Non-duality is how English often translates Advaita, a school of Indian philosophy, and Merriam-Webster's entry for Advaita describes a nondualism that "denies the separateness of any aspect of reality" from one impersonal oneness. The Sanskrit name Advaita means, roughly, not two. The way I use those two words is my own: as a question about the feeling of being sealed off from everything else.
Joaquim's daughter asks it from the passenger seat, somewhere on Al Khail Road.
"Dad, what's non-duality?"
She's fifteen, and someone she follows used the word in a video. Her father has read about it. He takes a breath.
"It means everything's connected," he says. "There isn't really a you and a me. Not separately."
"So I'm you?"
"No. Well. Not exactly."
From the back seat, her younger brother leans forward between them. "So if there isn't really a me, there isn't really any homework."
"There's definitely a you," Joaquim says, "and there's definitely homework."
They stop at a red light. He points through the windscreen at a single cloud, a white smudge above the towers. "Try this. You're like the sky, and I'm like that cloud."
"So I'm not the cloud."
"No. Well." He stops. "You're also the cloud."
"Dad."
The light changes. Everyone laughs, and the talk moves on to whose turn it is to choose the music. But for the rest of the week, Joaquim keeps turning it over, still hunting for the simple answer he couldn't find at the lights.
What is non-duality, in simple words?
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy sets out Advaita's teaching like this: the individual self is "not different from" ultimate reality, and the world has no existence of its own apart from it. My own reading is narrower, and only mine: I take "not two" as a question about the feeling of being sealed off from everything else.
Before going further: talk of "no separate self" unsettles some people, and for a few it brings on a sense of being unreal, or far away from their own life. If ideas like these leave you feeling unreal, detached or unwell, stop reading and talk to a doctor. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services. Nothing on this page is therapy or medical care, and if you're in treatment, keep working with your doctor or therapist.
Where does the word non-duality come from?
The English is plain enough: Merriam-Webster builds "nondualism" from "non-" and "dualism". It's the word English often uses for Advaita, and Merriam-Webster traces that Sanskrit name to a prefix meaning "not", joined to the word for duality, which comes from the word for two. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy adds that Advaita is often translated as non-dualism, though it literally means "non-secondness". No second thing.
As I understand it, other traditions, among them some schools of Buddhism, use language that sounds similar and mean something of their own by it. So the word doesn't belong to one teaching alone. My own work, the RS Method, isn't one of these schools, and it doesn't speak for any of them.
The Who Am I? masterclass has a sky in it too, with its own meaning, beside a second picture, and it's free with the code GIFT26. Here's the page: Receive the Masterclass. Or read on.
What do the sky and the clouds have to do with it?
Joaquim borrowed the sky from a picture I've used myself, in who am I, and the Who Am I? masterclass sets that sky beside the ocean as one of its two pictures. He put it to his own use, with himself as the cloud, and that's the use I'll stay with here.
Here's a second look at his version, offered as an image and nothing more. A cloud isn't pasted onto the sky, like a sticker on a window. It's the sky's own water, gathered thickly enough to see, and it forms there, out of the same air. If you've ever flown through one, you'll know there's no edge to find from the inside. From the ground it has an outline. Up close, it's more of the sky, thicker for a while.
That's how I hold the words "not two", in his version: a cloud and the sky, never two separate things. It's my picture, not a definition from any school. Read that way, it says something I find gentle: you aren't sealed in a room of your own, with everything else on the far side of the wall.
Does non-duality mean I don't exist?
Joaquim's son found the loophole straight away: if there's no me, there's no homework. Taken too literally, the idea can sound frightening.
The schools that teach non-duality answer this in their own terms, carefully and at length, and their own texts are where to read the answer. I won't speak for them. For my part, I'd only say this: you have a name, a body, a history and a list of things to do today, and none of it is in doubt.
The separate self sat at the centre of one writer's work, and I've written about him in Alan Watts and the separate self.
Why does life feel so divided, then?
Part of it is just how a person works. You see from one place, and you feel your own toothache, not your neighbour's.
The rest, as I see it, gets picked up along the way. Take Joaquim. For years he worked for a manager who pounced on every slip, and he started answering every question a half-second late, after checking it for traps. Nobody asked him to. That's what that job seemed to need. Now the half-second goes everywhere with him, into the supermarket queue and the kitchen, and by now it doesn't feel like a habit at all. It feels like who he is: a guarded man, standing a little apart, even from his children.
That half-second is a small wall, put up for one boss and carried everywhere since. There's more on walls like that in what is a survival identity. A wall that was built can come down. The person behind it is older than the wall.
You are not broken. You are buried. The freedom is in the removal.
For ninety minutes, the free Who Am I? masterclass stays with one question, the one in its title. When you're ready for it: Receive the Masterclass.
How can you try "not two" in an ordinary day?
Here's a small exercise. It isn't taken from any tradition, and it won't teach you Advaita. It's a way to look, on paper, at a line you draw every day without noticing: the one around yourself. All it needs is a pen, a page and about five minutes, sitting at a table with your eyes open.
- Draw a circle the size of your palm in the middle of the page, and write your name inside it. That's you, with a name, a body and a point of view. It stays on the page the whole time.
- Around the circle, write five things from today that you'd file as "not me". The coffee you drank. A song from the car radio. Something a colleague said. The air in the room. A message you read.
- Go through them one by one and ask a plain question: is any of it in the circle now? The coffee is in your body. A song can still be going round in your head. A remark can still be sitting in your mood. Where the answer is yes, draw a line to the circle. Where it's no, leave it. Then look at the page once, set the pen aside and get on with your day.
If at any point you feel far away, unreal or shaky, stop. Feel the chair under you and the floor under your feet, and look around the room. Then tell someone you trust how you're feeling, or call your doctor.
What makes the Who Am I? masterclass a good fit?
Before you start, I'd want these in place.
- A question you can't quite put down. The page's own phrase for such questions is "the big ones".
- A liking for pictures over definitions. The masterclass works with two images, the sky with its clouds and the ocean with its depth, and the written guide covers both.
- A settled day, and the freedom to stop. The masterclass finishes with a guided stretch that turns your attention inward, listed on the page as "A direct experience of your own awareness". If you've ever felt unreal, detached or far away from your own life, or you're being treated for dissociation or depersonalisation, talk to your doctor before you do that part, or leave it out. Anyone can stop the guided part at any point, open their eyes, feel the floor and tell someone they trust.
Who Am I? takes ninety minutes, in three parts: a PDF to read, ten pages long; a video in which I explain it all, slide by slide; and the guided part to finish. The masterclass is priced at USD 297, and next to that figure the page says: "Yours free, use code GIFT26 at checkout".
I'm no scholar of these traditions, just a man who has found two small words useful.
In a video, Mais Mohammed began a longer thought: "The best decision I took for myself in my entire life".
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. Not every evening suits a question like this one. When a settled one comes, and the masterclass fits you, give it ninety minutes, and stop the guided part the moment you want to. Receive the Masterclass