The man of understanding certainly sees preferences being made in daily living between the polaric opposites, but is totally aware of the fact that the preferences happen according to the individual programming in each case, and are not made by any individual person doing the preference. The man of understanding is, therefore, always in tune with the Source. When the final flash of total understanding happens, it is not at all unlikely for the individual to realize the unbroken wholeness of the universe and to clearly see the whole range of polaric opposites as a great illusion or a play of a feigned quarrel between lovers. The result can be an uncontrollable fit of huge laughter or intense weeping.
If only one would realize it, one's daily living is never more than a continuous choosing, comparing and judging, blaming and praising - hardly ever mere witnessing and accepting. How can there ever be peace and harmony in our daily living?...
In day-to-day living, one faces problems that have an astonishing range of
apparent reasons and possible consequences. The interesting question, therefore,
is whether there is a basic common cause that could be isolated and dealt with.
Indeed, the basic cause of human conflict and unhappiness is 'dualism', as distinct
from 'duality'. The core of this difference needs to be thoroughly analyzed
and clearly understood. In fact, such a clear understanding could itself be
the solution of human unhappiness because it would relieve the human being from
the double-bind in which he finds himself in his relentless pursuit of unalloyed
happiness.
The fact of the matter is that 'duality' is polaric, interrelated and, therefore,
not really separate, whereas 'dualism' is opposition, separation, and, therefore,
conflict. Phenomenal manifestation is a process of objectivization that basically
requires a dichotomy into two elements: a subject that perceives and an object
that is perceived. This is the process that is known as 'duality': all phenomena
that are sensorially perceivable are the correlation of a subject (object-cognizer)
and the object (the object cognized). This process of duality makes it evidently
clear that without such a process there cannot exist any phenomena, and that
neither of the two phenomenal objects (neither the cognizer subject nor the
cognized object) has any independent existence of its own: the existence of
one depends on the existence of the other.
When the basis of duality is clearly apperceived, there is no question of either
any samsara (phenomenal day-to-day living) or any bondage for any conceptual
individual for the simple reason that the 'individual' concerned is merely the
psychosomatic apparatus, the instrument through which the process of perceiving
and cognizing takes place. Our unhappiness, our conflict, our bondage arises
as the effect of the identification of What-We-Are (Consciousness) with the
object-cognizer element in the dichotomy of the whole-mind (Consciousness) into
subject and object in the process of duality.
This identification or entitification as a separate independent entity (as the
pseudo-subject) is the 'dualism' - the maya - which results as the practical
application in day-to-day living of the original principle of duality, that
is polaric, interrelated and, therefore, not separate. It is this illusory
entitification that causes all the conflict, all the suffering, all the
unhappiness that is collectively termed 'bondage'. The instantaneous apperception
of this very fact of the illusoriness of the pseudo-subject as an independent
doer-entity means the freedom from the bondage.
Excerpted from 'Advaita: The Teaching' - Chapter 6 of Peace & Harmony in Daily Living by Ramesh Balsekar ( Yogi Impressions)
