Real-World Nonduality

by Greg Goode

  Still, what led me to it, even after 15 years of accomplished seeking, was a vivid, even urgent, yearning to see through the story of a separate self. There was even a hint of desperation in my approach to the book, a kind of last-ditch, Hail-Mary attempt to finally just “get it.” But I was in for a surprise. Not only would I not “just get it,” but the book, and the path, would reveal that many of my underlying assumptions had gone entirely unquestioned. They were functioning in the background, like malware, possibly disabling my better attempts to “make progress.”

  Curiously, one of these assumptions was the objectivist-

  materialist worldview (I say “curiously” because one might assume that after 15 years of self-identifying as a nondualist, I would have long since given up such assumptions). So fundamental had objective materialism become to my identity that it was my unquestioned meta-narrative, the preferred vocabulary against which all things were to be measured. In another way, it was my security and comfort. That it might have been working against the very insights I was yearning for was a possibility I’d never considered—that is, until my worldview, which I regarded as eloquently based in nondualism, came under the scrutiny of the direct path, especially as presented by Greg Goode in his writings.

  This is the story of the turbulence that ensued during the collision between a narrative I took to be true (that I am a nondualist) and the narrative that was actually true (that I still held fiercely to objective materialism). But this story, were it framed as cinema, would be French in nature, for it has no tidy ending. It ends in medias res.

  Escape from one objectivism to another

  Like most people’s path to nonduality, mine has been circuitous. I was fervently evangelically Christian in my teens, and deeply embedded in this worldview was an objectivist viewpoint that became, as I can see now, the template for any metaphysical evaluation I made from that point forward. There was Truth and there were Truth claims, and through an honest reliance on reason and rationality, one could make objective statements as to how closely these two entities were related, and then make adjustments to the claims as needed.

  Under the sway of objectivism, I believed, then, that the only escape from a false worldview was to replace the false narrative with a true one. The coexistence of two worldviews was a logical impossibility. Thus, like the ‘droids escaping from Darth Vader’s clutches, I used the escape-pod of science and materialism to make my own getaway from the Empire of Christendom.

  Yet, in so doing I added an additional layer of certainty to objectivity: now, thanks to science, I could be sure that I was at least provisionally right. Seeing my liberation from what I considered to be the superstitions of Christianity as a gift of Rationality, I deeply vowed to never let go of that tool (as if it were a life raft). If I was not vigilant, I feared that I would somehow be seduced back into the warm somnambulism of belief again. At any rate, all subsequent shifts in worldview followed that template: the false was replaced with the true, and when the new arrived, the old was rather unceremoniously discarded.

  Zen and the separate self

  When I finally came to practice Zen, with a decidedly secular approach, I found (in retrospect) the materialist mindset to be oddly unchallenged and even supported, though this likely reflects my own misunderstanding of the tradition. While Zen philosophically posits the Absolute and the relative, most of the emphasis (particularly in the schools I was involved in) was on the relative perspective, the perspective in which there are existing individuals, who are products of evolutionary forces and made up of psychological layers of containment, and who, through meditation practice, come to see (either through a gradual progression or a sudden event) that there is actually no self and that all things are empty.

  So my approach was to simply accept material reality as it appeared, while nurturing the belief that eventually I would see through it. And seeing through the story of the separate self would be an event, one that would arise as a kind of perceptual explosion, always in the future. But there were no traces of that reality in my current experience.

  While I always bought into the view that there is no separate self, I didn’t realize that the foundation of that statement also implied its logical corollary: there is no other self either. Somehow, I think I’d constructed a metaphysics in which the only non-existing entity in the world was myself; objects, I took for granted. The not-two reality that all the great traditions pointed to was, in the end, perhaps some kind of a mythic energy connection between all beings.

  Advaita and nonduality

  I did, however, become an eclectic student of Zen, and came to incorporate a wide spectrum of teachers into my tool belt. In pretty short order, I eventually read my way to Advaita20 and nonduality and felt a live connection to it. But so deeply embedded were my materialist assumptions that even the implications of the teachings of Ramana Maharshi21 and Sri Nisargadatta22—steadfast in the Advaitic pointing to the primacy and transcendence of consciousness—were, when I read and consulted them, almost invisible to me. I simply took the concept of the “Self” and translated it into “non-self,” deciding that everyone was pointing to the same thing anyway.

  But my contact with Advaita and nonduality was deeply compelling—especially my reading of the Ashtavakra Gita,23 which spoke to something that aligned with my experience: that there is something changeless against which the kaleidoscopic world of experience plays out. I could sense this “something” as a substratum of all my experience. I could even trace it backwards to my time as a child. It felt familiar, kind—closer than myself in some strange way. I wanted a way to resolve my Zen practice with this new vocabulary—and there are many teachers who do so—but I was tiring of Zen practice itself. It had this classical disciplinarian approach to spiritual practice that I was moving away from energetically.

  Discovering awareness

  At some point, though, surprisingly right when I was ready to really re-commit myself to a more formal lay practice of Zen, my energy for it simply evaporated. It vanished, almost overnight, and I found myself wandering, as many a seeker will do, into the receding horizon that is the satsang universe of YouTube. In it, I made my way somehow to the stream of videos by Rupert Spira and found an immediate connection with what he says: awareness —rather than the clunky, effortful mindfulness-hybrid I’d concocted—was always, already present, effortlessly. It couldn’t be any other way.

  Not only that, but “I” was this ever-present, clear, and pristine awareness and I didn’t have to develop it through Jedi-like mind training and lotus-position devotion. And everything I perceived (through an alchemy I didn’t quite understand but chose to believe anyway) was also already this awareness. Most important, if I really looked into my own experience, carefully, without the addition of memory or inference, I would actually perceive this truth, perhaps through a perceptual shift. The important thing was that this wasn’t a future-event-oriented substantiation; it was to be had right here and now, through careful inquiry. Even the idea itself—that I was effortlessly the awareness in which all things appeared—was profoundly restful.

  I was hooked. In the ever-updating palimpsest that was my understanding of literal truth, the direct path (I was still unaware of its moniker, though) was written on top: it was replacing all that had come before it as the best account of reality. The objective scientist was still ever alive and well. And, truthfully, as what the Buddhists might call a “useful means,” the direct path was serving a deeply felt need, in that it was speaking to personal concerns I had about my approach to inquiry, which had previously only been informed by Ramana Maharshi’s approach. I was beginning to integrate these tools into my interpretation of experience, particularly the insight (though this is not unique to the direct path) that I was awareness, and everything I could perceive—including mind, body, thoughts, feelings and perceptions—was an object of, and simultaneously one with, awareness.

  Encountering the direct pa
th

  I clearly wanted more, though, and if you ask, the internet provides, which is how I found myself on a Facebook group devoted to supporting and guiding readers of The Direct Path: A User Guide.24 It is important to relate, though, that while I was now a member of this group, I still had not read (nor did I even own) the source text. My experience with formally investigating my experiences was limited to a few guided yoga meditations on YouTube, and while I thought I understood the point, I didn’t really grasp the detail or the methodology, which is why I was in for a bit of a surprise.

  While all the hallmarks of the direct path as I’d come to know it through Rupert Spira were visible, there was a philosophical rigor in this approach that was totally unexpected. I’d ask a question on the group page and see, in some cases, the assumptions it was based on entirely deconstructed before my eyes. A comment I’d make that might presume the existence of the body-as-feeler would be questioned by some user, and I’d be left dumbfounded: What on earth do you mean by questioning the existence of my hand?

  The direct path: enticing, rigorous… and confusing

  Here is where the water began to get a bit choppy. I felt riveted by the observations folks were making about facts I took as givens, yet I couldn’t divine from what framework these statements arose, and the fact that it was users (not published nonduality authors) who were making many of these statements—making them as their own, not second-hand regurgitations—that fact began to both inspire and infuriate me. I had to understand this framework, this model. It was too counter-intuitive not to be enticing. It was harder than a nut to crack, yet it exuded some juiciness that was seductive. I had to see it for myself. There was something subversive and rigorous about The Direct Path: A User Guide. It was inviting and kind, yet it was coming from some place I couldn’t identify—there was a playful rigor that was entrancing.

  Into my Amazon cart went the The Direct Path: A User Guide, and, three weeks later (I live in Seoul, South Korea), into my hands it came. But, as I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t exactly in a beginner’s mind-mood when I received the book. I speed-read through massive quantities of the text, dipping into the experiments with the randomness of a child at a buffet, yet expecting (urgently hoping for) perceptual explosions to occur at any moment. The speed with which I approached the text belied one simple truth: the more I read, the more stunned I became that I actually didn’t understand a thing. And yet I couldn’t admit it to myself. There were whole paragraphs that I read in utter confusion, the total confusion of listening to the news in a foreign language. But I mercilessly suppressed the interior voice that alerted me to the fact.

  Take, as a small illustration, this passage: “[T]he only way to verify the independent existence of a color is to visually experience a color that is present but unseen and to then verify that vision actually sees that same color” (p. 34). On first reading, I pretended that the meaning of that was as clear as a grocery list, but the truth is it stuck in my craw like a sideways bone, because I was actually thinking, “There’s no way that makes any sense. What on earth is an unseen color?” Passage upon passage piled up like this one, until I began wondering—genuinely—if there was a The Direct Path: A User Guide for Dummies available. (Perhaps I’ve found my calling.)

  Yet, here I am. And here I’ll stay, until or unless Sri Krishna Menon himself comes and excuses me, with a kindly gesture that says, “Enough, enough now.”

  A rock in my shoe

  It is important at this point to defuse any anticipation the reader might have—based on countless prior templates—that this essay will end with a satisfying dénouement. None is to be had here, as I mentioned in the introduction. This is a story of getting a rock stuck in my shoe, a rock I can’t shake out. All paths are temporary tools, and the direct path, to me, is right now like a new romantic lover, one whom you cinematically embrace in one moment and then ignore at a café the next. But while there will be no explosions, ice melts slowly, and perhaps that is my path: the slowly-melting-ice-with-a-rock-in-the-shoe Way™.

  Two windows in my face

  But I do want to share a few things that have shaken loose (besides my wits) in the course of these experiments. Not insights, per se, just place-markers I have noted. Perhaps they can be signposts for those who come behind, particularly those of the materialist-objectivist persuasion.

  One of the first absurdities that occurred to me in the course of the experiments was that I truly believed—in contradiction to what even conventional science says—that my sensory apparatus didn’t present a representation of the world; it presented the world as it is. For instance, I conceived of visual data as coming to me through two windows in my face. If I had wanted to feel sophisticated, I might have described them as lenses (they could, after all, focus), but for all practical purposes, there was, in my mental model, nothing representational happening: the world is as the world is seen. This applied to all my senses. All the scientific or philosophically based models of perception presented in The Direct Path (like naïve realism) were totally news to me.

  So, how is it possible to look afresh at your sensations—to look afresh at the conditioned conclusions based on those sensations—when you’re completely sure that what you perceive is the world itself? If my self were a little man looking out through those windows in my face, and if, additionally, he were able to jump outside my head (like getting out of a car), I believed he would have seen the exact same scene that he had from behind the glass. (The thought of what he would be using to see would never have occurred to me as a philosophical problem of infinite regress.)

  Trapped in my head

  So the visual experiments at first presented me with an uncanny feeling: what if, then, what’s out there doesn’t correspond to what’s in here? What if, for example, what I take to be a pillow is actually a hideous green monster that my perceptual apparatus just translates conveniently as a soft thing to sleep with? What is that thing over there? I’m trapped in my head!

  But it is this sense of being trapped that is important. It begins to push directly against objectivity: there is no way to verify the sense information we receive. Just like in the story of the little man in my head above, there is no way for me to jump outside my skin and verify objectively that colors, shapes, sounds and other sensory data, are what I take them to be. Furthermore, there is no way for me to even verify that the sense data I am receiving is being caused by the objects I am conditioned to think are causing them. If I am trapped in my head, then so is the whole universe. But this isn’t accurate, either, because what I take to be my head is just another object arising in awareness.

  Multiplicity resolving into awareness

  But is this it? Is this all the direct path wants to take us to, to some radical agnosticism about our perceptions? What would really be the point of that? What is even the point of questioning the existence of separate objects, and what does that have to do with spirituality at all? The old Zen admonition “Don’t make one” (because one implies two, three, four, and so on) is instructive here. If one appears, multiplicity (and separation) appears; if one disappears, then so do multiplicity and separation. The experiments in the direct path are going right for the throat of apparent separation: if objectivity dissolves, then so does containment, so do body and mind, self and world, other and self. The house of cards comes down, and all is revealed to be awareness itself.

  So, begin to view the world for a moment as if there aren’t objects out there. What begins to happen? Oddly, for me one of the first implications of inquiring into objects was its corollary: inquiring into space. Space itself, even visually, is the yin of objects’ yang, the nothingness to being, but if objects are truly just color and form, then where is this supposed space that separates me from them? Visually I can’t find space. This view collapses the certainty of three-dimensionality, which suggests something surprising: nothing is at a distance from “me.” Or, to put it another way, all things are at
the same distance. Or, to put it in a way that feels closer to my experience, all visual data is equally intimate.

  And this is what the direct path does expertly: it takes a belief, like the belief in objectivity, and it begins to uproot it, methodically, with a clear-cutting logic that—while at first you don’t completely appreciate it—becomes clearer and clearer as you go. In some sense, once you begin to grasp the implications of the methodology, it’s too late: you can’t unsee it! For example, while I haven’t fully recognized the truths of the direct path’s argument against common sensibles, I intuitively grasp it enough to know that I can’t just add a sense for verification, and this has profound implications for how we interpret our experience. It begins to dislodge objectivity, which is really just the first domino in the chain of beliefs that lead to containment, separate self, other, time, space, causality, mind, body, and even truth itself.

  Objective truth

  And it is on this last point that I wish to comment. I don’t know why or how, though this clearly comes out of my reading and conversations with Greg, but the very belief in objective, literal reference itself has come to be deeply doubted. This well-meaning tyrant, which has led me by the nose through countless vocabularies, filling me with an urgency that has been at once as equally thrilling as it has been enslaving.