The Last Dualism 2 – The Myth of the Body’s Illusion

Plato’s Legacy and the Persistence of the Great Dualism

In the midst of today’s non-dual revival, a strange contradiction persists. While the language of unity, presence, and wholeness is widespread, the body—this visible, touchable, vulnerable being—is often spoken of as an illusion, a veil, a mistake. In countless spiritual teachings, the body is subtly or explicitly dismissed: a temporary shell, a bundle of sensations, a fiction of the ego, a prison for the soul.

This contempt for the body is not new. It is the ancient inheritance of Platonic dualism, quietly absorbed by religious dogmas, mystical traditions, and even contemporary “non-dual” thought. The body becomes the site of ignorance, while “true self” is located in some disembodied awareness, an eternal formlessness divorced from space and time.

But the very idea that the body is unreal—that it comes from nothing and returns to nothing—is the root of the nihilism that haunts even the most luminous teachings. In this article, we expose this hidden dualism and ask a deeper question: What is the body, if Being cannot not be?

The Platonic Inheritance: A Division That Still Holds

Plato was among the first in the West to clearly formulate the idea that truth belongs to the eternal, not the temporal; that reality is found in the invisible world of Forms, not in the fleeting world of appearances. The body, for Plato, was a temporary vehicle—changeable, fallible, and ultimately deceptive. The soul, by contrast, was immortal and pure, imprisoned in matter, awaiting release.

This worldview was revolutionary in its time, but it carried with it a decisive rupture: between body and soul, time and eternity, visible and invisible, matter and spirit.

What is often not recognized is that this division was built upon the unspoken acceptance of Becoming—that is, the idea that things come into being and pass away, that what exists now was once nothing and may return to nothing. The body is temporary because it is thought to arise from nothing. It is unreliable because it is destined for disappearance.

This belief remains active today, even in the teachings that claim to transcend dualism.

The Disembodied Non-Duality: Spiritual Echoes of Plato

In contemporary non-dual teachings, especially those influenced by Advaita Vedanta or certain strains of Buddhism, the soul–body dualism often reappears under new terms: Awareness vs. phenomena, Self vs. form, the Real vs. the apparent.

Teachers may say, “You are not the body,” or “The body is just a passing appearance in consciousness.” The language has shifted, but the structure remains: the formless is real, the formed is derivative; Being is pure light, and the world of embodiment is its shadow.

The result is a spiritual idealism: salvation is found in dissociation from the world, in transcending the senses, in dissolving into the unmanifest.

But this too is dualism. It merely cloaks contempt for the body in the rhetoric of peace. It leaves the deepest assumption untouched: that the body is a temporary accident—something that came from nothing and will return to it.

So long as the body is seen as perishable, as a flicker in the void, then the nothingness at the root of nihilism still governs thought.

What Is the Body, If Nothing Does Not Exist?

Let us now confront the heart of the question: What is the body, if Being cannot not be?

If nothingness is not—if it has no being, no power, no reality—then no being can arise from it. Nothing can return to it. Every being, insofar as it is, is eternal. This includes the body—not only the concept of body, but this particular body, with its form, sensations, memories, and weight.

We are not speaking of the body as an abstraction, but as a concrete appearance within the eternal order of Being. This does not mean that the body is fixed in time, frozen like a statue. It means that the appearing of the body—its phases, its transitions, its states—is part of the necessary, non-contradictory totality of what is.

The body, then, is not a passing phenomenon. It is not a vessel for something higher. It is not something to be “seen through.” It is an eternal being, inseparable from the structure of reality.

The true revolution is not to say ‘I am not the body,’ but to recognize: the body is, and therefore cannot not be. It is eternal.

The Tragedy of Disembodiment: Spirituality’s Hidden Violence

The belief that the body is illusory is not a harmless metaphor. It has consequences.

It fuels dissociation from lived reality. It denies the eternal significance of suffering, love, intimacy, birth, and death. It encourages a subtle spiritual arrogance, in which the world is dismissed as irrelevant or unreal. It contributes to a culture that treats the material as disposable, as something to overcome or escape.

Even worse, it continues to subject the body to the logic of use and abandonment: valuable only insofar as it serves a higher purpose—whether enlightenment, pleasure, or spiritual vision. And when it no longer serves that purpose, it is left behind like a worn-out shell.

This is not liberation. It is the repetition of Plato’s mistake. It is the failure to recognize the eternal depth of what appears.

The Glorified Body: Beyond Plato and Resurrection Dualism

Even in Christian theology, which insists on the resurrection of the body, we often find the Platonic wound unhealed. The body is to be “transformed,” “glorified,” or “spiritualized,” as if it were not already, in its very being, eternal. The resurrection becomes a future event, a metaphysical correction of a temporary mistake.

But if nothing is ever lost—if every being that is, is eternally so—then there is no need to wait for a “return” of the body. The body has never not been. What appears in time is not merely temporary but is a necessary aspect of the eternal.

The glorified body is not some post-historical reward. It is the recognition of the already eternal body—this body, in its suffering, beauty, fragility, and presence.

Toward a Non-Duality That Includes the Body

A true non-duality must include the body—not as a symbol, not as a phase, not as a stepping stone, but as a being that cannot not be. This changes everything:

• The body is not an obstacle to truth; it is a mode of the eternal.
• Pain and pleasure are not transient appearances; they are revelations of Being.
• The visible is not inferior to the invisible; both belong necessarily to the same order.

Such a recognition does not require mystical states or renunciation. It requires only the clarity to see that whatever is, is eternal—and that the body is no exception.

To love the body, then, is to love eternity.

Conclusion: From Contempt to Wonder

We have inherited, often unconsciously, a long tradition of contempt for the body. Whether in philosophical, religious, or spiritual language, we have been taught to see the body as something to transcend, escape, or dissolve. But this contempt is rooted in a misunderstanding of Being itself.

The body is not a mistake. It is not an illusion. It is not a temporary flicker against the background of formlessness.

It is eternal. It is necessary. It is sacred.

To see this is to begin the return—not to some disembodied source, but to the truth that has never left: that Being, in all its appearances, is whole. And the body, too, belongs to that wholeness.