The Seer

Advaita is not monism. Advaita means “not-two.” We and the universe are not “one”: then all distinctions would be destroyed. We are “not-two,” intricately interrelated with everything, both separate, unique *and* united. The astonishment of this dance of “not-two” grows slowly as the mind and heart open in divine love and wisdom.

Imagine that there was a heap of gold and a skillful smith. The smith made fir trees, geraniums, tables, human beings, lamps. Every object had a different shape, a different purpose and identity but was made of the same thing. Look at the sea. All waves are rising and falling differently, in different rhythms, with different volumes. Some catch the light some do not. You can see the separations between the waves but what you also see quite clearly is that all the waves are water. That is what the knowledge of “not-two” is like.

Things retain the separateness which the senses give them, which we use to negotiate this reality, but the illumined mind knows that all things are Brahman or God, waves of one infinite sea of light. You know, in other words, that you and everything and the light that is at all times manifesting everything are “not-two,” and “you” come to exist normally on all levels of the divine creation, and meet “yourself” in all states, events, conditions, beings.

This is sahaja, spontaneous negotiation of, and union with, all dimensions at all moments. Nisargadatta Maharaj explains most lucidly the marvelous transitions to this state: “When the I am myself goes, the I am all comes. When the I am all goes, the ‘I am’ comes. When even ‘I am’ goes, Reality alone is and, in it, every ‘am’ is preserved and glorified.”

It is wonderful that this the most ultimate and holy of all possible ‘experiences’ in this world, that of unity, of advaita, has to be enjoyed by everyone in their own profound solitude, at that diamond point of solitude at which everyone secretly joins and meets God and each other and all things.

This final ‘experience’ kept for this most sacred and secret moment and is too vast an precious to be ever completely communicated. This is the moment when the created one returns to the source of creation — the moment at which all laws, dogmas and techniques that helped the ‘mystic’ (or ’seeker’) arrive at that diamond point vanish in the silence of return to origin.

~ by Andrew Harvey, in Dialogues with a Modern Mystic.