Nonduality Algorithms

8 min readDec 22, 2019

“What you are the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti

The most difficult computer bugs to find are often rooted in assumptions you believe could never possibly be wrong.

I’ve distilled in summary form below the nonduality “algorithms” or practices that have been helpful for me. These are mostly based off the modern and lucid teachings of Akilesh Ayyar and the discussions I have had with my fellow seeker friend Shin Kim. The goal of these practices is to realize your true nature and thereby profoundly increase your internal peace. I believe nonduality is practical, concrete and achievable.

Self-Inquiry Algorithm

Self-inquiry is to use effort to temporarily experience your true nature—a peaceful state of awareness with an empty mind free from thoughts. See Physical Cues for Meditation for a full explanation of the physical cues below.

Perform anti-frown: use your scalp and brow muscles to slightly pull back the ears and make the eyes bigger by making them both taller and wider.
Perform anti-mutter: press back of tongue down into the throat to tense up the vocal cords and neck in order to suppress word based thoughts.
Perform anti-slouch: pinch your shoulder blades together and straighten your posture.
Blanket your awareness evenly over all sights, sounds, feels, thoughts, etc. As if you were in the zone playing a sport. Relax the mind to reach a state of spacious pristine awareness free from conscious thought. Avoid using word based thoughts once you are in this state to try and maintain the state. Recognize that this is your true nature.
Some awareness physical cues: breathing in through the nose, exposure to cold, expansion of the body in every aspect like a swan dive.

Surrender Algorithm

Surrender is to use effort to recognize that your conscious thoughts are given too much importance in your mind and that most of them are not necessary to function and can be ignored.

Maintain only one conscious thought: to recognize thoughts and then ignore them by not attaching any importance to them.
When a thought arises from the depths of your mind, you should recognize that a thought has arisen and then tell yourself to ignore the thought.
Relax the mind and let go of all effort and see that thoughts merely exist only when they arise and do not have any permanent existence. This includes the “I” thought.
You may continue to act in the world as you normally do but without giving any attention to your conscious thoughts. This is a surprising and strange experience.
Some surrender physical cues: breathing out through the mouth, exposure to heat, relaxing into a hollow fetal position.
Some surrender psychological cues: giving up control, humbling yourself, following your intuition, accepting that fate exists.

Discussion

“Well for both of our sakes, let’s hope enlightenment is easier than golf”— Dr. Shin Kim

Both of these practices require you to make effort and should be performed with open eyes as you go about your regular day. Practice surrender when you are not practicing self-inquiry. Note that they can be quite tiring so give yourself a break when necessary. You can think of this as training your mind to learn a new skill (although it’s much more than that really). It’s kind of like learning how to balance on a bicycle — you can read about it and think about it all you want, but ultimately you have to just practice. And at some point everything may click and you will be balancing without knowing exactly how you figured it out.

Self-inquiry or being in a thoughtless state of awareness shows your brain that an alternate state exists in which it can function. You can temporarily experience what it is like to be your true self. Surrender shows your brain how useless and transient your conscious thoughts are. You realize that every thought no matter how benign is actually deeply tied to the illusory concept of the “I” thought. These narcissistically grounded thoughts (“how can that object flatter or threaten my ego?”) just arise but there is nothing more than the arising of them and there’s nowhere they really exist prior to arising. This means there is no “I” thought in static existence. The “I” thought just gets created once in a while and you attach to it because you believe it has a permanent existence and reality somewhere. Combine these two practices enough and at some point, something deep in your brain may say AHA! I don’t need to attach such identification with my thoughts anymore. This realization should be unmistakable and unfortunately is not something that you can just do on demand with conscious thought.

If you have this deep realization, then the promise is that the veil that has been obscuring your true nature will be permanently lifted. The default mode of your brain will flip from being identified with your conscious thoughts to effortlessly realizing yourself as pure awareness. Note that you will be mostly the same flawed person. You will still have conscious thoughts and operate normally, but your mind will be quieter and your thoughts will feel softer because you won’t identify your being with them. The key difference from realizing your true nature will be a permanent and profound background of peace in your heart (why this is so is quite an interesting question!). This peace will serve as a protective buffer against negative emotions (which you will still experience by the way but with a muted distant feel).

Oh the fun paradoxes here. You are trying to understand that thought is somewhat illusory using thought and that the seeker never really existed in the first place.

The greatest conspiracy theory in the world centers around who you believe you are.

Other Spiritual Practices

Imagine that you have no head and that there is only empty space where your head used to be — how can a headless person have any thoughts? (via headless.org)
Imagine that part of you that has not changed between when you were a young child and right now.
Ask yourself — What’s here now if there is no problem to solve? (via Loch Kelly)
Send your awareness to a corner of a room and have it turn around and look back at you. (via Loch Kelly)

Adjacent Practices

Some of these meditative states are adjacent to states that are learned via other physical/mental activities.
Adaption states: cold exposure (ice bath), heat exposure (sauna), and foam rolling (knot release breathing). The pain will force you to search for skillful adaption states as quickly as possible.
Bodily function control: voiding for example (the toilet can be a place of meditative practice) .
Mental absorption: mental states for high performance in music, strategy, work, athletics are also adjacent.

Nondual vs. Breath Focused Meditation

In my view the nondual practices described here are very distinct from breath focused meditation. A very commonly prescribed mindfulness meditation style is to focus your attention on the breath, and observe your thoughts as they arise. I believe that this is not directly useful for pursuing glimpses of nonduality because focusing attention requires and enhances the feeling of an “I” or a separation from that which is attended to. My belief is that the nondual meditation tries to diffuse attention evenly over all objects of consciousness rather than pointing your attention at any one object of consciousness. By diffusing attention evenly everywhere, you essentially achieve no-attention.