Pseudo Dualism
What is usually taken as normal perception and cognition is, in fact, a state of false understanding in which nearly everyone abides constantly when they fail to inspect their mental mechanisms and recognize the truth of things as they really are. Enlightening texts such as the Heart Sutra always suggest inspection and analysis of our inner and outer worlds, and awakening to the real nondual situation. Even the “inner” and the “outer” are mere conceptual designations and are not two in reality because dharma cannot be one-sided. If one side is denied then the other side is automatically affirmed and if the opposite choice is taken then the opposite is the result. This is the way the mind habitually splits one reality into a relative pseudo-dualism.
But a pseudo-dualism is no actuality; anything pseudo is false, and a false dualism is always as-it-is, false, as all dualisms are always false, not real at all. Dualism is a perspective adopted by a mind endowed with accumulated perceptive filters tainted with ignorance and false knowledge. Dualism does not actually exist anywhere or at any time, just because all it is is a false idea, a false perspective, and such a perspective comes to be believed as fact when the untrained mind operates in its habitual tendency to dichotomize or split parts of reality into opposing factions. If there is an absence of the dichotomizing and falsely discriminating mental dysfunction then there is also the corresponding absence of the false view of duality. This kind of delusion is common in almost everyone but can be eliminated by simple recognition of the dichotomizing conceptual error. Just recognizing what mind is doing in its mechanical processes can deconstruct the errant mental tendencies. Dualism is then seen truly as only conceptual, only a product of the diffused mind.
In the approach to real liberation we denominate as Advaitayana Yoga this diffused mind becomes more and more clear and undiffused, more of an efficient tool useable for meaningful thinking in an active attentiveness instead of in the usual passive and daydreaming modus. Just by being more and more attentive to what the mind keeps habitually doing is the effort required. A lot of skills will be developed as a result of this kind of effort such as persistence, control of attention, ability to focus powerfully and unremittingly, the capacity to escape entanglements of conditioned reactivity, capacity for intelligent response instead of the old reactive habits, determined thought recognition of what really is, Self-discovery, volitionless living, depth perspective, freedom, and a whole lot of laughs while re-emerging back into Real Reality.
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