Inquirer: I have been reading for many years about nonduality and have engaged in various practices. But I feel like I haven’t had the “a-ha” moment of clarity. However I recently came across the “Headless Way” and it immediately showed me something I hadn’t seen before. It’s pretty wild! Basically there are these quick experiments you can do. One of them is so simple. Just realize that you “can’t see your own head.” And if you can forget that you’re looking out of a head, you are instead looking out as this huge spacious awareness. The entire world, other people, and even your body, your thoughts, the sensations, are all existing in this huge awareness. And your Self is actually just observing and unaffected. The end result is congruent with what many other spiritual traditions are pointing to. It’s just a different way of getting there and I’ve experienced some fast results. (Now I just need to carry this feeling throughout the day.) Has anyone else found this method to be more immediately helpful than others? Or are there any other recommendations to check out?
Sundari: This is a neat technique to experience nondual vision as Awareness – and I am sure it can be helpful. There are many other similar techniques and practices that are part of the ‘tool kit’ of nondual teachings, such as taking a stand as Awareness and practicing the opposite thought, among many more. But no matter the techniques or spiritual practice, without being grounded in Self-knowledge, what happens when the experience ends? Here is the teaching on the difference between experience and knowledge:
Experience and Knowledge
Vedanta asserts that reality is non-dual but because duality is so persuasive and our minds so programmed by it, we believe in experiential reality. So we look for an experiential enlightenment. The challenging discussions on the nature of Consciousness relates to the most important confusion in the spiritual world concerning the nature of enlightenment: the apparent contradiction between experience and knowledge. Lack of clarity on this topic prevents seekers from realizing the truth of their existence.
People suffer because they continually find themselves at odds with the nature of reality. Vedanta is a means of knowledge that removes existential suffering by teaching us how to in investigate reality in such a way that we discover our non-separation from it. Non-separation from reality is tantamount to lasting happiness, the diamond in the dust of experience. Happiness is constant when, though Vedanta’s profound inquiries, we see clearly that we need nothing from the world to complete us.
It’s first inquiry convinces us that the joy we seek in objects does not come from the object but from within ourselves. This understanding frees us of the need to pursue objects. An object is anything other than myself. But what is the nature of this joy, this freedom that is in me, that is me? Is it in the form of some special experience or is it accessible only through Self-knowledge?
The experiential view that enlightenment is a special experience other than what I am experiencing right now is based on the idea that reality is a duality. Vedanta disagrees. It says reality is non-dual Awareness. This presents a real problem because we seem to experience reality as a duality. Duality means that I take the distinction between me and the world in which I live to be a real, not an apparent distinction. When we inquire properly using Vedanta’s proven methodology we discover that duality is the result of false perception and that reality – life – is actually non-dual. Nothing is separate from me.
Because we are caught up in a false perception of reality we are inclined to accept the experiential notion of enlightenment. According to this theory, a permanent non-dual experience that erases the separation between me and the objects in my inner and outer worlds can be obtained in various ways.
We accept this view because those from who we take our cues about the nature of enlightenment, those who have had so called experiences of non-duality, did not examine their experiences properly. They took the appearance of their experiences as the truth because they did not understand the fundamental nature of the experiencing entity and the nature of experience itself.
When you take yourself to be an experiencing entity and have epiphanies, samadhis, satoris, NDEs, etc., you feel happy, limitless, free, transcendent and one with everything. There is a sense of merging and melting in into something beautiful and transcendent, a feeling of unconditional love, a sense of permanence and lightness, a feeling of oneness and wholeness. Most everyone in the spiritual world has had such experiences at one time or another. A huge body of literature chronicles them from, a popular account which has made its recounter very famous, is Eckhart Tolle and his experience of ‘being in the now’.
The problem with the experiential theory of enlightenment is as told by someone else is that someone else’s experience cannot be transferred to me. I can feel inspired to seek it myself, but then I am bound to the treadmill of chasing another object to make me feel complete. Secondly, even if I too have a mind blowing experience, while experience itself is constant, specific experiences are not. Nor are they under the control of individuals. They are produced by the myriad ever-changing factors in the vast field of existence. We want to be in control of what we experience but we are not in control. The force behind the field, Isvara, is in charge. All experiences happen in time and end. So what do I do when the experience ends? Off I go again, chasing another experience of the Self – which unknown to me, is what I am having all the time. I am what I seek.
What is the problem with the experiential view? If reality is non-dual Awareness as Vedanta claims, then the distinction between you and what you experience does not obtain. If that is true and fullness is the nature of Awareness, the Self, then everything you’re experiencing right now is you. The chair you are sitting on is you. The light in the room is you. The thoughts in your mind are you. The man walking across the street is you. The silent peace you feel in meditation is you.
If this is true, why do I want a special experience? I want the special experience of oneness because I don’t know what the Self is, or even if I think I know, I don’t know what that means. To use more popular terminology, I don’t know who I am. Therefore, if I want to be free of the apparent limitations imposed on me by the ever changing matrix of experience I should seek to understand the nature of reality, which is in fact eternal, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, and which is my innermost nature. For this I need Self-knowledge, not experience.
When are you not experiencing yourself? You are never not experiencing yourself because the Self is Consciousness and Consciousness is all there is. Therefore, if I want enlightenment, freedom from the sense of limitation imposed on me by the belief that I am separate from the objects I experience. I don’t have an experience problem. I have a knowledge problem.
Most teachers sell the experiential notion of enlightenment. Kundalini Yoga is a good example. According to this notion you are meant to generate a big cosmic non-dual experiential union with Consciousness by performing certain actions. But if I am already Consciousness then I can’t do anything to get what I’ve already got. Actions are only useful for obtaining something I don’t have or getting rid of something I do have.
Love, Sundari
