Mysticism, Monism, Theism

Many mystics who prioritise experience, and perhaps an intellectual approach, over revealed truth, tend to assume impersonal monism is a higher or deeper realisation than theism, dismissing the latter as dualistic (bad word) or, if they are influenced by Indian religion which many are, a bhakti approach, bhakti being something like devotion to a deity. So they equate theistic mysticism with an emotional dualistic, me and him, attitude to God, one still centered in the self which must be transcended for full realisation. 

From where I stand they are both right and wrong. Yes, full identification with the separate self must eventually be left behind and yes, an emotional loving response to God does take place on the level of that self, albeit a purified level. But bhakti as devotion is different to agape which is love as being-feeling not emotion-feeling (hence without an opposite and not subject to fluctuations), and a higher state than simple identification with pure consciousness which is a kind of ‘back to where we started’ state that disregards the purpose of incarnation and experience in our dualistic world with the consequent sense of separation between self and other. It also isolates one part of our being, namely spirit or essential being, from the rest, in particular soul (individuality) but body too, thereby reducing the totality of what we are to its most fundamental aspect. 

But the true goal of unfolding life is the integration of spirit and matter, of the individual and the universal, including not separating, making the two one but, at the same time, keeping them as two and so preserving the truth in duality even if seeing it in the light of overall oneness.  Monism rejects matter by seeing it just as a veil on spirit and with no purpose or function in itself.  It has sometimes occurred to me that you could even regard it as metaphysically misogynistic, if you wished to think in those terms, matter being an aspect of mater and also maya, the feminine side of divinity, and crucial to God's purpose for us.

A proper theism sees the one and the many as not just both valuable but both essential with truth in both, and it seeks to preserve their uniqueness while uniting them in consciousness. And while monism ultimately seeks experience and therefore, contradictorily, could be perceived as self-centred, theism is concerned with doing the will of God in love and humility. 

Which is greater, to reject the self or to sanctify it? To exclude or to include the fruits of creation? I would say that the latter is not just better but truer to God's intention for us.  Why otherwise create us?

Sometimes disagreements are just over words and, bearing that in mind, you could say that the real goal is to reach a state which combines monism with theism since both contain something of the truth and neither is sufficient on its own, especially if your understanding of theism implies an unbridgeable separation between God and Man. There is no separation. Life is one. But within this oneness there is multiplicity and it is that which gives love, beauty and goodness to life. Monism is wrong because the personhood of God belongs to the highest level of being, and there is an element of differentiation right at the heart of existence. That is the Trinity which contains within itself the principle of differentiation and so makes creation possible. But theism is also wrong when it sees the creature as always apart from the Creator. For truly creature and Creator are one in essential being just as they are different in expression.

The highest truth is not in pure being alone but in being and becoming together always working together to create more, a ceaseless expansion of life to the greater glory of God and ourselves, his children.