Modern Wisdom - #349 - Rupert Spira - Enlightenment, Happiness & Non-Duality

Episode Date: July 24, 2021

Rupert Spira a teacher of the Non-Dualism Direct Path, an author and a potter. Non-dualism is a state of consciousness that many contemplative practitioners aim to achieve. A dissolving of a barrier between the observer and the experience, it's incredibly complex but thankfully Rupert is one of the clearest and most direct teachers of non-duality. Today we tackle some of the biggest questions in enlightenment practice, like what are we at our essence? What is consciousness? What does it mean to say that you are the same person that you were 20 years ago? What are we referring to when we say "I"? What happens if you take away everything that we identify with? Sponsors: Get 20% discount & Free Shipping on awesome vegan meals at https://vibrantvegan.co.uk/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get 20% discount on the highest quality CBD Products from Pure Sport at https://puresportcbd.com/modernwisdom (use code: MW20) Extra Stuff: Check out Rupert's Books - https://amzn.to/2UZT8sO Check out Rupert's website - https://rupertspira.com/  Get my free Ultimate Life Hacks List to 10x your daily productivity → https://chriswillx.com/lifehacks/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, my friends in podcast land. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Rupert Spira. He's a teacher of the non-dualism direct path, an author, and a potter. Non-dualism is a state of consciousness that many contemplative practitioners aim to achieve. It's a dissolving of the barrier between the observer and the experience. It's incredibly complex, but thankfully Rupert is one of the clearest and most direct teachers of non-duality. Today we tackle literally some of the biggest questions in enlightenment, like, what are we at our essence? What is consciousness? What does it mean to say that you are the same person that you were 20 years ago? What are we referring to when we say, I, and what happens when you take away everything

that we identify with? This is such a gorgeous conversation. Rupert, I think, perhaps takes the biscuit, the title of most beautiful voice on this podcast, after mine, of course. There's a meditation partway through about 35 minutes in where he asks some questions and suggests that you imagine what it would be like if you stripped away all of the different There's a meditation partway through about 35 minutes in where he asks some questions and suggests that you imagine what it would be like if you stripped away all of the different parts of you that you identify with. It's just, it's beautiful. If you enjoy his work, he's got tons of stuff on YouTube, you can go and check it out. He's a really, really lovely guy and the insights

that you get today are super, super profound. You're gonna love this one. Before we get to other news, an update on the Modern Wisdom reading list. It is with the designer, it is nearly finished, we have proved it, and it will be out, I promise, within a couple of weeks, it'll be out sometime very soon. I'm just finishing up the landing page, making sure that everything works before I announce it.

This is so good, 100 books that you need to read before you die, it's got descriptions from me and my favorite takeaways, and they're all categorized, it's gorgeous. So get ready for that and thank me massively when it comes out. It took ages. But now it's time to learn about the nature to perhaps give us an idea of where we're heading. How do you define enlightenment? term that has acquired all sorts of exotic and superfluous meanings for people, but they did really refer to something very simple and well within everybody's grasp. And it is simply this, the recognition of the nature of one's essential being or self. So it's innately linked to some sort of truth? We could say it is the truth about what we essentially are.

Now, when I say what we essentially are, I mean that aspect of ourselves that never disappears, cannot be taken away from us, is inherent or integral to us. So for instance, the current conversation that you and I are having is not inherent in us. It started a few minutes ago and it will come to an end. It's not part of our essential being. Indeed, no thought that we have ever had is essential to us. All thoughts appear, they exist briefly and they vanish. Likewise, our feelings, however intimate or deep a feeling may be, it is still something that is added to us. It lasts a while and then it vanishes the same as true of any relationship or activity.

So if one were to imagine removing everything from ourselves that is not essential to us. What would remain would be what I refer to as our essential irreducible self or being. The recognition of its nature is what is referred to in the religious and spiritual traditions as enlightenment or awakening. So it feels a lot like that is casting off rather than learning more. It feels absolutely. It feels like we need to get rid is supposed to acquire. Well, it's actually not even necessary to get rid of anything. It is simply necessary to see clearly that all those elements of our experience, namely thoughts, feelings, activities, relationships,

sensations and perceptions are not essential to us. We don't actually have to get rid of them or change them or discipline them. We just have to realize they're not essential to us. The analogy that I sometimes use to illustrate this is the analogy of the screen and the image. No image, no movie is essential to the screen. If you close down all your programs, your emails, your iPhones, your notes, your YouTube clips, your Word documents, you close down all the programs that you have running through the day. What can't you close down? You even remove your screen saver, which is not essential,

it seems to be there always, but actually it's not essential to the screen. What remains just the transparent empty screen? So yes, it's a similar process. It's a process of removing from one's are rather than adding to oneself. But it's removing presumptions. I think what you're highlighting there is the fact that these things don't necessarily need removing because they were almost never there in the first place. Yes, what

you're absolutely right. Well, we're actually removing is the belief that any of these elements of experience define or limit us. Given that approach, what does it mean to say that you root put at the same root put that was root put 20 years ago, or that I, Chris, am the same Chris that was Chris 20 years ago, or will be in 20 years time. Okay. Well, can we start by not going as far back as 20 years? Can we start with, let's start with two minutes? Okay.

Two minutes ago. And we'll go to 20 years. But let's start a little closer to home. So let me rephrase your question, but what does it mean to suggest that Chris is the same Chris now that he was two minutes ago? Well, the thoughts that you, Chris, are having now are not the same as the thoughts you were having

two minutes ago. The feelings, if indeed, that any feelings are present, are not exactly the same. Your bodily sensations, the sensation of the air on your skin, the sensation of your hand, on your mug, the sensation of your legs on your chair, they're not exactly the same as they were two minutes ago, the sound of my voice, the content of our conversation,

the sight of your room. None of these are exactly the same as they were two minutes ago. They've all changed, evolved, appeared, disappeared. But there is one element of your experience that is present now, knowing or being aware of the content of your current experience that was present two minutes ago knowing or being aware of whatever it was that you were experiencing then. And that is what you refer to when you say, I. So now you say, I am listening to your voice. I am experiencing thoughts. I am feeling my legs on the chair. The sounds, the thoughts, the sensations on the chair. These all come and go, but the I that knows them is the same I that knew or was aware of your experience two minutes ago, two days ago, two years ago, 20 years ago, or when you were a two-year-old boy. In other words, when you were a two-year-old boy, you knew

or were aware of your experience, the feeling of being in your mother's arm, the sound of your parents, the sight of your room or the garden, or you are having experiences and you are aware of your experience as a two-year-old boy, as a ten-year-old boy, as a twenty-year-old young man, etc. All everything that you are aware of is constantly changing, but that which is aware of it remains consistently present throughout all changing experience. In fact, that aware presence that we refer to when we say, I, is the only element of experience that never changes. It is our essential irreducible self, the one element of our experience that never changes. It is our essential, irreducible self, the one element of our experience that cannot be removed or separated from us.

Why are you pirouetting around the word awareness? Is there a reason to avoid using awareness as a word? No, I wasn't aware that I was regretting a grandly, because if I, Chris, I'm not sure who's listening to this conversation, I don't want to presume anything. Of course, if I were having a private conversation with you, I would use the word awareness freely, because I know, I don't know you well, but from what I know of you, I know that you understand

that we both share our understanding of the word awareness. Now, some people, the word awareness, they may have heard of it once or twice, but they've never thought of it. It doesn't relate to something in their experience. However, if I were to say to, to let me give you an example, if I were to walk now out onto the high street

and say to someone, do you know what awareness is? They would look puzzling them. What do you mean to them? If I was to say to the same person, are you aware of your experience? They would just say yes. I understand. So I don't even remember now exactly how I phrased my answer to your question.

But it was, you see, having these conversations, I want to do my best not to present any linguistic barriers or to provoke objections or resistance and just trying to make this easy, accessible, experiential, and everybody knows what I mean. When I ask the question, are you aware of your thoughts? Do you perceive the sight of your room? Do you know your feelings? Everybody knows exactly what I mean by knowing or being aware of their experience. But now coming back to your question about the word awareness, we could say that that which is aware of our experience, the common name for it, the name that we give to it is I, I know my thoughts, I am aware of my feelings, I perceive the world. But we could also call it awareness or consciousness,

that which is aware of our experience is consciousness or awareness. Now, just one thing to add to that, the downside of saying referring to it as awareness, awareness being a noun tends to suggest that what we are referring to, that which is aware of our experience, is some kind of an object. And that is the pitfall or the downside of using the word awareness. Everything that we are aware of is some kind of an object,

some kind of a thing. But awareness itself, that which knows or is aware of our experience, is not any kind of an object. So we have to understand that when we use the word awareness. We don't, I don't mean to imply that it is some kind of a subtle thing. How does what we've gone through so far relate to non-dualism at large, or if it doesn't at all then, can you give us an introduction to non-dualism? Yeah, it does relate to it very directly, that the non-dual understanding, or the perennial philosophy,

as it's sometimes referred to, is the understanding that really underlies all the world's great, religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions. And if we were to distill the non-dual understanding, however it may be expressed in these different traditions, if phrases. Firstly, the nature of our being or self is happiness itself. And we share our being with everyone and everything. Well, these are the two core understandings that really are the essence of the non-dual tradition in whatever cultural context that understanding has been expressed. The expression, of course, is very different in each case, depending on the time and the

placing, which it was expressed. But the understanding that was being expressed was always the same, is always the same, and it is mainly that happiness is the nature of ourself for being, and that we share our being with everyone and everything. Why would happiness be the substrate that we grow out of? Why not another emotion? It's just that that's the way it is. It's just if you were to,

can we try a little experiment to try to illustrate? Absolutely. Because then we will make this very experiential and not just philosophical. If I were to ask you Chris to describe as best you can, that which is aware of your experience. So I'm not asking you to describe your experience, your thoughts, your feelings, your sensations, your perceptions. But I would asking you to describe your experience, your thoughts, your feelings, your sensations, your perceptions. But I want to ask you to describe that which is aware of your experience. In other words, your essential self or being.

What, what were you saying? Thinking of words like insight, center. It's the center of yourself, yes, it's the essence of yourself. Try to describe it, can you try to find words that would describe its qualities, if we can. Open, open completely open like an open space of a room simply, experiencing whatever appears without prejudice, impartial, choiceless, yes, completely open without resistance, yes, can you say more? Like an aperture on a camera. Yes, that allows you to focus in and focus out.

Yes, you can focus the camera on a single object, or the camera can remain unfocused and just taking the entire visual field. The presence of awareness, we can focus on the content of our conversation, or we can relax our focus and simply be aware of the entire spectrum of our experience without preference or choice. Perfect. Yes. What else? Has a texture to it. Sometimes it can feel high fidelity. Sometimes it can feel like an old VCR camera. Okay. So I suppose I would say it's changing as well. There is a there is a change to it and it's nature in the way that it feels in the way that I experience it at least. You see now I think you're you're beginning to suddenly describe.

What you are aware of. So take a step back what is it that is aware of these changes? I keep coming back to aperture, the openness. It's just this awareness. So, let me ask you a few more specific questions about it. Is there any agitation in it. Your thoughts may be agitated, you may be in pain, in your body, in which case your sensations will be uncomfortable. There may be a crisis on the street outside your apartment, but so my question is not about the agitation in what you are aware of, thoughts, feelings, and is there any agitation in that which is aware of your experience? I would say no, in the same way as a camera simply observes what it's looking at.

Perfect, the camera never gets agitated, it may be watching a... Showing something that is agitating on the lens, yeah, precisely. Exactly, but the lens itself is never agitated. What is the common name from a human perspective for the absence of agitation? Peace. Peace. And that peace is the nature of awareness.

It is nothing to do with the content of your experience. Your thoughts may be agitated, your feelings, you may be upset, there may be a commotion on the street, but that which knows or is aware of all of these, like the camera, doesn't share their agitated qualities. It is at peace. And it's not at peace that depends upon the content of experience. It is at peace that is prior to an independent old, the content of experience. So let me ask you one more question. Is there any lack

in the presence of awareness? There may be feelings of lack or the thought I need something, I am lonely, but that which is aware of your thoughts and feelings, is there any lack in it? I don't think so. It feels like a conduit for whatever is going on outside. Exactly. Exactly. What is the common name for the absence of lack in human experience? Peace. Yes, you're right. A little more to give you one more word. Is it happiness? It's happiness, it's happiness. I knew it was one of the two. The peace and happiness are, they're really the same.

So the reason I'm saying this is, because you ask me why is happiness, the nature of ourself? And I said, it's not for any reason, it just happens to be the way it is. So what I've tried to demonstrate to you, or rather what I've tried to lead you to in your own experience is to recognize that that happiness is

peace and happiness are the very nature of yourself that you don't need to be made happy. You don't need to manipulate your experience in order to find peace and happiness. Peace and happiness are the very nature of yourself. They are prior to and independent of the content of experience. I'm not sure if it's my disposition around the word happiness. And obviously anything linguistic comes with its own baggage, right? Because my happiness and what it means to me isn't quite the same. It's a very, we need new relinqu, we need Elon Musk to hurry up and allow us to just do brain to brain communication. So he can dispense with his pesky words.

Yes. I feel much more comfortable and it makes more sense to me to hear the word peace than it does to hear the word happiness. Peace to me feels like what we've talked about, a stripping away of lacks, a stripping away of fixating or suppressing. Happiness to me feels more like there's something in motion. Yes. Chris, I think you word happiness is because if we were to do a survey of all 7.8 billion people in the world and ask them what is it you want above all else. Most people would start by giving a list of a relationship, a family, a better health, a nice house, or these kind of things. But then if we were to ask them, but why do you want these things? Almost everyone would answer, because I think they will make me happy. In other words, happiness is the thing that people want, experience that people want above all else. Most people

would conceptualize that for which they long above all else as happiness, but it could equally be peace, joy, love. These are all synonyms, really. That's why I include the word peace and happiness. You're right that one of the downsides of using the word happiness is because of the common association that most people have with it, namely that happiness is a fluctuating emotion that alternates with suffering. So, and that is not intended, I would suggest that happiness is not, not really an emotion in the sense that jealousy, hurt, upset, anger, anxiety, fear are emotions. I would suggest that happiness is the ever-present background of all emotions. It's like the blue sky behind the clouds. It's always there. It doesn't mean it's always visible because it's sometimes covered by clouds, but the blue sky

and the grey clouds don't alternate with each other. The blue sky is always there. It's sometimes seen and it is sometimes obscure. I would suggest that peace or happiness are the nature of ourself. And simply by virtue of the presence that ourself is always present. So peace and happiness are always present. But this doesn't mean that it's always felt, why not? Because it is obscured by the gray clouds

of thoughts and feelings. It's an analogy that I've been using for a long time that you are the sky and everything else is just the weather. Exactly. The thoughts and feelings would be the weather that come and go, but what is the sky's attitude towards the weather? In difference. No attitude at all.

Complete indifferent. The sky doesn't feel that it needs something from the weather. The sky never says, oh, goodness, it's a sunny data. I can't wait for it to stop raining on it, because the sky feels whole and complete, irrespective of what the weather is doing. Awareness is like that, we could call it the blue sky of awareness or the empty space of awareness, yes. So let's use the word happiness, considering it is the lexical commonality that is most useful. What do you think are the most common impediments that people have to attaining happiness?

And to kind of just append onto the end of that, given that happiness in how people define it might not actually be what they're after. They may be after something closer to peace. But what are the things in your experience that get in the way of that? Whether someone conceives what they long for above all else as peace or happiness. I would suggest that the one thing that gets in the way of their recognition of it as the very nature of themselves is the belief that it can be acquired via objective experience. In other words, in order to be happy, I need to change something about the content of my current experience. In other words, in order to be happy, I need to change something about the content of my current experience. My health needs to improve. My financial situation needs to improve. My relationship needs to improve. My finances need something needs to be changed. I need

something, something objective, an object, a substance, an activity, a state of mind, a relationship. I need something and when I get that, whatever it is, then I will be happy. This belief, which we have inherited from our culture, which is almost continually reinforced by our culture, is the main impediment to the recognition that happiness is the nature of our being and is available to all people at all times. I've been reading a Jed McKenna book recently. I was introduced to him by a friend, and I've been very, very impressed. If anyone that's listening wants to read it,

enlightenment, the damnedest thing, I think is the first one in his series. And he talks about releasing the tiller on that, so the tiller being the handle that steers the boat. He talks about how a lot of people grip very, very tightly onto this tiller and a desperate attempt to try and steer themselves. And it's really, it's a beautiful analogy that's made me think a lot, is you're talking there about the fact that we presume that by doing better steering or faster steering or more agile steering, that's what's going to get us towards the end goal, peace of mind, happiness. That's true, but that belief that we might steer the boat a bit more carefully,

a bit more efficiently. That belief is, it's not the fundamental belief. There is a belief that underlies that, namely, that when I acquire a certain experience in the future, then I will be happy. That's the fundamental mistake. And holding the tiller is the root to achieving the thing. The tiller is the root and I may think I do it more efficiently, if I hold it tighter, so that is a secondary belief that I'll get to this future happiness quicker, if I just improve my technique of getting there, gripping the tillers more strongly. But the fundamental belief, the primary belief is that happiness, peace and happiness are dependent on the content

of experience. That belief is a recipe for disappointment and suffering. Does this mean that there is no such objective, better state or worse state for somebody to be in, surely suffering and illness and not at all, not at all. I don't mean to imply that it isn't legitimate to take care of oneself and one's family, if one has one financially, to educate one's children, to take care of oneself, to live in a place that one likes, to have friends. No, I don't mean to imply that that is not legitimate. All I mean to imply is that once you're not doing any of these things for the sake of finding happiness.

But still perfectly okay to have a desire. You had a desire to interview me on this, on your podcast. It wasn't to have, the desire wasn't motivated. You weren't feeling miserable. You didn't think, oh, I'm a subconcession with Rupert, I'll feel better about, no, it was, you were already feeling that the joy of this understanding and your desire arose out of that joy, the desire to spread it and to share it. So I'm glad you asked that question because this understanding doesn't in any way imply that it is not legitimate to take care of oneself and to think about one's future, one's education to look up to one's children, one's health, one's finances, etc.

The motivation for a lot of that comes from the felt lack, though, right? We see a state which we believe would make life for perhaps ourselves or those around us better, that it would improve their life or our life in some way. Well, again, it depends. Does the desire to... does the desire that arises, does it arise on behalf of a sense of lack, or for instance, does it arise on behalf of the safety and the wellbeing of the body? That would be perfectly legitimate.

You're sick. You don't just say, oh, I'm sick, my happiness is not dependent on the state of my body. I'm not going to do anything about it. No, it's true your happiness is not dependent on the state of your body, but it's still appropriate to take care of your body to feed it or your child, if you have a child, or someone who is in your care. So what time suggesting doesn't imply in any way that one doesn't have a desire, that

one isn't motivated to do certain things. It's just that the motivation no longer comes from a sense of lag. Objective experience is no longer seen as the means to find or secure happiness. I guess this means that we need to be very careful about what desires we have and where they come from. Exactly, exactly. But the only, all that's important is to be aware of desires that come from a sense of lack. There are many other reasons that a desire may arise, a desire may arise as they just sit on the, on behalf of the safety or the well-being of the body.

A desire may arise from a feeling of happiness, from a feeling of happiness, from a feeling of love. You may be feeling at peace, totally fulfilled, you may call a friend and ask them around for dinner, not because you think your friend is going to make you happy, because you're already feeling fulfilled. You just want to share that with your friend or go through a walk or on your desire to have this conversation, didn't arise out of a sense of lack of the rose on behalf of your love of truth. That's another reason and motive for desires to arise, to explore or express or to share or to celebrate truth or reality. That's another legitimate motive for a desire, an impulse to do something that doesn't come from the sense of lack.

There's only one type of desire that diminishes as a result of this understanding, namely the desire that comes from a feeling of lack and the belief that the object, the substance, the state, the relationship that is acquired will provide happiness for us. That's the only type of desire or as the only motive of our desire that falls away in the face of this understanding. I've got the words gap and fear in my mind as you're talking about that. Gap comes from a concept by Ben Hardy where he discusses the difference between gap and gain. So he says a lot of the time people when they're driven to do something they look at a thing that they want, they net off the difference, they subtract

the difference and find that there is a gap between them and it, as opposed to the inverse, which would be, this is something that would be great for me to do. I am compelled, I am pushed forward as opposed to pulled along, and that's the gain. And then fear, I think, I keep on talking about it. I'm so adamant that many of the people that are driven to do great things in the world are doing them out of a fear of insufficiency. That if I build the next business, create the next product, get the next million subscribers, whatever it might be, this will fill the hole in me. I am not worthy of love or compassion or care or companionship as I am. And with this, that fear can be dispelled. And of course, as we as we

well know, getting the next million or acquiring whatever it was, were we were driving towards does not give us the happiness we long for that the feeling of emptiness is possibly briefly eclipsed but by the acquisition of the million dollars the whatever it is, but sooner or later, and usually sooner rather than later, the old feeling of lack, the void, the empty feeling comes back up. And now, next time round, you need a stronger dose of whatever it was. Another million won't suffice. It's going to be 10 million. Or if it's a substance or an object or a light, you tend to need more of it to give you that same fleeting sense of happiness.

And that fleeting happiness, it lasts for less and less time before the old sense of lack comes up. And sooner or later, one gets to a stage where one feels I've explored everything. Nothing I've found in my life has given me the lasting peace and happiness for which I long. I've cried everything. And that is either a moment of despair for people because there's nowhere else to turn and this often precipitates despair or depression. But in others it can precipitate either spontaneously or the suggestion of a friend or reading a book or watching a YouTube clip, it can trigger this intuition that they have been

looking for happiness in the wrong place and there can be this as a result, there can be for happiness in the wrong place and there can be this as a result there can be a spontaneous turning around, I mean a turning around of the mind away from the content of experience. And we begin to investigate who I really am, prior to my thoughts, feelings, sensations or perceptions. And this is the beginning of the path that leads to the recognition of our true nature and its innate peace and happiness. Do we have an experiment that we might be able to do to help identify what we are at center or identify our awareness in that way. Yes, we could imagine gradually removing from ourself everything that is temporary or objective in our experience. So just imagine removing your thoughts, and then remove your feelings because no feeling is permanent. They all come and go. Remove your memories. Remove your aspirations, your hopes. Remove your

relationships. However close they may be, no relationship is permanent, it cannot be essentially what we are. So imagine removing your relationship, remove your activities, whatever activities you may be engaged in, no activity is permanent. Remove the sensations of your body, all sensations come and go. So it is, I sometimes liken it to a process of undressing. We are not taking off our clothes.

We are taking off the layers of experience that are not essential to us. And just as when we get undressed at night, we reach a stage where we can't take anything else off. It's just our naked body. In this experiment, it's exactly the same. We get to a stage where we can't take off any more layers of experience. We have in our imagination removed from ourself everything that can be removed.

What remains just make it aware being. And in that one there is no agitation and no lack. That is the happiness that everybody looks for nearly always through the acquisition of some kind of objective experience. How does this relate to the non-dual part of the terminology? Does this mean that we are in the world and of the world? When I first offered a definition of non-duality, I suggested it had When I first offered a definition of non-duality, I suggested it had two parts to the understanding, the first happiness is the nature of our being, and that's where our conversation has been centered up till now.

The second aspect, which is more specifically, from which the term non-duality comes more specifically, is the understanding that we share our being with everyone and everything. In other words, what we essentially are, is the same as what everyone and everything essentially is. In other words, there aren't two separate independent realities or entities in existence, mind and matter, self and other, God and world. There is a single indivisible, infinite reality from which everyone and everything derives its apparently independent existence. So the first aspect of the non-dual understanding, the nature of our being is happiness relates to our internal experience. It's just about our own inner life. The second aspect of the non-dual understanding relates to our relationship with others

and the world. And it is from this second aspect that the term non-duality comes, that there is a single reality. It appears as if there are 10,000 things, but that is an appearance of a single reality, just as when you look at, you watch a football match on the screen, you seem to be seeing 10,000 people in the crowd, but really you're looking at one screen. The 10,000 people are an appearance of the single screen. In other words, the screen is the reality of the apparent 10,000 people. So I would suggest that beneath or behind the appearance of multiplicity and diversity, there is a single unified reality or whole. It's not really behind

or beneath. When I say it's behind or beneath, that is a concession to the belief that the appearance of things are independent of this underlying reality. So it's not really true to say that the screen lies behind the movie, but as a concession to one who believes that the landscape in the movie is real, we might at least to begin with say, no, understand that the screen lies behind it. So to begin with, we might make a distinction and talk about appearances and their reality,

the movie and the screen. But of course, appearances and their reality, the movie and the screen are not really two separate things. The former is simply the appearance of the latter. All there is is really the latter. All there is is the screen. It just sometimes appears as a movie. All there is is reality, infinite consciousness or awareness. It sometimes appears to us as a multiplicity and diversity

of objects and selves. The biggest distinction, I think, that most people make as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves. The biggest distinction I think that most people make is that they feel like an actor who is an agent that works within the world as opposed to an extension of the world. We feel like there is a self behind the eyes in the head somewhere, toodling about doing our daily business. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Chris, take the analogy of a dream when you have a dream at

night. And this is a nice illustration of this second aspect of the non-dual understanding, the fact that we share our being with everyone and everything. When you have a dream at night, you forget that you are dreaming, you overlook your mind, overlooks the fact that it is dreaming. And it imagines a dreamed world within itself, the dream as mind, imagines a dreamed world. But it doesn't view the dreamed world directly. In order to see the dreamed world, the dreamers mind localises itself as a dreamed character. The dreamers mind seems to become a character in its own dream, and it's only from the perspective of the dreamed

character, that the dreamers mind is able to perceive what is in fact its own activity as an outside world. Now from the point of view of the dreamed character, exactly as you say, the dream character feels, I am a separate independently existing agent or self-acting of my own volition with my own energy in this world relating to objects and others and that I feel more or less separate from. Now, because when we wake up, we realize that sense of separation of otherness, of being an independently existing person in the dreamed world, is a complete illusion. The whole thing was the activity of our own mind, which is itself a unified field, albeit a limited one. So in this analogy I would suggest that the dreamers mind is a microcosm of the universal mind or infinite consciousness which is so to speak dreaming or imagining the universe within itself.

In other words the universe is the is the the mental activity of the one mind, the universal consciousness, but it cannot view that universe directly, because the infinite cannot perceive the finite directly. In order to view its own activity, it must localize itself within its own imagination as an apparently separate subject of experience, from whose perspective it views its own activity as an apparently outside world. So it's a very close analogy to what takes place on the level of an individual dream. The dream insights really interesting. I don't tend to remember many of them, but it's so weird that you don't have the God's eye view.

If this is you, did you ever play civilisation, Sid me as civilisation in the game? Yes. So you thought of this omnipotent big? Yes, you're right. You don't, you never have the God's eye view. You can lucid dream in which you know you're dreaming, but even then when you're lucid dreaming, you still perceive the dreamed world from the localized perspective of the dream character. It's just that you

realise that the whole thing is taking place within your own mind. I had a dream a couple of weeks ago where I was kidnapped by scouts from Liverpool and they forced me to do their marketing for them. That was how I spent most of an evening, apparently, just relaxing doing some marketing for some people from Liverpool. So why is it given the fact that this seems quite compelling? Why is it that natively we have such a different experience of reality to this perspective? Because we experience reality from the localised and limited perspective of each of our minds, and our finite minds impose their own limitations on everything that they perceive. So the finite mind is like a pair of glasses, or that's

upgrade the analogy, the finite mind, a human finite mind, which consists of the activities of thinking and perceiving, is like a virtual reality headset. We put on the virtual reality headset, and reality, the outside reality appears in accordance with the limitations of the VR headset, through which we perceive it. If it is calibrated to work in terms of thinking and perceiving, then the universe that we perceive will appear in accordance with those limitations. But if the VR headset had other faculties, the world with the reality we perceive as the world would appear in accordance with those faculties.

It's like, did you ever as a child go into a 3D iMacs cinema? Yes. Yeah, and you know, remember when you, I haven't been for years now, so they're probably a lot more modern now, but you used to go and you get given a big clunky pair of goggles. And you look on the screen, and it's just a regular screen, and all you're seeing on the screen, it's just a fuzzy pattern. It's just a, you know, a completely abstract fuzzy, it looks as if it's like an old-fashioned

TV set that's malfunctioning. Then you put on your glasses and suddenly you're immersed in an ocean in which there are fishes swimming all around you. So the VR goggles that you have put on renders what is actually a two-dimensional screen as a three-dimensional environment and you don't feel that you're viewing the two-dimensional screen from the outside One feels that one is participating in the three-dimensional Reality the ocean or whatever it is from the inside

that ocean or whatever it is, from the inside. So that the structure of the VR goggles that we have put on renders, the two-dimensional screen, in a way that is consistent with the configuration of the goggles. Well I would suggest that a human mind is like a VR headset that functions in terms of perceiving and thinking. And the reality we perceive appears in accordance with its limitations. But what I am not suggesting is that all there is to reality is the contents of our own finite mind. That would be solipsism, and not suggesting that, and suggesting that there is a reality that is outside each of our finite minds, but that it appears in accordance with the limitations of the finite mind through which it is perceived. In other words, the world owes its reality to infinite consciousness, but its appearance to the finite mind. Now, what's the relationship between the finite mind and infinite consciousness?

The finite mind is simply a localisation or rather an apparent localisation of infinite consciousness, just like the dreamed character is an apparent localisation of the dreamers' mind. Given the fact that you've worked at this for 40 years, maybe more than 40 years now, 50, 50, I've, I've, I've first had this intuition when I was seven or eight years old. Cool. A while. So it, it's, it. So it's really, I've always had this intuition. It took me a long time. I had to forget this intuition.

I had to go out into the world. I had to suffer. I had to trace my way back to my own experience. I had to, so it took a long time for me to make my early childhood intuition my own actual experience. So given the fact that you've worked at it for half a century, can you try and describe the distinctions in your experience now? What's it like to be somebody who has worked at this and worked at this and worked at this for five decades?

Can you talk to the delta between Rupert then and Rupert now in terms of the texture of your mind, the way that you experience things? It's very simple, Chris, and very ordinary, it's nothing extraordinary. It's and the really that the two differences from the Rupert then and the Rupert now are two differences that I could speak of in terms of these two aspects of the non-Jule understanding. The first is that I have understood clearly that the peace and happiness that I love cannot be derived from objective experience. So I have ceased looking for happiness in objective experience. It is clear to me that happiness piece that which I love above all else is the very nature of myself.

So if that innate peace and happiness are eclipsed or veiled at any stage in my life, the impulse to find it again through objective experience no longer rises. I just go straight back to my being. That's the one, one thing. And the second thing, and this is something that, the deepens, it's not a fixed state or a final state, it's something that deepens. And in time, the sense that I share my being with everyone and everything increases. The common way we express this felt sense of our shared being in relation to people and animals is called love and in relation to objects and nature it's called beauty. That's what the experiences of love and beauty are are the collapse of the felt sense of separation. So there is this progressive dissolving of any sense of separation between myself not just in people, but in my people, animals, objects. So in other words,

another way of saying that would be that the appearance of multiplicity and diversity becomes, as it were, increasingly transparent. It is progressively losing its power to veil its reality. And as a result, our shared reality, the reality we share with everyone and everything, shines through appearances more and more strongly. Does this lead you open to feeling other people suffering more than you would have done previously? It does, Chris. Yes, the extent to which we are emptying of the suffering that attends the belief in separation. So we become more and more sensitive

to other people's suffering. If we're consumed with our own suffering, another way of saying this, if we're consumed with our own personal suffering, there's not much room to be empathetic towards somebody else's, and we only feel somebody else's suffering. If it's expressed in that very bold, strong terms, we wouldn't be sensitive to the slightest, the smaller degrees of suffering that many people have. But to the extent that we are empty of our own suffering, so we are sympathetic or empathetic to the suffering of others, yes. Do you find that challenging? It's challenging to... it would be challenging to myself as a separate entity, but to the space of awareness, no, it's not challenging. So it depends where

I locate myself at the moment I experience. If I feel I'm a separate self, then another, if I'm lost in the sense of separation, then another person suffering can be challenging. If I'm not only understanding, but my feeling myself to be this awareness, awareness, the sky of awareness, then it's not challenging, the weather is never challenging for the sky. Let's say that there's someone who's listening who your avatar early on, the person who has tried and locked in different places for happiness, filling it with relationships or experiences or emotions or objective metrics of success. Let's say that there's someone to whom that resonates

with simpatico, right? It is completely attuned to their experience of life right now. What would you say to them? I would say when you feel suffering, when you feel any moment or period of suffering in your life, instead of doing what you normally do, reaching for whatever it is in your particular case, the fridge, the bottle, the phone, the etc. Pause, sit down, close your eyes, instead of going outwards towards the object, the substance, the activity, the relationship, go in the other direction, ask yourself the question, but who is the one who is suffering? Not what am I feeling, known a sorrow, shame, guilt here, but who is the one? It is I who am feeling upset, it is I who am lonely, it is I who am afraid.

Who is this I? What am I really? So you begin to trace your experience inwards towards yourself, rather than tracing your suffering, following your suffering, outwards towards the object, tracing your suffering, following your suffering outwards towards the object, the substance, the activity. And in this way you trace your way back through the layers of experience until you come to this inherently peaceful presence of awareness. And then you rest there, that is the resolution of your suffering. and then you rest there, that is the resolution of your suffering. Rupert Spiral, ladies and gentlemen, Rupert, if people want to find out some more about your work

or Delvedeeper into non-Jewelism, why would you send them? The first place would be YouTube. I have a ridiculous number of YouTube clips on YouTube and 3, 400 I think. So there, go to YouTube first, have a look at my channel, explore there. If you're interested, go to my website, roopersparad.com. There's a whole archive of all the meetings that I've conducted over the last 10 or 12 years. There are books and I do webinars every week, meditation weekends where we can have conversations and so that would be the place to go if you're

if you're still interested after you've sampled some clips on YouTube. Where would you suggest they begin with your writing? What book? I would suggest two books depending on your inclination. If you're very philosophically minded, you want to delve into the nature of reality. I would recommend a nature of consciousness. But if you want a simple experiential approach, I would recommend being aware of being aware or in a couple of weeks time a new book coming out called Being Myself. So these these two books being aware of being aware and being myself are short, simple, experiential, they're just the essential on your understanding. If you want something more involved and philosophical, try the nature of consciousness.

I love it. Rupert. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Chris. Thank you for asking me to be the pleasure speaking with you. I wish you the very best. you Yn yw'n gweld. Yn yw'n gweld. Yn yw'n gweld. Yn yw'n gweld. Yn yw'n gweld. Yn yw'n gweld. Yn yw'n gweld.

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