Dear Stephen,

I believe scientific inquiry becomes shy in the face of crossing the demarcation line between method and non-method. You will surely find behavioral studies regarding the sense of spirituality and well being, but beyond that, you could hardly call it scientific literature, in my opinion. Anyway, I'm sorry if I misunderstood your question.

Sincerely,

Hércules Freitas

Hi,

historically I think you are right, but nondual awareness is scientifically testable (see Zoran Josipovic). All existent behaviour can be investigated. The nondual view is present and can be demonstrated as being so. It's not a 'holy grail'. Nondual practice is undertaken by hundreds of thousands (if not more) of meditators right now. Can't figure out why it's not on the research map.

Thanks for the input

Stephen

You might need to clarify what you mean by dual and non-dual, Stephen. These terms mean all sorts of different things in various traditions in philosophy and science. There is a massive literature on awareness that does not invoke dualism, although whether it should is another matter.

What does non-dual practice mean to you? It does not mean anything very specific to me.

I agree with @Jonathan Edwards, the phrase 'dual' is highly ambiguous and its usage is extremely diverse, both in terms of the philosophy of science and art. It is possible that you mean the dual awareness model:

Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C., Langdon, R. and Ziegler, J., 2001. DRC: a dual route cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological review, 108(1), p.204.

or the dual process model for awareness:

Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J. and Solomon, S., 1999. A dual-process model of defense against conscious and unconscious death-related thoughts: an extension of terror management theory. Psychological review, 106(4), p.835.

I assume this since you seem to be psychologist.

At the quantum level matter exists in duality, and there is no evidence in my opinion that suggests the dual nature of time, so one might see this as a dual non-dual causal relationship.

Again, you have to be specific to get a better answer.

Many thanks for the input and references,

My question relates to human consciousness and perception. Particularly how internal representations of the external world, that are not 'real' in any sense are reified to the point whereby they become experientially real.

My area of interest in compassion based meditation. Traditionally meditation offers insight into the limitations of conceptual dualism, for example how self and other are in fact inseparable. This is not intended in any metaphysical sense. How we see and experience the world has implications for our health and wellbeing.

My current research has been informed by a range of work. Most recently Zoran Josipovic (Josipovic, Z., 2016. Love and compassion meditation: a nondual perspective. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1373(1), pp.65-71)

Regards

Stephen Gene Morris

With a quick glance at some of the catalog entries at my university, I'm seeing the following titles. They appear to be more along the lines of psychotherapeutic and educational applications of "a nondual perspective," rather than research projects per se:

-- The sacred mirror: nondual wisdom & psychotherapy, by Prendergast, John J.; Fenner, Peter; Krystal, Sheila. Omega book (New York, N.Y.), 2003

-- Radical Acceptance: A Nondual Psychology Approach to Grief and Loss, by Theriault, Brian, International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 06/2012, Volume 10, Issue 3.

-- Nondual Psychotherapy and Second Stage Sexual Addictions Recovery: Transforming “Master of the Universe” Narcissism into Nondual Being, by Nixon, Gary; Theriault, Brian. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 06/2012, Volume 10, Issue 3.

-- Intercultural Philosophy and the Nondual Wisdom of ‘Basic Goodness’: Implications for Contemplative and Transformative Education, by Eppert, Claudia; Vokey, Daniel; Nguyen, Tram Truong Anh; Journal of Philosophy of Education, 05/2015, Volume 49, Issue 2.

-- Cultivating Dynamic Communion: A Nondual Perspective on Awareness in the Counseling Room, by Barton, Hugh, 2012.

-- A comparison of the theory and practice of Jungian, archetypal, and Buddhist psychology from a nondual and postmodern perspective, by McAbee, Mindy Suzanne1999.

You may be aware of the research work of Kristin Neff, who focuses on "self-compassion"; but she does so largely from a Vipassana-based starting point.

It's my personal impression that much of the present-day attention to "mindfulness" in psychology has yet to move beyond the presumption that meditative experience is a matter of an intentional "achievement." More simple, and profound, realizations entail uncovering (rather than "achieving") an always already there experiential capacity that gives rise to such things as (egoic) intention in the first place.

(As an anecdotal emblem of the latter distinction: I've sometimes had the experience of meditating in my sleep -- some part me "knew" what it was doing -- and that experience throws into relief how much of my waking state "intentional" functioning and identity is something that is contingently generated.)

The subject-object framework is something that's "booted up." My current less-than-fully-awakened sense is that nondual experiential processes can occur in at least two ways. (And, incidentally, I'm much more inclined to attend to nondueal experiential processes than to talk of nondual "philosophies" or "perspectives" or "beliefs.") One way is through generated experiential states such as the Buddhist form jhanas (second through fourth), where the subject-object frame is in effect let go off as something "too complicated" and/or "too agitated." A phenomenal experience (actually a sequence of experiences) is then allowed which is without that observer-observed frame -- there's just an absorptive state, that can be powerfully pleasant, which is as it were all object-as-mentally-manifested, with attending experiential factors of joy and equanimity, but without any subject that's construed as separately observing that object.

Another nondual experiencing occurs that I have less consistent personal experience with, but my current sense of it is as an always already there "living presence," too fundamentally simple and original for words -- a mode of functioning that underlies and gives rise to things like waking cognitive processes, and dreams, and dreamless sleep, and altered states such as jhana absorptions.

there's a whole slew of research on nondual awareness. One of the most convenient "clearinghouses" for scientific research on nondual awareness is the organization Science and Non-Duality (S.A.N.D.)

Dear Stephen,

It sounds as if you are wanting to explore what is thought about the grounding of conscious experience. That is certainly metaphysics, in the proper sense of wanting to understand the underlying basis of theories of the world (for William James nothing more than an unusually obstinate tendency to think clearly).

The place to start is Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy, which remains a very good primer (it was intended so for Sorbonne students) in metaphysics despite the recent fashion for belittling Descartes. But I would strongly recommend reading Leibniz, who built on Descartes fifty years later and who I think remains the best authority. He provides clear answers to your questions about the relation of experience to reality and the lack of any division between self and world.

Almost everything written since Leibniz ignores the central message of these two authors, and also of the ancient Indian traditions, and falls back into an intuitive form of 'materialism' (even when it claims to deny that, as in Kant). That is where confusion arises.

To my mind internal representations are entirely real. They are not the same thing as the events in the world they portray, but we have every reason to think they arise from proximal events of the same general kind. Events are only ever part of an experience for a subject if they are immediately proximal to that subject in terms of dynamic relation. Distant events have to be represented more proximally by internal representations. Things have to be so, otherwise our experience would be cluttered with every event that has ever taken place anywhere.

I agree that how we see the world has implications for health and wellbeing. However, I suspect the true nature of human subjects is very unlike what most people would like to think, and not accessible through meditation, only through a long process of rigorous metaphysical and scientific analysis.

Sincere thanks for all the input. Many of the recommended papers/ideas I have already engaged with but several new lines of enquiry have also been suggested, I will follow them up.

I'm a mature student, relatively new to western scientific enquiry into human behaviour. The issue I was struggling with in the preparation of my paper was the lack of an agreed theoretical framework within known psychological perspectives. For example there is no consensus regarding the distinctions between a nondual view, a nondual method and a nondual state. However the western dichotomy of non dualism generally is perhaps even more interesting.

Thanks once again, I have gained more shape to my proposed presentation of nondual awareness.

Dear Stephen Gene Morris

My view and approach IS non-dualistic scientific enquiry (w/r to human behavioral science) . Any nature/nurture debates resolve as well as other dualistic and contentious issues, e.g. continuous development vs. abrupt changes. I have stated my basic position (esp.: large paper: "A Human Ethogram ... ") and provide full explication in 100s of essays. See

Article A Human Ethogram: Its Scientific Acceptability and Importanc...

and

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