So, I Googled, “What is non-duality?” and the answers I got were, of course, fairly strange and useless. Wikipedia says that non-duality is this completely obscure teaching that everything in the universe is United.
The universe is the universe; everything that is in the universe is in the universe, so it’s all there together. How can it not be United?
That’s like saying, “This is an obscure teaching that all the water in the ocean is water in the ocean,” or that all the water in the ocean can flow around. Or even make it even simpler than that, “This is an obscure teaching that all the water in a glass is water in a glass.” That it’s all together in the glass. Of course, it’s together in the glass.
That’s not what non-duality is at all.
Non-duality is a tool to teach you and me and everyone else to stop imagining that everything in the universe isn’t connected, to stop coming up with excuses to think that everything in the universe is not United. It’s working on the basic concept that, of course, everything is United. And then a little tiny sidebar, and something’s gone wrong with people’s brains to make us think that it’s not. So, let’s turn around, look the other way, let’s look over in the other direction where we can see that everything is United, and let’s play a little trick with our minds: Everything is not two. There’s not two. There’s not two. This is just a little trick for us so that we can start seeing beyond these silly concepts that we hold, that things are not United because they are. Water’s wet, hot is hot, cold is cold, the universe is United. Simple.