Why Non-Duality Is Not Solipsism but Other People Are Thoughts

Mr.Faceintherock says "I beg to differ!" Just kidding, I'm totally just putting words in his mouth. It's funny when we project thoughts on animals and inanimate objects but we do it with people all the time and totally miss the humor.

Within discussions about non-duality the topic of solipsism comes up a lot.

You grow up believing that there is a you and that there are other people. Non-dual teachings try to get rid of that belief by saying the opposite, "There are no other people".

You cannot turn "there are no other people" into a new belief. Or rather, you can, and that's called solipsism, but it feels awful be cause it doesn't work out. It doesn't work out because it's not true. 

"There are no other people. There is no you." That pointer is really just a magic eraser so you can clear out all the old awful feeling beliefs about yourself. Teachers are tricky. Use the eraser to clean the writing off the wall, and then get rid of it. Don't nail it to the wall in place of the writing.

Other people are thoughts, unless they are in our presence. You don't actually like or dislike anyone, what you like or dislike is the thoughts you have about them. This is based on how thinking those thoughts feels to you. We assume that another person is a solid, objectifiable thing that we can judge, but they aren't, Love is alive. We often mistakenly believe that other people are concepts outside our present experience and our relationships with others are a cluster of judgments, thoughts and feelings. We mistake the thoughts, and concepts with what's real.

If you want to act out of what we could call Infinite Love or Truth, you always, always want to choose the best feeling thought you can about another person. 

If you believe the person has reality, that they have objectifiable existence and substance on their own outside of thoughts you'll have a multitude of reasons you believe in to continue to think thoughts about them that don't feel good and aren't True. Objectifiable means you believe yourself and them to be bodies. Deep down the "I am the body" and other people also are their bodies, and therefore objects, is the root belief at play here. 

Compare how these thoughts feel, "That person is jealous of me and wants to see me fail." -feels bad.

"That person is inspired by something I'm reflecting and sees me as a threat because of their own fear. How can I help them own the inspiration and automatically in doing so, forget the fear?" -feels good.

In both those thoughts above you're still "imagining" the person. You still interact with people but it changes how you do so because you've completely redefined what YOU are and what OTHERS are.  There is no longer any excuse whatsoever to not meet reality and others with unconditional love. You are the meeting itself. Nothing else makes sense anymore. Nothing else feels better. Life goes on, much better, with much more connection and love than ever before. There's nothing scary, dismissive, ignorant or lonely about it. If it were to be scary, dismissive, ignorant or lonely, there'd still be a you and an other for those things to even come up at all.