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[post_content] => Last week I wrote about nondual philosophy. It was very brief, but hopefully pointed you in the right direction. It’s hard to convey with words what can only be experienced, but I feel compelled to try. Therefore, this week I’m presenting you with many attempts by people of many different times and cultures. The key is not the specific words they use, but the common experience they’re all pointing at.
In dream you love some and not others. On waking up you find you are love itself, embracing all. Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariably binds; love in freedom is love of all.
- Nisargadatta
Boundary lines, of any type, are never found in the real world itself, but only in the imagination of the mapmakers.
- Ken Wilber
Quite simply, since reality is One, and everything is equally an expression of that one divine Light of Consciousness, every experience by definition is an experience of God ... Now some interpreters of the tradition say, "Everything is God, but some things are more God than others." This is as nonsensical as the famous quote from Animal Farm, "Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others."
If we propose that some things are more God than others, like concentrated orange juice versus watered-down orange juice, then we must also propose the existence of something that is not God that waters down divinity. But no such thing can be found, at least in this philosophy, because 1) the definition of God here is the unbounded Light of Consciousness, 2) everything that is known to exist is an object of experience, and 3) every experience is by definition pervaded by consciousness.
Therefore, this - whatever is happening right now - is as God as it gets.
Now, if you are in a miserable or banal life situation you may be disappointed by this announcement. But notice I said, "This is as God as it gets," not, "This is as free as it gets." Freedom means actually experiencing the divinity in each moment, which is the same as not wanting the present moment to be any different than it is. When you don’t want any moment to be any different, then you are no longer struggling (or even waiting) for a better situation, and therefore you are free to fully show up for what is actually happening now. Paradoxically, this reveals the inner joy of consciousness, because by not struggling against some part of reality, you see and meet the whole of the moment, and you naturally enjoy it to the maximum extent you are capable of in that moment.
- Christopher Wallis
Kindness is the light that dissolves all walls between souls, families, and nations.
- Paramahansa Yogananda
In the pursuit of Knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Way, every day something is dropped.
- Lao Zi
When you think everything is someone else's fault, you suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy.
- Dalai Lama
Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn’t exist. Mortals keep creating the mind, claiming it exists. And arhats keep negating the mind, claiming it doesn’t exist. But bodhisattvas and buddhas neither create nor negate the mind. This is what’s meant by the mind that neither exists nor doesn’t exist.
- from The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma translated by Red Pine
You could say the whole world is consciousness having taken birth as form, manifesting as form temporarily, and then dying which means dissolving as form. What always remains is the “essence” of all that exists – consciousness itself.
- Eckhart Tolle
And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.
And
For no reason
I turn into a leaf
That is carried so high
I kiss the sun’s mouth
And dissolve.
And
For no reason
A thousand birds
Choose my head for a conference table,
Start passing their
Cups of wine
And their wild songbooks all around.
And
For every reason in existence
I begin to eternally,
To eternally laugh and love!
When I turn into a leaf
And start dancing,
I run to kiss our beautiful Friend
And I dissolve in the Truth
That I Am.
- Hafiz
It is as if a raindrop fell from heaven into a stream or fountain and became one with the water in it so that never again can the raindrop be separated from the water of the stream; or as if a little brook ran into the sea and there was thenceforward no means of distinguishing its water from the ocean; or as if a brilliant light came into a room through two windows and though it comes in divided between them, it forms a single light inside.
- St. Teresa of Avila
I BELIEVE God is everything. . . Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found It… My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all round the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can’t miss it.
- Alice Walker in The Color Purple
Vimalakirti asked Manjusri what was the Buddha’s doctrine of nonduality. Manjusri answered, “The doctrine is realized by one who sees beyond forms and who knows beyond argument. This is my understanding – what is yours?” In response to this question, Vimalakirti closed his lips and was silent.
- Timothy Freke (ed.) in Zen Wisdom
It is not the body, nor the personality that is the true self. The true self is eternal. Even on the point of death we can say to ourselves, “My true self is free. I cannot be contained.”
- Marcus Aurelius
Profound and tranquil, free from complexity,
Uncompounded luminous clarity,
Beyond the mind of conceptual ideas
This is the depth of the mind of the Victorious Ones.
In this there is not a thing to be removed
Nor anything that needs to be added.
It is merely the immaculate
Looking naturally at itself.
- Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche
This unity is not mere one-ness as opposed to multiplicity, since these two terms are themselves polar. The unity, or inseparability, of one and many is therefore referred to in Vedanta philosophy as “non-duality” (advaita) to distinguish it from simple uniformity. True, the term has its own opposite, “duality,” for insofar as every term designates a class, an intellectual pigeon-hole, every class has an outside polarizing its inside. For this reason, language can no more transcend duality than paintings or photographs upon a flat surface can go beyond two dimensions. Yet by the convention of perspective, certain two-dimensional lines that slant towards a “vanishing-point” are taken to represent the third dimension of depth. In a similar way, the dualistic term “non-duality” is taken to represent the “dimension” in which explicit differences have implicit unity.
- Alan Watts
I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.
- Richard Feynman
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
- Carl Jung
Look, my thumb touches my forefinger. Both touch and are touched. When my attention is on the thumb, the thumb is the feeler and the forefinger, the self. Shift the focus of attention and the relationship is reversed. I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, Love; you may give it any name you like. Love says: 'I am everything'. Wisdom says: 'I am nothing.' Between the two my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both.
- Nisargadatta
Love is without a doubt the basis of everything. Not some abstract, hard to fathom kind of love but the day to day kind that everyone knows. The kind of love we feel when we look at our spouse or our children or even our animals. In its purest most powerful form this love is not jealous or selfish but unconditional. This is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or will exist. And no remotely accurate understanding of who or what we are can be achieved by anyone who does not know it and embody it in all of their actions.
- Eben Alexander, MD
You make what you defend against, and by your own defense against it is it real and inescapable. Lay down your arms, and only then do you perceive it false.
- A Course in Miracles
My contribution was the title (“One plus one equals one”), which some wise person probably said long before me. From a nondualist’s perspective, two (duality) emerges not from merging oneness with oneness (which just begets oneness), but perhaps from dividing oneness – a separation which can only be accomplished in the illusions of the mind.
Hopefully some of these quotes spoke to you. Admittedly, although these words were drawn from nondual contexts, some of them spoke not to nondual philosophy itself but certain facets of the human experience in a way that I found insightful. Perhaps some rubbed you the wrong way, or confused you, or brought up more questions than answers – all of which are good, in my opinion. Keep challenging your beliefs and feel free to share your thoughts below.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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[post_content] => One evening several years ago, I was taking a walk and saw something big flapping in the wind. As I got closer, I realized it was a giant plastic bag that was stuck to a tree. I thought to myself, “Someone should clean that up,” and I walked on.
It was one of those thoughts where you actually hear the specific words in your head – Someone should clean that up. And one word in particular stuck in my mind: Someone.
Then it felt like my body was compelled to slow down, and a higher part of my consciousness seemed to be telling me, “Look more closely at this pattern.”
Someone should deal with what I dislike. Make it better for me.
I turned around. I disentangled the bag from the tree. I balled it up, found a nearby dumpster, and threw it away. And though it was just one bag, it was symbolic of a shift. The shift wasn’t that I now pick up all the litter I see wherever I go. It was a recognition of how I want the world to be different without participating in the process, and it was a reminder of my ability to choose my perspective and to act on my own behalf.
Then there was one more insight from that soul place: This is (part of) what being an adult means. As children we expect our caregivers to make the world right for us; as adults, we act on our own behalf. It struck me that growing up has little to do with how many years you’ve been alive. You could be 80 years old and still expecting the world to make things right for you.
Over the following months, I paid closer attention to people who were active in consciously shaping their world. It was so inspiring. I noticed that sometimes this approach to life issued from an attitude of optimism and empowerment, like, “I have gifts to share!” or “I want to be an active participant in changing my environment.” And other times it came from an attitude of mistrust and pessimism, like, “You can’t count on anyone; that’s why you have to do everything yourself” or “People are going to mess it up if I don’t step in.”
Gradually, another characteristic of growing up was revealed: letting go of fixed positions. In those who strove to improve their world, there was always flexibility and a willingness to see more than one side of an issue, because the truth is rarely black-and-white. Children like things in absolute terms: this superhero is good and the other guy is bad; broccoli is healthy and candy is unhealthy; sharing is the right thing to do and not sharing is wrong. But adults recognize that such formulaic ways of thinking often fall short. Only by engaging with life openly and organically, with a strong appetite for the truth, do we stand to grow and evolve. This brings lots of grey and apparent paradox, but the adult mind can handle it.
How do you define growing up? What challenges you about being an adult? Share in the comments section below.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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[post_content] => When my wife says I’m the only person she knows who could happily curl up in bed with a 20-pound medical text, I like to point out that I also enjoy books on philosophy. It’s been at least a decade since I’ve read a work of fiction (except to my kids), but I find nonfiction so fascinating, and it constantly challenges my worldview. I know most people find these subjects dry and heady, so I try to tackle them in our newsletters with the aim of making them more accessible and digestible.
Today I’d like to share some thoughts on one of these dry topics – the philosophy of nondualism. Wait, don’t leave! I promise I’ll make it interesting – controversial even. Just bear with me. It might even change the way you see the world.
In a nutshell, nondualism is the notion that everything is essentially one – that all the apparent differences and separation we perceive in the world are an illusion.
Nondual philosophy has many different forms; I can’t deliver a comprehensive analysis in an article this short. Instead, I’ll speak to the perspective of a single Eastern source – Tantra Illuminated by Christopher Wallis – and a single Western source – A Course in Miracles (ACIM) by Helen Schucman.
The first is a study of Tantra, a group of spiritual traditions that arose mainly between 300 and 1300 A.D. They had a significant impact on the development of yoga, Hinduism, and Buddhism. And I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but “tantric sex” is the tiniest fraction of what Tantra comprises.
The second, which might be understood as nondual Christianity, was written by an American in the 1960s and 70s and is presented as a “channeled” work dictated by Jesus.
Though seemingly very different, these two traditions actually have a lot in common. And what they share is a perspective that would alleviate a lot of suffering if it were more widely known.
Both schools of thought focus on discovering the unity within all the apparent differences in the world. They say that when we see a world where some things are godly and others aren’t, where good and evil, wealth and poverty, sickness and health, virtue and sin, life and death, and a host of other “dualities” yank us around and define our experience of life, we’re wrapped up in a dream that obscures the real truth.
And that truth, they assert, is that all things are an expression of one Consciousness (God, Spirit, Universe, Divine Light, Highest Self, or whatever other word you care to use), which is synonymous with Love. These systems hold that everyone and all things are connected, equal expressions of God, and there is nothing to fear and no reason to suffer.
ACIM often pushes non-Christians’ buttons by using terms like Jesus, Christ, and Holy Spirit. For me, raised Jewish, the terminology presented some hurdles at first, but it gets easier the more I recognize that these names – as well as those of most other traditions – are all pointing to the same thing.
ACIM also pushes Christians’ buttons because much of what it teaches flies in the face of Christian dogma. It states that God isn’t outside of us or different than us. It holds that there is no duality of heaven and hell; only heaven is real and we’re either conscious of it or lost in stories of our own making. It says there is no sin – only mistakes made out of confusion. It claims that God doesn’t forgive – because God doesn’t condemn.
Despite these potential objections, I feel it’s a worthwhile study in Western nondualism. It might be a more natural leap for someone with a background in an Abrahamic religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam are the main three) rather than adopting a completely foreign Eastern nondual tradition. However, some find the reframing of deeply entrenched Abrahamic concepts too difficult to swallow, or the terminology too loaded, making the Eastern traditions something of a clean slate in comparison.
Central to ACIM’s narrative is the idea that you sought to break apart from God, to be independent, and in so doing, you gave your power to your ego. (This might be likened to the biblical story of eating from the Tree of Knowledge, whereupon the mind was given authority and we lost the “Eden” state of consciousness.) The ego protects this idea of independence by asserting that the world is a place of separation, where everything is disconnected, where all things are in competition, and pain, suffering, and loneliness threaten us.
The perpetuation of this dream depends on the ego’s continually empowering itself by generating conflict – with the world and yourself. Meanwhile, the belief that you cut yourself off from your Highest Self (keep substituting words you like) is a source of deep self-blame, which you also project onto the world and its inhabitants.
The primary means of resolving this dilemma, the Course teaches, is forgiveness. By forgiving yourself and everyone else, conflict dissolves, the illusion of separation fades, you see that you were never actually alone or vulnerable, and the world becomes a different place.
Nondual Tantra takes a slightly different view of the origin, but presents a similar human conundrum. In its conception of reality, there is one Divine Light (again, you can call this God, Goddess, Awareness, Spirit, Dao, etc.) that expresses itself in all possible ways – including as seven billion humans – through what is called krida, the doctrine of divine play. The word “play” is used because the Source manifests an infinitely diverse world for its own sake – for the love of it – rather than for some end result.
In order to have an immersive experience as each of these facets of the world, the Divine imbues them with only a fraction of its total awareness. That is, so that you can really experience being you – believing you’re on your own, thinking you’re limited by this body, feeling the full spectrum of human emotion, triumphing over obstacles – you can’t know all along that you’re actually God acting like a human.
You have to forget, so the play feels that much more real – and so that you can later remember. It’s the ultimate game: to dive into a world where you’re blind to the connections and safety nets, where there’s so much potential to feel alone, afraid, and attacked, and yet, to find the light. To remember that it’s all You. To wake up to what you really are, with revelation, relief, and awe.
I have no agenda of convincing you to subscribe to either of these schools of thought. But knowing that our readers are open-minded people who are looking for deeper peace and an experience of connection, I thought you might find it compelling that two traditions from such different times and places offer such a similar message. (And these are just a couple examples of many.)
Both systems declare that you’re so much more connected to the world and your Highest Self than you realize, that the death of your body isn’t the end of life, and that the fundamental matrix of the universe is love. Perhaps there’s room in your worldview for a little nondualism. What do you think?
With love,
Dr. Peter Borten
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[post_content] => Last week I wrote about nondual philosophy. It was very brief, but hopefully pointed you in the right direction. It’s hard to convey with words what can only be experienced, but I feel compelled to try. Therefore, this week I’m presenting you with many attempts by people of many different times and cultures. The key is not the specific words they use, but the common experience they’re all pointing at.
In dream you love some and not others. On waking up you find you are love itself, embracing all. Personal love, however intense and genuine, invariably binds; love in freedom is love of all.
- Nisargadatta
Boundary lines, of any type, are never found in the real world itself, but only in the imagination of the mapmakers.
- Ken Wilber
Quite simply, since reality is One, and everything is equally an expression of that one divine Light of Consciousness, every experience by definition is an experience of God ... Now some interpreters of the tradition say, "Everything is God, but some things are more God than others." This is as nonsensical as the famous quote from Animal Farm, "Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others."
If we propose that some things are more God than others, like concentrated orange juice versus watered-down orange juice, then we must also propose the existence of something that is not God that waters down divinity. But no such thing can be found, at least in this philosophy, because 1) the definition of God here is the unbounded Light of Consciousness, 2) everything that is known to exist is an object of experience, and 3) every experience is by definition pervaded by consciousness.
Therefore, this - whatever is happening right now - is as God as it gets.
Now, if you are in a miserable or banal life situation you may be disappointed by this announcement. But notice I said, "This is as God as it gets," not, "This is as free as it gets." Freedom means actually experiencing the divinity in each moment, which is the same as not wanting the present moment to be any different than it is. When you don’t want any moment to be any different, then you are no longer struggling (or even waiting) for a better situation, and therefore you are free to fully show up for what is actually happening now. Paradoxically, this reveals the inner joy of consciousness, because by not struggling against some part of reality, you see and meet the whole of the moment, and you naturally enjoy it to the maximum extent you are capable of in that moment.
- Christopher Wallis
Kindness is the light that dissolves all walls between souls, families, and nations.
- Paramahansa Yogananda
In the pursuit of Knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Way, every day something is dropped.
- Lao Zi
When you think everything is someone else's fault, you suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy.
- Dalai Lama
Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn’t exist. Mortals keep creating the mind, claiming it exists. And arhats keep negating the mind, claiming it doesn’t exist. But bodhisattvas and buddhas neither create nor negate the mind. This is what’s meant by the mind that neither exists nor doesn’t exist.
- from The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma translated by Red Pine
You could say the whole world is consciousness having taken birth as form, manifesting as form temporarily, and then dying which means dissolving as form. What always remains is the “essence” of all that exists – consciousness itself.
- Eckhart Tolle
And
For no reason
I start skipping like a child.
And
For no reason
I turn into a leaf
That is carried so high
I kiss the sun’s mouth
And dissolve.
And
For no reason
A thousand birds
Choose my head for a conference table,
Start passing their
Cups of wine
And their wild songbooks all around.
And
For every reason in existence
I begin to eternally,
To eternally laugh and love!
When I turn into a leaf
And start dancing,
I run to kiss our beautiful Friend
And I dissolve in the Truth
That I Am.
- Hafiz
It is as if a raindrop fell from heaven into a stream or fountain and became one with the water in it so that never again can the raindrop be separated from the water of the stream; or as if a little brook ran into the sea and there was thenceforward no means of distinguishing its water from the ocean; or as if a brilliant light came into a room through two windows and though it comes in divided between them, it forms a single light inside.
- St. Teresa of Avila
I BELIEVE God is everything. . . Everything that is or ever was or ever will be. And when you can feel that, and be happy to feel that, you’ve found It… My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all round the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can’t miss it.
- Alice Walker in The Color Purple
Vimalakirti asked Manjusri what was the Buddha’s doctrine of nonduality. Manjusri answered, “The doctrine is realized by one who sees beyond forms and who knows beyond argument. This is my understanding – what is yours?” In response to this question, Vimalakirti closed his lips and was silent.
- Timothy Freke (ed.) in Zen Wisdom
It is not the body, nor the personality that is the true self. The true self is eternal. Even on the point of death we can say to ourselves, “My true self is free. I cannot be contained.”
- Marcus Aurelius
Profound and tranquil, free from complexity,
Uncompounded luminous clarity,
Beyond the mind of conceptual ideas
This is the depth of the mind of the Victorious Ones.
In this there is not a thing to be removed
Nor anything that needs to be added.
It is merely the immaculate
Looking naturally at itself.
- Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche
This unity is not mere one-ness as opposed to multiplicity, since these two terms are themselves polar. The unity, or inseparability, of one and many is therefore referred to in Vedanta philosophy as “non-duality” (advaita) to distinguish it from simple uniformity. True, the term has its own opposite, “duality,” for insofar as every term designates a class, an intellectual pigeon-hole, every class has an outside polarizing its inside. For this reason, language can no more transcend duality than paintings or photographs upon a flat surface can go beyond two dimensions. Yet by the convention of perspective, certain two-dimensional lines that slant towards a “vanishing-point” are taken to represent the third dimension of depth. In a similar way, the dualistic term “non-duality” is taken to represent the “dimension” in which explicit differences have implicit unity.
- Alan Watts
I, a universe of atoms, an atom in the universe.
- Richard Feynman
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
- Carl Jung
Look, my thumb touches my forefinger. Both touch and are touched. When my attention is on the thumb, the thumb is the feeler and the forefinger, the self. Shift the focus of attention and the relationship is reversed. I find that somehow, by shifting the focus of attention, I become the very thing I look at and experience the kind of consciousness it has; I become the inner witness of the thing. I call this capacity of entering other focal points of consciousness, Love; you may give it any name you like. Love says: 'I am everything'. Wisdom says: 'I am nothing.' Between the two my life flows. Since at any point of time and space I can be both the subject and the object of experience, I express it by saying that I am both, and neither, and beyond both.
- Nisargadatta
Love is without a doubt the basis of everything. Not some abstract, hard to fathom kind of love but the day to day kind that everyone knows. The kind of love we feel when we look at our spouse or our children or even our animals. In its purest most powerful form this love is not jealous or selfish but unconditional. This is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or will exist. And no remotely accurate understanding of who or what we are can be achieved by anyone who does not know it and embody it in all of their actions.
- Eben Alexander, MD
You make what you defend against, and by your own defense against it is it real and inescapable. Lay down your arms, and only then do you perceive it false.
- A Course in Miracles
My contribution was the title (“One plus one equals one”), which some wise person probably said long before me. From a nondualist’s perspective, two (duality) emerges not from merging oneness with oneness (which just begets oneness), but perhaps from dividing oneness – a separation which can only be accomplished in the illusions of the mind.
Hopefully some of these quotes spoke to you. Admittedly, although these words were drawn from nondual contexts, some of them spoke not to nondual philosophy itself but certain facets of the human experience in a way that I found insightful. Perhaps some rubbed you the wrong way, or confused you, or brought up more questions than answers – all of which are good, in my opinion. Keep challenging your beliefs and feel free to share your thoughts below.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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