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

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 #rupertspira #nondualism #enlightenment - 00:00 Intro 00:25 Defining Enlightenment 04:34 Our Past Selves 07:55 What is Awareness? 11:19 The Nature of Happiness 19:12 Are Peace and Happiness the Same? 23:10 What Impedes Happiness? 34:57 An Activity to Re-centre 37:29 The Essence of Non-Duality 44:39 The Finite Mind and Infinity 49:31 Lessons Learned from Rupert’s Life 55:13 Rupert’s Advice to Seekers of Happiness - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  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.

• 0:23Chris Williamson?

  I actually want to start at the end to perhaps give us an idea of where we're heading. How do you define enlightenment?

• 0:35Speaker 00

  I would suggest that enlightenment is a rather exotic term that has acquired all sorts of

• 0:47Speaker 00

  exotic and superfluous meanings for people, but that it really refers 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.

• 1:12Chris Williamson?

  So it's innately linked to some sort of truth?

• 1:16Speaker 00

  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.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  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 is true of any relationship or activity. So if one were to imagine removing everything from ourself 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.

• 2:42Chris Williamson?

  So it feels a lot like that is casting off rather than learning more. It feels

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 2:48Chris Williamson?

  It feels like we need to get rid as opposed to acquire.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  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 realise they're not essential to us. The analogy that I sometimes use to illustrate this is the analogy of the the screen and the image. Now, no image, no movie is essential to the screen. If you close down all your programmes, your emails, your iPhotos, your notes,

• 3:36Speaker 00

  your YouTube clips, your Word documents, you close down all the programmes that you have running through the day, what can't you close down? You even remove your screensaver, 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 oneself rather than adding to oneself.

• 4:10Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Yes, you're absolutely right. What we're actually removing is the belief that any of these elements of experience define or limit us.

• 4:32Chris Williamson?

  Given that approach, what does it mean to say that you Rupert are the same Rupert that was Rupert 20 years ago, or that I Chris am the same Chris that was Chris 20 years ago, or will be in 20 years' time?

• 4:48Speaker 00

  Okay, well, can we start by not going as far back as 20 years? Can we start with, let's start with two minutes. 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. 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.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  The feelings, if indeed 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

• 6:03Speaker 00

  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 then is the same "I" that knew or was aware of your experience

• 6:42Speaker 00

  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.

• 7:00Speaker 00

  The feeling of being in your mother's arm, the sight, the, the, the, the sound of your parents, the sight of your room or the garden, or you were having experiences and you were 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.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  It is our essential, irreducible self, the one element of our experience that cannot be removed or separated from us.

• 7:54Chris Williamson?

  Why are you pirouetting around the word awareness? Is there a reason to avoid using awareness as a word?

• 8:07Speaker 00

  No, I wasn't aware that I was

• 8:10Chris Williamson?

  Oh, no.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  pirouetting around it, because if I, you see, Chris, I'm, 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, with you, I would use the word awareness freely, because I know, I, I don't know you well, but from what I know of you, I, I know that you understand, that we both share our understanding of the word awareness. Now, some people, the, the word awareness, they, they've, they may have heard of it once or twice, but they've never thought of it. It doesn't relate to something

• 8:53Speaker 00

  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, onto the high street and say to someone, "Do you know what awareness is?", they would look, they would look puzzled. "What, what do you mean, do I know?", if I was to say to the same person, "Are you aware of your experience?", they would just say, "Yes."

• 9:22Chris Williamson?

  I understand.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  So that that's the, 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? Are you, 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.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  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, 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 the down, 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.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  And that is the, 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.

• 11:19Chris Williamson?

  How does what we've gone through so far relate to nondualism at large? Or if it doesn't at all, then can you give us an introduction to nondualism?

• 11:28Speaker 00

  Yes, no, it does relate to it very directly. The nondual understanding, or the perennial philosophy as it's sometimes referred to, is the is the understanding that really underlies all the world's great religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions. And if we were to distill the nondual understanding, however it may be expressed in these different traditions, if we were to distill the essence of that understanding, we could describe it in two simple phrases.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  Firstly, the nature of our being or self is happiness itself. And we share our being with everyone and everything. These are the two core understandings that really are the essence of the nondual 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 place in which it was expressed. But the understanding that was being expressed was always the same, is always the same.

• 12:46Speaker 00

  And it is namely that happiness is the nature of our self or being and that we share our being with everyone and everything.

• 12:57Chris Williamson?

  Why would happiness be the substrate that we grow out of? Why not another emotion?

• 13:07Speaker 00

  It's just that that's the way it is. It's just, if you were to...

• 13:17Speaker 00

  Can we try a little experiment to try to illustrate?

• 13:22Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  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. I would ask you to describe that which is aware of your experience. In other words, your essential self or being... What would you say?

• 13:58Chris Williamson?

  Thinking of words like insight, centre.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  It's the centre of yourself, yes. It's the essence of yourself. Try to describe its... Can you try to find words that would describe its qualities, if we could?

• 14:15Chris Williamson?

  Open?

• 14:17Speaker 00

  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?

• 14:38Chris Williamson?

  Like an aperture on a camera?

• 14:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:40Chris Williamson?

  That allows you to focus in and focus out?

• 14:43Speaker 00

  Yes, you can focus the camera on a single object or the camera can remain unfocused and just take in 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?

• 15:07Chris Williamson?

  Has a texture to it. Sometimes it can feel high fidelity. Sometimes it can feel like an old VCR camera.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 15:21Chris Williamson?

  So I suppose I would say it's changing as well. There is a, there is a change to it in its nature, in the way that it feels, in the way that I experience it at least.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  You see, now I think you're, you're beginning to subtly describe what you are aware of.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  So, take a step back. What is it that is aware of these changes?

• 15:49Chris Williamson?

  I keep coming back to aperture, open.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  It's just the openness. It's just this aware openness. So let me ask you a few more specific questions about it. Is there any agitation in it? Now, your thoughts may be agitated. You're, you're, you may be in pain in your body, in which case your sense, your sensations will be uncomfortable. There may be a crisis on the street outside your apartment, or, but. So my question is not about the agitation in what you are aware of, thoughts, feelings, and it. Is, is there any agitation in that which is aware of your experience?

• 16:31Chris Williamson?

  I would say no, in the same way as a camera simply observes what it's looking at.

• 16:39Speaker 00

  Perfect. The camera never gets, never gets agitated. It may be, it may be watching a.

• 16:44Chris Williamson?

  Showing something that is agitating on the lens. Yeah, precisely.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  Exactly, but the, but the lens itself is never agitated. What is the common name, from a human perspective, for the absence of agitation?

• 16:58Chris Williamson?

  Peace?

• 16:59Speaker 00

  Peace. And that, 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, it is at peace. And it's not a peace that depends upon the content of experience. It is a peace that is prior to and independent of the content of experience. So let me ask you one more question. Is there any lack

• 17:42Speaker 00

  in the presence of awareness?

• 17:45Speaker 00

  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?

• 17:59Chris Williamson?

  I don't think so. It feels like a conduit for whatever is going on outside.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. And what is the common name for the absence of lack in human experience?

• 18:14Chris Williamson?

  Peace?

• 18:15Speaker 00

  Yes, you're right. A little more... Give me one more word.

• 18:22Chris Williamson?

  Is it happiness?

• 18:23Speaker 00

  It's happiness, exactly.

• 18:25Chris Williamson?

  I knew it was one of the two.

• 18:26Speaker 00

  Peace and happiness, they're really the same. So the reason I'm saying this is because you asked 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 happiness is... Peace and happiness are the very nature of yourself. 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.

• 19:13Chris Williamson?

  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 Neuralink, we need Elon Musk to hurry up and allow us to just do brain-to-brain communication so he can dispense with these pesky words.

• 19:33Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 19:34Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  Yes. Chris, I think you're absolutely right. I tend to agree with you.

• 20:03Speaker 00

  The reason I use the 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 household, these kind of things. But then if we were to ask them, "But why do you want these things?"

• 20:34Speaker 00

  Almost everyone would answer, "Because I think they will make me happy." In other words, happiness is the thing that people want, the 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. So that's why I include the word peace and happiness. You're right that that one of the downsides of using the word happiness is because of the common association that most people have with it,

• 21:17Speaker 00

  namely that happiness is a fluctuating emotion that alternates with suffering.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  So, and that is not intended. I would suggest that happiness is 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, say, it's always visible because it's sometimes covered by clouds. But the blue sky and the gray clouds don't alternate with each other. The blue sky is always there. It's sometimes seen and it is sometimes obscured. I would suggest that peace or happiness are the nature of ourself and simply by virtue of the presence that ourself is always present.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  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.

• 22:21Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  Exactly, that the thoughts and feelings would be the weather that come and go, but what is the sky's attitude towards the weather?

• 22:36Chris Williamson?

  Indifference.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  No attitude at all, complete indifferent. The sky doesn't feel that it needs something from the weather. The sky never says, "Oh, thank goodness, it's a sunny day. I can't wait for it to stop raining." No, 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.

• 23:02Chris Williamson?

  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 on to 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?

• 23:36Speaker 00

  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. My health needs to improve, my financial situation needs to improve, my relationship needs to improve, my finances need to... Something needs to be changed. I need something, something objective,

• 24:21Speaker 00

  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 and 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.

• 24:56Chris Williamson?

  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 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 in a desperate attempt to try and steer themselves. And it's really, it's a beautiful analogy that's made me think a lot as 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 toward the end goal, peace of mind, happiness.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  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

• 25:57Speaker 00

  when I acquire a certain experience in the future, then I will be happy. That's the fundamental mistake.

• 26:05Chris Williamson?

  And holding the tiller is the route to achieving the thing?

• 26:10Speaker 00

  Holding the tiller is the route and I may think I do it more if I do it more efficiently, if I hold it tighter, if I, 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 tiller 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.

• 26:47Chris Williamson?

  Does this mean that there is no such objective better state or worse state for somebody to be in? Surely suffering and illness and...

• 26:55Speaker 00

  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, no, I don't mean to imply that that is not legitimate. All I mean to imply is that one should not do 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,

• 27:36Speaker 00

  the desire wasn't motivated. You weren't feeling miserable. You didn't think, "Oh, I'm in a conversation with Rupert, I'll feel better." No, it was, you were already feeling the joy of this understanding and your desire arose out of that joy, the desire to spread it and to share it. And so, 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 after one's children, one's health, one's finances, etc.

• 28:12Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Well, again, it depends. Does the desire to...

• 28:37Speaker 00

  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 well-being 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 I'm suggesting doesn't imply in any way that one doesn't...

• 29:19Speaker 00

  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 lack. Objective experience is no longer seen as the means to find or secure happiness.

• 29:36Chris Williamson?

  I guess this means that we need to be very careful about what desires we have and where they come from.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly. 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 I just said, 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 love. You may be feeling at peace,

• 30:12Speaker 00

  totally fulfilled. You may call a friend and ask them round 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. Go for a walk. Your desire to have this conversation didn't arise out of a sense of lack. It arose on behalf of your love of truth. That's another reason, motive for desires to arise, to explore, or express, or to share, or to celebrate truth or reality.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  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 the only motive of our desire that falls away in the face of this understanding.

• 31:24Chris Williamson?

  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'm 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

• 32:06Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  And of course, as we well know, getting the next million or acquiring whatever it was we were striving towards does not give us the happiness we long for, that the feeling of emptiness is possibly briefly

• 32:54Speaker 00

  eclipsed 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 got to be 10 million. If it's a substance, or an object, or you tend to need more of it to give you that same fleeting sense of happiness. And that fleeting happiness,

• 33:34Speaker 00

  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 tried 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

• 34:18Speaker 00

  that they have been looking for happiness in the wrong place. And there can be this, as a result, there can be a spontaneous turning around. By turning around, I mean a turning around of the mind away from the content of experience. And we begin to investigate what, who I really am prior to my thoughts, feelings, sensations, or perceptions. And this is the, this is the, um, the beginning of the path that leads to the recognition of our true nature and its innate peace and happiness.

• 34:57Chris Williamson?

  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?

• 35:08Speaker 00

  Yes, we could, um, we could imagine gradually removing from ourself

• 35:22Speaker 00

  everything that is temporary or objective in our experience. So just imagine removing your thoughts.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  And then remove your feelings, because no feeling is permanent. They all come and go. Remove your memories.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Remove your aspirations, your hopes.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  Remove your relationships.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  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.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  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.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  But, and just as when we get undressed at night, that, that we, 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.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  What remains? Just naked, 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.

• 37:30Chris Williamson?

  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?

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Okay, 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 is that's where our conversation has been centred up till now. The second aspect, which is more specifically, which is 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.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  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.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  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. And in other words, the screen is the reality of the apparent

• 39:52Speaker 00

  Ten thousand 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 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,

• 40:34Speaker 00

  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, the 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.

• 41:17Speaker 00

  It sometimes appears to us as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves.

• 41:25Chris Williamson?

  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. Right? We feel like there is a self behind the eyes in the head somewhere.

• 41:47Chris Williamson?

  Tootling about doing our daily business.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  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 dreamer's mind imagined a dreamed world. But it doesn't view the dreamed world directly. In order to see the dreamed world, the dreamer's mind localizes itself as a dreamed character.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  The dreamer's mind seems to become a character in its own dream. And it's only from the perspective of the dreamed character that the dreamer's 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, of course, when we wake up,

• 43:18Speaker 00

  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 dreamer's 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 mental activity

• 44:01Speaker 00

  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.

• 44:37Chris Williamson?

  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 Civilization, Sid Meier's Civilization, the game?

• 44:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so you're sort of this omnipotent, big.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  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 realize that the whole thing is taking place within your own mind.

• 45:15Chris Williamson?

  I had a dream a couple of weeks ago where I was kidnapped by Scousers from Liverpool and they forced me to do their marketing for them.

• 45:23Chris Williamson?

  That was, 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?

• 45:44Speaker 00

  Because we experience reality from the localized and limited perspective of each of our minds. And the, our finite minds impose their own limitations on everything that they perceive. So the finite mind is like a pair of glasses, or it'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.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  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, the reality we perceive as the world would be, would appear in accordance with those faculties. It's like, um, did you ever as a, as a child go into a, um, a 3D IMAX cinema?

• 47:00Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. And you, you know, you remember when you, and I haven't been for, for years now, so they probably a, a lot more modern now, but, but you used to go and you'd get, get, get given a big clunky pair of, of goggles. And you look on the screen and it's just a regular screen and all you're seeing on the screen is just a fuzzy pattern. It's just a, I mean, no, 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, the, the, the VR goggles that you have put on renders

• 47:40Speaker 00

  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. So that, that, the, the, 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, the goggles. Well, I would suggest that a human mind is like a VR

• 48:22Speaker 00

  headset that functions in terms of perceiving and thinking. And the, 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. I'm not suggesting that. I'm 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.

• 49:07Speaker 00

  Now, what's the relationship between the finite mind and infinite consciousness? The finite mind is simply a localization, or rather, an apparent localization of infinite consciousness, just like the dreamed character is an apparent localization of the dreamer's mind.

• 49:27Chris Williamson?

  Given the fact that you've worked at this for forty years, maybe more than forty years now?

• 49:35Speaker 00

  Fifty. I first had this intuition when I was seven or eight years old.

• 49:42Chris Williamson?

  Cool, a while.

• 49:43Speaker 00

  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.

• 50:08Chris Williamson?

  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?

• 50:37Speaker 00

  It's very simple, Chris, and very ordinary. It's nothing extraordinary.

• 50:45Speaker 00

  It's, and

• 50:49Speaker 00

  really, 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-dual 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, peace, that which I love above all else, is the very nature of myself.

• 51:30Speaker 00

  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 arises. I just go straight back to my being.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  That's the one thing. And the second thing, and this is something that deepens. It's not a fixed state or a final state. It's something that deepens in time. The sense that I

• 52:15Speaker 00

  that I share my being with everyone and everything increases.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  The common

• 52:26Speaker 00

  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, the collapse of the felt sense of separation. So there is this progressive dissolving of any sense of separation between myself, not just and people, and my people, animals, objects. So that, in other words, another way of saying that would be that the appearance of multiplicity and diversity becomes, as it were, increasingly transparent.

• 53:10Speaker 00

  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,

• 53:22Speaker 00

  shines through appearances more and more strongly.

• 53:27Chris Williamson?

  Does this lead you open to feeling other people's suffering more than you would have done previously?

• 53:33Speaker 00

  It does, Chris. Yes, the extent to which we are empty 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 to the slightest, the smaller degrees of suffering that

• 54:16Speaker 00

  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.

• 54:26Chris Williamson?

  Do you find that challenging?

• 54:35Speaker 00

  It's challenging to

• 54:38Speaker 00

  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's suffering can be challenging. If I'm not only understanding, but by feeling myself to be this aware openness, the sky of awareness, then no, it's not challenging. The weather is never challenging for the sky.

• 55:13Chris Williamson?

  Let's say that there's someone who's listening, who your avatar earlier on, the person who has tried and looked 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?

• 55:41Speaker 00

  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, 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? Loneliness, sorrow, shame, guilt, fear. But who is the one?

• 56:26Speaker 00

  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, 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.

• 57:06Chris Williamson?

  Rupert Spira, ladies and gentlemen. Rupert, if people want to find out some more about your work or delve deeper into non-dualism, where would you send them?

• 57:15Speaker 00

  The first place would be YouTube. I have a ridiculous number of YouTube clips on YouTube, 300, 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, rupertspira.com. There's a lot more. 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 still interested after you've sampled some clips on YouTube.

• 57:55Chris Williamson?

  Where would you suggest they begin with your writing? What book?

• 58:00Speaker 00

  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 The 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 two books, Being Aware of Being Aware and Being Myself are short, simple, experiential, they're just the essential non-dual understanding. If you want something more involved and philosophical, try The Nature of Consciousness.

• 58:43Chris Williamson?

  I love it. Rupert, thank you so much.

• 58:46Speaker 00

  Thank you very much, Chris. Thank you for asking me. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. I wish you the very best.