A Very Persistent Illusion

I know reality seems really real, but it’s really not. In fact, as the initial nondual insight reveals, it’s knowably not. There can be, as you’ve realized by now, only one true reality, and obviously, it’s not the one that you and I and humanity and space aliens and lightbeings and ascended masters currently inhabit. This reality is a fraud; that’s what nonduality means. The dreamstate is just a false appearance, an apparition; a full-spectrum, high-resolution, sensory-immersion mirage. That’s what we see when we open our eyes and look, which is precisely why we don’t. The show must go on, which means disbelief must be suspended. Mind is a sword, and the dreamstate bubble is no place for sharp objects.

What’s the difference between a brain in a skull receiving sense-generated signals, and a brain in a jar receiving computer-generated signals? There is no difference from the brain’s perspective, meaning that you have no way of knowing if you’re in a skull or a jar, or some other system of containment, and what that means is that you’re just accepting the reality with which you’re presented.  You embrace this narrative because it’s easy, not because it has withstood serious scrutiny. Authentic (radical) nonduality is what serious scrutiny looks like. The dreamstate is a depiction of a reality which is totally and knowably false; false means untrue, and untruth does not exist.

Picture the finite yinyang symbol on an infinite white field. Now, stop imagining the black parts – black circle, black fish, black eye – and what’s left is the true paradigm where you and I exist. Sound boring? Of course it is. That’s why we need this artificial refuge. It’s not real or true, but it’s everything else, so we play along with the farce, and strut and fret our hour upon the stage. 

If you have a yinyang tattoo, this might be a good time to pick up your sword and cut a big red gash through it. The yinyang symbol is emblematic of duality and duplicity; of the world that’s been pulled over your eyes to blind you to the truth. If you seek harmony and balance within the halflight of the sewer-dungeon, the yinyang symbol represents your highest spiritual ambitions, but if you wish to climb from darkness to light, the yinyang symbol represents everything that’s in your way. The yinyang symbol does not represent truth or reality or harmony, or the milk-dippability of the Great Oreo Cookie in the sky, it represents the Grand Illusion of the dualistic dreamstate. You can embrace the illusion, adopt it, love and nurture it, let it live above the garage and sing it silly love songs, but it’s still a lie. 

You can become a god or a king or a great spiritual muckety muck within the dreamstate, but it will always be a fiction and your life will always be bullshit. If you don’t care that you’re living a lie, no one else does either. We don’t have to hate delusion or exit the dreamstate or slay Maya, we just want to know what’s going on so we can have some idea of where we are and where we want to go. We have a few reasonable questions about our situation: Do we have free will? Is there life after death? Is love real? Do canned sardines have a Buddha nature? Inquiring minds want to know.

Truth is an uninhabitable paradigm. There is no true paradigm, no such thing as true context. If we want to experience drama and duality, it can only be in a false paradigm in which the impossible is possible. Given the perfect intelligence of infinite consciousness, there can be unlimited universes with unlimited creative entities and unlimited time, space, energy and matter, all for the very low price of nothing. The only condition is that the dreamstate must obey certain rules, or else it breaks down from crystalline perfection to muddy slop. 

The first step in figuring out who you really are (Brahman) is figuring out who you’re really not (Atman). Because you’re so deeply entrenched in the delusion of selfhood, that’s where the real work of awakening takes place; not with you going from the Point A of where you are, to the Point B of your desired destination, but with you getting out of the hole you’ve dug yourself into; only then can you set out in the direction of your full and rightful human potential. There’s no getting around that part of the journey, though everyone tries, and countless bogus solutions are peddled in the spiritual marketplace. Reversing course and digging yourself out of this fantasy you’ve mistaken for reality is what waking up looks like; anything else is not about waking up, but dreaming you’re awake. That’s the purpose of spirituality, but not of nonduality.

Your senses can tell you any story and you’ll believe it, but when you detect the deception and start looking for answers, you discover that you can’t rely on your senses anymore – or the heart and mind they inform. What can you trust in this situation? Reason. You’ve never needed reason before, and you’ll probably never need it again, but you need it now. Reason doesn’t lie, and you’re already using it, which is how you got this far. Feelings, beliefs, opinions and ego can get you out of the herd, but to make it through the up-the-slope stage, you’ll need to bring your brain online and isolate it from the heart’s debilitating influence. Not forever, but for now.

There’s no real benefit or upside to waking up in or from the dreamstate except to improve and enhance your dreamstate experience. Your situation is not improved except in the sense of fulfilling your human creative potential. You don’t get transformed into a bigger, better version of you, only into your authentic self. The goal in all this is to open your eyes and make use of the vision that is your birthright. The life of the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind, however,  is not all riotous fanfare and tickertape parades. The benefit of becoming who you really are is that, one, you get to stop being who you’re not, and two, you get to live your authentic life in alignment with your authentic pattern. That’s the only victory there is. As Joseph Campbell teaches us, the privilege of a lifetime is being who you truly are.

Whether you know it or not, or believe it or not, no-self is true self and no-universe is true universe, so the key to enjoying your time here is to not take yourself too personally; we are such stuff as dreams are made on. The character you play has nothing to do with you. Life, as we experience it, begins with segregation from our true state and ends with re-integration with it. There is no life, no you, no universe, so just try to settle in wherever you can get comfortable and enjoy it while it lasts. No one is ever ahead or behind, above or below; that’s just the magic of stagecraft, creating the illusion of distance and depth.

This is actually pretty good news. You don’t have to learn or grow and climb up through the ranks. You don’t have to become a sage or seer, guru or roshi, ascended master or being of light, all you have to do is snap out of the trance you’re in; disassemble the artificial reality-construct you’re trapped in and start your life-journey anew, this time with the understanding that, even if you don’t really exist, here you are. 

You can wake up out of the dreamstate – enlightenment – but there’s no context within truth, and no you outside of context, so even if you manage to slip out of the dreamstate, you have to slip right back in. There’s no there out there. Yes, you can die and re-merge with the infinite ocean of being from whence you sprang, but what’s the point of that? That’s where we all end up because we never really left. What’s the rush? You’ll wake up from this dream soon enough. There’s no scorekeeping in all this, no belt system or points for style, no winners or losers; there is only awareness, and that thou art.

When you’re afloat on a shoreless sea, the best thing you can do is remain blissfully ignorant of who and what and where you really are. Yes, you can do this thing you’re doing now; make a sport of spirituality, a hobby of nonduality, a pastime of awakening. That can give you something to occupy your heart and mind while you run out the clock; give your life direction and motivation, shape and the illusion of meaning. The best you can do on a shoreless sea is have a desired heading and speed based on some imagined destination. It’s bullshit, but it’s good bullshit, and, as luck would have it, you do have a course and speed written into your spiritual DNA. Once you align with it, you can begin following your rightful trajectory, which is a whole lot better and easier than following a pattern not your own, or going this way one minute and that way the next. 

My best guess is that, if you’re a self-aware being, you have an authentic indwelling pattern, and when the light of your lifeforce shines through this pattern, it projects something new and unique into the world; something that never would have existed had you not manifested it. I have no idea what that may be, but that’s my dreamstate understanding of who and what and where we all are. I could be wrong, and no one can ever know, but this sounds like a safe bet. Even if I am wrong, you still win because the search for context and purpose itself provides context and purpose. 

Right now, it looks like you’re struggling to wake up, but what you’re really working toward is the expansion, exploration and expression of your unique and authentic indwelling pattern. That’s what all this spirituality stuff is really about; reason, truth and nonduality are just navigational and motivational aids to help you get there. Out-of-the-herd, up-the-slope and down-the-pipe are stages in the process; the dying that must precede rebirth. 

Creation is the sine qua non of the dreamstate; the necessary condition without which nothing else matters. Without the dreamstate, there is consciousness without an object, awareness without appearance. The only escape for Brahman is via the vehicle of Atman. Brahman is trapped outside of context, and we, as Atman, are its source of relief. We are not the eyes through which the godmind perceives itself, we’re the dollies with which it plays house, cops and robbers, dress-up, tea time, cowboys and indians, and war.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.