February 12: Words and Non-duality by John T.

     Today  John T,, a deep thinking member of our group (he would say, deep thinking? Ah, but thinking is the problem!), undertook to present some personal remembrances of his life of seeking spiritual truth.He chose the title "Words and Nonduality" for various reasons. Indeed, words have duality. Yet we try to use them to describe non-duality. Most of the time the words do not do a very good job in this function.

     John talked about his experience with words. As a young man, he thought written words had to be the truth. No one would ever write what is not true, especially a public person such as a public or a politician. That was his point of view at the time. But as the years of his life passed he realized that indeed the truth was often not in the words. And today, with the Internet, this is probably even more so. John compares this to "Alice in Wonderland" and going down the rabbit hole, where we are confronted by the rabbit who tells us that he makes up the words and they mean whatever he says they mean." But John says, "Beware, because the words don't usually mean what they seem to mean."

    John discussed his experience with "going to church." Even in such a rarefied atmosphere, as in the church, there was an inner part of him that thought there must be something more, some further truth. As he went about his seeking that truth, the answers often came from books. As the years passed, he read widely of traditional spiritual texts. After all, some of the first sacred texts date back to 1400s BC, and the Old Testament dates to 140 BC.

     John did put together something written for us today but he was unable to pull it up on his I-phone. He then spoke from his memory and from his heart, I might add. He wanted to add some humor and told us that he did check his writing out to make sure that it represented correctness and some degree of truth and wouldn't be offensive. He says he checked his writing out with the Ketchup Society of America. That group read his piece and told him that for the most part it was good and mostly unoffensive. But they prescribed an increase in his intake of Ketchup and through the natural processes in his body with the digestion of the Ketchup he would somehow become more mellow and even less likely to offend.

     Non-duality. What does it mean? If John would use one word to state the meaning of Non duality, it would be indivisibility. In the Sanskrit, it would be not two, but one. Other simple substitutions for Non duality commonly used might be: "That"; "I am"; The Absolute. Some people use the word "God." Many of these words have a lot of baggage. John likes the concise word and concept: The Absolute.

     Over the years, certain teachers have shown John some truth, but sometimes John would not recognize that truth until 40 years later. One teacher said: When one can see oneself in all other beings, and all other beings are in oneself, that is a liberation. One important teacher for John has been Francis Lucille, a Frenchman of the Advaita Vedanta lineage. His teacher was Jean Klein who also led spiritually in this tradition, directly out of India.

     John T. attended a week long retreat with Francis Lucille in the last few weeks in Florida. The retreat included meditation, dialogue, and yoga and very profound teachings. Francis is now 70 years old. His approach is somewhat different and he succeeds to draw the students in and seems to enable them to get in touch with The Absolute. One half of the retreat group were MDs, psychologists, and such. Francis himself is a mathematician and physicist and he is still involved in that world to some degree.

     Advaita in Sanskrit means not two. The meaning does not in turn mean one, but rather not two. And this is non-duality. There is no separation between me and the rest of the universe. Consciousness is defined as pure being which is aware of the words right now.

     Another teacher that John likes is Robert Wolf. His website is: LivingNonduality.org. On that site is an excerpt from his book, "Living Nonduality". Chapter One: Living is an Enigma.  Multiple writers have made attempts to put The Absolute into more words, to describe it. Words like boundless, infinity, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, infinite, eternal, free of causation. Basically it is ineffable. There are no words to describe it. We can only know that it is not the relative world that we live in. Rather it is the underlying essence of all. Truth appears as false, and that which appears as false is true.  It is unthinkable. It is experiential. Someone asked John if he ever experiences being even momentarily in touch with this Absolute. John describes moments where all attachments drop out. He has experienced one or more profound times where everything is love. He feels then that everything in creation comes from love.

     When John worked at Pabst and was seeking and reading a lot about these topics, he was looking for someone to bounce this spiritual idea off of. He found this Christian bishop. They had several deep discussions. But the bishop said that if John had brought these ideas up to a parish priest, that priest would have been scared to death by them. Indeed, the ego has an investment in not recognizing the non duality just as different religions also do. Therefore the ego fights these ideas and fights attempts to engage in non duality.

     One of the wonderful ideas that John has developed has been discussed in our meetings before, and that is the universality of these non dual ideas. They are present in so many of the common and uncommon world spiritual traditions. The following are brief words that various traditions use that express this non-duality. "Be still and know that I am."   "The word is God."  Oooom meaning home in Sanskrit is often thought of as the first word. Buddha-consciousness, Christ-consciousness. Jesus said: "I and the father are one."  The Gospel of Thomas was written expressing some of Jesus ideas perhaps closer to his actual life and teachings. It seems in that Gospel that indeed Jesus teachings are non dual. But a couple centuries later the currently used Gospels according to Matthew, Mark and Luke are dualistic -- me and God are two different things. To read in detail or to just scroll through a bunch of references to nondualism to see how it enters into the traditions of almost every spiritual tradition throughout history and around the world, just Google nondualism and look at the Wikepedia article. It is interesting that on Wikipedia there are so many incomplete stubs, but here on this esoteric topic, the random writers have produced a huge and thorough piece of writing. It is truly amazing.

      In my searches on the Internet, here is another site that gives some insight into nondualism, which is a dialogue with John Foster.
http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/essays-transcripts/what-is-nonduality/

      IN ADDITION, I thank John T. for posting his writing on our email site. I have copied his references below as well. I think our membership will have plenty to keep us busy researching nondualism until our meeting next week.

Hello All,

I want to thank everyone who was present Feb. 13th for their support and patience.

Here are the links to the Nonduality information resource pieces I made reference to and from in sharing about the topic of Nonduality with Body, Mind, and Spirit Group Thursday morning.

There are many great definitions of nonduality.  The first one (The Absolute Enigma) I have on the list is one of my personal favorites. Which is an excerpt from Robert Wolfe's book entitled "Living Nonduality". I have always thought a through reading of this piece could be analogous to "the taking of the Red Pill" as in the movie "Matrix". In my recent readings on nonduality I came across a written piece by Jerry Katz from his (website nonduality.com), which is a replica of the same image I experienced. I think it is an excellent piece to use as a precursor to read before one takes the Red Pill/reads the "The Absolute Enigma". So, I also offer it here.

-  The word nonduality is a “red pill.” Recall that in the movie The Matrix, Neo was offered either a blue pill or a red pill. The blue pill would have returned Neo back to his dream world whose unreality he sensed but did not understand. The red pill would have awakened him to who he really was, which would have begun his journey through life and to the source. 

The word nonduality could work as a red pill if you value its meaning enough to follow it as deeply as you can. When Neo was being given his choice of pills, his teacher and mentor Morpheus explained to him:

This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes…. Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more….

http://www.livingnonduality.org/absolute-enigma.htm

If one wants to explore nonduality further, here are some additional links to written pieces or videos I have found useful.

Francis Lucille - Buddha at the Gas Pump Interview - YouTube: 

                                   https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FUdfaVDckkw

Science and Non Duality Conference, with Francis Lucille doing a Q&A On free will, emotions, freedom and more - YouTube:  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=68yRlexJTJs

Robert Wolfe Interview:             http://livingnonduality.org/

Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi. - YouTube :  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=weXKuURMgMs

And one other piece I referenced from Thursday: The Nonduality Highlights, #3665

                                                                  http://www.nonduality.com/hl3665.htm#_ednref3

All of these links can lead one to many other useful resources to further explore the topic of Nonduality if one is so inclined.

May peace be with you,

John T.