The Nondual
Q: So this casual unmanifest is that the absolute end point? Is
this the end of time, the end of evolution, the end of history? The
final Omega point?
KW: Well, many traditions take this state of cessation to be the
ultimate state, the final end point of all development and
evolution, yes. And this end state is equated with full
Enlightenment, ultimate release, pure nirvana.
But this is not the final story, according to the Nondual
traditions. Because at some point, as you inquire into the Witness,
and rest in the Witness, the sense of being a Witness in here
completely vanishes itself, and the Witness turns out to be
everything that is witnessed. The causal gives way to the Nondual,
and formless mysticism gives way to nondual mysticism. Form is
Emptiness and Emptiness is Form.
Technically, you have dis-identified with even the Witness, and
then integrated it with all manifestation in other words, the
second and third phases of fulcrum-9, which leads to fulcrum-10,
which is not really a separate fulcrum or level, but the reality or
Suchness of all levels, all states, all conditions.
And this is the second and most profound meaning of Emptiness - it
is not a discrete state, but the reality of all states, the
Suchness of all states. You have moved from the causal to the
Nondual.
Q: Emptiness has two meanings?
KW: Yes, which can be very confusing. On one hand, as we just saw,
it is a discrete, identifiable state of awareness namely,
unmanifest absorption or cessation (nirvikalpa Samadhi, ayn, jnana
Samadhi, nirodh, classical nirvana). This is the causal state, a
discrete state.
The second meaning is that Emptiness is not merely a
particular state among other states, but rather the reality or
suchness or condition of all states. Not a particular state apart
from other states, but the reality or condition of all states, high
or low, sacred or profane, ordinary or extraordinary. Recall that
on figure 9-1 we had Spirit as both the highest level (causal)
and the ever-present Ground of all levels
(nondual).
Q: We already discussed the discrete state; now the Nondual.
KW: Yes, the experience of this nondual Suchness is similar to
the nature unity experience we earlier discussed, except now this
unity is experienced not just with gross Form out there, but also
with all of the subtle Form in here. In Buddhist terms, this is not
just the Nirmanakaya gross or nature mysticism and not just the
Sambhogakaya subtle or deity mysticism; and not just the
Dharmakaya causal or formless mysticism. It is the Svabhavikakaya
the integration of all three of them. It is beyond nature
mysticism, beyond deity mysticism, and beyond formless mysticism
it is the reality or the Suchness of each, and thus integrates each
in its embrace. It embraces the entire spectrum of consciousness
transcends all, includes all.
Q: Again, rather technical. Perhaps theres a more direct way to
talk about Nondual mysticism?
Kw: Across the board, the sense of being any sort of Seer or
Witness or Self vanishes altogether. You dont look at the sky, you
are the sky. You can taste the sky. Its not out there. As Zen
would say, you can drink the Pacific Ocean in a single gulp, you
can swallow the Kosmos whole precisely because awareness is no
longer split into a seeing subject in here and a seen object out
there. There is just pure seeing. Consciousness and its display are
not-two.
Everything continues to arise moment to moment the entire Kosmos
continues to arise moment to moment but there is nobody watching
the display, there is just the display, a spontaneous and luminous
gesture of great perfection. The pure Emptiness of the
Witness turns out to be one with every Form that is witnessed, and
that is one of the basic meanings of nonduality.
Q: Again, could you be even more specific?
Kw: Well, you might begin by getting into the state of Witness
that is, you simply rest in pure observing awareness you are not
any object that can be seen not nature, not body, not thoughts
just rest in that pure witnessing awareness. And you can
get a certain sensation of that witnessing awareness a
sensation of freedom, of release, of great expanse.
While you are resting in that state, and sensing this Witness as
a great expanse, if you then look at, say, a mountain, you might
begin to notice that the sensation of the Witness and the sensation
of the mountain are the same sensation. When you feel your pure
Self and you feel the mountain, they are absolutely the same
feeling.
In other words, the real world is not given to you twice one out
there, one in here. That twiceness is exactly the meaning of
duality. Rather, the real world is given to you once, immediately
it is one feeling, it has one taste, it is utterly full in that
one taste, it is not severed into seer and seen, subject and
object, fragment and fragment. It is a singular, of which the
plural is unknown. You can taste the mountain; it is the same taste
as your Self; it is not out there being reflected in here that
duality is not present in the immediateness of real experience.
Real experience, before you slice it up, does not contain that
duality- real experience, reality itself, is nondual. You are
still you, and the mountain is still the mountain, but you and the
mountain are two sides of one and the same experience, which is the
one and only reality at that moment.
If you relax into present experience in that fashion, the
separate-self sense will uncoil; you will stop standing back from
life; you will not have experience, you will suddenly become all
experience; you will not be in here looking out there in here
and out there are one, so you are no longer trapped in
here.
And so suddenly, you are not in the bodymind. Suddenly, the
bodymind has dropped. Suddenly, the wind doesnt blow on you, it
blows through you, within you. You are not looking at the mountain,
you are the mountain the mountain is closer to you than your own
skin. You are that, and there is no you just this entire luminous
display spontaneously arising moment to moment. The separate self
is nowhere to be found.
The entire sensation of weight drops altogether, because you are
not in the Kosmos, the Kosmos is in you, and you are purest
Emptiness. The entire universe is a transparent shimmering of the
Divine, of primordial Purity. But the Divine is not someplace else,
it is just all of this shimmering. It is self-seen. It has One
Taste. It is nowhere else.
~ Ken Wilber
