Towards radical non-dualism

The first profound inklings of non-dualism often come through meaningful contact with meditative practices.  After some time the practitioner may occasionally get the sense that the line between what they consider ‘self’ and the contents of their ‘experience’ or awareness begins to blur.  Burroughs, that old opium magician, wrote about this, or rather I absorbed it from him when I was occupied in reading his bibliography.  Cut Body Lines.

The feeling of a body cutting through another at a strange angle. There are simpler places to begin to get it, without having to achieve proficiency in what can present itself as a very difficult stillness for the majority of the population. When the line between movement and breathing blurs so too does the line between body and mind.  Qi-Gong and Tai-chi teach this very simply, their roots in Daoist non-dualism seem more obvious in practice than on paper.  In either case, the experience has some high degree of inevitability.

An atheist can achieve this state as easily as one who believes in an external deity, the difference between the two (another duality) lies in their framing of the experience and their transmission of the experience to others.

The word “spiritual” means nothing, nothing important, nothing definitive, it clings to the emotions and never dares enter the reasoning centers.  Often, fear creates this connection and the word becomes just another opium to still the pain and uncertainty of life.  That something worthwhile happens beyond this, and if we could only see it, or ‘awaken’ it, or achieve ‘rebirth’ in it, then everything would finally turn favorable.  The word creates a separation, a duality, that ordinary life has no meaning while ‘spiritual life’ has infinite meaning.  That a spiritual state has a difference from walking down the street, screaming in grief, vomiting from the flu, shitting in the toilet, drawing a picture, etc.   It creates an elitism.  Those who have achieved such an exalted spiritual state and those who have not, a judgment that makes no sense and has no place.

In yogic philosophy they say that you always knew, that you always know and all you have to do to understand this state lies in your ability to polish your viewing lens.  In reality, once a non-dualistic state transitions into a primary personality map from one of occasional experience it presents itself with the costume of complete normality, so complete as to seem slightly foreign but completely familiar.  Like we knew it all along.  However, Advaita Vedanta (yogic/vedic nondualism) can take a long time to bear fruit.

The table, the chair, the air, all life.  All living.  What lives?  What dies?

Dimensions interact where bodies meet because this intersection contains valuable, relatively measurable, information.  A manipulator can push a cone through the surface of a volume of water contained by a basin.  The surface of the water will ‘see’ the cone as being any number of shapes but cannot ever ‘see’ the whole cone in the round.  Imagine a spiky ball pushing its way through the same surface, instead of a single object, it would look to the water’s surface as many seemingly separate objects that, in fact, have their place on a greater whole.  What if the adage that “you are me, and I am you” grasps at this 4^th dimensional object?  That, like the many forms of Devi in shaktism, every atom, person, chair, table, we see appearing as many separate things have their origin in a single object pushing through to our 3-dimensional perceptions just as a person looks different when viewed from the front and the back, the angle of interest changes.  In addition, with our perceptual limits, without very prolonged and possibly damaging training, we have the ability to  see each of these angles only during a particular moment in time.  

Watch how this idea continues to corrupt the original, simple, thesis.  No-thing lives. No-thing dies.