Advaita as philosophy is an erudite, generally useless thing. It's a wonderful mental game to start at "there is only a oneness, seen as subdivided" and let it run from there. Lots of fun. Fun, but still useless.

As a truth percieved in Satori , Advait becomes a powerful path, an accelerated approach to Truth. The method, not the philosophy, is what's of value. The path of Advait is the path of integrating polarities - experiencing the full polarities of a thing, yielding the synthesis, and so on until all duality is transcended.

In more practical language, an example: Love and Hate are "opposites", the companions/polarities which make a "something" out of oneness. Polar expressions of the same thing. If you fall in Love, Hate is there. It can't be any other way with an ego. Just wanting to hold on to the love, to posess the beloved means hate will be there. The power the beloved now has will be resented and so on. Transcending Love and Hate results in the synthesis of Love and Hate: Compassion.

The Italian Restaurant Meditation is a great introduction to Advait. All the important lessons of polarity can be had with this one. Be warned – it involves the use of a dangerous drug (caffeine) and requires the eating of unhealthy substances (ice cream). Consider yourself warned. This can be a mind altering experience.

Now that you are suitably warned, here's how to do it yourself:

Go to a GOOD Italian Restaurant, pick the place carefully. It should have a great reputation for its coffee, and it's gelati (ice cream). Find a reasonably secluded table -this meditation goes deep, and you want to minimise disturbances.

This is very important. Please don't pervert the ancient teaching by trying this at home, or in a sub-standard Italian Restaurant (Like, the owner's grandpa was Italian, but into tiling, not Penne Pesto.). It won't work anywhere but a good, stress on "good" Italian Restaurant. The spiritual qualities of a good Italian Restaurant are indispensible to the process. Italian restaurants that believe they are good enough to be mentioned here should take a long hard, aspirational look at their promotional budget, and get in touch.

Now, for each participant, order at minimum a cup of black filter coffee, decaf is OK, or if your liver can take the strain, make it a double espresso. You want it unsweetened and HOT . If you live in Johannesburg, or anywere 1000m above mean sea level or above, ask them to heat the cup first. Also order a portion (size depending on your liver function) of vanilla gelati. They should arrive at the table simultaneously.

You're ready to begin. Take a tiny sip of your hot, black, bitter coffee. Savour it a while, really pay attention to the experience of it. Now, a tiny taste of the cold, white, sweet ice cream. Take a moment to taste it carefully, paying full attention to the experience. Now back to the coffee and so on, 'til you are finished. If the coffee gets cold, or the ice cream gets warm, and you want more of this meditation, just (budget allowing) order again.

If you want to do the meditation before I tell you some insights people have had from it, then stop reading immediately, and come back when you're done. Bookmark this page, then return to read of the blissful experiences of those who did it before you..

Some feedback I've had from IRM meditators:

"The more wilingly, the more deeply I experience each "opposite", the more I appreciate depths in the experience which were previously unavailable."

"One finds the bitter through the sweet, the sweet through the bitter"

"Reality is found in encompassing the opposites"

"Shit! This coffee's HOT!"

"A deeply transcendant experience. I'm now enlightened"

"I've got a headache from the ice cream. Can we go home now?"