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There are two camps of non-duality. The more gentle camp of non-duality pronounces that Consciousness/Awareness (with capital C/A) is your true Self (with capital S). The other more radical camp of non-duality pronounces that you are not in any kind of form. The former is more of a feel-good style; the latter is more of an obliteration style.
Now before we get into who’s right or who’s wrong, let’s first make one important point clear. Comparing what teaching is right and what is wrong is a pretty dual thing to do. In the end, it really doesn’t matter much because it doesn’t influence what is. It’s not as if teachings actually influence the truth.
However, the more accurate a teaching is the more effective it is.
After all, it’s easy to believe the sagely words of sagely people. The issue is that believing words and trying to accomplish the ideal they represent can be one of the biggest traps for any seeker.
If you haven’t yet fallen into this trap, the following might help you avoid it. If you are in this trap right now, the following might help you get yourself out of it.
Gentle Non-Duality vs Radical Non-Duality
The message of gentle non-duality is that you need to rediscover who you are, which is the one all-encompassing Consciousness/Awareness. You do this through meditation, inquiry, stillness, and whatever else there is to do. It’s often described as coming home — reintegrating with your true nature.
The message of radical non-duality is in some respect similar but takes a huge dump on the gentle non-duality.
Radical non-duality pronounces there is no self to discover because there is no you. Even the one all-inclusive Consciousness/Awareness is a mere shadow. If there is no you then what’s the point of spiritual practices to find your true you?
The radical message strips away everything: Unknowable, no thing, no practice, no goal.
Although the radical kind is more accurate in its message, I don’t fully agree with the premise that there is nothing to do.
Sure, ultimately speaking there is nothing to do and no you to do it. You doing something to realize another better something is the hallmark of duality.
In that context, engaging in spiritual practice is a moving away from non-duality. Although you can never move away from anywhere because there is no you to move nor anywhere to move to or away from. (The previous two sentences are classic radical non-duality lingo. People seem to get a real kick out of it.)
Having said that, if there is a strong urge to seek — to find the truth, or whatever — then you can’t just mentally convince yourself to stop seeking because someone says there is nothing to do.
You have to exhaust that seeking energy. Otherwise, you’ll just suppress it.
Or as Jed McKenna states in his book, Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing:
“To say that the individual can do nothing to break free of dualistic perception because it results in non-dualistic perception is like saying a living being can’t step off a cliff because it results in death or that a dreamer can’t wake up because he’s dreaming. It’s absurd.”
The gentle non-duality has some good points and some might argue that many of the teachers build their teachings as a stairway, each concept negating the last. Often, however, there is the perpetuation of a crucial misunderstanding that can keep a seeker in a merry-go-round of spiritual trappings.
Misunderstanding Non-Duality
One such common misunderstanding, as we have already said, is that there is oneness or a real self to discover. There is none of that anywhere. If you could find your real self, it would turn into an object you are observing, which therefore couldn’t be any more a real self than a watermelon.
So we might say that you are the subject that observes objects. Finding your real self would mean that you find yourself as the subject. But this finding would inevitably turn the subject into an object.
Now, as you might have already suspected, subject and object are a pair of dualistic opposites. This is not non-duality, is it? So, therefore what you are must then be the absence of both — a non-subject so to speak.
Or to put it differently, subject and object are one. Objects are the manifested aspect of subject.
For anyone who speaks of consciousness/awareness as some kind of real entity, I would ask where this entity was before you were born. Or to choose something more recent, where was this entity during last night’s deep sleep? What exactly is during deep sleep? Where is consciousness then?
In the end, we can say that the gentle non-duality is either (radical) non-duality misunderstood or watered down to make it less offensive to the ego.
Camera and Movie
Let’s use a common analogy to make our point clearer. Trying to find yourself is like trying to find the camera that recorded the movie inside the movie.
The camera that recorded the movie is part of every frame of the movie because it is what makes the movie possible. The movie is the manifested function of the camera. Would you consider the movie to be an entity separate from the camera? In other words, could the movie exist without the camera?
Certainly not, right?
If that is what you say then you have just admitted that there is no objective/external world. In other words, no mind no world. Got you.
But the camera can exist without the movie, you might say. Yes, but then how would we be aware of its existence? Let’s mix analogies to bring this point home.
The camera with the movie is like REM sleep (sleep with dreams). The camera without the movie is like deep sleep (dreamless sleep). Without the movie, there is just pure featureless camera.
But of course, we’re just playing with analogies. No matter how good an analogy is, every analogy is speaking in dual terms and thus needs to be discarded.
Pretty Radical, Huh?
Radical non-duality aka non-duality is the negation of everything, including the idea of everything and nothing. It’s at the same time absolutely radical and deeply natural. It’s life as it is.
Realizing this changes everything and yet leaves all as it is.
The fun part is that you already have access to non-dual awareness. Having access to it is not that difficult. The tricky part is getting to abiding non-dual awareness, which is for the most part a discarding of wrong beliefs.
Discarding wrong beliefs doesn’t mean acquiring the right beliefs. Emotional attachment to beliefs is what can make them difficult to discard. The mind’s tendency to fill the void can make it difficult to reject new beliefs that want to swoop in.
Therefore being aware of the tendency to grasp and hold on to concepts (especially spiritual ones) is necessary.
In radical non-duality, there is no room for wonderful spiritual concepts like joy, bliss, happiness, love, and so on. These are all fine experiences to have but also pitfalls to fall into. For most of us, these words represent an emotional experience. So when we think that any of those is the goal, we are just chasing an emotional experience.
We think love is the destination but love is just the other side of hate and both need to be discarded. Don’t get me started on unconditional love…
When both sides of every coin have been discarded, a wholly new but weirdly familiar experience takes place. This might be described with such inadequate words as peace or bliss but really is just a lightness as a result of negative and positive having both taken their leave.
It’s not an exalted spiritual state. It has nothing to do with spirituality or mysticism at all. It’s just natural. It’s everything going on in the same way it has been going before but with the direct knowing that it’s all empty.
There are no entities. There is no one to direct or control anything. Everything is manifesting completely spontaneously.
Therefore, enlightenment is already enlightened. Nothing needs to change. Nothing needs to be done or realized. No one needs to be dissolved. That’s the truth.
Pretty radical, huh?
Luka
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Cómo decimos los profesores: no comentan porque lo entendieron todo o nada entendieron.