Anyone who has spent any time in nonduality groups has seen this, because the moment someone speaks from a simple, grounded place, some voice will rise up out of the shadows to correct them, to outdo them, to sound more radical, more absolute, more uncompromising, and it becomes this endless spiral of one‑upmanship where nobody is actually listening and nobody is actually seeing, they are just trying to win a game that has nothing to do with clarity at all.
The pattern is predictable, mechanical, and it goes like this. Someone asks a question, then there is a comment with some insight, and next someone jumps in with the automatic negation, the reflexive contradiction, where whatever is offered is immediately dismissed and whatever is dismissed is dismissed again, as if negation itself were the highest truth, the spiritual version of saying “I know you are but what am I.” And no matter what is said, no matter how clear the pointer is, this interloper is going to say it is not that, they will try to turn a clear pointer on its ear by back flipping into a more radical sounding position, because they are not really offering insight, they have none, they have only learned to do the verbal gymnastics of the advaita shuffle to sound as if there is some deeper understanding.
And mixed in with these one‑uppers are the flat‑out trolls, the ones who are not even pretending to offer clarity, the ones who jump into any thread only to contradict whatever is said, the ones who say things like “there is a someone there,” or “how can you say there is no one when you said it,” or “who is making the statement,” not because they are inquiring, but because their only purpose is to provoke, to stir conflict, to derail the conversation. They do not know what any of this means, they only know how to say “that is wrong,” and they offer nothing but antagonizing and confusion for the sincere seeker who is genuinely trying to understand.
It is not depth, it is not radicality, it is not truth, it is just the ego trying to stay on top of the heap by sounding more nondual than the next person. You can see the whole thing as the ego’s need for superiority dressed up in spiritual language.
The irony is thick, because the whole point of nonduality is the dissolution of the one who needs to be right, yet these groups are full of appearances acting out the identity of the one who knows, the one who corrects, the one who negates, the one who can quote the most teachers or deny the most teachings. It becomes a performance, a posturing, a stance, and the stance has to defend itself constantly, so it argues, it nitpicks, it negates, it corrects, it never rests. This is the mind turning conceptual understanding into identity and then defending that identity at all costs.
This one‑upmanship is not clarity, it is insecurity. It is not insight, it is compensation. It is not the collapse of the seeker, it is the seeker reinventing itself as the authority. Once you see that, the whole thing becomes transparent, because you can feel the difference between a pointer arising from seeing and a position arising from mind. One is simple, quiet, grounded. The other is loud, reactive, and always trying to outdo whatever came before it. This is the basic mechanics of spiritual defensiveness playing out in real time.
The tragedy is that real conversations get buried under this noise. Someone genuinely exploring gets shut down by someone performing. Someone asking an honest question gets drowned out by someone trying to sound advanced. Someone sharing something gets corrected by someone who cannot tolerate not being the center of the room. The whole thing becomes a stage for the loudest trying to win a contest they created.
The truth is, none of this has anything to do with nonduality. It is just the same old ego, the same old insecurity, the same old need to be right, wearing a spiritual vocabulary like a costume. The performance continues, the identity defends itself, and the simple clarity that nonduality points to gets lost under layers of conceptual noise.
It is clear how superiority becomes a coping mechanism, or how the mind turns teachings into identity, and how defensiveness masquerades as radicality, because all of this points to the same movement, the same pattern, the same old ego wearing a new mask.
And if there is any doubt for the sincere seeker, just look at who offered a pointer, who offered insight, and then look at who burst into the middle of the conversation only to say that it is wrong. The difference is unmistakable.
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