Neo-Advaita, Contemporary Non-dual Spirituality &
5 Dangerous Divergences from Traditional Contexts
5 Dangerous Divergences from Traditional Contexts
The term Neo-Advaita has become a pejorative buzz-word in the world of contemporary non-dual spirituality, gaining notoriety from increasing reports from people negatively impacted by it's primary teaching of a "direct path" to liberation from suffering via permanent "ego death" or "ego dissolution" wrapped in a self and world negating ideology that promises a sort of "instant enlightenment" through shattering the very foundation of one's individual sense of self and reality. I think of their slogans as nuanced variations on the theme of "no self, no suffering." Like their traditional origins, they're based on a system of authoritative beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality, as well as value judgments based on these beliefs and meditative practices and "direct pointers" to experience these truths beyond the concepts, for example directly experiencing that the self is illusory/non-existent and that the ultimate nature of reality and oneself self "is pure consciousness and all else is merely illusion."
Now it's important to recognize that what many are calling Neo-Advaita, is actually a newly emergent Western amalgam (over the last ~30 years) of several Eastern Enlightenment traditions - specifically selected elements from Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism - most commonly Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, in which the goal is permanent liberation from suffering and the ego/individual self (and all that comes along with it) is a pernicious illusion standing in its' way.
[A hallmark of specifically Neo-Advaita teachings are references to the more contemporary Advaitic gurus Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta who their teachings are more or less identical to - review their core messages here - and the use of Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry technique for bringing about, in most basic terms, an immediate realization of the non-existence of the ego/self and permanent collapse of one's sense of personhood.]
My view is that since this hybridized new-age spirituality serves up a sort of instant enlightenment non-duality soup that comes in many flavor combinations, the term contemporary non-dual teachings is an umbrella that more fully encompasses the overall trend/phenomenon of self-negating spirituality that has become so popular in the West and proven to be a sharp double-edged sword that has had a profoundly harmful impact on too many people's lives.
While Neo-Advaita and contemporary non-dual teachings largely share the same ideological worldview and teaching content as the traditions they draw from, what really differentiates them is how they have been taken out of their socio-temporal context, seen by many as mis-appropriated for a modern Western audience in problematic ways. My perspective, shared by many others, is that the primary reason why these teachings have been able to harm so many people is the significant difference in the context of how they're being taught, let's say the difference in set and setting, which includes first and foremost their lack of consideration of it!
Some of Neo-Advaita's core messaging
"It's time to face the truth - you're all experiencing a massive hallucination, your entire existence is nothing but a false construct, don't attempt to cling to the notion that you're real, because doing so will only lead to an endless cycle of ignorance and delusion."
You are not a person, You are a hallucinating yourself, you don't exist, there is no individual, no separation, separation is an illusion, there is no chooser, no doer, everything is just happening, there is no self, reality is only a dream that happens to no one, everything is perfect as it is, seeing happens, talking happens, but it happens for no one, no one is talking, and no one is listening, words are being spoken by no one, for no one, your mind is your enemy, the ego must die, everything is perfect.
Now it's important to recognize that what many are calling Neo-Advaita, is actually a newly emergent Western amalgam (over the last ~30 years) of several Eastern Enlightenment traditions - specifically selected elements from Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism - most commonly Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, in which the goal is permanent liberation from suffering and the ego/individual self (and all that comes along with it) is a pernicious illusion standing in its' way.
[A hallmark of specifically Neo-Advaita teachings are references to the more contemporary Advaitic gurus Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta who their teachings are more or less identical to - review their core messages here - and the use of Ramana Maharshi's self-inquiry technique for bringing about, in most basic terms, an immediate realization of the non-existence of the ego/self and permanent collapse of one's sense of personhood.]
My view is that since this hybridized new-age spirituality serves up a sort of instant enlightenment non-duality soup that comes in many flavor combinations, the term contemporary non-dual teachings is an umbrella that more fully encompasses the overall trend/phenomenon of self-negating spirituality that has become so popular in the West and proven to be a sharp double-edged sword that has had a profoundly harmful impact on too many people's lives.
While Neo-Advaita and contemporary non-dual teachings largely share the same ideological worldview and teaching content as the traditions they draw from, what really differentiates them is how they have been taken out of their socio-temporal context, seen by many as mis-appropriated for a modern Western audience in problematic ways. My perspective, shared by many others, is that the primary reason why these teachings have been able to harm so many people is the significant difference in the context of how they're being taught, let's say the difference in set and setting, which includes first and foremost their lack of consideration of it!
Some of Neo-Advaita's core messaging
"It's time to face the truth - you're all experiencing a massive hallucination, your entire existence is nothing but a false construct, don't attempt to cling to the notion that you're real, because doing so will only lead to an endless cycle of ignorance and delusion."
You are not a person, You are a hallucinating yourself, you don't exist, there is no individual, no separation, separation is an illusion, there is no chooser, no doer, everything is just happening, there is no self, reality is only a dream that happens to no one, everything is perfect as it is, seeing happens, talking happens, but it happens for no one, no one is talking, and no one is listening, words are being spoken by no one, for no one, your mind is your enemy, the ego must die, everything is perfect.
Context is key - Set & Setting - TL;DR:
While contemporary non-dual teachings share much of the same philosophy as the traditional teachings they are derived from, the teaching context is vastly different from the traditional context, and it's primarily these differences that have led to harm. This means that those who care about reducing the harm should be able to de-center philosophical disagreements when focusing on the practical consideration of safeguarding people from being negatively impacted!
Here are what I call "The 5 divergences" - my perspective on the main differences from the traditional contexts that make today's mainstream non-dual teachings so dangerous:
Taught indiscriminately
Lack of Preparation Stage
Lack of Support Structure
Inexperienced self-appointed gurus
Commodification
Keep reading for a deep dive into each of these differences and their implications!
Here are what I call "The 5 divergences" - my perspective on the main differences from the traditional contexts that make today's mainstream non-dual teachings so dangerous:
Taught indiscriminately
Lack of Preparation Stage
Lack of Support Structure
Inexperienced self-appointed gurus
Commodification
Keep reading for a deep dive into each of these differences and their implications!
Overview of 5 Contextual Divergences primarily responsible for harm
This is an overview of the key contextual differences between modern non-dual teachings and the traditions they stem from. These differences have been shown through research and personal experience to play the most significant role in causing harm, and I'm calling these differences "The 5 Divergences." My intention is to equip those who are attracted to contemporary non-dual teachings with insight to spot unhealthy factors that could cause harm, so that they can make informed decisions around engaging with them, as well as to safeguard one another. I also hope to spark a greater shift towards making our current spiritual marketplace and teaching dynamics/ learning environments healthier and safer for all!
Taught indiscriminately to the general public, as a blanket solution to whatever ails you, omitting the traditional assessment by experienced guides/gurus equipped to discern the appropriateness of the teachings for an individual based on their unique circumstances.
- Take for example, a quote from Ramana Maharshi, a major inspiration to Western non-dual teachers: "What is said is given out to suit the temperament of the hearers." Contrast with the target audience of today's teachers being largely a demographic of people in states of psychological distress/emotional fragility, simply seeking immediate relief from suffering and an unlikely category of people for whom no-self/ego death pointers would be ideal/safe for. More on this in the discussion of omitting the preparatory stage.
- Consider as well , that these are predominantly renunciate teachings given a monastic setting for those committed to asceticism being given out to "householders," rather than those who have prepared for and are committed to asceticism. Most find, understandably so, that renunciation/renunciate ideals are incompatible with the lifestyle they're living, and a vast number of people report tragic unexpected and unwanted disturbances to their relationships, including with their family members and capacity to engage in their role as parent, sibling, partner, etc. once a process of ego destabilization/ego dissolution is under way and/or one's mind has been filled with renunciate ideals largely unliveable in their lifestyle.
- This is where we see the omission of set - the current mindset, psychological background, and intentions of individuals which both traditional enlightenment gurus and psychedelic facilitators who similarly guide people in "ego death" experiences, take deep care to assess. See section below on the ethical protocols of psychedelic facilitators, and how this relates.
Omitting a preparatory stage that involved rituals and mental/emotional discipline, cultivation of virtue/morals/ethical values, practicing renunciation and building up a sturdy foundation for eventual ego deconstruction after cultivating things like a dispassionate mind and ongoing state of emotional and physiological regulation (In Hinduism this is called satva/ a satvic disposition) which was considered crucial, for many reasons. The lack of any preparation stage is what defines "the direct path" to enlightenment/liberation (as opposed to a progressive path) that is a prized feature in most contemporary non-dual teachings, and precisely what makes them attractive to a Western audience seeking immediate relief from suffering, and quick fixes. It is precisely the dangled carrot of "instant enlightenment" that has drawn in millions of people and become a sort of "enlightenment business in a box" for so many to jump on.
- Contrast this with it being taught today as a way to become regulated. Encouraging instant loss of ego/self is concerning in many ways, but it's easy to see how it often puts people on a fast track (almost inevitably) to spiritual bypassing (which is "par for the course" on any awakening path, and a term which John Welwood coined when he saw it happening in his contemporary Buddhist circles) where sudden self-transcendent awakenings leave all of your "issues" intact, and lead to the increasingly common phenomenon of people who are seen as "awakened" or "spiritually advanced" but are psychologically and emotionally under-developed, stunted, immature. "Because by relating to the continuity-alone—even though this is an important experience to have—the egoic problems of being an individual tend to fade and even disappear, giving the student the idea that all is well. Well, all is not well. That is part of human life as well... In deep contact with the absolute-alone, the ego disappears...instead of being healed. It is very possible to have a profound connection to the continuity-alone and other non-egoic states, and still be an asshole." It's not unlikely that a large portion of "direct path" teachers fit into this category, given the disturbing number of them who have "fallen from grace" when it's discovered that they've been engaging in varying levels of mistreatment, abusiveness, financial scandal. Beyond these major falls from grace, we can look to something that has been gaining increasing attention - a frequent lack of humility, respect, empathy and compassion shown by self-proclaimed awakened teachers to their distressed audience members, as well as among community members, giving a clear impression that they are talking the talk but not walking the walk of virtues like love, kindness, peace and compassion.
- This also points to the danger of the dismissal and even undermining of the importance of cultivating and practicing ethical and moral behavior, personal responsibility/accountability, and how their actions impact others. It really highlights the importance of the virtue cultivation and what a shame it is that our so much of popular non-dual spirituality today has cut this out, making awakening non-relational, a pursuit based entirely on personal salvation, with almost no talk of how awakening should lead to behavior change and more altruistic action that minimizes the suffering /positively impacts other beings, improving our relationships, communities, and society itself. In much of my experience, the messages of much of modern non-dual teachings promoted and led many people to have more disdain/cynicism towards humanity, isolationism, and a rather misanthropic attitude! One could argue that this can happen with any renunciate path but you can see for example in Buddhism that the Dharma (including it's emphasis on right speech and right behavior) was an essential part of the path, without which it would be anemic and incomplete.
Lack of in-person relationship between teacher and student/support system which ensures that misunderstandings and the common challenges that the individuals experience can be directly supported in an ongoing way. Today people face the understandably disorienting aftermath of ego dissolution as well as dangerously spinning out into crisis with no one to turn to and it's not uncommon to hear of people becoming dysfunctional, sometimes hospitalized and there are many reports of people committing suicide when their lives are turned upside down. I constantly hear from people who turned to their teachers, typically from a distance, in these times of crisis and were treated dismissively and given dangerously negligent advice, and where it's clear that had they been given appropriate guidance, these people might have been alive today. This doesn't place blame squarely on the teacher but points to the grave and even deadly impact that a lack of adequate support provided with the teachings has had. More on this in section on inexperienced teachers.
- Consider that in a renunciate traditional setting, in a monastery for example, the shift in consciousness was shared by and understood by those around you - i.e. what is consensual reality in society is consensual in that community! As researcher Elizabeth Stephens poignantly notes, "Many in the contemporary West engage in intentional practices designed to cultivate ST (self-transcendence) or PST (permanent self-transcendence), such as meditation...without the benefit of rituals, community, or traditional religious support structures."
- Wade (2018) who researched adverse effects of what she calls "self-transcendence," including "people whose awakening process cost relationships and jobs; led some to homelessness and incarceration in mental institutions; and debilitated others for years with kundalini disturbances." She concluded that "Doing non-duality “on your own” clearly involves hazards... individuals awakening without some of the traditional supportive structures religious institutions provided are likely to face many challenges."
- Very telling of the lack of consideration for how dangerous the lack of in-person support structure is, I recently reaad a transcript of a conversation in which someone asked Shinzen Yung about the "dark night of the soul" that he heard people can experience on the meditative spiritual path, because he was worried it might happen to him. Surprisingly, Shinzen inaccurately replied that these are highly uncommon occurrences (which he explained in Buddhism is thought of as "falling into the pit of the void"). What he said next was illuminating - he said that when they did happen in the monastic setting, they were "serious, but still manageable through intensive, perhaps daily, guidance under a competent teacher. In some cases it takes months or even years to fully metabolize." Contrast this with the situation today, where a vast number of people, including myself, have had dark nights of the soul, "falling into the pit of the void" as well as what Zen Buddhism calls "emptiness sickness," without access to anything close to daily support from a competent teacher. The growing field spiritual emergency/spiritual crisis is working hard, given the overwhelming volume of people reporting these crises, to educate both the spiritual and medical community on how prevalent severe dark nights of the soul are, and the critical need for competent support.
Commodification of teachings, sold in best-selling books, paid in-person events, online courses etc. It might not seem like it but this is a huge concern when considering the ways that people are harmed, as it which presents a conflict of interest, sometimes unconsciously I would think, for teachers who have a financial investment in spreading the teachings to as many people as possible as a one-size, one-Truth fits all solution to suffering. There's a case for the possibility that many of these teachers either knowingly or unconsciously dismiss the downsides and risks, not choosing to or seeing a need to give any sort of disclaimers about them. It makes sense that when you benefit financially from people perceiving ego dissolution and what is being considered "non-dual awakening" as a panacea bringing freedom from suffering that is unlikely to cause new forms of short and long-lasting suffering, that you may be invested in perpetuating and/or believing it to be true, as Elizabeth describes it, that "non-dual loss of self is the pinnacle of human development and wellbeing, with negative "side effects" being rare, despite growing evidence that this may not reflect the reality."
Inexperienced self-appointed enlightenment experts (even if they don't call themselves that) looked to as fully awakened experts on enlightenment despite the fact that many of them are at a very early stage in their spiritual journey, ubiquitously teaching a beginning as an end goal, and do not have the training or experience to support people going through the range of challenges that commonly result from their teachings. Not to mention that it's very difficult to safely guide people in a territory you haven't been in yourself. This often leads to those who prematurely set themselves up as teachers entering new stages of spiritual development in which they discover that what they were initially teaching was a woefully misleading partial truth, or even completely leading people astray into the same tragic pitfalls they've found themselves in. Jeff Foster is one example of a teacher who was honest about this, yet sadly there are so many teachers who are quick to point out the mistakes that seekers make on the path (such as spiritual bypassing or overly fixating on emptiness) but do not acknowledge the role they played in leading them led into them, instead frequently labeling them as "immature" or "unripe" when of course this is what they were when these people were following their lead. My view is that it is "unripe" teachers who teach an audience they know to contain many people who they perceive to be "unripe." It is also my view that it is a so-called "unripe" teacher whose teaching dynamic fits these 5 divergences.
- Like I described in the lack of preparatory stage, we are seeing an alarming rate of reports from people who have shared the difficulties they're experiencing to their non-dual teachers and being dismissed in dangerous ways, a ubiquitous response being a blanket prescription to double-down on ego-dissolution, as well as to use self-inquiry to negate the existence of the one who is suffering.
Looking to the Ethical Protocols of Psychedelic Facilitation to Understand the Importance of Set & Setting in Mitigating the Risks in the Instant-Enlightenment Movement
Perhaps the most succinct way to think about it is that today, those who are giving out enlightenment teachings, while not literally giving out drugs, are guiding people to have equally powerful ego death experiences as those experienced on psychedelics, while neglecting the crucial consideration, as a kind of facilitator, of set and setting. This is a term typically associated with taking psychedelic drugs, where set refers to an individual's current mindset/mental makeup and setting refers to circumstances, including the physical and social environment in which they are being taken. In the context of taking psychedelic drugs, it's widely understood that taking account of set and setting is critical in maximizing the chances that a powerfully mind-altering (and often life-altering!) experience will be largely positive, and most importantly ensuring one's safety, given that inducing a sudden unravel foundational sense of self and reality which is known, understandably to be extremely ungrounding, de-stabilizing in ways that result in patterned forms of serious, often long-term harm. This is precisely why so much research is going into the cost/benefit ratio of psychedelic usage before green-lighting them as legal in a psycho-therapeutic setting and potentially for the general public. And most importantly, those who get trained in facilitating psychedelic trips follow an ethical protocol that most would agree is critical, which includes a stage of screening/assessment of the individual's current and historical psychological background (having been trained in understanding red flags for risk potential) a preparatory stage that discusses their expectations, intentions, and fully discloses potential risks, for potential "ego deconstruction" as well as a stage of integration, often considered one of the most important, in which the facilitator directly supports the individual with post-shift challenges, so that the person is not left hanging alone in the wake of a shift in consciousness, that especially if one experienced ego dissolution, is known to be life-altering, blowing apart the foundation of one's familiar identity and reality paradigm. There's no lack of understanding how harrowing the aftermath of a "bad trip" can be, and even when it's mostly or totally positive, support is crucial in safely acclimating to and navigating consensual reality and a world in which they may have lost their bearings.
Here is an article in Tricycle Magazine about the dangers of both teachers and seekers neglecting set and setting when inducing ego-deconstruction with spiritual practices.
Perhaps the most succinct way to think about it is that today, those who are giving out enlightenment teachings, while not literally giving out drugs, are guiding people to have equally powerful ego death experiences as those experienced on psychedelics, while neglecting the crucial consideration, as a kind of facilitator, of set and setting. This is a term typically associated with taking psychedelic drugs, where set refers to an individual's current mindset/mental makeup and setting refers to circumstances, including the physical and social environment in which they are being taken. In the context of taking psychedelic drugs, it's widely understood that taking account of set and setting is critical in maximizing the chances that a powerfully mind-altering (and often life-altering!) experience will be largely positive, and most importantly ensuring one's safety, given that inducing a sudden unravel foundational sense of self and reality which is known, understandably to be extremely ungrounding, de-stabilizing in ways that result in patterned forms of serious, often long-term harm. This is precisely why so much research is going into the cost/benefit ratio of psychedelic usage before green-lighting them as legal in a psycho-therapeutic setting and potentially for the general public. And most importantly, those who get trained in facilitating psychedelic trips follow an ethical protocol that most would agree is critical, which includes a stage of screening/assessment of the individual's current and historical psychological background (having been trained in understanding red flags for risk potential) a preparatory stage that discusses their expectations, intentions, and fully discloses potential risks, for potential "ego deconstruction" as well as a stage of integration, often considered one of the most important, in which the facilitator directly supports the individual with post-shift challenges, so that the person is not left hanging alone in the wake of a shift in consciousness, that especially if one experienced ego dissolution, is known to be life-altering, blowing apart the foundation of one's familiar identity and reality paradigm. There's no lack of understanding how harrowing the aftermath of a "bad trip" can be, and even when it's mostly or totally positive, support is crucial in safely acclimating to and navigating consensual reality and a world in which they may have lost their bearings.
Here is an article in Tricycle Magazine about the dangers of both teachers and seekers neglecting set and setting when inducing ego-deconstruction with spiritual practices.