by Greg Goode
(A few seconds later) Wow! I got a jolt right there, like a fl ash of insight. But now it’s gone. Let me think about this for a while...
So Now – How Should I Talk?
Yesterday I had a deep experience that everything is borderless space. I just knew it. And then of course I came back to my normal kind of experience. But now I don’t think that anything I see or hear is the truth anymore. I feel that I am not being true to my realization by the kind of talk that goes on day to day.
Sometimes it’s confusing to encounter nondual teachings. Many varieties of nondual teachings seem to imply that there is simply no free will, no mind, no people and no objects. So we wonder how to talk without “backsliding.” If the teachings are then taken at face value, what about those mundane things like paying taxes, raising children, eating dinner and getting a haircut? Do we somehow stop doing these things now that we’ve ingested a teaching that says they aren’t what they seem, that they don’t truly exist?
So, is there a way I should talk now?
No. Any cosmically grounded “shoulds” have vanished. Talk as you please. There’s no need for a “nondually correct” way to speak. There’s no fixed, objective world out there to become indignant if you describe it in the “wrong” terms! There are no wrong terms! In speaking, you are free from the limitation of “getting the world right.” Follow your heart. Sometimes people begin their relationship to teachings by adopting a new vocabulary, trying it on for size. You might find a delight in the words, or a resonance with a beloved teacher speaking those words. The teachings might then grow to become clearer through inference or demonstration, or even a spontaneous, noninferential experience. And then at some point it is unshakably realized that experience was never truly characterized by duality or separation in the first place.
At this point, what had been felt as a difference between “appearance” and “reality” collapses. It no longer seems like there is an “accurate” or “inaccurate” way to “represent” things. Speech is no longer seen as a mirror of reality, but becomes free and unveiled.
But Ramana and Nisargadatta and Buddha never spoke about paying taxes or getting a haircut...
This is because virtually every word you have ingested from these teachers was recorded and extracted from teaching contexts. It’s not so common to chatter about one’s hygiene or personal finances while surrounded by people and conversing about nonduality... It becomes a matter of language and context. Multilingual people don’t speak the same language or dialect all the time in every situation. A physicist might devote his life to scientific research, but you can be sure he doesn’t tell the traffic cop, “I didn’t run a red light, because subatomic particles are all there is.”
But I feel that I’m falling back into duality by speaking normally.
You can’t slip into duality, which is the false claim that the world is made of many separate things truly separate from you. You can’t create duality by speaking. There is freedom in this. Once you know the truth of yourself, you will feel this freedom from falling.
Imagine you are telling a friend about your vacation. You want to say how you went to Paris and saw the Eiffel Tower. But then you know that there are truly no external, separate objects to see, and no individual, located point of view where seeing comes from. There is truly no separate seer. And you know that in nondual circles people often speak in a way that doesn’t assume the reality of these things. And you’ve read how Ramana and Papaji and other famous teachers have encouraged seekers to ask, “Who did this, who said this?” So you are tempted to say something like, “This form appeared to travel and was merged into the Paris form. In the illusory passage of time, the Eiffel Tower form appeared. There was the illusion of excitement in this form.” But there’s no need to speak like this all the time, especially once you have inquired and discovered the truth. You know the inseparability of you as awareness from all that arises within it, including cities and structures, you will not feel as though one way of speaking is more nondually correct than other ways of speaking.
Words may even come to you more lightly and fluidly than before. Actions as well. There’s no conflict, no backsliding, no falling into anything by using everyday language instead of talk of appearance, form and borderless space.
So it’s OK to speak in terms of “things”...
Sure, we’re doing it now! In the Jewish, Advaitin, and Buddhist teachings, there is a profound insight: Not believing in things, yet speaking the language of things.
“Thing-talk” is a kind of conceptual and social shorthand that makes life smoother. Refusing to use thing-talk leads to foolishness. And not crazy-wisdom, sagelike foolishness, but Beavis ‘n’ Butthead slacker-foolishness: “Pay my restaurant check? No way – that would require separation, and there isn’t any separation.”
This almost sounds as if you’re trying to impress upon others that you have a deep realization. There’s a name for that kind of talk – Lucknow Disease.3
So there’s no conflict, nothing gets created in this way...
That’s right. And you don’t fall back. Insights don’t reverse themselves just because you use everyday speech. You won’t lose points. No one is keeping score. Contexts have different vocabularies. In chemistry lab, you might use the “everything-is-particles” vocabulary. In court testifying as a witness you might use everyday observational terms. While discussing meditation and relaxing into space, you’ll perhaps use some yogic, advaitic, spiritual and geometric terms. In psychology class you might use the language that allows for choice, cognition and willed action.
In a Philosophy 101 class, you argue about the existence of choice, but in an Ethics 101 class, or ordering food at a diner(!), choice is most often assumed, so the talk is a bit different.
All of these different language-groupings have their ways, their consistency and coherence. Only if you expect one vocabulary to truly represent all situations are you faced with the sense of fundamental incompatibilities or the need to reconcile different situations under a common neutral description. Without this expectation, language and thought are free.
Is Consciousness Nondual?
Many teachers say that consciousness is nondual. Isn’t this conclusion just conceptual? It seems like each one of us has a separate consciousness.
Yes, it is conceptual. Any statement is conceptual. “Dual.” “Nondual.” These kinds of statements depend on concepts of consciousness, nonduality, duality, “is-ness,” and so forth. You say “just” conceptual. As opposed to what? Conceptual as opposed to actually true?
Yes, I want to know what consciousness actually is, like what’s really true about it. Some teachers say that nondual consciousness is objectless. Others say that it is knowledge knowing itself. But that seems like a subject/object kind of thing, not very nondual! So, bottom line: nondual consciousness – which is it, objectless or self-knowing?
“Objectless.” “Self-knowing.” Both are metaphors of slightly different flavors. They aren’t meant to be taken literally. These metaphors take advantage of the fact that most people feel that experience is divided. The metaphors are meant to indicate a way of experience that isn’t divided. Once that “happens,” that is, once experience no longer seems divided, then you won’t distinguish between “consciousness” and “other than consciousness.” The very notion of consciousness will gently and peacefully dissolve. And yet you may find yourself using the “consciousness” word, but again, lightly, with no metaphysical baggage attached.
But I’ve heard of direct, nondual, experiential knowing. I’d like to know nondual consciousness in this way.
Yes, this is exactly what I just described. You are looking to behold it directly, correct? In such a way that it embraces you and you embrace it, and there is nothing left out, correct?
That’s right!
It’s already happening! You inescapably know this consciousness in a nondual way by being it. It’s not the way the mind knows “2+2=4” or “Sacramento i
s the capital of California.” It’s not an objective knowing, because there are no objects in it. It’s not the kind of thing you can stand away from and look at from the side. Knowing consciousness is not like looking at the headlights of a car.
Well, why do some teachers speak of “knowing it”? It sounds like some people know it and others don’t.
And you’d like to be one of the knowers, correct? (smiles)
Yes. There must be something to that. You’ve gotta admit, lots of writings mention this. What are they talking about?
“Knowing it” means losing the confusion that you might actually be something else. It means to no longer take yourself as a person, as an object. In the West it’s called gnosis. In the East it’s said that you know it by being it. In both cases, it’s a discovery made by the mind about something that was always the case – that you are awareness itself. You are not a separate object, absolutely cut off from the world. The ironic thing is this – as soon as you “know” it, you see that “knowing” was impossible. The kind of thing to which people attribute “knowing” is a mind, a brain, or a person. But you have realized that these are only objects. Objects can’t “know” anything. A “mind” can’t know anything for the same reason that a “teacup” can’t know anything – it is an object. In fact, knowingness itself is an object. You also have seen that there are truly no separate objects at all, so there can be no separate “knowers.”
Oh, I see what you mean about knowing. It doesn’t make sense to require myself to “know” something like this. But I would still like to not take myself as a person.
You would like to lose the belief, the feeling, that you are a person?
That’s right! I will feel less anguish then. Many teachers say that suffering comes from this belief.
OK, but notice that you are asking as a person. Having beliefs and losing beliefs is the kind of thing that persons do. Nondual awareness doesn’t “do” anything.
OK, so what’s wrong with that?
Nothing! In fact it’s normal to see this in a personal way. Until you don’t...
OK, later maybe I’ll understand it. But right now I must admit there’s the feeling of wanting to lose this belief, no matter what it is properly called.
To lose this belief, become curious about what you are really made of. Be true to your own experience and find out whether you actually are a person.
Find out – how?
Look very deeply. Investigate the claim that you are a person by investigating the consequences of this claim. If the consequences do not bear up to your direct experience, then neither does the claim itself. For example, if you really are a person, then wherever you are, the person will be too. Is this true? Are you ever there when the person is not? Is the person ever there when the seer of the person is not? Look for the usual parts that make up the person. The body, the mind, values, emotions, memories and anything else included in the person. If you are there when these things are not present, then they can’t be the sum and substance of what you are.
Can you give me an example of how I go about it?
Deep sleep is the best example. During deep sleep, according to your experience, is your body present in experience during deep sleep?
It must be there.
But is it experienced? In deep sleep, do you see it, feel it, hear it or sense it?
No...
So in that moment, according to your experience, can it be said to be present?
No.
Are YOU there? Do you sense that you were absent? Look back on the experience of deep sleep. Does it now seem like you had gone out of existence? Or does it seem like you were present the whole time?
It seems that I am like the body... I didn’t see the body in deep sleep. And I didn’t see or hear myself either.
Good observation! But the YOU that I am asking about is the witnessing awareness. This is the nondual consciousness you asked about earlier. Did this witnessing awareness stop existing during deep sleep, and then begin existing again when you woke up? Or do you sense continuity in it?
Now that you say it like that, I do sense continuity. Like I am not interrupted even through sleep.
So your presence is not interrupted, but the experience of the body as an object is interrupted?
Right, because the body is not experienced at that time...
So the body cannot define what you are. Because you are present when the body is not.
I see. I never thought about it that way, but it’s true!
This is an example of how you come to realize that you aren’t a person. You come to see that you aren’t defined by the components of the person. You see how they are intermittent appearances, while you are never absent. Deeply seeing this will shed the notion that you are the person. That notion will make as much sense as believing that you are a pair of jeans.
Ah, yes! Where can I go from here?
Look for the mind as well. Other than a succession of thoughts, can you find the mind at all? Test the findings against your experience, not against a theory about what ought to be the case. Do you really experience the presence of the mind? If you can’t find the mind, then how can the mind be what you are? This investigation can be carried out with every candidate, every component that you think might be you. See what happens. This is self-inquiry – finding out who you truly are.
How Are Objects a Block?
You’ve written that the notion that physical objects are external is a block to nondual inquiry. Can you say more about that?
Using objects in everyday activities does not block your inquiry. You can actually put on your clothes in the morning or drink a cup of coffee and do inquiry at the same time. But it is a block to take objects literally as external, independent, solid chunks of reality separated from yourself. If you regard objects as separate, then you regard yourself as separate. This sense of separation is based on these unwarranted object-beliefs, and gains a false conviction from kinesthetic experiences and the feelings of bodily muscular contractions. In truth, however, the body is not separate. It is unlimited and infinitely light, as awareness. The body is not in space, it is infinitely more subtle than space. It is awareness itself.
But we tend to think in spatial, physicalist terms, and use these terms widely. The spatial concept of physical separation tends to serve as the paradigm for all our notions of difference. We tend to experience “difference” as spatial. This makes us think of two aspects existing on opposite sides of unbridgeable spatial gaps. Examples include feeling cut off from reality (as in “it’s out there, we’re in here”), feeling cut off from other people, feeling separated from our goals and the objects of our desires, and feeling ourselves to be divided in various ways: heart from mind, mind from body, conscious from subconscious, worldly from spiritual, etc. We almost feel as though these things occupy different places. And all of these feelings make us experience ourselves as all alone, vulnerable, and perishable.
But isn’t this the way things really are?
No. You never experience spatial externality or independence. Instead, you merely accept a story about it. This can be demonstrated. Try this: Shut your eyes. Now try to just listen... air-conditioning sounds... hushed conversational sounds... clinking silverware and coffee cup sounds... diner sounds. But there’s no evidence of an external air conditioner or cup appearing as such. In fact, the sound is the only appearance. In this moment, outside the sound, you don’t have evidence of a true external air-conditioner or cup.
But where is the sound itself located? The sound is not on the outside or inside. It’s not on the left, right, north or south. There is no dividing line between the sound and you. Of course there might be a story line that makes an existential claim about the sound. This story line might say that the cup is physically located “outside.” But notice that this “outside” is not evident in the sound itself.
This is the same for all the senses. Try this with vision. Place two similar coffee cups in front of you. Now, at
tend to the visual evidence alone. Two cylindrical patches of white, with Formica-beige between them... No line between the colors and you... No evidence in the colors of being “out there” ... There is no evidence of yourself being an observer “in here.” Nevertheless, based on these colors and their change over time, we conclude that there are objects external to us. We accept a story that these objects are separated from us. But there’s no support for this story in the visual evidence itself.
OK, so are you saying there are no cups or people?
Not independent from experience. Not as separate from you. It is not your experience that things exist in and of themselves, apart from experience. Think about the way you experience a cup. It is not apart from seeing or touching or thinking. Seeing, hearing, touching and thinking are never present without awareness within which they arise. It’s all awareness all the time. And awareness is the very nature of you.
You never experience an unexperienced cup. You might think you do experience a cup that is in itself an unexperienced object. This is what classical Western science has taught. Heisenberg began to show how experience itself conditions the supposed object of experience. Experience is always in the makeup of anything experienced. There’s never experience of something existing apart from experience. So this whole notion of independent existence can be dropped as incoherent and productive of feelings of separation.
So, what’s left?
Experience, which is always whole and non-separate. And when it doesn’t seem like there’s anything other than experience, then it won’t seem like there’s a real thing called experience either. Existence/nonexistence, being and non-being will stop making sense and will drop away, no longer serving as partitions. You’ll never feel cut off from the world again.
Well, I sure seem to experience this chair, this pencil, this cup of coffee. What is it like not to have any experience of these things?