If it’s a word, it’s not true. Nonduality is trying to get us in touch with the fact that our thoughts constantly cause us to be separate from reality, to be separate from ourselves. Our thoughts feel like they’re very, very loud inside our heads, and we get hypnotized by them; put to sleep by them. So it’s really useful to look at what’s actually happening with thoughts. If it’s a ‘word’, it’s not true.
Very simply, you can know this by taking a sentence apart. If it’s just one word it becomes a static thing if it’s a noun.
Noun: Cat.
If I did a whole video where all I’m saying is “cat,” it would be boring and meaningless, static.
Cat.
You have an idea of a cat. I have an idea. It paints a small picture. I start putting more words together, and it starts feeling more. It can be something beautiful: “beautiful cat,” “soft cat.”
“The beautiful soft cat came over and sat in my lap, and I petted it until it started purring.”
Now it starts to feel like something. But those are all still words. Each one individually doesn’t mean anything. The whole sentence altogether starts painting a picture in your mind, but it’s the picture that’s the understanding, not the actual words. The fact that I’m able to string these sounds together and create a picture for you is just what we call communicating. But it’s not simply the words that are doing the communicating.
In order to say that sentence, I had to create this picture in my mind, and then I used words to pass this picture onto you. But the word itself—none of those actual words—was the truth.
You can go way, way deeper into it. There is no way possible to string together enough words to completely define anything, particularly who you are. We habitually try to do that. We try: Who am I? Who am I? We try to describe ourselves with words, but there’s a you that’s indescribable, and this is the you that we’re wanting to wake up with nonduality.
Nonduality is not a philosophy. It should have no history at all. I can’t believe the fact that people are always quoting nonduality teachers that are dead from a hundred years ago. They had something to say then to the people that were there, but it becomes static once it’s written down and it’s not coming through live.
The word is not it. The word cannot describe it.
This is simply what nonduality is saying: stop trying to describe it, stop thinking you know it because you know words. When you actually know it, you’ll know it. There is no mystery whatsoever to who you are. When you’re thinking of yourself as something separate from yourself, it’s a huge mystery. But come fully into yourself, and you know who you are. You know it right this minute. You’re you. No words necessary.
So the word is not it, and when we know that as a knowing, then we can start looking at the world from the vast intelligence that we are.