what is Duality and Non Duality?? And how does it affect the Afterlife??

[Inika]

I don't know. I as in who I am do not know. Its great you all know with what seems 100% certainty. I personally just do not know no matter what I read, hear or am told. I travel. I have conscious states. Like you all. What I don't have is God or source of all explaining to me exactly where I will be after death or what happens.

I almost envy people like you that know. Like you just utterly know with no doubt. Maybe you create what you want? Maybe there is no law. Maybe there is nothing. Maybe there is everything? Maybe we reincarnate? Maybe we dont? Maybe we meet our passed loved ones? Maybe we become some infinite consciousness that flows into consciousness of living humans? I really do not know and there is so so so many options you could explore since there is no absolute destination "Hello sir, welcome to your passing, please follow the corridor to your left and go through the blue door, everyone is there to greet you"

I appreciate the posts here. Thank you.

About ghosts. I believed everything at one time. Not literally everything but majority of it I have and at a point now where I ask....what is this? Ghosts existing I have had first hand experience. But what is that really? Projection? Why is there earthbound spirits? Why would we see them? Why would they appear? Why dont they go into the ethers...do we all just walk aimlessly around in spirit trying to get the livings attention? Why dont I see the spirit of my uncles and only seen them in dreams? Why cant I see my suicide friend? What happened to them?

[no1wakesup]

Originally Posted by The Necromancer

To be in a non-dual state at the time of death means you don't care if there's an 'afterlife' or not because 'life' and 'death' are dualistic principles anyway.

This is how I look at it. The goal of this life is self-liberation/enlightenment because nobody knows for certain whether there is/not an 'afterlife' and it's hoped that the immersion of consciousness within the Divine Abstract would prove to be so much of a diversion, the question would be rather moot.

Yes. When that personal funamental dualty collapses, it is all rather moot.

Well said.

[Within Silence]

I think the opposite of death is birth, not life. Life is that in which birth & death happen.

And yes, non-dual means one is liberated from dichotomies/words.

Awareness is non-dual, mind is dual, thought is dual, words are dual.

[Joe Mc]

Originally Posted by metal68

I come across these expressions regularly in my afterlife investigations but I'm yet to fully understand what they mean I'd be very grateful if anyone could clarify what they mean, in an understandable way and also how they affect the idea of consciousness surviving death

Is this watcher, the observer destroyed, annihilated at the time of death ? Does the person cease to be, that would posit that awareness is solely dependent on physical functions ? But even in the simplest sense it has been observed that some people who were clinically dead with no brain function had experiences in such a state which were later verified. I can't remember the details but you know the stories..the pair of training shoes on the window ledge of the hospital window..nobody could have known they were there, observed by the dead person on the bed. So that is interesting suggesting that physical reality is not needed in terms of brain function etc. to observe or experience phenomena ..so were is death in all of that ?

Your question also made me think of Hamlet in the Shakespearean play. Hamlet famously procrastinates about taking his own life, and comes out with the infamous speech .." To be or not to be " in other words, he had his doubts that doing away with his body would result in cessation of experience lets say .. to put it simply. There is also a point that some non dual teachers make about ..the awareness which you had as a child ..the awareness that was present in your childhood. They suggest that this awareness is still present, its still the same awareness and has never changed or waivered ? It's an interesting point I think and probably worth investigating ? Thanks for the opportunity to replay and engage.

[FallingLeaves]

Originally Posted by Joe Mc

They suggest that this awareness is still present, its still the same awareness and has never changed or waivered ? It's an interesting point I think and probably worth investigating ? Thanks for the opportunity to replay and engage.

yeah it has been investigated along with everything else. The teachers who have done it recommend it.

I recommend it too!

[no1wakesup]

Collectively, what is interpreted as awareness for most on the spiritual path, is not consciousness. That is, the awareness we find in the "gaps" or in the "now" are usually never fullfilled (as awareness recognizing itself as primary). Although expanded momentarily, all
that is expericed is a taste of a deeper duality yet to be realized.

In the first few weeks following birth, an infant is in a state which is still non-dual. There has yet to form a relationship between subject and an objectified world. This infant is still in a state I refer to as conscious form. The infant has form but as of yet no perception of its own borders. It* is pure conciousness, an indifferentiating source which imminates through the infants eyes. It is the natural state before simple stimulus transforms into a beginning perception of a centralized somethingness.

Awareness is formed, post birth, the moment this consciousness contracts. That contraction occurs the moment the infant establishes anything in relationship to itself "out there". It is in that space or bubble of awareness, where all content, all conditioning fills an ever evolving solid sense of me eventually percieving itself moving through linear time and bounded space.

Imagine a smaller bubble of awareness, within that larger bubble of content/conditioning, forming. This is the watcher or witness that is now aware of breathing, thoughts or any facet of "other". That awareness is still in its own duality.

When we temporarily use the watcher or witness discipline for instance, the observing quality that is there witnessing or observing without judgment is not, for the most part, seeing or witnessing ITSELF long enough for something deeper to unfold. That is awareness does not endure long enough to expand and eventually break thru the last concrete ceiling of unconsciousness. It is yet too busy in being the witness (which seems to be something someone is still doing) to truly see its own transcended position. That is, the witness is not WITNESSED. It seems that the witness gets stuck yet again in doing something we call being "aware."

Beyond that duality of awareness is the ground of being. The natural state, that original quality that has yet to say "I AM". In that natural state or pure conciousness, just as there is no argument without an opposing position, there is nothing to grasp because there is no one there in separation needing to maintain it own continuance... there are no measurements because there is no center.

That state is already here. Its the unconscious screen of conditioning (which collapses and filters all the content accumilated over the years) which prevents one from seeing what is there (or rather not there).

[jimrich]

Originally Posted by metal68

I come across these expressions regularly in my afterlife investigations but I'm yet to fully understand what they mean I'd be very grateful if anyone could clarify what they mean, in an understandable way and also how they affect the idea of consciousness surviving death

what is Duality and Non Duality??

My current understanding is that Duality does not really exist and is the by-product of limited beliefs and assumptions in a limited mind which says that I am an individual 'me' who is separate from everyone and everything else.
Non-duality says that there is NO separation and there is only one: life, mind, reality, being, energy, consciousness, presence, force, awareness, Oneness,Boundlessness and a lot of other descriptions of it and that this
Wholeness is beyond words or the mind's ability to grasp it. It is unnameable, infinite, ineffable, vast, empty yet full, Nothing and Everything but cannot be known my the limited mind yet it is EVERYTHING and EVERY FORM! There is much more to be said about Duality and Non-duality so look it up in a library or on line.

And how does it affect the Afterlife??

IMO, it has no affect on the Afterlife or any other life. Non-duality encompasses and includes all that there is, was and ever will be so, those over in the Afterlife are pretty much the same as forms or manifestations any where. I call non-duality the Source and the Source manifests and become or simply is all that there is - visible and invisible, on earth and in an Afterlife, etc. It's all Source appearing to be various things and conditions, etc.
The limited mind cannot grasp this and is often threatened by non-duality which seems to end it's separate, limited life.
The joke is that there is NO separate individual. All there is is _________ (fill in the blank). Some call it energy, mind, life, being, god, love, peace, the Now, It, That, This, you, I, me, Divinity, the Absolute, Source, the Force, Experience, presence, the Self, cosmic mind, Spirit and on and on! There is no actual word that can sum up the Reality or Creator since it is infinite which is beyond words and the mind BUT it can be felt or experienced and thus known. It is you right here and now, just as you are. It is plain old, simple, ordinary YOU and me and everyone and things that appears to exist. Non-duality is NOT way off somewhere - it's us - just like this. It's this. We are it, you are it, I am it, this is it! My late wife, in the Afterlife is it or It is her. It is everything, everywhere and for all of eternity! Others can and have said this better than I but basically It just is. Always was and always will be. Forms, such as this body and mind may come and go BUT it NEVER comes or goes nor can it, so, in a sense, we/you/I, etc are ETERNAL.
Most of the sages and teachers agree that it's a mystery and cannot be completely understood or bottled up in words. The point is that this is it and we are already it - end of story!

[Bohdiyana]

these terms can mean a lot of different things of course but one meaning would be duality is a kind of mental delusion we live under where we consider ourselves having thoughts for example. like they are ours. it is basically we have identified with our thoughts, which can source from our physical brains and memory. so it refers to our normal state of conceptually projecting and accepting... "this is what i think..." I am thinking" the enlightened non-dual state would be not identifying with that kind of thought as me or "I"

[Bohdiyana]

i would add there seems to be several types of thought and not all have the same source

[baro-san]

From another board:

What is there to learn here in the physical world that we couldn't learn over in the spiritual realm?

It's been said that here, in this realm there is duality or rather good and evil, positive and negative and to learn one or both you must have the other. Supposedly the spiritual realm is only positive.