To What End?
It would be of value to determine to what end our human life is served by the understanding of Advaita. Once having started the enquiry, or the thinking into the subjects presented in writings on nondualism it becomes ever so obvious that we have been perceiving and thinking in a way that is not really proper or correct. We find that our capacity for correct and errorless discrimination in our perceptions is not as good as we might wish it to be. But the value of understanding Advaita can easily be known by a little bit of enquiry into what delusion is and how deeply each of us is submerged in it. Most persons will not be able to discriminatively determine the aspects and details of their own delusion because they have not studied or reflected or enquired so as to develop the art of introspection. When somebody sees the truth about their own delusion and ignorance then there is a possibility to find that-which-is and understand it in the absence of the polluting factors of that-which-is-not.
There are some meditation practioners, contemplatives and philosophers who will have realized they have and do accumulate habitual mental patterns, the energies of the pervasive ego-notion. These patterns eventuate into thought process structures which can become serious obstructions and hindrances to the attainment of certainty regarding the fact of Advaita. Lack of certainty causes the contemplative practitioner to remain enmeshed and entangled in a subtle disharmony, in a subtle imprisonment which is a self-sustaining feedback loop of propensities that foster more energies that prevent the recognition of the way things really are. The insight that penetrates into the truth gets blocked by the tendencies of the habitual mind and this can generate an even more dense and obstructive hindrance. This is the illness to which the medicine of Advaita can be applied. Nondual apperception is that pure and present state of consciousness that can dis-integrate wrong views and give certainty and clarity of illumined understanding. This is how our human life is served by knowing Advaita.
On the other side of the coin, what may be the situation encountered as a result of not understanding Advaita? First of all, there will continue a persistent lack of confidence as to what is really going on in this existence. The knowing of the fact of nonduality is the cure for uncertainty in this matter. Throughout life we have made and continue to make our many plans and when we get a little older and a little wiser we see the whole thing as like a dream, lasting no longer than a dream, and so most of our motivations have been directed toward a lot of pointless preparations and schemes to acquire security and comfort that, at best, are questionable and, at worst, are temporary and fleeting. Trying to adopt what is wholesome and beneficial and to avoid what is unwholesome or even evil is not much of an assurance that disaster or death will not visit today or day after tomorrow. Whomsoever can understand nonduality will transcend uncertainty and will then live beyond most of the despair and frustration so prevalent in our materialistic and hedonistic world.
