Apparitions of the Absolute
A Nondual Reflection on Synchronicity, Meaning, and Appearances
The dominant mythos of the contemporary spiritual imagination revolves around the idea that there is a coded dialogue between the self and the world, between seeker and source, in which symbols serve as encrypted transmissions to guide you back to some higher knowing. Perhaps it appears as a sigil you suddenly can’t stop drawing, the object that feels unreasonably familiar, the stranger whose presence floods your nervous system with unbearable recognition, the numbers, the “signs”, (and the accompanying narratives that form in their wake). We imagine the world is populated with these messages, dispatched by some higher agency—the soul, the Self, the universe, angels, God—and then ceremoniously placed along the road like esoteric breadcrumbs to guide us back through the cosmic labyrinth. The separate self looks for confirmation of its path through divine intervention, giving that phenomenon a name like “synchronicity,” and is then better equipped through narrative to conjure a sense of ease.
But from the standpoint of Advaita, the entire image of meaning is still a dream had by the imagined traveler: there is no soul making progress, no Self sending messages, no path upon which one advances. There is only the unborn, endlessly appearing, never moving.
There is no symbol.
There is only That—nirguna brahman—appearing as symbol, person, object, omen, without the slightest deviation from its own immutable nature. The mind, imagining itself to be an entity embedded in time, superimposes causality, significance, even grace. But none of this touches the Real.
The Isa Upanishad begins: īśāvāsyam idam sarvaṁ—All this is pervaded by the Lord. Not that the Lord resides within things, nor behind them, but that things are not things. They are That. The so-called world is not a field of signs. It is Brahman—the Absolute—undivided, expressing no intention, no message, no distance from itself.
To say a symbol comes “when you are ready” is to preserve a latent dualism: a separate self advancing along a developmental axis. But what readiness can there be, when the self that might prepare is itself a modulation of the very substratum it seeks to realize? Readiness is a perfume of maya—still fragrant, altogether false.
Nisargadatta was unequivocal: “There is no such thing as a person.” Which means: there is no one to be guided, no one to be awakened, no one to whom anything appears. There is only appearance. The dream of difference. And thus, there is no “you” to whom the symbol may appear; no separate awareness observing the play of archetype and image. What is taken for “resonance” or “sacred attraction” is simply the spontaneous tat tvam asi shining through the veil of concept, momentarily misread as synchronicity.
In truth, the symbol is not even a veil. It has no ontological weight. It is not concealing the Self, nor revealing it. There is nothing to conceal or reveal. Only the Self, self-luminous and unfragmented, appearing in and as phenomena, but untouched by them. Like a reflection in a mirror that never actually occurs—because there was never a mirror, never a reflection, and never a one to whom the image was directed.
You do not stumble upon meaning or find a code. Meaning is not given. Meaning itself is the final disguise of maya. It is what the Self appears as when it is no longer mistaken for the seeker. In the precise moment of no-time, when the reiteration of intellect falls away, what was always present becomes apparent. This is the sacred truth at the heart of nonduality: not the tale of consciousness journeying through forms to find itself, but the immediate, unprovoked display of being—as symbol, as fascination, as fleeting aesthetic compulsion. It is the choreography of consciousness folding in on itself, not to guide, or awaken, or heal, but simply to be. Because this is how the uncaused appears—formless presence flowering into pattern without purpose.
And yet, still—things appear and “have magnetism.” You are compelled, attracted, repulsed, moved by emergent form as image or object. Why does a sigil ignite the nervous system? Why does a phrase of “revelation” ruin the concept of linearity?These are not events. They are the Self, playing for no reason; awareness knowing itself through veils of form.
The Upanishads speak in negation to illustrate this point: neti neti—not this, not that. Negation is the scalpel that removes what is not the Self—not to reveal a hidden essence, but to exhaust the mind’s compulsion to locate it. Symbols do not veil the truth. They are the truth, momentarily clothed in ephemerality, appearing for no one, pointing nowhere.
In the Bhagavad Gītā, Arjuna stands paralyzed at the edge of battle, gripped by despair and the collapse of moral reasoning. What unfolds is not merely a dialogue between man and god, but a metaphysical unraveling of the illusion of doership, agency, and selfhood. When Krishna reveals his cosmic form to Arjuna, it is not to reassure him with metaphysical symbols, but to shatter the presumption that any self exists to receive a revelation. The battlefield does not represent the human condition. It is consciousness appearing as conflict, as consequence, as illusion—and in that same moment, never bound by any of it.
This dance continues because the Absolute has no bias toward or against appearing. It simply is—and sometimes is as symbol, or as an encounter, or an aesthetic obsession. But none of this is evidence of a plan, a code, or a sender. It is simply what is happening. The fragrance of what-is needs no interpretation. The game is not to interpret, but to recognize there is no player!
You are not here to refine a personality and follow the cosmic instruction manual of “signs” into a color-by-numbers awakening, whereby you “enlighten” and attain access to a somehow better This. You are here to let the architecture of illusion fall; to die into the Real and live as its unending celebration. You are not becoming divine. You are Divinity in the absence of becoming, and when the veil of pretending grows thin, You shine through, appearing to yourself as the sign “you” have been looking for.
What you perceive as a message is not sent to you.
“You are Divinity in the absence of becoming” ✨ truly a thinking heart indeed.
Wow. This essay feels like a message itself. The mind's compulsion to locate IT must be exhausted. Brilliant!