The Four Major Attitudes of Learning during your Return to God

The four major attitudes of learning: Dualism, Semi-Dualism, Non-Dualism, and Pure Non-Dualism from The Disappearance of the Universe, Chapter Two

DU p 29 & 37
There are four major attitudes of learning you will go through during your return to God. Everyone will go through all four of them, and everyone who progresses will occasionally and unexpectedly bounce back and forth from one to the other. Each level brings with it different thoughts and resulting experiences, and you will interpret the exact same scripture differently depending on which attitude of learning you are currently engaged in.

You should keep in mind that each of the four major attitudes of learning are long roads in themselves, and you will sometimes bounce around like a Ping-Pong ball in between them. The Holy Spirit will correct you along the way and set you back in the right direction. Do not feel bad when you temporarily lose your way. There is none who has ever walked this earth, including J, who did not give into temptation in some way. The myth of living a perfect life in terms of behavior is self-defeating and unnecessary. All that is necessary is to be willing to receive correction.


Dualism

DU p 29 & 30
Dualism is the condition of almost all of the universe. The mind believes in the domain of subject and object. Conceptually, it would appear to those who believe in God that there are two worlds that are both true: the world of God and the world of man. In the world of man, you believe, very practically and objectively, that there is in fact a subject - you - and an object, namely, anything else. This attitude was well expressed through the model Newtonian physics. The objects that make up a human's universe, which until the last few hundred years was simply called the world and referred to all of manifestation, are believed to exist apart from you and can be manipulated by you - "you" meaning the body and the brain that seems to run it. In fact, the body and brain that you think are you appear to have been caused by the world. But this idea is exactly backwards.

By necessity, the attitude toward God that accompanies this attitude of learning is that He is somewhere outside of you. There is you and there is God, seemingly separated from one another. God, Who is actually real, seems distant and illusory. The world, which is actually illusory, seems immediate and real. Your split mind, which split from the house like the prodigal Son, has unconsciously assigned to God the same qualities that your seemingly separated mind itself possesses. Thus God and the messages that seem to come from Him are conflicted.

Keep in mind that most of this is unconscious - meaning that it seems to exist out there in the world rather than in your own split mind. So God is considered to be both forgiving and wrathful. He is both loving and a killer, apparently depending on what kind of a mood He's in. This may be a good description of the conflict of a dualistic mind, but it is hardly a description of God.


Semi-dualism

DU p 30 & 31
The next attitude of learning you will go through during your return to God is sometimes referred to as semi-dualism. This could be described as a kinder, gentler form of dualism because certain true ideas have begun to be accepted. Once again, it makes no difference what your religion is, which is just one reason why all religions have some very nice, gentle, and relatively non-judgmental people. One such idea that the mind would be accepting at this time is the simple concept that God is Love.

A simple notion like this, however, if it is truly believed, would bring along with it some very difficult questions. For example, if God is Love, can He also be hate? If God is really perfect Love, then can He also be flawed? If God is a Creator, could He then be vengeful against that which He Himself had created?

Once the answer to such questions is clearly seen to be of course not, a long closed door has been nudged open. In the state of semi-dualism, your mind has begun to lose some of its hidden but terrible fear of God. Now God is less threatening to you - a primitive form of forgiveness has taken root within you. You still think of yourself as a body, and both God and the world still seem to be outside of you, but now you sense that God is not the cause of your situation. Perhaps the one person who was always there when things appeared to be going down the toilet was you. Perfect Love can only be responsible for good. So everything else must come from somewhere else. But as we'll see in our next attitude of learning, there is nowhere else.


Non-Dualism

DU p 31 & 32
Do you remember the old riddle, that if a tree falls in the middle of the forest and there’s nobody there to hear it, does it still make a sound? Well, what the tree does is send out sound waves. Sound waves, like radio waves – and for that matter, energy waves – require a receiver to pick them up. The human or animal ear is a receiver. If a tree falls in the middle of the forest and there’s nobody there to hear it, then it does not make a sound. Sound isn’t sound until you hear it, just as a wave of energy does not appear to be matter until you see or touch it.

To make a long story short, it should be evident from this that it takes two to tango. In order for anything to interact, you must have duality. Indeed, without duality there is nothing to interact with. There can be nothing in a mirror without an image that appears to be opposite it, attached to an observer to see it. Without duality there is no tree in the forest. As some of your scientists of quantum physics know, duality is a myth. And if duality is a myth, then not only is there no tree, but there is also no universe. Without you to perceive it, the universe is not here, but logic would have to dictate that if the universe is not here, then you are also not here.

DU p 34
Non-dualism is like the old teaching that you live as if you are in this world, but your attitude is that of the two seeming worlds, the world of truth and the world of illusions, only the truth is true and nothing else is true. But even then, people make the mistake of thinking the illusion was made by truth. So they still make the error of attempting to bring legitimacy to the illusion rather than giving it up. You cannot hope to break the cycle of birth and death as long as you maintain this confusion. The unconscious mind goes to such lengths to avoid God that you will either ignore Him, or even more likely you will attempt to devolve non-dualism into dualism.


Pure non-dualism

DU p 39
J was neither judgmental nor a reactionary, and our brief outline of non-dualism should have given you the idea that he would not be willing to compromise on this logic: if nothing is outside of your mind, then to judge it is to grant it power over you, and to no judge it is to withdraw its power over you. This certainly contributes to the end of your suffering. But our brother J didn't stop there.

Pure non-dualism recognizes the authority of God so completely that it relinquishes all psychological attachment to anything that is not God. This attitude also recognizes what some people have called the 'like from like' principle, which says that anything coming from God must be like Him. Pure non-dualism is not willing to compromise on this principle either. Rather, it says that anything that comes from God must be exactly like Him. God could not create anything that is not perfect or else He wouldn't be perfect. The logic of that is flawless. If God is perfect and eternal, then by definition anything He creates would also have to be perfect and eternal.

Since there is obviously nothing in this world that is perfect and eternal, J was able to see the world for what it was - nothing. But he also knew that it appeared for a reason, and that it was a trick to keep people away from the truth of God and His Kingdom.

DU p 41
J's Love, like God's was total, impersonal, non-selective and all-embracing. He treated everyone equally, from rabbi to prostitute. He was not a body. He was no longer a human being. He had reclaimed his place with God as pure spirit. This is pure non-dualism, an attitude that, along with the Holy Spirit, will lead you to what you are. You and J are the same thing. We all are. There is nothing else.

DU p 41
Gary asks, 'I've been taught that I'm a co-creator with God. Is that true? Arten responds, 'Not on this level. The only place where you are really a co-creator with God is in Heaven, where you would not be aware of being any different from Him or in any way separate from Him. So then how could you not be a co-creator with Him? But there is a way here on earth to practice the thought system of the Holy Spirit like J did, which reflect the laws of Heaven, and that is your way home.

DU p 41 & 42
If God is perfect Love, then He is not anything else, and neither are you. You are, in fact, the Love of God, and your real life is with Him. Like J, you will come to know and experience that God is not outside of you. You will no longer identify yourself with a vulnerable body or anything else that can be limited, and a body is anything that has borders or limits. You will learn instead of your true reality as pure spirit that is invulnerable forever.

DU p 128
The Course in purely non-dualistic, meaning that of the two seeming worlds, the world of God and the world of man, only the world of God is true and He doesn't interact with the false world - but the Holy Spirit is here to guide you home.

YIR p 43
It’s imperative that you stick to the message of the Course. Don’t compromise on it. A Course in Miracles is purely non-dualistic. We don’t want the same thing to happen to the message of the Course that happened to J’s message 2,000 years ago. That’s one of the main reasons we’re back: to help keep people focused.


God Is....and nothing else is