How is the experience/observed explained in non duality?

I'm curious as to your opinion on how experience is explained in non duality?

My take on non duality is that everything is one, including thought. The issue I noticed is that many non dualism teachings say that we(the true self) is the observer only and not the experience. If everything is one then the experience and experiencer are one in the same. Thought can't simply be an illusion if it's apart of oneness yet oneness itself is not an illusion.

a reply to: Ralphy


Ok the simple answer.

You have to kill the past in you.

The repeating memories that hurt you.
Then you enter into continual fight or flight until you see the sun.

After that you avoid the bright lights for a time.

It keeps .... Going...and going....and going....it's like giant energizer bunny. But it's still a bunny.

a reply to: Ralphy

You are over thinking this. Everything has a duality, but can be viewed as a singularity from different points of observation. What you see as a human is often not what you see as a soul.

a reply to: Ralphy

I'm curious as to your opinion on how experience is explained in non duality?

That's the problem: nothing is explained in non duality. Everything is in fact explained away.To say everything is one is the same as saying everything is nothing. It's simply a matter of choosing your prefered term and imagining it to be so. Of course it changes nothing, and dualists and non dualists alike have to deal with themselves in a pluralistic environment their whole lives, where things are not one or even two.

As for experience, it's just a term westerners have picked up fairly recently. It is a term without reference. It cannot be applied to anything, it cannot be imagined, and it is absent from the world. If we were to pin that word to what it is in reference to, people will only be able to pin it to themselves. In other words, it's a misunderstanding of the self; it is don't know thyself; it is forget thyself.

it's a misunderstanding of the self; it is don't know thyself; it is forget thyself.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope
On one level its a process of elimination, I am not this, I am not that! This is a misunderstanding of the self, therefore it is not the self. To forget the self is to live in a fantasy bubble, from there on words fail miserably. " Just be that which you are and always were" You end up sounding like a buffoon talking about non duality! Yet here we are mumbling on giving it a go, everything is possible.

a reply to: Ralphy

if thoughts are really apart of oneness at your current undestanding, than who is the one:
- who is hearing the thought mentally?
- who is the one thinking the thought?

You see with thinking we are creating this imaginary division, hence the duality. Point of non duality is to go beyond that.
One way is with help of filtering imagination by contemplating I am not this, I am not that (google netti netti for more info). Until your body and mind concepts dissolves and only true being is achieved. As acientthunder explained.

So by only thinking you will not get anywhere, because thoughts are a product of intellect and this is a product of a body or brain. But we are far from anything material, our true origin is elsewhere!

So being and non being are just concepts, as are body, mind, thoughts even oneness!
Until you get past this hurdle and trust and abide only in what is (being but non being - outwardly doing everything, but inwardly "empty") and not in your thoughts than the veil will not be revealed. This is the essence of true meditation. Silence.

This is far easier said than done. Even while meditating but it gets easier with practice and practice makes perfect

a reply to: Ralphy
All that is happening is happening - the experience of thought and the witnessing of thought arise as one - thought is not a problem. Thought is oneness expressing as thought.
However, thought speaks about a 'me' - it says 'I did this' or 'I did that' or 'I will do this/that'. 'I am bad because I did this' 'I am good because I did that'. Thought speaks about 'me in time and space' - thought creates the image of a 'me' as a body - a separate 'thing'.
Now that there seems to be a 'me' - a finite thing with a beginning and end - all attention goes on protecting, defending and getting more things. The 'me' as a 'thing' is fearful of not being. 'Me' believes it has to be good in this life to have a good next life. It has to be some 'thing' even if that thing is 'happy'. 'I want to be happy'. 'I don't want to be sad'. The 'me' is always some thing or trying to become some thing other. And seems to be surrounded by other some things.

Really there are no things - there is only ever simply what is happening. Imagine it this way - there is a screen with a moving image appearing on it - the screen is the unconditional space which allows the picture of existence to exist.
Thoughts are just a appearance that appears but disappears - the screen never goes anywhere.

thought creates the image of a 'me' as a body - a separate 'thing'.

a reply to: Itisnowagain
Taking "me" for granted, something that we are programmed with right from the word go!

originally posted by: Ralphy
I'm curious as to your opinion on how experience is explained in non duality?

There is no 'explanations' in 'non-dual terminology'!
All 'duality' exists as 'thought/imagination, where our words and languages exist!
To speak is already to come half-way down the mountain!
Words are lies that point to truth!
Experience IS non-dual!
The moment you experience 'thought', all appears as 'duality'!
All 'identity' exists as thought/imagination, ego!
Identity is 'this', NOT 'that'!
Duality!

... The issue I noticed is that many non dualism teachings say that we(the true self) is the observer only and not the experience.

'This', not 'that'... IS duality!
That 'teaching' is all duality!
Observer and observed are One, even science tells us that, now!

If everything is one then the experience and experiencer are one in the same.

Exactly!

Thought can't simply be an illusion if it's apart of oneness yet oneness itself is not an illusion.

We do not 'create' thought in our wet lumps of meat rattling around in our skulls!
'Thought', like everything else in existence (and that is everything) is 'perceived'!
Not anything is (or can be) 'created'!
The 'illusions' that appear in the imagination/thought (ego) are just that, illusions!
'Illusions are Real features of an ALL inclusive One Reality!
To BELIEVE that your imaginary perceived critters exist beyond the 'imagination', is insanity, 'delusion' (another feature of Reality)!

I can't speak for any non-dualist (or any other particular ideology).

I do have some sense of something I can call non-duality, which is pretty stable underneath another sense of very clear duality.

That sounds "dual" in itself...LOL!

I don't know if I can explain it in words. There is a layer of experience which is very clearly of dual nature- I think most would call this the materialistic/physical reality. In this, there is an "I" and "not I". There is time and space, and all that they entail.

But that is somewhat existing within a larger reality, in which none of these separations exist.

I sense something which is like a ray or laser, focusing into this dual world, that I think is akin to the "higher self" concept sometimes spoken of. But.... it is not really a "self"... it is not the "I"...
No more than rays of light from a light source are separate individual things from the light source.

The observer and the observed are the same, just as the yolk in an egg is just as much the egg as is the white in the egg.

My mind can sort of flit between looking out through the "I" of the yolk, or the "I" of the white, to observe a relation between them as separate.. but there is always this underlying feeling of being the egg in entirety.

I hate trying to put internal intuitions into words, the very business of pulling them into linear language automatically makes it impossible.

TextI hate trying to put internal intuitions into words, the very business of pulling them into linear language automatically makes it impossible.

a reply to: Bluesma

For me there are two languages and one is more suitable for samsara and the other......

TextA Poem by Rumi There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired, as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts from books and from what the teacher says, collecting information from the traditional sciences as well as from the new sciences. With such intelligence you rise in the world. You get ranked ahead or behind others in regard to your competence in retaining information. You stroll with this intelligence in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more marks on your preserving tablets. There is another kind of tablet, one already completed and preserved inside you. A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness in the center of the chest. This other intelligence does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid, and it doesn't move from outside to inside through the conduits of plumbing-learning. This second knowing is a fountainhead from within you, moving out.