How did the nondual become dual? What was the first duality?

[communitybuilder]

My mind has been pretty obsessed with these questions for a few months now: How did the original nondual substrate become dual? What was the first duality? And perhaps most importantly, what IS the stuff that makes up the dividing lines / boundaries between all things/dualities?

It seems like there are a bunch of blinders/coverings in my experience that hide the totality of my big Self from my small self. But what in the world are those blinders/coverings made out of? Are they made out of something that isn't the original nondual substrate? Well that doesn't make much sense if everything came from this singular nondual substrate that is literally everything/nothing/infinity. Are the blinders/coverings made out of the nondual substrate? Well that seems circular because how is the nondual substrate able to create a contrast/duality by using only nondual substrate?

Not sure if this makes sense, but just wanted to put this out there to see if anyone can point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance!

[The Buddha]

When did the coin divide in two faces?

Understanding Nonduality by duality or nonduality will never work. Your question only has sense from the dual perspective, yet u must understand the nondual, after that you will see that they are two faces of the same coin (as up and down), then Nondual understanding will arise in you.

[Tim R]

@communitybuilder

Non-Duality never became dual. Duality is at root: an illusion. The dividing lines are made of thought. But they are not really there

A while back I made a post about those "dividing lines", this might help you:

7 minutes ago, communitybuilder said:

Well that seems circular because how is the nondual substrate able to create a contrast/duality by using only nondual substrate?

Very good, you're starting to get the point!!

[Nahm]

5 hours ago, communitybuilder said:

...how is the nondual substrate able to create a contrast/duality by using only nondual substrate?

Nondual means not two. A substrate and something else would be two. 

5 hours ago, communitybuilder said:

Not sure if this makes sense, but just wanted to put this out there to see if anyone can point me in the right direction. Thanks in advance!

Meditation. 

[VeganAwake]

@communitybuilder Check out these videos ❤

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by VeganAwake

[gettoefl]

god was bored one day and wanted play mates so he invented mind, now what was one can be imagined as two ... mind only does one thing, makes two from one ... with mind, you're either good and on my team or bad and i'm staying clear of you

 

 

[snowyowl]

Duality  imo started as part of the evolutionary process ie the survival strategy. When I begin to see myself as in some way separate then there's something to defend from takeover by that which isn't me. Survival depends on eating some other organism also trying to survive, and avoid being eaten in turn. So this could well predate thought, as we understand it, by a long time, from when organisms first started to defend and attack, eat or be eaten. Competition for food and sex, felt subjectively as will. 

Edited April 12, 2021 by snowyowl

[Moksha]

How can there be a "first duality" when ultimately, time and sequentiality are an illusion?

Ultimate Consciousness is the uncaused cause. It is outside of time and space. It never became dual, but it creates the illusion of duality, within itself. Duality is nothing more than the changeless, creating the story of change.

My advice: don't try to understand it. It is called the Mystery for a reason. It is beyond the capacity of the human mind to comprehend it. Obsessing over it is binding yourself to the hamster wheel of intellectualization, which will never free you from the conceptual cage.

The only way to be free from the cage is to realize that there is no cage, and indeed there is no "you" within the cage; ultimately all separation arises from the imagination of Consciousness.

[WaveInTheOcean]

"How did the nondual become dual?" is a good question. The answer is profound.

The answer is basically that it never did :-) The non-dual ( = God = Reality = Love = You = I = Infinite Consciousness = This! = The Now) is always non-dual. It can't be anything else than be itself, i.e. non-dual.

Now, duality -- good, evil, light, dark, pain, joy, all that jazz -- is just imagination. That's the best answer I can give you. And the source of that imagination is You as God as Love. God is Infinite Love-Imagination, you could say.

What creates the apparant duality is absolutely speaking you as God.

On a more relative level, it's the ego-body-mind's job of putting an overlay of concepts (dualities) onto the world. Try to notice how you constantly, rather unconsciously does that. You label everything in your experience. It happens mostly unconsciously. Has to do with survival. A tiger has to be seen as 'bad' cos it can kill you, while a dog can be seen as 'good' cos it can help you mind magic mushrooms:> It's all just Love/God tho.

[Vittorio]

3 hours ago, WaveInTheOcean said:

"How did the nondual become dual?" is a good question. The answer is profound.

The answer is basically that it never did :-) The non-dual ( = God = Reality = Love = You = I = Infinite Consciousness = This! = The Now) is always non-dual. It can't be anything else than be itself, i.e. non-dual.

Now, duality -- good, evil, light, dark, pain, joy, all that jazz -- is just imagination. That's the best answer I can give you. And the source of that imagination is You as God as Love. God is Infinite Love-Imagination, you could say.

What creates the apparant duality is absolutely speaking you as God.

On a more relative level, it's the ego-body-mind's job of putting an overlay of concepts (dualities) onto the world. Try to notice how you constantly, rather unconsciously does that. You label everything in your experience. It happens mostly unconsciously. Has to do with survival. A tiger has to be seen as 'bad' cos it can kill you, while a dog can be seen as 'good' cos it can help you mind magic mushrooms:> It's all just Love/God tho.

I will disagree to all of your posts, because I think there is actually a first duality.

This is something I discovered during a trip.

The first duality lies in the intrinsec form of consciousness.

Consciousness is both void (empty) and full. 

The empty is the space that contains the full.

But, for the void to exist, there must be an observer to feel it.

And for an observer to exist, there must be a void (a space) in which he is contained.

The Void and the Source are the same thing (Conscoousness), but there are two aspects of it, the void and the full part.

There cannot be any creation without a creator. This is why there must be something inside nothing, otherwise a Void cannot creare anything because there is noone to create anything.

This means that the Void and the Source (the living entity "I") are both the first duality it ever existed. There is nothing more primordial to it.

This means that our universe is dual already in its composition and it couldn't be otherwise.

How it all happened? There is no processo afaik, it just happened. 

Edited April 13, 2021 by Vittorio

[erik8lrl]

The first duality is the duality between duality and nonduality. Which is an infinite strange loop that sits at the root of all causality in existence. 

Edited April 13, 2021 by erik8lrl

[Adamq8]

Desire for twoness. 

Actualized by thinking. 

One infinite eternal unchanging immortal imagines the opposite, finite time change mortal.

But it is an illusion, the senses decieves us.

The one is looking through the eyes.

[WaveInTheOcean]

6 hours ago, Vittorio said:

I will disagree to all of your posts, because I think there is actually a first duality.

This is something I discovered during a trip.

The first duality lies in the intrinsec form of consciousness.

Consciousness is both void (empty) and full. 

The empty is the space that contains the full.

But, for the void to exist, there must be an observer to feel it.

And for an observer to exist, there must be a void (a space) in which he is contained.

The Void and the Source are the same thing (Conscoousness), but there are two aspects of it, the void and the full part.

There cannot be any creation without a creator. This is why there must be something inside nothing, otherwise a Void cannot creare anything because there is noone to create anything.

This means that the Void and the Source (the living entity "I") are both the first duality it ever existed. There is nothing more primordial to it.

This means that our universe is dual already in its composition and it couldn't be otherwise.

How it all happened? There is no processo afaik, it just happened. 

Hehe it seems to me we actually kind of agree.

Yes, you could say two opposites (i.e. hate, love, or consciousness, physical, nothingness, something, etc) are two aspects of the same thing, i.e. "IT"/Source/GOD/LOVE/The Dao That Can't Be Spoken!:-)

What can I say: reality is 'dual-non-dual'. Words are just pointers ?, remember that.

Not the Truth. Not the actual thing.

Direct experience is needed.

Pointers are fine tho.

Reality is *smashes a gong* and we will not give it a name;)

[JosephKnecht]

Self Vs. Not Self.

[allislove]

@communitybuilder

It seems like there are dualities, there is only non duality. Analogy would be, it seems like Santa Claus is real, it's not. Duality is non dual, non duality is dual, ?.

You are already that, just do not merge with thinking that you are a separated person in the world. You are the whole world.

[Nahm]

@communitybuilder

There isn’t a ‘first duality’. First & last are duality (thoughts). Thoughts appear, yes? Duality is an appearance. Inspect for what there is in direct experience, which there is not an opposite of. Then you’ve found a thought, which is dual, but which points to that which is not.