Levels of Nonduality

INTRODUCTION

As I shared in the What is nonduality article, nonduality is a taking in of everything all at once from the heart and experiencing an intimacy with all of life. A visionary leader who cultivates this recognition and the subsequent embodiments will experience its power and how it can effect greater impact for the beings they serve. If a luminary doesn't have a map or has at best a general map, this impact will be limited. This practitioner will also reach incorrect understandings and elevated self-assessments of their recognition of nonduality that can further limit their own spiritual development and freedom. They will experience limitations in their relationship with intimacy, whether as a leader or lover. Spiritual by-passing exemplifies such a limitation and will prevent them from presencing triggers with their loved one or followers because they will spiritually bypass to happy peaceful states that are inherent in the earlier levels of nonduality vs being in the intimacy of pain and dissonance, which resides in the more complete levels.

Thus why I provide a nuanced map here and will provide further nuances in future publications. The understandings from my 30 years of training, my teachers, the nondual traditions I explored, and the model of Integral Spirituality¹ inform the paths of recognition and levels of nonduality outlined below.²

I have found in particular, Integral's map on nonduality, to be the most complete along with the distinctions that the Dynamic Presence model has to offer to this map. The Integral map is extremely complex. In its understanding of nonduality, it includes BOTH states and structure development. Traditional nondual paths only train in state development. So I will unpack this complexity over time and how it relates to the embodiment of relational nonduality and the application of Dynamic Presence for your visionary leadership and facilitating transformation with others.

For now, I will keep it simple and speak to the recognition of nondual states and how it manifests on the gross level of a human being.³

THREE PATHWAYS OF RECOGNITION

Many pathways exist to discern this recognition. I find these three paths offer a concise map:

1. Awareness

2. Bhav

3. Service

Another way you can classify this is Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Karma Yoga.⁴

Let's start with the second path and then we will make our way to the first. Bhav is defined as "divine emotion." When a practitioner connects with the oneness from the heart with a sacred friend, teacher or a personal deity (ie Jesus, Krishna, God), they will experience this sacred emotion that is beyond what a human emotion feels like. Bhav will invite you into an absorption of love and joy as it connects with all things. Bhav feels thick and dense like swimming in an ocean of love and sacred intimacy. This pathway offers several markers for the embodiment of nonduality.

Service is the third path. Service is working in the world and giving up the fruits of your efforts. Experiencing intimate nonattachment of outcomes, developing equanimity, patience, and compersion are some of the markers for this path.

I have found the first path to be the best path to start with because it is the easiest to recognize. Markers of bhav can be the most difficult because most people have challenge opening their heart and being truly intimate with people and life on an embodied level. In my opinion, the path of the heart is the most challenging path for people and usually practitioners embark it after many years of mastering the awareness aspect of nonduality. And most never embark on this journey because of the prevalent spiritual bypassing I see out there amongst the community of teachers and practitioners. 95% of the teachings don't include developmental psychology and human intimacy.

AWARENESS PATH: THE 5 LEVELS OF NONDUALITY

The Awareness path encompasses 5 main levels:

1. Oneness Understanding

2. 360° Awareness

3. Formlessness

4. Union

5. Deity Self
   

Level 1: Oneness Understanding. At this level, several possibilities of experience exist. You can just have an innate understanding of oneness; or you have an intuitive experience such as experiencing the oneness of life while walking in nature or watching the sunset and you get absorbed into the moment. Also psychedelics can sometimes produce these type of experiences. All of these examples at best, are peak experiences. But most of the time, the recognition is at the mental-experiential level. The experience or intuitive oneness is still conceptual. The visualization exercise and metaphors in this article point to this level of recognition.

Level 2: 360 Awareness. This level marks the first time there is a direct experience. There is an expanded 360° awareness and no thoughts. Or there are thoughts but they are experienced as aspects of this 360° awareness. The thoughts happen and move across the practitioner's flow of consciousness like clouds in the sky, but they are not distracted and their locus of awareness is centered in this 360° awareness and its objects. However, the experience of time and space is still ordinary. They will still experience subject/object and here/there. It is an experience of oneness within the ordinary referents of time and space. The 360 awareness comes and goes and takes effort to hold. They will also experience boundaries of this awareness if they bring their meta-cognition to it.

Level 3: Formlessness. This level marks the first experience of true nonduality and how it is traditionally understood. While in the 360° awareness, it is when the reference markers of self, time, and space drop away and one enters the formless within form. There is no here/there or subject/object. There are no longer any felt boundaries to this awareness when one brings their meta-cognition to this aspect. In some dimensions of this level, one is just absorbed in the formless. In more complete dimensions of this level, one experiences the form and formless together but this recognition is not yet integrated and stable moment to moment. Sometimes you are identified with the formless aspect while form is in the background of the experience. And other moments, you are identified more with the form aspect and the formless is in the background. There is still some duality and separation here. You can still fall out of nondual consciousness and enter back into ordinary consciousness. Because of this natural shifting back and forth between the recognition of the formless and form while still being in the other and few moments of ordinary consciousness, this level doesn't encompass as much as the coming and going like Level 2. So there is more stability and less effort to hold this recognition, but stability moment to moment is still not yet established. One of the markers for recognition at this stage, is perceiving the all pervasive space inherent in the nondual awakening. It takes many years to complete this level and enter into the next.

Level 4: Union. As the recognition of the formless within form, and vice versa mature, a practitioner embodies the seamless oneness of both aspects and enters true oneness. At this level, the recognition of nonduality is stable moment to moment. They truly have liberated from ordinary consciousness completely. There is no longer any traces of separation and duality like the previous level. As one matures at this level, a complete purification begins to happen and one enters into the final and never-ending level.

Level 5: Deity Self. As one deepens within Level 4, all the pathways of recognition (some listed above) merge and you begin to remember yourself as a Deity. You have embodied the paradox of individuality and oneness. They are one and the same. You emanate all the qualities of a Buddha. You have become Divine in human form. You enter the sacred outlook level of nonduality and see everything as sacred - the good, bad, and ugly. And you relate to this phenomenal world from a place of reverence with devotion to service to all beings. True love incarnate. This is a rare phenomenon and most practitioners do not reach this level in a single lifetime.

SUMMARY

This delineation of levels will help a visionary leader have a sense of where they are at in their spiritual practice and how they can leverage the powers that each level has to offer to have greater impact in their circle of influence as well in their romantic relationship.

I offered a basic nuanced map here and there are numerous more discernments around this topic. This is just a rough map to get started. I will present these nuances in future publications. You can also receive these nuances live at a training. See the Training page for more info.

Now that you understand the levels of nonduality, read the power of nonduality next.

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NOTES -

¹ I follow the Integral Spirituality's model on nonduality and definition of enlightenment. See Ken Wilber's book, Integral Spirituality. Especially Appendix 2, pg 235. Also see his chapter, The Evolution of Nonduality in his book, Religion of Tomorrow.

² As I wrote here, not everyone agrees what nonduality is. If you look at all the understandings out there, you will see a theme of oneness. Integral Spirituality defines this oneness, nonduality as a union of emptiness and form. A lot of nondual teachers I have witnessed on the web have an earlier level of understanding as I delineate in this article. They usually stop at the formlessness or the emptiness aspect (ie neo-advaitins) of nonduality. Most traditional paths such as Tibetan Buddhism (ie Dzogchen) go a step forward and integrate the form aspect. They call it the inseparable pair of nonduality.

In addition, if nonduality is truly to mean oneness of all, then we need to follow a criteria that meets that especially as we update our understanding of oneness. Especially the evolution of form. And Integral Spirituality offers this understanding and criteria as they include the dharma of developmental psychology.

Since alot of teachings on nonduality in the spiritual marketplace emphasize this emptiness aspect or the importance of experiencing formlessness and ego transcendence, and might argue against delineating levels, I will offer some brief words. First, if you are considering nonduality only to be the formless aspect, then I would argue that you are paradoxically in duality then (will explain that contradiction more deeply another time), spiritually by-passing, and missing the other big piece of reality which is form and how that is also formlessness.

Second, if you accept form is formlessness - yes, the emptiness aspect or formlessness levels of nonduality is unchanging and has no levels, but form is always changing, especially hierarchical development in skills and maturity as someone progresses thru life. Because I am offering the understanding of nonduality as a union of emptiness AND form, and form evolves, then the embodiment of nonduality will also evolve. And thus the levels of nonduality will be infinite.

So if you come across different understandings of nonduality out there in your explorations and encounter confusion, Integral Spirituality (see footnote 1 above) can offer a map to clear that confusion and bring coherence to all those perspectives. And Dynamic Presence can offer additional discernment in that map.

³ See the Wilber-Combs Lattice in Integral Spirituality, chapter 4 for more of an understanding.

⁴ Wikipedia offers a basic introduction to these concepts. See entries there for Trimarga, Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Karma Yoga.