The Bamboozle

I don’t write about things that I can see and you can’t. If I can see it, you can see it too. If your thick skull has been pierced by the diamond bullet of the initial nondual insight, then everything I talk about is fully visible to you, you just have to open your eyes and learn to look. It would be pretty shitty of me to throw shade on sacred traditions, spiritual luminaries and beloved asstalkers unless you could see what I’m saying for yourself. Nonduality is a strict meritocracy where everyone does not get a trophy. You pay for every step you take; a pound of flesh apiece. Even if you’re a total flopdoodle in every other area of your life, you can be a lord of nonduality; it all comes down to eliminating wrongness, allowing the revelation of rightness. There’s nothing to learn, nothing to practice, nothing to become, only a bird’s nest of feelings and opinions and wrong-knowings to deconstruct and discard. 

There are two ultimate combatants in your single-player gamespace; Fear of No-Self in one corner and Hatred of False-Self in the other. Fear of Truth versus Hatred of the Lie. Those are the warriors in the arena, and the arena is in you.

Krishna
Arjuna, I tell you with absolute conviction,
you won’t have a choice between peace and war.

Arjuna
What will be my choice?

Krishna
Between a war, and another war.

Arjuna
The other war, where will it take place?
On a battlefield, or in my heart?

Krishna
I don’t see a real difference.

The Mahabharata, Jean-Claude Carrière

As far as you know, you’re the only one in your gameworld and everyone else is a computer-generated non-player character. It’s all a matter of appearance, which lends itself not to knowing, only believing, but why go through life believing when you can open your eyes and see? As Nietzsche teaches us, “Belief means not wanting to know what is true.” Only awareness can be known because only awareness is true; everything else has to be believed because nothing else is true. If you exist at all – if you are something, not nothing – then you can only be awareness because that’s the only thing there is. There’s nothing else to be – either awareness or nothing – and only you know which you are. If you are aware, you are Atman, and Atman is Brahman; therefore, thou art God. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Nothing is lasting, permanent or real about the dreamstate gamespace. The most meaningful thing you can think of is the exact equal of the most trivial thing. Nuclear war and a fly in your soup – no difference. The end of the world and a rusty hubcap – no difference. You don’t need me to tell you this, you already know it; not at the anything-goes emotional level, but at the cordoned-off thinking level. Just as there’s no difference between any two elements in your nighttime dreams, nor is there any in your reality dream. Your emotional response may vary, but that doesn’t change the truth. Snidely Whiplash ties Nell down on the tracks, and Dudley Do-Right saves her in the nick of time. “That’s not Nell, Inspector, that’s my horse in a Nell suit.” In the dreamworld gamespace, it’s all equally true, and it all makes perfect sense.

You’re seated with friends at Maya’s House of Noodles. Your waiter awaits your order.

“Yes,” you say, studying your menu, “I’ll have the Nondual Special, but I want that with God, love, compassion, reincarnation, angelic ascension, higher-self and space aliens, with the tantra-yantra vinaigrette and a sprinkle of bliss. Oh, and hold the not-two, I have allergies. I’ll just stick with the duality.” 

The waiter looks confused. 

“So basically, you want the New Age smorgasbord?”

“Well, yes,” you whisper through clenched teeth, “but I want to call it the Nondual Special. My friends are watching. I don’t want them to think I’m eating regurgitated New Age swill from a communal trough.”

“But,” says your server, “that is what you’re asking for, so that is what you’ll get.”

“Yes,” you softly shriek from behind your menu, “but I’d rather call it the Nondual Special than Vomit Medley. It sounds less like I’m consuming a lie.”

“The Nondual Special is quite a bit pricier.”

“But I don’t actually want the Nondual Special, I just want the name. I want to dine self-serve from the New Age Buffet, but I don’t like the sound of it. Can’t you understand that?”

“Of course,” says your server, knowing that many others in this establishment are placing the same confusing order. Your server also knows that Maya’s House of Noodles does not actually serve the Nondual Special – it’s only available from a shady street vendor in the dark alley out back – but your server works for tips and has his own habit to feed, so he treats the always-wrong customer as always-right, and everyone gets what they want. 

In a few years, nonduality will fall out of fashion and they’ll have to change the spiritual menu to promote some other exotic Asian Fusion dish. What sounds tasty? Quantum Taoism? Neo-New Ageism? Techno-Zen? Polly Wanna Cracker-ism? I guess we’ll jump off that bridge when our friends do.

You tell your server that you get the whole nonduality thing – all is one, wink-wink – but you’re still in the market for the super-awesome spiritual awakening platter that lured you in. A spiritual ruse by any other name still stinks the same; a ruse is a ruse is a ruse.

“So you don’t want the Nondual Special at all?” your server whispers. “You just want the swill?”

“Yes,” you scream under your breath. “Okay, okay, add a small dollop of nonduality on the side, just so I can say I tried it. Not too much, I don’t want to sell the house, the car and the kids, I just want a nice relaxing meal with friends, and let’s keep the wine flowing. In vino veritas, isn’t that what they say?”

If that dual-focus approach works for you, great. Maybe you’re the exception that proves the rule. Maybe you’re the one who can worship two gods and piss off neither, who can chase two rabbits and catch both, who can straddle truth and the dreamstate. Maybe you caught a glimpse of nonduality and didn’t like what you saw, so now you want to pretend the nondual insight was just another minor epiphany, like when you sober up in a clam bar and see what you’re actually swallowing. 

You don’t want to become unbamboozled, as nonduality threatens; you want to remain bamboozled while maintaining a facade of lucidity. Get yourself a nonduality t-shirt to show you’re serious, but keep breath-watching, candle-gazing and Buddha-worshipping without leaving your seat. Maybe get those funny glasses that make you look wide-eyed and awake while, behind them, you sleep.

We can’t do that straddling maneuver with authentic nonduality, but pop-nonduality was made for it. You can interweave threads of truth into your tapestry of bullshit to your heart’s content. You can say things like “I’m able to maintain my moral outlook within a nondual framework.” Or, “I find the nondual teaching compatible with my political, religious and scientific views.” Or, “The nondual experience is conducive to my happiness and my emotional well-being.” In short, everyone wants to span the divide, not cross it; have one foot on both sides of the chasm, and except for being complete and utter bullshit, that’s perfectly fine. We steal the nonduality sign and hang it over the New Age glop everyone’s been swilling forever; that’s how the bamboozle works. You can remain fully in the dreamstate, while incorporating nondual teachings and experiences, of which there are none. (Oh wait, I’m having a nondual experience right now… Never mind, it was just a half-chewed clam coming back up. First rule of clam bars, never use your teeth.) 

A person in Maya’s House of Noodles is surrounded by murals depicting blue skies, puffy white clouds and sunlight, so they think they’re free, but such a person has not taken a single step in the direction of actual awakening; they’ve only incorporated a stolen thread into their fantasy avatar. This is what eyes-closed entities do; they absorb and synthesize elements of their environment, including those of their surrounding herdmates, and build their dreamstate character self from accumulated orts and bits, like a bird’s nest or a tumbleweed or a dustbunny. The pattern you’re meant to inhabit is also the pattern that gives you shape, so if you are in a pattern not your own, you are of a shape not your own and living a life not your own.

You and I are creations, created for the purpose of creating and beholding creation. Every act of creation, preservation, and destruction is a creative act. Time, space, energy and matter are elements of the gamespace physics package, with no independent existence outside the blackbox gaming console you call home. There are no stars or galaxies, no free checking accounts or stoplights or decadent desserts – and there’d be no place to put them if there were. There’s no you or me, no Jesus or Buddha, no red-winged blackbirds or ring-tailed lemurs; there is only the magic of creative intelligence, and anything that tells you otherwise, or provides an alternate explanation, is itself a product of that same creative intelligence. 

He that hath ears, let him hear. Everything is magic. It’s not that there’s magic in the universe, but that magic is what this universe is; all magic and nothing else. Magic is creative intelligence. That’s what the dreamstate is; the perfect intelligence of infinite consciousness. There’s no other feature or element or component, only the creative magic of perfect intelligence, of which you and I are creators and beholders. Things are thoughts and thoughts are things; how much more magical can you get?

In terms of awakening in rather than from the dreamstate, the truth-bullshit cocktail of human adulthood is a very workable and highly desirable solution, and the one I recommend. You use the attachment-severing, ballast-releasing function of nonduality to elevate yourself as high as your fuel will take you, and take up residence at that altitude of perspective; your rightful place of neutral buoyancy. You don’t have to worry about truth except as a guiding light by which to navigate. Just because you steer with truth as your pole star doesn’t mean you have to end up there.

Why dig your way out of an amusement park? You’re on your way out anyway, and could be totally gone at any moment, so why not enjoy this magical creative playspace while it lasts? Keep whatever opinions and beliefs, relationships and attachments you want, or cut them free and reacquire them later. The point of your brief, shining moment in the dramatic production of the dualistic dreamstate is not to break out, but to expand, explore and express your unique potential. It’s still bullshit, but it’s good bullshit, especially when you’ve had a bellyful of the bad kind.