One of the most profound and simultaneously challenging insights on the spiritual path is that our mind is inherently dual in its thinking and there are nondual ways to be in the world. To make things even more interesting, there is the common teaching that when we do experience even the slightest hint of nondual reality, an undeniable unconditional love naturally arises.
The terms dual, nondual, unconditional love, and the connection between them can get confusing, particularly when people use them in different ways, come from different traditions, or simply misunderstand them altogether. So, what is duality, what does it mean to be nondual, and what do either have to do with love?
While the answers to these questions are infinite, this post will cover some of basic understandings as a foundation for exploring more advanced concepts.
What is duality?
Our first clue to duality is in the name: dual means two and duality means two-ness. So, duality implies any separation into multiple things.
Duality is necessary to literally understanding and talking about, well, anything. In order to have words, we have to have definitions; in order to define anything, we have to define what is not that thing.
So, if I want to name something that is a “dog,” or even my dog, Sparky, I am now creating a mental separation between the entity that are all the dogs on Earth and everything else that is not dogs. Then when I pick out one piece of the piece I just created and name it Sparky, that, in turn, makes all the other dogs not-Sparky too.
Any categorization system is a home of duality. By dividing things up into species, peoples, nations, states, or anything else, we are creating two-ness, or separation. This is how our mind works: it divides the phenomenon of the world into duality in order to talk about it and understand it.
Although each definition requires separation, essentially, they are not separate at all. They are dependent on each other; you cannot have one without the other. For example, if I say, “Look at the south side of that Mountain,” the term south can only exist if there is also a north side. These are relative terms. So are the terms buying and selling, because they are two words being used to describe the same singular phenomenon.
Along with simple categories like plants and animals, or nouns and verbs, there are the larger more ultimate dualities of light and dark, heaven and Earth, happiness and sadness, day and night, life and death, to be or not to be. These dualities are are also dependent on each other, they are two terms used to describe the one singular phenomenon of existence. As real as the concept of happiness might feel, our happiness is only truly known in relation to our sadness.
Then there is the biggest, most fundamental duality of all: subject and object, or what you might call mind and matter: the experience of being a very real human being caught up in a very strange and magnificent world. The investigation into the duality of self and non-self is an important component of many spiritual and philosophical paths.
If duality is any separation that is created in the world, what is nonduality?
Not-Two
If, like before, dual means two, then nondual means not-two. This is a very important distinction: nonduality does not mean oneness. Nonduality doesn’t even mean that everything is connected, necessarily. It means not-two. Or, as some people define it, it means one without a second.
Saying the word oneness not only implies a twoness but also that there is a not-one lurking behind the curtain. For example, if I say, “The universe is all one”, even a child would have to ask, “Well, what exists outside of that universe?” or, “If the universe implodes on itself, what is left?”.
We have to be intentional about using the word non-two and nondual to imply that there is no second and there is no one either. There just is. This verbiage is the essence of Advaita Vedanta, the nondual tradition of Vedanta and the source of the great sayings I am That and That Art Thou. Anytime we define the world or ourselves as anything, we come back to the duality. So all we can say is “that,” to signify that which goes beyond.
One powerful mantra to explore that which goes beyond is Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha, which translates to gone, gone over, gone fully over and beyond to awakening. Another one is Soham, meaning “I am that,” pointing to seeing ourselves as part of the absolute reality.
It is also important to recognize that there isn’t one nondual tradition in the world, there are many perspectives. Aspects of nonduality can be found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism and even Christianity. In California, there is even a Science and Nonduality Conference. I often argue that science in itself is pretty nondual, because it basically says God doesn’t exist and our separate existence is just an illusion.
The larger point is that nondual means no separation at all. It is nonconceptual and doesn’t reify the existence of anything. Not life, not death, not me, not you, not dogs, and not cats. It goes beyond the mind and cannot be explained through words and writing.
That is exactly why there is an unconditional love that results from this nondual understanding, because it means no separation at all. There is just pure connection.
The Love at the Center of All Things
Earlier I mentioned the greatest duality of all: self and other, subject and object. The fundamental human experience is feeling like a lonely subjective in an external and objective world. Even when we meet other people that claim to have their own subjective reality, they still seem separate from us. They feel pain and while we might be able to empathize with it, we do not feel the same pain. When I stub my toe, however, I feel that pain. It is mine.
What great mystics and spiritual leaders have taught again and again is that there is an unconditional love at the heart of all spiritual awakening. When you combine the spiritual teacher Adyashanti’s saying that “Enlightenment is nothing more than the natural state of being” and the poet Mark Nepo’s teaching that “Enlightenment is the moment we realize that we are made of love”, the only conclusion one can make is that our natural state of being is that of pure, unconditional love.
The nondual teacher and therapist John Prendergast, who I interviewed on the Learn to Love Podcast, called this center the Deep Heart, the “loving awareness, the very center of our being.” The nondual teacher Rupert Spira noted the same in his book Presence, that love is just another world for who we are once we dissolve our illusory sense of separateness. He writes, “Love, peace and happiness are inherent in the knowing of our own being. In fact, they are the knowing of being. They are simply other names for our self.”
Without I there is no Other
This is why true spiritual teachers are not teaching to be worshipped and admired by others. They are not intent on becoming somebody rich and famous, but rather focused entirely on becoming nobody at all. One of my favorite teachers, Ajahn Chah, has a compilation of quotes not by himself, but by No Ajahn Chah, because once we dissolve our ego’s desire to attach itself to wisdom and be seen as wise to others, we simply become a conduit for the teachings that were passed onto us and we will pass onto others.
Ram Dass, who even has a documentary called Becoming Nobody, says he has no interest in becoming “a lover,” but is rather “interested in only being love.” When we drop our sense of separate self, we drop into being, we become a verb along with the all the all happenings of life.
So when we come into a nondual understanding, our sense of self dissolves. Our sense of separateness dissolves, and when our sense of “I” dissolves, our sense of “other” dissolves too. Other people then become us. Violence to nature becomes violence to us. Everything becomes undivided connection, everything becomes love, whether it be born from it, returning to it or existing in it, including us. “We are all strings in the concert of God’s joy”, as the 16th century Christian mystic Jakob Böhme put it.
This may sound high and mighty, but the spiritual path is real and grounded: sitting still and slowly breathing into the truth of who we are. All these words are just concepts: the real work is opening into the great mystery and resting in love.
