What does nonduality actually imply?

[Soul_of_Shu]

Whatever conceives ain't never been conceived.

[SanteriSatama]

Whatever conceives ain't never been conceived.

Conceiving as a form of sublation, process of escape podding from conceived?

[quant-um]

Advaita / non-dualism has two basic classical interpretations:

Advaita is one flavor of many nondualism belief systems right? It is basically substance monism from what I recall.

[SanteriSatama]

Advaita / non-dualism has two basic classical interpretations:

Advaita is one flavor of many nondualism belief systems right? It is basically substance monism from what I recall.

Advaita is Sanskrit for not-two, perhaps also without-two. Not sure about semantic range of alpha-privative in Sanskrit, which is Greek to me .

But yes, Advaita Vedanta ("Brahman=atman") is basically idealist substance monism. Buddhist concept anatman is very short-hand for rather complex process philosophy.

[Peter Jones]

Hello!

First time poster, long time metaphysical journeyer, and exploring the depths of nonduality/ontology/realism.

I have a few questions regarding what we can actually know about nonduality.

As a preface, I currently see nondualism as a category of belief systems (monism, nihilism, etc) and nonduality as the concept itself of not-dual.

Nondualism is not a belief system. It may be for us, for few of us can say we truly know rather than believe, but it is verifiable in experience and requires no beliefs. Also, it is unlike the other 'isms' you mention in that it is not logically absurd, and as a formal philosophy it is unique in this respect.

Does nonduality imply the absolute/ineffable is all their is? Aka...does it imply duality "this OR that" doesn't exist and there is only that which we cannot know or experience its true nature?

It states that there are not two things, thus endorsing 'Unity' and the Oneness of consciousness. Note that Reality and Consciousness would be the same phenomenon. We would be able to 'know' the ineffable but only by identity, which is to say by becoming. As this means the collapse of the knower-known distinction this is not usually called 'knowing' but, rather, 'being'. Sometimes it is said there is nothing to know, since nothing would really exist or ever really happen, but we can know this.

Or...does nonduality imply the absence of absoluteness...aka "this AND that" both exist? And does that also tag along with the "which we cannot know?"

Definitely not. It is an absolute and fundamental doctrine. It is not postmodernism or an appeal to ignorance.

Or even yet, does it imply neither and is still open for debate?

There is no debate about what it states,. It states that for binary metaphysical questions the answers are not one or the other, both or neither. This is not obfuscation. It is just the way things are. The answers require a transcendence of the questions.

Lastly, even if we say nonduality exists or doesn't exist...or it is this OR that...however we add qualia to it, does it now not become nondual, and therefore we can only know/experience/talk about duality, and we are 100% conflating nonduality by trying to theorize about it? If so, doesn't that make the entire subject really pointless...like it ends up looking at itself like...well we proved that we can't prove anything!

This para is full of misunderstandings and difficult to disentangle. It is actually quite easy to prove nonduality in logic. For instance, the failure of Western philosophy is only explicable if Reality is nondual and a Unity.

Sorry if these are noob questions to this forum...I don't know the level at which ye speak/theorize yet or if these have already been answered

Also, please give you a reason why you believe what you do regarding my questions and not just a "no, it is actually this way" if you do comment, thanks!

Don;t worry, noob questions are nearly always the best.

My responses are based on a sound understanding of metaphysics. They are supported by experience, but there's no need to believe this.

[quant-um]

@Peter - How does one "prove" substance monism though? Isn't part of the premise of nonduality that we cannot know anything, for doing so is within duality...aka thought/feeling/senses are all in duality/illusion and cannot escape it...meaning that any "knowledge" is still an illusion.

Essentially the concept of Anekantevada...many sidedness...chaos...the ineffable...this is what I see nonduality being.

Nonduality to me is a lacking of absolutes, and substance monism is still within absolutes (this exists and this doesn't).

Substance monism to me is also able to be challenged by asking, "isn't one vs not-one still a duality?"

[quant-um]

I found a better word than Anekantavada...Pyrrhonism!

[Eugene I]

@Peter - How does one "prove" substance monism though? Isn't part of the premise of nonduality that we cannot know anything, for doing so is within duality...aka thought/feeling/senses are all in duality/illusion and cannot escape it...meaning that any "knowledge" is still an illusion.

Essentially the concept of Anekantevada...many sidedness...chaos...the ineffable...this is what I see nonduality being.

Nonduality to me is a lacking of absolutes, and substance monism is still within absolutes (this exists and this doesn't).

Substance monism to me is also able to be challenged by asking, "isn't one vs not-one still a duality?"

I would agree with you. Substance monism is a possible but not the only variant of non-dualism. Even within the Advaita tradition there is a non-monistic approach, which can be described as "not-two, not-one". Similar approach it taken in many Buddhist schools (Zen for example). Basically, this approach is mostly experiential and phenomenalistic, it finds both dualistic and monistic perception and interpretation of the world erroneous. In such approach the reality is ineffable and fits into neither monistic, not dualistic interpretation, both of which are considered to be quite primitive and inadequate cognitive schemes.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I also like the mobius strip analogy, whereby initially there can be the apparency of two sides, but further along in the process of investigation, reveals there to be only one side.

[Peter Jones]

@Peter - How does one "prove" substance monism though? Isn't part of the premise of nonduality that we cannot know anything, for doing so is within duality...aka thought/feeling/senses are all in duality/illusion and cannot escape it...meaning that any "knowledge" is still an illusion.

Essentially the concept of Anekantevada...many sidedness...chaos...the ineffable...this is what I see nonduality being.

Nonduality to me is a lacking of absolutes, and substance monism is still within absolutes (this exists and this doesn't).

Substance monism to me is also able to be challenged by asking, "isn't one vs not-one still a duality?"

Advaita is not substance monism. It states there is no such thing as substance.

The knowledge question is tricky. What you say seems roughly right but in non-dualism there are always two truths, so there is another way of looking at this. In a sense, as Aurobindo and the Upanishads tell us, all knowledge that can be known is within our grasp. But in another deeper sense there would be no knowledge apart from being.

I'm not sure what you mean by saying nonduality is a lack of absolutes. It is absolute in the sense that it is fundamental, and it makes many absolute statements about the world. But it states that nothing really exists or ever happens, so denies the absoluteness of ordinary exsstence and distinguishable 'things'.

As you say, 'One' versus 'not-one' is a duality, This is why both are denied by advaita. The phrase 'not-two' is a very deliberate avoidance of 'One'. The word 'One' in mysticism is non-numerical .It is therefore a mistake to think of it as monism. If it was monism it would not be called nondualism or advaita. It is more like monism than dualism, so perhaps monism could be considered a first approximation.