It should be noted that, as one might recognize from IGF’s subtitle, non-duality is a key to understanding the material (evolution), political (revolution), and spiritual (vision) essence of the book. Foundational to the project of Western Modernity is a series of dualities: self/other, subject/object, mind/body, spirit/matter, male/female, Christian/pagan, settler/“savage”, West/East, North/South, capitalist/worker, progressive/reactionary, white/Black, etc. It is these dualisms that I target; though they may be helpful to conceptualize and map reality, they are inherently artificially reductionist.
The excess of the Real, on the other hand, calls for something far more radical: a vision that is truly integral in a revolutionary and evolutionary way — hence the use of the term (r)evolution, which reflects the two primary tactics of anarchist praxis, revolution against the State and evolution of anarchist communities in preparation for a phase-shift into a State-less future. There is a key spiritual, Christocentric connection here in terms of an anticipation of eschatological arrival of the Kin-dom of God. Thus my (r)evolutionary vision is one which is both anarchistic and Christocentric, albeit with a Christocentrism that is esoteric and perhaps heretical. I’m in agreement with many esoteric thinkers, including Rudolf Steiner, that the Second Coming of the Christ is multiple — it is the awakening of the Christ-consciousness in each individual Self. This is the kernel of non-duality that leads to my political vision.
It is my firm commitment to the excess of the Real, represented by Deleuze in the equation “PLURALISM = MONISM”, that leads me to the dissolution of dualities and the union of opposites. This is not a naive dissolution and union, in which things are seen as essentially one-and-the-same; rather, it is a complex, integral dissolution and union in which each-and-every thing is differentiated, individuated, and caught up in a multiplicity of forces that spawn from an ontologically monistic primordial flux. As Deleuze writes in Difference & Repetition,
Opening is an essential feature of univocity. The nomadic distributions or crowned anarchies in the univocal stand opposed to the sedentary distribution of analogy. Only there does the cry resound: ‘Everything is equal!’ and ‘Everything returns!’. However, this ‘Everything is equal!’ and ‘Everything returns!’ can be said only at the point in which the extremity of difference is reached. A single and same voice for the whole thousand-voiced multiple, a single and same Ocean for all the drops, a single clamour of Being for all beings: on the condition that each being, each drop, and each voice has reached the state of excess – in other words, the difference which displaces and disguises them and, in turning upon the mobile cusp, causes them to return.
In this way, the differentiation of “all the drops” is the exceeding of the naive universalism that so often informs so-called mystics. What these individuals experience is in many ways true — that we are all part of “a single and same Ocean” — but what they miss is that individuation is a necessary, even desirable aspect of this “clamour of Being.” It is a “clamour” — a roaring infinitude, a commotion, a gathering, a multitude. The naivety of a non-dual universalism is the result of an impoverishment of thought and feeling, leading directly to the counter-movement of dualistic thinking. What is needed, then, is an overcoming of dualistic thinking through increasing attention to differentiation and singularity, the excess of the Real.
So “. . .the difference which displaces and disguises them and, in turning upon the mobile cusp, causes them to return” is the return of dissolution and union; however, this time it is complex, integral, and perspectival. Rather than saying that our singularity is in fact an illusion, we can say that we are individuated manifestations of the Real, embedded in our historical, social, and material contexts, enfleshed in a distinct body, and epistemologically unique. We are, in so many ways, not just shadows of the Christ as Christian orthodoxy would say, but instead singular incarnations of the Christ-consciousness. Our Self-consciousness is of the Universe, though it is not universal.
The obvious critique that could be laid against this concept of pluralism is that it itself seems to be making a universal claim on the nature of reality. This is the crux of “PLURALISM = MONISM”. There is much to be decided about what constitutes reality, but I make these claims not because I feel that they are inherently more true, per se, but rather because they are both more beautiful in my opinion and, I hope, more pragmatic. The issue arises because I am attempting to persuade; that my persuasion be ineffective is a chance that I take. The goal for me is not to prove my vision, but rather that my vision proves itself worthy of the excess of the Real. Beyond the naivety of universalism and the fabrications of duality lies the fabulation of the cosmic: that we are here to create the Universe, to spawn a New Story as Thomas Berry says, and to initiate an eschatological transformation of our reality and our selves. It is simply a wager I’m putting out into the world. If it doesn’t speak to you, let it pass; and if it does, craft with it your own vision of the (r)evolutionary path beyond tomorrow’s morning.
In Good Faith: a blog 