The basic ontology we find in Nisargadatta’s late teaching consists of (i) the personality (or jiva or bodymind or body-identity) at the lowest level, of (ii) I Amness (or Beingness or Knowingness) at the second level, and of (iii) the Absolute state (or Parabrahman or the real, etc.) at the highest level. The point of sadhana is to (a) get beyond the bodymind level, to (b) abide as I Amness, and to (c) ultimately get absorbed into the Absolute.

While I’m enamored with Nisargadatta’s teaching, I’d like, in the spirit of friendliness, to point to a thing or two that could potentially be misleading. It stems both from his negative way teaching and from his terminological usage.

Nisargadatta’s emphasis on the negative way–on negating X in order to “arrive at” the higher state Y–can lead to a couple of errors in terms of one’s sadhana. One is that there’s still a presumption that a certain state like I Amness is ontologically different from that of the personality. Therefore, it can feel as if one is “getting away from” the personality and is thus “arriving at” or “coming to” a totally different sort of thing known as I Amness. Indeed, it can seem as if there are “genuine skips” between personhood and I Amness.

The above mistake can lead, unwittingly so, to attachments and aversions just because the ontology can seem to be “multiplying” things. That is, what the nondual teaching is actually saying is that there is only one Reality. Since that’s the case, there can’t be more than one. But since there can’t be more than one, then the belief that I Am is somehow ontologically different from personhood is, in fact, a significant misunderstanding inasmuch as it can seem as if there are two different things. In fact, I Amness (as I’ll explore tomorrow) is simply personhood without a certain limitation or qualification. And I Alone (the Ultimate) is simply I Amness without any qualifications whatsoever.

I alluded, in the paragraph above, to attachments and aversions: you can become attached to I Amness and develop an aversion to personhood. Then you can “keep trying to” get back to I Amness while feeling as if the “practice isn’t deep enough” if there’s an engrossment in personhood. You can worry about “getting stuck” in your practice and about “not making adequate progress” in your practice. But all these are based, I’d argue, on a mistaken ontology. If I is the only “thing” that exists, then I need only to understand how to “experience out” (call this “concretion”) and how to “involute” (or return to Myself Alone). It’s as if I slide out, I breathe out and as if I slide back, I breathe in.

Because the use of different terms can mistakenly imply that we’re dealing with different things and because the negative way can make it seem as if negating X yields some different thing Y, I think it makes the most sense to set out a seamless ontology: what I’ll term a “nondual Tantric ontology of continuity.” Such an ontology will spell out how every single “level” involves no skips at all. In fact, the only Reality in question is that of the I, and that Reality is totally smooth.

Until tomorrow, then.