Nonduality
The Endless Enigma
The central challenge to understanding nonduality is it is beyond words, because once it has been named, by definition—and paradoxically—a duality is created. The act of naming, fragments the oneness. Even the statement “I am one” creates a separation between “I” and “one”. I am, would be closer. I…closer still.
Jesus said: I will give you that which eye has not seen, an ear has not heard, and hand has not touched, and which has not entered into the heart of man. In the Tao te Ching, Lao Tzu says: The Tao that can be told is not the universal Tao. The name that can be named is not the universal name.
The timeless message of nonduality is it is ultimately impossible to put into words. Something is a piece of everything. You can name the fragment but you cannot name the source because it takes a relative and conceptual approach and already we are separated from that which we are naming, which is everything.
As an example of this endless enigma, I will share my experience of nonduality that apparently happened as I began writing a book. The book became the experience of my nonduality. The Garden is a paradox and this is the nature of non duality.
First, we must understand the idea that we are not ‘someone’. Being someone is the fundamental act of separation into duality. The idea that, I am an ‘I’, an individual, separate from everything and everyone, is illusory. Nothing is separate, for everything arises from one source.
Writing The Garden was an absolute experience. Any time during the creation of its pages my identity disappeared. My sense of being an individual separate to everything else was lost. There was an expansion, a sensation of being outside of what I was. A feeling of fullness without form. No me. There was no locality of me. No outer or inner. In the infancy of the book I had no words, therefore no names or fragments. Nothing written. Just emptiness on a page. Boundlessness. Nothing and everything existing.
THE BEGINNING
“Once there existed no reason for our happiness.”
So begins the first chapter of The Garden. Already there is oneness. Already there is non duality. Oneness never comes and it never goes. It is constant and absolute.
THE FIRST AWAKENING
Mind needs a purpose or a meaning so it pretends there is meaning and purpose. From oneness of being arises a concept of ‘me’. My individual self is seen as a separate part to the whole. Deep down, I remember there is a one source, a beingness of all that there is. A feeling of loss or something missing arises and so begins the sense of wanting to go back, wanting to go home, find what I have lost, and so I start to seek the oneness that I already am. Self inquiry begins: Who am I? I am awareness being aware I am awareness.
“Curiosity masked our memories of the Garden, for our daringness washed our footprints from the earth, yet our inquisitiveness was a lure that enticed us to follow. We would heed to the faint and distant voices that swayed us; they would usher and they would beckon and we stood daring to cross the bridge.”
My ‘self’ becomes the dilemma…for as long as there is seeking there is never finding. This is the bridge that divides and separates—it is a mind deception that something must be sought.
THE SLEEPING
In my seeking for what already is, I fall under the hypnotic spell of separation. And I dream the dream of duality.
“The Garden of our birth is akin to another world. Our Garden and the kingdom beyond the bridge have existed ever since the first cry of our parallel birth.”
THE DREAMING
In the dream I can never find oneness. The seeking of oneness is my dream of duality. The mind cannot fathom the enigma and the paradox it has created through separation. The mind is open to all things except becoming absent of itself. Only in the absent of self is there oneness. But I am the seeker and I must search everywhere for enlightenment. Only when I finally face my own dark night of unknowing does the self begin to realise its own futility of being separate.
“Bleakness cloaked the sky and harsh rains showered the earth, yet still the dreamer walked on, pushing through the dark night of unknowing, where finally he did come upon a precipitous path that cut into the mountainside on the far side of the kingdom.”
The seeker finally stops seeking and a veil is lifted. My journey is no more. The individual concept of ‘I’ falls away and a boundless and nameless awareness arises.
THE REAWAKENING
In the stillness and emptiness, fullness appears. From nothing comes the source of everything.
“At the far end of the bridge, back upon the well worn path, friends greeted friends and a reunion and an acquaintance did bring light to their eyes and a warm glow upon their faces. And many did greet one another as though returning home from a long and faraway journey.”
When there is no separation, there is also no seeking. When there is no seeking to become whole…there already is wholeness.
All there is is oneness. Oneness is the ordinariness of life as it is apparently happening. There is no path to oneness. Oneness is already here. The myth of enlightenment is that we must seek. But we are already here. We have always been here. We are always here and all there is is oneness.
- Download this article Nonduality PDF
- Further Reading
