It makes no sense to talk about a knower of the non-dual because the Non-Dual cannot be known with our regular knowing apparatus. We’d have to talk about an unknower of the Non-Dual.
In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna gave Arjuna special “love eyes” so he could see the form of Krishna, saying:
“You cannot see me thus with those human eyes. Therefore I give you divine sight. Behold – this is my yoga power. …
“Suppose a thousand suns should rise together into the sky: such is the glory of the Shape of the Infinite God.” (1)
And Krishna was simply showing Arjuna a form; that is still not the formless, the Non-Dual. That cannot be “shown.”
To “see” that, he’d have to have our sight taken away altogether, for the time of the experience at least. Knowing that, Pseudo-Dionysius cries out:
“I pray we could come to this darkness, so far above light! If only we lacked sight and knowledge so as to see, so as to know, unseeing and unknowing, that which lies beyond all vision and knowledge. For this would be really to see and to know: to praise the Transcendent One in a transcending way, namely through the denial of all beings. …
“Now as we climb from the last things up to the most primary we deny all things so that we may unhiddenly know that unknowing which itself is hidden from all those possessed of knowing amid all beings, so that we may see above being that darkness concealed from all the light among beings. … As we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing.” (2)
That’s why we talk about entering “the cloud of unknowing.” (3) In that state, removed from the mind’s chatter, will be found the unknowing of the unknowable, the Non-Dual.
Milarepa meditated for three years in a cave, eating only nettle soup, to achieve the unknowing of it. The Blessed Henry Suzo and St. John of the Cross spent years meditating in a cell to win it. And we are gradually (or rapidly) being ushered into its presence, for the asking.
The price of admission for us, rather than baptism in the River Jordan, is to wash ourselves in the river of awareness, clean of all Third-Dimensional residue. What’s that? The residue is all our traumatic memories, core issues, constructed self, false conditioning.
All the sickness and fatigue, the fears and moods, the hesitations and agonies we’ve been experiencing recently are a product of this residue. Our re-experiencing them is them rising to the surface to be dissipated into the ether. And raising them to awareness and experiencing them by remaining passively aware of them, not resisting or reacting to them, (“washing them in the waters of awareness”) is how we cleanse ourselves.
In this empty vessel, without crack or seam, love and bliss arise, the reward for all our efforts.
Love and bliss arise as a flow. The higher dimensions arise as a flow. The depths of our being arise to our awareness as a flow. All is flow where we’re going.
Labels are falling. Structures are collapsing. Everything that holds us down is dropping away. We’re cut loose from our moorings and asked to trust in the flow of the Ocean of Bliss.
Our traumatic memories, core issues and conditioned self are all obstructions to that flow, which is why they must go. We’re dredging the river of all obstacles and deepening it to allow the torrent of love and bliss to flow through us, which ultimately will result in our Ascension, the culmination of which is our sahaja experience. (2)
There’s an end to our processing, an end to our core issues. I’m not there yet, but I do experience some relief from ever-present issues and reactions. I’m gradually becoming more than a stimulus-response machine.
Achieving this state of aliveness and spontaneity is the real awakening for me, after which breakfast (bliss) is served.
Footnote
(1) Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. Hollywood: Vedanta Press, 1987; c1944, 114.
(2) Pseudo-Dionysius in Cohn Luibheid, trans., Pseudo-Dionysus, His Complete Works. New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1989, 138-9.
(3) Anon., The Cloud of Unknowing trans. Clifton Wolters. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1978; c1961.
(4) Sahaja samadhi is the enlightenment experience that marks the culmination of our Ascension. See https://tinyurl.com/j3fynfy and below.