Experiential Inquiry: Unveiling the Nature of Reality Beyond Description

Experiential inquiry is a profound exploration into the nature of what is present here and now. This approach centres on investigating our direct experience, which, according to the message of nonduality, is all we have to explore. The goal is to discover how what is showing up experientially is vastly different from what we imagine it to be based on our concepts and language.

Our common human tendency is to operate within descriptive frameworks, language, and concepts, imagining that they accurately capture what is here. We often assume that our ideas about what’s happening are true and equal to reality itself. For example, we might identify patterns in the visual field, subjective experiences, or objects, giving them names like ‘tree,’ ‘sadness,’ or ‘person,’ and believe these descriptions fully define what they are. This process of constantly describing and defining experience is deeply ingrained.

However, experiential inquiry invites us to step back from these interpretations and feel the presence of what’s here directly. It is an invitation to discover the myriad ways in which experience transcends any possible description we might bring to it. The exploration is not primarily intellectual, philosophical, or abstract; it is an experiential question inviting us to find out what reality is by exploring it directly.

The Process: Feeling the Presence

At its core, experiential inquiry in the exploration of nonduality involves simply feeling the presence of our experience. This might sound simple, but it points to how we know something is present – because it is being felt. Whether it’s thoughts, emotions, sensations, memories, or perceptions, the presence of these phenomena is felt as experience. So, to ‘feel your experience’ means to feel that palpable presence of what is here.

This investigation is wordless and non-conceptual. It involves bringing a simple noticing to the fact that experience is being felt at all times. The emphasis is on encountering what is here just as it is, without seeking something different. We don’t need to look for a special experience; we can simply notice what is present wherever our attention naturally lands.

The inquiry involves going to what is most concretely present, palpably here, and investigating its nature experientially. This method often leads to a curious paradox: by going to the concrete, we discover the unfindable.

Key Discoveries of Experiential Inquiry

Engaging in experiential inquiry can reveal astonishing insights into the nature of reality:

1. Transcendence of Description and Concepts: Experience is always more than we think is going on; it transcends our interpretations and categories. Our descriptions, no matter how sophisticated, cannot fully capture the vastness and complexity of what is here. Reality is ultimately unthinkable and cannot be collapsed into thought.
2. Boundlessness and Indefinability: When we feel experience directly, we discover it is boundless, infinite, without edge, border, or limit. There is no end to experience. This infinity means it is not definable or resolvable; we can’t get to the bottom of what experience is. It is pure mystery and unfathomability.
3. Lack of Separation: Experiential inquiry dissolves apparent distinctions. There is no experiential inside or outside, here or there, no nonduality. The perceived boundary between subject and object, perceiver and perceived, self and world, dissolves into a seamless continuum. Experience is inclusive; everything is contained within it, and nothing is apart from it. Even the apparent flow of time and space emerges from this timeless, boundless presence.
4. Constant Change and Underlying Constancy: While experience seems to be in constant flux, shifting instantaneously, upon closer inspection, there is no enduring continuity in phenomena themselves. Yet, paradoxically, there is an undeniable constancy in the flow of experiencing itself.
5. Wholeness and Singularity: Despite the appearance of multiplicity and distinct phenomena (like thoughts, feelings, or objects), experiential inquiry reveals that fundamentally, everything is one thing, one pure singularity, an undivided continuum. Everything that appears is inseparable from its basis, like waves are inseparable from the ocean.
6. Inherent Richness and Aliveness: Reality, as encountered experientially, is described as unthinkably full, rich, luscious, and sensuous. It is intrinsically fulfilling, vibrant, and alive. This aliveness is the way reality is, not something to be sought or created.
7. Equalness of Everything: This exploration can reveal the fundamentally non-hierarchical nature of what’s here. There is no better or worse experience; every experience, no matter how it is described (e.g., sadness or joy, bondage or freedom), is equally an expression of this boundless, transcendental reality. Everything is ‘the doorway’ because everything is the doorway.

Implications and Benefits

Discovering the nature of experience through this inquiry has significant implications for human well-being and understanding.

• Freedom from Suffering: Much human suffering stems from being fused with our conceptual interpretations and believing that reality is exactly what we think it is. We feel stuck in experiences or circumstances because we believe we know what they are. By seeing that experiences (like fear or anxiety) are not bounded, discrete things but open-ended and indefinite, we find freedom from them. What we call bondage is revealed to be pure freedom because everything is fundamentally unlimited and undefinable.
• Enhanced Well-being and Enjoyment: Exploring the transcendental nature of experience can lead to a richer, deeper, more enjoyable, and awe-inspiring way to encounter life. The inherent richness of the moment is discovered to be bottomless and endless. Even seemingly mundane perceptions are found to be anything but insignificant. This exploration can lessen stress and suffering immensely.
• Spontaneous Aliveness, Openness, and Flow: The search for a sense of aliveness, openness, or being ‘in the flow’ is revealed to be unnecessary because life itself is already complete, effortless flow and boundless openness. These qualities are not things to be achieved through effort or techniques, but are simply the way reality is. Trying to control the flow of experience, paradoxically, creates unrest.
• Recognising Reality as It Is: Experiential inquiry allows us to encounter the moments of our lives in a fundamentally different way, one that is often 180 degrees from our typical conceptual orientation. It shifts our perspective from being a separate subject potentially overwhelmed by circumstances to seeing all phenomena as expressions of an undivided whole.

This approach differs from conventional psychological or spiritual methods that might focus on modifying or managing specific experiences or achieving particular states. Instead, it points to the nature of all experience as already boundless, free, and indescribable. It is not about getting rid of thinking or interpretations, which are natural functions, but about seeing that they do not define or limit the underlying reality of experience.

In essence, experiential inquiry is a direct, felt exploration of the present moment that reveals its inherently boundless, undefinable, and radically free nature, transcending all our ideas and descriptions about what is happening. It invites us to recognise that what we are searching for – be it fullness, completeness, or freedom – is already present as our very experience, just as it is.

In the words of spiritual teacher Peter Brown: