Twenty-Eight Principles of True Nonduality
© Jason Shulman 2025
Twenty-Eight Principles of True Nonduality
© Jason Shulman 2025
Nonduality is often understood as an insight that resolves the sometimes uncomfortable duality of our having a separate sense of self that seems to be disconnected from the universe, and the opposite sense we also have of the basic oneness of all of creation. We experience this problem in our lives as a sense of discontentedness and a loss of a sense of meaning. The implication is that nonduality re-connects our disconnected consciousness, returns it to a higher paradigm of unity and as such, is a return home for exiles who have spent small eternities wandering in the appearance of separateness when oneness, hidden, but in plain sight, was always there.
For the most part, this view of nonduality depends upon believing that there is a prior, universal consciousness to which we can return, seeing through our illusion of separateness. The hope is that through this understanding, our lives can become more peaceful, connected, and meaningful as we live in this more fundamental state of oneness which exists as a more basic truth of existence, somehow beyond the sense of physical separation. Nonduality, from this common point of view, does the double-duty of uniting us with the universe and solving the mystery of existence itself.
This of course is so…and not so.
From my perspective, nonduality is simply a picture of the actual state of affairs and the actual state of affairs is that we are separate and united with all we see in exactly the same moment. There is no hierarchy or preference since separation and unity are two sides of the single coin of existence and, co-arising as they are, depend upon each other for their existence. Nonduality penetrates the mystery of separation and unity and shows us how both are needed to make a greater whole, a whole that true nonduality exemplifies and offers a path to actualizing in our daily life. Yet, in the same moment, even as nonduality disperses psychological and philosophical clouds of unknowing and dispenses insight, the great unknowing remains, held in the arms of nonduality like a child near its mother’s breast.
Ultimately of course, everything is connected, arising from the same source. The carbon in the star Vega in the constellation the Lyre is the same carbon in our bones and tissues. But the human miracle is also the fact that we are separate—a gift we should not spurn too quickly. We are separate but not separate-only. This separateness-only is made to be seen through as the illusion it is, but also honored as the reality it also is, the miraculous product of the universe’s ongoing creativity.
Nonduality that is truly nondual is the perspective and action that holds the fact that separateness and unity exist because of each other. There is no “prior” or sequential arising of some primary unitive state which we have abandoned and to which we need to return, but the immediate, co-dependent arising of elements that, like a stream of water and its shore, depend upon each other to make what we call a “river” which includes, of course, all the life that accrues to this dynamic, ever-changing and living system. One cannot exist without the other and any attempt to separate them comes from the egoic lens we see the world through, one in which individuality alone is the symbolic and underlying language. Because of this actual nondual unity, that includes heaven and earth, the physical world takes on an importance and centrality that the usual view of nonduality denies. Here, it says, is the home of the nondual and the home of separateness and unity, here it continues, is the vehicle in which all these miracles take place.
Several months ago, as a sort of exercise, I wrote down some twenty-eight principles of the philosophical view of A Society of Souls, our school of healing and awakening, founded some thirty-eight years ago. I wanted to see if I could articulate our understanding of nonduality in a way that captures the fact that the oneness and unity of nonduality rejects nothing as part of its body of holiness—even separateness itself and the riches that arise from the ability to hold the unique and separate within the Great Unity, makes our lives more whole, more separate and yet less apart from this Totality. In other words, the Great Uniqueness is an equal partner of this Great Oneness.
Here are these principles. I am sure as my relationship—which is another gift of the nondual view—deepens and matures beyond my seventy-eight years—will call for another version. But this is a start. The mystery always remains at the heart of existence. The nondual view deepens it, but it also gives us the ability to revel in that mystery as it brings additional color and depth to our mortal span. To the maturing soul, this is not a problem. To be settled in the mystery is to be settled in life, loving it and living it, moment by moment.
Twenty-Eight Principles of Nonduality
© Jason Shulman 2025
The universe is a single thing with an infinite number of differences.
This means that all the separate parts are part of this great unity. All identities and differences are essential to the Great Unity.
This means that our egos, which represent this separateness and are often troublesome, are essentially part of this unity and need to be healed to take their rightful place. We should not imagine they can be discarded anymore than our pulsing heart can be rejected and ourselves remain alive.
Enlightenment, which should really be called “enlightening,” as an ongoing, non-static and alive process, occurs as we awaken to our delusions which tell us we are only separate or only unified, trying with all our might to find a place that does not change. Aliveness is our ground of being and is always there.
All things arise together, co-dependently.
All things are in constant relationship and exist only in this matrix of interactivity and connectedness.
And yet, all things—including this great unity— live in impermanence.
This constant interplay between identity and the transitory nature of life, between life and death, makes our troubles and our joy.
The sum total of all these principles, when taken to heart, encourage and sustain the arising of compassion and tender-heartedness for the human condition and state of being for all of creation.
Compassion and tender-heartedness are our guiding touchstones and do not need to be “learned” since, as obstacles are healed through acceptance and love, these traits arise naturally. We will be surprised at the results of our efforts!
Compassion and tender-heartedness arise toward others. But first they must arise for ourselves as imperfect beings who, it turns out, are capable of living with this state of imperfection as an ally who brings gifts untold.
Altruism, which many spiritual traditions extol, is not an austere condition of sacrifice but is about the ability to feel pleasure for yourself and extend this desire for the pleasure of wholeness and awakening action to others, one by one. This is the healing process.
When we heal others, we heal ourselves. When we heal ourselves, we heal others.
We do not learn to love: love is an action more than it is a feeling.
We are not required to “feel” all our love: we are the manifestation of love itself. So, what is needed is the shedding of prior, limited ideas in favor of the non-judgmental seeing what is. We learn to take a chance on ourselves as we are as the path to freedom, even accepting our judgements if they are there. An awareness of our limitations and delusions is our way home.
This awakening or enlightening is ongoing and is never finished. We don’t aim to live in a castle called enlightenment where we entertain visitors who admire our erudition and spiritual attainment.
Our movement is downward, toward simple humanity and not upward, toward an imaginary realm where nothing changes, and we are safe from impermanence and death.
God, or Reality, is hidden only because we close our eyes.
It is okay to close our eyes until we are ready to open them. We must open our eyes again and again to see new things. But within each limited state, the effulgence of the light of being is complete and whole.
There is no heaven apart from hell, no nirvana apart from samsara, no absolute separate from the relative. To think otherwise is a fantasy of the unrelated ego which hopes to bypass change and uncertainty in favor of a spiritual dream. To admit this is the first and best step toward freedom.
The material plane is not separate or less than, the spiritual plane. Spirit is em-bodied in the material plane.
The brain that experiences “timeless,” and “universal consciousness,” and other spiritual dimensions and possibilities, is this physical brain that exists in the here and now.
This existence itself is the miracle of awakening. The material and the ultimate light are not different from or separate from each other but contiguous, touching, and generate each other in their simultaneous arising. All other philosophical ideations are ways of keeping the unknown at bay and, the hope of trying to keep us from change, and growth, and death itself.
Death and life are a single thing and are going on in every moment. One literally could not exist without the other, spiritually, or biologically.
To know all this is to heal our humanity, to give our individuality a home and not banish it from the highest spiritual attainment, to enter the unknowable which is at the core of the human condition, to grow tender-hearted toward our selves and our compatriots and to live an ongoing, awakening life.
Taken in its entirety, this is the path to wholeness, often talked about in hushed and sacred tones. But really, it is the lotus in the mud, the steaming coffee in the cup, the sadness and joy of human life, the ongoing footprints we make as we walk through the earth of life, made of earth ourselves, with hearts of fire, aware of the gladness of the possibilities of being alive, brave and alone, with the desire for beauty in our heart-minds and the wish to be useful in our mind-hearts.
By knowing these things, by living them, along with specific meditations and spiritual practices, all built on this foundation of sanity and true nonduality, we learn to heal others and, in that way, reduce suffering without pretending that suffering is not part of this world.
We transform into truly human beings, wonderful, imperfect, and holy, temporary manifestations of the Great On-Going, riding every emotion, every thought, every possibility, traveling with our companions into the fathomless, along this path of healing.
Thank you Jason for re-articulating this, freshly, and soul-surging as ever! Tears are flowing remembering how It’s these articulations, 7 years ago, reunited me with my humanity, my own breath flesh and bones, my sense of belonging here, as a real part of this bitter sweetly splendid world again, after losing it to the either/or nonduality that is tragically so alluring these days. Endlessly grateful 🙏💕 - Jessica Nathanson
Some things can be read. Others can only be breathed in and out as a single living and dying, awakening moment that captures and mimics the fabric of time itself, like the Northern Lights, as a separate, shimmering, impermanent continuity.
Thank you, Jason, for embracing and sharing your lifelong journey in ways that help me live better, both here and now, and as one with the stars as well. I love you. Calvin