On the spiritual journey, how much can we take with us, and how much must we leave behind? The author Annie Dillard once wrote a short essay describing the trail left by the ill-fated Franklin expedition to the South Pole. The artifacts revealed the misconceptions they had in undertaking the journey: the sailing ships had auxiliary steam engines, but only brought a twelve-day supply of coal for what was estimated to be a two or three year’s voyage. Rather than bring extra coal, they made room to carry a 1200 volume library in each, along with china place settings, cut-glass wine goblets and heavy sterling silver flatware. Rather than take special clothing for the Arctic, they wore only the uniforms of the Queen’s navy. The burden of these things ultimately contributed to their failure; a later search party found the remains of those who died, including two skeletons in a boat on a sledge that had been hauled 65 miles. With the two skeletons were some chocolate, some guns, some tea and a great deal of table silver.

The successful expeditions, on the other hand, chose the right company and knew what to let go of, as well as what they could afford to enjoy. Dillard points out, “If you are an officer with the Franklin expedition and do not know what you are doing or where you are, but think you cannot eat food except from sterling silver tableware, you cannot get away with it.”^_ As with the expedition, she notes, if you want to know God, you have to know what to let go of — though God does not demand that we let go of anything at all: “God needs nothing, asks nothing, and demands nothing, like the stars…You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.”

This is the paradox of the spiritual journey. God is not the taskmaster we take Him to be — but if we wish to know God, then there are some prized possessions that we cannot bring with us. The practical question for each of us to answer is, then, what do we take with us, and what must we leave behind? Yet this is not something demanded of us, only required to make the trip.

Unlike the expedition, of course, is that the spiritual journey is not measured by miles; in the end, we travel no further than our own heart, completing a tremendous journey without taking a single step. In philosophical terms, the journey is described either in terms of dualism and nondualism. On the one hand, we might ask, ‘Is the ‘land’ of the Spirit and Absolute Reality so entirely ‘other’ than the land we presently inhabit in everyday life that we must ultimately leave everything behind through a path of renunciation?’ This path of discrimination and renunciation is part and parcel of a dualistic view of spiritual Truth, and carries with it a certain attitude toward the world.

If on the other hand we take the view that our world and Absolute Reality are actually One, then how do we chart our journey to the experience of this Unity? What should our attitude toward the world be? If all things are really an expression and manifestation of the Absolute, what do we accept and what can we really reject? For the nondualist, the question is ultimately not one of discrimination (though discrimination plays an essential role) but of recognition of the Truth that is already present. The nondualist has a further question to answer: how can this Truth be ‘hidden’ or concealed from us if, as the nondualist holds, there is no ‘other’ to conceal the Truth, nor to mark the distance between ourselves and the Truth? What is it that stands in our way?

At the center of the fray for both the dualist and nondualist is the ego, and the question perhaps is really, what of ourselves and our ordinary way of understanding and experience must we leave behind, and what is the new vision to which we are called? The question of whether the world should be embraced or renounced on the spiritual path is really a question of how we relate to the world as well as to ourselves, and the spiritual journey is really a question of transforming how we understand and relate to both world and self, and how well we understand how the mind helps or hinders us in this.

The stage in this drama is set by the suffering and sense of limitation and alienation that comes of the ego’s way of relating to the world. The terms of our engagement with the world are dictated by the nature of the ego itself, and the plot turns upon way(s) in which we must paradoxically use the mind, body and ego to transcend the mind and ego. The philosophical idea of a ‘dualism’ in yoga is really a strategy for bringing the play to a triumphant conclusion in which one side is victorious and the other vanquished. The under-standing of nondualism seeks a different ending: it leads not so much to victory as it does to a resolution, a completion.