Neoplatonism speaks to my transcendental universalist sensibility because offers a vision of reality where all beings are expressions of a single ineffable source, and where the soul’s journey is one of recollection, inner ascent, and ultimate return. It bridges philosophy, spirituality, and mystical experience without the dogmatic boundaries of institutional religion.
I notice that I am on a different path to Evelyn and am sorry for her struggle.
Singularity by Marie Howe (after Stephen Hawking):
Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?
so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money—
nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone
pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.
For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you. Remember?
There was no Nature.
No them. No tests
to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf or if
the coral reef feels pain. Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;
~ would that we could wake up to what we were
—when we were ocean and before that
to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not
at all—nothing
before we came to believe humans were so important
before this awful loneliness.
Can molecules recall it?
what once was? before anything happened?
No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with
is is is is is
All everything home
It seems that across time, geography and tradition, human beings share a fundamental impulse: the need to reflect on the meaning of life, to grapple with uncertainty, and to seek connection with a reality that transcends the self. This impulse takes many forms - prayer, meditation, journaling, reading sacred texts, communing with nature, or creating art. Though the outward expressions vary, shaped by culture, religion and individual temperament, the underlying desire remains remarkably consistent: a longing for direction, depth and transcendence.
At their core, these diverse practices are attempts to answer a series of perennial questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is worth living for? Whether the addressed presence is called ‘God’, ‘the universe’, ‘truth’ or simply ‘the inner self’, the act itself reveals an engagement with something larger - a dimension that provides coherence, meaning and moral direction.
From the perspective of a transcendental universalist, this widespread and deeply human pattern provides powerful support. The fact that people across cultures and epochs independently cultivate practices oriented towards ideals such as truth, unity, beauty, and goodness - often accompanied by a spirit of compassion - points to a common spiritual and ethical ground beneath our surface differences.
These values, even when interpreted through very different lenses, seem to reflect something essential in the human condition. Whether one turns to Christian mysticism, Buddhist mindfulness, Sufi ecstasy, indigenous wisdom, or secular humanism, the impulse is the same: to respond to an inner call to the transcendent - to a reality that transcends narrow self-interest and touches the infinite.
This common movement towards compassion, coherence and higher meaning gives depth and legitimacy to the universalist view. It does not flatten the distinctiveness of traditions but recognises that they may be different articulations of the same inner truth - paths winding towards a common summit. In their striving, these traditions reveal a kind of universal spiritual grammar: a language of the soul that speaks in many tongues but resonates with the same longing.
As a transcendental universalist I try to align with many aspects of Advaita Vedanta, especially in its metaphysical and ethical dimensions — but I am aware there are also some important distinctions.
I think we agree on the Unity of All That Is. In my understanding, Advaita Vedanta asserts that Atman (the individual self) is identical to Brahman (the ultimate, impersonal reality). My emphasis on a shared human impulse toward truth, unity, and transcendence hopefully resonates strongly with this non-dual (Advaita) view — that behind apparent diversity lies one undivided reality.
In the way I see different traditions as culturally shaped expressions of the same deep longing, My understanding is that Advaita teaches that religious forms and rituals can help point toward truth, but the ultimate reality lies beyond all dualities and concepts.
A worry of mine has been that Advaita focuses primarily on metaphysical realization, but I am encouraged to read that traditional commentaries emphasize that the realization of oneness leads naturally to compassion, because harming another is ultimately harming oneself. My focus on truth, unity, beauty, goodness, and compassion reflects a similar moral logic.
When I write about “something greater than the self” and a shared spiritual grammar, this hopefully aligns with the Vedantic idea that the ego and separateness are ultimately illusory (maya), and that spiritual practice leads to the dissolution of that illusion.
As someone who is coming from a Christian background, I struggle a little with the fact that Advaita Vedanta tends to lean toward an impersonal understanding of the divine (Nirguna Brahman — without attributes), whereas I tend to leave room for a personal or relational divine presence (e.g., “God,” “inner self,” etc.). You may see this as a divergence, unless personal conceptions of the divine could be seen as provisional steps toward a deeper impersonal unity.
I can identify with Advaita’s ultimate goal of moksha — liberation from the cycle of birth and death through realization of non-duality. However, my approach is more inclusive and dynamic by nature, valuing ongoing ethical, aesthetic, and relational engagement with life, not just transcendence of it. I don’t think it’s incompatible with Advaita, but there is a difference.
What I’m not familiar with is the Cosmology and Ontology of Advaita Vedanta. I read that Advaita has a highly specific metaphysical system (with ideas like maya, avidya, sat-chit-ananda) that gives structure to its claims. My transcendental universalism may be more phenomenological by nature, focusing on shared experience and values rather than a fixed ontology.
So, does my position broadly resonate with Advaita Vedanta, at least in its emphasis on unity, transcendence, and the illusory nature of divisions? Or am I too pluralistic and ethically grounded in this-world experience, instead of being more metaphysically rigorous and ultimately aiming at liberation from the world?
The poem Singularity spoke to me with Advaita in mind, which is why I posted it. What do you think?
As a fellow seeker of moksha, I think it does.
That depends on your aim. What do you want from the world? The path to spiritual liberation through action comes through selfless work. This involves performing actions without attachment to the results. This means dedicating oneself to one’s duty and offering one’s actions as service to others without expecting any personal gain or reward. In Vedantic terms its karma yoga. In taoism it’s wu wei. In Christian terms, it’s the fruit of the spirit.
I think it does, beautifully. The line “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. Remember?” alludes to Transcendentalist poet Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”:
1 I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
2 And what I assume you shall assume,
3 For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
Some say there is no continuous path from ethics to nondualism because ethical judgments are dualistic and therefore lead to blaming which creates disharmony and negative karma. Therefore, nonduality negates ethics.
According to this view one must transcend the ethical to reach nondual consciousness. Nonduality takes you beyond all judgments of good and evil enabling you to become the other, that is, seeing all sides with compassion.
The upside of this is compassion toward all creatures. Omnicompassion does not take sides.The downside is lack of accountability. Holiness is beyond justice. It is not answerable to ethical questioning.
Sri Ramakrishna taught that disturbances in meditation are caused by desire. Lust, anger and greed and are caused by the inclination to worldly enjoyment. He taught that these are washed away by weeping for God—Hari, the ultimate attractor.
Ramakrishna asked why a person lies, steals, or commits murder? In other words, Why does a person become immoral or unethical? He says it’s because they can’t control themselves. It’s the impulsion of temptation or terror, fear or some attraction that the person cannot overcome that one does immoral things. Accordingly, all immoral action is caused by desire, anger or fear. These are the drives which cause us to go beyond the limits of morality.
The enlightened being realizes that happiness is not found in the phenomenal world. Giving up the delusion that happiness is found there frees one from the desires, fears and anger that cause immorality. This is what we expect to see in an enlightened being be it another or oneself.
Reflections on Christianity from the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer.
A long predicted epoch has set in; the church is beginning to totter, nay it totters already to such a degree, that it is doubtful whether it will ever be able to recover its centre of gravity; for faith is lost.
The light of revelation, like other lights, requires a certain amount of darkness as an indispensable condition. The number of those who have been unfitted for belief by a certain degree and extent of knowledge, is already very large.
Of this we have evident signs in the general diffusion of that shallow Rationalism which is showing its bulldog face daily more and more overtly. It quietly sets to work to measure those profound mysteries of Christianity over which centuries have brooded and disputed with its draper’s ell, and thinks itself wondrous wise withal.
It is, however, the very quintessence of Christianity, the dogma of Original Sin, which these shallow-brained Rationalists have especially singled out for a laughing-stock; precisely because nothing seems clearer or more certain to them, than that existence should begin for each of us with our birth: nothing therefore so impossible as that we can have come into the world already burdened with guilt. How acute!
And just as in times of prevailing poverty and neglect, wolves begin to make their appearance in villages; so does Materialism, ever lying in wait, under these circumstances lift up its head and come to the front hand in hand with Bestialism, its companion, which some call Humanism.
Our thirst after knowledge augments with our incapacity for belief. There comes a boiling-point in the scale of all intellectual development, at which all faith, all revelation, and all authority evaporate, and Man claims the right to judge for himself; the right, not only to be taught, but to be convinced. The leading-strings of his infancy have fallen off, and henceforth he demands leave to walk alone. Yet his craving for Metaphysics can no more be extinguished than any physical want. Then it is, that the desire for philosophy becomes serious and that mankind invokes the spirits of all the genuine thinkers who have issued from its ranks.
Then, too, empty verbiage and the impotent endeavours of emasculated intellects no longer suffice; the want of a serious philosophy is felt, having other aims in view than fees and salaries, and caring little therefore whether it meets the approbation of cabinet-ministers, or councillors, whether it serves the purposes of this or that religious faction, or not; a philosophy which, on the contrary, clearly shows that it has a very different mission in view from that of procuring a livelihood for the poor in spirit.
For it behoves all professorial philosophy, before all things, to establish beyond doubt, and to give a philosophical basis to, the doctrine, that there is a God, Creator, and Ruler of the Universe, a personal, consequently individual, Being, endowed with Understanding and Will, who has created the world out of nothing, and who rules it with sublime wisdom, power and goodness. This obligation, however, places our professors of philosophy in an awkward position with respect to serious philosophy. For Kant had appeared and the Critique of Pure Reason, was written more than sixty years ago, the result being, that of all the proofs of the existence of God which had been brought forward during the Christian ages, and which may be reduced to three which alone are possible, none are able to accomplish the desired end.
Religion is, in fact, to Theism as the genus to the single species, and Judaism and Theism are alone identical. For this reason we stigmatize as heathen all nations who are neither Jews, Christians, nor Mahometans. Christians are even taxed by Mahometans and Jews with the impurity of their Theism, because of the dogma of the Trinity. For, whatever may be said to the contrary, Christianity has Indian blood in its veins, therefore it constantly tends to free itself from Judaism.
The Critique of Pure Reason is the most serious attack that has ever been made upon Theism—and this is why our professors of philosophy have been in such a hurry to set Kant aside; but had that work appeared in any country where Buddhism prevailed, it would simply have been regarded as an edifying treatise intended to refute heresy more thoroughly by a salutary confirmation of the orthodox doctrine of Idealism—that is, the doctrine of the merely apparent existence of the world, as it presents itself to our senses.
—————————
The ideal explained in the Stoical philosophy is the most complete development of practical reason in the true and genuine sense of the word; it is the highest summit to which man can attain by the mere use of his reason, and in it his difference from the brutes shows itself most distinctly. For the ethics of Stoicism are originally and essentially, not a doctrine of virtue, but merely a guide to a rational life, the end and aim of which is happiness through peace of mind. Virtuous conduct appears in it as it were merely by accident, as the means, not as the end. Therefore the ethical theory of Stoicism is in its whole nature and point of view fundamentally different from the ethical systems which lay stress directly upon virtue, such as the doctrines of the Vedas, of Plato, of Christianity, and of Kant. The aim of Stoical ethics is happiness: τελος το ευδαι μονειν (virtutes omnes finem habere beatitudinem) it is called in the account of the Stoa by Stobæus (Ecl., L. ii. c. 7, p. 114, and also p. 138). Yet the ethics of Stoicism teach that happiness can only be attained with certainty through inward peace and quietness of spirit (αταραξια), and that this again can only be reached through virtue; this is the whole meaning of the saying that virtue is the highest good.
And the inner contradiction referred to above, with which the ethical system of Stoicism is affected even in its fundamental thought, shows itself further in the circumstance that its ideal, the Stoic philosopher, as the system itself represents him, could never obtain life or inner poetic truth, but remains a wooden, stiff lay-figure of which nothing can be made. He cannot himself make use of his wisdom, and his perfect peace, contentment, and blessedness directly contradict the nature of man, and preclude us from forming any concrete idea of him. When compared with him, how entirely different appear the overcomers of the world, and voluntary hermits that Indian philosophy presents to us, and has actually produced; or indeed, the holy man of Christianity, that excellent form full of deep life, of the greatest poetic truth, and the highest significance, which stands before us in perfect virtue, holiness, and sublimity, yet in a state of supreme suffering.
————————
For the New Testament, as regards its historical part, is almost more unsuitable for painting than the Old, and the subsequent history of martyrs and doctors of the church is a very unfortunate subject. Yet of the pictures, whose subject is the history or mythology of Judaism and Christianity, we must carefully distinguish those in which the peculiar, i.e., the ethical spirit of Christianity is revealed for perception, by the representation of men who are full of this spirit. These representations are in fact the highest and most admirable achievements of the art of painting; and only the greatest masters of this art succeeded in this, particularly Raphael and Correggio, and especially in their earlier pictures.
And this knowledge in them, reacting upon the will, does not, like other knowledge, convey motives to it, but on the contrary has become a quieter of all will, from which proceeded the complete resignation, which is the innermost spirit of Christianity, as of the Indian philosophy; the surrender of all volition, conversion, the suppression of will, and with it of the whole inner being of this world, that is to say, salvation.
————————
In Christian theology we find the dogma of predestination in consequence of election and non-election (Rom. ix. 11-24), clearly originating from the knowledge that man does not change himself, but his life and conduct, i.e., his empirical character, is only the unfolding of his intelligible character, the development of decided and unchangeable natural dispositions recognisable even in the child; therefore, as it were, even at his birth his conduct is firmly determined, and remains essentially the same to the end. This we entirely agree with; but certainly the consequences which followed from the union of this perfectly correct insight with the dogmas that already existed in Jewish theology, and which now gave rise to the great difficulty, the Gordian knot upon which most of the controversies of the Church turned, I do not undertake to defend, for even the Apostle Paul scarcely succeeded in doing so by means of his simile of the potter’s vessels which he invented for the purpose, for the result he finally arrived at was nothing else than this:—“Let mankind Fear the gods! They hold the power In everlasting hands: And they can use it As seems good to them.”
———————-
The Old Testament made the world and man the work of a god, but the New Testament saw that, in order to teach that holiness and salvation from the sorrows of this world can only come from the world itself, it was necessary that this god should become man. It is and remains the will of man upon which everything depends for him. Fanatics, martyrs, saints of every faith and name, have voluntarily and gladly endured every torture, because in them the will to live had suppressed itself; and then even the slow destruction of its phenomenon was welcome to them.
———————-
Let no one think that Christianity is favourable to optimism; for, on the contrary, in the Gospels world and evil are used as almost synonymous.
————————-
As thing-in-itself, the will of the begetter and that of the begotten are not different, for only the phenomenon, not the thing-in-itself, is subordinate to the principim individuationis. With that assertion beyond our own body and extending to the production of a new body, suffering and death, as belonging to the phenomenon of life, have also been asserted anew, and the possibility of salvation, introduced by the completest capability of knowledge, has for this time been shown to be fruitless. Here lies the profound reason of the shame connected with the process of generation. This view is mythically expressed in the dogma of Christian theology that we are all partakers in Adam’s first transgression (which is clearly just the satisfaction of sexual passion), and through it are guilty of suffering and death. In this theology goes beyond the consideration of things according to the principle of sufficient reason, and recognises the Idea of man, the unity of which is re-established out of its dispersion into innumerable individuals through the bond of generation which holds them all together. Accordingly it regards every individual as on one side identical with Adam, the representative of the assertion of life, and, so far, as subject to sin (original sin), suffering, and death; on the other side, the knowledge of the Idea of man enables it to regard every individual as identical with the saviour, the representative of the denial of the will to live, and, so far as a partaker of his sacrifice of himself, saved through his merits, and delivered from the bands of sin and death, i.e., the world (Rom. v. 12-21).
But that the deeper knowledge, which is no longer involved in the principium individuationis, from which all virtue and nobleness proceed, no longer retains the disposition which demands requital, is shown by the Christian ethics, which absolutely forbids all requital of evil with evil, and allows eternal justice to proceed in the sphere of the thing-in-itself, which is different from that of the phenomenon. (“ Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord,”—Rom. xii. 19.)
———————
I should like here to refer to a passage in the Vedas, where it is said: “As in this world hungry infants press round their mother; so do all beings await the holy oblation.” (Asiatic Researches, vol. viii.; Colebrooke, On the Vedas, Abstract of the Sama-Veda; also in Colebrooke’s Miscellaneous Essays, vol. i. p. 79.) Sacrifice means resignation generally, and the rest of nature must look for its salvation to man who is at once the priest and the sacrifice. Indeed it deserves to be noticed as very remarkable, that this thought has also been expressed by the admirable and unfathomably profound Angelus Silesius, in the little poem entitled, “Man brings all to God;” it runs, “Man! all loves thee; around thee great is the throng. All things flee to thee that they may attain to God.” But a yet greater mystic, Meister Eckhard, whose wonderful writings are at last accessible (1857) through the edition of Franz Pfeiffer, says the same thing (p. 459) quite in the sense explained here: “I bear witness to the saying of Christ. I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things unto me (John xii. 32). So shall the good man draw all things up to God, to the source whence they first came. The Masters certify to us that all creatures are made for the sake of man. This is proved in all created things, by the fact that the one makes the use of the other; the ox makes use of the grass, the fish of the water, the bird of the air, the wild beast of the forest. Thus, all created things become of use to the good man. A good man brings to God the one created thing in the other.” He means to say, that man makes use of the brutes in this life because, in and with himself, he saves them also. It also seems to me that that difficult passage in the Bible, Rom. viii. 21-24, must be interpreted in this sense.
[Romans 8:20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.]
——————
And what I have here described with feeble tongue and only in general terms, is no philosophical fable, invented by myself, and only of to-day; no, it was the enviable life of so many saints and beautiful souls among Christians, and still more among Hindus and Buddhists, and also among the believers of other religions. Thus it may be that the inner nature of holiness, self-renunciation, mortification of our own will, asceticism, is here for the first time expressed abstractly, and free from all mythical elements, as denial of the will to live, appearing after the complete knowledge of its own nature has become a quieter of all volition. On the other hand, it has been known directly and realised in practice by saints and ascetics, who had all the same inward knowledge, though they used very different language with regard to it, according to the dogmas which their reason had accepted, and in consequence of which an Indian, a Christian, or a Lama saint must each give a very different account of his conduct, which is, however, of no importance as regards the fact.
That’s not something limited to Hinduism, in Buddhism the Yogacara [Vijñānavāda] school of thought teaches the same thing, that all of reality is merely a single flow of consciousness. That consciousness is reality.
If one studies epistemology on virtually everything it easily leads to epistemological nihilism which then devolves into mental solipsism.
But the thing is, that isn’t just limited to religious or spiritual institutions, that path eventually engulfs the nihilism of all human institutions, constructions, or creations where on a long enough road you eventually end up in the zero point of everything, the zero point of all existence itself. That is the inherent problem with extreme nihilism or skepticism, you’re eventually left with nothing at all. Who can base their entire life, worldview, or survival on nothing? That sort of thinking isn’t particularly useful or helpful to anybody. That type of thinking is the antithesis of life, it is simply death, or a proverbial dead end.
If you however mix all of that with utilitarianism and pragmatism with a keen insight into human history along with the psychology of the mind the pitfall trap of nihilism becomes completely avoidable no longer being existentially tragic.
“We’re all stardust” ~ Some scientist, and atomic theory of matter, and our common DNA (tree of life), seem to be scientific ideas that speak to the unity of all things. The Advaita Vedantists, due to a lack of scientific knowledge, relied on an ethereal glue - atman and Brahman - to ground the To Hen (The One).
Schopenhauer too was missing the scientific knowledge that would’ve edified him on the interconnectedness of all things. So he took a different tack - read him.
Would you all agree that the Tao Te Ching puts the (epistemological paradoxical) matter rather succinctly when it says :
“The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.”
?
It seems as human beings we see what we want to see and most of what we see isn’t even real at all. We don’t really see or perceive the universe and cosmos, we only see a mirror of ourselves. We’re in a house of mirrors constantly caught up in our own illusions.
The world is will and representation.
If that is true and it seems likely that it is we are under a poor guided malignant will of spirit currently and a corrupt representation at that. The future of modern civilization looks very bleak currently of this whole disastrous era we live in.
.
The sum of an individual’s parts?
There’s a collective consciousness at work, but it is also clear there is malignant evil individuals trying to control that directionary flow of consciousness for their own interests as well. Human consciousness is a constant battlefield.
.
I know, and I’ve never liked that.
Schopenhauer saw that the glue was consciousness.
Schopenhauer influenced Darwin, Einstein, Schrodinger and other brilliant scientific minds. He was a polymath whose “tack” included a large breadth of scientific and philosophical knowledge plus Buddhism and the Upanishads.
I see that science since Schop’s day has mostly confirmed his philosophy. Are there scientific findings that you think run counter to it?
We are infinite nondual consciousness perceived though the lens of a finite minds which create the illusion of multiplicity you are describing. The sages say that the world we see is due to our karma. Ours doesn’t seem to be too good. But, it’s a perfect place from which to seek liberation. 
Or so it seems to the jiva.
Liberation is difficult when you have an entire planet ruled by despots that seek to enslave humanity and convince the minds of men to harm one another. The goal is to seek enlightenment in this world, but that doesn’t mean we can ignore worldly events around us, we have an obligation to do better, to help others in need. It is our sacred duty to liberate everybody on this earth.
