Understanding the Value of Duality from the Nondual Perspective

A.H. Almaas explains how duality is an essential part of human evolution and development. Scroll down to view the video and summary of highlights.

Summary

In the Diamond Approach, we begin by talking about presence, which is what opens us to the boundless, nondual dimensions of reality. In these dimensions, there is no self, no emotion, no experience. We are just pure knowing (what we call the Supreme), pure love (Divine Love), pure perception (the Nameless), pure space (the Absolute), and so on. Many traditions revere these dimensions as the true point of spiritual work, what we need to strive for, but they disregard the dual human condition as unimportant, an illusion.  

It is true that at the nondual level, duality is an illusion. But our presence also helps us understand the value of duality for both human experience. For what we experience here—now, on Earth, in our bodies—as the capacity for knowing, the feeling of love, the ability to perceive, etcetera, are all reflections of the boundless dimensions from which they arise. The boundless dimensions are the foundations for each, and each dimension collapses into our ordinary dual experience as those capacities. 

Unlike paths with hierarchies that place more importance on the boundless and transcendent for true liberation, we are not only interested in liberation. We are interested in the development of the soul, the usage of human intellect, and evolution of the human race. From the primal, nondual dimension, evolution and development are irrelevant and illusory. But in daily living in our post-modern world, our dual understanding plays a crucial role in helping us grow and mature as spiritual beings. 

Take science, for example. In the old religions, direct experience, mythology, and superstition are all there together in the literature of nondual experience. It is our ability to discern and know—derived, as it is, from the ground of pure knowing of the Supreme dimension—that allows us to differentiate direct experience from myth, myth from superstition, and so on. The differentiation is what allowed the development of science and contributed to the evolution of humanity. This in turn brings us closer, as we follow this discernment to its natural source, to the boundless dimensions.