Non Duality

Non-duality, Non duality, Nonduality

Non-duality (non duality, nonduality) is a translation of a Sanskrit word, Advaita, which means, ‘not two.’

Our experience is normally conceived as a subject, ‘I’, and an object, the world. This is expressed in terms such as, “I see the tree,” where ‘I’ is the subject and the ‘tree’ is the object.

This basic division of experience into a perceiving subject and a perceived object underpins the way we conceive all our experience. This view could be called ‘Duality’ because two basic entities are considered to be present in every experience, a perceiving subject and a perceived object.

The understanding that is expressed in non-duality comes from a deep investigation of the true nature of experience and forms the core of all the great religious and spiritual traditions.

Non-duality states that in fact our experience does not consist of ‘two things.’ In non-duality the subject and the object, the experiencer and the experienced, are understood to be always one in experiencing.

In non-duality both the apparent subject and the apparent object are seen to be abstract concepts that are superimposed by the mind onto the reality of our experience.

Another way of expressing this would be to say that there are not two separate realities, one for our self and one for the world, but rather that the reality of our self is identical with the reality of the world and others.

Read the complete essay: Non Duality