Non-Duality and the Problem of the Ego

According to non-dual therapists, the dualistic attitude to life is naturally stressful. The ego, i.e. the conviction that one is a self-standing individual, separate from the outside world, is physically experienced as a contraction of the muscles, resulting in tense breathing, tension in the chest, in the throat, at the back of the head and around the eyes. In the dualistic attitude to life, we literally contract our bodies into individual, separate units, standing over against an – at best indifferent, at worst hostile – outside world. A world in which we have to struggle in order to maintain and assert ourselves.

Non-duality as ultimate relaxation
This feeling of contraction into a separate individual begins when we are still very young and builds up as tension and stress throughout the rest of our lives. No wonder the phenomenon of burnout takes on epidemic proportions in our hyper-individualistic and competitive societies! In the experience of non-duality, however, all this stress disappears, as we then experience ourselves as one with the world. The sense of separation simply falls away. Hence the great therapeutic value of non-duality.

In the non-dual experience, the sense of separation between “me” and “not-me” disappears, and so the restless urge to be an ego, a self-standing individual, is abandoned. In the non-dual experience, the ego experiences its own dissolution in the Cosmic Whole, dissolving like a lump of sugar in a hot cup of tea. This feeling of letting go is experienced physically and emotionally as a great relaxation. The dissolving ego heaves a great sigh of relief, similar to the last breath of a dying person: “It’s over...”

With this difference, of course, that you don’t really die. On the contrary, you are reborn into a liberated state, freed from the suffering inherent in the dualistic attitude to life. In the non-dual experience, one returns to the state of cosmic unity we all experienced as babies, albeit that one now experiences this unity consciously, as an adult. We become ‘self-conscious babies’, as it were.

The oceanic feeling
That feeling of absolute oneness with your mother, while you were still in the womb, and later, after your birth, the feeling of being carried in the arms of your parents, that feeling of total safety and surrender, of undivided unity and love, what Freud called the “oceanic feeling” and described as a “sense of oneness with the universe” – that primordial feeling is what we lose when we grow up and internalize the dualistic attitude to life, thereby becoming ego’s.

We then learn to see ourselves as separate individuals, each with his / her own supposedly free will and moral responsibilities. We start to see ourselves as self-standing individuals who must meet the dualistic expectations of society. In this way, we lose the primordial bliss of cosmic unity we experienced as babies. But we never lose the memory of that bliss. And that, in short, is why we suffer – in the sense of “suffering” that plays such a central role in Eastern spirituality. We suffer because, above all else, we want to return to that original state of blissful oneness and because – in the dualistic attitude to life – we can never have that bliss again. So we want the impossible. That’s to say: we want the impossible as long as we think we are separate individuals.

The secret of human desire
From a non-dualistic perspective, this is the secret of human desire and the problem of the ego. Seemingly separated from the Cosmic Whole, we feel ourselves radically incomplete, radically insecure. And then we try to fill this inner emptiness by looking for something outside of ourselves, something that will make us whole again. That’s why we can’t stop buying useless things and chasing desperately after wealth and success, love and sexual pleasure, physical health and beauty...

In the dualistic attitude to life, we think: “If only I could buy that new car...”, or “If only I could find the right partner...”, or “If only I could finish my education...”, or “If only I could have that breast augmentation...”, or: “If only I could find the right guru...” – in short: “If only I could acquire that elusive something X, I would be happy, for then I would be complete, then I would be fulfilled.” But, as we all know deep down (even if we don’t like to admit it to ourselves), life simply doesn’t work that way.

The inner void left behind by the Cosmic Whole which we apparently lost as we grew into separate individuals – that void can never be filled by anything other than the Whole itself. Trying to fill it with things outside us – a nice car, a breast augmentation, social success, a loving partner, the right guru – is the same as trying to fill a sieve with water. That’s what suffering is: trying to retrieve the Whole while remaining a separate individual.

Samsara for skeptics
In this way we can understand the cycle of samsara without having to stick to the ancient Indian belief in reincarnation – a belief that many people today see as unscientific superstition. The cycle of samsara can simply be understood as the cycle of dualistic desire: any attempt to become whole again by chasing something outside ourselves will inevitably fail and will therefore revive this desire for wholeness. That’s what the cycle of samsara is: the unceasing reproduction of dualistic desire, because nothing finite and material can ultimately satisfy us.

Only the Whole can do that. Only the non-dual consciousness, where we realize our original oneness with the Whole, can stop the samsarian cycle of desire. This end to dualistic desire is Enlightenment, Awakening, the Liberation of the Suffering, or – as Buddhists say – “Nirvana” (which literally means “blown out”, like the blowing out of a flame, thus pointing to the extinction of dualistic desire).

This emphatically does not mean we become completely without will! As if from now on we are ‘perfect saints’ who no longer have desires. It is only the dualistic desire that falls away in the non-dual experience, the desire to heal ourselves, to become whole again, by seeking something outside of ourselves. That kind of desire falls away in non-dual consciousness, because we then realize we have never left the Whole in the first place! Then we are finally free to really enjoy life and all the beautiful things and people around us, because then the dualistic urge to possess is no longer felt.