Nonduality occupies a contested and generative position within the depth-psychology corpus, appearing variously as a metaphysical claim, a contemplative attainment, a psychological hazard, and a critique of spiritual narcissism. Masters provides the most sustained psychological interrogation, arguing that nondual awareness is neither a stage to be achieved nor a refuge from embodied life, but a living reality that must include rather than transcend the personal, the shadowy, and the egoic — and that its misappropriation fuels spiritual bypassing. Welwood and Cooper engage nonduality through the lens of Buddhist-psychotherapeutic dialogue, examining how Mahamudra, Dzogchen, and Dogen's radical non-dualism reframe the relationship between self, thought, and awareness without collapsing the therapeutic dimension. Watts and Suzuki situate nonduality within classical Zen and Mādhyamika frameworks, showing its roots in the transcendence of conceptual pairs. Campbell and Zimmer approach it mythologically and comparatively. McGilchrist, by contrast, mounts a philosophically rigorous resistance to any simplistic monism, insisting that 'All is One' is only half a truth and that genuine nonduality must preserve rather than annul the tension of opposites. Aurobindo integrates the question into Vedantic ontology, where apparent dualities are aspects of a single self-differentiating Absolute. The convergence of these voices reveals nonduality as one of the corpus's most theoretically dense and practically fraught terms.
In the library
16 passages
In nonduality there is no dissociation from phenomena, no withdrawal from life, no bypassing, no avoidance of manifesting as form. And there is no truly separate self, no discrete knower, no autonomous entity standing apart.
Masters defines authentic nonduality as the full embodiment of reality without dissociation, explicitly contrasting it with the spiritual bypassing that uses nondual language to avoid personal and shadow work.
Masters, Robert Augustus, Spiritual Bypassing When Spirituality Disconnects Us From, 2012thesis
their separation from and refusal to truly embody the dual, the personal, the idiosyncratic, the shadowy, and, yes, the unrepentantly egoic keeps them (and their followers) up to their eyeballs in good old dualism, clinging to the idea—or ideal—of nonduality.
Masters argues that spiritual teachers who use nondual discourse to bypass embodied personal work are trapped in dualism, not liberated from it.
Masters, Robert Augustus, Spiritual Bypassing When Spirituality Disconnects Us From, 2012thesis
The sage has transcended dualism, whereas the newborn has yet to enter it, not having awakened to the fact that he or she has been born into a realm of deeply ingrained dualism.
Masters distinguishes the neonatal pre-differentiated state from genuine nondual realization, insisting that authentic transcendence of dualism requires prior full immersion in it.
Masters, Robert Augustus, Spiritual Bypassing When Spirituality Disconnects Us From, 2012thesis
The claim that All is One is well-intentioned, but, it seems to me disastrous, because it is just half a truth. We sense that we are not as separate as our everyday manner of thinking implies, and that is wonderful.
McGilchrist critically challenges the monistic reading of nonduality, arguing that 'All is One' must be complemented by 'All is Many,' and that collapsing the tension between them produces philosophical and existential distortion.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
The claim that All is One is well-intentioned, but, it seems to me disastrous, because it is just half a truth. We sense that we are not as separate as our everyday manner of thinking implies, and that is wonderful.
McGilchrist challenges nondual monism as philosophically incomplete, insisting that genuine understanding must hold the One and the Many in irreducible tension.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
If one considers the calm state as something positive to be attained, and the wave of thought as something negative to be abandoned, and one remains caught up in the duality of grasping and rejecting, there is no way of overcoming the ordinary state of the mind.
Welwood, citing Namkhai Norbu, presents nonduality as the dissolution of the meditator's dualistic split between calm and agitation, self and thought, through sustained presence within the movement of mind itself.
Welwood, John, Toward a Psychology of Awakening Buddhism, Psychotherapy,, 2000supporting
Dogen turns the meaning of the story around to support his radical non-dualism. He shifts the tile polishing metaphor around and characterizes both Baso's zazen and Nangaku's tile polishing as expressive of 'practice in realization.'
Cooper shows how Dogen's radical non-dualism collapses the distinction between practice and realization, making every activity an expression of awakening rather than a means to it.
Cooper, Seiso Paul, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019supporting
When the mind rests serene in the oneness of things, The dualism vanishes by itself. And when oneness is not thoroughly understood, In two ways loss is sustained.
Suzuki's translation of Sengcan's 'Inscription on the Believing Mind' presents nonduality as the natural resolution of mental dualism when the mind abides in the suchness of things without preference or aversion.
Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series), 1949supporting
Opposites genuinely coincide while remaining opposites. Some philosophies tend to collapse into the monism that opposites are identical; others into the dualism that opposites remain irreconcilable and are merely, at most, juxtaposed.
McGilchrist articulates a position between monism and dualism in which opposites are co-constitutive rather than either identical or merely juxtaposed, offering a structural account of what nonduality must navigate.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
Opposites genuinely coincide while remaining opposites. Some philosophies tend to collapse into the monism that opposites are identical; others into the dualism that opposites remain irreconcilable and are merely, at most, juxtaposed.
McGilchrist maps the philosophical terrain between monism and dualism, arguing for a synthesis in which opposites are dynamically conjoined without losing their distinctness.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
there is no binding dualism; the contradictories and oppositions which the intellect creates exist only as aspects of the original Truth; oneness and multiplicity are poles of the same Reality.
Aurobindo situates nonduality within Vedantic ontology, arguing that intellectual dualities — pleasure and pain, oneness and multiplicity — are secondary appearances of a single self-differentiating Absolute reality.
the two hands represent the nonduality of the spiritual world (kongokai) and the matrix or material world (taizokai), which can be also read in the act of sexual union, wherein 'each is both.'
Campbell reads the Adi Buddha's mudra as a symbolic statement of nonduality in which spirit and matter, form and void, are revealed as mutually constitutive and ultimately inseparable.
Campbell, Joseph, The Mythic Image, 1974supporting
He has transcended all dualities whatsoever, and thus it would mean nothing to him to think of himself as a superior person or a spiritual success.
Watts identifies the Buddha's realization with the transcendence of all duality, including the spiritual hierarchy that would rank the enlightened above the unenlightened.
Only when it becomes conscious do we feel motivated to call one: unity, the unity, the All-oneness, individuality, nonduality, counting unit, etc.
Von Franz mentions nonduality in a mathematical-philosophical register, listing it among the 'necessary statements' generated by the concept of oneness as number becomes conscious.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014aside
the yonder shore is the shore beyond pain and pleasure, gain and loss, fear and desire, you and me. It's the transcendence of duality in the realization of the cosmic unity, or transcosmic unity.
Campbell describes the Buddhist 'yonder shore' as the mythological figure of nondual realization, a transcendence of all paired opposites including self and other.
Campbell, Joseph, Transformations of Myth Through Time, 1990aside
Watts's index entry situates nonduality as an explicit thematic category within his treatment of Zen, pointing to its discussion in the context of Indian philosophy and Buddhist metaphysics.