Nonduality explained clearly:
Basically, nonduality means that there’s you and there’s everything else. That’s the two things: you and everything else, right? Two things.
But now we’re saying, “not two.” In one way, it means all those other things are not you. Like, particularly, when talking about your internal experience. There’s you and there’s your mind. There’s you and your emotions. These are the most important things to think about when you’re trying to understand nonduality. There’s you, and there’s your mind. So, here’s these two things.
But nonduality says there’s not two. That means you are not your mind. You project yourself onto your mind, but you are not your mind. You are not your emotions.
You see other people, and we project all sorts of things onto other people. But there’s you and there’s them—two things. But you are not them. This is the simplest way to look at it.
When you actually experience who you are, though, then everything changes because you’re not a thing that can be defined. And when you discover who you are, you find out that there really aren’t any edges between things. Like, there’s not actually an edge between you and your mind.
In more advanced nonduality we discover that two things—me and my mind—but actually they aren’t separate. They’re the same. They’re not the same, but they’re not separate. Like they flow together. Me and my emotions—it’s not really two separate things. It’s like one thing happening.
Now this experience of being me becomes much riper because I’m not just me. When you think that you’re your mind, it’s kind of like this chattering, chattering, annoying thing, always trying to figure stuff out. But when you find out that you are you, then now your mind is this companion thing that’s not separate from you. So, the edges between you and everything else start to blur. And this is what we experience as the spiritual experience.
Many of us have had the experience where all of a sudden you feel this greater unity than you knew was possible. But at this point, there’s not really two things happening. There’s not me and my mind—it’s like the same thing happening. And also, there’s not my mind and society because society is the thing that gave me my mind. And my mind, particularly my language, interacts with everyone going on. So, we become interrelated with everything, and there’s literally no edges.
This is why the experience of nonduality is explained as nothing and everything. Because when you see yourself as nothing, that means all those extraneous things have dropped away—your mind, your emotions, your name, your job—all those things have dropped away until you’re down to absolute zero. And then your connection to everything is just revealed as obvious.
Not two.
You are not just your mind. You are not the thoughts that go on in your head. You’re not all the things you project yourself onto in your field of awareness. You’re not your dreams. You’re not your hopes and fears. You’re not your job. You’re not your name. All these things—I’m not this, I’m not that, I’m not this
There are many things in the world, but there’s only one of you. You are this thing we’re trying to locate. The one of you.
And this is why nonduality sounds a obscure. Because you locate yourself, and then you’re here. You’re in a place. And so, you and the place exist simultaneously. Your body, your mind, your emotions, everything about being a human being is just one thing happening. There’s not two things happening. There’s not two of you. And that’s the most important thing to think about with nonduality: there’s not two of you. So, in that case, then who are you?