(Proto-)Samkya thoroughly influenced both Hindu-traditions such as Yoga, Advaita Vedanta, and Kashmir Shaivism, Veerashaivism, as well as Buddhism, which all emerged in close interaction. This is accomplished by self-restraint and bodhi, discriminative discernment or "enlightenment". In Indian traditions, the realisation of this primordial consciousness, witnessing but disengaged from the entanglements of the ordinary mind and samsara, is considered moksha or vimutti, release from suffering and samsara. Indian ideas of nondual awareness developed as proto- Samkhya speculations in ascetic milieus in the 1st millennium BCE, with the notion of Purusha, the witness-conscious or 'pure consciousness'. Nondual awareness, also called pure awareness or pure consciousness and the "non-difference of subject and object," is primordial consciousness or witness-consciousness, a "primordial, natural awareness" which is described as the essence of being, 'centerless' and without dichotomies. According to David Loy it is best to speak of various "nondualities" or theories of nonduality. While "advaita" is primarily related to the Hindu philosophy of Advaita Vedanta & Kashmir Shaivism, nondualism refers to several, related strands of thought, and there is no single definition for the English word "nonduality".
The term is derived from the Sanskrit "advaita" (अद्वैत), "not-two" or "one without a second". In spirituality, nondualism, also called nonduality and interconnectedness and nondual awareness, is a fuzzy concept for which many definitions can be found, including: a rejection of dualistic thinking originating in Indian philosophy the nondifference of subject and object the common identity of metaphysical phenomena and the Absolute the "nonduality of duality and nonduality" the unity of God and man or simply monism, the nonplurality of the world, or double-aspect theory.