Moral integrity or structural integrity? Why does language use this same word to point to these two apparently different meanings? The word "integrity", of course, is related to words such as integer, integral, and integrated, all of which point to a similar underlying concept : the idea of a pure undivided unity. When we speak of a piece of wood, or a piece of iron, the word "integrity" brings to mind a solid wholeness with no defects, splits, holes, or weaknesses. But when one speaks of the integrity of a person, why then do we think immediately of the perfection of moral qualities, and not of constitutional unity as we do with physical materials? Obviously, this is because we had forgotten about the binary quality of the human soul (even though language itself had not).

Our sense of morality rests in the unconscious. When we do something that deep down inside we feel was wrong, our unconscious always tries to tell us this (as in the universal cliche "I just knew in my heart that it was the right [or wrong] thing to do"). But in all us "less-than-enlightened" folks, the moral sense shares its home with all the repressed material we also force down into the unconscious over the course of our many lives, and this material, once there, functions automatically, compelling us to do various things largely without being aware of it, or at least without being aware of why we are doing it. So long as the contents of the unconscious remain unknown and hidden, the moral sense that resides there must compete with these automatic behavior patterns, and often fails.

The conscious mind is dominant and the stronger of the two, and can repress the messages from the unconscious (except for a little that always manages to leak through), and often does. The more the voice of the unconscious is repressed in order to avoid its moral judgments, the more a person also finds that he or she becomes cut off from his own feelings and emotions. This is why it is a classic cultural image that the most evil people in the world seem to feel no emotions, for in the process of turning off the voice of their own morality, they had to block the voice of the entire unconscious, and so became cut off from their own feelings as well.

Integrity is "integral" to spirituality itself. A person who does not possess the first could only pretend (or deceive himself) that he had the second. Radio's "Dr. Laura" is one voice speaking this message, insisting that true spirituality requires the most perfect and unflinching self-honesty, responsibility, and integrity. The concept that these two things, spirituality and integrit, are related, no, not merely related, but that they totally depend on one another, often seems to be utterly lacking from today's "New Age" thought. The ancient Binary Soul Doctrine, however, explains why integrity has always been traditionally taught to be a prerequisite for spirituality, why, in fact, pure integrity actually constitutes spirituality.

Paradoxically, however, the very same Eastern philosophies that hold nonduality up as the ultimate goal tend to dismiss the entire right-brain unconscious human soul, with all of its subjective feelings, moral attitudes, and personal memories, as completely irrelevant. In fact, to attain the ultimate goal, many Eastern philosophies maintain that one's subjective half needs to be entirely discarded, blaming it for preventing us from experiencing nonduality in the first place. Of course, many others take the exact opposite approach, insisting that we can simply say, "it is right because it FEELS right", and ignore, deny, and reject the intellectual half of one�s being, even when the objective self is saying "No, it is wrong. It doesn't make sense."

But if we can only honor our feelings by rejecting the voice of the intellect, or if we can only honor our objective intellectual self by rejecting our subjective feeling self, isn't this, either way, still only honoring half of our Maker and half of ourselves? When we are not acting from our full selves, but only from selected bits and pieces of ourselves, then we are not being fully WHO WE ARE, and so will inevitably fail to reach our highest potential and greatest good.

Still, most people seem to assume that it's easier to reject one side in favor of the other. For example, men have historically favored allowing the objective conscious mind fuller expression, while relegating the expression of the subjective unconscious to a back burner, while women did the exact opposite. Isn't this the opposite of non-dualism? How can we hope to achieve nonduality if we are splitting ourselves apart to do it? How can we know ourselves if we are rejecting half of ourselves? Aren�t we acting rather like the split-brain patient who had one hand trying to button up his shirt while the other hand was trying to unbutton it? Division is the problem, not the solution.

To reject the soul, the Binary Soul Doctrine suggests, is the original problem. The unconscious soul is subjective, feminine, emotional, intuitive, artistic, caring, nurturing, loving. And these are precisely the qualities that humanity has repressed, to its own detriment, for thousands of years. To say that the rejection of the soul is necessary for salvation is to authorize and encourage the continued rejection and repression and denial of all the values the soul provides. To approve the rejection of the feminine soul is to give unwitting approval to the continued repression of women by men, to approve the domination of the strong over the weak in all avenues of society and civilization. It is to reject art in favor of science, to reject faith in favor of reason, to reject the East in favor of the West. The unconscious soul is where our feelings reside, where they come from. Our feelings are what make us human, what allow us to care and feel for each other. No salvation that leaves this out is worthy of the name.

In the final analysis, any approach to solving humanity's problems, whether individual or collective, must come from and satisfy both the head and the heart, both our male and our female, both our right and left brains. Sooner or later, all attempted solutions that don�t satisfy both halves of the equation will be abandoned as ineffective and unworkable. This is a lesson that our religious leaders, as well as our politicians, should have figured out a long time ago. Humanity has tried for millennia to place male above female, science above faith, logic above feeling, Republicans over Democrats, law and order above right and wrong, justice over love (and vice versa), and it never works. Having tried this partisan, divisive, fractured approach for millennia, we as a species should be about ready by now to admit that it just doesn't work. Society as a whole, as well as its individuals, have all just been stunted and crippled by this naive approach.

The simple truth is, human beings are not more right-brain than left-brain, not more head than heart, not more intellect than emotion. Or vice versa. Whenever we find ourselves in a dilemma and willfully choose to honor one side by rejecting, denying, and ignoring the needs of the other side, we betray half of ourselves, dividing both our selves and our world in two. The only successful solution would seem to be to integrate them together, balancing them as Taoism teaches, "making the two one" as early Christian doctrine taught, achieving true "nonduality".