"Dialectical monism"? What an awkward name for a great philosophy.

[GliderGuider]

I've recently been dipping into Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, surfing the non-dualist bow wave of Peter Kingsley's remarkable book "Reality". In the course of my wanderings I discovered that the quote "No man steps in the same river twice. It is never the same river and never the same man" - that I always thought was by some Eastern mystic - was actually coined by the presocratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus.

In the Wiki entry for Heraclitus I found a link to an entry for something called Dialectical monism. This philosophy really rings my bell, because I've been looking for ways to unite the non-dualist position I hold so dear with the obvious multiplicity of observed reality.

[div class="excerpt" style="border:solid 1px #000000"]Dialectical monism is an ontological position that holds that reality is ultimately a unified whole, and asserts that this whole necessarily expresses itself in dualistic terms. For the dialectical monist, the essential unity is that of complementary polarities, which, while opposed in the realm of experience and perception, are co-substantial in a transcendent sense.
I'm continually amazed by the treasures waiting to be discovered out there.

Edited to add: here's a more thorough article on it, for those whose interest is piqued:

http://naturyl.humanists.net/diamon.html