Reconciling Mind and Matter with Dual-Aspect Monism
We live in a world of duality, of apparent separation between our inner world of thoughts and feelings and the external world of objects and lifeforms. From this divide the question arises: how can two seemingly different substances possibly interact, and in what larger context?
From a nondual perspective this fundamental split is seen not as a fundamental truth but as a limitation of the mind. [Spoiler: all separation that occurs in the mind is an appearance within a single indivisible reality.] But how can philosophy articulate this perspective without denying the obvious differences in how we experience mind and matter?
One philosophical framework that resonates with the nondual view, particularly when it identifies the fundamental, unifying substance, is dual-aspect monism. This position proposes that there is only one reality (monism), but this fundamental reality can be experienced in two ways, as two different aspects: mental and physical.
Dual-aspect monism becomes insightful when this single, underlying substance is identified as consciousness. From the vantage point of the consciousness-only model, mental and physical aspects are not separate realms made of different substances somehow interacting. Instead, they are different experiences within consciousness.
When we look out across the ocean from the shore we see the waves, the rhythm, the distance. These are the objective forms that appear in consciousness. If we were to swim out into the ocean, we could experience its wetness, its temperature, its current. This is analogous to the subjective experience within consciousness. So it is all one substance, experienced in different ways.
In terms of the mind-body relationship from this nondual-aligned dual-aspect monist perspective, the brain is not a thing made of matter that produces consciousness. The brain is the physical representation of consciousness whose mental aspect is the subjective experiences of thought, feeling, and self-awareness. In other words, consciousness is not produced by the brain; the brain is an appearance within consciousness.*
The objective, physical universe is not separate from the perceiving consciousness. Both are ways in which experience is known. The body is not a physical container for consciousness. The body is the physical aspect of the consciousness that is aware. In the same way, the physical world is an aspect of the consciousness by which it is perceived.
Dual-aspect monism, when grounded in the primacy of consciousness, provides a philosophical bridge between the empirical reality of mind and matter and the nondual realization of unity. It affirms that duality is real as an appearance, but not as a fundamental reality. The fundamental reality is the aware ground of subjectivity from which both aspects, mind and matter, arise.
Other dual-aspect monists explored on this website are Baruch Spinoza, Arthur Schopenhauer, Carl Jung, David Bohm, and David Chalmers.