Duality and Nonduality in Human Experience

by John Welwood

(this is an excerpt)

DUALISM AND NONDUALITY
Most people's consciousness, however, remains restricted to a single plane of reality:
dualistic perception, as fabricated by the conditioned egoic mind, which sets up a solid division
between the separate self over here and everything else over there. All our main patterns of
self-defense — repression, resistance, denial, avoidance, withdrawal, projection, judgment,
rejection, dissociation, aggression— are ways of separating ourselves from reality, standing
apart from it, and substituting a mind-created virtual reality in its place. This tendency to
fabricate our own separate reality is a way of trying to protect ourselves against "other"— those
elements of reality that appear alien or threatening.
The dualistic ego-mind is essentially a survival mechanism, on a par with the fangs,
claws, stingers, scales, shells, and quills that other animals use to protect themselves. By
maintaining a separate self-sense, it attempts to provide a haven of security in an impermanent
world marked by continual change, unpredictability, and loss. Yet the defensive boundaries
that create a sense of safety also leave us feeling isolated and disconnected. So unless we
develop beyond the defensive ego-mind, we remain subject to endless inner conflict, alienation,
and suffering — the hallmark of what the Eastern spiritual traditions call samsara.
Fortunately, as human beings we also have access to a larger dimension of
consciousness that is intrinsically free of dualistic fixation. The Eastern spiritual traditions
regard this egoless awareness as our true, essential nature, the very ground of our being.
Tapping into this pure nondual presence, as in certain types of contemplative knowing, reveals
a wide open field of awareness in which the separation between self and other, or perceiver and
perceived, falls away.
By dissolving the cognitive filters that maintain the division between self and other,
nondual awareness is the doorway to liberation from the conditioned mind and the narrow,
conflictual world of samsara. It reveals absolute truth, the way things ultimately are:
inseparable, undivided, interconnected. The Indian axiom,"Thou art That," expresses this
discovery: our very being is not separate from the isness of all things. What I am is inseparable
from the whole of reality as it appears and flows through me at every moment, in the flux of my
ongoing experience.
If the dualistic egoic mind is pre-human, or subhuman, in that it is survival-oriented,
nondual egoless awareness is trans-human, or suprapersonal, because it opens up a larger
expanse of being or presence that is free from our usual preoccupation with how our life is
going. These two planes of existence— subhuman and trans-human, samsara and nirvana— are
the main focus of many Eastern traditions, which lay out a path leading from the bondage of
conditioned mind to the liberation of unconditioned awareness.

That's amazing! Perhaps the first article that I've seen of late, in which I agree with absolutley nothing!

Alot of nice words though, slapped together in an aethestically pleasing fashion.

Nothing compares to experience though, I'm afraid.

Experience is a function of action, however. How does one knoe whether their actions are the right ones ? Do people really know all the choises that are available ? I don't think they do. They tend to be guided and often corraled by the supply side of the power equation.

Do you pay federal income tax ? If so, why ? By whose law ? Why does that law have power over you ? How is it legally circumvented ? Are there laws that are more powerful that man's laws actually yield to ?

When you can successfully answer these issues, you will understand duality much better than you do at the moment.

Duality is like a karmic wheel that keeps you contained within the "belly of the beast".
How can you tell what it looks like from the inside ?

I rather liked Welwood's little exposition.

It sounds logical to me too!
But it describes a different situation for duality than what I thought was meant.
Life coping strategies are essential some would say, and I never presumed that 'pushing things under the carpet' automatically meant that one then 'assumed' that what happened didn't happen (thus creating a false understanding of reality).
It is more that one 'inhibits recall' of nasty things (for most of the time) but realises full well what really has happened or what the true situation is (at least every now and then).

"To be or not to be!
That is the question. "
'Sir Francis Bacon'