We are perfect as we are. This is the ecstatic proclamation of the advaitic, or non-dual path of direct understanding. But the moment this proclamation is made, the question is often raised, "How do we come to this understanding?" This question arises from the notion that there is something that we can do to come to this understanding. This presupposes that there is a progressive path of purification that will take us to this realization. These two paths, of direct and progressive realization, are really two ends of a stick. We cannot have one end without the other. What we often don't realize is that the stick is always, in and of itself, whole. The poles of direct and progressive, non-dual and dual, are complimentarities. When we live with the complimentarity of these approaches, we find that they are, in fact, a unified whole. It appears that we cannot come to the final understanding that we are perfect as we are without being involved in a process of purification. But ultimately, neither a direct path nor the path of purification will take us to the ultimate understanding.
Once upon a timeless moment, before the conceptual 'Big Bang' birthed us into creation, we were without perception of inside or outside, of "self" or "other". We felt no sense of separa-tion. We were not a "do-er" or a "be-er" for there was no "doing" or "being". There was only non-conceptual "suchness"; our "original face before we were born", the proverbial sound of the "one hand clapping" that everything is before it becomes some 'thing'.
As I was writing this paper, I stopped and asked my wife what she would say if she were giving this presentation. Without hesitation she replied: "I wouldn't write a thing. I'd keep silent and go about my life. Then everyone would see what my real doing and being is. I thought her answer a particularly good response, for no matter what we say, our actions always speak louder than any words we may utter. The ultimate truth is always expressed in the Silence that is beyond descrip-tion.
And now, for as far back as we have been convinced into believing, we find ourselves living as apparently separate selves, doing and being and quite often, feeling "done in" and being "quite out of it". We are often perplexed and confused, alternating between feeling anxious and alone, all the while searching to calm our 'hungry ghosts' within that are constantly searching for a sense of belonging and a feeling of unqualified security.
Perhaps some of us may recall that first moment when time arrived and we suddenly felt our se-parateness. I must have been between one and two, for I remember quite distinctly that I was able to talk. My sister and I were standing by the side of the window in our bedroom. In a flash of awakening into time, space and separation I found myself, for the first time, feeling separate from my sister-a distinct and separate other, her brother. And I was able to also discern the light flowing in through the window as a distinct reality, separate from us both.
We now find ourselves living separate lives, feeling ourselves distinct from one another. We feel ourselves separate and independent from everything else in the universe. Then, as a sepa-rate and independent entity, we reach out for only a part of life rather than the whole of it. We want what we find acceptable and we reject what is not. We think the opposites are to be kept apart. Give us happiness but certainly not grief. Give us security and not fear. And, by all means, give us health and life, not pain, suffering and death.