Non-Duality is terrifying

[Atla]

I would agree that dualism is more a matter of perception rather than ontology. It is broadly true, but it ignores transitional states.

Using your examples above: Inside - outside - on the verandah. Short - tall - average. Hot - cold - warm. Physical - mental - sensation. Light - dark - dusk. Matter - space - energy. Even digital 1s and 0s - the gold standards of duality - have been rendered triunal by quantum computing, its qBits capable of 1 and 0 simultaneously.

It depends on perspective. The Earth can be said to be covered by land and ocean (with beaches in between) but, land and sea can simply be seen as features of the Earth's surface, ie. non-dual.

Sort of, however ontologically there are no transitional states either between A and B, when A and B are made-up states to begin with. For example:

on the verandah: we have to divide the place into inside and outside first, so we can say that the verandah is the transition between them
average, warm, dusk: again, they are simply somewhere 'between' A and B, or where A and B 'meet', or where they 'transition'
physical, mental, sensation: probably all these are ontologically the same inseparable thing
matter - space - energy: probably all these are ontologically the same inseparable thing

And 1s and 0s are merely numbers (abstractions like all information), but I know that you disagree with this. But the circuits of computers are all built on the general principle that either current is flowing (1) or not (0), or some similar implementation, without any actual information-substance involved. Quantum computing isn't really 'triunal' either, 0 and 1 aren't special states within the superposition, more like there is 0, 1 and infinitely many 'in-between' values. They only take 0 or 1 when measured.

[Sy Borg]

I would agree that dualism is more a matter of perception rather than ontology. It is broadly true, but it ignores transitional states.

Using your examples above: Inside - outside - on the verandah. Short - tall - average. Hot - cold - warm. Physical - mental - sensation. Light - dark - dusk. Matter - space - energy. Even digital 1s and 0s - the gold standards of duality - have been rendered triunal by quantum computing, its qBits capable of 1 and 0 simultaneously.

It depends on perspective. The Earth can be said to be covered by land and ocean (with beaches in between) but, land and sea can simply be seen as features of the Earth's surface, ie. non-dual.

Sort of, however ontologically there are no transitional states either between A and B, when A and B are made-up states to begin with. For example:

on the verandah: we have to divide the place into inside and outside first, so we can say that the verandah is the transition between them
average, warm, dusk: again, they are simply somewhere 'between' A and B, or where A and B 'meet', or where they 'transition'
physical, mental, sensation: probably all these are ontologically the same inseparable thing
matter - space - energy: probably all these are ontologically the same inseparable thing

And 1s and 0s are merely numbers (abstractions like all information), but I know that you disagree with this. But the circuits of computers are all built on the general principle that either current is flowing (1) or not (0), or some similar implementation, without any actual information-substance involved. Quantum computing isn't really 'triunal' either, 0 and 1 aren't special states within the superposition, more like there is 0, 1 and infinitely many 'in-between' values. They only take 0 or 1 when measured.

I don't see them as made up. For instance, night and day are not entirely inventions. One can say that any given point on the Earth will spend some time facing towards or away from the Sun to some extent. Yet, there are transition periods as the Sun goes lower in the sky, to fall behind the horizon and, for a short time, continue to glow from below the horizon. Once the glow from behind the horizon is gone, there is night. A fairly definite state. Obviously the converse applies with sunrise etc.

It depends on one's perspective.

[Atla]

I don't see them as made up. For instance, night and day are not entirely inventions. One can say that any given point on the Earth will spend some time facing towards or away from the Sun to some extent. Yet, there are transition periods as the Sun goes lower in the sky, to fall behind the horizon and, for a short time, continue to glow from below the horizon. Once the glow from behind the horizon is gone, there is night. A fairly definite state. Obviously the converse applies with sunrise etc.

It depends on one's perspective.

Important from a local everyday perspective, but made-up, irrelevant when it comes to an 'absolute' ontological perspective. For example even during night, we are facing trillions of stars, they are just farther away, and such positions don't fundamentally make a difference anyway.

[Sy Borg]

I don't see them as made up. For instance, night and day are not entirely inventions. One can say that any given point on the Earth will spend some time facing towards or away from the Sun to some extent. Yet, there are transition periods as the Sun goes lower in the sky, to fall behind the horizon and, for a short time, continue to glow from below the horizon. Once the glow from behind the horizon is gone, there is night. A fairly definite state. Obviously the converse applies with sunrise etc.

It depends on one's perspective.

Important from a local everyday perspective, but made-up, irrelevant when it comes to an 'absolute' ontological perspective. For example even during night, we are facing trillions of stars, they are just farther away, and such positions don't fundamentally make a difference anyway.

Point taken, but there remains an objective component to the day/night/twilight triune. That is, heat. When you boil reality down to its very basics, it comes down to distribution of heat. There can be no debate about that, unless our fundamental perspective of reality is wildly wrong, a possibility we can never entirely discount.

[Atla]

Point taken, but there remains an objective component to the day/night/twilight triune. That is, heat. When you boil reality down to its very basics, it comes down to distribution of heat. There can be no debate about that, unless our fundamental perspective of reality is wildly wrong, a possibility we can never entirely discount.

First time I hear that. Why should the distribution of heat matter more than the distribution of other physical quantities?

[Sy Borg]

Point taken, but there remains an objective component to the day/night/twilight triune. That is, heat. When you boil reality down to its very basics, it comes down to distribution of heat. There can be no debate about that, unless our fundamental perspective of reality is wildly wrong, a possibility we can never entirely discount.

First time I hear that. Why should the distribution of heat matter more than the distribution of other physical quantities?

Because nothing can happen unless the temperature is above absolute zero.

[Atla]

First time I hear that. Why should the distribution of heat matter more than the distribution of other physical quantities?

Because nothing can happen unless the temperature is above absolute zero.

And without matter, energy couldn't push around anything. Sure, a human is necessarily bound to a changing universe (at least from our perspective), but I see no reason to treat energy in a special way.

[creation]

I begin by saying that possibly not everyone will understand this, because of the complexity of putting to words non-dual ideas by dualistic ideas (Language).

This is just an excuse, as explaining thee one and only One in words is really extremely simple, and thus not complex at all.

Understand that proposing a separation between Duality and Non-duality is already a dualistic notion of the mind.

Any notion of actual separation exists only in the brain. The human brain is actually the thing that makes thee One appear separate. The brain does this by compartmentalizing and separating with names and by labels.

So bear with me the complexity of the matter, and sorry if I contradict myself in anyway.

If you contradict (your-self, which by the way is a very separated, wrong, and contradictory dual word in and of itself, just in case you had not noticed before), but anyway, if you contradict, then why?

I just truly discovered this notion of "wholeness", "unity" or "oneness" from non-duality.

Did you truly just discover this, or did you really learn this from some other source?

This idea is very frightening for me, because it collapses my experience of reality. Awareness is all that there is, every other thing is a mind-created concept.

What is this 'mind' thing exactly?

Could it be the case that even this 'mind' thing is actually just another created by the human brain concept? After all, there are not many people at all that are able to agree on what this 'mind' thing is exactly.

I will not explain non-duality in depth and the big metaphysical implications of it as it is still a very fresh idea that is nurturing my mind. I will just ponder of the ideas that have entered my mind, and are intelligible as of now. So, Non-Duality is awareness itself. There is no separation of ego/thought or object/subject.

But there is plenty of separation going on by that ego separating it 'self', though thought, object and subject.

Precisely because experience is all it is, and experience IS consciousness.

'Experience' is experience, and, 'Consciousness' is Consciousness.

Consciousness is just being Aware of ALL-THERE-IS.

There is no experiential state if there is no awareness, therefore "being" is all there truly is. This is without having this "I" that is assumed to be doing the experiencing.

You are confusing and conflating thee one and only 'I', the Being with Awareness and Consciousness of ALL-THERE-IS, with the human 'i', the being that separates with names and labels, what essentially is not, and can not be, separated.

For some this mystical ego-transcendence is beautiful, because of the divine nature of it(How this pure state of awareness feels). And also because it is the ultimate truth. It is the true nature of nature. Duality is the greatest enemy to non-duality (Obviously). But get this, in order to reach non-duality you MUST purge the duality of the mind. So, having a firmly dualistic mind will not comprehend this in any way.

Is the reason 'you' can not understand and comprehend this fully yet is because 'you' are a firmly dualistic creature by nature?

Because non-duality is experienced, it is not known by a rational explanation.

But it is already KNOWN by and through rational explanation. This is because Conscious Awareness KNOWS the rational explanation ALREADY. The dual nature of being a human being does not yet know this rational explanation, and so will make the ridiculous and stupid comments and remarks like; "Non-duality is not known by a rational explanation".

For the explanation of it is dualistic in nature,

No it is not. This is because there is only thee Truly One, and therefore, only the Truly One Truth as well, which obviously holds the rational explanation.

Dualistic human thinking continue to state these truly wrong dualistic irrational thoughts, which you have just said and expressed as though it was some sort of truth.

because language is dualistic and always implies separation.

The language you choose to use may cause an appearance of separation, this is because 'you' are firmly held in dualistic thought.

People engage in meditation to reach this perceptual change of awareness.

Maybe so, but it is not necessarily so, needed.

My biggest fear is knowing that everything I have experienced up until now has been an illusion.

Will you provide any examples?

A product of the mind's intrinsic tendency to dualism. Everything seems false, nothing is real. Truth is just one. Up until now my philosophical "truths"(Or any thought of that matter) have been dualistic. So, I reach some sort of existential crisis or nihilistic crisis in nature. Not only that, but all of my dreams, hopes, my personal realizations are far from truth. Any meaning becomes meaningless. It is not worth living for something at it is just a concept, a construct of the mind that separates me and true reality. In a crude way, it is all fake. I can't even think without separation so it troubles me more.

If thinking happens without separation, then you are an extremely long way from understanding and knowing thee One.

I seem to be on the brink of death speaking about these troubling thoughts.

Well that is a prime example of the ego at work, "rationalizing".

For now, everything seems bearable. But I don't know where I will end up if this destroys me. Any thoughts to this?

If all this was just about that ego 'i' and 'it' wondering where 'it' will supposedly "end up", as though that is of any importance, then what this post started out as very quickly turned around to that ego only caring at 'its' 'self'.

[Sy Borg]

Because nothing can happen unless the temperature is above absolute zero.

And without matter, energy couldn't push around anything. Sure, a human is necessarily bound to a changing universe (at least from our perspective), but I see no reason to treat energy in a special way.

Einstein showed us that, without energy, there is no matter.

The words "special" in context is hard to make sense of, but energy is at least a great mystery. No one knows exactly what it is or how it came to be.

[Consul]

Einstein showed us that, without energy, there is no matter.

The m in his famous equation E = mc² stands for mass rather than for matter: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equi ... cAbouEoMc2

[Sy Borg]

Consul, no way, man! I'm pretty sure Einstein's equation says that the number of Elephants in a room equals Morality times Confirmation bias squared.

Or - and this is a pretty wild idea, but hear me out - Einstein's equation might just show us the relationship of energy to matter, that energy can be turned into matter via fusion and matter can be turned into energy by fission. Thus, energy and matter are fundamentally the same, being either in diffuse or compressed form.

[Atla]

Consul, no way, man! I'm pretty sure Einstein's equation says that the number of Elephants in a room equals Morality times Confirmation bias squared.

Or - and this is a pretty wild idea, but hear me out - Einstein's equation might just show us the relationship of energy to matter, that energy can be turned into matter via fusion and matter can be turned into energy by fission. Thus, energy and matter are fundamentally the same, being either in diffuse or compressed form.

If energy and matter are fundamentally the same (which I think is obviously the case), then it makes no sense to me to treat energy in a special way (like it was more fundamental or something), and say that without energy, there is no matter.

Some people could say the opposite, that therefore matter is special, and without matter, there is no energy.

I think some people rather go with the first one though (without energy, there is no matter) because energy is such a fascinating, ethereal, hard-to-pin-down concept compared to matter.

[Bluemist]

We can't think logically in anything more complicated than binary logic.

Yes, we can: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-manyvalued/

OK, I'll take that back. We can't even understand binary logic.
The following display lists historical diagrams invented by logicians to show what 'All A is B',
https://cdn.britannica.com/s:700x500/80 ... -logic.jpg
The only one that is clear is Euler's, and it is incomplete or at least not comprehensive of the range of possibilities.

[Consul]

Clear definitions or descriptions of Eastern/Buddhist nondualism are very hard to come by. Here's one that isn't very clear:

"nondualism: the view that reality is actually one (not composed of separate entities), that the usual dualisms of mind/body, good/evil, self/other, active/passive are superficial judgments of convenience. Nondual reality is emptiness, nothingness."

(Carter, Robert E. The Kyoto School: An Introduction. New York: SUNY Press, 2013. p. 178)

First of all, "oneness" can refer to identity and it can refer to unity. Identity entails unity; but unity doesn't entail identity, since two or more things can be united in the sense of constituting a unitary whole without being identical to one another.

The opposite of separateness in the sense of withdrawnness from others, disjoinedness, disconnectednees, or detachedness isn't identity or nondifference. To say that A isn't separate from B is not to say that A = B.

It's not clear to me what it means to say that "reality is actually one":
Is 1 the number of entities in reality, the number of kinds of entities in reality, the number of basic kinds of entities in reality?

When Buddhists speak of "emptiness", they mean emptiness of substance and essence. For them, the elements of being are momentary events devoid of a substantial substrate and an intrinsic nature. Those events have only extrinsic, relational properties, and the universe is nothing but a dynamic causal-spatial-temporal structure of such events. So Buddhist ontology is a combination of pure eventism and dynamic relationalism/structuralism.

However, experiential events include qualia that aren't relational properties; so I'm not sure Buddhist ontology is internally coherent.

What exactly does it mean to say that "the usual dualisms of mind/body, good/evil, self/other, active/passive are superficial judgments of convenience"?

[Belindi]

Clear definitions or descriptions of Eastern/Buddhist nondualism are very hard to come by. Here's one that isn't very clear:

"nondualism: the view that reality is actually one (not composed of separate entities), that the usual dualisms of mind/body, good/evil, self/other, active/passive are superficial judgments of convenience. Nondual reality is emptiness, nothingness."

(Carter, Robert E. The Kyoto School: An Introduction. New York: SUNY Press, 2013. p. 178)

First of all, "oneness" can refer to identity and it can refer to unity. Identity entails unity; but unity doesn't entail identity, since two or more things can be united in the sense of constituting a unitary whole without being identical to one another.

The opposite of separateness in the sense of withdrawnness from others, disjoinedness, disconnectednees, or detachedness isn't identity or nondifference. To say that A isn't separate from B is not to say that A = B.

It's not clear to me what it means to say that "reality is actually one":
Is 1 the number of entities in reality, the number of kinds of entities in reality, the number of basic kinds of entities in reality?

When Buddhists speak of "emptiness", they mean emptiness of substance and essence. For them, the elements of being are momentary events devoid of a substantial substrate and an intrinsic nature. Those events have only extrinsic, relational properties, and the universe is nothing but a dynamic causal-spatial-temporal structure of such events. So Buddhist ontology is a combination of pure eventism and dynamic relationalism/structuralism.

However, experiential events include qualia that aren't relational properties; so I'm not sure Buddhist ontology is internally coherent.

What exactly does it mean to say that "the usual dualisms of mind/body, good/evil, self/other, active/passive are superficial judgments of convenience"?

The western metaphysical theory of idealism(immaterialism) is basically like eastern non-dualism, because eastern non-dualism and western idealism are each based on individual minds and/or absolute mind as two aspects of existence.

For both eastern non-dualism and western idealism existence is not basically material : conscious experience is formed from mind. I am not claiming there is nothing 'out there' i.e. some material thing in itself, but if so the thing in itself is vague and uncertain.

To claim inferiority or superficiality for "the usual dualisms" is probably a sneaky claim that absolute mind is synonymous with God. It may be the case that absolute mind is synonymous with God, but there has to be an argument before that should be accepted.