A second helping of Nondualogicality

Jody Radzik
9 min readJun 1, 2023

--

Part Two

[Ed.note: this is a blog called Nondualogicality I wrote in 2003–2004 when I was a member of a circle of Kali devotees in Laguna Beach and much more enamoured with the panpsychic interpretation of human consciousness. What I’m calling the ‘nonconceptual phase of ordinary awareness’ now, I called ‘oneness’ back then, more closely hewing to the Vedantic concept of Brahman. Otherwise, I think it holds up pretty well, which is why I’m resurrecting it here.]

Monday, April 07, 2003

Degenerative name calling, how spiritual is that?

But that’s what I’ve been engaged in recently on a couple of the email groups I post to. It got me to wondering: who is the one calling this woman names?

The outrage and derision are reactions to insults. The thing that is hurt is my (this life’s) way of seeing things.

The investment I have in this vision forms a constellation of significant thought. It makes for a good deal of identification, making up the “one” who gets insulted.

Which results in silly name calling.

These little blind spots are fun to uncover, and I’ve got Devi to thank for it.

In this regard she has acted as my guru, so pranams to you this moment Deviji.

Thursday, April 10, 2003

The individual is the collection of identifications that have formed in the mind in response to life conditions. The awareness of that collection of responses creates the idea of a someone who “has” the response.

When “we” make a decision to get rid of this idea, it can only be from this idea that the decision gets made. Thus we acquire a whole new set of identifications, with our guru, our ideology, our chosen deity, and our mystical experiences, all of which combine to form the idea of an expectation that they’re doing something for “us,” but mostly only serving to strengthen the idea that there is an “us.”

And all the while we rest in our true nature, being who we are uninterrupted, never once affected by the hoopla of being on a path as “we” seek to become that which we have never not been.

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

This is it.

Yet the activity of writing occurs. There’s a writing going on, and it can only be by the mechanism of the personality. Only this can be the “voice” of the silence.

Everyone’s voice is the voice of silence. Yet some spring from lives which have been freed from the exclusive attachment to the “I” thought, the idea of “me” that is the bounds of personal identity.

For these folk there’s a very real and ongoing revealing of our true nature. This revelation had a moment of beginning in the context of a life, but the revelation itself is revealed to have always existed, in everyone.

So, the silence lives in all and is seen in some, and yet both seem to have a lot to say about it. The seers expound and the seekers do as well, agreeing or disagreeing depending on what they know or what they’ve chosen to believe about the truth.

And the seers either react, or not. How they react is a reflection of that mechanism of personality, that voice of the silence. That particular psychological fingerprint created by the conditioning conditions of the world.

There may be little or no identification with it, but it’s still there, enabling everything that goes on here.

Those who see the silence may go on trying to describe it as an experience. It’s all, yet keys are being pressed, the tv is being heard, and relief is being felt after having finished the taxes. These are all things happening to a person, not the silence. But the silence is right here as this person.

In effect, these words seemingly spring from nothing, but always through the scrim of the life that has been etched here.

Monday, May 26, 2003

Some folk make it their hobby to collect spiritual “experiences”. They go from satsang to satsang, intent on absorbing whichever master’s ‘transmission’ they are visiting. If they are sufficently dazzled by the show, they will leave happy and believing that something was transferred. That’s what keeps them coming back, their belief that they are getting ‘something’ by way of magical transmission.

It’s fairly common for satsangis to have various kinds of experiences in the presence of someone they believe to be a master. Just attend any big-time guru’s satsang to see this in action. Of those people who come in the hopes of getting an experience, most usually leave happy. Never mind that they created their own experience, with the guru being a proxy for God but with their imagination doing the actual work behind their backs. Because these experiences provide comfort in the form of a belief in one’s own spiritual advancement and one’s specialness for being blessed by the guru, they become collectables for the satsang junkie.

But whether from truly on high or as a self-suggested fantasy, almost any advaitic sage would advise the student to ignore these experiences if and when they occur. Despite their sometime seemingly cosmic proportions, these experiences are only that much more Maya, and no different than any other experience or phenomena. They are impermanent, so therefore meaningless in any ultimate sense, despite how ultimate they may have made one feel.

This isn’t to say that there isn’t valuable information to be gleaned from such experiences, nor to say that these experiences are not indicative of something happening in the way of personal transformation. But forming an attachment to these experiences is a kind of spiritual morbidity. These ideas of power and knowledge can easily form the basis of an insidious new identity, one that is protected by the idea that it isn’t there to begin with, and one that becomes very difficult to get rid of once it has set in.

Monday, January 12, 2004

Theosophical nonsense is a term which describes spiritual ideology which resorts to any of the following:

•Astral travel
•Life after death
•Ascended masters
•Heavenly hierarchies
•Extraordinary abilities
•Miraculous happenings

Whether or not any of these things happen, all of them are not one bit closer to the truth than you are right now. Not one little bit.

Even if it were all true exactly as Bailey described it, it would still be not one eeny, tiny little bit closer to the truth.

All the hulabaloo about life after death, angels who guide us, gurus who enlighten with a look, or one’s burgeoning ‘spiritual’ abilities only distract from the immediate truth of your own being.

It’s like we need to walk around the world to find out what we were looking for was right under our own bed. The transdimensional stuff just makes this walk that much longer, whether or not any of it is actually true.

Saturday, January 17, 2004

I’ve been wrestling with a question this morning: Who is the one who likes to have a good time?

We are truly, as we are, uninvolved in anything that happens in the ‘real world.’ It’s a scary thought to that part of our programming that operates under an assumption of control.

It’s that assumption of control, the idea that we are ‘doers’ doing things, that seems the crux of the route. That idea of being a doer doesn’t occlude the truth as much as distract from it.

We are so fascinated with being ourselves that we can’t look around the “me” to see the truth of our own being which has always been right there, all along the way.

The “me” show keeps playing, whether or not ‘this’ is known. But I’m not writing the script anymore. In fact, I never did, despite the memories which seem to suggest otherwise.

Thursday, February 26, 2004

It occurred to me that thinking of who as a quantity is a measure of realization’s effect on a life.

Before awakening, we are our who exclusively. When we decide to embark on a spiritual journey to find ourselves, we start out by adding to this who, sometimes greatly adding to it, with the materials we come across while being spiritual people.

As far as I can tell, much of spirituality seems to only add to who levels. Sure, it may turn you into a bliss bunny, and that’s certainly good consolation for some. But being a bliss bunny is only a different color of who. Many, many people get stuck right here. If they can feel bliss around their guru, they think they’re getting “it”. These folk spend their lives chasing experience, never really seeing the truth that lay just beyond, in plain view, the whole time they were looking for it.

There was just too much spiritual who in the way.

In order to reduce your who, you’ve got to turn your mind back on itself, and attempt to learn as much about your process as possible, and do so fearlessly. You’ve got to become an eater of who, processing the landscape of emotional complexes through your awareness of them. You’ve got to dive into your most fearsome nightmares. That is the only way to truly know yourself and get access to your deepest who.

And perhaps after a few decades or so, you’ll suddenly see that you are not this who at all. You’ll understand in a very clear and very real way, that you are ‘this’.

But, that doesn’t suddenly drain the who out of the mind. The who which was still there sticks around, and changes gradually in the awareness of ‘this’. This is what I mean about levels of who indicating the effect that realization has had on a life.

So start eating your who, slowly at first. A therapist can be really helpful here, but you should probably make an effort to find a good one. I’d recommend one trained at a transpersonal psych college. That’s no guarantee of quality, but at least they’ll be able to get their heads around your spiritual trip.

Draining yourself of your who can be a tricky business, so an advisor of some sorts can be a real blessing. But those who are sincere in their who eating would seem to have a better shot at seeing through the who to the truth which lies directly underneath, the truth of our being only ‘this’.

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Dear Mokshayana.

I’m saddened, but not surprised by your decision to censor my writing on OriginalMind.

In my life as a devotee and a jnani, I’ve found that a great deal of spiritual culture only exists to perpetuate itself, its usefulness long gone by in the march of time and cultural evolution.

Holding on to this dead wood has the effect of stunting the spiritual growth of literally millions of souls on this earth.

As a result, these millions wait for an understanding that will not come, as their minds are infected with a template that it just cannot fit into.

You are serving to perpetuate this set of occluding expectations about self-realization, and so I would submit to you that you are doing much more harm than the good works you may believe yourself to be doing.

But, it’s not unusual to expect your devotees to abandon their capacity for critical thinking in order to get into line behind your own beliefs. These are the beginnings of the socio-dynamics of a religious cult.

I’m sorry that you apparently feel your authority called into question by my questioning, rather than deciding to engage in a public discussion of the issues that were raised.

That would be the sign of a true spiritual leader in my eyes. You must know that Swamiji himself would have faced me down and gone round after round with me until a synthesis was arrived at.

It’s too bad his spirit does not preside on your list.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

Brahman is indivisible, and Atman is Brahman. Atman is not separated from Brahman to become a “drop,” it is the whole Brahman known to an individual life.

There was never any separation. There is only apparent separation. It’s a mirage, not a difference in location.

Seeing ourselves as these “drops” puts a layer of symbolic thinking between personal and impersonal awareness, keeping personal from opening up to see what’s always been present, the impersonal truth.

Breaking the bonds and opening awareness would be the trick. I guess that’s what spiritual practice is about. However, even with those bonds we think need breaking, we are always right here, in front of our noses, as Brahman.

--

--

Jody Radzik

Spiritual enlightenment is biological: attention binds to simple awareness resulting in the recognition of personal identity in that aconceptuality.