Non-duality: beyond the reach of science and self

What is the nature of science, self and non-duality?

Different kinds of non-duality can be discerned. “Unity” (1) receives the greatest recognition: the unity of external reality as a basic energy or system (1a), the unity of an internal reality as primordial consciousness (1b), and the unity of both in non-duality (1c). Of these, non-duality (1c) and that which is its origin (2) is the most important. We’ll investigate science and self in order to understand non-duality.

Science concerns itself with a particular area of knowledge and action: the natural world. Due to its methodology this specific area is revealed - and not another. Central to its methodology is observation, the experience of objects at a distance. These objects and their interactions are conceptualized in theories and models which themselves become mental objects. The scientist as the observing subject tries to maintain a distance from the natural world he investigates. It’s not possible for science to say anything about a real subject, because its epistemology only allows for perception of objects and object processes. The highest achievement of science is its demonstration of perceived reality as a unity (1a). Science remains fundamentally dualistic.

The self, in science and in daily life, partially belongs to the natural world. It’s a mixture of both subject and object phenomena. In returning to its origin, the self can be aware of losing more and more properties which had previously been objectified. The self attains the level of the witness consciousness (1b). Through surrendering this level, a non-dual unity (1c) arises which is characterized by an internal sense ‘I am’ without predicates. The realization of the highest non-duality (2), concerns the surrender of this ‘I am’ to, and merging with, the absolute as groundless openness.

Douwe Tiemersma was a teacher of Biology and then senior lecturer in Philosophy at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam until his retirement in 2005. He has given weekly advaita-satsangs in Gouda ever since his enlightening encounter in 1980 with Nisargadatta Maharaj who gave him his initiation. Besides writing the ‘Foreword’ to Nisargadatta’s spiritual classic, ‘I am That’, he has written and edited approximately twenty books and many articles, especially about non-duality, most of them in the Dutch language. See www.advaitacentrum.nl/en. This summer John Hunt will publish his ‘Non-duality – the groundless openness’.