Nonduality Salon (/ \)
The Self, Maya, and the Heart: The Fundamentals of Non-Dualism, page 6
Part III: The Philosophy of Non-Dualism
Dualism supposes that there is a subject-"I"
and an object, the individual self versus the world, man
versus God, a thinker versus the thoughts he thinks, and
so on. But in the philosophy of non-dualism, these are
all only concepts, ideas, or imaginings, which we hold to
be real, only because of attention to them as they arise
in the waking consciousness. According to the philosophy
of non-dualism, as soon as the Self is enquired into,
these "ideas" of a separate self just vanish.
The ideas of a conscious mind, subconscious mind,
unconscious mind, even superconscious mind to one who has
enquired into the Self, are only that, ideas
(concepts-images-impressions), having no real existence,
apart from attention to them in the waking state. The
idea of a waking state, dream state, and deep sleep, even
the idea of a fourth state beyond, impartially
"Witnessing" those three, again, to the
non-dualist, are only concepts or ideas of the waking
mind with its need for a fixated attention, or need to
identify and organize itself around some idea, to
establish an identity.
The non-dualist will state that this is the nature of the
outgoing mind, but that when this mind is stilled,
purified, and made to enquire of its source, the Self
shines forth, the True Man emerges, these ideas become
ruthlessly disregarded within oneself, and one remains
abiding as Self only.
When someone asks how this can be, that the entire world
and all one sees and believes about it are just a fiction
of the mind, the non-dualist gives the following
comparison:
To paraphrase p. 5-7 of Jewel Garland of Enquiry (Vichara
Mani Malai), the non-dualist will say that just as in a
dream one finds one's self to be the subject of one's
dream thinking about and relating to all sorts of persons
and events over what may seem to be a long period of
time, but in reality, both the subject and the
objectified world one sees have all been created by the
mind in the dream, so too this waking world is all a
projection of the Self. The non-dualist states that we
seem to believe that we are a subject seeing a world and
making impressions and reactions to what we think we are
seeing only due to non-enquiry into that Self. Therefore,
he states, as soon as we enquire into the Self, the
subject-"I", we take ourselves to be, with all
its dilemmas, and the objectified world we project our
relationship with, will all just vanish, like the dream,
and we remain abiding as Self only, impartially
witnessing all the states and planes and levels of
consciousness, unattached, unconditioned.
There seem to be 2 paths, both which lead to
one path:
One path one might call a path of purification of the
mind, a path of the separate soul seeking Union with its
Creator. As an outset this would involve a focus on
virtuous acts, involving giving, caring, and
unconditioned love, with an attitude that avoids
selfishly motivated acts, or acts, where one is seeking
reward or advantage, as found in greed, lust or hate.
This is called Karma Yoga.
These virtuous acts then lead to a giving up of desires,
giving way to a sense of longing for the feeling of
stillness and purity of the mind, a sense of surrender to
that feeling of totally placid, thoughtlessly alert
brightness, which many may call the Spirit of God, a
state absolutely free from all thought. With this is said
to come a feeling of neither an inside nor an outside
regarding the body, of beauty/perfection- beatitude. This
is called Bhakti Yoga.
The mind becomes so still or pure that when one goes to
sleep, the body is seen to go to sleep, and one remains a
still witness. Apparently, this purity leads to one
becoming awake at, what the Western world would call, the
subconscious or unconscious states.
The non-dualists also have a name for this -
jagat-sushupti, which means waking-sleep, or one who is
awake in or to his unconscious all the time, asleep or
awake. They see the world within a field of pervasive
consciousness from the perspective of the atoms that form
it.
Yogis approach this purification similarly, but adding
various physical and mental forms of purification, such
as cleaning out their intestines, stomach, and nasal
passages with water and special exercises, fasting and
strict vegetarian diet controls, certain postures -
called asanas, postures with movement combined with
breathing - called kryias, exercises in concentrating the
mind - called meditation, and various types of breathing
regulation - called Pranayama.
This is page 6. Go to page
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10