First off, please don’t panic. The “nonduality” thing is a crazy phenomenon. Nearly everyone has moments of non-dual experience, but hardly anyone recognizes them or has more than a shaky conceptual idea of what the term means. You are not alone! Take a deep breath…and relax. This is important.

Duality is the world of separative consciousness. Things appearing as separate entities—that’s duality. Duality is the world of you, me, dog, toaster, asteroid, and all the crap in your closet. When you are stuck in a dualistic mode, as most of us are, you just cannot feel at one with last year’s party shoes no matter how hard you try.

Nonduality is nonseparative consciousness. It’s the Oneness thing. Stuff may look separate, but it really isn’t. We’re all connected and nondifferent in some sneaky, fundamental way. New Physics has a lot to say about this.

But the physicists haven’t come close to knowing what yogis have known for millennia. Not even close.

Kashmir Shaivite Tantra (KST) is commonly spoken of as being a “non-dual” practice. This is how it’s commonly spoken of.

More subtle interpreters get closer to the truth by calling it dual/nondual.

What the heck does this mean? It means that duality and nonduality are both Reality.

Think of the ocean/wave paradox. Waves are the ocean. Waves are also separate-ish events. Both of these things are true at the same time.

On the ground level, KST is a practice of duality/nonduality. We don’t reject dualistic experience. We appreciate it and play with it. At the same time, we experience dualistic life as arising within the context of nonduality. Waves and ocean.

The thing we try not to do is stay chained within the limits of separative consciousness.

All well and good, but still not the biggest picture.

Let’s consider our Advaitist friends. “Advaita” simply means “not two.” Advaitists believe that nonduality is the only game in town. Duality is just a nasty trick. Advaitists are usually more transcendental in their thinking and aims. Let us lift ourselves out of the muck of duality and fly amongst the bodiless angels sort of thing. I’m just speaking in general.

This crude example is nevertheless instructive. You can see that nonduality can be just as much of a ball and chain as duality. The very name, “not two,” suggests that something is being left out or rejected. If there is something outside of the non-duality tent, then how can it be truly nondual? Don’t you create a dualistic View by allowing exclusions? This is the terrible burden of the Advaitists!

The head of our lineage once wrote: The only thing to renounce is renunciation itself.

KST renounces nothing. Hah! Think about that mindbender over your morning chai!

Which brings me to The Very Important Part.

Rarely, you will read in a book or a poem, or hear from a teacher (likely muttering under his or her breath), that Reality is beyond duality and nonduality.

EEK!

You just spent some of your precious life plowing through these tough concepts and now it’s all gone, all gone in an instant.

Welcome to The Real Tantra.

That is, welcome to life just as it is.

What these rare, whispered hints are pointing to is the fact that both duality and nonduality are conditioned experiences.

We can say we are experiencing dualistically. Or we can say: Hey man, I had this like totally non-dual moment this morning.

Or, we may be steeped in nonseparative consciousness while enjoying all of the differences that naturally arise.

Either way, our experience is conditioned. Conditioned means that our experience is con-forming. It has already taken shape. Duality and nonduality are both modes of appearing of Reality.

Beyond both dual and nondual experience is unconditioned life.

The greatest Mahasiddha of KST, Abhinavagupta, knew this. And this understanding is what makes his work so unspeakably profound and beautiful.

Unconditioned life is not an experience. It is what makes experience possible.

So a more fundamental distinction than dual/nondual would be conditioned experience and unconditioned life. We could also say unconditioned awareness as the Buddhists would have it. Or unconditioned satchitananda.

But we absolutely cannot speak of conditioned experience and unconditioned life in the same way that we talk about duality and nonduality.

Why? Because duality and nonduality are both conditioned aspects of experience-able Reality. Unconditioned life is not an aspect, or a way of looking at things, or a mode of appearing.

Unconditioned life comes before and sits behind all appearing and all disappearing. It is the reservoir of infinite potential spoken of by Namkhai Norbu and other teachers. It is the awake, lively potency of every moment.

If you find yourself sitting within this living current, beyond anything you can conceptualize or imagine, stuff such as duality and nonduality go phhht! and blow away like so many dry leaves in the wind.

Why have I dragged you through this long and difficult post?

Well, because from now on, I am going to be using the term “unconditioned life” here on Living Tantra. And I want you to know what it means. Sort of.

OM Shanti,
Shambhavi

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