Nonduality explained: is it an experience? This is a very interesting thing to explore because the answer is yes and no. One of my favorite spiritual teachers is Sam Lewis, and he always said you have to actually have the experience of spirituality or Unity or Oneness. You can’t get it from a book; you can’t read about it. As a matter of fact, you can’t get it from a teacher, no matter how fabulous that teacher is, until you actually have the experience. So yes, there is an experience.
In one way, “Experience” is the wrong word, and I’ll explain that in a moment, but there is a happening where nonduality is revealed, down underneath all the crazy division that you imagine is going on in your life. So yes, we’ll use the word “experience” to describe that moment and everything that then comes after it, because without this experience, you’re just stuck in your mind, thinking about nonduality, reading about nonduality.
So don’t get caught in the studying of it. Know for sure that there is this experience, this happening, and you can get there.
So then, on the other hand, is it an experience? No. And you’ll notice how, when I started trying to explain this, I was always kind of tripping over the word “experience,” because an experience is still something separate from you. This is why nonduality is such a good teaching because it’s always saying “not two.” It’s not something that’s separate from you.
You can imagine there’s you, and you have an experience. So no, that’s not it. The thing is, you are the one having the experience, and this is what we’re trying to locate: ultimately, who are you?
We can make English words try to fit into this reality in a very awkward way, and we can say you are the experiencer, and you know that’s true. Or maybe we can try to make it kind of more verb-like: you are experiencing. But still, as long as we have this sentence “you are,” we’re still seeing two things, right? You and that.
So this is why it’s so easy to get caught in nonduality teachings because as long as we’re thinking about it, it always ends up sounding confused, confusing, confused’er. What we’re looking for, however, is the actual experience itself, the experiencer—you, the one who’s having this experience.
And then let’s go back to using our word “experience” like we were using at the very beginning because it is actually a moment in time where you wake up from the illusion of who you thought you were. And then at that point, you can say, yes, this is the experience of me being an awake person.
So is it an experience? Yes and no. Don’t think about it or get caught in it. Just know for absolute certainty that when you know it, you’ll know it, and you can get there. You’re so close.