Nondual Awareness and the Whole Person

Paul J Mills; Tiffany J Barsotti; Judith Blackstone; Deepak Chopra; Zoran Josipovic

doi:10.1177/2164956120914600

Nondual Awareness and the Whole Person

Glob Adv Health Med. 2020 May 21:9:2164956120914600. doi: 10.1177/2164956120914600. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Paul J Mills¹, Tiffany J Barsotti^{1

2}, Judith Blackstone³, Deepak Chopra^{1

4}, Zoran Josipovic⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Family Medicine and Public Health, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California.
² Heal and Thrive, Encinitas, California.
³ The Realization Process, Woodstock, New York.
⁴ The Chopra Foundation, Carlsbad, California.
⁵ Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York.

Abstract

Integrative Health aims to treat the whole person and to do so within the context of whole systems and practices. We raise questions as to what constitutes the whole person and what must be taken into account to support the creation of optimal well-being. We propose that in order to fully account for the whole person, the transcendent aspects of human awareness, the development of which is the goal of many meditative traditions, must be taken into account. "Nondual awareness" is a term increasingly used in the literature to describe a state of awareness that is characterized by the experience of nonseparation, compassion, and love. Well-being in this state does not depend on anything being experienced per se, but it is rather an innate attribute of living in nonduality. For these reasons, nondual awareness can be considered foundational to the realization of the whole person and achieving the state of optimal well-being.

Keywords: consciousness; nondual awareness; traditional medical systems; well-being; whole person.