What is nonduality?
Spiritual and religious philosophies around the world have offered us the possibility of becoming conscious of something higher, something that transcends our everyday experience. Sometimes this transcendence is called consciousness, God, or perhaps the void. Ultimate reality has been recognized under these names, among many others. Generally, these traditions and philosophies attribute two qualities to ultimate reality: creation and love. I find that these qualities have their basis in an idea we call nonduality. I also find that if we carefully examine the world’s faiths, most seem to boil down to nonduality. They all point to a state of being that’s known as enlightenment, or union with God, depending on one’s view. What does this mean?
Achieving this state is about recognizing who you really are. It’s about undoing the conditioned thinking that leads you to believe that you are an individual. Although it sounds contradictory to what we know and live every day, the sense of being an individual person is a transitory experience. Let’s investigate this idea. If we are not individuals, then what are we? Perhaps you have heard of this idea of “oneness”. Many wisdom traditions have echoed the truth that it is truly one Self that is here, rather than a world of many. How is that possible?
We already know that the world we perceive to be around us is an image, the result of input fed through our senses that is processed internally. What we miss is that, while we have a persistent sense of sentience, the little self that we consider to be our identity is an image as well. What we have done is we have taken the total image and we have divided that image into subject and object. We have attributed a sense of subjectivity to the little self, which is comprised of the body and the mind, and we have objectified the rest of the world.
The problem arises due to objectification. The sense of “I am” is real. The thought “I am this” is an error. When this error of “I am this” comes up, it creates the foundation for further delusion. The delusion involves thinking there’s a “me” and then a “he” and a “she” and then a world. The whole delusion compounds on this idea of “I am this”. When we take this mental construct to be true, we suffer. We suffer because we have limited our idea of Self.
If we think that there is a “me” and the world is separate from “me”, we will grasp at the world, which is truly a call for our original nature in disguise. If that continues, we will suffer, due to craving, attachment, loss, fear, and hatred. What the suffering is signaling to us is that we are caught up in delusion. Essentially, the suffering is a reminder that there is a bug in the code, the bug being “I am an individual being separate from the world.” With this bug, the mind can do nothing but crash repeatedly.
Once we see this bug, however, we can start to inquire into our identity, which is the just the sense of “I am”. This knowledge is so basic, primal, and universal, which is precisely why we miss it at first. Recognizing this sense of “I am” is the key to liberating ourselves from suffering. This is because we are just pure consciousness. In fact, the whole world is just an image superimposed on pure consciousness. Here, consciousness is a term for that emptiness which is aware of all perception as well as the sense of “I am”.
The inquiry begins with, “Who sees the world? Who sees the individual self?” We discover that we see our body and mind the same way we see the rest of the world, and that we have drawn the wrong conclusion from the image that appears before us. Once we begin the process of inquiry, we start to remember, “Oh yes, this is who I really am. The world is unreal. My notion of being an individual is unreal. I am actually God.” This is what I refer to as being enlightenment, and it is an experience that I think is available to everyone, if we choose to turn our attention to it.
Now what is this thing we call God? God is a mental construct that becomes a stand-in for consciousness. As long as we still believe in our individual identity, it becomes difficult to conceive of ourselves as empty consciousness. It is even more difficult to conceive of ourselves as one with everything. But at some point, we begin to see that there is something wrong with our paradigm. God is the mental construct that arises when it is time to return home to our true nature.
Of course, that depends on how we relate to that mental construct. If we relate to that mental construct from a place that is loving and open with ourselves and others, then we can begin the process of inquiry. Some of the world’s faiths are strict about attributing no physical form to God, which makes sense as the process of attaining union has to do with undoing the mental process of objectification. Other faiths allow us to relate to an image or form that inspires love and devotion in us. This also makes sense, as initially all we know how to do is relate to another object. As we begin to undo our conditioning and turn away from the idea of the world as real, the idea of God becomes our anchor. It is just an idea of a big Self until we realize that we are and always have been that big Self.
I began this essay by calling our attention to both love and creation. I have not addressed either of those ideas here, but I invite you to think about why love and creation might have their basis in nonduality. Regardless of where our religious inclinations lie, every human being has the capacity to surrender to love and creation. Why might that be? What does nonduality have to do with these themes?
These ideas as I have stated them come from the Indian philosophical tradition of Advaita Vedanta. Although I find that all traditions and philosophies echo the same idea, I also find that Advaita Vedanta, among few other schools of thought, states these ideas more directly. However, it is also important to note that the original essence of nonduality is lost when it is confined to a system of thought. Yet I acknowledge the temporary value of having a system of thought lead us back to a state of final, unadulterated knowledge. If you are curious about the ideas presented here or have any additional questions, you may reach me at manivan.priya@gmail.com. I can point you to additional resources and teachers who can show you how to integrate nondual knowledge into your everyday experience.
