What is Non-Duality?

What is Non-Duality? 

Substance and Form 

Non-duality simply means "Not Two", in regard to the nature of life.

The basic message of non-duality can be described through the concept of substance and form. We can see everything in the world as multifaceted, having both a substance and a form. The substance of something can be described as its true essence, the material that an object is made of - what the object “is”. An objects’ form can be described as the shape that a substance is formed into.

In every day life when we speak about different things, we often refer to only an objects form as a short hand. For instance, If I say “puddle” I don't say “water puddle”. the substance “ water” is implied when I refer to the form “puddle”. Using language in this way is practical, but has a lasting adverse effect on how we perceive objects. For example, we tend to think of a puddle or the Pacific Ocean as being separate or distinct from one another, but a puddle or the Atlantic Ocean are in actuality the same thing. Both are simply forms of the substance water. Could water ever become two separate things in reality, a puddle and an ocean? If so, how many waters are there on the earth? Would we have to count all of the puddles, streams, oceans and rivers to add them up to find out how many waters there are? Of coarse not, there is only water itself appearing in different places in different forms, but never becoming anything other than itself.

What non-duality is pointing to, is that the underlying substance of all things is the same, and that this substance never truly becomes anything other than itself, or separate from itself, while taking the form of all things. We could refer to this substance as “life itself”.

In the same way that we overlook the fact that a puddle and an ocean are in essence the same thing because we don't refer to them as “water puddles” or “water oceans”, we forget that everything in the universe is simply life itself taking different forms because we don’t go around referring to things as “life trees”, “life cats”, or “life flowers”. With this, we overlook the oneness of the universe, which is always complete and whole and could never be separate from itself.

So what are the implications of forgetting the oneness of life? For starters, we don't tend to think of the universe the way it really is: one complete whole with many facets. We tend to think of the universe as comprised of separate, distinct objects that can act upon each other in “right” or “wrong” ways with a separate “us” right in the middle of it, judging what should or should not happen.

We tend not to view ourselves as a facet of this oneness of life, but as an individual, cut off from everything and everyone else. We feel that we are missing something, and our lives become a story about trying to find what we feel we are lacking, trying to complete ourselves in careers, relationships, goals and aspirations which leave us unsatisfied when we've acquired what we imagined would complete us. We do this because we don’t understand what it is that we are truly looking for: To realize the completeness that we already are, that we have overlooked and forgotten about. We don’t understand how we are to “fit in” with this world around us in order to feel complete, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that we have forgotten that ourselves and this world are intrinsically one, inseparable from each other, which is instead a situation that is already complete, with nothing that needs to be resolved.

Non-duality is an invitation to abandon a life of thinking that what you are is limited to the form that you find yourself as, this human body, but to remember what it is that you truly are- life itself- that has taken the form of that body. And that this life that you are is one with and the same as the life in all things regardless of their form.