What is Non Duality?

Quote from I Am That, by Nisargadatta Maharaj

All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false. All is onethis is the ultimate solution of every conflict.

You are not in the body. The body is in you.

The way to truth lies through the destruction of the false. To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst. ...Realize that what you are cannot be born nor die and with the fear gone all suffering ends.You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies. Once you realize that bodily existence is but a state of mind, a movement in consciousness, that the ocean of consciousness is infinite and eternal, and that, when in touch with consciousness, you are the witness only, you will be able to withdraw beyond consciousness altogether.

You need not reach out for what is already with you. Your very reaching out makes you miss it. Give up the idea that you have not found it and just let it come into the focus of direct perception, here and now, by removing all that is of the mind.
See that you are not what you believe yourself to be. Fight with all the strength at your disposal against the idea that you are nameable and describable. You are not. Refuse to think of this or that. There is no other way out of misery, which you have created for yourself through blind acceptance without investigation. Suffering is a call for inquiry, all pain needs investigation. Don't be lazy to think.

Believe me, there is no goal, nor a way to reach it. You are the way and the goal, there is nothing else to reach except yourself. All you need is to understand and the understanding is the flowering of the mind.

Nisgaradatta

Already Being - Tony Parsons

What is sought remains hidden from the seeker by already being everything.

It is so obvious and simple that the grasping of it obscures it. Never found, never knowable, being is the consummate absence that is beyond measure.

Looking for being is believing it is lost. Has anything been lost, or is it simply that the looking keeps it away? Does the beloved always dance constantly just beyond our serious focus?

The very intention to seek for a mythical treasure within life inevitably obscures the reality that life is already the treasure.

By seeking the myth it dreams it can attain, the seeker effectively avoids that which it most fears âĦ its absence.

Liberation is like a fuse that suddenly blows, and all the little lights go out and there is only light.

This is not a message about you or me or anyone getting anything. This is about the realisation that thereâÄôs nothing to get âĦ that what has been sought has never been lost.

This isnâÄôt about seeking or not seeking; itâÄôs beyond the concepts of Advaita and non-dualism and beyond the idea of reaching states of awareness or mindfulness. ThereâÄôs no goal. ThereâÄôs nothing on offer. This is totally beyond knowing.

Tony Parsons

Non-Duality in a Nutshell by Scott Kiloby

1.  You start out with the belief that you are a separately existing self in a world of other, separately existing things that live within a reality called space and time.  Separation is the name of the game here.  Almost everyone that comes to a nondual teaching is here.  You heavily privilege appearances because that is all you see--separate appearances.   

2.  You see that what you took to be separately existing things are thoughts and sensory experiences.  You see that space and time are also just thoughts, not separately existing things "out there."  You see everything is a thought, first and foremost.    

3.  You notice that these thoughts and sensory experiences are really just movements that come and go within an unchanging and unmoving, ever-present formless, non-conceptual awareness, and realize that your real identity is this awareness.  This feels like witnessing still, however, as if there is a witness that sees everything come and go.  There is still a subtle belief that awareness and the appearances within awareness are separate in some way.  
At this point, you may find yourself privileging awareness over appearances.  
 
4.  You see that the appearances are inseparable from awareness.  You cannot pull one apart from each other.  And the whole notion of a dividing line between awareness and what appears is seen as silly and impossible.  You don't even privilege awareness over appearances or vice versa.  It's all inseparable.  And so your humanness, down to the most unique thing about you and others, is totally included.  In Zen, they call this "returning to the marketplace."  It could also be called "The Middle Way."  


This list is not necessarily a list of stages of seeing that unfold in time.  The above list is a list of insights that can arise.  These are real insights.  Cherish them when they arise, yet don't get stuck in any of them.  Remain open.  To live life in an undivided way is the real point of nonduality.  That is number 4.