What Is Non-Dual Awareness? – Deep Psychology

In this article, we’re covering non-dual awareness: what it is, what it is not, the three levels of non-duality, some inspiring descriptions of it, and methods for how to train it.

I’ll be honest and say that it’s much easier to contact non-dual awareness if we’ve engaged in serious contemplative practice, such as meditation, for some time.

Before we talk about what non-dual awareness is, it’s best we make clear what it is not.

What Non-Dual Awareness is Not

Our mind loves to attach itself to abstract concepts, mistaking them for the reality of what they describe. In the case of non-duality, this is a particularly dangerous road to go down.

Non-duality is a direct, first-person experience. If all we do is cling to our ideas about non-duality, we’ll have no chance of ever directly contacting it. The words “non-dual awareness”, or any other words we may use, are merely a descriptor of it.

By making clear what non-dual awareness is not, we empty our minds and cut through our illusions, and we have a chance of contacting the pure reality of what it is, beyond all descriptors.

If and when we notice that we cling to any of these false notions of non-duality, we’d do well to drop it and go deeper.

So, non-dual awareness is not:

• an existential or epistemological philosophy: we’re not musing on the nature of reality by debating and critiquing philosophical models.
• a concept: a concept is by necessity an abstraction, and non-duality is not that: it is a direct experience or apprehension of how our sense of self and our world come to be in every single moment, right here, right now.
• a pointer outside: because there is no outside! Non-duality is now, it is this, it is right here, right before our eyes, if we learn how to perceive it.
• an ideal: it’s not a philosophy on how we should all join together and live in harmony.
• a political position: it’s not a well-wishing proclamation of how the political world should work.
• a logical deduction: it’s not a conclusion reached through a series of logical steps, and no amount of logic or philosophy can ever touch it.
• any kind of mental construction: as long as we attempt to rely on our logical mind to understand it in the way we understand grammar or mathematics, we never, ever will.
• a magical high: the experience of non-duality can occur with any emotion or inner state and is not an emotional state of any kind.
• an achievement: it is instead a collapse, a coming home, a simplification, the end of delusion, the end of separation.
• a reason to feel superior: it’s the end of our sense of self and other as we know it.
• a final state: it’s an ever-present reality, whether we realise it or not, and sometimes we may be more connected to it than others, unless we’ve trained for years and decades.
• as sexy as it sounds: non-dual awareness is just a word – when we experience it, all ideas of it being a certain way are dispelled.

That’s a pretty comprehensive list of everything that we falsely believe non-dual awareness to be. Now that we’ve covered that, let’s describe what non-dual awareness is.

What Non-Dual Awareness Is

As we’ll discuss below, there are different kinds of non-dual awareness. But before we do, let’s cover a broad, user-friendly description of what it is:

• the direct perception that we and the world are fundamentally not separate;
• realisation that sense of an “I” that is separate from everything around me is a construction or optical illusion;
• direct understanding that everything we perceive is within “us”;
• the collapse of the objective world and subjective world into one, or the unity of subject and object;
• knowing that “I” am not a person, or a body, or a mind, or any thing, but pure beingness and everything that appears within it;
• also known as unity, ultimate consciousness, non-dual awareness, oneness, the Supreme Identity, union, and more.

Though I said that non-dual awareness itself is not an emotional state, it tends to bring certain effects:

• the sense of being “home”;
• understanding that there is nowhere to go, there is nowhere else;
• knowledge that the world is just an illusion or a dream, in the sense that it’s not solid, reliable and physical;
• a radical ownership of body, mind, emotions, habits and behaviour;
• radical freedom from the clashing and smashing of fixated subject and object;

Three Types of Non-Dual Awareness

In this talk, Shinzen Young describes two traditional definitions of non-dual awareness – sabija samadhi (merging with an object) and nirbija samadhi (formless merging) – and proposes what I understand to be a third, higher level.

• Merging with Object: a sensory phenomenon arises, with no self-sense arising. Just the phenomenon with no sense of a person doing it. One appears to be or to become that sensory phenomenon. Sense of “Just Hearing”, “Just Seeing” and “Just Thinking”.
• Formless Merging: Sensory phenomenon arises unfixated and flowing; self-sense or subject also arises unfixated as a flow. The two flows merge into one interacting, unfixated wave, in between expansion and contraction, then die down into nothing.
• Zero, Something, Zero: Shinzen also coins a new definition of non-dual awareness: “habitual abiding in the cycle of zero, polarisation, zero, polarisation, over and over and over again”. He describes this as the cycle of each moment (self and world) becoming each moment out of pure consciousness, lasting for a short time, then collapsing through formless merging. By realising that self and world come from Zero, we realise they aren’t separate from Zero, and neither become fully formed.

As I mentioned aove, it seems that these are not merely three types but three levels of non-dual awareness. To contact the first level, we must realise that anything we’re perceiving is self-arising, without a self that directs the process. It relies on the absence of the self-sense.

The second level requires the first level, along with the awareness that the self-sense is not fixated and that our self-sense is intertwined with what we perceive, and that we follow both subject and object back to their formless origin, our True Face, our “unadorned, empty, deep clear Awareness”, as Wilber describes it.

The third level requires all that, and that we perceive the origin of subject and object before they even arise, witness them arising, and then follow them back to their origin.

Ken Wilber’s Descriptions

Without being overly technical and picky about his descriptions, I wanted to share a few great descriptions of the various states of non-dual awareness by Ken Wilber. This will get you a better idea of what they mean.

Interestingly, he doesn’t differentiate between them as clearly as Shinzen Young does. This is symptomatic of the ambiguity of these terms.

Merging With An Object

What you call the “table” and what you feel as your Awareness of it are one and the same feeling. Feel what you call your self, your Looker, the Watcher, and notice that the table is arising exactly where that feeling is!

Allow the immediate, direct awareness of the world to exist all on its own, pushing out any sense of a Watcher or Looker; there is simply this thing and this thing and this thing, all arising right here within me, arising in the open clearing or space, where a Watcher or Looker once was.

Formless Merging

There are not two worlds—subject versus object—there is just one taste, and you ARE that; it is all arising within your very being.

Zero, Something, Zero

The world of observed Form and the clear open Emptiness of your Observing Self have become one—or better, are seen to have always already been one (or “not-two”), the very definition of Enlightenment.

And finally, I can’t help but end with this quote. I hope Ken is okay with it.

Before you know anything, you know this. Before I AM anything, there is simple I AMness, in and of itself, just so—and you are aware of that I AMness right now, yes? Before you are aware of anything, you are aware of this. Before you feel anything, you feel this. It is constantly unknowable, this knowledge of All. It is too complex to be known; too simple to believe; too present to be grasped; too here to be felt… The entire universe is arising within you, and deny it as you will, it always has. Just look: you are not in this room, this room is in you… Likewise, you are not in this Kosmos, this entire Kosmos is in you.

How to Contact It

Now, I know these descriptions are inspiring and stirring, but as I warned, all of these descriptions are meaningless unless we directly apprehend what the refer to.

And though non-dual awareness is described as revealing the ever-present nature of things just as they are, in reality, we need to train ourselves to contact it. The human condition is one of separation and, honestly, delusion. Serious re-engineering of our consciousness is necessary.

If we’re yet to engage in spiritual or contemplative practice, I recommend we begin with these resources:

After a few years of a regular meditation practice, we’re in a place to use these materials:

You might like my episode on why spiritual enlightenment is the damnedest thing.