There’s an odd assumption often enough found in contemporary nondual spiritual circles, and it is that intellectual knowledge of the metaphysical doctrine of nonduality is either “obvious” or “irrelevant.” Both options strike me as naive, not to say also self-defeating.

It is anything but obvious that, as the Chandogya Upanishad declares, “All this, indeed, is Brahman.” Because it’s not obvious (for doesn’t dualistic consciousness ordinarily hold sway?), the proper use of the intellect is very much in order. And this is good news, since Advaita Vedanta in particular leaves ample room for intellectual inquiry. Allow me to elaborate.

Perhaps one of the most parsimonious and powerful teaching statements is this: “Awareness is not an object.” What does this really mean? Well, many things. Perhaps too simply put, the claim is that awareness is not anything perceivable or conceivable. That is, it’s neither a perception nor a sensation perception nor a concept.

But there’s more: since it’s not a sense object, it can’t be apprehended as if it were a sight, a sound, a texture, etc., despite countless attempts by practitioners to do so (on this point, see, e.g., “the objectification approach” roundly critiqued in Zen). The intellectual knowledge that awareness cannot be any sense object sets up the deeper, experiential inquiry that can thus ensue.

Furthermore, because awareness is not a sensation, it’s just not possible for it to be a physical body. Therefore, all attempts to spatialize awareness (e.g., the wrong view that awareness is “uniquely inside” the body) or to temporalize awareness (e.g., the other wrong view that awareness is an I that’s tied to “a story of ‘my’ life”) are mistaken. Again, the doctrine makes possible the specificatinos for the nondual, experiential inquiry. For instance, “What is this that, beyond name and form, is present right now ‘in’ this sensation but is ‘beneath’ and thus not reducible to this sensation?”)

Finally, awareness, not being a concept, cannot be inferred through the use of lower reason. Hence, awareness is not discoverable through a logical demonstration or proof of any kind. You can’t “think it” or “reason your way to it,” however hard or however often you try.

If the above is intellectually understood, then many habitual mind-generated errors can–often slowly and methodically–be dispensed with.

While there’s a lot more juice to squeeze from “Awareness is not an object,” let’s pass on to the second common statement: intellectual knowledge is irrelevant. This, in fact, is a sloppy misreading of all the nondual traditions–and I’m most familiar with Advaita Vedanta, next with Zen–that call out mere book learning.

There’s a fallacy, however, when modern Westerners brush aside intellectual knowledge out of hubris. Never did Zen say that one should never study, for instance, The Diamond Sutra. It just said that such, alone, is no substitute for an experiential investigation of one’s true nature. Moreover, the ancients were right to criticize those who strutted around with mere “book learning Zen” or “book learning Advaita Vedanta” on the grounds that all those who had succumbed to this temptation were not only puffed up with pride but also much less open to opening their hearts. The strutters, it’s true, were a hopeless case.

The nondual teaching can’t be grasped or taught apart from the historical moment in which one lives. Our time, I submit, calls for an appropriate amount of intellectual rigor, combined with honesty and humility. Far from being irrelevant, needless, or “beside the point,” a keen interest in understanding “enough” of the niceties of the metaphysical doctrine of nonduality evinces a fervor and, indeed, a willingness (as my Zen would have seen) to “go all the way.” By “going all the way” is meant the experiential knowing of one’s true, and only, nature. At the very least, intellectual knowledge tells you to stop looking in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways. At its best, the intellect, having “done its work,” graciously falls on the sword, surrendering to the direct apperception of nondual truth.