Usually teachings of non-duality point out that the subject/object experience is illusory in nature, meaning it is present and exists but is not what it seems, and that witness consciousness, the uninvolved, unchanging, always present self that knows, affirms, and validates the presence of the appearance of the subject/object, is the nature of reality (the Self)
This teaching is almost always misunderstood to be indicating the presence of something separate from the appearance of duality (“splitting” as Robert Saltzman calls it), which of course is duality all over again. This is a misinterpretation of what is actually said in Vedanta scripture, although the distinctions can seem subtle. It is true that Vedanta isolates the conscious factor in order to point out that the Self is limitless and eternal, but when that is communicated without the teaching of Maya, it falls apart as a means of knowledge.
The Maya teaching, which is that appearances are only seemingly real because they are bookended by nonexistence, completes the picture about what “non-duality” means. Without accounting for duality fully and completely, which happens to be the entirety of our discrete experience of being alive, so-called “radical” non-dual teachings ironically reinforce duality (splitting).
The proper understanding of the subject/object experience is not that it is false or unreal in any way, but that it is not essentially a multiplicity. Subject/object experience is how limitless existence shining as consciousness (the self, which is non-dual and which there is nothing other than) seems to an apparent “individuality.”
If reality “really was” non-dual in nature, how would it look? How would an apparent individuality, which by definition must be apparent if there are not two principles operating here, know and perceive a world that it is not essentially, fundamentally, or substantially other than? You’re looking at it! this is why Vedanta exhorts inquiry as the means of self knowledge, because they’re already never was real ignorance. How can something unreal, like a mirage or the child of a baron woman, be removed other than by knowledge? It cannot, because it is never actually existent, only seemingly so.
If we imagine the substance of the universe as gold, and gold is formed into a shape called a ring, nothing changes from the standpoint of gold. The name and form “ring” never actually references gold, even though it is nothing other than gold. How can I remove “ring-ness” from gold? Easy, I can melt it and let it return to it’s natural shape. Or can I?
What is the natural shape of gold? It does not have a shape, it is what is shaped. By what? By whatever thought form seemingly forms gold into something else. It doesn’t actually happen! Neither name not form affect, modify, or in any way change gold itself. It, meaning the thought form, itself “becomes” a form.
Form has two conditions, potential (causal) and actual (manifest). They seem different but really they do not exist without each other. A ring is the thought of a ring in manifest condition. The cause of a ring is the thought of a ring, but where there is a manifest ring, that cause has become the effect. What does this mean? It means that a ring never actually comes into existence, which is to say it only seems to exist.
This is what Vedanta says about subject/object experience, duality. It is seeming-ness, appearance, temporary, and bookended by nonexistence. How then does nonexistence turn into existence? Does nothing become something? No. Reality does not work this way. Even a kindergarten knows that something does not come from nothing, except in imagination. So what is happening then? How is it possible that something seems to be and yet had no prior cause?
Ignorance is the cause, according to Vedanta. A ring needs no other cause than ignorance, because it does not actually exist independently. The existence of a ring is tantamount to ignorance of gold. Gold alone exists, and every ring or necklace or bangle or earring only seems to be a second thing. There is no second thing.
The self is not hidden, but self knowledge is hidden because like a ring, the ego appears to have its own existence. As far as the ego (the sense of “I,” of individuality) knows and experiences, it is conscious and exists. No outside affirmation is required for an ego to know that it is real from its own standpoint. That does not make it real, but it makes it capable of misapprehending its own nature because there is no experiential separation from what it actually is. Ignorance has no independent existence.
My ordinary experience is that of a conscious subject and the objects known to it. That is the condition we all find ourselves in. In moments of unexpected clarity, or resulting from inquiry, I can discover the limitless nature of my conscious self. This is a tremendous shift, and is the dawning of seeking and/or self realization, whether it is noticed as such or not.
When self realization becomes firm, the topic of self inquiry is life itself, the totality of experience that includes myself as the conscious subject and the world as the object(s) of experience. This phase of Vedanta practice is called Nididhyasana. Nididhyasana is non-dual meditation, the process of continually applying knowledge of my limitless, whole and complete nature to the ongoing experience of individuality in order to remove remaining ignorance.
How is this process of integrating or assimilating knowledge “non-dual” when by definition a process occurs gradually in time? It is non-dual precisely because it is knowledge that is being assimilated. I am limitless, whole and complete fullness, so there is no action nor possibility of action that can make me what I already am. if that were possible, I would need to be separate, lacking, and incomplete, but Vedanta says I am not.
The experience of being alive is what it is like to be a partless whole seemingly observing objects that are nothing other than me. Subject/object experience is neither what it appears to be nor is it something else. There is no delineation, split, or starting point anywhere in the beginning-less continuum “between” me and everything else.
This aliveness is non-duality appearing as duality owing to individuality (ignorance). This is what is to be known, why there is something to be known, and yet it is not something else. It is Self knowledge, knowledge of my limitless, whole and complete nature in the midst of an utterly indescribable, unknowable, undeniable appearance. This is why no belief is required for this knowledge to obtain as oneself, and why all knowledge is ultimately ignorance, because there are not two things here, not two principles operating here, not two selves.
What is often imagined to be, and is even taught as, an uninvolved, non-experiencing witness of an involved, ever-changing experiencer, is actually nothing other than our ordinary everyday experience, exactly as it is regardless of circumstances, minus the binding beliefs and notions in my own fundamental lack and insecurity that generate and sustain self insulting, self denying thoughts and emotions. Who and what am I without these binding thoughts crowding into that most familiar essence of me?
I am the Self, consciousness which is existence which is limitless. There is nothing other than me, which means that non-dual love, shining as my highest value in that everything I do is to remove any sense of self limitation, perceived or actual, is everything that is. The idea is to
contemplate and meditate on myself as limitless fullness until the very notion of identity that doggedly drapes my day to day experience in a weighted blanket of suffocating normalcy lifts and reveals non-localized, garden variety, non-dual love – my new normal.
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