You’ve probably encountered the word “nonduality” somewhere — maybe in a book, a podcast, or a conversation that left you both intrigued and slightly confused. The word itself doesn’t help much. Non-duality. Not-two. It sounds like a double negative pretending to be profound.
But nonduality isn’t a clever philosophical position. It’s pointing at something you can verify in your own experience, right now, without believing anything or going anywhere special.
The simplest way to understand it
Right now, you’re aware. You’re reading these words, and there’s an awareness of the reading happening. That awareness isn’t something you have to create or summon. It’s already here.
Now notice: can you actually find a boundary between the awareness and what it’s aware of? Can you separate the knowing from the known?
When you look at a tree, is there really a gap between “you” and “the experience of the tree”? Or is the whole thing one seamless happening — seeing, knowing, experiencing — without a dividing line?
That’s what nonduality points to. Not a theory about reality, but a direct recognition that experience isn’t split into a separate subject over here and a separate object over there. It’s all one undivided movement of awareness.
What nonduality is NOT
Before going further, it helps to clear away some common misunderstandings. Because nonduality has accumulated a lot of baggage, especially in online spiritual circles.
It’s not “everything is an illusion”
This is probably the most common misconception. Nonduality doesn’t say the world isn’t real. It says the world isn’t separate from awareness. There’s a big difference. Your morning coffee is still hot. Stubbing your toe still hurts. Nothing becomes less real. If anything, experience becomes more vivid when you stop filtering it through the lens of separation.
It’s not a state to achieve
You don’t “reach” nonduality like a destination. It’s not a peak experience that comes and goes. It’s the nature of experience itself — always already the case. You can’t arrive at what you already are. You can only notice it.
It’s not detachment
Some people hear “nonduality” and think it means floating above life in a state of cosmic indifference. That’s spiritual bypassing, and it’s the opposite of what genuine nondual recognition brings. When the sense of separation relaxes, life becomes more intimate, not less. You feel more, not less. The walls come down.
It’s not just Eastern philosophy
While nonduality has deep roots in traditions like Advaita Vedanta, Zen Buddhism, and Kashmir Shaivism, the recognition it points to isn’t owned by any tradition. Mystics from every culture and era have described the same thing. Meister Eckhart, Rumi, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing — all pointing at the same non-separate nature of reality.
The breath in and the breath out
One way I find helpful to understand nonduality is through the metaphor of breathing.
There’s the breath in — the return to silence, stillness, the formless ground of awareness. This is the aspect most spiritual paths emphasise. The witness. Pure consciousness. The “I Am” before any content.
And there’s the breath out — expression, creativity, the whole magnificent display of form and experience. Thoughts, feelings, relationships, art, conversation, the smell of rain.
Many spiritual approaches treat these as opposites. They elevate the formless and dismiss the world of form. But in nondual recognition, they’re inseparable. Awareness and its expressions aren’t two things. They’re one movement — like the ocean and its waves.
You don’t have to choose between the silence and the song. They’re the same thing, breathing.
How to recognise it directly
Nonduality isn’t a belief to adopt. It’s something you can check in your own experience. Here are three simple experiments:
1. The awareness experiment
Close your eyes for a moment. Notice that you’re aware. Now ask: what is this awareness made of? Does it have a shape, a colour, a boundary? Can you find its edges?
Most people find that awareness itself is… nothing they can grasp. It’s present, undeniably here, but it has no form. And yet everything appears within it.
2. The subject-object experiment
Look at an object near you — a cup, a plant, anything. Now notice the seeing of it. Is the seeing happening “inside you” while the cup is “outside you”? Or is there just… seeing? One seamless experience without a dividing line?
If you look honestly, you might notice that the supposed gap between “you” and “the world” is assumed, not actually experienced. What’s actually happening is just experiencing, without a separate experiencer on one side and experienced things on the other.
3. The gap between thoughts
Sit quietly and notice your thoughts. Now notice: between one thought and the next, there’s a gap. A brief moment of silence. What’s there in that gap?
It’s not blankness. It’s aware. It’s alive. It’s the same awareness that’s present during thoughts — just without the content. That’s what you are, before any thought tells you who you are.
Common objections
”But I clearly feel like a separate self”
Of course. The sense of being a separate individual is deeply conditioned. No one is saying that feeling is wrong or bad. Nonduality isn’t about denying the person. It’s about recognising that the person appears within something larger — awareness itself. The character in the movie is real as a character. But the screen is what makes the whole movie possible.
”This sounds like it would make me passive”
The opposite tends to happen. When the energy that was going into maintaining the illusion of separation relaxes, there’s actually more energy available for creative expression, authentic action, and genuine connection. Life doesn’t become bland. It becomes more responsive and alive.
”Can’t I just read about this and understand it intellectually?”
You can understand it intellectually — and that understanding has value as a pointer. But intellectual understanding alone is like reading a menu instead of eating the meal. The recognition nonduality points to is experiential. It happens in the looking, not in the thinking about the looking.
Where to go from here
If something in this article resonated — even a flicker of recognition — that’s worth paying attention to. You don’t need to understand everything at once. You don’t need to adopt a new belief system.
Start simply: notice that you’re aware. Get curious about the nature of that awareness. See if you can find where “you” end and “the world” begins.
That curiosity, that willingness to look, is all that’s needed. The recognition does the rest.
If you’d like to go deeper, I’ve written several free eBooks on nonduality and awareness that expand on the ideas here with practical exercises. I also write regularly on my Everyday Awakening newsletter.
The most important thing? Don’t take any of this on faith. Check it for yourself.