Discovering True Nature

Discovering True Nature

There is a simplified way to understand nondual teachings. The word form means “shape” or “image”: a human takes a form; a thought, or a plan, is formed. Each form is limited within the bounds of its definition, its particular function. Each thing is a form which is distinguishable from similar things. We might speak of some thing as: an activity; or a quality; or a symbol; or a concept, etc. Each thing has a relationship to all other things, even if it is just that it is not the same form. That there appears, to us, to be more than one form is what is termed duality. Adam and Jehovah exemplify duality. Forms have their source. We say that thoughts, plans, concepts, images take shape in, or are generated from, a mind. We know that the source of the materials that compose the planets arose from remnants of our solar system. A source is “that from which some thing derives.” Things which have being (have come into existence as formed) arise from a condition of being. This condition of being, which produces existent forms, is not a form like the multiplicity of forms it is the source of; the continual plurality of forms, which appear in every place and time, arise from a singular state of being which is not confined by space or limited by time. In other words, things arise from a presence of being that is not itself just another thing: forms arise from a source that is formless; finite forms owe their existence to a presence of being which is not finite, but infinite—unconstrained in space or time. Being illimitable, there is not anything outside of it, thus apart from it; it is all-inclusive. All

that exists, or will exist, is within it. The source of all multiplicity is itself indivisibly singular, or non-dual. Forms return to this ground of being from which they originated. The dualities, impermanent in time, ultimately dissolve into the nondual source of finite existence, the infinite ever-present. What this tells us is that the forms and the formless are merely aspects of an unbroken, inseparable actuality. There is not, at any point, a severance or disconnection of the many from the one, nor the one from the many. The forms appear within a greater whole or totality; they are appearances of the nondual infinite as its finite, and impermanent, expressions. The shapes and images do not appear, or exist, independently of their permanent, or eternal source.

Thus, the nondual perspective, or teachings, allow us to put our own forms in context, in terms of ultimate reality; in terms of what is timelessly true or vital. All that you know your self to be is nothing but a form— finite, impermanent. The source from which it “comes” and to which it “returns” is formless, without beginning or end in time or space. That, the teachings say, is your true nature.