Types of Nonduality: A Map of Deep AwakeningBy Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
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This article maps five distinct types of nonduality, arranged not arbitrarily but according to how deeply they penetrate the structure of experience itself. Each type corresponds to a specific level (or nidana) in the Buddhist framework of dependent origination, moving from the nondual integration of sensory experience down to the root separation that makes experience possible at all. Understanding these distinctions can help people recognize where they are in the process, what to expect next, and why certain teachings refer to certain levels while not touching the deeper levels.
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✓ Learn about the four stages between awakening & enlightenment ✓ Get exercises to progress Sign up below to get our FREE eBook. What Is Nonduality?At its most basic, nonduality refers to the collapse of aspects of subject-object separation. In ordinary consciousness, and even witnessing awareness, there appears to be "me in here" experiencing "the world out there." This split feels obvious and unquestionable. Nonduality is a series of progressive realizations that reveal that this distinction (and all distinctions) are constructed by the mind. When the first layer of this is seen through, the boundaries between things start to dissolve.
A Series of Progressive Realizations But here's where it gets interesting. That dissolution can happen at multiple levels. You can recognize the nondual nature of perception while still maintaining conceptual separation. You can see through conceptual boundaries while still believing that consciousness, itself, is nondual. Each time a deeper duality collapses, what seemed like complete awakening reveals itself as partial. The journey continues because awakening has more depth than we imagined was possible. Initial Awakening & Awareness Different traditions and contemporary teachers emphasize different aspects (or stages) of nonduality, often without recognizing the other aspects or stages. Most "nondual" teachings stop at awareness and call it "nonduality". This represents legitimate awakening and some of my favorite teachers teach from here (e.g., Eckhart Tolle & Rupert Spira). These teachings often reach more people because they make more sense. LOL. Some teachers believe that this 'awakening to awareness' is liberation, and indeed, it is a type of liberation. Deepening of this type of awakening leads one to what some people call "pure awareness". Still, there is awareness (here) observing objects (there) which is dual. Even when people say everything is 'in' awareness, there is awareness and objects 'in' it. Nondual Teachings Some teachings are referring to 'perceptual nonduality' when they say 'nonduality'. (We'll talk more about what this is below). A few other traditions (e.g., radical nonduality) and teachers (e.g., Jim Newman, Tony Parsons, & Bernadette Roberts) point to even deeper dissolutions, some of which I'll talk about below. And there may be more levels or details that I'm not aware of; this awakening thing seems to just keep going deeper! Types of Nonduality at a Glance
*Note: This is my interpretation of nonduality & the nidanas, not Truth with a capital T.
Perceptual Nonduality: When the Senses MergeSeeing Through Thoughts & Beliefs
The first major nondual shift occurs at what Buddhist psychology calls salayatana, the six sense bases. If this is seen, it is usually years after initial awakening or the recognition of awareness, witness consciousness, or "I Am". In ordinary experience, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling, and thinking appear as separate channels. You look at a tree, hear a bird, feel the breeze, and these seem like distinct events happening to a "me". Perceptual nonduality is the collapse of this structure. The six sense doors unify into a single seamless field of experiencing (or more accurately, they were never actually separate). There's still seeing, hearing, feeling, but they don't feel like they are separate senses belonging to a me. Experience is more like an interconnected hologram. And sight, sound, sensation, taste, smell, and thoughts/emotions are kind of like undulating waves within this one lake of experience. The sense of being a separate self or awareness, looking out at a foreign world, simply stops making sense. Thus, the paradigm, and experience, of being awareness starts to fall apart. Liberation? Some teachers call this stage liberation. Are you noticing a theme? Everyone thinks where they are is liberation, probably because every deepening is liberating in a new way. Indeed, given the physical and perceptual changes at this stage, this stage may bring with it a sense that the spiritual search is complete. The fundamental illusion of self as separate perceiver has been seen through. But, if we hunker down and grasp onto this experience as the end of the road, we'll stay here and many other dualities will remain intact. Beliefs & Perspectives From what I can tell, it looks like people in this stage have deconstructed many of their beliefs and perspectives. However, they have not deconstructed the concepts (definitions) that these beliefs were created from. You need a definition of a sandwich to believe in a sandwich. You need a definition of 'self' to believe that you can transcend a 'self'. You need a definition of love to experience everything as love. So even if you stop believing that you are "not enough" or "not a good person", the definitions of "not enough" or "not a good person" remain. Same is true with the 'self'. You can stop believing that you are self, and even see that there is no self, and yet, if your definition of 'self' remains in tact, the experience of self and no-self still seem real or true. Teachers who are at the stage of salayatana often have an experience of "transcending" the self. But, in order to have the experience of transcending a self, the mind must still hold a concept of 'self'. If 'self' is still defined (e.g., maybe the self is defined as thoughts & beliefs, a sense of ownership, attachment, or doership), then it still feels like there is something that can be transcended. Often, where one ends up is in 'no-self'. But no-self is still a subtle duality, an experience that seems different than the experience of self. This is pointing to a glaring inconsistency. An identification with nonduality while still holding that no-self is somehow more real than self. "More', 'better', 'truer' is all duality. What Still Operates? Operating in the dark, there is usually still a belief that: 'to transcend the self, you must see that thoughts and beliefs are not you'. This creates a projection (or apparent reality) that 'liberation is the dis-idenitification from thoughts & beliefs'. Many nonduality teachers are here and that's why they tell you liberation is about seeing that you are not your thoughts and beliefs. Indeed, this is very true/real at this stage. What Remains Unseen At this stage, the belief in self has been seen through, yet the meaning-making, concept-making structure that allows beliefs to form has not been seen and dismantled. Some examples I've seen:
The Transition If you deepen into the next stage, your definition of self falls apart so fully that there is no longer a 'self' to transcend. You no longer have to disidentify from the content of experience (e.g., thoughts & beliefs) because the conceptual mechanisms that created those experiences are starting to fall apart. Conceptual Nonduality: When Names and Forms MergeSeeing Through Definitions
The next deepening occurs at namarupa, translated as "name and form." This is where the mind defines undifferentiated experience as discrete objects and concepts. Prior to this stage, we still hold onto units of experience that seem real: meditation seems different than 'not meditation'. 'Truth', or 'practice', 'sensations', or 'knowing' seem to be real experiences while maybe 'thoughts' seem to be unreal. There are still labels that seem to correspond to actual, real, separate things. Nothing Is Permanent, Solid, Consistent, or Real Conceptual nonduality arises when it is seen that the naming/labeling function makes it seem like forms are actually real or permanent. There is no actual real "thing" that we then label. For example, the word "sadness" doesn't point to a pre-existing emotional experience. The language (and definition) creates the boundary that makes "sadness" seem like a discrete, separable experience distinct from "fear" or "anger" or even "bliss". So, even the words "liberation" or "enlightenment" aren't pointing to anything. There is no 'true liberation' to point to. In reality, experience is not actually broken up into conceptual units like 'liberated' and 'non-liberated'. The mind slices experience into categories through language, then mistakes those categories for real divisions in reality. If you move through namarupa (conceptual nonduality), you're dissolving the mental mechanisms that make things appear as separate units. Thus, this goes beyond the collapse of the self-concept and even beyond the concept of the 5 senses. All units/concepts collapse. How This is Different from Typical Spiritual Work At salayatana: At the prior stage, you might see that you have a thought about "being worthless". You look at the thought, the sensations that are associated with it, and how it creates suffering. With enough witnessing and/or embodiment, it becomes clear that it is just a thought (and not you), and so it can just float by without you attaching to it the way it used to. ➟ If you do this for many thoughts, you can greatly reduce suffering. I'm convinced that this is what most people mean when they say "the end of suffering". At namarupa: At this stage, you're not witnessing the thought; you're witnessing the units (i.e. concepts) that the thought or belief is made of. In this case, you'd look at 'worthlessness'. You go all the way into the concept to see, "What makes worthlessness different from suffering, or helplessness, or even worthiness?" If you look at what the concept actually is, it becomes obvious that there is nothing actually there. Once this becomes clear, seeing through thoughts and beliefs becomes a lot easier because you can see they are made of nonsense. This is the end of meaning. Since thoughts no longer mean anything, they can arise without causing much suffering. ➟ If you do this for many concepts, you can reduce suffering even further. Living in Conceptual Non-Duality At this stage, the experience of "transcending" the self no longer makes sense. Without conceptual boundaries, the 'self' is nothing and everything simultaneously. How could you transcend nothing and everything? Concepts don't describe reality. They construct it. ➟When conceptual nonduality starts to clarify, there is a profound sense of groundlessness. The concepts of beingness, presence, liberation, enlightenment, and even consciousness lose their reality or truthiness. There is nothing to hold onto. The Transition When namarupa (conceptual nonduality) is clear, you recognize that all concepts like "self", "presence", and "meditation", are mind-made constructions with no actual, real, permanent, solid, consistent, meaningful reality. Differential Nonduality: When Distinctions DissolveSeeing Through Distinctions
Deeper still is vinnana, which is sometimes translated as cognition or understanding. More precisely, it refers to the distinction-making function of the mind. This is the mind's habit of differentiating "this" from "that" and thinking that "this" and "that" are actually different. Conceptual Relationships Versus Distinctions Even though you no longer believe that concepts point to anything real or permanent, at the beginning of this stage, they still seem to have relationships with each other. The concept of "meditation" can seem attached to the concept of "awakening" while the concept of "roller skating" seems not attached to the concept of "awakening". This is vinnana at work, making certain things seem related to each other while other things are not related. In the mind, certain information still seems to be associated with the concept of "right" while other information is associated with the concept of "wrong". Here, "the sense field or bodily sensations" may still be associated with "truth" while "perspectives, thoughts, or stories" don't seem associated with "truth". THIS (e.g., a sensation) is still interpreted as different from THAT (e.g., a story). THIS and OPPOSITE-OF-THIS also seem different. For example, fear and not-fear seem different. Awake and not-awake seem different. Nothing and everything seem different. The distinctions between THIS and THAT are obviously still a type of duality. Beyond Understanding When vinnana is seen through, the idea of teaching, coaching, or answering students' questions no longer makes sense. Responses can no longer arise from the mind because there is no longer a way for the mind to choose one answer over another—all answers are equally true. You might say that any response that does arise is just from 'All That Is'. It might be said to be 'unknowing' (not from mind or memory) expressing itself as a response. Understanding IS vinnana. It is the mind choosing one answer or solution over another. When there is no difference between the options the mind can choose from, there is no longer an experience of understanding anything. So, if someone asks you "should I do X or Y to awaken?" there is clearly no correct answer. A response may come or it may not, but it has nothing to do with 'understanding', 'knowing', or 'truth'. Bumpy Transition For me, this was a difficult transition. It was scary looking into the mind and finding that no answers, no understanding could be found. For awhile, I often found myself BLANK with nothing to say. The sensation or experience of looking into the mind no longer seemed to be able to retrieve anything. During this phase, I struggled to write or teach or even really interact. I kept trying to look into my mind the way I used to and it was exhausting. And there was a lot of fear about being seen as incompetent. After a few months of integration, responses resumed. Now, there no longer seems to be an attempt to look into the mind for answers; instead, they seem to just arise from All That Is (and sometimes they don't). ➟ A more subtle type of suffering seems to lighten here. To me, it felt like the end of efforting. The sensation of effortfullness appears to have been simply the process of looking into the mind for 'knowing'. This 'efforting' sensation no longer arises. Understanding & Confusion Once integrated, this isn't experienced as confusion, because confusion is now the same as clarity; nothing can reliably be distinguished from anything else. Unclarity and clarity were never truly different. Action and non-action were never different. It was always the mind categorizing, making distinctions, and creating relationships between concepts that made them appear to be different. So, THIS and NOT-THIS genuinely don't appear different anymore for the majority of mental objects. Operational Nonduality: When The Time-Builder DissolvesSeeing Through Mental Linking
At the level of sankhara, often translated as volitional formations or fabrications, we encounter something even more fundamental than the relationships between concepts. This is about the constructive mental mechanisms that create apparent experience (as a sequence of moments). These are the foundational mental processes that link raw arisings into what appears to be a causally connected, temporally ordered, narratively meaningful reality. The illusion of causation is particularly surprising. You watch one billiard ball strike another and the second ball moves. What's actually perceived are separate moments of experience, like individual frames in a film. What strings them together into a causal sequence is entirely mental construction. The interpretation that the first ball caused the second to move, that force or power was transmitted between them, that one event made the other happen, that there's any inherent connection at all between 2 events is added by the mind, by sankhara. The mind takes "this, this, this, this" and constructs it into "this led to that." The illusion of subtle narrative operates here as well. You will likely have already realized much earlier that narrative (or your story) does not represent actual reality. But, here, it is seen how the narrative got built in the first place. There are these subtle mental mechanisms that tag/label moments with a location in time and then sew them together, literally like stitches attaching each moment to the last. When this is seen through, 'now moments' no longer seem to be related to past or future moments. The illusion of experience The stitch or link connecting what happened this morning to what's happening now is mentally constructed. It's sankhara weaving raw thisness into seemingly coherent sequences with beginnings, middles, trajectories, causes, outcomes, and implications. There appears to be volition to experience (movement through time). However, there is really only 'this, this, this' with links, labels, and meanings attached. This is the mental construction mechanism that makes life feel like an actual experience over time. Daily Life In daily life, the dissolving of sankhara manifests in ways that can initially feel extremely disorienting. When someone asks why you made a particular decision, the causal story that would normally arise automatically is "I did X because of Y". Now, it appears that the events arose spontaneously, the decision arose spontaneously (without a self making it), AND the causal link between them is added explanation (meaning) that isn't actually real. Thus, the "X because of Y" narrative stops arising. So, if someone asks you why you did X, you literally can not answer. If someone asks you where you want to be in 5 years (or tomorrow), it's an impossible question. It actually takes a lot of mental effort to link a 'thought that wants something to occur' to an 'experience in the future'. There is no real relationship between these things. There is no real relationship between anything, including anything across time. Work I don't know if this is true for everyone, but for me, it became difficult to hold a regular job. There was no longer a reason to work unless work arose on it's own. I used to reliably do X (work) because I believed it caused Y (money). Even this is a belief, based on the assumption of cause and effect. When living beyond sankhara, the causal belief structure no longer motivates behavior. Behavior still arises—for example, I am writing this article right now—but it's not linked to any imagined outcome. So the imagined outcome can no longer motivate the behavior or action. Action happens or it doesn't. It no longer felt like I could cause money to come into my life, and that was terrifying for awhile. Money either comes or it doesn't. This can be quite upsetting to the survival and safety programs operating in the body. Holding Time Lightly Actions still occur, and language about cause and effect is still used in communication. But there's no belief that this causal structure is real. When you drop a glass and it shatters, you can still say "I dropped it, so it broke," but this is recognized as the illusion of experience, not an account of what's actually happening. ➟ Suffering is no longer linked to other experiences in time. So nothing causes suffering, but suffering can still arise in the present moment. I can no longer generate suffering by looking at past emotional memories. However, since pain, sadness, and resistance are both empty and full, they can still arise and be felt as suffering (fullness) while simultaneously being meaningless (emptiness). Existential Nonduality: When Existence CollapsesSeeing Through Existence
The deepest level corresponds to avijja, translated as 'not-knowing', pointing to the root appearance that makes experience possible: consciousness (which is also a type of knowing). Here we encounter the most fundamental duality of all: existence versus non-existence, consciousness versus non-consciousness, knowing versus not-knowing. Existential nonduality is the revelation that everything is impermanent through the temporary collapse of ALL separation. There isn't actual time, so existence is flickering on and off in every moment, we just don't notice it. Then, one day, we notice it. Existence flickers off and on. We see that existence, itself, arises and falls just like everything else. What we call reality, or consciousness, is duality. It is impossible to know, observe, be aware, or even exist without duality. Thus, pure nonduality is non-existence, or the unmanifest. Of course, the manifest and unmanifest are not really different ;). The Illusion of The Present Moment The feeling of there even being a 'present moment' is made up from avijja. When we see reality flicker off and on in daily life, it becomes clear that nothing really exists. There is literally nothing in the gaps—no consciousness, no observer, no experience, no self, no memory, no existence, no nothing. In a gap, there is no experience and no existence. We only 'know' that there was a gap by what happens after a gap:
When we see that even existence (or consciousness) doesn't arise consistently, we see that even 'the present moment' is constructed. Nothing is real. Nothing is permanent. Consciousness is not the stable, permanent, 'ground' we once thought it was. Consciousness is no different than a bubble, a thought, or a rain drop. Here for a moment, and then gone. Disorientation All these transitions are disorienting, but this one was the most practically difficult. If you start noticing that existence flickers off and on multiple times per day, functioning goes right out the window. I had one terrifying day where I drove to the grocery store and back and could barely maintain a sense of time and space long enough to get a few items and get home safely. I didn't drive or cook again for a few weeks. Not knowing where you are in time and space, not knowing who you are, not knowing what's happening can create genuine safety issues while driving, cooking, or navigating other risky tasks. Don't worry though; it's not permanent. Somehow, the brain rewires so that it can function without continuous time. My hunch is that the brain stops using these mental links to orient in time and instead it looks for external cues, or sequences, to locate itself. For me, this lasted a few weeks before it started to integrate and I could function again. After integration, nothing even really feels different. There is no more belief in cause & effect or time, and yet, everything still plays out mostly like normal. There are still sometimes noticeable gaps, but they aren't disorienting anymore. Disidentification with Existence When existential nonduality begins to stabilize, even existence is held lightly. Present moment experience (existence itself) is not seen as ultimately real. Even existence arises and passes away. There is no 'you' that is 'here' and 'now'; there is not even really a 'here' or 'now'. ➟ Suffering is becoming difficult to speak about. There is less and less of a sense of standing apart from anything. Thus, there is less and less of an ability to even notice if suffering is there or not there. Insight & IntegrationWith each insight or transition, there is generally a clear seeing, disorientation, then a period of integration or embodiment, where the physical experience starts to reflect what has been revealed. So nonduality seems to deepen in such a way that the ability to speak about any of this gets more and more difficult as the mechanisms that can differentiate and separate concepts get fuzzier.
I noticed recently that I can no longer reliably distinguish 'insight' from 'not-insight'. Unlike the first insights on the awakening path, which were characterized by bliss and amazement, an epiphany or deepening may arise without anything to even observe it. I don't seem to even notice a deepening at all until I'm in a situation that calls for some type of mental response that no longer arises or arises in a different way. Examples For example, I was invited to do a gratitude practice and discovered that I can no longer generate gratitude at will. It can arise on its own when it wants to, but whatever mental process or sense of control that used to 'create gratitude' is offline. I can also no longer organize concepts into sequences in my mind, something that I was very good at during my career as a psychology writer. Yet, extremely clear communication can sometimes still be written on page. It seems that I can no longer do what a thought wants me to do—if a thought says "go the the gym", there is nothing left in the body that does what the thought says unless it wants to. Yet, spontaneous, sometimes surprising actions arise all throughout the day. I might describe it as ungraspable chaos, but that sounds bad and this is very neutral. *I'm starting to think that this is actually how it is for everyone, we just don't realize that we can't follow thoughts or control experiences like gratitude. The clarity is still fuzzy. Final Thoughts on Types of NondualityThese five types of nonduality—perceptual, conceptual, differential, operational, and existential—map the deepening progression through the dissolution of existence. Each level reveals what the previous one took for granted. Each collapse of duality exposes a more fundamental division that had been invisible before.
Different people may stabilize at different depths. It really doesn't matter. What's valuable about this framework is that it explains why descriptions of nonduality can seem contradictory when they're actually pointing to different levels of the same process. The journey through these types of nonduality is not about accumulating more experiences or reaching a final destination. It's about the progressive collapse of existence itself. Each stage removes something false. And that removal keeps revealing deeper and deeper layers of fabrication until there is nothing left. |
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©2026 AwakeningCollective.org