Is non-dualism a form of denial?

To a casual observer, non-dualism does seem like denial. Living life while all the while trying to see it as unreal seems like a kind of mental illness! How can a mentally healthy person claim that the events of the world, the people populating it, and even the universe are all unreal?

Let me ask you this: Is it denial to take your kids to sit on Santa's lap, when you know Santa isn't a real person? Is it denial to attend a magic show, when you know everything you are seeing is illusion? How about movies? Plays? I've even heard that there are people who attend church every week all the while not believing everything they're hearing.

In short, we deny things all the time. The mental illness part comes in when you are denying something that is real. And here, the issue becomes more interesting. In our human format, we define reality by agreeing with each other. The things we view as 'real' are the things that most reasonable people AGREE about.

Agreement, people holding the same paradigm at the same time in the same place, is powerful. We have marveled and wondered about cult behavior, people who say, think, and do things that the 'outside world' views as crazy. Strange beliefs, weird practices, outlandish rituals all seem normal when a group of people agrees. We don't have to search very far to find examples of how agreement can bring about some very unsavory events.

So the question then becomes, "Is there a better way to define what is real?" Is agreement really what makes something true? And the answer is clearly, no. Agreement makes things SEEM real, but agreement cannot make a thing BE real. In non-dualistic thought, we are denying that the world is real. We don't deny that most people want it to be real. We don't deny that most people BELIEVE it is real. In fact, we even think that we ourselves still want it to be real. But our definition of Reality is: That Which Never Changes. Buddhists would claim that there is no such thing; everything changes, they state. And they're correct in describing the world as most people see it.

In non-dualism, we claim that there is another Reality. It's not right in front of our eyes, because our eyes were made to only perceive change. Denying reality is not mentally healthy; denying illusion, however, is the very definition of sanity. How can we sort out this whole question of what is real and what is not? It seems so complicated. We need some guidance.

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