The Nonduality Highlights/ Jerry Katz

[Guest guest]

The Nonduality Highlights - NDhighlights

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this issue three selections. An entry from Don Montano's blog in which is he says, "Nonduality may be a very important term for our times."

 

More information on Peter Fenner's Nondual Training Course.

 

Notice of two new DVDs from Non-duality Press, one featuring Jeff Foster and the other Dr. Jean Klein.

There's a 9 minute sample of the Jean Klein video on YouTube (link

below). In the video interview he speaks about his life, beginning from

childhood. This video parts ways with the strict neo-advaita angle

taken by Non-duality Press (and Jeff Foster), since Klein reveals that

his teacher used the Upanishads and led him to seeing what he is not.

That is a more traditional approach and Klein seems aligned with it,

however that's only my impression from the video sample. I don't have

the full view.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is from Don Montano's blog:

 

http://multispective.wordpress.com/2007/05/28/nonduality-and-eitheror-thinking/

 

Nonduality and either/or thinking

 

“Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our

sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of

thought…The sense-experiences are the given subject-matter. But the

theory that shall interpret them is manmande…hypothetical, never

completely final, subject to question and doubt.” - Albert Einstein.

 

“The world we have made as a result of the level of thinking

we have done thus far creates problems we cannot solve at the same

level at which we created them” - Albert Einstein

 

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” - Einstein

 

Nonduality may be a very important term for our time. Since

most of our logic systems and most of our knowledge are based on

either/or binary thinking one way to move towards a balance may be to

recognize the phenomena of nonduality in our systems.

 

“The term nondual is a literal translation of the Sanskrit

term advaita, (meaning not two). That is, things remain distinct while

not being separate.”…”Nondualism may be viewed as the belief that

dualism or dichotomy are illusory phenomena.” (from Wikipedia)

 

The nonduality of matter and energy. Matter = energy = matter

 

Einstein was well-versed in philosophy and I can’t help but to

wonder if he was aware of this term. I am inclined to believe that he

used nondual thinking in his theory of matter and energy. When Einstein

came up with E=mc2 he basically explained that matter is energy in

another state. Or more specifically, how matter reverts back to energy

when you place it at the speed of light.

 

In pedestrian terms, matter and energy are just two states of

energy- just like water, has the states of liquid, solid and a gas.

This may be hard to understand when you’re trained to think of

everything through either/or thinking. Through either/or thinking you

usually get stuck in arguments like: “Well, is it matter or is it

energy?”

 

Multiple states and process

The belief that conceptual duality,

nonduality, pluralism and holism are mirrors of the cycle of

convergence-divergence. In other words, one process may be incomplete

without the other. Together, these tendencies form a cycle. That cycle

is just one of many others.

 

Challenging thingness

 

Everything is changing - but our human tendency is to attempt to

trap everything into boxes, into words, into documents, into static

states. Our tendency is to interpret processes as static, one or

two-dimensional ‘things’. This is another form of reductionism. The

same way we attempt to explain the entirety of life with a single frame

of time. Or our tendency to explain the entirety of human experience

with a few cells or genes.

 

Of course, static thinking has functional value but it also has

anti-functional value and degrees of value in between. Static thinking

may help us in one way but it may hinder and ‘trap’ us in other ways.

We need to be aware of this changing dynamic. All elements of life are

part of ever-expanding and ever-changing processes - we can deny this -

but we do it with high risk.

 

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” -Einstein