The Invention of Separateness

Understanding nondualism and ego.

What is the basis of numbers? Before humans developed complex mathematics, we probably started with simple counting, the way each of us does as a child. The beginning of counting is just to single something out as a specific object, pointing to it and distinguishing it as an entity. So, perhaps — “I want that apple.” Thus is born the number “1.”

As a young child, I first learned math at a Montessori school. The Montessori approach to early mathematics is very concrete. We used abacuses and counting beads (beads in groupings of numbers such as 1, 5, 10, and 100 that can be put next to each other, or taken away, to demonstrate basic arithmetic) to understand numbers in a tangible and practical way. There is philosophical significance in such an introduction to mathematics. After starting there, as you grow and study more sophisticated mathematics, you are likely to unconsciously remember the concrete meaning of numbers. All of the abstraction of complex math, such as calculus, has its root in the rudimentary designation of distinct objects, like beads.

But that act of designation is artificial. It is a practical contrivance. For example, we could point to an abacus and call it “1.” One abacus. Or we could point an abacus to mean a section of individual beads, and come up with “23” (perhaps there are twenty-three beads in that section). So the same pointing could mean either “1” or “23.” To come up with any number, we need to decide a frame of reference. We need an idea of what it is we are counting. We need to point to an apple, or an abacus, or a bead, and consider it distinct: separate from everything around it. That makes practical sense — it’s how we communicate and operate in a physical world. But it doesn’t have real meaning.

This is easier to observe with an irregular, organic object such as a tree. So we point to a tree and say “one tree.” But is it “one tree,” or a fraction of a forest? And how many branches does it have? We begin to count, and eventually run into some trouble. Does this nub count as a branch? How about this branch that forks at the very tip — does it count as two branches, or one? Counting requires distinct classification, and while classification has practical meaning (it would be impossible to trade without distinguishing apples from oranges), it’s just an artificial overlay we give the world for the purpose of communication. Numbers cannot grasp the real world. It is better to say that they caress it. We invent them from essentially arbitrary classification (such as a gender binary), and then we proceed as though the distinct entities that we’ve made up are real. This is fine for practical purposes (such abstraction of reality and calculation obviously serves in building bridges and technology), but it is problematic when we truly believe that our imaginary categories or practical distinctions are real.

So if numbers and distinctions are not ultimately real, then what is? Before a child points to a specific “object” (the word “object” itself implies an arbitrary classification) and singles it out, there are only qualitative perceptions in space. Perhaps color, sound, smells, and movement. There is not “one” or “two,” or even “none.” There simply is, without distinction.

In the same way, the notion of “zero” requires some initial designation of quantity. Again, in space without distinction, we don’t have “one,” or “two,” or even “nothing” or “everything.” There is just quality without quantity. So to come up with zero, we need to choose a distinct focus: “one apple.” Now, if that “apple” (that we ourselves have contrived as a distinct object) is taken away, we have “zero.” Zero apples. Suddenly, we’re left with nothing.

And yet we only have zero in an imaginary sense. We contrived the apple as our focus, and we could just as well stop doing so. If we stop looking for “an apple,” disengaging from our invented mental overlay and returning to simple, qualitative reality, suddenly we realize that “zero,” or “nothing,” was our own creation. To have “nothing,” you need to arbitrarily distinguish “something.” Beneath that made-up mental overlay, everything simply is.

This is the meaning of nondualism. Really, “nondualism” is not a complicated concept at all. It is perhaps the simplest concept that could exist, as it points to reality without the arbitrary complexity of our confused mental frameworks. Nondualism is what’s left when we stop engaging with all the complication of our own invented categories. We have contrived a practical fantasy of separate entities, probably initially for the purpose of communication, and come to mistake that fantasy for reality.

The potentially heavy consequences of this delusion are evident in oppressive categorization such as gender binary. So some societies looked at human beings, saw general groupings of characteristics, and decided there were “two:” males and females. To notice predominant groupings of characteristics and their interplay in procreation is not inherently “bad.” It must be quite practical in an agrarian society to understand that a “stallion” and a “mare” can produce another generation of work-horses: there’s nothing inherently wrong with observing tendencies in our world and communicating them to practical effect.

The mistake arises when we believe that those categories are real rather than imagined. In the case of gender, for example, they are clearly unreal. While there may be common similar characteristics we can choose to conceptualize as binary, or a polarity of female and male, reality is never so clear-cut. Nature doesn’t express itself in boxes; boxes are our own abstractions. So we can delineate them however we want, and some cultures have recognized (and do recognize) three or more genders. Really, an honest and careful observer sees a panoply of natural form and expression — not even “boys and girls and everything in between,” but ultimately just unnameable and organic diversity. Such is the richness of reality without rigid classification and definition.

So, in our invented mental overlay, we have fragmented the world into a million pieces. Thus we have distinct genders, races, religions, classes, nationalities, families, and even causes. Thus we have a “me” who is distinct from a “you.” Of course, we are amidst real qualitative variety in this world. The universe is a wonderful display of diversity of form. And of course we can discern nations or families for practical purposes of government or planning, or parts of the body for medical study. But there is no underlying, real separation between distinct “things.” Ultimately, beyond our contrivances, reality is undivided. So, ultimately, there are not separate individuals or things, “many beings” with “many lives,” but undivided being in a qualitative diversity of form.

As we grow up, we not only develop sophisticated mental overlays, but also invest great energy and emotion into them. We experience pleasure and associate it with a mental category: we like apples. We experience pain and associate it with another category: we don’t like peanuts. That is fairly practical if we enjoy apples and are allergic to peanuts. But we also do something more complicated — we start to attribute negative emotion and energy to broader categories, and soon we are categorically averse to this race or gender. Our understanding of the world becomes, to an extent, rigid and militant rather than fluid and practical.

That is not even to say that there can’t be some underlying truth to such broad categorization. “The patriarchy,” for example, is a broad and complex category, but it points to a real burden of violence and oppression, and is to that extent a useful concept as we navigate the world and look to contain and alleviate its cruelty. But we have to remember the softness of ideas. Concepts, categories and numbers may (or may not, depending on how confused the concepts) point to reality, but they are not reality. Ironically, the very violence done by “the patriarchy” stems from confused entanglement in rigid categories, and therein a deep forgetfulness of the non-separate being of all forms. So to invest ourselves emotionally in fixed and rigid concepts of “patriarchy,” mistaking idea for signaled reality, is to become lost in like manner.

Just as we can lose ourselves in negative association, we can also lose ourselves in positive association. So you associate apples with pleasure: you like them. But if you forget the practical and soft nature of that idea, you may start to believe something more rigid: apples = pleasure. Suddenly you want as many apples as possible, all the time. When you find yourself overwhelmed by apples, you are confused. You thought you liked apples, but now you don’t.

It may seem absurd to consider losing ourselves to the temptation of such apple overload, because we’re all aware of the notion of “too much of a good thing.” And yet many of us have developed similar pleasure complexes of material desire. Rather than apples, we want all sorts of things. We want more of everything we have experienced as good. We want more, and more, and more. An organic and “soft” attraction to what we like, as a sort of inclination, is natural. We all have different qualitative preferences. Our diverse attractions themselves are part of the richness of the world. But a fixed ideology of what pleases us (much of which isn’t even accurate, as we cling to so many collective ideas from media and advertising) is out of touch with the reality of our desire, and is central to consumerism and its destructive global consequences.

We may also have developed positive mental associations around social roles, titles and degrees. Many of these overlays are collective ideas that we absorb, consciously and unconsciously, as we grow up. So we may believe that doctors, presidents, celebrities, or other “accomplished” people are categorically worthy of particular admiration. These ideas, too, of course point to some reality. In theory, capacity in such distinguished social roles implies some realized benevolent or creative virtue. But we see the artifice of this mental overlay clearly when it distracts us from (or even blinds us to) reality, rather than points to it. For example, we may have difficulty seeing a celebrity as a real person, rather than as the media image we’ve absorbed. Or we may have difficulty reconciling the placement of a person we don’t admire in a social role we identify as good (or, worse, we may fail to recognize ignoble character under the mask of a favorable role). We might find it challenging to realize that the apparent leaders of our world, or the most decorated institutions, may not be the luminaries we imagine them to be. Or, as we meet and interact with people, we might look first to form ideas of who they are rather than connect with them as they are. While most of these examples may seem mere concessions of youthful idealism, they point to the dissonance between a static conceptual framework and our simple awareness of reality.

This separative mental framework with which we have invested (and do invest) emotion and energy is often referred to in spiritual language as the “ego.” Most of us mistake these fixed constructs for ourselves and the real world around us. We see ourselves and others as an amalgamation of relatively static ideas, patterns of behavior, preferences and memories, and overlook the undivided and fluid aliveness that we really are. Even as we talk about ego, though, we have to realize that the very concept only points to our investment in mental categorization, and is (like all concepts) otherwise meaningless. In that sense, there is no “ego” — only the reality to which the concept points.

So through imprecise or confused investment in a mental overlay of the world, we have come to believe it to be relatively static, discernible and divided. But the real world is fluid, impermanent, indefinable, undivided, and much deeper than our minds. We can use numbers and concepts to point to reality, but not to truly perceive it. Reality is non-separate: it is what we, and everything, already are. Only our accumulated emotional investment in a mental overlay distracts us from this simple awareness.

So spiritual practice, and letting go of ego, is just observing with simple, full awareness. We observe the heavy categories of our minds, and let the weight of them go. We release emotional tension that we hold rigidly in our bodies, and that we mentally associate with so many categories. We breathe into the being that we are, realizing that we have always been undivided reality. So we “unlearn” and gradually release, returning to an awareness simpler than counting, simpler than “one” or “zero,” and using concepts only as practical pointers. We begin to live in the wholeness of all that is, recognizing the deep aliveness and oneness of all things moving in organic diversity, free from the burden of division.

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