Subject & Object: From Mythical Constructs to Mystical Union
“There is no subjective experience that is not related to some object; there is no experienced object except through some particular interpretive vantage point… reality is a relationship between perceiver and perceived.” — Unknown
Often said in modern-day nondual circles are things like “there’s no bird chirping and there’s nobody hearing it — there’s only chirping,” or the nihilistic “there’s nobody here to perceive anything and nothing to be perceived,” followed by claims of the non-existence, the unreality of a subject or an object, and that the belief in them is little more than a delusion to spiritually overcome. To stay for a moment within the context of the phenomenon of sound, there’s actually no experience of a sound without a subject to hear it, as in, if a tree falls in the woods and there’s nobody there to hear it, it doesn’t make a sound. So what’s being described in the bird example is a subjective experience in which subject-object duality is transcended, which is a profound part of transcendent non-dual experiences. However the deepest truth of nonduality, as will be discussed below, is not that subject and object are fictional delusions, but that they co-arise, emerging simultaneously!
“Subject and object are both distinct realities and aspects of the same thing: a true unity-in-diversity.” — Ken Wilber
The paradox that subject and object are both individuated and utterly conjoined, is the heart of nonduality, and one that is naturally tricky for our limited human minds to embrace. While it’s understandable to conclude from transcendent experiences that subject and object are simply mythical, as non-dual understanding ripens, they are restored to their rightful place in a mesmerizing, life-affirming union to be reveled in.
“To go beyond duality (the ultimate aim of awakening) is to resolve opposites by integration, not by the denial of one side of the polarity. We do not go beyond the dualism of the subject-object split by denying that objects (the universe) exist, or by denying that the subject (‘I’) exists. Either denial is a type of insanity.” — P.T. Mistlberger
But, to grasp this, one must relate to what is meant by “transcend and include,” as opposed to conflating transcendence with negation. To transcend is to go beyond, but to go beyond something doesn’t erase it, even if it’s no longer a focal point of your attention. For example, it’s common after having self-transcendent experiences to align with a belief that the ego is nothing more than a phantom and any sense of a selfhood is simply a falsehood, and then go about attempting to annihilate it, rather than embracing it limited, yet a real aspect of the human experience, an integral part of the totality of what we are, but not the entirety of it.
“…the notion of transcending ego: it doesn’t mean destroy the ego, it means plug it into something bigger.” — Ken Wilber
From this perspective of “transcend and include,” just as the ego shifts from being experienced as the whole, to being part of a greater whole, subject and object unite (but maintain their distinctness) to create the relationship that forms the phenomenon of human perception. From this view, it’s erroneous for transcendence to lead to negation, and even duality itself, after being transcended, is perceived to be nested within “a oneness that is big enough to contain duality” Oneness and duality, self and other, subject and object — both ends of polarities are real, but they never exist without the other — two sides of the same shiny coin of nondual reality.
