Quick guide to Non-Duality

We talk about non-duality, which means 'not two', as a philosophy, but actually it is a description of reality.If it is not two, then you could say it is one. It is not named 'one' but 'not two' because there is no name for what is.  What is can be called many things: God, Consciousness, Energy, Everything or Nothing. These are only labels and what is cannot be described by any label but it actually encompasses all labels. It is the whole thing, all that is and all that can be. 

Duality is the idea that we are taught by our parents and society. It is the idea that there is an ‘I’, someone that is separate from all that is, that has control, responsibility and choice. How does duality happen? 

There is an individual experience, a perspective on what is, generated through the five senses of the body. When we identify with that individual experience, we get an individual. A person that is doing everything, that things are happening to, instead of things just happening. We take whatever happens in the individual experience personal and think there is someone who is responsible. Through this misperception the person is born and the name of the body becomes your name. 

If we keep taking everything in this individual experience personal we create a personal history. Everything has happened to us. Through what happened to the person there can be this response to what happened, a steering in a certain direction, an insistance on an outcome, an emotion, thoughts that can be believed, should do’s and should do nots and so through time this imaginary person is strengthened and there is more and more personal investment. Patterns emerge, beliefs are strengthened and an individual perspective on what happens is created. 

All is based on a sense of responsibility for this body and mind and its actions. There is this universe full of beings, bodies, minds and forces and in this huge ecosystem we think we are alone in control, a strange thought when there is such limited control through this body and the thoughts that emerge. Yet we take full responsibility for all that happens and are frustrated, really frustrated that we can’t get ‘our’ life to function as it should. The frustration makes sense because we don’t have control of our thoughts, our bodies, our house, our universe because it is not ours. It just is happening. 

All this struggle can be let go off easily and simply by not believing in this person and a personal history anymore. When we see what is, we can start living aligned with reality and stop fooling ourselves. There is no person, yet there is an individual experience, which is fine. We can learn that life steers itself when we let go of the person. 

If the body is thirsty, it moves to satisfy its desire. When the mind has a certain desire it thinks of ways to get it. When the soul is desiring something, there is this flow towards bringing this to reality. Life moves itself, if we see ourselves as all of life, instead of the person. I can try to explain it but you won’t see or trust it if you haven’t tried to let go.

There is not an accurate description of what and how reality happens and how individual experience moves without this idea of a person. That is where the name ’non-duality’ instead of ‘oneness’ comes from. It cannot be understood, it cannot be taught, because it is already here. 

The best way I know to describe this state of non-duality is flow. Life just flows, eternally, with or without the person. The benefit of knowing there is no person is that at least you are not fooling yourself and you can let go of all this efforting, this trying, this strive, this suffering and there is a stopping of taking things personal, that are not personal. 

I will end with the words of Osho: “You are already that which you are trying to be. The more you try, the more you will miss. You leave all effort and simply accept yourself, you just be that. And suddenly it is there.. "