What's Wrong With Nonduality?

In a word, it’s a religion.

Like other religions, its conjectures are not identified as such, but touted as indisputable facts, and followers take up the cause. This is what I call “learned ignorance.” Here is an example from the comments on my Youtube channel:

blue eyes: Non-duality means there is no separation between objective experiences, including thoughts, feelings, and sensations, and the reality that knows them. Non-duality is not a concept, but a fact, for you cannot have an object apart from the knowing element, call it whatever you like. It is only a pointer to the true life or reality within us. The pointers of non-duality tell us there is no separate self or person. There is no independent entity that has the power to exercise free will. Not realising this to be the case, humanity lives in a conceptual realm based on imagination and not reality. Hence the confusion and problems suffered at the personal level that extend to the wider community and affect every society founded and structured on false premises.

Robert: You say that, "Non-duality is not a concept, but a fact, for you cannot have an object apart from the knowing element, call it whatever you like." Really? How do you know that objects cannot exist apart from awareness of them? From my perspective, that is not "a fact," but a belief or a dogma.

blue eyes: For the simple reason that no one has ever experienced any object in the absence of knowing it. This implies that in the absence of consciousness, not a single thing exists. The beauty of the non-dual approach is to rely on your own direct experience and not on hearsay (however holy its source), or on speculation, or on inference. The stamp of reality has to be your own experience. We are not talking about conventional reality which appears only after non-conceptual awareness, or whatever you want to call it. If you claim that objects exist apart from the awareness that knows them, then you are looking at this from the standpoint of duality. It is the conventional view based on the belief in separation.

Robert: I do not claim that "objects exist apart from the awareness that knows them." I simply do not know, and you don't either. Yes, perhaps "no one has ever experienced any object in the absence of knowing it," by which you mean, I assume, noticing it or being aware of it. That is a tautology and so is automatically true simply because to "experience" an object is the same as "knowing it." In saying that, you are only saying that experiencing and knowing are the same thing, which says nothing meaningful about "nonduality." Your words here illustrate a principal problem with nonduality, its anthropocentrism. Do you really believe beyond any doubt that unless a human notices it, the moon does not exist? If so, you'd better have better proof than x is equal to x.