Second Thoughts on Non-Duality

This chapter is intended as a short postscript to the previous one, to fill out discussion on a few really difficult points that may not have been entirely clear to the reader.

  There is in the first place the distinction made between “individuality” and “uniqueness” (see pp. 88 and 167 *).  We have the idea that each one of us reacts in his own, entirely personal way to circumstances.  In other words, no two people react in exactly the same way.  This creates the impression of an independent “I”.

But in truth no two people are conditioned in exactly the same manner (not even identical twins, brought up together; and in this case behavior patterns resemble each other very closely).  There is the sum total of conditioning influences which not only comprises the individual’s experience–his whole life history to date–but also his glandular and neuro-physiological make-up.  It would be more correct to say, therefore, that each body/mind entity, a very complex bundle of conditioning factors, is unique in the make-up of its conditioning factors, is unique in the make-up of its conditioning.  The entity’s response has therefore a unique, “personal”, touch about it, although it is still only a function of its conditioning as defined in the broad sense given above.  Hence, despite the appearance of originality and uniqueness, it is merely a mechanical, completely determined entity that has no real freedom. 

True uniqueness, on the other hand, is the state which reveals itself when there is complete freedom from conditioning.  When in this state, the mind is totally transparent and without borders, functioning neither on the individual nor on the collective level.  It ceases to be an “entity”.  This brings with it, not complete annihilation of differentiation, total conformity–as some people seem to think the structure of non-duality to me–but the flowering of the rich diversity inherent in Reality.  What has been destroyed, however, is every form of imitativeness, of conformity to the patterns laid down by Society.   Such annihilation is essential if there is to be creative individuality or “character”.

A second difficult point contained in “Window on Non-Duality” came to the fore in the discussion which followed the reading of this paper at Cambridge.  One of the students could not easily accept the basic premise made in the middle of the article that all knowledge we possess originates from experience.  To the author it seems very obvious that all human knowledge must ultimately have been derived from experience (and thus been based upon  sensuous perception).  This is only difficult to understand if we think of experience as personal, obtained exclusively in the course of one’s own life, but this is not the case.  Knowledge is accumulative, including as it does not only individual memory but also social and racial memory, and thus represents the experience of mankind from its earliest beginning.  Thereforeit is based not only upon one’s own experience, but also that of others.

It is felt that we can do no better than to quote here a statement made by Krishnmurti at the Madras Talks of 1961, which seems highly relevant to the subject under discussion:  “What do we mean by experience?”.  Because, apparently, what guides most of us in the knowledge that we have derived from experience, either of our own or of the community or of the race.  Experience is what the race might have inherited, a certain knowledge, a certain tradition; that tradition, that knowledge is the derivation from experience, experience being response to stimuli and that stimulated response leaves a residue which we call knowledge.”

A third difficulty will now be discussed, which the author feels, could possibly be brought up by a reader whose prime concern is with logic.  The objection might be that the writer, in elucidating the nature of Reality as non-dual, has himself created a new basic duality: that of Reality and the Impositions (by the mind) on Reality.  The answer to this must be that this new duality is only apparent.  Absolutely speaking, the Impositions are illusory, although the mind takes them for real.  After all, who is talking about this new duality, if it is not the Impositions themselves?  Does not everything the mind seizes upon immediately become dualistic?  As soon as we say even one word about Non-Duality we have created Duality–and so the movement within the Impositions is Duality, Thought, Time, Suffering.

  Although ultimately, therefore, there may be nothing of the kind, it is we who experience existence a duality, who live in conflict; therefore to us, however much we may be living in illusion, duality is hard reality.  So relative to the human mind, we may say there is duality and non-duality, although it is a moot point whether we are entitled to make this discrimination–even if it is by inference.  For most of us only know the former state, which makes the state free from conflict merely a verbal projection.

This leads us finally to consider the question whether there is such a ting as an “approach to non-duality”.  It seems to me, before we can fruitfully discuss this, we should first understand how the separation between the everyday life and the “spiritual” life has come about. 

Many people are attracted to the state of Non-Duality, because they have heard about it–the promise of its bliss and so on.  Consequently their approach is to try to grasp Non-Duality–to understand it by analysis, speculation, etc.--rather than understand Duality, which is the everyday world.  Being fed up with this world, they have postulated another world, about which nothing is known but that it allegedly holds no frustration whatsoever; and so they are hotly pursuing the “other”.  But, contrary to what most religious people hold, it may well be that there is only this world; and that therefore the so-called other world–call it Non-Duality, or anything else, it does not matter-is still only this world.  And if that is so–and how could it be otherwise when whatever we know, whatever division we create and whatever concept we project, exists only within thought–then what matters only is this world, and our attitude towards it, our sense of values.  There being only one world, one life, yet two fundamentally different scales of values are possible.  Either we live with what is, or we escape into illusion because we prefer comfort to truth–the choice is entirely ours.  It is this choice which decides whether we are going to make heaven or hell of this everyday life.  To run away from it all and project a different world which we call Heaven, Nirvana, Non-duality, or some other high-sounding name is the most certain way of making hell of this, the real world.  

Not unlike the religious people, the intellectuals think that the attainment of non-duality is a matter of philosophy, of speculation, playing about with concepts.  But their approach, too, is doomed, because non-duality is the negation of every kind of concept, of any kind of certainty, that can be grasped by the mind for its security.  One cannot help but feel that if those who now profess an interest in the subject fully realized what is involved–nothing less than a dying, a complete giving up of Society–the majority would lose all interest at once.  For them the state of non-duality would appear as a mere “drifting”, “existing”, of a “living” which is an endless process of being helplessly jostled between the opposites.   

The state of non-duality implies that one is totally unconscious of oneself, not having any goals and thus free from self-concern. It follows therefore that to live in non-duality is incompatible with the following of a set path, a way of life, whether it be the Middle Way or simply The Way.

Any set way of life implies a model, an ideal.  It necessitates self-remembering and comparison with the ideal in order to adjust one’s behavior–what we have called elsewhere, a “psychological feed-back” system.  The latter may be considered the hallmark of the state of duality: the constant conflict between what is and should be.  It is therefore not so much thought that covers and obscures non-duality, as the “second-thoughts”, those after-thoughts which sneak in and cast doubt about the thoughts that have been and gone (e.g., “I should have done this . . . .”,  “What will people think of me now . . .”).  All this represents the feedback process of duality: always looking back, being preoccupied with the process of self-correcting, and thus incapable of living with the new, functioning in the present.  And when we are preoccupied–whether it be with sex, with politics or with the so-called “spiritual life”--we are stupid, dull, because we are not aware.  While thus “absent-minded” in the truest sense, we are incapable of giving Attention to anything, wholly absorbed as we are in the past.

The main reason for our obsession with the past is that, whatever we may say to the contrary, in actual fact we still cling in a childish manner to the hierarchical scale of Society with its ideas of the “superior” and the “inferior”.  So all the time we are weighing (comparing) our self on this scale, and trying to make it look more capable, more beautiful, more respectable.

I may be stupid, not quite so clever and quick-witted as others; but am I not being infinitely more stupid by trying to appear clever, that is, to be something which I am not, which can only give rise to all sorts of conflicts?  One major difficulty is that the whole trend of our education, with its cramming, its examination system and paper qualifications, tends to inculcate this attitude of stupidity, of “impressing people favorably”, which is the triumph of the sham, the phony.

And if I am greedy, say for earthly wealth, and I cover it up, am I not even more greedy, now hungering for social approbation as well?

And in both of the examples given I have brought into being a deep fear–the fear of not being able to live up to appearances, to be found out as stupid, greedy, or whatever the case may be.  It is through this kind of preoccupation that we create continuity and cause the self to be divided within itself.  

Thus far we have seen that all attempts to directly grasp Non-Duality by mind effort are doomed, because it can never be made a goal.  To be more precise: Non-Duality is not to be “attained”, as the result of some purposeful activity.  The latter always implies a motive, and every form of motive is self-induced and self-building.  Nothing that springs from the mind can bring about this state, for all effort tends to strengthen self-consciousness and thus leads away from it.

Non-duality comes from a fact, spontaneously, when there is an understanding of duality, our everyday life.  Again, it does not come into being through trying to understand duality.   There either is such understanding, or there is not; and the trying to understand is obviously a pursuit, a movement within duality, born of discontent with circumstances.  True understanding is an involuntary action; it cannot be bought by any means, nor can it be “helped along”.  Such perception is purposeless; it has no ulterior motive and is outside time, i.e. it occurs in a flash.  Yet it is not the outcome of an act of grace.  It is born of discontent of a different kind: not the will to modify the everyday world, to reform, so that there is a little less discomfort here or there.  What we are talking about is the discontent that can never be satisfied, that has no goal and so holds no conflict.  It is a discontent not with life’s circumstances, but with the very functioning of the mind that gives these external factors such undue prominence.  Such discontent gives a tremendous energy and it creates the intelligence not only to see that conflict in any form is a poison, but enables the understanding of conflict in its totality.  When one sees something in its totality (which includes the seer, the observer) all problems cease.  In this state there is no longer a seer and therefore there is Freedom-not the freedom from, which still indicates the presence of a center that that wills, chooses, etc., and so is in potential or actual conflict with its circumstances.

Do we ever see anything totally? Perhaps only in a crisis, or when faced with an emergency, with acute danger to life, when we have absolutely no time.  To see is not an action which needs time.  It is not a matter of seeing one aspect first, then another, and so on, finally obtaining the whole picture–that is merely the summation in memory of the various aspects, the way a machine operates, like a television camera.  Then it is always possible to go on seeing further aspects of the problem and therefore the seeing is never finished, never complete.  Such seeing is always a fragmentary act, an extrapolation of what is already known, and so no seeing at all.  To see totally is to find oneself completely in the present; such seeing is therefore timeless–and from this seeing there is an immediate action. The action is immediate  not in the sense of being an extremely fast response to the pressure of the moment--but, not being the result of thought at all, it is an unpremeditated and unprecedented action; therefore it is not a re-action which breeds further re-actions.  It is in this doing without sense of doer-ship, in which one is completely unconscious of oneself, that the state of non-duality finds consummation.