Ask a nondual "person"

[Valjean]

..

The problem is that when people become aware that this is the end of the story, they think they can just skip all the previous chapters and arrive at the end. All they have to do is call themselves a non-dualist, detach from their desires, and ta-da!

This is not how it works.

Not quite that easy.

Intellectual awareness of nested realities won't awaken you into a new one. That's why Hindu's have those elaborate systems of short-circuiting awareness (yogas), to zap the brain into a sort of seizure, awakening it into an altered state.

 

[Treasure Hunter]

Not quite that easy.

Intellectual awareness of nested realities won't awaken you into a new one. That's why Hindu's have those elaborate systems of short-circuiting awareness (yogas), to zap the brain into a sort of seizure, awakening it into an altered state.

It’s counterproductive to talk so openly about non-duality. It needs to become a curse word that is socially forbidden. It becomes too enticing for people to attempt to opt out of duality, falling into deception and delusion. I speak from personal experience.

 

[Zwing]

The problem is that when people become aware that this is the end of the story, they think they can just skip all the previous chapters and arrive at the end. All they have to do is call themselves a non-dualist, detach from their desires, and ta-da!

As I indicated above, this is not a component of belief which necessarily proceeds from non-duality. Rather, it derives from the Eastern esoteric and mystical practices generally associated with Advaita in the Hindu sphere. There are non-dualist thinkers, both eastern and western, who not succumbing to mysticism, do not renounce desire or the angst of life in this world, but rather embrace them. An Advaitin can validly decide to either embrace or to eschew mysticism. Mystically experiencing the substrate in this conscious life does not increase or decrease the likelihood that the substance of one’s being will eventually return to it.

 

[Valjean]

It’s counterproductive to talk so openly about non-duality. It needs to become a curse word that is socially forbidden. It becomes too enticing for people to attempt to opt out of duality, falling into deception and delusion. I speak from personal experience.

So you were a sadhu?

Falling into deception and delusion? Isn't the point that our current, duality-consciousness is delusion (maya), and the yogas are attempts to fall into reality (satya)?

Believers in the dharmic religions have been talking about non-duality for millennia, without society falling into chaos.

One has to live one's dharma, in whatever reality he inhabits. Someone trying to try to live in a reality not perceived miht be diagnosed as psychotic.

 

[Zwing]

Someone trying to try to live in a reality not perceived miht be diagnosed as psychotic.

Well said.

 

[SalixIncendium]

It’s counterproductive to talk so openly about non-duality. It needs to become a curse word that is socially forbidden. It becomes too enticing for people to attempt to opt out of duality, falling into deception and delusion. I speak from personal experience.

If you don't want to talk openly about nonduality, you shouldn't be participating in this thread.

If you want to debate the validity of nonduality, please create a thread in the religious debates. This isn't the venue for it.

 

[Treasure Hunter]

sadhu?

Falling into deception and delusion? Isn't the point that our current, duality-consciousness is delusion (maya), and the yogas are attempts to fall into reality (satya)?

No, duality is not delusion when we are engaging both pain and desire. When we detach from pain and desire, then the non-duality that we are subjectively accessing is the delusion.

You are trying to escape your subjectivity and see all of this from a non-dual, objective viewpoint that you haven’t fully earned yet. This is my point.

 

[Treasure Hunter]

If you don't want to talk openly about nonduality, you should be participating in this thread.

If you want to debate the validity of nonduality, please create a thread in the religious debates. This isn't the venue for it.

Fair enough. Apologies.

 

[Valjean]

No, duality is not delusion when we are engaging both pain and desire. When we detach from pain and desire, then the non-duality that we are subjectively accessing is the delusion.

Not following, what do pain and desire have to do with duality?

You are trying to escape your subjectivity and see all of this from a non-dual, objective viewpoint that you haven’t fully earned yet. This is my point.

Earned? Escape?
Again, the concept is not the reality. I live in the world I perceive.

 

[Zwing]

Not following, what do pain and desire have to do with duality?

I don’t want to put words into @Treasure Hunter mouth, but I think that in using such language he is recognizing that Hindu Advaitins generally have a somewhat mystical view of non-duality, coupled with other Hindu traditions associated with Samsara, Moksha, etc., which western Monists do not have.

 

[Viswa]

I don't know what "True Me" or "Ignorant Me" is with regard to a dream. I spoke of your dream character and the dreamer. Can you please ask the question using these term so I don't have to guess what you mean?


Relative reality is an appearance in Brahman, just as your dream is an appearance to the dreamer.

Does a dream have its own existence? No. It appears in you the dreamer.

True Me - Beyond Dreamer
Ignorant Me - Dreamer.
I can say I am Dreamer only if there is a dream. In Truth, there is no Dream/Relative Reality, so the True Me cannot be said as "Dreamer".

Likewise the Brahman. It can be said "Relative Reality is an appearance on Brahman" only if Brahman is Ignorant. In Truth, there is no Ignorance, only Absolute Reality, no appearance, no dreamer, only Brahman.

 

[Viswa]

Who defined the experience as "relative reality?"


None of this "really appeared." They were an error based on ignorance of what was real.

It is the ignorant One defined the appearance as Relative Reality, how can knowledgeable Brahman/One if it seems no Relative/Appearance/Dream but only Absolute?

If what you say is true that, "none of this really appeared", then why call oneself as Dreamer and why have to say "there is Dream"?

 

[Aupmanyav]

My personhood is an appearance in absolute reality (Paramartika).

IMHO, your personhood is an appearance in Vyavaharika (perceived world, pragmatic reality). In Absolute (Parmarthika), you are Brahman itself.

Is there a difference between monism and nondualism?

What kind of monism are you talking about (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism)? There is a variety. Wikipedia mentions Advaita as "Absolute Monism".

Knowledge of what I am results in my being unaffected by actions of others or what happens in transactional reality.

Even my own actions do not affect the Absolute. That is transactional reality. The Absolute is a different world altogether. A murderer or a rapist still is none other than Brahman in Absolute.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Does this mean you do not get angry or sad?

We may get angry or sad. After all, we are creatures of the transactional world. Brahman or the substrate has no such feelings, and no organ to feel such things.

@SalixIncendium, Is non-duality something that you have directly experienced, in a subjective sense, ..?

Non duality can only be understood by analysis. It is not something that can be directly experienced, just like relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

 

[SalixIncendium]

It is the ignorant One defined the appearance as Relative Reality, how can knowledgeable Brahman/One if it seems no Relative/Appearance/Dream but only Absolute?

Relative reality and dream reality are both appearances in Brahman. Neither is more real than the other. Guadapada validates this in chapter 2 of the Mandukya Karika.

Mandukya Upanishad with Gaudapada's Karika

The Mandukya Upanishad is 12 verses on AUM Mantra. Gaudapada's Karika is commentary relating to those 12 verses.

www.swamij.com

If what you say is true that, "none of this really appeared", then why call oneself as Dreamer and why have to say "there is Dream"?

Did your dream "really appear?" If you enjoy a cookie before you go to bed, and then you fall asleep and dream, and in that dream have two cookies, can you wake up the next morning and say, "I ate three cookies?" Of course not. You only ate one. The other two didn't really appear, though you thought in your dream state that you ate them. You thought this because your dream character was ignorant of the dreamer lying in bed asleep and dreaming of cookies.

 

[Zwing]

Non duality can only be understood by analysis. It is not something that can be directly experienced, just like relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

That is my experience as well. Even so, I am not quite willing to decry, or deny the experience another. I really don’t feel a need for such an experience, feeling that it cannot effect my ultimate fate, and I tend to be analytical by nature, which circumstance at once promotes skeptcism and inhibits mystical experience. I also have a strong emotional component to my psyche, which likewise inhibits mystical experience.

 

[SalixIncendium]

IMHO, your personhood is an appearance in Vyavaharika (perceived world, pragmatic reality). In Absolute (Parmarthika), you are Brahman itself.

Vyavaharika is an appearance in Paramartika, isn't it? Everything in vyavaharika is an appearance. So to say my personhood is an appearance in an appearance doesn't really make sense, does it? Nothing in vyavaharika has intrinsic value. All has borrowed existence as a result of Maya within Paramartika. All is verily Brahman.

If you have a gold necklace with a gold charm, is charm a form of (appearance of) the necklace? No. Both the necklace and the charm are a form of (an appearance of) gold. Neither the charm or the necklace have their own intrinsic existence. They both borrow their existence from gold.

Even my own actions do not affect the Absolute. That is transactional reality. The Absolute is a different world altogether. A murderer or a rapist still is none other than Brahman in Absolute.

Agreed.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Non duality can only be understood by analysis. It is not something that can be directly experienced, just like relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

Only?

Some of us who have actually had nondual experiences might be inclined to disagree.

But yes, understanding the experience on an intellectual level is done through research, analysis, and contemplation

 

[Zwing]

Nothing in vyavaharika has intrinsic value.

I disagree with this point. Biological life has value, and is wondrous. Even beyond that, everything in the subjective world has value for us, because of the subjective qualities they have when perceived by us. The perceptible “world” is not some trick which has been played upon us in an attempt to deceive. I feel that it is something more akin to a gift.

I wonder, what value do you attribute to the substrate, to Brahman? Even though you are essentially composed of that, you will ultimately have no consciousness of it, and no individuality once your subjective experience of this world is extinguished. From my perspective, the wonder and beauty lies in the subjective you that I perceive, not in the ultimate essence of your reality. In my view, the substrate is not necessarily something to be valued, it is simply an apparent truth, an apparent fact of nature.

Some of us who have actually had nondual experiences might be inclined to disagree.

 

[SalixIncendium]

I disagree with this point. Biological life has value, and is wondrous. Even beyond that, everything in the subjective world has value for us, because of the subjective qualities they have when perceived by us. The perceptible “world” is not some trick which has been played upon us in an attempt to deceive.

I didn't say these things don't have value. Of course they do, and of course it's all beautiful. But they don't have intrinsic value. From an Advaita Vedanta perspective, the perceptible world only has borrowed existence, not intrinsic existence.