Advaita — Absolute and Qualified Nonduality

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⁘ Created: 2025-10-31 ⁘ Updated: 2025-10-31 ⁘ LINK 🔗 PDF

Collection of comments and write-ups on Advaita. On the nature and implications of non-duality. Beyond absurdity and hallucinated enlightenment. Coherent insight into classical teachings and their living application.

• If we make categorical assertions of absolute non-duality, it leads not to living realization — but into imaginary enlightenment and a patently absurd interpretation of the manifest world.
• Assuming the absolute non-existence of plurality and identity, you could only ever freeze and vanish at once. Why does that not happen?
• Core concepts in Advaita are often misinterpreted. Planes and dynamics of samadhi should be understood in their coherent framings.
• A short and simple distillation of the core concepts in nondual realization. Contrasting absolute and relative, objective and subjective.

• ¶ The Absurdity of Categorical Absolute Nonduality ↴
• ¶ Walk That Enlightened Talk — Freeze and Vanish Away ↴
• ¶ Planes of Perception — Isolate and Qualified Brahman ↴
• ¶ Short and Simple — Of Absolute and Relative ↴

The Absurdity of Categorical Absolute Nonduality ¶

If we make categorical assertions of absolute non-duality, it leads not to living realization — but into imaginary enlightenment and a patently absurd interpretation of the manifest world.

If reality is truly and categorically nondual, then there's absolutely no difference between the contents of your post, the blank canvas behind it, you the author Tom Das, me, the binary bits behind the scenes, and this comment. Not only is there no gradation of realization. Nobody read your post, nobody posted to begin with, nobody liked or commented. Also, Facebook does not exist, and duality perception is a hoax that should be reported and canceled on all levels of cognition that do not exist. 🐰

If we look at it from the absolute vantage point — then not only are there no "stages of realization", the concept of "realization" itself does not appear (in contrast to what). But this is not the "living process experience" of a conscious instance from bondage to unbinding. As such, I question the uncontextualized expressions of nonduality. They often lead to process bypassing and "make-believe enlightenment", where the individual is still riddled by the kleshas, yet assumes the stance of "none of it is real". On a level that's true — but they are not witnessing the phenomena at that level.

Where the seer/drashta is still enmeshed in saguna-vrittis, where consciousness exists and operates within the reactive shell of incarnated identification — the imagination of "access" to the nirguna is mere conceptual hallucination. Our hazard here is that it becomes a "substitute enlightenment" — and a hindrance to the necessary progression of decoupling from identification with our patterns of conditioning.

Walk That Enlightened Talk — Freeze and Vanish Away ¶

Assuming the absolute non-existence of plurality and identity, you could only ever freeze and vanish at once. Why does that not happen?

This is the sort of cognitive dissonance that emerges with "unqualified non-dualism" and absolute denial of plurality. Instead of looking at all of this e.g. as strata of emanation, where mental and physical practices are necessary for the harmonization of these manifest tiers of being, to overcome the pull of attention to finite spheres, to decouple from identification with them, and so effect the categorical resolution and release of "funneled" consciousness, along with the illusion of fragmented selfhood.

These are all concerns in the realm of "Saguna Brahman" or the qualified or immanent absolute. Yes it is "illusory" or the substratum for subject illusions — but it isn't "non-existent". (If it were, how is it that you are here asking the question.)

Planes of Perception — Isolate and Qualified Brahman ¶

Core concepts in Advaita are often misinterpreted. Planes and dynamics of samadhi need to be clearly understood in their coherent framings.

In the following, I assume "Self" as "Atman" and "World" as "Jagat" for terms coherence. I am also seeding in a few other classic key terms. Two angles — Nirguna and Saguna: or Isolate and Qualified.

— First. When the Self is present in isolation — where undifferentiated consciousness does not interface with the World of formations — the "World" does not exist. It is not "Seen" — there is no infusion to animate it.

The Seer (Drashta) — reflected via the Mirror interface of Citta — infuses the undifferentiated matter or formative potential with attention, catalyzing the emanation of multiplicity — Pradhana to Prakriti in classic terms.

We may experience this in our intent contemplation on the clear Self — where for a period, we lull into the undifferentiated, and are again lured back with the echo of the formative seeds we once bonded with. This slipping-back happens for as long as we cling to our seeds of subjectivity.

Where we withdraw from the call of Patterns (Vritti), attending to the Mirror that connects the Seer to the Seen, and then rewind attention from the reflections of the binding interface — there is Kaivalya or conscious isolation. In here, subject-identification is entirely abolished and eliminated.

Here is the experience of Nirguna-Brahman, where the Atman-Self vanishes from its capacity as the Purusha (in-dwelling or contextualized awareness). In this "devoidness", the World is not seen. At all. Nirguna-Samadhi.

— Second. When the Self emerges in a context — where the embodied frame still exists — after the liberating experience of devoidness. The World is Seen — but it's not the World the people see. These are the forms of the World, yes, but the veil of otherness is absent. Deception (Mithya) and hallucination (Maya) are absent — no distortion exists.

Where the Absolution of Devoidness is ever-present in the conscious process, the Self is immune to bondage with action, nor does it taint itself with self-identification of any form. It is at liberty to witness the formative process, participate unbound in the pastime of the World (viz. lokavat tu lila-kaivalyam — a favorite phrase), as ever it may happen.

This experience, I understand, is also what Ramana referred to as the Sahaja-Samadhi, the natural or innate living union absorption state. Here the World apparent is not the enemy of pure consciousness — this calls not for the complete and permanent vanishing of all things ever as a condition of liberated consciousness. (No conditions accepted for the unconditioned!)

Here is the plane of Saguna-Brahman. Pure witnessing of the weave of the manifold manifestation. We no longer perceive "otherness" — we perceive the infusion of consciousness and the Self absolute in all that is.

The "world" of people — or truly, the countless subjective worlds they live in — has vanished. Pure actuality remains — unto itself, without another. Is the world — or is it not? When the Self is there — the "other" World disappears.

Short and Simple — Of Absolute and Relative ¶

A short and simple distillation of the core concepts in nondual realization. Contrasting absolute and relative, objective and subjective.

Shorter and simpler then. With breakdown/nuance as I see relevant.

[ Boundless Self: As Unmanifest and Manifest ]

• When Boundless Self is Static: Unbound consciousness is the absolute field. No world of any kind exists.
• When Boundless Self is Dynamic: Unbound consciousness is the absolute flow. No world of illusion exists.
• OR: Static self has no world. Dynamic self has nondual world.

[ Relative Liberation: Cessation of Subject and Duality ]

• When mistaken identification of self with forms ceases — the subjective world ceases.
• When no world of illusions exists — duality and experience of otherness do not exist.
• OR: False self ends. False world ends.

[ Witness Modes: "seeing" and "Seeing" ]

• When the world is "seen" — by the subject witness — there is no realization.
• When the world is "Seen" — by the nondual Witness — the play of the Self alone is seen.
• OR: Subjective world veils realization. Realization unveils the nondual world.

[ Absolute Liberation: Momentary and Permanent ]

• When consciousness dissociates entirely from forms — objective world ceases (for the duration).
• When the vessel hosting liberated consciousness expires — objective world ceases (permanently).
• OR: Self-context ends. All world-forms end.