Who We Really Are and the Nature of Reality | Rupert Spira
Rupert Spira spends two and a half hours with Andre Duqum making one argument from fifteen angles: everything we know about the universe arrives through a finite mind, so the finite mind can never report what the universe actually is, and the only unmediated experience available is the plain fact of being aware. From that he derives an idealist model where matter is what consciousness looks like from a localized point of view, the way the streets of Paris look solid to the dreamed character while the dreamer sleeps in Los Angeles, and where duality is the mechanism by which the unmanifest is realized in form. The practical half is unromantic and specific: happiness always tastes the same whatever produced it, the ego is I am plus anything (so I am enlightened is as much ego as I am depressed), awakening is usually cumulative and undramatic, and emotions that depend on a separate self diminish when that self does rather than one at a time. He is equally hard on the half of nonduality that rejects the body and the world, insisting the return trip matters as much as the departure. He closes by compressing three thousand years of scripture into one sentence: peace and quiet joy are the nature of your being, and you share your being with everyone and everything.
Published Nov 5, 20242:28:34 video102 min readAdded Aug 24, 2026Open on YouTube →
At a glance
Rupert Spira spends two and a half hours with André Duqum making one argument from about fifteen different angles: everything you will ever know about the universe arrives through a finite mind, so the finite mind can never tell you what the universe actually is. There is exactly one experience that does not arrive that way, the plain fact of being aware, and Spira treats that as the only door to reality there is. From that single move he derives the rest of the conversation: why everybody without exception is chasing happiness, why the mystics of every tradition agree while their theologians fight, why morality does not need to be taught to someone who has felt what he calls shared being, and why the search itself is the thing standing in the way.
The metaphysics underneath it is idealist rather than materialist. Consciousness is not produced by matter; matter is what consciousness looks like from inside a localized point of view, in the same way the streets of Paris look solid to the dreamed character walking them while the dreamer lies in bed in Los Angeles. Spira runs that analogy carefully and then runs it one step up, and the whole model of the universe follows from it, including his account of what death is and what a theory of reincarnation would have to look like to be consistent with it.
The practical half is more grounded than the metaphysics suggests. He is unromantic about awakening (his own came as a series of small recognitions with no dramatic moment, and he distrusts the cave and park bench stories precisely because they make people feel disqualified), blunt about spiritual ego ("I am enlightened is as much ego as I am depressed"), and specific about what changes in emotions, in relationships, in thinking, and in a difficult Thanksgiving. He also insists, repeatedly, that the version of nonduality that rejects the body and the world is only half a path, and that the return trip is as important as the departure.
He closes by compressing three thousand years of scripture into one sentence: peace and quiet joy are the nature of your being, and you share your being with everyone and everything.
The premise: if you want to know reality, know yourself (1:55)
Duqum opens on the podcast's own name. We grow up in an education system that teaches enormous amounts about the external world and gives almost no room to look inward. Spira has said the greatest service anyone can render humanity is the recognition of their own true nature. Why that conviction?
Spira's answer starts with grammar. All of our experience revolves around our self, and the common name we give that self is I. That is why almost everything we say about experience contains the word. I am having a conversation with you. I am seeing this room. I am experiencing such and such. The self stands at the very heart of experience, it is the most important element in it, and therefore there can be no more important question than what its nature is.
He presses the point as a question rather than a claim: our whole life revolves around our self, we live our life in service of our self, so should we not know the nature of our self before we know any other thing? Could there be a more important question?
This, he says, is why the words know thyself were carved above the temple of Apollo at Delphi. The importance of self knowledge stands at the very foundation of Western civilization, and Duqum's podcast is named after it.
Then the second half of the argument, which is the one that does the real work: anything we know about the universe is filtered through our knowledge of our self. Spira quotes William Blake: as a person is, so they see. As we understand our self to be, so we understand the universe. So we cannot understand the nature of the universe before we understand the nature of our self. Self knowledge is the highest knowledge, and to know the truth about oneself must therefore be the greatest service one could render humanity.
The orange tinted glasses (6:14)
Duqum asks him to say more about why, specifically, it is the greatest service. Spira takes the long route.
Everything we know or could ever know about the universe appears through the finite mind, and the finite mind consists of exactly two things: thought, and perception. Perception is seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. Thought then adds its own layer of conceptual knowledge on top of what the senses deliver.
And it is no coincidence, he says, that the universe appears to us in the form of sights, sounds, tastes, textures and smells. There is a direct correlation between our perceiving faculties and the way we perceive reality. The output looks exactly like the shape of the instrument.
So it is not possible to know the nature of the universe by approaching it through the finite mind. All we will ever know, looking that way, is a reflection of the limitations of the finite mind itself. Here is the image he keeps returning to for the rest of the conversation:
If you look at white snow through orange tinted glasses, the snow is always going to appear in accordance with the limitation of the medium through which you see it. The white snow will always appear orange.
Knowing the nature of reality is not a niche concern. It is the quest of science, of philosophy, and of the spiritual traditions. So the question becomes sharp: is there any experience we have that is not mediated through the finite mind? Only that experience would give direct access to reality. Every other kind of knowledge is mediated, and therefore cannot be absolutely true.
The one unmediated experience (7:48)
Do we have any experience that is neither a thought nor a perception?
We cannot go outward into the universe to answer that, because everything out there arrives in accordance with the finite mind's limits. So go inward. Travel backwards through the layers of experience: thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions. All of them are limited, so all of them can only give a limited or relative view. But go all the way back behind the content of thought and perception, and we arrive at one experience, namely the awareness of being, or aware being, or awareness itself.
That experience, Spira says, is the only one there is that is not mediated through the finite mind. And therefore it is the only access we have to reality. Which is why the early Greek philosophers carved those two words at Delphi: if you want to know the nature of reality, you have to know the nature of yourself. It is the only way.
He notes the same truth stated in Sufi form: whosoever knows their self knows their lord. That is religious language for whoever knows themselves as they truly are knows the ultimate reality of the universe. All the religious and spiritual traditions, one way or another, point to self knowledge as the key.
A civilization built on the evidence of the senses (10:23)
Self knowledge is also, on his account, the principle a civilization has to be founded on if it is going to evolve consistently with truth rather than consistently with the apparent evidence of sense perception. Sense perception says one thing above all: everything and everyone is separate.
Our world culture, he says, is predicated on a paradigm of separation, because we have allowed our sense perceptions to dictate the model of reality. And we all know that paradigm. It leads to sorrow on the inside and conflict on the outside. So self knowledge must be the foundation of a peaceful, harmonious and loving society. Not a private consolation. A foundation.
Why the mystics agree and the theologians quarrel (11:01)
Duqum brings up a line they had touched on before recording, from Meister Eckhart: the theologians of the world may quarrel, but the mystics of the world all speak the same language. Those who speak from direct experience seem to agree. Those who study intellectually can disagree for millennia.
Spira takes it as a straight consequence of the earlier argument. Thought and perception fragment reality and make it appear as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves. At the level of thought, thoughts are always different, so there are always going to be disagreements at the level of thought.
So the question is whether there is one experience that is absolutely true, that everybody agrees on, a knowledge prior to the differentiation of the finite mind. And yes, there is, and it is not an extraordinary mysterious knowledge that only a few special enlightened people had. It is the knowledge that lives in everybody as their very own self. It is just the awareness of being.
The experiment with the Christian, the Muslim, the Hindu, the Jew, the saint, the criminal and the atheist (12:28)
He builds it out as an actual thought experiment, and the list of participants matters.
Take a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu and a Jew, and ask them all about their idea of God or their vision of reality. They will all have different ideas, expressed in different language and different terminology. Now add a saint, a criminal, and an atheist. Ask them all to talk about their thoughts and feelings. They will describe different thoughts and different feelings, and there will be conflict between them.
Now ask every one of them the other question: turn your attention away from the content of your experience, go into yourself, keep going back until you come to your primary experience of yourself before any thought or perception arises. Not some marvelous extraordinary enlightened thing. Just your essential experience of yourself.
As long as they understand the question and actually participate in the experiment, they all go back to the same place: the simple feeling of being, the experience of being, the awareness of being. And there can be no difference in people's experience of being. It is always the same experience.
The kitchens (14:29)
The analogy he uses to make that land is the one he will keep reusing all conversation.
Ask several people to describe their kitchen. Everyone describes a different shape, size, color, and set of contents. Every description is totally different.
Now ask everyone to describe the space in their kitchen, which is after all the larger part of the kitchen. Every description is identical. Whether the kitchen is vast and airy or tiny and dark and cozy, the space is always the same. It is not qualified or conditioned by the four walls within which it seems to be contained, or by the objects it contains.
Our being is like that. Just as there would never be an argument about the nature of the space in all these different rooms, there can be no argument about the nature of being in all these different people. That is the essential knowledge. All the great religions and spiritual traditions are founded on it, and the conflicts only begin when that knowledge has been overlooked and people start squabbling about ideas and about the names you give to that being.
The room that thinks it is small (16:28)
Duqum turns to the longing for happiness. Pick a person at random off the street, ask if they want to be happy, and the answer is yes. But the I that wants to be happy is usually felt as a locus of thoughts and emotions localized in the head, an identity and personality structure that engages the world, and through that perceived separate self, happiness looks like something to be gained from possessions, from an arrangement of relationships, from something happening a certain way outside of us.
He offers a metaphor of his own: a lighthouse illuminating a beach, looking for its own light, failing to recognize that it is the source of its own illumination. What we are looking for is the place we are looking from.
Spira answers it by taking the space analogy all the way through, slowly, because it carries the entire model.
There is one physical space in the universe. Not numerous physical spaces. One vast boundless physical space that seems to be contained within numerous buildings and rooms. As soon as a building goes up, it seems to put a boundary around a portion of space, and the space then seems to share the qualities of the building: large, small, dark, light.
But the space never actually becomes limited. The space in this room is not actually limited by the four walls of this room. Take a sample of the space inside the room and a sample of the vast space outside the room, investigate them, and they are identical.
Now imagine the space were aware. Ask it to describe itself. It looks around and says: I am small, I am dark, I am cozy, I am full of objects. It is not describing itself. It is describing the walls within which it seems to be contained.
So say to it: no, do not tell us about the walls and the objects and the people. Tell us about yourself. The space, so to speak, looks at itself, tastes itself, becomes aware of itself. And now if it describes its quality it would never say I am small, I am dark, I am limited. It would say: I am vast, I am without limits, I am boundless.
The space has not become boundless as a result of doing this. It always was. It had only mistakenly identified itself with the four walls within which it seemed to be contained, and one clear look at itself liberated it, not from its limitations, because it never had any, but from the belief that it was limited. Instead of feeling I am confined, I am a fragment, I need something, I am incomplete, the space now feels I am whole, I am perfect, I am complete, I need nothing.
Figure 1. The analogy Spira reuses more than any other, with its mapping written out. The move it is built to make is precise: the space is not released from a real limitation, because it never had one. It is released from a belief. Everything downstream in the conversation, the source of happiness, the reason morality does not need teaching, and what happens at death, is this one picture applied to a different question.
Being, plus the contents of experience (20:44)
Now drop the analogy and go to experience.
Consider one being, whole, without borders, unlimited, infinite. A single being, like the single space. Now consider that single being temporarily enclosed within the body and mind, and mixed with the content of our experience, by which he means thoughts and feelings and sensations on the inside, and perceptions of the world on the outside.
So our sense of our self is a mixture: fundamental being, or being aware, or awareness itself, plus the contents of experience.
Our being is like the space. It is fundamentally unlimited, and this is easy to check in one's own experience. It has no shape, no size, no gender, no color, no age. But in each of us that essential self is mixed with thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions, so we do not experience ourselves as a complete, inherently peaceful, whole being. We experience ourselves as a being that is limited, temporary and finite, and therefore lacking, because a fragment feels incomplete.
Infinite being lacks nothing. The common name for the absence of the sense of lack is happiness. It is complete, it seeks nothing, it needs nothing, it is in a state of equilibrium, sufficiency, plenitude.
But mixed with the content of experience it seems to acquire limits. I no longer feel that I am inherently free, inherently peaceful, unconditionally fulfilled. I feel I am a temporary finite self made partly of being and partly of the content of experience, the body and the mind. So I feel I am a fragment, and as a fragment I feel I am missing something.
That feeling of missing something, and the attendant longing to find it, is the core feeling of the separate self. It is the one feeling that defines it.
Our inherent longing for happiness (24:48)
Because every apparently separate self carries that feeling of lack, every apparently separate self is motivated by exactly one thing: to be completed, to be whole again. Deep in the heart of every temporary finite self there is a memory of its essential nature, a memory of its eternity, a memory of its innate happiness. It has not been destroyed. It has been veiled by the content of experience.
So everyone is longing. To begin with in life we try to relieve that longing through the acquisition of objects, substances, activities and relationships. And for many people, Spira says, the world fails to produce the happiness they seek often enough that they begin to suspect happiness cannot be found in the conventional world at all.
And then we start on a great spiritual search.
This is the sharpest thing he says in the first hour, and he does not soften it:
We rebrand the search for happiness in the world as the search for enlightenment. But it's just the same thing. It's just a rebranding of the same longing.
Only now what we are longing for is a little more refined, and the objects and activities in which we seek it are a little more refined than the ones we used before. It is no longer substances. It is meditation practices, and teachers, and teachings, and traditions, and disciplines. But they are all activities of the mind engaged in for one sole purpose: bringing to an end this existential longing that lives in each of our hearts. We now call it the longing for enlightenment. In the religious traditions we call it the longing for God. It is the longing for something that is going to put an end to an unbearable longing.
Which is why, he says, all the great spiritual and religious traditions say in one way or another that what we are really seeking is not an object, however refined and noble that object may be. It is within ourselves. And so they have elaborated numerous different pathways, all basically to come back to the recognition of the nature of our being, because when being recognizes its own nature, like the space in this room, it recognizes that it is already free, already whole, already perfect, already complete. And it is that recognition that brings the longing to an end.
The steps: direct path and progressive path (28:49)
Duqum asks whether it is useful to examine what we are not, the ephemeral nature of thoughts and emotions, the way they come and go.
Spira does not think it is necessary. Back to the room: the space does not have to examine each object in the room to know that it is not essentially any of those objects. It is enough to take one look at itself and see that it is obviously not the four walls, obviously not the cameras and the lights. It does not need to investigate the cameras and the lights.
He then gives ground with a real distinction. The community of people interested in these matters has grown in maturity over the last twenty or thirty years to the extent that he feels the very direct approach, not examining the thoughts and feelings and histories and narratives but going straight to one's true nature of being, is sufficient for many people. But some people's experience is so intense, so distressing, so traumatic that going in one step from that experience all the way back to their being is too big a leap. For them, intermediary steps are important and necessary, and the first of those steps may well be to explore the content of their experience.
That is the difference between the two approaches he names:
The direct path. Go directly from the content of experience, whatever it is, straight back to the fact of being, or being aware, or awareness itself. The question that does it: what is it that is aware of your experience? That question takes you straight back to the fact of being aware, irrespective of what you were aware of.
The progressive or indirect path. Go more slowly, with intermediary steps.
He gives a concrete example of one such step, and it is unusually practical. If someone's experience is too intense for "what is it that is aware of this," start with: pay attention to your breath. That is not such a radical question. You take your attention off your thoughts and feelings and put it on the breath. You have not gone all the way back to your being, but you have unhooked attention from thought and feeling and rested it on a neutral object, and indeed a neutral object that shares many of the qualities of our being: it is transparent, it is empty, it is silent. It is a very good object to give attention to.
Then when attention has steadied on the breath for a while, you ask the question: now, what is it that is aware of your breath? And you take one step back to your being. Equally legitimate, equally appropriate, depending on the person.
The inherent qualities of awareness (33:10)
Duqum asks him to guide the listener into the direct experience of those qualities. Spira builds them one at a time, and each one is defined by contrast with something in experience.
Peace. Thoughts by definition are always agitated. They are always moving. So ask: what is it that is aware of our thoughts, what allows them to be known, what illuminates them, what knows them? That is what we essentially are, the presence of awareness. Here we are still separating experience into a subject and an object, but instead of taking the subject to be the body and mind, which is what we normally do, we say: the body and mind is something I am aware of. I am the light of awareness that knows the entirety of my experience.
And the awareness that illuminates our thoughts does not share their agitation. It just observes them. Like the sun that illuminates the earth and does not participate in whatever is taking place on it. The presence of awareness that is now listening to this conversation is silently witnessing those thoughts. It does not need to be made peaceful through effort or practice or discipline. It is already such.
Happiness. The same for feelings. By emotions here he means afflictive emotions: sorrow, loneliness, shame, fear. Their sorrowful nature is known, lit up, by awareness, and they appear within the space of awareness. So awareness has both a spacious quality and an illuminating or knowing quality, which is why in the Buddhist tradition it is sometimes called luminous emptiness. It is empty like space, not a physical space but an aware space, a luminous space that both contains all our experience and knows all our experience. And the aware space in which sorrow and loneliness and shame and fear exist does not itself share those qualities. Just as if we were dancing in this room, or fighting in this room, the space would not be modified. It remains at peace, unaffected.
And then he plants a flag which he will not let anyone move:
I'm not talking about an enlightened awareness. I'm not talking about awareness how it might be if we meditate for 30 years. I'm talking about the awareness with which all 8 billion of us now know our experience.
That awareness is already inherently peaceful and lacks nothing, and therefore we say its nature is happiness. Not an emotion of happiness that comes and goes. The complete absence of lack. Complete ease, fullness, sufficiency, plenitude.
Love. From the point of view of the finite mind, reality is broken up into separate objects and selves. The finite mind has a paradigm of separation. But for awareness, as for the space in the room, once it knows itself it knows nothing of separation. It does not feel separate from the space outside the room or the space in your kitchen. From the point of view of the space there is one space. Likewise from the point of view of aware being there is just itself, infinite, without borders and without divisions. There is no otherness in it. And that absence of otherness is the experience we refer to as love. Which is why love is sometimes said to be the nature of reality.
Peace, joy, love. Those are the qualities of awareness.
Then he takes all three back (38:11)
Having built the list, Spira immediately says that strictly speaking we should not assign any qualities to awareness at all, or name them, because all those names are really qualities we give to our objective experience.
It is legitimate to say the nature of awareness is peaceful in contrast with our agitated thoughts. Legitimate to say its nature is joy with reference to our emotions. Legitimate to say its nature is love with reference to the separation we normally feel. These are legitimate concessions. But in every case what we are doing is using the mind, and the mind is trying to name the qualities of awareness within its own frame of reference.
The mind cannot know reality. It cannot know awareness as it is, because everything the mind knows is refracted through its limitations. Therefore the mind cannot know the nature of awareness. Only awareness is aware, so only awareness can know about itself.
So if we really want to know the nature of awareness, we have to ask awareness itself.
What awareness would say if you could ask it (39:47)
He stages it as a caricature, his word. Say to awareness: what is your knowledge of yourself prior to the arising of experience? Thoughts and feelings and objects have not arisen yet. It is just empty. There are no buildings in the universe.
Awareness would never say I am peaceful, because it has not yet known agitation. It would never say my nature is happiness, because it has not yet known sorrow. It would never say my nature is love, because it has not yet known separation.
What would it say? It would remain silent. But press it, and the only thing it could say about itself is:
I am.
That is a true statement about itself. That is the statement it would make. If we ask the mind to tell us about awareness, the mind says it is peaceful, it is loving. That is the mind viewing awareness as an object. But in awareness's experience of itself there are no other finite minds from whose point of view it may be known. There is just itself, and its own knowledge of itself, and that must be the true knowledge of awareness.
Which is why, he says, it is said that the highest teaching is silence. And if we have to say something about truth, awareness's knowledge of itself is the highest truth, and expressed it would be I am. That is why I am is said to be the absolute truth. All other truth, even the knowledge that awareness is inherently peaceful, is relatively true, true relative to the finite mind's experience.
Go back to the four religions from the earlier experiment and they would all have to agree on this. If reality prior to the arising of experience were to say something about itself, it would just say I am. Which is why in the Old Testament, God's name is said to be I am.
States of the mind, not states of consciousness (43:26)
Duqum asks about states of consciousness, dreaming, waking, and the filtration levels between them.
Spira corrects the noun before answering. They are different states of the mind. They are not different states of consciousness. Consciousness is like the screen, and the different states of mind are the different programs that appear on it. Consciousness does not pass through any states.
He walks the transition from waking to dreaming as a subtraction, layer by layer.
In the waking state we are aware of perceptions of the world, sensations of the body, and internal thoughts and feelings.
We fall asleep. First perceptions leave: sights, sounds, tastes, textures and smells.
Then sensations leave, sensations meaning our felt experience of the body.
What is left is thoughts and images. We call that the dream state. Awareness has not undergone any change. It has remained exactly as it eternally is. Only perceptions and sensations have been removed from it.
At some point thoughts and images vanish too, and we say we have entered deep sleep. Consciousness has not entered anything. In the so called deep sleep state it is just aware of being.
The finite mind believes I have passed from one state of consciousness to another. Not at all. Consciousness has remained as it is; things have been taken away from it. It is the golden thread that runs through all our experiences and all our states, and whatever other states there may be. Spira uses awareness and consciousness synonymously, and notes that in the absence of the finite mind there is no time, so the accurate phrasing is not "as we always are" but as we eternally are.
How the universe separates itself in order to know itself (47:39)
Duqum reads back a sentence he wrote down from another of Spira's talks, and it is the hinge of the whole conversation:
Consider that what we experience as the waking state is a kind of dream in the universal mind of consciousness, and that each of us as individual people are localized perspectives of infinite consciousness within infinite consciousness, from whose perspective it perceives its own activity as the universe.
Spira says yes, and elaborates it in two steps.
Step one: the streets of Paris (47:32)
In a regular nighttime dream, you fall asleep here in Los Angeles and you dream you are walking the streets of Paris. But you do not experience the streets of Paris directly from your bed in Los Angeles. In order to experience them, you do two things simultaneously:
You imagine the streets of Paris within your own finite mind.
You locate yourself within your own dream as an apparently separate subject of experience, from whose perspective you see what seems to you to be the streets of Paris.
When you wake up you realize it was just the activity of your mind. But what is the activity of your mind appears as a material world, the streets of Paris, only from the localized perspective of the person you seemed to be inside your own dream. Your own mind divided itself in two, into a subject and an object, and it had to: that is the only way you can experience the streets of Paris. You cannot experience them from your unlocalized mind asleep in Los Angeles.
And note where the knowing is. You have localized yourself on the streets of Paris and you still perceive them, but the knowing with which you know that experience is not located in the dreamed body. It is not located anywhere in the dreamed world. It is located in your mind, asleep in Los Angeles. Relative to the dream, that mind is infinite: it does not appear anywhere within the time and space in which the dream takes place.
Step two: exactly the same thing, one step up (49:36)
Now consider that the very knowing with which each of us is now knowing this experience is not located in this body and mind, indeed is not located anywhere in the time and space that seems real from the perspective of this finite mind. It is unlocated. It is infinite, and it is infinite with respect to the time and space we seem to experience in the waking state.
So imagine infinite consciousness dreaming, imagining the universe within its own infinite mind. It cannot perceive the universe directly, because the infinite cannot know the finite directly. There is no room for the finite in the infinite. In exactly the same way that you cannot know the streets of Paris directly from your bed, infinite consciousness, if the potential in it is to be realized in form, must simultaneously imagine the universe within itself and localize itself as an apparently separate subject of experience.
That is all of us. From whose perspective it sees itself as the outside world.
Prior to manifestation, Spira says, consider infinite awareness a realm of infinite potential in which there is no form, no manifestation, no creation.
From the point of view of our finite minds the outside world seems to be something other than mind. We feel our minds on the inside, and what we see as the world is outside the mind, and we call that matter, material stuff. In just the same way that when you are on the streets of Paris in your dream, your mind seems to be inside you and the world made out of matter seems to be outside you. When you wake up you realize it is all the homogeneous activity of your own mind.
His summary of what is actually taking place: the one infinite whole reality, whose nature is consciousness or awareness or spirit or love, whatever we call it, is imagining the entire universe within itself and simultaneously knowing that universe from a localized point of view.
Figure 2. The central argument of the conversation, drawn twice because Spira builds it twice. The top panel is a claim nobody disputes: in a dream your mind splits into an apparent perceiver and an apparent world, and the world is made of the same stuff as the perceiver. The bottom panel is the same structure applied to waking life, which is where the disputed part lives. What makes it an argument rather than a picture is the observation carried across from top to bottom: the knowing never sits where the dreamed subject thinks it sits.
Why manifestation needs a subject and an object: you cannot see your own eyes (52:09)
Duqum asks him to go into more detail on why all manifestation can only be known from a subject object point of view. Spira gives a demonstration you can run in one second.
The reason we can see an object is that we stand apart, at a distance, from it. Now try to see your own eyes. Nobody can see their own eyes directly. Why? Because you have to stand apart from something you see. You need separation to have a subject object experience.
He is careful to flag that the eyes are of course not really the subject of experience, but let the eyes stand in for the subject. Then everything else is the object, and everything else has an objective quality to it because we perceive it from the point of view of a subject. But when the subject tries to see itself, when you look now to see your eyes, there is an emptiness there. A blind spot. There is no objective experience there, no manifestation, no creation. Nothing.
It is exactly the same in the infinite's view of itself. There is just itself, infinite and formless: no creation, no form, no manifestation. If the infinite is to manifest the potential that lies within it in form, the mechanism by which it does that is the apparent division of itself into a subject and an object. In other words, duality is the mechanism by which the potential lying unmanifest in the infinite is realized in form.
The price of manifestation (54:10)
But it comes at a price, and Spira spends real time on the bill.
You are perfectly peaceful and happy when you fall asleep in your bed in Los Angeles. But you locate yourself on the streets of Paris and there you can be miserable, you can have a nightmare. You have overlooked your natural state.
Likewise, if we can ascribe qualities to awareness at all, its nature is peace, plenitude, sufficiency, happiness. But in order to manifest its potential in form it must overlook itself, forget itself, localize itself as something temporary, finite, small, limited, located.
You could say that awareness pays for manifestation with its innate happiness.
It never really becomes a fragment, just as your mind never really becomes a separate person on the streets of Paris. Consciousness always remains as it is, whole, infinite, perfect, complete. But it seems to divide itself in order to realize itself in form.
And that is why in the heart of every separate subject of experience, which is all of us, there is a wound. There is a longing. There is a memory of our eternity. Here is the question he uses as the proof:
Why does everybody seek happiness? If we didn't know the taste of happiness, we wouldn't know what to seek.
Everybody retains the memory of happiness in their heart. If that happiness is concealed, the overriding motivation of that individual is to seek it. Whether we call it happiness or God or enlightenment, it is always the same search. And the search is not really for an object, or a substance, or even for a marvelous vision of God. It is the longing to be divested of the limitations we seem to acquire from the content of experience, and to stand revealed again as we really are.
Duqum offers a framing Spira accepts: suffering is the price of admission that the unmanifest one consciousness must pay to have a localized perspective and an apparent separation from itself.
What consciousness learns, and what it does not (57:15)
Duqum asks whether the one consciousness learns something through having each unique perspective, an infinite number of them. Spira says yes, and then draws a hard line through the answer.
It learns about the potential that lies within it. That is endless learning: as each of our finite minds goes on learning, as knowledge expands in the mind, consciousness through the agency of each of our minds is learning about the potential that lies within it.
It is not learning anything about itself. It localizes itself as a separate subject in order to know itself as the universe, in order to realize its potential in form. It does not do so in order to know itself. The idea that awareness has to become a finite mind in order to know itself is absurd, because everything the finite mind knows is by definition finite. Orange tinted glasses again.
So awareness does not assume the subject object mechanism in order to know itself. To know itself it must cease localizing itself in the finite mind, divest itself of the qualities it borrows from the content of experience, and go back to itself. Which is why most meditation practices, in one way or another, are an attempt to travel back through the layers of experience until we reach the one experience prior to thought and perception, namely the awareness of being.
What love and happiness actually are (59:32)
Duqum asks whether love is who we are, or whether it is in the recognition. Spira: it is who we are.
Love is the nature of being, and being is shared, like the space in this room is shared with all other spaces. The being in all of us is shared. We appear to be separate only because we look at each other through the lens of perception. My perceiving faculties make it seem that you are a separate body and I am a separate body. If we believe the apparent evidence of sense perception, we are going to feel that you and I are separate people.
That is why we love friendship: friendship is an expression of the being we are behind the appearance of separation and diversity. And it is why we particularly love intimate relationship. But he immediately corrects what he thinks intimate relationship is actually for:
It's not really the desire to merge with another person. It's really a desire to be divested of the sense of separation.
For a human being, intimate relationship is one of the ways that happens. But if we believe that the purpose of the other is to provide love for us, that is the source of conflict in intimate relationship, because the person can never provide love. Love is our nature. An intimate relationship can be an expression of shared being, but it is not a means to it. If we use another person as a means to experience love, then as soon as they do or say something we do not like, the love which was dependent on them is broken, and the relationship moves toward conflict.
The ice cream test (1:02:28)
Duqum raises the moment of orgasm: a complete loss of the sense of a separate self, the dissolution of feeling like a bounded, isolated, skin encapsulated ego.
Spira grants it fully and calls it a deceptive twist in our experience. In the moment of orgasm, or any intensely pleasurable experience, we do experience happiness. Not just pleasure. Happiness. And that is true throughout our lives, from the ice cream when we were children onward. We have had innumerable experiences that seem to have delivered happiness. So we can be forgiven, at least to begin with, for concluding that happiness must be caused by objects, substances and relationships.
Then the argument that undoes it, and it is an empirical one about the taste of the thing:
There isn't a particular kind of happiness that tastes like ice cream and another kind of happiness that tastes like winning a game or another kind that tastes like sexual intimacy. The experience of happiness is always the same experience.
That is the hint. What you are actually tasting in that moment is the nature of your being. Happiness is what being tastes like.
Then the mechanism, in four beats:
The separate self is a fragment, so it is always in a state of incompletion, and therefore always seeking to be completed. It lives in a state of tension, anxiety, seeking, longing.
It gets the object, the substance, the activity, the relationship. The tension comes to an end, because we got what we thought we wanted.
When the tension ends, the activity of the mind ceases. And as the activity of the mind ceases, we taste our true nature of happiness.
The mind rises again and wrongly attributes the happiness to the ice cream, the game, the relationship.
Our happiness was always shining. It is shining now. It is only veiled by the content of experience, and when the seeking mind subsides it shows. So after a while we realize the happiness is always the same, and ask the obvious question: why do I not just go there directly?
That does not mean the objects and activities and relationships go away. It means they are no longer pursued for the purpose of finding happiness or peace or love. They are pursued for the purpose of expressing it, sharing it, celebrating it, communicating it.
The objection to the word happiness (1:06:34)
Duqum pushes back on the vocabulary. Culturally and linguistically, happiness reads as dopaminergic pleasure, not the deeper satiation Spira is pointing to. What he is describing is almost the absence of the search for happiness, a quality of well being that exudes from that absence.
Spira agrees on the spot and calls it a very legitimate objection. It is more like a taste of the plenitude, the fullness of one's being, the sufficiency of one's being. He uses the word happiness only because it is the common name for the experience, and he is not attached to it. Sometimes he uses quiet joy instead, which does not carry the association with a superficial passing state of mind. Duqum takes the substitution and it is used for the rest of the conversation.
The implications for morality (1:07:50)
Duqum puts the moral case plainly: in the recognition of shared being you do not need to teach morality the way you conventionally would, because I experience you as self. I do not need to be taught not to hurt you, just as I do not need to be taught not to cut off my own hand, because that just seems stupid.
Spira agrees and reaches for Saint Augustine, who answered something similar with four words:
Love, and do whatever you want.
By which, Spira says, he meant: recognize first that there is one being and that everyone and everything shares that being. As long as you lead your life in a way that is consistent with that understanding, you do not need to be told do not kill anyone, do not steal, do not hurt. Those behaviors are the inevitable consequence of the felt sense of shared being.
Which produces the sharpest line in the section:
The Ten Commandments, in whatever form, are for people who don't yet know and feel that they share their being with everyone and everything.
Moral precepts, ideally, should be based on the recognition of inherent oneness. They tell people how to behave in a way that expresses that oneness before they know it for themselves. When you do know it for yourself, the recognition progressively pervades your whole experience. It begins to inform thoughts, feelings, actions, relationships. And he is clear it is progressive, over a period of time, and he thinks over an endless period of time.
The question
The model Spira says our culture runs on
The model he is arguing for
What is fundamental
Matter. Consciousness is something matter produces, late and locally.
Consciousness. It is the one reality, and it has no outside.
What matter is
The stuff the world is made of, existing whether or not anyone knows it.
What consciousness looks like from a localized point of view, the way the streets of Paris look solid to the dreamer inside the dream.
Where the evidence comes from
Sense perception, which reports separate objects and separate selves.
The one experience that is not a thought or a perception: the awareness of being.
What a person is
A separate self, a locus of thoughts and emotions in a head, born once and ending once.
Infinite being plus the contents of a particular body and mind. Only the second half is local.
Where happiness comes from
Objects, substances, activities, relationships, and an arrangement of external circumstances.
Nowhere. It is what being tastes like when the seeking mind subsides. The objects only interrupt the seeking.
What other people are
Other. Separate bodies with separate interests, known through perception.
The same being, wearing a different configuration. Love is the name for that absence of otherness.
What morality rests on
Rules, imposed and enforced, because interests genuinely conflict.
A felt sense of shared being, from which the rules follow without being taught. Love, and do whatever you want.
What emotion management looks like
Working on each emotion in turn: the abandonment, the jealousy, the hurt.
Cutting the root. Emotions that depend on a separate self diminish as that sense diminishes, untouched individually.
What enlightenment is
An exotic event that happens to rare people, after which they live in a cave.
The simplest recognition there is, often so quiet the mind only notices three months later.
What death is
The end of the self, because the self was the body.
Demolishing the room. Nothing whatsoever happens to the space; the contents disperse back into the ocean.
What it produces at scale
Sorrow on the inside and conflict on the outside.
The only foundation, he argues, on which a peaceful society can be built.
Table 1. The two pictures the conversation keeps setting against each other, assembled from across the full two and a half hours. Spira's claim is not that the left column is stupid; it is that it is exactly what you would expect a mind made of thought and perception to report, because perception's entire job is to render things as separate. Note that the two columns do not disagree about any observation. They disagree about which observation gets to be foundational.
Relationships as a container for growth (1:10:48)
Duqum asks how the deepening of that recognition changed the way Spira relates to the world, specifically how it changed what used to be the extraction of joy from relationships.
Spira answers with what he says is the first thing he knows and feels about anyone:
Their being is my being and my being is theirs. Whether I like them, whether I agree with their ideas, that's all secondary. That's got nothing to do with whether I love them.
Then he relates to them physically, emotionally and intellectually in a way informed by that felt sense of shared being. Which expresses itself one way with his intimate companion, a different way in this conversation, and a different way again with the Uber driver who brought him there that morning.
And a different way again with someone whose ideas he watches on the news and vehemently disagrees with. The first thing he knows about that person is that he shares his being with them. It does not make him agree with them. If he met them he probably would not smile sweetly at them, because sometimes a very firm no is necessary. But that firm no can still come from a sense of shared being. It is just the appropriate response. You may see someone thinking or behaving in a way that violates love, that violates the unity of being, and you may have to meet that behavior with something very forceful.
At the other end of the spectrum, with an intimate companion, the whole relationship has grown up out of shared being, and the purpose of the relationship is to express it, communicate it and celebrate it. The same shared being, expressed in many different ways depending on the relationship, but always the same felt sense underneath.
Not asking your partner to supply it (1:13:13)
The practical rule inside intimate relationship, in his own life: he does not look to his companion to provide joy or love for him. That would be an impossible demand to impose on her. It is not possible for somebody else to produce or provide happiness or love for us, and projecting that onto another person is sooner or later a recipe for conflict, because you are going to be disappointed. They blink the wrong way, they react the wrong way, and then the felt sense of shared being is veiled by them.
So he does not project his joy or peace or love onto his companion and does not hold her responsible for it. That is what keeps the relationship free of demand and expectation and disappointment, and free to be a celebration of shared being.
What the relationship exposes (1:14:47)
Duqum asks whether there is something deeper in shared love that we may not have been able to recognize on our own. Spira says yes, and gives the container argument.
In an intimate relationship, any areas in us that are not yet aligned with this understanding will sooner or later be exposed. That is very valuable: apart from being a celebration of love, an intimate relationship will sooner or later shine a bright light on all the hidden parts of us not yet exposed to the light of truth, to the light of awareness.
But it is much more than that, and much more than companionship. At a human level, for most people, it is the most potent objective experience there is. It is the most potent experience of shared being, the experience in which shared being manifests most fully, and in his experience that goes on and on deepening.
Which is what he says marriage truly is:
In a way, a marriage isn't between two people. The marriage is the dissolution of those two people.
It is why traditionally a marriage is said to be a marriage in God, God being the religious name for our shared being. A sacred marriage in which the sense of separation falls away progressively more and more, and the felt sense of shared being shines more brightly.
Enlightenment is lucid waking (1:18:18)
Duqum offers a reframe: if the waking state is a dream from the perspective of consciousness, then enlightenment is becoming lucid in the dream. We are still in it, but no longer under the veil.
Spira calls that a very legitimate perspective and then extends it with a quotation from William Wordsworth: our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
Go back to the model. Infinite consciousness dreams the universe within itself and simultaneously locates itself as a separate subject of experience within that dream. So you could say infinite consciousness falls asleep. It pays for manifestation with its innate happiness. It falls asleep to itself.
That, he says, is what the Vedantic tradition calls ignorance, and he refuses the word because in our culture it is equated with stupidity, which is not what is meant. It means the ignoring. Consciousness overlooks or forgets itself, ignores itself, just as you forget yourself asleep in Los Angeles when you seem to become the character in the dream. It localizes itself in the form of each of our finite minds, from whose perspective it sees itself as the world, and it has fallen asleep within its own dream.
Then the point of the analogy lands:
When you're on the streets of Paris in your dream, you feel you're wide awake. When you wake up in the morning you know that was a dream. But we now feel we're in the waking state, and from consciousness's point of view, which is the only real point of view, consciousness is dreaming. This is a dream.
So could enlightenment be considered lucid waking? Yes. Just as in lucid dreaming the dream goes on but you are no longer located exclusively as the person on the streets of Paris, you have also taken a step back and you know you are dreaming. In lucid waking, we still view the world from the perspective of a finite mind, which is the only way it is possible to view the world, but at the same time we have taken a step back and we know and feel that we are also the one whole of which all of this is an appearance.
"Because he never had one" (1:20:52)
Duqum asks about Spira's own journey: was there a predominant experience or two that shifted him, or a gradual series of small moments?
For him it was a series of small recognitions. And he tells a story about the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki, who was holding a meeting when somebody asked him why he never talked about his enlightenment experience. His wife, sitting at the back of the hall, stood up and said: because he never had one.
There are people who do have that moment, and Spira names Ramana Maharshi as the obvious example. Those stories exist, they make good stories, and they are obviously very inspiring. Ramana Maharshi went to live in a cave for the next ten years. Others end up on a park bench.
But there is a downside to them, and Spira is unusually direct about it. They equate enlightenment with an exotic experience, so exotic that you end up living in a cave for ten years or completely dysfunctional on a park bench. And then you think: that never happened to me, I am just a regular guy, so this marvelous experience has not yet happened, and you go on seeking.
So called enlightenment or awakening is not a marvelous experience. It's the simplest experience there is. It's just the recognition of the nature of being.
It is the simple recognition: I used to think and feel I was temporary, finite, limited, lacking. And I am complete. I am whole. I lack nothing. I am full. I am one with everything.
The mind may not even notice it at the time. It can be so quiet that only three months later the mind thinks: that is funny, I hardly ever react to anything anymore, nothing upsets me anymore, I feel so friendly with everyone. The mind notices in retrospect.
Speaking and writing about this for fifteen years, in retreats and meetings, he says the vast majority of people have exactly that: repeated recognitions, repeated tastes of the nature of their being, which become cumulative. In time, being aware ceases to be something we visit from time to time in between our other experiences. We begin to live there. We move in. And the peace, the quiet joy and the feeling of love that come with it gradually become more and more of our felt everyday experience.
And nobody ever says or feels I am enlightened, and you cannot point to a time when it happened. You just find it has become more and more your natural condition. That, he says, is how it was for him.
Three types of meditation (1:25:14)
Duqum asks how Spira's relationship with formal meditation has changed, and whether he needs less of it now. Spira asks permission to answer with a taxonomy, twice, which is his way of saying the answer only makes sense in three parts.
One: the progressive path. Meditation practice here means directing attention to an object. It might be the breath, a mantra, gazing at the sky, imagining a flame. Some kind of objective experience, and attention goes toward it. There are numerous types of these objective meditations, subtle objects and gross objects both.
Two: the direct path. A turning around of attention. Who am I? What is it that is aware of all these objects? There are many forms of objective meditation but really only one direct path, though it can be formulated in very different ways. Ramana Maharshi formulated it one way; there are others. It is always the same experience.
And here Spira corrects his own word, which is worth catching:
Not really the turning around. It's more like the sinking of attention. The relaxing of attention back into the source.
Three: the pathless path. Not doing anything with attention at all. Neither directing it toward an object nor tracing it back toward the subject. Simply resting in being, because whichever path you were on has already fulfilled its mission and taken you back to your being. Once you are there, there is nothing to do. He quotes Meister Eckhart: when we arrive at the one who gathers all things into itself, there you must stay.
So self inquiry has turned into self abidance. And it is not really a path, because there is no longer a practitioner doing something or even ceasing to do something. His phrasing is exact: you are not resting in being, because there is no entity to rest in. You are resting as being.
Progressive path
Direct path
Pathless path
What attention does
Goes outward, toward an object.
Sinks back toward its source. Not a turning so much as a relaxing.
Nothing. Neither out nor back.
The object
Breath, mantra, the sky, an imagined flame. Gross or subtle.
None. The question replaces the object.
None, and no subject holding it either.
The instruction
Attend to this.
What is it that is aware of your experience? Who am I really? What cannot be removed from me?
Rest as being. Abide.
How many forms
Numerous. Every tradition has its own.
Really one, formulated many ways.
Not a form at all.
Who it is for
Anyone, and specifically anyone for whom the direct question is too big a leap from very intense or traumatic experience.
Most people interested in these matters today, Spira argues, given how much the field has matured over twenty or thirty years.
Whoever has already arrived, by either road.
Is there a practitioner?
Yes, doing something.
Yes, asking something.
No. Not one doing something, and not one deliberately ceasing to do something.
Spira's own time in it
About 20 years of mantra meditation, which he loved and calls a beautiful practice.
About 15 years of self inquiry, which the mantra practice turned into spontaneously.
Now. Not a practice he does; the place he lives.
Table 2. The taxonomy Spira asks permission to lay out before answering a simple question about his own sitting practice, plus the autobiography he then hangs on it. The progression is not presented as a ranking of practices. It is presented as what happens to one practitioner over about thirty five years, with each stage ending by dissolving rather than by being abandoned.
The mantra that never quite stopped (1:28:00)
The autobiography is specific. Twenty years on the progressive path practicing mantra meditation, which he loved. At the end of that time it turned spontaneously into self inquiry: he began to ask himself what is it that is aware of my experience, or who am I really, or what is it that cannot be removed from me, or what is always with me. Very different questions, all leading to the same recognition.
So he stopped practicing mantra meditation, although the mantra continued to pop up in his mind and still does from time to time, simply because he practiced it so long that it had become like his breathing. He did self inquiry for fifteen years or so. Now even that has given way. He does not practice self inquiry. He abides as being. It has become his home, the place he lives.
He still sometimes chooses to close his eyes and rest as being, and someone looking from the outside might think Rupert is meditating, but really he is not doing anything. He is just being what he is. And the rest of the time he is out in everyday life, having conversations and doing activities, still doing the same thing, still remaining as being, as awareness.
Which is what the Orthodox tradition means, he says, by praying without ceasing. A more superficial interpretation would be that you continually repeat your prayers while out and about. That is not what they mean. They mean remaining in touch with God's being, which in religious language is your being, infinite being, all the time. At which point the distinction between everyday life and meditation no longer holds.
Spiritual ego and the pitfalls of intellectualization (1:31:30)
Duqum sets it up with a line from Freud: intelligence will be used in the service of the neurosis. Nonduality is perhaps one of the most enticing philosophies to latch onto with the mind as a theory instead of coming back to direct experience. There can be identification with the knowledge, built into a superiority complex, and a spiritual ego that comes online. Duqum says he has experienced it himself and that for many it is an inevitable part of the path.
Spira's first answer is a refusal of the whole enterprise of fixing it in other people:
I never have an agenda with anyone's ego.
He is familiar with what Duqum is describing, and has experienced it in himself in the past, when he thought he was privy to some special knowledge. He now feels he has no special knowledge at all, that he has rather less knowledge than most people, and that the only thing he is really sure about is the nature of his own being, and that there is nothing special about that. So when he sees it in other people he notices it, but he has no agenda with it. He is not on a mission. He sees everyone as infinite being and treats them like that, however they behave.
Why the ego cannot stand alone (1:33:06)
Then the structural account, which is the real content of the section and which loops directly back to what awareness would say about itself.
If pure awareness could say something about itself, all it would say is I am. As soon as anything is added to the I am, as soon as it becomes I am this or I am that, it becomes limited, and that limited awareness is the separate person we seem to be. It is the same move as the space: if it only looks at itself, all it says is I am, and it experiences itself as the vast space of the universe. Add I am small, I am dark, and the vast infinite space seems to become a temporary finite self.
So the ego is not a thing. The ego is a structure:
The ego is always pure consciousness plus some object of experience.
And it cannot survive without something to attach to. It does not matter what. It can be positive, it can be negative:
I am depressed. I am enlightened. I am enlightened is as much ego as I am depressed, because you're qualifying the I am.
Duqum takes it one step further: even nonattachment. Exactly, Spira says. I am nonattached is a position of the ego. I am a teacher is ego. I am a student is ego. I am plus anything is the ego, the separate self. I am divested of all objective content is the pure I am.
"I don't like spiritual people" (1:36:08)
Which is why the spiritual version is so natural. You go from ordinary everyday seeking in the world to seeking in the spiritual traditions. Your understanding becomes more refined, what you seek becomes more refined, and so you begin to identify yourself with slightly more refined objects. And you mistakenly believe this is a sign of enlightenment. It is not. It is a more refined attachment. Spira says flatly that he went through it, that he felt at a certain point that he was privy to some special understanding, which was just a very slightly more refined ego than the ego he used to be.
Then, with a warning that he is careful where he says it:
I sometimes say I don't like spiritual people. By spiritual people I mean refined egos. It's ego with a desire for even more refined specialness. It's an ego who's pretending not to be an ego. I would just prefer a regular ego that's content with being a regular ego and has no pretensions.
He does not judge it when he sees it, because he recognizes it as a natural progression for many people and fell into it himself. But he does not collude with it by taking an interest in it. He ignores it.
Asked whether there was a moment when he came out of it, he says no, he did not notice, it was gradual. He cannot give examples, but there were times when something about his circumstances reflected back to him a feeling that he was special, often enough for him to think: oh, Rupert, you have now invested your identity in having some special spiritual knowledge. Now, he says, he just feels so ordinary and regular.
The I thought as a prison door (1:38:11)
Duqum asks whether all forms of attachment are essentially self referential, referencing Ramana Maharshi's I thought.
Spira starts by placing pure awareness prior to the I thought. Awareness does not reflect back on itself, because to reflect on yourself you have to stand apart from yourself and look back, and that is what the finite mind does. Awareness is like the sun: the sun does not have to reflect on itself in order to illuminate itself, it illuminates itself by being itself. Awareness knows itself by being itself. It is only when it localizes itself as the finite mind that it has to become self reflective.
But if awareness were to say something about itself, it would first have to give itself a name. And the name it would give itself is I, because I is the name that that which knows itself gives to itself. So I is the first form of infinite awareness in the finite mind. As long as nothing is attached to it, that I is the name of the infinite. As soon as something is attached to it, it seems to become a finite self.
Then the image, which is the best one in the second half of the conversation:
The I thought is like a prison door. If you're outside the prison and you go through the door in one direction, you lose your freedom. If you're in the prison and you go through the same door in the opposite direction, you gain your freedom.
Run it both ways. If the finite mind takes the thought I, or I am, and passes through that portal, it loses its limitations and stands revealed as the infinite. It passes out of time into eternity. But when awareness passes through the portal in the opposite direction, as long as it stands at the portal I, it is still free. The moment it goes through and acquires the limitations of experience, as long as something is added to the I am, it loses its freedom and becomes an apparently separate self.
One door. Two directions. Same threshold.
Four one sentence answers (1:41:15)
Duqum imposes a creative linguistic restraint: answer these in one sentence each.
What is your definition of suffering?
Suffering is the veiling of our innate joy.
What is the cause of suffering?
The overlooking, or forgetting, of our essential nature.
What is the solution, the liberation from that cause?
The remembrance of our true nature. And Spira adds a clarification he clearly does not want misread: by remembrance he does not mean remembering something in the past. He means a deep remembrance of what we are now, of what lies in the heart of ourself, which for many people is obscured by their thoughts and feelings. Not a recognition of what we might become if we practice hard enough. A recognition of what we are now, essentially.
Is there any inherent meaning to life outside of our own projections? (1:42:18)
Here he splits the answer by point of view, which is the move he makes all conversation.
From the point of view of the finite mind, yes, there is a meaning to life and a purpose. From the point of view of awareness, there is no meaning and no purpose. Not for awareness itself.
And for the finite mind, he specifies both:
The primary motive of every finite mind is in one way or another to be divested of its limitations and to stand revealed as it essentially is: the eternal, the infinite.
The secondary motive is then to express the fruits of that recognition in everyday life, and share it with humanity.
What happens to our identity when we die (1:43:35)
Duqum asks the question directly: what happens at the moment of death of the body, both from the limitation of the mind and from our true nature?
Spira answers first with the space analogy, and it takes one sentence to run.
Think of the body as the four walls of this room, and our thoughts and feelings as the contents of the room. Death would be like removing all the objects from the room and demolishing the building. Absolutely nothing happens to the space. It just remains as it eternally is.
Duqum presses on what makes a kitchen a kitchen and a bedroom a bedroom, which is the contents. Similarly, the limitation of our perceived self, the personality, the Rupertness and the Andréness, is not the walls but the furniture: our silliness, our cultural background, all of it largely acquired since birth. So if the walls are demolished at the moment of death, would any of that uniqueness transition into another portal?
Switching to the ocean (1:45:27)
Spira asks to change metaphors, because empty space cannot carry this question and currents in an ocean can.
Now what we essentially are is the water, the ocean, formless. What we are as individuals is a bundle of thoughts, feelings, sensations. Imagine that as a current in the ocean, a vortex of thoughts, images, memories, feelings and sensations, made only of the water of the ocean but a localization of that water. The only stuff there is the one indivisible ocean, but we are a localization of it.
Each current in the ocean is a slightly different shape, a slightly different configuration of energies, just as every individual is a slightly different configuration of thoughts and feelings. So each current has its own uniqueness, and when one current looks at another it appears as a form with its own unique shape.
Now: what happens when the current dies?
It disbands. It loses its integrity. It expands back into the ocean, and it gives up its content to the ocean. What was a tight vortex of thoughts and feelings, which constituted the individual and which from a second person point of view looked like a body, loses its form, and the energies disperse out into the ocean as ripples.
It's as if the current donates its experience to the ocean as it loses its form.
Spira thinks something similar happens with us. The finite mind, the totality of our finite experience, our thoughts, our feelings, our utter uniqueness, our individuality, our memories, all of it now tightly configured. When he looks at the bundle of thoughts and feelings that Duqum is, he sees a clearly defined form. But as the form dies, this tight vortex of energies disperses out into the broader medium of consciousness, and each of our finite minds donates the entirety of its knowledge and experience to that broader medium.
His conclusion, and he is careful about it:
So I don't think anything's lost. We lose our integrity, we lose our form, but every thought and feeling, we just donate it to the whole.
Reincarnation, stated as a consequence rather than a belief (1:49:38)
Duqum asks whether the memory of self carries over into other existences. Spira says possibly, and then derives what such a theory would have to look like to be consistent with the rest of the model.
First the constraint. All there is to a current or a wave in the ocean is the water. The water never ceases being water and becomes a finite wave. The ocean is always the ocean. There is only one infinite reality, call it consciousness, awareness, infinite being, and it localizes itself as the activities of each of our minds without ever ceasing to be itself. So nothing new ever comes into existence. New forms appear, but the reality of all those forms is the one infinite reality. No new substance comes into existence when a new wave appears, and nothing goes out of existence when it disappears. The ocean just loses a temporary name and form.
Then the inference. There is nothing to suggest that the ripples which lost their integrity as one form, and were donated to the ocean, may not later coalesce. Some of them may begin to form the beginning of a new wave or a new current, in which case some of the contents of the previous current will reappear in the new one. The new current will share some characteristics of the old current, because it is made out of the residual energies dispersed when that current dissolved.
And that would be a theory of reincarnation that was consistent with this understanding. So that's possible, yes.
But he corrects the location of the continuity. The parent current has given rise to the reincarnated one, and there could be a feeling of continuity, but the real continuity is not the content of the two currents. It is the water that is the reality of both.
Where the sense of "it has always been me" comes from (1:52:44)
He closes the death section by pointing the same argument at ordinary life, which is the strongest empirical move he makes.
We all feel our life has been one long life. We always feel it has been my life. I feel I am the same me now as I was two minutes ago, or two days, or two years, or when I was a two year old boy. There is a continuity, and it has always been me.
So ask what has actually been continuous. Not my thoughts. Not my feelings. Not my sensations. Not my perceptions. Not even the physical body, which is changing all the time. Where does the conviction come from that I have always been the same, that it is always me, that I have been getting older and developing but it is still me?
The only element of our experience that is continuous is awareness. It's from awareness that we derive our essential sense of ourself.
How nonduality sees uniqueness (1:53:48)
Duqum raises an emerging distinction being pioneered by Marc Gafni and Ken Wilber: the unique self. We must wake up beyond the illusion of a separate self to our true self, and then there is a unique perspective that emerges once true self is realized, a unique way the universe is being seen through your eyes, which gets shared with the world. He names the failure mode it is meant to correct: in nondual circles there can be a dismissal or bypassing where the human experience is diminished and viewed as a dreamlike illusory thing, and without authentic realization, that shuns it away.
Spira calls it a very valid point and then makes the concession that shapes the entire last half hour of the conversation.
In some classic expressions of Advaita, because it is recognized that what we essentially are is not our thoughts, our feelings, the body, there is an initial turning away from the body. I am not this. I am not this. I am not this. And here is the concession:
If that's as far as the teaching gets, then this leaves us rejecting the world and rejecting the body.
That process of recognizing I am not my thoughts is only necessary for someone previously completely identified with their thoughts, feelings and sensations. As a temporary stage we have to turn away in order to recognize the element of ourself that is not those things. But then we need to turn back again toward the experience we previously separated ourselves from, and realign it with the new understanding.
That is the realignment Duqum was describing. We come back to the person, the body and the mind we turned away from solely for the purpose of recognizing our true nature, and all its faculties are still there:
If you were a brilliant mathematician before, you'll still be a brilliant mathematician. If you're a good gardener, your interest in gardening will still be there. All your unique individual faculties will still be there, but now they are upgraded.
Upgraded meaning they are no longer used in the service of the separate self we once believed ourselves to be. They are used in the service of the true self and its innate qualities of peace, joy and love. We fully inhabit our life as an individual, but our life is then used in the service of this understanding and this love, whereas previously it was used exclusively in the service of the separate self with all its anxieties and fears and demands.
Duqum offers the Zen formula: chopping wood, carrying water. Spira accepts it and then declines to make it a rule. You may go back to chopping wood and carrying water, but you may also choose a different activity. You may realize that the activity you were engaged in before, you engaged in solely to fulfill an existential sense of lack. Now that you no longer have that, and feel the fullness of yourself, you may not want to engage in it anymore. It is not the right activity for expressing what you now want to express. You have the same faculties. You use them in the service of love and understanding.
Properly relating to our emotional experience (1:58:41)
Duqum notes that some traditions suggest transcending emotions and others suggest fully feeling them, and asks which is the proper relationship.
Spira's answer begins with a structural claim rather than a technique. The emotions that rely on the existence of a separate self at their heart diminish in direct proportion to the diminishing of that separate self. In some people the sense of separation disappears all at once; in most it is a gradual diminishment. Either way, the emotions that attend that sense of separation diminish with it, without your having worked specifically on each individual emotion.
There's a whole train of emotions all of which rely on the sense of separation for their existence. If that sense diminishes then the whole train will also diminish, without your working on your feeling of abandonment, your jealousy, your lack. Because you've cut the root.
What actually changes, in order (2:00:27)
Asked how emotions arise differently from that recognition, he describes a sequence rather than an event.
First, less engagement. You feel: I am the space, and this emotion is just an old habit. Where you previously felt I am that emotion, you now feel I feel it. He points out that our own language already encodes the shift: I am sad becomes I feel sad. I feel the sadness. I am not the sadness. You may never formulate it that way to yourself, but you have already taken a step back and you are standing in your true nature.
Second, they still arise, but they lose their persuasive power. You do not lose yourself in them. They still appear, they are still unpleasant, but there is less resistance to them, because you know they are something you experience. You do not have such an agenda with them. There is no need to get rid of them, because you know deep down they are a passing cloud. So you tend to be more compassionate with yourself. There is no judgment of emotions. There is an allowing of them.
Third, in time they diminish. Because you are no longer engaged with the emotion, you are no longer feeding it, and in particular you are no longer feeding the separate self around whom, and on whose behalf, the emotion arises. You are no longer standing as the hurt self. You are standing as the open empty space of awareness that cannot be hurt. So the feeling of hurt can no longer arise in the same way, because the self that feels hurt is not there to feel it. You cannot hurt this space.
And when you feel that, two things follow. You no longer need to defend yourself against what anybody says, because you know it cannot hurt you. And the feeling of hurt does not arise so much in the first place.
Duqum names the practical effect: less immediate reactionary energy to defend a sense of personhood. Spira agrees and traces the consequence into relationships. You say something he thinks is untrue or unjust or unkind, and he does not immediately defend himself by attacking you. He just hears what you say. It may provoke a feeling of resistance, but he does not act on it. The resistance rises, it falls, and the conversation carries on. It may be necessary to address what you said, or not. Either way it does not break the feeling of shared being. Whereas normally the emotion rises, the feeling of connection is lost, you feel hurt and angry, and we all know where that goes.
The Thanksgiving test (2:03:30)
Duqum quotes Ram Dass: if you think you are enlightened, spend a week at Thanksgiving with your family. We are tested most in our familiar relationships, where there is historic conditioning and an expectancy that a particular personhood will keep showing up.
Spira agrees and gives a preparation you can run right now, a month out, not in the moment.
Think of a member of your family you have conflict with, one where the old habits are so strong that being together produces immediate tension. Think about that person now. And when you think of them, all you know about them is that they are the same being that you are. Whatever the conflict, whatever happened in your childhood, whatever happened in the intervening years, you see that person primarily as the same being that you are.
Practices to embody your true self (2:05:27)
Duqum asks whether there is an additional tool for the immediate moment, something to remind ourselves of, or the breath. Spira's amendment is small and it is the whole practice:
Not just thinking of the other as the same being that you are, but really feeling it. Feeling the other as your own being, irrespective of the history.
That is the best one can do in relation to the other. In relation to oneself, and to the reactive emotions provoked by media or anything else, it is to resolutely remain as this open, inherently peaceful, aware space, and to remain as that when circumstances are easy and neutral. It is relatively easy to feel ourselves as that in a calm conversation. But the more established we are in benign circumstances, the easier it will be to remain as that when the bar is raised. And that is the test.
He quotes the Indian sage Atmananda Krishna Menon, paraphrasing: asked how we know when we are established in our true nature, he said it is when thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions can no longer take you away. Objective experience has lost its power to take you away from yourself.
And usually, as Duqum said, the relationships with our nearest and dearest are the stickiest experiences, the ones that retain that power longest, and therefore the best places to look. Which is why Spira tells people on retreat the opposite of what they expect to hear:
People say to me, it's all very well when we're here in these peaceful benign circumstances, but I'm dreading going home, there's conflict at work. And I say no, no, no. You should look forward to that. If you can only maintain your peace in loving, easy circumstances, then it's a fragile peace. It's a state of mind. It's not the real peace.
There are two possibilities in a conflict. Either you lose yourself in it and sorrow is the inevitable consequence, or you use the situation to establish yourself more fully in your innate peace. You feel the independence of your being. You feel that nothing can hurt you and therefore you do not need to defend yourself, so you can go fully into life, open.
And he closes the loop on a word people get wrong here. It does not make you invulnerable in the traditional sense. It makes you open. You can be very sensitive. You just do not need to defend yourself, because you experience at the deepest level that you cannot be hurt. Your peace is imperturbable. Unshakable.
Embracing the wholeness of the human experience (2:09:41)
Duqum raises the caricature honestly: from the outside, the nondual perspective can look like an inert, boring reality, peaceful people sitting over there not doing a whole lot. For him, getting in touch with this place intimately is exuberant. Enlivening. Sometimes peaceful and still, sometimes quiet joy, but the language often used seems to push aliveness away when the truth is the opposite.
Spira agrees, and gives the two directions their names.
The inward facing path. Turning away from the content of experience. I am not my thoughts. I am not my feelings. A legitimate path, and most pathways start there in order to recognize the nature of our being.
The outward facing path. Going back to the experience we previously separated ourselves from, which means going back to the body and mind and to the world, being fully engaged again in activities and relationships.
A balanced path is one in which both are honored, both engaged in, both respected, and in balance with each other.
Then he does the tradition by tradition accounting, and it is the most historically specific passage in the conversation.
Vedanta emphasized the inward facing path; the outward facing path was implicit in it but not often spoken about. He cites Ramana Maharshi to show that the outward turn is genuinely there in the source and not an import:
The world is an illusion, only Brahman is real. That's the inward facing path. But then he said: but Brahman is the world. There he's going back to the world.
First there is the world. We turn away from the world and go to our self. Then we go back and unite that self, consciousness, with the world. Consciousness is the world. The world is consciousness.
Tantra is the mirror image. In the tantric traditions the recognition of our true nature as pure awareness is implicit and often spoken about, but not emphasized the way it is in Vedanta. What is emphasized is our oneness with the entirety of experience, including difficult emotions and everything that comes up.
Each has a beauty and each has a danger, and Spira names both.
The danger of the Vedantic approach is the one Duqum described: a negative attitude toward the body and the world, a rejection of human experience. Its great contribution is the emphasis on recognizing the nature of reality, which he calls the great contribution Vedanta made to society.
The danger of the tantric approach is that you can think you are engaging in spiritual life and actually just use it as an excuse for being lost in the content of experience. His aside: "We're in California. I don't need to describe that to you." Its great contribution is the reintegration of the understanding with all aspects of our life.
Exponents of the two traditions usually take shots at each other to assert their superiority. Spira does not see it that way. He thinks they are two aspects of the same tradition, one emphasizing the inward facing path and the other the reintegration, and a balanced path is one where the two are really balanced.
Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.
Spira: exactly.
The nature of our thoughts (2:14:55)
Duqum cites the common figure that we have roughly 60,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day, and that we are largely troubled by the ones we are invested in. What are the implications of this understanding for thinking itself?
Spira's answer is a taxonomy, and the point of it is that almost all thinking is fine. He goes category by category.
Practical thoughts. He gives his own morning as the example: I have to be there by ten, I am not sure where we are, so I will get there at nine thirty, I must call an Uber, and so on. That is a whole series of thoughts, maybe twenty of them. They were all in the service of enabling this conversation to take place. Absolutely nothing problematic. Not particularly interesting thoughts, but not problematic ones. He is invested in them for as long as they last, and when they have gone, they have gone, because they brought him here. There is no sense of being a separate self in those thoughts. They arise on behalf of the practical situation.
Creative thoughts. Duqum's desire to have a podcast, to share this understanding, to talk to people about it, and everything required to put it on. What is he really doing? Sharing his love and understanding, and wanting not just to keep it in his own heart but to share it with thousands of people. Those are creative thoughts. They involve a degree of practical thought, the cameras and the lights, but the idea behind it is creative: you are bringing something new into society. You have thought a great deal about your work and who you are going to interview and your research, and a lot of thoughts go into that. There is no ego in those thoughts. They arise on behalf of love and understanding.
Thoughts on behalf of the body. If you get sick, or you need lunch. Practical thoughts that arise not on behalf of a separate self but on behalf of your body, or the body of anybody you have to take care of. Perfectly legitimate.
Investigative thoughts. Those that arise on behalf of our love of truth. The kind of questions Duqum has been asking, and the kind we have all asked ourselves: who am I really, I cannot really be my thoughts because they are always coming and going, who am I. All the reading, all the exploring. No ego in those thoughts either.
And then the one category that is actually the problem:
There's just one small category of thoughts that contain at their origin, and concealed within them, the sense of being a temporary finite psychological self. Those are the only problematic thoughts, and those are the thoughts that diminish.
Everything else continues. The thoughts necessary to come and visit you, to take care of your body, to put on this podcast, to share and celebrate your love with a friend or companion. Only the thoughts based on the separate self diminish. But because a fairly large proportion of our thoughts do indeed arise on behalf of the separate self, there is a real reduction in thinking, and the mind quietens. Only the thoughts remain that are in service of love and understanding, or a practical situation, or investigating our true nature.
Figure 3. The unusual part of Spira's answer is how little of thinking he treats as the enemy. Practical, creative, bodily and investigative thoughts all keep running, unchanged, and he explicitly says there is no ego in any of them. Only one narrow category goes, and it goes not by being suppressed but by losing the self it was arising on behalf of. The claimed second order effect is a budget transfer: the bandwidth that category consumed shows up as creative capacity.
The bandwidth argument (2:19:25)
Now that the mind is not occupied for the most part with thoughts arising on behalf of the separate self, the mind is free for much of the time. It will be quieter and there will be periods of stillness. But Spira makes a stronger claim than quiet: you are then free to use the mind, and this is where he connects it back to the unique self. The mind becomes part of the unique self, used in service of love. And you are actually freer and tend to be more creative, because you have so much more spare time and energy for creative projects and the expression of love and understanding, where previously all that time and energy would have gone into feelings of separation.
Duqum's phrasing for it: there is an immense amount of bandwidth taken up by continually recording things mentally on a personal basis, and that energy gets rerouted.
Why the conversation felt short (2:20:57)
They realize they have been going about two and a half hours, which surprises both of them, and Spira turns that into the last piece of theory.
Time only exists, or seems to exist, when we think about it. As thoughts diminish and you live more in your being than in your thoughts, the sense of time goes with them. Which is why we say time flies when you are happy:
When you're happy, you're in your true being. You're not on the horizontal line of time and your thoughts. You're in the vertical dimension of being, and there's no time there.
And the opposite holds. When we feel very identified in our suffering, an hour goes forever. A minute is an eternity. When is this meeting going to end?
A reminder: spirituality is simple (2:21:51)
Duqum asks whether there is anything else Spira wants to contribute for anyone who has made it this far.
Spira adds one thing, and it is an explanation of why the field looks so complicated from the outside.
Wherever this understanding has arisen on the planet, in whatever place and time, it has been expressed in the language of that time and place. So there are many, many different expressions of the same understanding, and sometimes the expressions are so different that they seem to conflict with each other, even though the deep understanding they express is the same.
And as people struggled with it and asked questions and did not know what the teacher meant, the teacher would develop methods and pathways and techniques to help them understand more clearly. The result is a great proliferation of ideas and methods and techniques, so that the whole thing looks like a maze of complexity.
It's so simple. That's what I'd like to say. What is being pointed to is so simple. The complexity is just, one, the different times and places in which it has been expressed over the centuries, and two, our difficulties and objections, which caused the teachers of the past to elaborate all sorts of different methods.
Then he proposes the compression test, and this is the line the conversation ends on. Take three thousand years of religious and spiritual tradition, feed every scripture that has ever been written or spoken by anybody into ChatGPT, and ask it to express the whole thing in one sentence. It would give you numerous variations, but one such sentence would be:
Peace and quiet joy are the nature of your being, and you share your being with everyone and everything.
That is it. The simplest thing. Just the recognition of what we are now, at the deepest level: inherently peaceful, fulfilled, and shared with everything and everyone. That is all you need to know.
Duqum adds the coda that the more we reside in that place, the more room there is for something unique and true to emerge. Spira agrees and closes the circle back to the unique self: it is the same understanding in everyone, but filtered through our particular mind and body. And there are many ways to express that love and understanding, not just in words.
Conclusion (2:26:29)
Asked where people can find him, Spira says the first place he would go is YouTube, where he has over a thousand clips: conversations he has had with individuals on retreats and at meetings, and guided meditations. YouTube is the main resource, but also his website, where there is a vast archive holding everything he has said or written for the last fifteen years, and all his books. YouTube is the place to start.
Duqum thanks him for the many different nuances they explored and for the distillation of simplicity, and closes the episode asking listeners which parts resonate with their own journey of understanding their own true nature.
Key takeaways
The whole argument runs on one move. Everything we know about the universe arrives through thought and perception, so it arrives shaped by thought and perception. White snow through orange tinted glasses always looks orange. The one experience that does not arrive that way is the plain fact of being aware, which is why Spira treats self knowledge as the only unmediated access to reality there is.
Being is the space, not the room. Ask people to describe their kitchen and every answer differs. Ask them to describe the space in it and every answer is identical. That is the analogy carrying the entire conversation, including what happens at death: demolish the building and nothing whatsoever happens to the space.
The separate self is a mixture, not a thing. Infinite being plus the contents of a particular body and mind. The feeling of lack that follows from being a fragment is the one feeling that defines it, and everything anyone chases is a response to that feeling.
The spiritual search is the same search, rebranded. Seeking happiness in objects becomes seeking enlightenment in practices and teachers and traditions. More refined objects, identical longing.
Happiness is what being tastes like. The proof offered is that it always tastes the same. There is no happiness that tastes like ice cream and another that tastes like winning. The object only ends the seeking; the mind then misattributes the result to the object.
Duality is a mechanism, not a mistake. You cannot see your own eyes because seeing requires standing apart. Likewise the infinite cannot know itself as form without dividing into a subject and an object. The price of that division is the forgetting, which is why there is a wound in every heart.
Consciousness learns about its potential, never about itself. It localizes as finite minds to realize its potential in form. Knowing itself requires the opposite motion, which is what meditation is for.
Morality is downstream of felt oneness. Augustine: love, and do whatever you want. The Ten Commandments, in whatever form, are for people who do not yet feel they share their being with everyone.
The ego is I am plus anything. I am enlightened is as much ego as I am depressed, and so is I am nonattached. The I thought is a prison door that works in both directions: pass through one way and the infinite acquires limits, pass through the other and the finite mind stands revealed.
Awakening is usually undramatic and cumulative. Suzuki's wife on why he never talked about his enlightenment experience: because he never had one. Spira warns that cave and park bench stories make ordinary people feel disqualified.
Three meditations, one arc. Attention out to an object, attention sinking back to its source, then nothing at all: resting as being rather than in it. Spira's own path was twenty years of mantra, fifteen of self inquiry, then abidance.
Cut the root instead of the branches. Emotions that depend on a separate self diminish as that self does, without working on the jealousy or the abandonment individually. I am sad becomes I feel sad, and the space that gets hurt is not there to be hurt.
Look forward to the difficult family visit. Peace that only holds in benign circumstances is a state of mind, not peace. Prepare a month out by feeling, not merely thinking, that the person you conflict with is the same being you are.
Turning away is half the path. Advaita stated inward and left the return implicit; Tantra stated the return and left the recognition implicit. Ramana Maharshi said the world is an illusion, only Brahman is real, and then said Brahman is the world. Both halves or neither.
Almost all thinking is fine. Practical, creative, bodily and investigative thoughts have no ego in them and continue unchanged. Exactly one category goes, and the bandwidth it was consuming returns as creative capacity.
The whole thing compresses to one sentence. Peace and quiet joy are the nature of your being, and you share your being with everyone and everything.
Chapters
0:00:00 Intro
0:01:55 Who Are You, Really?
0:11:01 When Thoughts Lead You Astray, Being Leads You Within
0:16:28 Investigating Our True Nature
0:24:48 Our Inherent Longing For Happiness
0:28:49 The Steps to Recognize Your True Being
0:33:10 The Inherent Qualities of Our Awareness
0:47:39 How the universe separates itself to know itself
0:59:32 What Love & Happiness Are
1:07:50 The Implication This Has on Morality & How We Experience the World
1:10:48 Relationships as a Container for Growth
1:18:18 The Journey & Experience of Enlightenment
1:25:14 3 Different Types of Meditation
1:31:30 Spiritual Ego & The Pitfalls of Intellectualization
1:41:15 Beyond Suffering: The Meaning of life
1:43:35 What Happens to Our Identity When We Die
1:53:48 How Non-dualism Sees Uniqueness
1:58:41 Properly Relating To Our Emotional Experience
2:05:27 Practices to Embody Your True Self
2:09:41 Embracing the Wholeness of Your Human Experience
2:14:55 The Nature of Our Thoughts
2:21:51 A Reminder: Spirituality is Simple
2:26:29 Conclusion
Notable quotes
"If you look at white snow through orange tinted glasses, the snow is always going to appear in accordance with the limitation of the medium through which you see it. The white snow will always appear orange."
Rupert Spira, 6:44
"It's not possible to know the nature of reality when we view it through the lens of the finite mind."
Rupert Spira, 7:15
"The early Greek philosophers realized: if you want to know the nature of reality, you have to know the nature of yourself. It's the only way."
Rupert Spira, 9:21
"Our world culture now is predicated on a paradigm of separation, because we have allowed our sense perceptions to dictate the model of reality. It leads to sorrow on the inside and conflict on the outside."
Rupert Spira, 10:23
"The theologians of the world may quarrel, but the mystics of the world all speak the same language."
Meister Eckhart, quoted by André Duqum, 10:54
"Just as there would never be any argument as to the nature of the space in all these different rooms, there can be no argument about the nature of being in all these different people."
Rupert Spira, 15:00
"One clear look at itself liberated it, not from its limitations, because it was never limited in the first place. It liberated it from the belief that it was limited."
Rupert Spira, 20:14
"This feeling I'm incomplete, I lack something, is the one feeling that defines the apparently separate self."
Rupert Spira, 23:52
"We rebrand the search for happiness in the world as the search for enlightenment. But it's just the same thing. It's just a rebranding of the same longing."
Rupert Spira, 25:26
"I'm not talking about an enlightened awareness. I'm not talking about awareness how it might be if we meditate for 30 years. I'm talking about the awareness with which all 8 billion of us now know our experience."
Rupert Spira, 36:09
"It would remain silent. But imagine we were to press it. The only thing it would say is: I am."
Rupert Spira, on asking awareness to describe itself, 40:50
"The I am is the absolute truth. All other truth is relatively true."
Rupert Spira, 41:55
"Consciousness is like the screen, and the different states of mind are the different programs that appear."
Rupert Spira, 43:56
"You could say that awareness pays for manifestation with its innate happiness."
Rupert Spira, 55:14
"Why does everybody seek happiness? If we didn't know the taste of happiness, we wouldn't know what to seek."
Rupert Spira, 55:44
"There isn't a particular kind of happiness that tastes like ice cream and another kind that tastes like winning a game. The experience of happiness is always the same experience. Happiness is what being tastes like."
Rupert Spira, 1:04:01
"Love, and do whatever you want."
Saint Augustine, quoted by Rupert Spira, 1:08:38
"The Ten Commandments, in whatever form, are for people who don't yet know and feel that they share their being with everyone and everything."
Rupert Spira, 1:09:09
"The first thing I know and feel about anyone is that their being is my being and my being is theirs. Whether I like them, whether I agree with their ideas, that's all secondary."
Rupert Spira, 1:10:39
"It's not really the desire to merge with another person. It's really a desire to be divested of the sense of separation."
Rupert Spira, on intimate relationship, 1:00:53
"In a way, a marriage isn't between two people. The marriage is the dissolution of those two people."
Rupert Spira, 1:16:18
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting."
William Wordsworth, quoted by Rupert Spira, 1:18:19
"Somebody asked him why he never talked about his enlightenment experience, and his wife, who was sitting at the back of the hall, stood up and said: because he never had one."
Rupert Spira, on Shunryu Suzuki, 1:20:52
"So called enlightenment or awakening is not a marvelous experience. It's the simplest experience there is. It's just the recognition of the nature of being."
Rupert Spira, 1:22:22
"You're just resting, not resting in being, because there's no entity to rest in. You're just resting as being."
Rupert Spira, 1:28:00
"I never have an agenda with anyone's ego."
Rupert Spira, 1:32:03
"I am enlightened is as much ego as I am depressed, because you're qualifying the I am."
Rupert Spira, 1:35:08
"I sometimes say I don't like spiritual people. By spiritual people I mean refined egos. It's an ego who's pretending not to be an ego. I would just prefer a regular ego that's content with being a regular ego."
Rupert Spira, 1:36:39
"The I thought is like a prison door. If you're outside the prison and go through in one direction, you lose your freedom. If you're in the prison and go through the same door in the opposite direction, you gain your freedom."
Rupert Spira, 1:39:44
"Suffering is the veiling of our innate joy."
Rupert Spira, 1:41:18
"Death would be like removing all the objects from this room and demolishing the building. Absolutely nothing happens to the space."
Rupert Spira, 1:43:52
"It's as if the current donates its experience to the ocean as it loses its form."
Rupert Spira, 1:47:34
"The only element of our experience that is continuous is awareness. It's from awareness that we derive our essential sense of ourself."
Rupert Spira, 1:53:14
"If you were a brilliant mathematician before, you'll still be a brilliant mathematician. All your unique individual faculties will still be there, but now they are upgraded."
Rupert Spira, 1:56:52
"You're no longer standing as the hurt self. You are standing as the open empty space of awareness that cannot be hurt."
Rupert Spira, 2:01:59
"If you think you're enlightened, spend a week at Thanksgiving with your family."
Ram Dass, quoted by André Duqum, 2:04:01
"If you can only maintain your peace in these loving, easy, benign circumstances, then it's a fragile peace. It's a state of mind. It's not the real peace."
Rupert Spira, 2:08:08
"It doesn't make you invulnerable in the traditional sense of the word. It makes you open. You can be very sensitive. You don't need to defend yourself."
Rupert Spira, 2:09:11
"The world is an illusion, only Brahman is real. But then he said: but Brahman is the world."
Rupert Spira, on Ramana Maharshi, 2:12:17
"Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows."
Nisargadatta Maharaj, quoted by André Duqum, 2:14:49
"There's just one small category of thoughts that contain, concealed within them, the sense of being a temporary finite psychological self. Those are the only problematic thoughts."
Rupert Spira, 2:17:52
"When you're happy, you're not on the horizontal line of time and your thoughts. You're in the vertical dimension of being, and there's no time there."
Rupert Spira, 2:20:57
"Peace and quiet joy are the nature of your being, and you share your being with everyone and everything. That's it. That's all you need to know."
Rupert Spira, 2:25:02
Resources mentioned
The two people in the room
Rupert Spira, the guest. Teacher in the direct path tradition, formerly a potter, author and retreat leader.
Rupert Spira on YouTube, his own recommendation for where to start: over a thousand clips, conversations from retreats and meetings, and guided meditations.
rupertspira.com, the vast archive: everything he has said or written for the last fifteen years, and all his books.
Ramana Maharshi, named for the sudden recognition, for the cave, for formulating self inquiry, and for the world is an illusion, only Brahman is real, but Brahman is the world.
Shunryu Suzuki, and his wife's answer about the enlightenment experience he never had.
Nisargadatta Maharaj, wisdom tells me I am nothing, love tells me I am everything.
Atmananda Krishna Menon, the Indian sage on when you know you are established in your true nature.
Worth being clear about which parts of this are argument and which are assertion, because Spira mixes them and the difference matters.
The strongest move is the epistemological one, and it is not fringe. The claim that everything we know about the world arrives through and is shaped by the apparatus that knows it has a long, respectable history: it is broadly Kant's point about phenomena and the thing in itself, and it is the reason the hard problem of consciousness is still called hard. Where Spira departs from Kant is in claiming there is a way through: one experience, awareness of being, that is not a phenomenal representation and therefore delivers reality directly. Most academic philosophers would want a great deal more argument for that step than the conversation provides. The claim that being is featureless and therefore identical across all people is doing enormous load bearing work, and it is closer to a report than a proof. That two people find nothing to disagree about when they introspect on bare being is compatible with one shared being; it is also compatible with the far duller explanation that a contentless report cannot vary.
The metaphysics is analytic idealism, and it is a live minority position rather than a fringe one. Consciousness as fundamental, with matter as its appearance from a localized perspective, is roughly the position Bernardo Kastrup defends in the analytic literature, and it sits on the same shelf as panpsychism and cosmopsychism, which Philip Goff and others argue for in mainstream journals. The mainstream in philosophy of mind and in neuroscience remains physicalist, and the standard objection to Spira's version is the one every idealism has to answer: if the universe is one mind imagining, why is the imagining so lawful, so consistent between observers, and so indifferent to what any observer wants? The dream analogy is vivid and it is doing philosophical work, but analogies do not survive being asked for equations. Nothing in this conversation predicts anything a physicist could measure, and Spira does not claim it does.
The reincarnation passage is the most carefully hedged thing he says, and it deserves credit for that. He does not assert it. He is asked whether personal content survives, he answers "possibly," and then derives what a theory of reincarnation would have to look like to be consistent with the ocean model: dispersed ripples that may later coalesce, with real continuity in the water rather than in the content. That is a model being kept coherent, not a claim about evidence, and he does not pretend otherwise.
The psychology is where the page earns its keep regardless of what you make of the metaphysics. The observation that happiness always tastes the same whatever produced it, and that the object may simply be ending the seeking rather than delivering the goods, is a real and testable claim about the phenomenology of desire, and it lines up well with what the hedonic treadmill literature reports. The account of the ego as I am plus anything, which makes "I am enlightened" structurally identical to "I am depressed," is a genuinely useful diagnostic and one that a lot of teachers in this space fail. So is his refusal to romanticize awakening, his warning that cave stories make ordinary people feel disqualified, and his flat statement that he prefers a regular ego to a refined one. The shift from I am sad to I feel sad is close to what cognitive defusion does in acceptance and commitment therapy, arrived at from a completely different direction.
Two places to keep your eyes open. First, the claim that morality follows automatically from felt oneness is elegant and unfalsifiable in the same breath: it explains good behavior as evidence of recognition and bad behavior as evidence that recognition has not happened, which means no observation can count against it. Spira is honest that a very firm no is sometimes the appropriate response, which is more than most teachings in this genre concede, but the framework itself gives you no way to adjudicate a genuine conflict of interests between two people who both feel shared being. Second, the argument's own trap: if the finite mind cannot know reality, then any objection raised by a finite mind can be dismissed as a product of the finite mind. Spira does not deploy that move in this conversation, and in fact spends a great deal of it giving ground to Duqum's pushbacks, on the word happiness, on the unique self, on the rejection of the body. But the move is available in the structure, and it is worth noticing that it is.
What you get here is a very clear, very consistent, very old position stated by someone who has been stating it for fifteen years and has heard every objection. It is not offered as science and it does not pretend to be. Taken as philosophy it is a minority report with a serious pedigree. Taken as psychology it is unusually practical. Taken as an argument for its own metaphysics it rests, in the end, on a single experience it asks you to go and have.
Full transcript
[00:00:00] If you want to know the nature of reality, you have to know the nature of yourself. It's the only way. Why does everybody seek happiness? In each of our hearts, there is this wound. There is this longing that there is this memory of our eternity. If we didn't know the taste of happiness, we wouldn't know what to seek. Many people, they've been failed often enough by the world. They begin to suspect that happiness can't be found in the conventional world. And then we start on a great spiritual search. We arrive at one experience, namely the awareness of being. If we
[00:00:30] really want to know the nature of awareness, we must, as it were, in some expressions of the traditional non-dual teaching, there is this initial turning away from body. I'm not this, I'm not this, I'm not this. If that's as far as the teaching gets, then this leaves us with rejecting the world and rejecting the body. We need to then turn back again and realign it with this new understanding. We fully inhabit our life as an individual, but our life is then used in the service of this understanding.
[00:01:00] [Music] Hey everyone, welcome back to the Know Thyself podcast. Our guest today for many years has been inspiring countless people through his books, his talks, his retreats and courses. And he's been supporting really us recognize the true nature of ourselves as awareness itself. The teachings of non-duality have immense implications in daily life. And it also feels like the main reason I started this podcast, named it know
[00:01:31] thyself to begin with. And so I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I'm about to. Rupert Spyro, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Very nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me, Andre. Yeah, it really is my honor. I've loved your talks and your shares and pointings for for many years. And so this is uh this is a cool moment. The question, who am I? Let's just start right there because we grow up often in an education system, learning so many things about the external world,
[00:02:01] not really given uh much spaciousness to look inwards and to examine oneself internally. You have said that the greatest service one can render humanity is the recognition of one's true nature. That's so profound. And I'm just curious what has led you to that conviction. All our experience revolves around our self and then the
[00:02:31] common name we give to oursel is I. And that is why everything we say about our experience um contains the word I. I'm I'm having a conversation with you. I'm seeing this room. I'm experiencing such and such. So our self stands at the at the very heart of our experience. Uh our self is the most important element of our experience and and therefore there can be no
[00:03:01] more important question than to know the nature of our self. Our whole life revolves around ourself. We live our life in service of ourself. So the most important thing to know in life is what what is the nature of myself? If my entire life is lived on its behalf, if my entire life revolves around it, then should we not know the
[00:03:33] nature of our self be before we know any other thing? Could could there be a more important question than to know the nature of our self? And and it is for this reason that that the words know thyself um were carved above the temple of Apollo at at Deli because this this understanding the importance of self-nowledge stands at the very foundation of Western civilization. Of course, your podcast isn't is named after that.
[00:04:08] you undertake all these interviews in in in honor of that of that quest to know oneself. So, so yes, self-nowledge is I would suggest that self-nowledge is the most important knowledge that anyone could could ever attain. And anything we know about the universe is filtered through our knowledge of our self. As William Blake said, as as as a person is, so they see, you know, as we
[00:04:39] understand ourself to be, so we understand the universe. So, we can't really understand the nature of the universe before we understand the nature of our self. So yeah, self-nowledge is the most important, the highest knowledge and the and the greatest service to to know the truth about oneself must therefore be the the greatest service one could render humanity. if you could elaborate a little bit on why specifically it is the greatest service. Uh what implications once one
[00:05:11] is self-realized that transforms radically all their behaviors and the energy in which those behaviors are infused. And so uh why is it the greatest service one could render render humanity as you said the illusion of separateness starts to fall away and you realize our inherent interconnectedness and then your service starts to be really towards all of life around you as you see it as an extension of yourself. Yes. Um and so if you would like to share some more thoughts on that. Yes. So everything we know or could ever
[00:05:42] know about the universe is filtered through our finite minds, filtered through the uh perception, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. And then thought then adds its own layer of conceptual knowledge to the knowledge that our sense, perceptions give us. So everything we know about the universe appears uh through our finite mind and appears in accordance with it. Our finite mind consists of
[00:06:14] thought and perception. Perception that is seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. And it's no coincidence that the universe appears to us in the form of sights, sounds, tastes, textures and smells. There's a direct correlation between the the our perceiving faculties and the way we perceive reality, the universe. So it's not possible to know the nature of the universe if we approach it
[00:06:44] through the finite mind. All we will ever know when we look at the universe through the finite mind is a reflection of the limitations of our finite mind. If you look at white snow through orange tinted glasses, the snow is always going to appear in accordance with the limitation of the medium through which you see it. The white snow will always appear orange. You cannot see the nature of the snow. If you look at it looking at it through orange tinted glasses, it's not possible to know the nature of reality when we view
[00:07:15] it through the lens of the finite mind. And obviously knowing the nature of reality is is important. It's it's the it's the the quest of of of of science, philosophy, the spiritual traditions. So we have to ask is there um is there any experience we have that is not mediated through the finite mind. Only that experience would would give us direct access to reality. any other knowledge
[00:07:48] gives us mediated access to to reality and therefore cannot be absolutely true. So if we want to know what's absolutely true, we have to go to a to an experience that is not subject to the limitations of the finite mind. So do we have any experience that that is neither a thought or or a perception? And in order to we we can't go outwards into the universe to to find the answer to that question because everything we know appears in accordance with the
[00:08:18] limitations of the finite mind. So if you go inwards what what happens if we travel as it were backwards through the layers of experience uh thoughts feelings sensations perceptions all of these are limited. So they they can only give us a limited or relative view of reality. But if we go all the way back behind as it were the the the content of of thought and perception, we we arrive at one experience,
[00:08:50] namely the awareness of being or aware being awareness itself. And this this this experience we have the experience of being aware or aware being is the only experience there is that is not mediated through the finite mind. And therefore it is the only access we have to reality. And that is why the the words know thyself were were carved above the temple of Apollo that
[00:09:21] that the early Greek philosophers realize if you want to know the nature of reality, you have to know the nature of yourself. It's the only way to know the nature of reality. And this this is this truth is expressed in many different ways in the in the Sufi tradition as you know paleani um whosoever knows their self knows their lord. That's religious language for who whoever knows theirel as they truly are knows the ultimate reality of the
[00:09:52] universe. Uh so so that's why all the the the religious and spiritual traditions one way or another uh point to self-nowledge as the key to to to understanding and and the principle really which on a civilization must be must be founded if a civilization is going to evolve in a way that is consistent with um truth uh rather than evolve in a way that is consistent with the apparent evidence of sense
[00:10:23] perception. In other words, separation. Our our world culture now is predicated on a on a paradigm of separation because we have allowed this our sense perceptions to dictate their model of reality. Everything and everyone is separate. That's our that's the the foundation on which our world culture is based. And of course, we all know um this paradigm. It leads to sorrow on the inside and conflict on the outside. So, so this this self-nowledge must be the
[00:10:54] the foundation of of of a peaceful, harmonious and loving society. Meister Ehart we briefly mentioned before recording talking about one thing that he said was that theologians of the world may quarrel but the mystics of the world all speak the same language. Absolutely. And there seems to be those that speak from direct experience seem to agree and those that study through the mind intellectually often can disagree. Yeah.
[00:11:24] So what is it I suppose and it's a bit of a provocative question that through immediacy of their direct experience they get to know reality intimately as it is for all of us versus the finess of the mind you spoke to earlier um we could disagree for millennia. Yes. Exactly. If we if we if if we go through the finite mind that is through thought and perception, thought and perception fragment reality and make it appear as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves. And so yes, at
[00:11:56] the level of thought, thoughts are always different. Thoughts there are always going to be disagreements at at the level of thought. Is is there one experience that is absolutely true? Is there one experience that everybody agrees on? Is is there is there a knowledge that is prior to the differentiation of the finite mind? That is this knowledge that Meister Echard said is the one knowledge that all mystics agree on? And and yes, there is. And it's not a um an extraordinary
[00:12:28] mysterious um knowledge that that only a few special enlightened people had. It's the knowledge that lives it in everybody as their very own self. It is just the awareness of being. So let me let me try and illustrate that. Let's let's take uh let's take a a Christian and a Muslim and and a Hindu and a Jew and ask them all about their
[00:12:58] vision of of their idea of God or their vision of reality. uh they will all have different ideas about it and they'll they'll express their their understanding in different language, different terminology, different but if we were to ask each of these four people turn your attention away from the content of your experience and just go back as far as you can in your experience to to the your your primary experience of yourself
[00:13:29] before any thought or perception arises. What what do you find there? And as long as they understood the question and participated in the in the experiment, they would all go back just to the experience of being. And let's add in a few other people as well. Um, a saint, a criminal, an atheist. We do the experiment with a whole range of different people. We ask them to talk about their thoughts and feelings. They'll all describe different thoughts and feelings and there'll be conflict
[00:13:59] between them. But we ask them all, turn your attention away from the content of your experience. Just go into yourself. Keep on going back till you till you come back to your till to to your primary not not some marvelous extraordinary enlightened just your your essential experience of yourself. It's just the simple feeling of being the experience of being the awareness of being. And there can be no doubt there can be no
[00:14:29] difference in people's experience of being. The experience of being is is always the same experience. It's like, let me give you an analogy. It's like if we were to ask several people, describe your bedroom or let's say you describe your kitchen and everyone would describe the shape, the size, the color, the contents that the the everyone's description would be totally different. Now we say to everyone, okay, but now describe the space in your kitchen, which is after all the larger part of your K. describe
[00:15:00] the space, everyone's description would be identical. Whether the kitchen was vast and spacious and airy or tiny and dark and cozy and the space is always the same. It's not qualified or conditioned by the four walls within which it seems to be contained or the objects that it contains. It's always the same. Our being is like that. There would there's no just as there would never be any argument as to the nature of the space in all these different rooms. So there there can be no argument about the nature of being in all these
[00:15:31] different people. That is that that's the essential knowledge. All the great religions and spiritual traditions are founded on that knowledge. They've only it's only when that knowledge has been o overlooked and people start squabbbling about ideas and the names you give to that being that that all the conflicts begin. All the great religious and spiritual traditions are are founded on this simple recognition of the nature of being.
[00:16:02] And I would suggest that also that knowledge also has to be the foundation of any peaceful harmonious society. It it's a it it must be the foundation. It must be the paradigm on which any truly civilized society must be based. in the deeper examination of our fundamental longing for happiness which you pick a person randomly off the street and you ask them do they want to
[00:16:32] be happy everyone's going to say yes right and the eye that wants to be happy many of us have different perceptions on but we tend to feel it is this kind of locust of thoughts and emotions localized in our head and we have this identity personality structure in which we engage the world with and It's through the perception of that separate self that happiness is perceived to be gained through the possessions and gain of exterior material possessions and an
[00:17:03] arrangement of relationships. Something happening a certain way outside of us. Yes. And you're inviting the perspective to realize the source of who you are, which is happiness. And I often think of this metaphor of like a lighthouse illuminating a beach. In many ways, it has been said that what we are looking for is the place we are looking from. And a lighthouse that's illuminating is almost like looking for its own light, failing to recognize that it is the source of its own illumination.
[00:17:35] And and so as we start to peel back the layers of our preconceived notions of self to see who we are more fundamentally that field of awareness that we can tap into, I would love for you to reflect on that and start to guide us with the direct experience of that because I think it uh non-duality can be seen as a philosophically dense topic of exploration but it's also very simple and the immediiacy of direct experience one can come into contact with it. So what say you?
[00:18:09] Yes. Okay. So there's one physical space in the universe. There are not numerous physical spaces. There's just one vast boundless physical space in the universe that seems to be contained within numerous buildings or within numerous rooms. And each of those rooms, like the room we're sitting in now, um lends a quality to the space. The space seems to as soon as the the building is is put up, the building seems to limit
[00:18:43] put a boundary around a certain portion of of space and the space then seems to share the qualities of the building large, small, dark, light and and and so on. The space never actually becomes limited. The space in this room is not actually limited by the four walls of this room. If we were to take a sample of the space inside the room and investigate it and we were to take a sample of the the vast space outside the
[00:19:13] room, they would be identical. Now imagine that the space were aware that and if we asked the space in this room uh describe yourself it would look around and it would say I'm small I'm dark I'm cozy I'm full of objects and and it's not describing itself it's describing the the walls within which it seems to be contained
[00:19:43] but if we said to it no don't tell us about the walls and the objects and the people look tell us about yourself. We want to know about the nature of yourself. The the space would so to speak look at itself taste itself become aware of itself. And if if it were then to describe its quality it would never say I'm small, I'm dark, I'm limited. It would just say I am vast. I am without limits. I am boundless. The space hasn't become boundless as a result of doing this. It
[00:20:14] it was always that it just mistakenly identified itself with the four walls within which it seems to be contained. And just one clear look at itself liberated not from its limitations that it it was never limited in the first place. It liberated it from the belief that it was limited. So instead of this face now feeling feeling I am I'm confined. I'm limited. I'm a fragment. I need something. I'm
[00:20:44] incomplete and so on. The space now feels I'm I'm I'm whole. I'm perfect. I'm complete. I need nothing. Okay, that's the analogy. So, let's go back to our to our experience. Try to make Yeah. contact with this in in our experience. Leave the analogy of this vast boundless space. Go to the analogy of being. Consider one being whole w without borders unlimited infinite. a single being like like the single space and then and now
[00:21:16] consider the single being temporarily enclosed within the within the body mind and um mixed with the the content of our experience. By content of our experience I mean thoughts and feelings, sensations on the inside and perceptions of the world on the outside. So our sense of ourself is a mixture of of the fundamental being or being aware or awareness itself
[00:21:46] plus the contents of experience. So I would suggest that our being is like the space. It's fundamentally unlimited. And this is easy to check in one's experience. We we could perhaps go there later. It's it's easy to check in one's experience that one's being is is without limits. It has no it has no shape, no size, no gender, no color, no age and and and so on.
[00:22:17] But in each of us, our being, our essential self is is mixed with our experience with our thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions. So we don't experience oursel as as this um complete inherently peaceful whole being. We experience oursel as a being that is limited, temporary, finite and therefore lacking because we're a fragment. We feel incomplete. This mixture of infinite being plus the
[00:22:50] contents of experience makes for a a finite being. like the space in this room seems to be a finite space. So although infinite being is is whole, it it lacks nothing. So it's it the common name for the absence of the sense of lack is is happiness. It's com it's complete. It seeks nothing. It needs nothing. It's in a state of equilibrium, sufficiency, planitude.
[00:23:21] But when our sense of ourself, our the fact of being or awareness itself is is mixed with the content of experience mixed with our thought thoughts and feelings, it seems to acquire limits. I no longer feel that I am this inherently free, inherently peaceful, unconditionally unconditionally fulfilled being or or awareness. I feel that I am a temporary finite self that is made partly of of being or awareness and partly of the content of experience that
[00:23:52] the body and the mind. And so we feel we're a fragment and as a fragment we feel I'm missing something. So this sense of missing something and the attendant longing to find something is is the core feeling of the separate self that we seem to be. It's the it's the one feeling that defines the the apparently separate self. This feeling I'm incomplete. I lack something. And therefore in response to that feeling of lack all separate selves,
[00:24:25] all apparently temporary finite selves are are motivated by one thing to to be completed to be whole again. Because because in the memory deep in the memory deep in the hearts of all temporary finite selves that there is this memory of of of our of our essential nature. This memory of our eternity this memory of our innate happiness but but it's been it's been veiled. Our innate happiness
[00:24:55] has been veiled by the content of experience. And therefore everyone is longing. Now to begin with in life we we try to relieve this longing through the acquisition of objects, substances, activities, relationships and and and and so on. And for what for many people I I suspect for many of your listeners when most people at least many people that they they they've been failed often enough by the world. The world has has
[00:25:26] failed to produce the happiness they seek often enough. They begin to suspect that happiness can't be found in the conventional world. And then we start on a great spiritual search. We rebrand the search for happiness in the world that the search for enlightenment. But it's just the same thing. It's just it's just a rebranding of the same longing for for something. Only now what we're longing for is a little bit more refined. And the objects or activities in which we seek it are a little bit more refined than the objects and activities that we
[00:25:56] used to seek it in the world. It's no longer substances and and and so on. It's um meditation practices and and teachers and and teachings and traditions and and disciplines and and so on. But they're all in effect um activities of the mind that we engage in for a one a sole purpose bringing to an end this longing this existential longing that lives in each of our hearts. We now call it the longing for enlightenment. For in the religious
[00:26:26] tradition, we call it the longing for God, but it's all the longing for for something something that's going to put an end to this this unbearable longing. The dissolution of a separate self. Yes. So the the most if not all the well I would say all the great spiritual and religious traditions in one way or another say that what we really what we're really seeking is not an object. However refined and noble that object may be, it
[00:26:56] it's it's within oursel. And for this reason, all the the religious and spiritual traditions have elaborated numerous different pathways basically to to to come back to the recognition of the nature of our being. Because when we recognize the the nature of our being, we we like like the space in this room recognizing it its essential nature, it it recognizes that it is already free. It is already whole. It is already perfect. It is already complete. And it is that
[00:27:26] recognition that brings to an end this unbearable longing. So that that is why in in one way or another all the religious spiritual traditions say know thyself. It's only that self-nowledge that will um put an end to to this to this longing. So let's examine a little bit deeper the direct qualities of that awareness because and perhaps if you'd like to
[00:27:56] start by what do you think is the usefulness of examining what we are not like uh in in the realization or the dissolution of self and the acknowledgement of recognition of one's true nature. Do you feel it's useful to examine essentially the things that are in the space of this room that we can see and we are not like the ephemeral nature of thoughts and emotions how they come and go. I don't think it's necessary to examine
[00:28:27] them or to go deeply into them. Uh the space in this room doesn't have to examine each object in this room to know that it is not essentially any of those objects. It's just enough to take one look at itself and see I am obviously not the four walls in this room. I am obviously not the cameras and the lights. It doesn't need to investigate the cameras and the lights. But would you would you say for people that are closely identified with their body as a separate self? Yes. for some people,
[00:28:58] uh, I would say for for many people nowadays, certainly for many people that are that are interested in in this, the the the community of people that are interested in these matters has has grown in maturity over the last 20, 30 years to such an extent that I feel that this very direct approach, not examining the thoughts, the feelings, the histories, the narratives and so on, but just going directly um to one's true true nature of being or
[00:29:29] awareness itself is for many people sufficient. But you're quite right there there are some people um for whom their experience is so intense, so distressing, so traumatic that it's it's too big a leap, too big a step to go straight from their very distressing, traumatic experience all the way back to their being in one step. and and for them uh it it's it's it's important and and necessary to interpose various
[00:30:00] intermediary steps and and the first of those steps may well be to to explore uh the content of their experience. So the the the approach that I'm suggesting is this very direct approach is is sometimes called that the the direct path because we go directly from the content of our experience whatever it is straight back to the the fact of being or or being aware or awareness itself and then what is sometimes
[00:30:31] referred to as the progressive or indirect approach would be an approach where we we go more slowly. We we we there are some intermediary steps for for instance give give you an example of one such step. If someone's experiences is very intense and and distressing and it's too much to ask a question such as um what is it that is aware of your experience. That question takes you straight back to the fact of being aware irrespective of what you were aware of.
[00:31:01] If if that's too big a uh if the if their attention is so uh um identified with the content of their experience, one such intermediary step would be okay um pay attention to your breath. That's not such a radical question. You're paying attention to your thoughts and feelings and you just take your attention off your thoughts and feelings and you pay attention to your breath. It it's you. So you you dissociated to a degree from your thoughts and you've taken a step back from your thoughts and
[00:31:32] feelings. Not all the way back to your being, but you've you've unhooked your attention from your thoughts and feelings. And you're now resting your attention on on on a neutral object, not not a painful emotion, but but a neutral object and and indeed a neutral object that shares many of the qualities of our being. It it's it's transparent. It's empty. It's silent and so on. So it's a very good object to give one's attention to. Then when one's attention has steadied on the breath for a while, you
[00:32:02] can then ask the question, okay, now what is it that is aware of your breath? And then you take one step back to your being. So that would just be one one example of a of a more of a more gradual approach which is um equally legitimate, equally appropriate depending on on on the person. Yeah. Amazing. So now further examining the qualities of awareness, it creates immediate freedom in the experience of that fundamental being
[00:32:32] that we all share. And uh I think it's useful to now have a more direct experience of what are these qualities that one could attribute to the fragrances or the the things that exude from our natural state of being of self and um and so yeah for for those that want to go a little bit deeper in this moment to experience their direct nature how how would you guide us to do so? So if we we start with the the content of
[00:33:04] our experience, let's take our thoughts. Thoughts by definition are always agitated that that that is they're always moving. Um emotions and by emotions I referred to afflictive emotions, sorrow, loneliness, shame, fear and and so on. So our feelings have a have a a sorrowful um aspect to them. So if we ask ourselves the question um what is it that is aware of our thoughts
[00:33:34] and what is it that allows our thoughts to be known? What is it that illuminates them? Uh what is it that knows them? That that that's what we essentially are the the presence of awareness and the presence of awareness is is them. So here we're we're separating our experience into a subject and an object. But instead of considering the subject of our experience to be the body mind which is what we normally do where we're saying no the the body mind is something I'm aware of. I am the the light of
[00:34:05] awareness the the lighthouse like I'm the light of awareness that that knows or is aware of that my thoughts in indeed the entirety of my experience. And the awareness that illuminates or knows our thoughts doesn't share their agitation. It just observes them. Uh the sun that that illuminates the earth. It doesn't participate in the in in in the whatever is taking place, it just illuminates it. It doesn't share the
[00:34:37] qualities of of the the content, the activities of the earth. And likewise the presence of awareness the the presence of awareness that is now listening to our conversation or knowing our thoughts is just silently witnessing those thoughts. It it doesn't need to be made peaceful through effort or practice or or discipline. It it is already such. It is just this inherently peaceful silent witnessing knowing presence.
[00:35:09] Um and the same with our feelings. The the sorrowful nature of our feelings are is known or lit up by awareness. And they also appear within the space of awareness. So awareness has both this spacious quality and this um illuminating or knowing quality. It's why in the Buddhist tradition it's sometimes referred to as luminous emptiness. It is empty like space. It's not a physical space, but it's an aware
[00:35:39] space, an a luminous space that that both contains all our experience and knows all our experience. But the this this aware space in which our sorrow and loneliness and shame and fear exists doesn't itself um share those qualities. Just like the space in this room if we were if we were dancing in this room now or fighting in this room now that this the space would not be modified by the space would remain as it
[00:36:09] essentially is at peace unaffected and awareness is like that just I'm not talking about an enlightened awareness I'm not talking about awareness how it might be if we meditate for 30 years I'm talking about the awareness with which everybody the the the the everybody all 8 billion of us. The awareness with which all 8 billion of us now know our experience is already
[00:36:40] inherently peaceful and and without any any lack it lacks nothing and and therefore we we say its nature is happiness. By happiness I don't mean an emotion of happiness that comes and go. It's just this complete absence of lack, this complete ease, this this fullness, this sufficiency, this planitude. So the in that so it's in relation to the content of our experience, in relation to our agitated thoughts that
[00:37:10] we say the nature of awareness is peaceful. It's in relation to our sorrowful feelings that we say the nature of awareness is happiness. And one other quality important to to mention that from the point of view of the finite mind reality is broken up into separate objects and selves. So that finite mind has a has a paradigm of separation. Whereas for for awareness it's like the space in this room the space in this room once it knows itself how it really knows nothing of se it
[00:37:41] doesn't feel separate from the space outside the room or or indeed the space in your kitchen. It's it's from the point of view of the space there's one space. So likewise from the point of view of awareness or aware being there's there's just there's just itself with it it's infinite without borders and without without divisions. So from its experience of itself it it's there are no there's no separation. There's no otherness in it. And this absence of otherness is the experience that we
[00:38:11] refer to as as love. That's why love is sometimes said to be the the nature of reality. So peace, joy, love, these are the these are the qualities of awareness. But I'd like to add one thing to to that that strictly speaking we shouldn't assign any qualities to awareness or name those qualities because all the qualities and the names uh we give them are really qualities that we give to our experience
[00:38:43] to our objective experience. It's legitimate to say that the nature of awareness is peaceful in contrast with our agitated thoughts. It's legitimate to say that the nature of awareness is joy in contrast with or with reference to our emotions. It's legitimate to say that the nature of awareness is is love with reference to the separation that we normally feel. So these are legitimate concessions that we make. But what but what we're doing is
[00:39:15] we're we're still um using the mind in in these cases. The mind is trying to name the qualities of awareness within its own frame of reference. However, the mind cannot know reality. It cannot know awareness how it is because as we saw earlier everything the mind knows is refracted through its limitations. Therefore the mind cannot know the nature of awareness. Only awareness is aware. So only awareness can know about itself or or indeed anything else. So if
[00:39:47] we really want to know the nature of awareness, we must as it were ask awareness, what is your experience of yourself? That can be the only true knowledge of awareness. So if we were to do that, if we were to say I'm caricaturing awareness now, if we were to say to awareness, what is your intrinsic awareness of yourself? What is your knowledge of yourself prior to the arising of experience? So thoughts and feelings and objects haven't arisen yet.
[00:40:19] Imagine they haven't arisen yet. It's just empty space. The there are no buildings in the universe. There are no it's just empty. We say to awareness, what is your experience of yourself prior to? In other words, don't refer to experience. What is your experience of yourself? Awareness would never say I am peaceful because it hasn't yet known agitation. It would never say my nature is happiness because it hasn't yet known sorry. It would never say my nature is love because it hasn't yet known separation. What would awareness say if
[00:40:50] we asked it? What are what is your experience of yourself? Well, it would remain silent but imagine we were to to press it because they come tell us something true about yourself. The only thing it would say is I am. That is a true statement about itself. That's the statement that it would make about itself. If we ask the mind to tell us something about awareness, the mind says it is peaceful. It is loving it. So
[00:41:24] that's the mind viewing awareness as an object. But in awareness is experience of itself. There are no other finite minds from whose point of view it it may know. There's just itself and in its own knowledge knowledge of itself and that must be the the true knowledge of awareness. So that that's why it's said really that that the highest teaching is is silence. And if we if we have to say something about truth that that would be awareness
[00:41:55] is knowledge of itself would be the highest truth. And awareness is knowledge of itself is just the expression. If it were to express that knowledge, it would be I am. And that's why I am is said to be the absolute truth. All other truth. Even that the knowledge awareness is inherently peaceful. It is it's relatively true. It's true relative to the finite mind's experience. But if we want a a truth that is not subject to the limitations of a finite mind, then all we can say is
[00:42:26] I am. the the IM is the absolute truth. And going back to our conversation about the different religions and traditions that that that they would all agree they would have to agree on that that that the nature of reality prior to the arising of experience. If that reality were to say something about itself, it would just say I am. Which is why in the Old Testament, God's name is said to be I am. That that is the the the highest expression of the of the ultimate
[00:42:56] truth. Well said. The recognition of that I amness throughout our whole life and what we have memory of from being 2 years old to 20 to maybe one day 100 years old. The continuity of the self that has been the same, the awareness, the I amness, the isness, the recognition of that is inherently liberating. and the recognition that there is something unchanging amidst all
[00:43:26] that is changing and the apparent separation between all life. And yet we have these different states of consciousness or filtrations with the mind that give us different you know the dreaming state, the waking state consciousness. And so when you examine these different states of consciousness, I would like to hear your opinion of I guess the utility and uh I guess the yeah the filtration levels from the dreaming state all the
[00:43:56] way up to consciousness. Yes. I I would suggest that they're different states of the mind. They're not different states of of consciousness. They're consciousness as it were is like the screen and the different states of mind are the different programs that appear. So they're different. Um so consciousness doesn't doesn't pass through any states. Take take for instance um the transition we go through from the waking state, the so-called transition we go through from the waking state to the dream state. In the waking state where we're aware of the the the waking world, we experience
[00:44:27] perceptions of the world, sensations of the body and uh internal thoughts and feelings. And then when we when we fall as and and and we awareness are are aware of those perceptions, sensations, thoughts and images, thoughts and feelings. Uh then when we fall asleep, what really happens is that first of all perceptions of the world leave us. Sight, sounds, s tastes, textures and smells leave us. And then our sensations, I use the word sensations to describe our felt experience of the
[00:44:58] body. Sensations leave us. So when we fall asleep perceptions and sensations leave us and only thoughts and images or thoughts and thoughts and images are left we call that and and we awareness in the in the so-called dream state instead of being aware of perceptions sensations thoughts and images are now just aware of thoughts and images. But awareness hasn't gone undergone any change. It's just remained exactly as it eternally is. only perceptions and sensations have been removed from it.
[00:45:29] The finite mind believes I've passed from one state of consciousness to another. No, not at all. It it's consciousness has just remained as it is. Perceptions and sensations have been removed and now only thoughts and images appear. We call that the dreaming state. But consciousness hasn't transitioned between any state. And then at some point thoughts and images vanish and we say we've now entered a deep sleep state. Consciousness hasn't entered a state. It hasn't transitioned from one. It just remains as it is. And in the deep sleep state, the so-called deep
[00:46:01] sleep state, it is just aware just aware of being. It's not aware of thoughts and images or aware of sensations and perceptions. So consciousness remains as you as you rightly said, it's the it's this golden thread that runs throughout all our all our experiences and and and all our different states and whatever other states there may be. But but consciousness doesn't we we awareness I I use the words awareness and consciousness synonymously. We awareness
[00:46:32] don't don't transition through any of those states. We just remain as we always are or more accurately as we eternally are because in the absence of the finite mind there's no there's no time. So I was watching a video where you were talking about this and I wrote down what you said if I may speak it back to you. I thought it was a very concise breakdown. Said, "Consider that what we experience as the waking state is a kind of dream in the universal mind of
[00:47:02] consciousness and that each of us as individual people are localized perspectives of infinite consciousness within infinite consciousness from whose perspective it perceives its own activity as the universe." Yes. Okay. Would you like me to to to elaborate that? Let you on that a little bit. So, I um I'm I'm using our experience of of a dream. So, in in a regular nighttime dream,
[00:47:32] uh you fall asleep here in LA and you dream that you're walking the streets of Paris, but you don't experience the streets of Paris directly from your bed here in LA. In order to experience the streets of Paris, you you simultaneously imagine them within your own mind with within your finite mind and then you simultaneously lo locate yourself within your own dream as an
[00:48:02] apparently separate subject of experience from whom perspective you see what seems to you to be the streets of Paris. But when you wake up you realize no it was just the activity of my mind. So the act what is the activity of your mind appears as a material world the streets of Paris only from the localized perspective of the person you seem to be within your own dream so your own mind divided itself in two into a subject and an
[00:48:32] object and you had to do that that's the only way you can experience the streets of Paris is by dividing yourself into an apparently separate subject and object and you view the object the streets of Paris from the localized perspective of the subject. You can't experience the streets of Paris from your unloized mind asleep in LA. Unloized with reference to the to the to the dream. Okay, that that's the analogy. Now consider that exactly the same thing happens but one step up. That in just
[00:49:05] the same way that your finite dreaming mind is infinite with respect to the dream. It doesn't appear anywhere within the time and space that the dream takes place. Well, consider that that and and and and that the knowing with which you know the streets of Paris, you you you you've localized yourself on the streets of Paris and you still know or perceive the streets of Paris. But the knowing with which you know your experience is not located in
[00:49:36] your body. It's not located anywhere in the dreamed world. It's located with in your mind asleep in in in LA. Now consider that the very knowing with which each of us is now knowing this experience is not located in this body mind indeed is not located anywhere in the time and space that seems to be real from the perspective of this finite mind that it's unlocated that it's infinite. And it's infinite with respect to the time
[00:50:08] and space that we seem to experience in the waking state. So now imagine infinite consciousness, infinite awareness, dreaming as it were, imagining within its own infinite mind, the the universe, but it cannot perceive the universe directly because the infinite cannot know the finite directly. There's no room for the finite in the infinite. So in just the same way that you cannot know the streets of Paris at night directly, you
[00:50:38] have to localize yourself within your own dream, the infinite if it wants to prior to manifestation, consider infinite awareness a realm of of of infinite potential in which there's no form, there's no manifestation, there's no creation. But if that potential is to be realized in form, infinite consciousness must uh simultaneously um imagine the universe within itself and localize
[00:51:08] itself as an apparently separate subject of experience. That that's all of us. From whose perspective it sees itself as the outside world. Now from the point of view of our finite minds, the outside world seems to be something other than mind. We feel our minds on the inside and what what what is out what we see as the world is outside the mind. We call that matter. We call that material stuff. In just the
[00:51:38] same way that when you're on the streets of Paris in your dream, your mind seems to be inside you. The world made out of matter seems to be on the outside of you. When you wake up, you realize, wow, it's all the activity of my own. The homogeneous activity of my old own mind. Well, from our point of view, experience seems to be separated into a self and another mind and matter, subject and object. But that's just how it is from our local limited point of view. What's really taking place I I would suggest is
[00:52:09] that the one infinite whole reality whose nature is consciousness or awareness or spirit or love whatever we we call it is as it were imagining the entire universe within itself and simultaneously knowing that universe from a localized point of view. So awareness has as it were divided itself into a subject and an object. All manifestation can only be known from a subject object point of view. C can I go into more detail about
[00:52:39] why that is the case? Take any object. You the reason we can see an object is because we stand at apart at a distance from it. Yeah. Now um try now to see your own eyes. Nobody can see their own eyes directly. Why? simply because we cannot you have to stand apart from something that you see. Yeah, you need separation to have you need separation. You need a subject object experience. Let's the eyes are of course not the
[00:53:10] subject of experience. But let's imagine in the context that the eyes are the subject of experience. Everything else is the is the object. The only thing and therefore everything else appears it has an objective quality to it because we perceive it from the point of view of a subject. But but when the subject tries to see itself, when the eyes trying to when when when you look now to see your eyes that there's an emptiness there that that there's a blind spot there that that there's there's no objective experience there.
[00:53:40] There's no manifestation. There's no creation. There's nothing. So it's exactly the same in in the infinite view of itself. There is just itself. Infinite, formless. There's no creation, no form, no manifestation, no If the infinite is to manifest the potential that lies within it in in form that the mechanism by which it does that is this apparent division of itself into a subject and
[00:54:10] object. In other words, duality, the subject object relationship is the mechanism by which the the manifest the the potential that lies unmanifest in the infinite is realized in form. But it comes at a price. See, in order to do just as you forget that you are sleeping in LA, you are perfectly peaceful and happy when you fall asleep in your bed in lab. But you
[00:54:41] locate yourself on the streets of Paris and there you can be miserable. You can have a nightmare. You you've overlooked your your natural state of happiness when when you're asleep in a Likewise awareness's nature. If we go back to the conversation about its qualities, if if we can ascribe qualities to to awareness's nature is is peace, planitude, sufficiency, h happiness, burnt in order to manifest its potential
[00:55:14] in form. It must overlook itself. It must forget itself. It must localize itself as something temporary, finite, small, limited, located. So you could say that awareness pays for manifestation with its innate happiness. It localiz it becomes a fragment or seems. It never really does just as your mind never really becomes a separate person on the streets of Paris. And it your mind always remains as it is. It's the same consciousness always remains as
[00:55:44] it is. Whole, infinite, perfect, complete. But it seem it it seems to divide itself into into a subject and an object in order to to realize itself in form. But it comes at a price. And that's why the separate the individual the separate subject of experience that's all of us. That's why in each of our hearts that that there is this wound, there is this longing there. There is this memory of our eternity. Everybody Why does everybody seek happiness? If we didn't know the taste of happiness, we wouldn't know what to
[00:56:15] seek. Everybody retains the memory of happiness in their heart. And if that happiness is concealed, then the the overriding motivation of that individual is to seek that happiness. Whether we call it happiness or God or enlightenment, that that that's that's it's always it's all the same search. And the search is not really for an object, a substance. It's not even for a marvelous vision of God
[00:56:45] or it's not it's it's just a search. It's just the longing to be divested of the limitations that we seem to acquire from the content of experience and to stand revealed again as we really are. H I love that perspective that suffering in many ways is the price of admission that the unmanifest one consciousness must pay to have a
[00:57:15] localized perspective and apparent separation of itself. Yes. In many ways for the joy of becoming one again. Um but also on this uh the discovery of like there's surely something that the one consciousness learns through having each unique perspective an infinite amount of perspectives. Yes. It it learns about the potential that lies within it.
[00:57:45] Mh. It it it and and and that's an an endless learning as each of our finite minds go on learning as there is as there is an expansion of of knowledge in the mind. Consciousness through the agency of each of our minds is learning about the potential that lies within it. It's not learning anything about itself. In other words, it localizes or seems to localize itself as a separate subject of experience uh in in order to to know itself as the
[00:58:16] universe in order to realize the potential that lies within it. It doesn't do so in order to know itself. the the the idea that awareness has to become or seem to become a finite mind in order to know itself is is is absurd because everything the finite mind knows is by definition finite. It's impossible to know the nature of awareness through the agency of the finite mind just like it's impossible to see white snow through orange tinted glasses. So awareness doesn't assume the
[00:58:48] the mechanism of the subject object relationship in order to know itself. It it does so in order to realize its potential in form. But in order to know itself, it must cease localizing itself in the finite mind. It must divest itself of the qualities that it borrows from the content of experience. It must go back to itself. And and and that's why this this um most meditation practices in one way or
[00:59:18] another are an attempt to to to travel back through the layers of experience until we get to that one experience that is prior to to thought and perception, namely namely the awareness of being. It seems like uh for those that are very densely identified with their body, we will continually uh meet harsh realities kind of guiding us bringing us back to the essential nature that cannot be realized
[00:59:49] other through the recognition of itself and uh love I've heard you share as the recognition of our shared being. Yes. So do you see as love is essentially who we are or it is is it in is it in the recognition that we are it's who we are. It's who love is the nature of being is shared like like the space in this room is shared with all other spaces. The being in in all of us is is shared. We appear to be separate
[01:00:21] because we look at each other through the lens of perception. My perceiving faculties make it seem as if you're a separate body and I'm a separate body. But if we so if we believe the apparent evidence of sense perception, we're going to feel that you and I are separate. we're I'm going to feel I'm a separate person and that you're separate and and and and therefore that the it's for this reason that that not only do we love friendship because friendship is an expression of our of the being that we are behind the the appearance of of of
[01:00:53] separation and diversity. But it's why we particularly love intimate relationship because in intimate relationship is really it's not really the desire to merge with another person. It it's really a desire to be divested of the sense of separation. And for a human being intimate relationship is one of the ways that happens. But if we then attribute if if we believe that that the purpose
[01:01:25] of of the other is to provide love for us then as we all know that's the source of conflict in infant intimate relationship because the person can never provide love. Love is our nature. that that the the the intimate relationship can be an expression of that shared being but it is not a means to it. If if we use another person as a means to experience love then then
[01:01:56] um as soon as they do something or say something that that that that we don't like or then immediately the feeling of love is uh the love which was dependent on them is then broken and and the relationship goes towards towards conflict. It really feels like God will pull us in through the face of many things until we realize that is what we are. You know, like the the the intimate relationships
[01:02:28] that we have and you think about the uh the moment of orgasm there is this complete loss of a sense of a separate self in a way, right? There's this inherent pleasure and the dissolution of of feeling like a boundaried isolated skin encapsulated ego, you know. Yes. And again, the longing for happiness where we really seek it for through so many different things and we realize the futility of it coming back into recognition of it. Yes. Or originating in in ourselves is
[01:03:00] Yes. Yes. It it's um it's deceptive that there's a there's a kind of deceptive twist in our experience because you're right, the moment of orgasm or or any intensely pleasurable experience. We do experience happiness. We don't just experience pleasure. We experience happiness. So, we can be forgiven. And and that that's true
[01:03:30] through throughout our lives, you know, when we were children, the the the ice cream all through our lives. We have had a numerable experiences and they do all seem to have delivered the experience of happiness. So we can be forgiven at least to begin with thinking, well, you know, when I got the ice cream, I I did experience happiness. When I won the game, I did experience happiness. When I had this intensely pleasurable sexual experience, I did experience happiness. Therefore, happiness must be caused by objects, substances, and relationships
[01:04:01] and so on. But I I would suggest that that that that the hint in all of those experiences is that the happiness we experience on the acquisition of each of those objects, substances, it's always the same. You know, there there isn't a particular kind of happiness that tastes like ice cream and another kind of happiness that tastes like winning a game or another kind of happiness that takes tastes like sexual intimacy. That the experience of happiness is always the same experience.
[01:04:31] And and that's the hint that what you're actually tasting in that moment is the nature of your being. Happiness is what being tastes like. So, let me finish this. Um so what's happening that the separate sub is a fragment as we've already seen it's always in a state of incompletion and therefore seeking to be completed. So it lives in a state of tension, anxiety, seeking, longing. And when it gets the object, the substance,
[01:05:01] the activity or the relationship, that tension does come to an end because we've got what we think we want. And when that tension ends, the the activity of the mind ceases. And as the activity of the mind ceases, we taste our true nature of happiness. And then the mind rises again and wrongly attributes the happiness we experienced to the ice cream, the game, the the relationship. So after a while then we realize ah it's always
[01:05:33] the same experience that that that the object substance activity relationship just put an end to my seeking and when my seeking when the seeking mind subsided temporarily my true nature of happiness which was always shining it is always shining it's shining now but it's veiled by the content of experience but when the seeking mind subsides then our happiness shine that's that's the taste of being that's the experience of joy. So after a while we we realize oh the happiness is never it's not why don't I
[01:06:04] just go there directly I don't need to go via an object substance activity or I can just go directly doesn't mean to say that I may not still seek objects activities and relationships but but I no longer do so for the purpose of finding happiness or peace or love I do so for the purpose of of of expressing it and and sharing it and celebrating it and communicating it. There's I I don't there's something
[01:06:34] about the word happiness in which I don't like using fully here because I think there is this cultural linguistic familiarity seeing happiness as dopamineergic pleasure. Yes. Rather than a deeper which you're pointing to a deeper satiation of the recognition of oneself. It is almost like the happiness you're speaking to is actually the absence of the search for happiness and there is there is a quality of well-being that exudes from. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a very
[01:07:04] legitimate objection. It's more like just a taste of the planitude, the fullness of one's being, the sufficiency of one's being. I use the word happiness just because it's the it's the common name for that experience. But you're quite right. also has a an association w with a um a superficial passing state of mind. So I'm not I'm not attached to to the word some sometimes I use the word quiet joy- which feels more um that doesn't have
[01:07:36] that same association. Yeah. Yeah. I I love quiet joy because it it it feels I mean it feels it feels a little bit more precise I suppose for me. I in the recognition of that quiet joy I'm curious to hear your thoughts on morality because in the recognition of our shared being suddenly you don't need to teach morality as you may have conventionally needed to because in the
[01:08:06] acknowledgement of our shared being I experience you as self in many ways yes I do not need to be taught to hurt you just as I don't need to be taught to cut off my own hand cuz that just seems stupid Right. Absolutely. And and so what implications do you feel like the recognition of our essential nature has on how we relate to where we see it and our surroundings as well and how that changes on our daily life, how we interact with it. Yes. St. Augustine said love in response to a
[01:08:38] similar question. I don't know what the question was, but I imagine it was in response to a similar question. St. Augustine said, "Love and do whatever you want." by which he meant recognize first of all that there is one being and that everyone and everything shares that being. Now, as long as you lead your life in a way that is consistent with that understanding, you don't need to be told don't kill anyone, don't steal anyone, don't hurt anyone, and so that those behaviors are the inevitable
[01:09:09] consequence of the felt sense of our shared being. So the ten commandments are are for people who don't yet know. The ten commandments in whatever form are for people that don't yet know and feel that they share their being with everyone and everyone. They're just meant to keep everyone that that the the moral precepts that ideally they're based they should be based on this recognition of our inherent oneness. and they're just
[01:09:39] telling people how to behave in a way that is an expression of that oneness before they know that for themselves. When you know that for yourself then um one one's and it's a progressive thing more and over a period of time and I I think it's over an endless period of time one's entire experience is um gradually and and progressively pervaded by this by this recognition. It it begins to inform our thoughts, feelings,
[01:10:09] actions, relationships, and so on. In the deepening of that recognition, how do you engage with what used to have been the extraction of joy from relationships? Meaning, if we're under the illusion that we're going to get happiness from somebody, then we're going to approach that relationship completely differently than if we come at it from the energy of sharing joy and the recognition of our shared being. Then we're not looking to extract so
[01:10:39] many things from the external world. And so from your own experience, I would love as you've grown in the deepening of the sense of recognition of who you are, how has it changed how you relate to the world? The first thing I know and and and feel about anyone is that their being is my being and my being is them. That we share our being, whether I whether I like them, whether I agree with their ideas, whether I that that's all secondary. That's got nothing
[01:11:10] to do with whether I love them. So that's the very first thing I feel when I meet anybody or with with anybody is that I share my being with them. And then I relate to to them um physically, emotionally, intellectually um in a way that is um informed by that felt sense of of our shared being um which will express itself one way with my intimate companion. Uh expresses
[01:11:41] itself a different way when we're having this conversation. It expresses itself in a different way with the um the Uber driver that brought me here this morning. and indeed express yourself a different way again with someone whose ideas for instance let's say I'm watching the news seeing someone um express their ideas I may disagree with those ideas vehemently but I my first thing I know about that person is that I share my being with them it doesn't make me agree with them
[01:12:12] if I met them I probably wouldn't smile sweetly at them but but but because sometimes a A very firm no is is necessary. But that can still come from a sense of your shared being. It's just the appropriate response. It's it's you you may see someone that is either thinking and or behaving in a way that violates love that violates the unity of being and it you may have to meet that behavior with
[01:12:42] something very forceful. Whereas um on the other end of the spectrum uh wi with your intimate companion you that that that the whole relationship has has grown up um out of this shared sense of being and and the purpose of the relationship is is to to to to express this and communicate it and and and to celebrate it. So that it's the same shared being the the same felt sense of shared being can be
[01:13:13] expressed in many many different ways depending on the depending on the the relationship but it's but it's always the same shared being the felt sense of shared being underneath. Now go to to go on to the second part of your question about how how does that look in in intimate relationship the the the main just to add to what I've already said about that the main thing is that I don't um I don't look to my companion to provide
[01:13:45] uh joy or or love for me that's not if if I that that would be an impossible demand to impose on her and what she it's not possible for somebody else to to produce or to provide happiness or or love for us. And and to project that onto onto another person is is is a recipe sooner or later for conflict because you're going to be disappointed. They they they blink the wrong way. They react the wrong way or something and and then and then the the the felt
[01:14:17] sense of shared being the love is then is is then veiled by them. So I I I don't project my my uh joy or peace or or love on onto my companion. I don't hold hold her responsible for it. And that keeps the relationship free of this um demand and expectation and disappointment and and keeps the relation free to be a a celebration of our shared being, a celebration of love.
[01:14:47] Surely there's in the love that we share together, there's something deeper in the recognition that we otherwise may have not been able to recognized fully on our own. Do you think that's true? It's possible that in the relationship, particularly in intimate relationship, that any areas in us that are not yet aligned with the understanding that we're speaking of will sooner or later be
[01:15:18] exposed. So that's a very valuable thing that that apart from being a celebration of of love, a rel an intimate relationship will sooner or later shine a bright light on all those hidden parts of us that are not yet exposed to the light of truth, to the light of awareness. So a relationship can be very valuable from that point of view. But an intimate relationship is is much more than that. And I I would suggest also much more than just companionship. It it
[01:15:48] is really I think at a at a human for for most people and for many people at a at a human level it's the it's the it's the most potent objective experience. It's the it's the most potent experience of of our shared being. It's the experience in which our shared being manifests most fully that this felt sense of of oneness and that uh deepens
[01:16:18] in in my experience. It it it goes on and on and on deepening. It it's it's it's what marriage truly is. It's a real it's a In a way, a marriage isn't isn't between two people. The marriage is a the dissolution of of those two people. It's
[01:16:48] why traditionally a marriage is said to be a marriage in God. God is the religious name for our shared being. So, it's it's like a sacred marriage in which this the sense of separation um falls away progressively more and more and more in the relationship. And this felt sense of our shared being shines more more brightly in the relationship. I love that the the a big obviously
[01:17:19] through line is the dissolution of separation and there are a myriad of different mirrors in which we can come continually as a reflection and reminder of who we are and what we are in in our true sense. Earlier we talked about the difference between the dream state and the waking state. How from the perspective of consciousness, our waking state experiences is very much so also like a dream and perhaps enlightenment if we want to use that word and the recognition of our true essential nature
[01:17:49] is becoming lucid in the dream. Meaning we become aware that we are in the dream. We're still in it but we're no longer under the veil of Yes. Uh just like we would become lucid in a in a dream state. Yes. Yes. That that that's a very legitimate perspective. Yes. Just going back to what you said about the waking state being a being like a dream and the English poet William Wsworth said our
[01:18:19] birth is but asleep and a forgetting. And he was referring to to to to just this go back to the model of infinite consciousness um dreaming as it were the universe within itself and simultaneously locating itself as a separate subject of experience within that dream. So you could say infinite consciousness as it were falls asleep and and this is what we say that consciousness pays for manifestation with its innate happiness that it falls asleep to itself. This is
[01:18:49] what what in the vidantic tradition it's what's referred to as ignorance. I I don't use the word because it has a it's equated in our culture with stupidity and that's not what's in ignorance. It means more just the ignoring consciousness as it were overlooks or forgets itself. Ignores itself just as you overlook your sleep. You asleep in LA. You forget yourself when you seem to become the character in in in the dream. consciousness as it were forgets itself, localizes itself in
[01:19:19] the form of each of our finite minds from whose perspective it sees itself as the world. But it's it's fallen asleep within its own dream. So what what is from the when you're on the streets of Paris in your dream, you feel you're wide awake. You feel the streets of Paris. This is I'm in the waking state. When you wake up in the morning, you had no you know no that was a dream. That was an illusion. But this we now feel we're in the waking state from consciousness's point of view which is the only real point of view. Consciousness is dreaming. We we're we
[01:19:50] think we're in the waking state. We're not. This is a dream. It's the waking dream that that that you refer to. So in the context of that would enlighten could enlightenment be considered um lucid waking as opposed to lucid dreaming? Yes. Yes. Um, just as in in lucid dreaming, the dream goes on, but you're no longer located exclusively as the person on the streets of Paris, you've also taken a step back, and you know, you're dreaming. Well, this is
[01:20:21] enlightenment could be conceived a lucid waking. We we still view the world from from the perspective of a finite mind. It's the only way it's possible to view the world. But at the same time we have taken a step back and we know and feel that we are also the the one whole of which all of this is an appearance. Mhm. When you reflect back on your own journey, have you has there been a predominant uh experience or two that really shifted you into uh becoming more
[01:20:52] lucid? Like did you or was it a gradual uh more gradual series of small moments? For me, it was a a series of uh small recognitions. um story I tell sometimes of the Zen teacher um Shinrio Suzuki who was holding a meeting and somebody asked him why do you never talk about your enlightenment experience and and his wife who was sitting at the back of the
[01:21:22] hall stood up and said because he never had one. He never had that moment where everything just some people do and and you know we know Raman Mahashi is obviously one of the um examples of that um and th those that they make there's something to talk about they make good stories you you you know Raman Mahashi went to live in
[01:21:52] cave for the next 10 years and ended up on a park ben for park bend you know that there's the these very sudden recognitions but I would suggest for the vast majority of people it doesn't happen like that and um they're obviously very inspiring stories but there's also a downside to them is that they equate enlightenment with an exotic experience so exotic that you end up living in a cave for 10 years or completely dysfunctional on the pub and you think
[01:22:22] well that never happened to me I'm just a regular guy and therefore this marvelous experience hasn't yet happened and you go on seeking well in so-called enlightenment or awakening is not a marvelous experience it it's it's the simplest experience it's just the recognition of the nature of being it it's the simplest experience there just the simple recognition oh
[01:22:53] I used to think and feel. I was temporary, finite, limited, lacking. And I re I'm I'm complete. I'm whole. I lack nothing. I'm full. I'm one with every it it it it can just be a the the mind cannot even notice to begin with. It can be so quiet. It only later, 3 months later, the mind think, "Oh, that's funny. I hardly ever react to anything anymore. Nothing upsets me anymore. I feel so friendly with
[01:23:24] everyone. It the mind can just notice in retrospect. It can be so quiet. I think for most people it's like that. Certainly from having been speaking and writing about these matters for 15 years or so in in my retreats and meetings, vast majority of people just have these uh repeated recognitions, these repeated tastes of of of the nature of their being. And these and and these um they
[01:23:56] they become kind of cumulative and in time our being or the fact of being aware it ceases to be something that we visit from time to time in between all our our other experiences. We we begin to to live there. We move in. We begin to live as that. And and the peace and the quiet joy and the feeling of love that comes through that just just gradually becomes more and more of our felt everyday experience. And we never say, "Oh, well, we we never say I'm enlightened or we never feel I'm
[01:24:27] enlightened." And you can't point to a time when it happened. You just you just find it's more becomes more and more your natural condition. That's how it was for me. On the path, how has your uh relationship with formal meditation changed? because I think the formal you know spiritual practices and meditative techniques and contemplative meditation um like carving time out for that is is
[01:24:57] is you know particularly useful in the beginning stages of one's discovery and then one kind of I feel becomes meditative and it becomes less of a something we do and more of something we are of course still having its place but I'm just curious what how has the formal, you know, sitting down a meditation practice been for you. Um, and has it do you feel like shifted to, I guess, needing less of that? Yes. Yes. Okay.
[01:25:28] Um, c can I can I talk about three different types of meditation in order to fully answer your Okay. Can I talk about three different types? Say no. So we spoke earlier about the the progressive and and the direct path and and then there's another path which I sometimes refer to as the pathless path. So on the progressive path uh meditation practice involves directing our attention to an object. It might be the breath. It might be the mantra. It might be gazing at the sky. It might be
[01:25:58] imagining a flame. It's some kind of objective experience. We direct our attention towards it. And and there are numerous types of objective um objective meditations. Meditations where we give our attention to some kind of an object, subtle object. That's the progressive path. Then there's the the direct path which is a a turning around of the attention. Who who who am I? What what is it that is aware of all of these objects? So
[01:26:28] there's really only one there many forms of objective meditations. There's really only one direct path. Although it can be formulated in in very different ways. Raman Mahashi formulated it in one ways but there are many other ways. The um direct path can be formulated but it's always the same experience at the the turning around of attention. Not not really the turning around. It's more like the sinking of attention. not directing our attention
[01:26:59] outwards towards an object, subtle object or a gross object. The thinking of attention, the relaxing of attention back into the source. That's the that's the direct path. And then there's the the pathless path which is not doing anything with one's attention. You're neither directing it towards an object nor are you tracing it back towards the subject. You're simply resting in being because you've the direct path has fulfilled or whichever path, the progressive path or the direct path, they fulfilled their mission. they've taken you back to your being.
[01:27:29] What once you're there that there's nothing to do. It's it's it's what my staircart referred to when he said when we arrive at the one who gathers all things into itself there you must stay. So all the all the practices whatever our practice was it it's taken us to to the awareness of being there. There's no more practice there's just an abidance. So self inquiry has turned into self-abidance. So this self-resting um and that's not
[01:28:00] really a path that there's no longer a practitioner doing something or even ceasing to do something. You're just resting not resting in being because there's no entity to rest in. You're just resting as being. So those are the three types of meditation. Now to answer your question, I spent uh 20 years on the progressive path practicing mantra meditation and and I loved it. It was a beautiful practice that then kind of spontaneously at the end of that time it it turned into self inquiry. I began to
[01:28:31] ask myself the question but what is it that is aware of my experience or who am I really or what is it that cannot be removed from me or what is always with me? all these very different questions that lead to the recognition. So I then ceased stopped practicing mantra meditation although the mantra continued the mantra continued to pop up in my mind and indeed still does from time to time just because I I practiced it for so many years it was just it became like my breathing but I stopped practicing that
[01:29:02] and then started engaging the self inquiry and and but I did that for 15 years or so but then um even that now has has given way I don't practice self inquiry now I I just abide in being a as being that that's my it's become my it's become my home it's the place I live I still sometimes choose to close my eyes and just rest in being rest as being and someone looking from the
[01:29:32] outside might think oh Robert's meditating but really I'm not doing anything I'm just being what I am I'm just being being just being aware being and then the rest of the time I'm I'm out in everyday life having conversations and activities, but I'm I'm still doing the same thing. It's not something I'm doing. I I I'm still I'm still remaining as being as awareness. And this is what they mean in the Orthodox tradition when
[01:30:02] they speak of praying without ceasing. A more superficial interpretation of that would be when you're out and about in the waking state, you're continually repeating your prayers. Not that that's not what they really mean. they they they mean remaining in touch with God's being in religious language with God's being with infinite being your being all the time. So then the really the distinction between everyday life and meditation it no longer holds. Although I do still
[01:30:32] sometimes just sit and close my eyes and and rest as being but I wouldn't really be doing anything else something different from what I'm doing the rest of the time. I think that for those that have a proclivity towards the intellectualization of phil philosophy and you know non-duality perhaps being one of the most enticing I guess philosophies to latch on to with our mind as like a theory instead of coming
[01:31:03] back into the direct experience of it. Freud has the quote intelligence will be used in the service of the neurosis meaning oftent times the mind and its desire for more and more uh philosophical novelty and you know there there can be the pitfall of the intellect intellectualization of a lot of this understanding and so I I would just like to ask you I guess a couple questions about the
[01:31:33] struggles on this path there can be this identification with this knowledge often times to build it as a superiority complex and there can be spiritual ego that comes online and I feel like for many of us it's an inevitable part of our path that we encounter at some point of our journey. Uh for many I know I've experienced it. Um, and what do you what do you do, I guess? How do you support people that um may experience that or
[01:32:03] have or currently are experiencing a little bit of that kind of inflationary energy? Um, using spiritual concepts really disguised to infatuate or kind of embellish the ego in a way. I I never have an agenda with anyone's ego. I I'm I'm familiar with with what you're what you're what you're saying. I I' I've experienced it in myself in the past when I thought that I was privy to some special knowledge. I I I now feel
[01:32:34] that I have no special knowledge at all. Um I feel that I have rather less knowledge than most people. The only thing I'm really really sure about is just the nature of my being. And there's nothing special about that. But so when I see what you're what you're suggesting in other people, I I I notice it, but I I have no agenda with it. I would never I don't have an agenda with people's ego. I'm not on a mission to to uh I I see everyone as as infinite being and I
[01:33:06] just I treat them like that however they however they behave, whatever they That's wonderful. and for your own personal path where you've experienced that I suppose just reflections on that as a part of the path which we encounter. So maybe not how you would navigate it yourself. Yes, it's the ego or the sense of separation cannot stand by itself because as we said earlier if pure awareness were able to say something about itself
[01:33:36] all it would say is I am. As soon as anything's added to the I am instead of the soon as the I am becomes I am this or I am that it becomes limited and this limited awareness is the separate person that we seem to be. If the space in this room only looks at itself all it would say is I am and in that experience it experiences itself as the vast spa space of the universe. As soon as you add something to the I am, as soon as you say I am small, I am dark, then the vast
[01:34:07] infinite space of the universe seems to become a temporary finite self. So as long as we just say I am that refers to who we truly are. We add something to it, we we we become a an apparently finite separate consciousness. That's what the ego is, an apparently finite separate self. So the ego, the pure eye, pure eyes cannot The ego cannot stand without identifying itself with something. If nothing
[01:34:38] follows the I am, that's pure consciousness. So the ego is always pure consciousness plus some object of experience. So the and that creates the ego, the the consciousness or awareness plus thoughts and feelings. So in order for the separate self to survive, it must always identify itself with something or someone. It doesn't matter what. It can be something positive. It can be something negative. It can be I am depressed. I am enlightened. I am I mean
[01:35:08] even I I I am enlightened is as much ego as I am depressed because you're qualifying the I am. The I am is the egoic attempt for survival. It it's it's a qualification of the pure I am. And and as long as the from the from the ego's point of view, as long as it's attached to something, as long as it feels that it's identical to something, then it survives. I am I am this, I am that, doesn't matter what the this or the that is. It can be depressed. It can be enlightened.
[01:35:38] Doesn't matter. So even nonattachment, I am nonattached. Exactly. I am nonattached. That's a position of the ego. I I am I am a teacher. That's ego. I am a student. That's the ego. I am I am plus anything is the ego or the separate self. I am divested of all objective content is the the pure I am. So it's natural. I certainly went through it myself that as you go from your ordinary
[01:36:08] everyday seeking in the world, you start seeking in the spiritual traditions, you your you become more refined. Your understanding becomes more refined. Your what you're seeking becomes more refined. You just begin to identify yourself with slightly more refined objects. And of course, you you mistakenly believe that this is a sign of enlightenment. It's not. It's just a more refined attachment and I certainly went through that. I felt at a certain that I had I was privy to some some special knowledge. I had some special
[01:36:39] understanding which was just a kind of very slightly more refined ego than the ego that I used to be. And to be honest, I prefer just regular egos. Yeah. I sometimes say I'm careful where I say it, but I sometimes say um I don't like spiritual people. Mhm. I just like but by spiritual people I mean I mean refined egos, enlightened ego. It's ego with a uh a desire for even more refined specialness. It's an ego who's pretending not to be an ego. I would just prefer a regular
[01:37:10] ego that that just content with being a regular ego has no pretentions. And so but but at the same time I recognize it's it it's a a natural progression for many people. I certainly fell into it. So I don't judge it when I see it, but I don't collude with it by taking an interest in it. I just ignore it. Was there a moment that sticks out for when you were coming out of it? No, I didn't notice. I think it just gradually Yeah, I think there were I can't I'm not sure that I can give you any examples, but there were there were times when
[01:37:41] something about my circumstance reflected back to me uh a feeling that I had that I was special. I I can't remember a particular time but I I remember that feeling often enough to think oh Robert you now you now invested your identity in having some special spiritual knowledge. So yes there were definitely times when I when I feel that now I just feel so ordinary and regular.
[01:38:11] H do you think that all forms of attachment are essentially self-referential? meaning Ramana Maharshi would refer to this I thought there is this fundamental referencing of I this I that um in relation to attachment to the physical world um do you feel it's all self-referential pure awareness is is prior to the I
[01:38:41] thought the the however I if awareness were to say something about itself self, it would first have to give itself a name. In order to refer to itself, in order to well, it can't really reflect back on itself because in order to reflect on yourself, you have to stand apart from yourself and look back. So, it's the it's the finite mind that reflects back on itself. Awareness doesn't reflect back on itself. It's like the sun. The sun doesn't have to reflect on itself in
[01:39:11] order to illuminate itself. It just illuminates itself by being it itself. So awareness is um just knows itself by being itself. It's only when it localizes itself as the finite mind that it has to become self-reflective. But so I if awareness were to say something about itself, it would first give itself a name. And the name it would give itself is I because I is the name that that which knows itself gives to itself. So I we could say is the first form of infinite awareness in the finite mind. And as long as that eye, as
[01:39:44] long as nothing is attached to the eye, that eye represents that eye is the name of of the infinite. As soon as something is attached to it, it seems to become a finite self or a finite mind. So that the I thought is like um I see it like a like a portal. Take a prison door that if you're outside the prison, you go through the door in one direction,
[01:40:15] you lose your freedom. You enter captivity. If you're in the prison, you go through the same door in the opposite direction. You gain your freedom. I like that. The I thought is like a prison dorm. If the finite mind takes the thought I or the thought I am and goes through that portal as it passes through that portal, the finite mind loses its limitations and it stands revealed as the infinite. So the finite mind passes through the portal I or I am
[01:40:47] and regains its freedom. It passes out of time into eternity. However, when the infinite when awareness passes through the portal in the opposite direction, as long as it stands at the portal eye, it's it's still free. The moment it goes through that portal and acquires the limitations of experience, as long as something is added to the I am, it loses its freedom and becomes an apparently separate self. Can I I want to put I guess a creative
[01:41:18] linguistic restraint. If you had to answer these couple questions in like one sentence, what is your definition of suffering? Suffering is the veiling of our innate joy. And so similarly, the cause of suffering is the overlooking of our essential nature. and the overlooking or forgetting of what we
[01:41:48] essentially are and then the solution or liberation of that cause of suffering. The remembrance of our true nature. When I say remembrance, I'm not talking about remembering something in the past. I'm talking about this deep remembrance of what we are now. Deep remembrance of what lies in the heart of ourself. that is for many people obscured by their thoughts and feelings. So this deep remembrance or
[01:42:18] recognition not of what we might become if we practice hard enough but this recognition of of of what we are now essentially. Do you feel that there is any inherent meaning to life outside of our own projections? From the point of view of the finite mind, yes, there's a meaning to life. From the point of view of the finite mind. Yes. But from the point of view of of awareness that there's no there's no meaning. There's no purpose. There's no not not for awareness itself. But for
[01:42:50] the finite mind, yes, there is meaning. There's purpose. And that would be whatever we describe. The primary purpose of every finite mind and indeed the primary motive of every finite mind is in one way or another to be divevested of its limitations and to stand revealed as it essentially is the eternal the infinite. That's the primary motive of every finite mind. The secondary motive would be then to express the fruits of that recognition
[01:43:20] in everyday life and share it with humanity. I'm curious what you feel as we see that we have this localized perspective of awareness, right? We have the finess of mind. We come to remember and experience the infinite I guess awareness within oursel. What do you then perceive I suppose both from the limitation of the mind and the our true nature the moment
[01:43:52] of death of the body? What could you have any Yeah. How could you get as close to absolute reality of truth of what that moment is and what happens to our portal of consciousness? Okay. So if you going back to our analogy of space, if you think of the body as the four walls of this room and our thoughts and feelings as the contents of this room, death would be like
[01:44:24] uh removing all the objects from this room and demolishing the building. Absolutely nothing happens to the space. It just remains as it eternally is. Some would say that what makes a or any room, what makes a kitchen a kitchen, a bedroom, a bedroom, a living room, a living room is the contents in which is what is in the room. Similarly, the limitation of our perceived self, our personality, um, rupertness, Andreess is
[01:44:56] the instead of the furniture of the room, it's our personality, our silliness, our, uh, cultural background. All that seems to have been largely acquired since coming into this life from birth. And if the walls of the building are demolished at the moment of death, would any of that uniqueness, do you think, if it's just empty space, transition into another portal? Yes. Um,
[01:45:27] can we switch metaphors now to because I think the the metaphor of the um oceans and waves and currents in the ocean is is a better metaphor to to respond to this question. And so now instead of empty space and the the the what we essentially are is is the water, the ocean, formless um and what we are is a what we are as individuals is is a a bundle of of thoughts, feelings, sensations and and
[01:45:58] and so on. So imagine that that what we are is like a like like a current in the ocean um like a vortex of of thoughts, images, memories, feelings, sensations and so on made only of the the water of the ocean but but a localization of that water. The only stuff that's there is is is the one indivisible ocean. But we are we are a a localization and each current in the
[01:46:29] ocean is a a slightly different shape slightly different configuration of energies just just as every individual is a slightly different configuration of thoughts feelings and so on. So each current has its own uniqueness and when one current looks at another current it it appears as a form it has its its own unique form and everything. Now what happens when that current I think this is your your question. What happens the when when the current in in the ocean this vortex of energies what happens when it when it dies it it it
[01:47:03] dispands. It loses its integrity. It expands back into the ocean and um it gives up its content to the ocean. So that what before was a tight vortex of thoughts and feelings which constituted the individual and that from a second person point of view looked like a body looked like a form that the form that the energies disperse.
[01:47:34] They just they just disperse out into the ocean as as ripples. They they it's as if the the current it it donates its experience to the ocean as it loses its form. I think something similar happens with us. the finite mind, the totality of our finite experience, our thoughts, our feelings, our utter uniqueness, our individuality, our memories, which which now tightly configured and when I look at the bundle of energy, a bundle of thoughts and
[01:48:05] feelings that you are, I see your form and it it it clearly defined form. But but as the form dies this tight vortex of energies and it disperses out into the broader medium of consciousness and and and each of our finite minds as it were donates the entirety of its knowledge and experience to the broader medium of of consciousness. So I don't think anything's lost. We we lose our in in integrity. We use our our form but
[01:48:35] but every thought and feeling it it we just donate it to the to the whole as we lose our form. How could what was simply acquired in this life perhaps cultivated perhaps conditioned in the form of identity, personality, form you said like a vortex of I guess energy of if those are qualities and the wave of
[01:49:06] the ocean you know returns donates itself back to the ocean it seems like what it truly is its real essence is the only thing that can join back with And so in terms of like us as individuals and our memory of self, do you think and is it in your experience uh that that carries over to other existences perhaps in other life reincarnation? Possibly.
[01:49:38] Remember all there is to a a current or a wave in the ocean is the water. The water never ceases being water and becomes a finite wave. It the ocean is always the ocean. It's always so same thing that there is there is only the one infinite reality. Call it consciousness, awareness, infinite being. It it it localizes itself or seems to localize itself as the activities of each of our minds. But it never actually ceases to be itself. So it just as the wave and the current
[01:50:10] is is the activity of the ocean but always remains the the same the same. Likewise each of us as apparently finite minds are the activity of infinite awareness. So nothing nothing new ever comes into existence. new forms appear. But the reality of of all of those forms of of of all of us all is the one infinite reality consciousness just like
[01:50:40] the waves and the oceans are are just no new substance comes into ex into into existence when a new wave or current appears. And likewise when they disappear nothing goes out of existence. The ocean just loses a temporary name and form. Well, when we come into existence, awareness um assumes a new name and form and then it loses that name and form as as the ripples that constitute our our current or our wave um are are dispersed
[01:51:10] into the broader medium of the ocean. And to to now answer your question, there's nothing to suggest that those ripples that have lost their integrity as this form but have but have been donated to the ocean may not coalesce later or some of those ripples may coales later and begin to form the beginning of a new wave or a new current. in which case some of the contents of the previous
[01:51:42] current will reappear in the new current. So the new current will have share some of the characteristics of the old current because the new current is made out of the residual energies that were dispersed into the ocean when that current dissolved. And that would be a theory of reincarnation that was consistent with it this understanding. So that's possible. Yes. And and just to respond to one last
[01:52:13] thing you said that there could be some feeling of continuity. the the the parent current has has given given rise to the to the reincarnated and the the but the real continuity is not the content of the two currents. It's it's the it's the water that that is the reality of both
[01:52:44] just as the the sense of continuity that we have in our lifetime. We all now feel that um a continuity that our life has been one long life. We always feel it's been my life. We always feel like I've been the same me. I feel I'm the same me now as I was 2 minutes ago or 2 days ago or 2 years ago or when I was a 2-year-old boy. I feel there's this continuity. It's always been me. What has been continuous in my my thoughts, my feelings, my sensations, my
[01:53:14] perceptions, my if we consider the body is physical. Even even a physical body is changing all the time. So for from where do we get this conviction that I've always been the same? It's always me. I've been getting older. I've developed but we always feel it's it's me. There's always a me that's this continuous th is that well the only element of our experience that is continuous is is awareness. It's it's
[01:53:44] from awareness that we derive our essential sense of ourself. How do you then reconcile the impersonal nature of awareness with the unique expression of individual forms? There is this emerging distinction uh kind of being pioneered by friend Mark Gaffne, Ken Wilbur about the unique self meaning we must wake up and it's inevitable to wake up beyond the
[01:54:14] illusion of a separate self to our true self which we've been speaking to and then now there is this unique perspective once realized the true self. There is this unique perspective in self that emerges that gets to be shared with the world. And so there is once one awakens to true self, there is still this uniqueness in the way that uh life the universe is seeing through your eyes. And yes, and so I think that because there can
[01:54:45] often be this dismissal or bypassing in non-dual circles where it's like the human experience is supposed to be diminished and viewed as this dreamlike elucory thing which in in in perspective it is um and it it without the authentic realization of it it kind of like shuns it away and dismisses it. So what do you think about the emerging of the unique self? Yes, I
[01:55:17] I think it's a it's a very valid point that in some expressions of the traditional non-dual teaching in some expressions of classic expressions of advant because it is recognized that what we essentially are is is not our thoughts, our feelings, the body and so on. There is this initial turning away from the body. I'm not this. I'm not this. I'm not this. And if that's as far as the
[01:55:48] teaching gets, then this leaves us with a a rejecting rejecting the world and rejecting the body. Uh but that's only that that's just that process of recognizing I'm not my thoughts. I'm not my that that's only necessary for one who was previously completely identified with their thoughts, feelings, sensations. So as a as a as a temporary stage we have to turn away from that in order to recognize that element of ourself that is that is but then we we
[01:56:21] we we need to then turn back again towards the experience from which we previously separated oursel and um realign it with this new understanding. So we and I think that's what you're you're talking about this realignment process where where we we come back as it were to the the the person the body and the mind that we from which we previously turned away solely for the purpose of recognizing our true nature but now we turn back towards it and all its faculties are are still there. If
[01:56:52] you were if if you were a a brilliant mathematician before, you'll still be a a brilliant ma if if you're if you're a a good gardener, your your interest in gardening will still be there. All all your your unique individual faculties will still be there, but now they are upgraded. I think this is what you mean by the by the they all those faculties are no longer used in the service of the separate self that we once believed oursel to be. they are now used in the service of the true
[01:57:22] self and its innate qualities of peace, joy and love. So we we then go back to to to to being a uh um we fully inhabit our life as an individual but our life is then used in the service of this understanding this love and understanding whereas previously it was used exclusively in the service of the separate self with all its anxieties and fears and demands and so on. chopping wood, carrying water, perhaps
[01:57:53] something different. Yes. Well, you go you may go back to chopping wood and carrying water, but you may also choose a different activity. You may realize actually the activity that I was engaged in before, I engaged in it solely for the purpose of fulfilling my existential sense of lack. Now that I no longer have that, I feel the fullness of myself. I don't actually want to engage in that activity anymore. It's not the right activity for expressing what I might I now want to
[01:58:24] express. You you might choose a different activity uh that you feel is better able to express your new love and understanding. So you don't necessarily go back to chopping wood and carrying or you don't necessarily go back to the same activity. You have the same faculties but you use them in service of love and understanding. How does this similarly affect our relationship with emotions? Because some spiritual traditions suggest the transcendence of emotions while others suggest fully feeling our emotions and
[01:58:55] fully feeling them. And so what is what do you feel is the proper relationship to our emotional experience? the the emotions that um rely on the existence of a separate self at their heart diminish in direct proportion to the diminishing of that separate self. So as the sense of separation um disappears in
[01:59:26] some people it disappears like that in most people it's a it's a gradual diminishment the se the emotions that attend that sense of separation diminish diminish with it without your having worked specifically on each individual emotion. There's a whole train of emotions all of which rely on the sense of separation for their existence. If that sense of separation diminishes then the whole
[01:59:57] train of emotions that were dependent on it will also diminish without your working on your feeling of abandonment, your feeling of jealousy, your feeling of lack, your feeling of because you you've you've you've cut the root. It's in the recognition that awareness is the container of all experience. How have you noticed emotions arise differently and how we relate to them from that sense of recognition of our true self?
[02:00:27] Um first of all there's less engagement with afflictive emotions because you feel more I am the space and this emotion is just an old habit and not of of of hurt um upset, jealousy, irritation, anger that that that so you feel whereas you previously used to feel I am that emotion and we used to even um express this in our language. I I am sad. You now feel I feel sad. I feel the
[02:00:59] sadness. I'm not the sadness. I but I feel it. So that's that's already one step back. You may not formulate it to yourself in this way, but you have actually taken a step back. You're standing in your true nature. I feel the sadness, but I'm not the sadness. So there's this distance. Your your emotions that they still arise to begin with, but they don't have that um persuasive power. You don't lose yourself in them. They still appear. They're still unpleasant, but they they
[02:01:29] they appear. There's less resistance to them because you know they're something you experience. You haven't you don't have s you don't have such an agenda with them. There's no need to get rid of them because you know that deep down that that they're a passing cloud. So you you tend to be more more um more compassionate with yourself. there's not this agenda there. There's not this judgment of of emotions that there's a allowing of them. But then in time,
[02:01:59] because we're no longer engaged with the emotion, we're no longer feeding the emotion. And in particular, we're no longer feeding the separate self around whom the emotion or on whose behalf the emotion arises. In time, those emotions begin to diminish because you're no longer standing as the as the hurt self. M you are standing as the open empty space of awareness that cannot be heard. So then the the the feeling of hurt it it it it can no longer arise because
[02:02:29] the the self that feels hurt it you can't hurt this space. When you feel that, when you feel the space of awareness that I am can't be hurt by what someone says, not only do you no longer need to defend yourself against what anybody says because you you know that it can't hurt you, but the the feeling of hurt doesn't arise so much. It really feels, at least in my experience, there's lessened there's less of this immediate reactionary energy to defend a sense of personhood.
[02:03:00] Like when the identification has been lessened and it's not as strongly gripped, then like you're like you're mentioning, we don't have the feeling or the need to immediately defend it. And of course, that has a profound effect on our relationships because you you say something that that um I think is untrue or unjust or unkind and I don't immediately defend myself by attacking you. I just hear what you say. It it it may provoke a provoke a feeling of of
[02:03:30] resistance but then I and I don't act on that. It just resistance rises. It falls and we carry on our conversation. It may be necessary to address what you said or or not but but it it doesn't it doesn't break the the feeling of shared being. But normally the emotion rises up and immediate that feeling of connection the feeling of love is is then lost. you feel hurt and angry and we all know where that goes. So, so yes, that has a
[02:04:01] profound and not only does it have a profound effect on one's own internal emotional state, it has a very profound effect on one's relationships, intimate or otherwise. Ramda said, "If you think you're enlightened, spend a week at Thanksgiving with your family or something along those lines." It feels like we are tested most in our familiar relationships where there's the uh historic conditioning and perception of who you have been in relation to them through development and uh and so there there's a sense of
[02:04:32] expectancy of that personhood to continue showing up. Yes. And uh is probably the most testing area or arena to see if you can still create that sense of spaciousness when responding. Yes. And a a very good preparation for that is not not only when you've gone home and for Thanksgiving and you're in the midst of your family, but even now, you know, a month or away, you can think of of of members of your family that you have conflict with that when you're
[02:05:03] together with them, the old habits are so strong that that you just immediately get into a state of tension with them. But you can think about that person now and when you think of them, all you know about them is that they are the same being that you are. Whatever the conflict, whatever's happened in your childhood, whatever that's happened in the intervening years, you you you see that person primarily as the same being that you are, that is tremendously healing, would you say? Cuz that's very practical. Like as we go home for the holidays or, you know, meet with our
[02:05:34] family, is there another additional, I guess, uh, tool we can use in the immediate moment where we would typically be conditioned to react? Um what have you found is something that we can either remind oursel in like perhaps that the other is self or with our breath to uh to to give us a chance at more okay well not just thinking of the other as your the same being that you are but but really feeling it so feeling the
[02:06:04] other as your own being irrespective of the history that that's the the best I think it's the best one can do in relation relation to the other, but in relation to oneself, in relation to the the reactive emotions that may be provoked in you as a result of of of media, then it's it's to um resolutely remain as this open, inherently peaceful, aware space and and to remain to remain as that when
[02:06:34] circumstances are are easy when circumstances are neutral. It it's relatively easy like now to to to to feel oursel as that. But but the more established we are as that in relatively benign circumstances, the easier will be to remain as that when when the bar is raised a little bit and and really that's the that's the test somebody once asked uh an Indian sage adminanda Krishna and h how do we know when we're
[02:07:06] established in our true nature and he said and I'm paraphrasing when thoughts feelings Sensations and perceptions can no longer take you away. They they've lost their power. Experience has lost its power. Objective experience has lost its power to take you away from yourself. And usually, as you say, the relationships with our nearest and dearest are the last some of the some of the stickiest experiences
[02:07:37] that they are the they are the ones that retain their power to take us away from oursel for the longest and therefore they're the best places to we we should look forward to sometimes on on retreats people say to me this it's all very well when we're here these peaceful loving benign circumstances but I'm dreading going home, you know, there's conflict in my work. And and I said, "No, no, no. You should you should look forward to that." Because if your peace, if you can only maintain your peace in
[02:08:08] these loving, easy, benign circumstances, then it's it's a fragile piece. It's a state of mind. It's not the real peace. You should look forward to going to a difficult family situation or or whatever it is to to to test your your stability in in your in your true nature. It seems like that shift of perception to see difficulties in our relational world as opportunities for awakening as they are. Yeah. Is uh even that alone that perception
[02:08:38] shift I feel like changes how we engage with it. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. You look forward to it. It's it's an opportunity because you you it's an opportunity. There are two possibilities. Either you lose yourself in the conflict and you know sorrow and it's the is the inevitable consequence that or you you you use the situation to establish yourself more fully in your innate peace. You feel your more peaceful straw. You you feel that you're being you feel the independence of your being. You you you feel nothing can hurt
[02:09:11] me and therefore I don't need to defend myself. I I can go fully into life. I can be open. I'm It doesn't make you invulnerable in in the tra traditional sense of the word. You It makes you open. You can be very sensitive. You don't need to defend yourself. Um because you know when I say know, I mean you experience you feel at the deepest level that that you you can't be hurt. Your your peace is imperturbable. It's unshakable.
[02:09:41] uh you mentioned that Indian sage I believe who was referring to the various perceptions and experiences that could pull us away from the state of recognition. Yeah. And I just want to get your your opinion on this because I think there can be again this withdrawal of the human experience as like the place to get to. And I and I know your take on it's really the
[02:10:12] deepening of a truest sense of of who we are and our essence. And there is this human experience that's to be lived. I think this non-dual perspective can be seen sometimes, you know, from the outside in as sort of this inert like uh kind of boring reality that we get to. It was like, oh, it's just like peaceful people sitting over there that really don't do a whole lot. To me, getting in
[02:10:42] touch with this place intimately is very exuberant also. It is very enlivening. Um, and at times, yeah, you know, it's very peaceful and still and that quiet Joey that we were talking to. Um but it it seems like sometimes the language that's used is almost a pushing away of aliveness when I feel like it's actually the opposite. Yes. Yes. I I agree with you. As I said earlier, some some expressions
[02:11:15] of the traditional classical advita teaching only emphasize what I refer to as the inward facing path. The turning away from the content of experience. I'm not my thoughts. I'm not my beings. And that's a legitimate path. Most pathways start with that in order to recognize the nature of our being. That's what I call the inward facing path. But equally important is the outward facing path. When we then go back to the experience from which we previously separated oursel, which means going back to the body mind and to the world, being fully engaged again in
[02:11:46] activities and relationships. And I think a a balanced path is a balanced path in which these two approaches, the inward facing path and the outward facing path are um are both honored, both engaged in, both respected, but are in balance with each other. And uh traditionally I think that the vidantic approach emphasized the inward facing path. Uh the the outward facing path was implicit in it.
[02:12:17] Raman Mahashi said um the world is an illusion only the Brahman is real that that's the inward facing path turning away from the illusurary world back to Brahman infinite conscious only that is real but but then he said but but Brahman is the world there he's going back to the world there you you first of all there's the world we turn away from the world we go to the to to ourself but then we go back and unite our self consciousness
[02:12:47] with the world. Consciousness is the world. The world is consciousness. So um but in in a lot of those teachings, the inward facing path was emphasized and the outward facing path was implicit but not often spoken about. In the vantic tradition, in the tantric traditions, I think the opposite is the case. The inward- facing path, the recognition of our true nature of pure awareness is um implicit and often spoken about, but it's not emphasized in the way it is in the Bedantic tradition. But our oneness
[02:13:19] with the entirety of experience, including our difficult emotions and everything that comes up is is emphasized. There's something beautiful in that, but there's also a danger in that. Just as there's a danger of remaining exclusively on the pedantic approach that the danger that that you describe of this of negative attitude towards the body and the world, a rejection of of human experience. Um, but it's also has a there's something very beautiful about it. This emphasis on the recognition of the nature of reality that that's really the
[02:13:49] great contribution that the Bedantic tradition made to to to to our to society. the pedantic approach. The danger is that is you can get lo think you're engaging in spiritual life and actually just use it for an excuse for being lost in the content of experience. We're in California. I don't need to describe that to you. Um but but the very be so that's the danger of it. But the very beautiful the great contribution of the tantric approach is this reintegration of the understanding with all aspects of our
[02:14:19] life. So I feel that the vidantic tantric approaches usually um exponents of the two different traditions take take shots at each other to to try and to to to try and um assert their their superiority. I don't see it like that. I feel that they're actually two aspects of the same tradition. The one emphasizes the inward facing path, the turning away from experience. The other emphasizes the reintegration of this understanding in all aspects of our
[02:14:49] experience. And I think a a balanced path is is one in which these two approaches are are are really balanced. A quote that really embraces that paradox beautifully is Srarata's uh wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything and between the two my life flows. Yeah. Exactly. It's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. In our everyday life, we have on average about 60 to 70,000 thoughts per day. And largely we are troubled with the
[02:15:19] ones we are invested in. Um and uh I'm curious similarly as we explored the implications awakening has on relating to our own emotions. What do you feel like the implications to our own thoughts? I think our thoughts arise for many different reasons. One, um, a response to a practical situation. Um, I have to be here um, by 10:00. I'm not sure where we
[02:15:50] are, so I'm going to get there at 9:30. I must call an Uber and etc., etc. That's a whole series of thoughts. I don't know how many thoughts that was. Probably 20 thoughts, let's say. But they were all in the service of of enabling this conversation to table. Absolutely nothing problematic. They're not particularly interesting thoughts, but they're not problematic thoughts. I I'm invested in them for as long as they last, but when they've gone, they've gone because they've they've brought me here. I don't need to think about that. Practical thoughts. Perfectly legitimate. There's no sense of being a separate self in those thoughts. They
[02:16:20] just arise on behalf of the practical situation. Um there can be creative thoughts. um your desire to to have a podcast and to share this understanding and to to to talk to people about this understanding and and to um everything that you need to do to to put that on. What What are you really doing? You're you're you're sharing your love and understanding and you're wanting not just to keep it in your own heart. You're wanting to share it with
[02:16:50] thousands of people. That that that's creative. So th those are creative thoughts. They involve a degree of practical thoughts, your cameras and your lights and everything. But but really the idea behind that it it's that it's creative. You're bringing something new into humanity into society and you've thought a great deal about your work and who you're going to interview and you do your research and so a lot of thoughts go into that. There's no ego in those thoughts. It it those thoughts arise on behalf of love and
[02:17:20] understanding. No problem with them at all. Um if you need um I if you get sick or if you need if if you need lunch they're practical thoughts that arise not on behalf of a separate self but on behalf of your body. Your body needs taken care of or the body of anybody else that you have to take care of. Those are perfectly legitimate thoughts. But then there's one and then there are other thoughts um that arise on behalf of our love of truth are the investigative thoughts that the
[02:17:52] kind of questions that that you've been that you've been asking me and the kind of questions that we've all asked ourselves who am I really I can't really be my thoughts because they're always coming and going I can't really be my act who am I all the reading we've done all the exploring that those are thoughts that arise on behalf of our love of truth there's no ego in those thoughts on there's just one small category of thoughts that that we have that contains at their origin and concealed within them the sense of being a temporary finite psychological self.
[02:18:22] Those are the only problematic thoughts and those are the thoughts that diminish all the other thoughts. The thoughts that are necessary for me to come to visit you. The thoughts that are necessary for you to take care of your body. The thoughts that are necessary for you to put put on this podcast. the thoughts that that that you have with a friend or or or a companion to to to to to share your love and celebrate your love. There's no ego in those sort that they continue. It's just the thoughts that are based on the separate self that diminish. And as
[02:18:53] a fairly large proportion of our thoughts do indeed arise on behalf of the separate self, there is a reduction in thinking. And the mind quietens only those thoughts remain that are in service of love and understanding or practical situation or investigating our true nature or um in in I think I don't need to repeat it. Yeah. Thank God it's much more peaceful when Yes. Yeah. And actually it it um
[02:19:25] now that your mind is not occupied for the most part with thoughts that arise on behalf of the separate self, the mind is then is then free for much of the time. It will just be quieter and and there'll be periods of stillness. Also you are then free to use the mind in this is going back to your what was the phrase you that the um the self not the um Ken MBA's what what was the self the unique self that the mind the mind is then is then becomes part of the unique self it's used in service of lab and actually you're freer you you tend
[02:19:56] to be more creative um because you because you you've got so much more spare time and energy to use in service of your creative projects the expression of love and understanding whereas previously All those all that time and energy would have been spent on on on on your feelings of separation. Yeah. It feels like there's so much energy that is freed up when we're not continually recording things mentally on a personal basis. Yes. I feel like that takes up an immense amount of bandwidth. Yeah. Yeah.
[02:20:27] And like you beautifully said, that energy can then be rerouted to the unique self in the service of others and our creative impulses and a lot of those other thoughts. Which are amazing. Uh as we're because I could, you know, time is flying by with you. We've been going for about two and a half hours. This is amazing. Really? Okay. Time indeed has flown by. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, on that note, it really does feel the more that we're in that space of it is like a timeless experience. Um,
[02:20:57] it's it's absolutely because time time only exists or seems to exist when we think about it and as thoughts diminish and you you live more in your being than in thoughts. That then the sense of time also could you have a conversation like this and it's why it's that the phrase we have um time flies when you're happy. Yeah. And it's the opposite. When you're happy, you're in your your true being. You're not in your in you're not on the horizontal line of time and your thoughts. You're you're you're in the vertical dimension of being and there's no time there. So, it seems that I I'm
[02:21:28] surprised we've been here for 2 and a half hours. And on the contrary, for the times that we feel very identified in our suffering of a go forever, a minute is an eternity. Yes. When's this meeting going to end? Yes. Yes. uh having the context, the understanding of the conversation we just had, I'm curious um is there anything else that you'd feel like you'd want to uniquely contribute um for
[02:21:58] the audience and community of listeners that are tuning into this conversation that if you have made it this point this far into the conversation, it's uh it's quite incredible how substantial this level of devotion of inquiry is growing. growing on the planet right now. Yes, there is more and more this matured deepening of a sense of self and desire to truly grow one's self-nowledge and to share that in the service of others in our own unique capacity
[02:22:28] creatively in the world whether it's through teaching or podcasting or art and music or whatever it could be also in the silence of you know beautifying your garden whatever it is right um anything else you'd like to contribute as we are all waking up to the shared consciousness that we have and are building towards systems in the world that are representations of love. Anything that you'd like to share? It's open floor for Yeah. I think that perhaps just one thing to
[02:22:59] add, we've spoken about it a little bit that it it's inevitable that wherever this understanding has arisen on the planet in whatever place and whatever time it's expressed in the language of that time and place. So for that reason that there are many many different expressions of the same understanding and sometimes the expressions are so different that they seem to conflict with each other but the deep understanding that they express is
[02:23:30] the same understanding. And also that as people struggled with this understanding and and asked questions about it and and didn't know what what didn't know what the teacher or whoever it was that was it didn't know what they they meant, they would ask questions and and the person speaking about it would then develop um methods and pathways and techniques to help them to try to understand it more clearly. So as a result of this a great proliferation of ideas and methods and
[02:24:00] techniques and you referred to this earlier it sometimes it seems to be just a sort of a a maze of complexity of ideas and no it's so simple that's what I'd like to say what is being pointed to is so simple the complexity is just you one to the different time and place in which the expressions have been said over the expression of this understanding has been expressed over the centuries and two our difficulties objections which have caused the teachers in the past to have to
[02:24:30] elaborate all sorts of different methods and pathways and it all seems so complicated. It's so simple. It's just about the recognition of the nature of our being. That's it. You could you could take you could take 3,000 years of religious and spiritual tradition pushed into chachi and say you could you could you could feed every scripture that has ever been written or spoken by anybody in the last 3,000 years put the whole thing into chatbt and say express this
[02:25:02] in a sentence it would give you numerous variations but one such sentence would just be peace and quiet joy are the nature of your being and you share your being with everyone and everything. That's it. It's the simplest. It's just the recognition just the simple recognition of what we are now at the deepest level. It's inherently peaceful. It's fulfilled and
[02:25:32] we share it with everything with with everything and with everyone. That's it. That's all you need to know. It feels the more that we reside in that place, the more that we make space for something unique, true and profound to emerge from within us and uh so any thoughts you have on that as we close. Well yes and and not only the more we reside in that something
[02:26:02] profound emerges within but within us but as you say unique because that that that understanding that it's the same understanding in everyone but it's then filtered through our particular mind and body. So we all those of us that express it in one way or another and I don't mean just in words but there are so many ways that you can express this love and understanding not just in words um but in in so many different ways. For those that want to really they have
[02:26:32] a deep desire for the deepening for the the longing for the deepening of this recognition of their true self. Where can people find what you're doing? You have amazing retreats and books and things and just anywhere you can point people um towards Yes. The first place I would go is YouTube. I've got I think over a thousand clips now on on YouTube, conversations that I've had with individuals on on retreats and meetings and and guided meditations. So YouTube is the main resource, but also on on my website. Um there's a there's a vast
[02:27:05] archive. Everything I've said or written for the last 15 years is there. All all my books and and but YouTube would be the place to start. YouTube and then my website rupertspar.com. Amazing. And we'll link all that down in the description below. I uh am so grateful to be able to do this podcast where I can not only have these conversations but make friends with um individuals such as yourself and just truly grateful to have a friend and
[02:27:36] brother on the path. And um I love this conversation and the many different nuances we explored and the distillation of the simplicity that you offer as well is is uh very unique in how life is using you uniquely. So thank you immensely for the work that you're doing and uh the continued efforts um and looking forward to continuing the conversation in the future. Likewise. Well, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure, Andre. Thank you. Yeah. All right, everybody that's been
[02:28:06] tuning in to this episode of the life self podcast, as always, curious to know in which way this resonates with your own path, with your own journey of understanding your own your own true nature. And uh until next time, be well. [Music]
