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Originally Posted by swampgrl
To me, nonduality has the feel of, to borrow an analogy, a glitch in the matrix for how else could it present itself to the ego which has a seeming monopoly on consciousness?
How could anything else get through that edge wise?
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Conditioning, my dear. Cognitive bias.
For example, people will be interested in finding out/experiencing 'nonduality' or 'Brahman' or 'the Truth' (Sat) and so, instead of meditating, focusing on their breath and whatnot, they'll go "that seems like really hard work...let's just read what Ramana Maharishi or Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or "some other Advaita saint" has to say about it".
Then from all the collected works of such noble personages, they will cherry pick a sentence or paragraph here or there...marry it to something else they have read that their mind likes the sound of, study contemporary thoughts on these issues and come up with their own solution; "hey, I don't need to do anything because I'm already
that" and when I say "who told you so?" they are like "Ramana said it" or "Vivekananda said it" etc, and then I go "so, Ramana's 40-50 years of silent meditation and introspection to reach that conclusion was all a waste of time then was it?" and "why did Ramana go to Arunachala when he could have stayed where he was?" and I proceed to shoot holes in it (I pretty much shoot holes in everything). lol
So, any concepts of nonduality, of Brahman are gleaned from other sources...I mean, I gleaned mine straight from Adi Shankaracharya (the 'father' of nonduality), but even when he said "Shivoham" (I am Shiva) I really cringed, because Shiva was an actual 'deity' I prayed to...in full-on
duality, but realising that it
was duality.
Adi Shankaracharya and the Hindu Scriptures tell us to 'shoot holes in everything'...it is called "Neti Neti" meaning "not this" as in, there's something else that isn't 'this' or 'That isn't known by the mind'. Any notion of nonduality or Brahman that can be thought about, spoken of, philosophised about, isn't it! it isn't nonduality...and yet, it's only when I said "neti neti" to "neti neti" itself...said "neti neti" to Shankaracharya, to the Hindu scriptures, to even Shiva him/her/itself that I understood that which the mind cannot understand and I reached the heart-level.