From Dualism via Non-Dualism to Monism

The Shift from Need for Continuity to Dynamic Self-Regulation

By the Druid Finn

1. The Infantile Dualist Notion: God as Stable Continuity

In the earliest stage of human and cultural development, the infantile self requires security and predictability. Its survival is fragile, so it projects authority outward to an all-encompassing regulator, imagined as:

· Continuous (ever-present, never absent).

· Ubiquitous (covering all space, all acts).

· Stable and static (unchanging, like a permanent parental figure).

· Possibly caring (a provider who feeds and protects).

This God is conceived as creation + regulation system. Spinoza’s Deus sive Natura, or Ibn ʿArabī’s doctrine of waḥdat al-wujūd (unity of being as seamless continuity), embody this continuous, unbroken totality.

But this dualist God arises not from insight into reality, but from need: the infant projects the longing for dependable regulation into a metaphysical principle. God is the Parent writ large.

Summary: The dualist God is a survival fiction—a continuous, stable projection that reassures the infant self.

2. The Juvenile Non-Dualist Notion: God Internalized

As development proceeds, the juvenile self begins to acquire internal regulation. The parent’s voice is carried inward as conscience, reason, or inward divine spark. God is still present, but now both beyond and within.

· Christianity: “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).

· Upanishads: tat tvam asi (“Thou art That”).

· Sufism: God is nearer than one’s jugular vein.

Here God is no longer purely external law but becomes an internal compass guiding the growing self. The juvenile is less dependent, yet not fully autonomous: still tethered to an imagined universal stability, but now with an internalized share.

Summary: Non-dualism is the adolescent compromise—external authority partly interiorized, supporting transitional self-regulation.

3. The Mature Monist Notion: Self as Dynamic God-Regulation

With full maturity comes the recognition that the stable, continuous God was never real. The continuous was a projection of need; reality itself is discontinuous, dynamic, iterative—like frames of a film or quanta of energy.

· The mature adult has become self-regulating.

· He recognizes that self and God are identical as procedural events of the Universal Rule System.

· To say “I am God” is to affirm full self-regulation: the individual is not watched, guided, or protected by another, but is the living iteration (a sort of fractal elaboration) of the universal procedure itself.

In this phase, God is not continuous being but dynamic, discretely discontinuous procedure:

· Not eternal stability, but quantum discontinuity.

· Not ubiquitous presence, but serial emergence.

· Not caring provider, but neutral generative engine.

Summary: Monism is adulthood: the self recognizes that to exist is already to enact the universal procedure. God is not apart, not within, but identical with the act of self as event.

4. The Developmental Shift in Essence

· Dualist infant: needs stability → invents a continuous, caring God.

· Non-dualist youth: internalizes regulation → imagines God within as transitional guide. His world becomes unstable.

· Monist adult: recognizes discontinuity and autonomy → affirms self as God, dynamic, self-regulating, discontinuous procedure.

5. Toxicity of Misplacement

Each view is beneficial only in its proper phase:

· Dualism stabilizes the infant but infantilizes the adult.

· Non-dualism trains the adolescent but confuses the infant and hinders the adult.

· Monism crowns the adult but destroys the infant (premature autonomy) or inflates the adolescent (arrogance, cultism).

6. Conclusion

The developmental trajectory from dualism → non-dualism → monism is a natural arc of survival-maturation. What begins as a projection of need for continuous stability ends in the recognition of dynamic, discontinuous autonomy.

Thus the mature adult does not pray to God, nor search for God within, but lives as God in action—each event a local iteration of the Universal Procedure.

Home