Recent questions from readers have circled around the word ‘illusion’ – and whether to describe the world as illusory is to deny its reality. The misunderstanding begins with the word itself. In what follows, I want to trace the non-dual understanding from its foundations. At its centre is a clarification that changes everything: an illusion is not something unreal. It is something real – but not what it appears to be.
What Is ‘Non-Dual Understanding’?
The non-dual understanding is the experiential recognition that underlies all the great religious and spiritual traditions and has been formulated in numerous different ways by those traditions. The formulations of the great understanding, of course, change. But the understanding to which these formulations refer is always the same.
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