The Direct Experience

The Way of Non-Duality

What is a thought made of?

What substance is a thought made of? This is a legitimate question: if something exists, and thought exists, then it is valid to ask what it is made of.

The little voice that speaks in our mind is a thought, the images, sounds, flavours, smells and sensations that appear in our dreams or in our imagination are thoughts. Well, what are thoughts made of? Observing a thought I find neither atoms, nor particles, nor electromagnetic fields, nor any other physical entity. Thoughts are not made up of a physical substance, and yet they exist.

To be able to answer this question it is necessary to verify that: "a thought is the awareness we have of that thought." That is: a thought of mine is constituted by my own awareness of that thought. A thought exists when we are aware of it. Awareness is the material and efficient cause of thought.

This discovery is not harmless, if we stop to contemplate it well we realise that it overwhelms everything, that it extends to everything. In fact, everything I observe with my senses is in fact a thought: because it exists in my mind. The perception I have of the light coming from the objects that surround me is not the physical light (the electromagnetic wave): the brain being locked inside my head is in the dark. So the light I perceive exists only in my mind, it is related to physical light but does not coincide with it. The light I perceive is therefore a thought. Similarly for sounds, flavours, odours and sensations. Even the ideas and all the conceptual abstractions that I can conceive are thoughts and as such are a manifestation of my awareness. So even the very idea of being/existing is a manifestation of my awareness, and therefore cannot exist outside of it. Everything is a thought: everything is a manifestation of my awareness or consciousness. The substance of which all things are made is consciousness. Reality is a kind of dream.

If this discovery is making you dizzy, try now to look at the environment around you thinking you are dreaming. Let this thought marinate for a while, and then choose any object and observe it contemplating that: "this object is not outside me; it appears in my awareness". At this point try to arouse a sense of gratitude or love not towards the object, but towards the vitality that allows the object to appear. At the end you will feel a slight shiver of recognition, a sense of warmth in your chest, a small burst of joy. If you can reach this state, even just for a moment, you will have experienced a small spark of enlightenment that will never leave you.

Who am I? What is the nature of reality? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the meaning of existence?

The “non-dual” understanding of reality offers enlightening and reasonable answers to these perennial questions. “Non-duality” posits that consciousness is the primary reality, while matter is merely a manifestation of consciousness, not the other way around. Aldous Huxley defined non-duality as the “perennial philosophy” because it has been discovered or glimpsed repeatedly throughout history in almost all cultures and eras.

This book provides an unexpected introduction to the perennial philosophy of non-duality through the perspective and arguments of a computational physicist. The result is particularly comprehensible, enlightening, and encouraging.

In this book, the author presents ten suggestive, convincing, and compelling analytical arguments in favor of non-duality.
These arguments are transformative.

Portal into Direct Experience

This is a book to be read again and again. I like the analytical, scientific approach of leading the reader into direct experience of the moment.