Latest / Always Connected / What If Consciousness Doesn’t Begin or End with the Body | Rupert Spira

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What If Consciousness Doesn’t Begin or End with the Body | Rupert Spira · Always Connected

0:02
Speaker 1: Hi, everybody. As you may know, most of my podcasts
0:05
these days have been live, but every so often, I
0:08
bring on a very special guest, and I couldn't be
0:11
more pleased today to bring you a man who has
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been instrumental in my journey. I first discovered him a
0:20
few years after I asked the question, how is it
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possible that I am tuning into information that's coming in
0:26
beyond my non-physical senses? And my guest today is going
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to show you how that's possible, why we don't need
0:36
our physical senses to tap into wisdom and guidance and happiness.
0:41
Rupert Spira is a teacher of non-duality, and you're going
0:46
to come to understand what that is and what it
0:49
means for you. He leads conversations and guided meditations on
0:54
happiness and the nature of reality. So I'd like you
0:58
to meet Rupert. Spira, welcome to the show.
1:02
Speaker 2: Thank you for your kind words, Suzanne. It's a pleasure
1:06
to be with you.
1:07
Speaker 1: Well, the pleasure is mine. I found you online when
1:11
a video of yours popped up. I know it was
1:13
2019 because I can judge things by where I was
1:16
traveling around the country at the time. And I became
1:19
addicted to your YouTube videos, of which there are many.
1:23
And the more I listened, I said, yes, yes, this
1:26
is it. This is the way to touch this reality.
1:30
that I've tapped into through years of meditation. So let's
1:34
just dive into that. I need to ask, where do
1:38
we begin? Okay, let's begin with the definition of non-duality.
1:45
Speaker 2: Non-duality suggests, the non-dual understanding suggests that peace and happiness
1:53
are your nature and you share your being with everyone
2:00
and everything. That's as succinct a definition of non-duality I
2:08
can give you.
2:09
Speaker 1: And I love it because what you just did there
2:12
is demonstrate what I have seen you do over and
2:16
over and over. And if we all could do that,
2:19
we would find that happiness and peace. Did you notice everybody?
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He didn't just jump into a canned answer that he's
2:25
given a hundred times before. He didn't answer immediately. He paused.
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And I would conjecture that you became that reality and
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you waited for the answer to arise. How would you
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put it?
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Speaker 2: That's very true. When I answered the question, indeed, when
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I answer any question, sometimes I pause. Sometimes the answer
2:48
is just immediately there. It's not a style that I have.
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But I pause immediately. for two reasons. One, because I
3:00
want to understand not only the question, which in this
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case was easy to understand. Your question was very clearly
3:08
and succinctly formatted, but I want to feel the question
3:12
behind the question. So that's the first thing, to feel
3:16
where the question's coming from. And the second thing, I
3:19
want to refer back to my own experience and answer
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from that. Now, Having said that, this is not the
3:27
first time, for the sake of transparency, this is not
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the first time that I have formulated the non-dual understanding
3:36
in these terms. However, I could have answered your question
3:41
in many different ways. So it was, we don't yet
3:48
know each other very well, but I'm aware of your work.
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Speaker 3: I'm aware of.
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Speaker 2: What you want to bring to your listeners. So I'm
3:57
pausing because I think, how can I best respond to
4:01
this question in a way that would relate to Suzanne's listeners?
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I don't want to give you an abstract philosophical answer
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because I don't think that's what you or your listeners
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are interested in. You're interested in something more experiential, as
4:19
indeed am I.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So why would the listeners of this podcast
4:26
care about non-duality?
4:30
Speaker 2: Because I would suggest that all your listeners, indeed I
4:36
would suggest that everybody above all else, seeks peace and
4:41
happiness on the inside and harmony or love on the outside.
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Not many people formulate that search in non-dual terms. If
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we were to formulate that search in non-dual terms, we
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would call it the search for enlightenment or awakening. If
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we were to reformulate it in religious terms, we might
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call it seeking union with God. But not that many
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people seek either enlightenment or union with God. Eight billion
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people seek peace and fulfillment. Most people, if we were
5:31
to ask them, what is it in life that you
5:33
really want? Not many people would say, I want happiness.
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Most people would say, I want better health, or I
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want an intimate relationship, or I want a family, or
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I want a better job, or I want a nicer home,
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or something like that. But then if we press them
5:49
and say, well, why do you want happiness? those things
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or one of those things, they will say, because I
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think it will make me happy. If you said to them,
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for instance, well, if you were absolutely certain that better
6:04
health would make you miserable, would you want it? And
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they would say, no, I'd rather be unhealthy and happy
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rather than healthy and miserable. I'd rather be single and
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happy rather than married and miserable. So we really seek
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all those objects, activities, relationships, and so on for the
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sake of the happiness that we believe that will be
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derived from them. What everybody really wants is happiness. And
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by happiness, I don't mean a gleeful experience, an ecstatic experience.
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I mean peace, fulfillment, A sense of being complete, at ease, sufficient, whole,
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lacking nothing.
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Speaker 1: Yes. And so many people come to this program, well,
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for a variety of reasons, but many because they're in grief.
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They're trying to find out, does consciousness survive beyond death?
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Is my loved one still around? That's what brought me
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to this journey. And finding the answers to that question,
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that is, yes, our loved ones are still accessible. as
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expressions of consciousness that we all are, has brought me
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to that peace and happiness that your work points to.
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Beyond any imagining that I ever had back in my
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Navy career, a happiness that is always present. And that's
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what I hope that followers of this podcast will find,
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which is why I was so thrilled to have you here. Yes.
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Speaker 2: I mean, this is really the great, open secret of
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not only the non-dual understanding, or I would suggest the
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non-dual understanding is the understanding that underlies all the great
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religious and spiritual traditions, namely that happiness is not a
8:00
state of mind that you may or may not attain
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from time to time as a result of acquiring an object,
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a substance, an activity, a relationship, and so on. Happiness
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is the nature of your being. It's what you are.
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It's not an experience that you have. It is the
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very nature of your being. And this is formulated in
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all the traditions. The kingdom of heaven is within you.
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It is a Christian way of saying the same thing.
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And this is really what everybody should know, that if
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you want happiness, the place to find it is in God.
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your own being. And I suspect, I don't know your,
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your audience well, but I suspect the people that come
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to you, come to you precisely because the happiness, they
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didn't find the happiness they previously sought in the world,
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in activities, relationships, and they have either understood that happiness
9:04
cannot ultimately be found there, or they are beginning to
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suspect that to seek happiness in the world is, is, um,
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is destined for disappointment. Just to make sure there's no misunderstanding,
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I don't mean to imply in any way that to
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lead a very full life in the world, to participate
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in life in the world very fully, is therefore not legitimate.
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I don't think that at all. I think it is
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absolutely legitimate. But I feel that one's life in the
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world should come from one's happiness rather than go towards it.
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Speaker 1: What a wonderful distinction. So you teach the direct path to, oh,
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fill in the blank too. I don't want to fill
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it in for you. The direct path to what and
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how does one walk that path?
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Speaker 2: The direct path to happiness, although not everyone would formulate it.
10:00
in that way. Others would formulate it in terms of peace, enlightenment, God,
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the relief from suffering. There are many different ways that
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this could be formulated. And some people object to the
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word happiness and reasonably so. because of the close association
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they have with the word happiness, with a temporary ecstatic
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state of mind, which is not what I mean by happiness.
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It's more quiet joy, causeless joy.
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Speaker 1: If I could just interrupt the flow for a moment,
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everybody who follows my work would know that joy is
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my name for source.
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Speaker 2: Yes, yes. Quiet, causeless joy, a joy that is not
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caused by anything that either does or does not happen
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in your external life, a causeless joy that is the
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nature of your being. So that's what it's the direct
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path to. Now, what is meant by the direct path?
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There are basically two paths. We could almost say three,
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but let's start with two. Two paths. The progressive path
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is and the direct path. And I make no hierarchy,
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no qualitative distinction between these paths. Both are equally valid.
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I spent 25 years on the progressive path before I
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discovered the direct path. But the progressive path is a
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path that takes us to our true nature, to peace,
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to God, to enlightenment, whatever name we give it, via
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some object of experience. You might practice mantra meditation. You
11:50
might watch your breath. You might visualize a light. There
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are numerous progressive paths in all the different traditions. And
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they all, one way or another, involve directing your attention
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to some object of experience, some content of experience. By
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object of experience, I don't necessarily mean a physical object.
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It could be a mantra, your breath, a flame, the
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blue sky, the image of a deity, your teacher. There
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are numerous possible objects that we can give our attention
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to on our way back to our true nature. That's
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the progressive or indirect path. It's like flying from London
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to LA via Chicago. Now, the direct path is when
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you just go directly from your current experience to your
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true nature. You just go straight from Heathrow to LA.
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You don't go via any object or content of experience.
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So whatever you're experiencing, what we're experiencing now, you may
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be in physical pain, you may be suffering, you may
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be in grief, you may be lonely, you may be anxious.
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Wherever you find yourself in your current experience, you could
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ask yourself a question such as, what is it that
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is aware of my experience? And that question will take
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your mind away from what you are aware of back
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to that which is aware. In other words, you go
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back to your true nature of being aware or awareness
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itself directly.
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Speaker 1: I love that you said earlier, on our way back,
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and it's because it's right here. You never left.
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Speaker 2: On our way back, absolutely. You cannot progress towards your
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true nature. Our true nature is what we essentially are.
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But at the moment, in most of us, what we
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essentially are is veiled or obscured or covered by layers
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of experience, thoughts, and particularly feelings, activities, relationships. So it's
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what we are at the deepest level. And we go
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back to it. We can't progress towards it. We don't
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become it. We recognize it.
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Speaker 1: What was the turning point for you after 25 years
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of going from airport to airport, finally just going direct?
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Speaker 2: Well, I wasn't going from airport to airport. I was
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very focused. I was practicing mantra meditation for 25 years.
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Mantra meditation, just to say something about that, because it's
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the one form of the progressive path that I have
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firsthand experience on. As you know, I'm sure all your
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listeners know, with mantra meditation, instead of paying attention to 10,000
15:06
things in rapid succession, you You pay attention to one thing.
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You focus your attention on the mantra. And then you
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repeat the mantra. And as you repeat the mantra, the
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mantra begins to fade. The repetitions slow down. They get
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further and further apart. And they get quieter and quieter.
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So this fading of the mantra, as the mantra fades,
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two things can happen. One, your mind gets busy again
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with the 10,000 things, in which case you hold on
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to the mantra again.
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Speaker 1: Or....
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Speaker 2: As the mantra fades, your mind doesn't go back to
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the content of experience. It subsides into the source of awareness.
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So now to answer your question, what I found after
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25 years is that I needed the mantra less and less.
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I would sit down, as I had done every morning,
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every evening for 25 years, and start repeating the mantra
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with the intention of taking my with the intention of
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taking my attention away from the content of experience, back
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to my true nature. But I found that I was
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there already, perhaps just once or twice, just mention the
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mantra once, sound it once, let it dissolve, and there
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I was, back in my being. And of course, this,
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as very often happens, you will understand this, all your listeners,
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listeners will understand this, very often when your understanding matures,
16:44
there is often a synchronistic event in the outside world
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that corresponds with that understanding. And you meet a person
16:52
that somehow is the right person at the right time
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to help you with this next stage of your journey,
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which is exactly what happened with me.
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Speaker 1: Yes, I've heard you talk about your teachers.
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Speaker 2: Yes, yes.
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Speaker 1: And then you found your own way of showing people
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how to, I love what you said, you know, be
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back in your being. Yes.
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Speaker 2: So then I spent another 13 years practicing self-inquiry with
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my teacher and the community that had grown up around him,
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exploring all this, never once thinking that I would share
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these matters in writing or speaking. I was an artist
17:34
at the time, very happy working in my studio and
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just presuming that I would spend the rest of my
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life in my studio. But I did write a book,
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really just, I didn't even know to begin with that
17:49
I was writing a book. I was just writing a
17:50
series of essays for my own, just for my own,
17:54
in order to clarify my own understanding and really for
17:57
the pleasure of writing. Anyway, I won't tell the whole story,
18:00
but that collection of essays then became a book.
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Speaker 1: Which one was that? Because I'm pretty sure I've read
18:06
all of your books.
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Speaker 2: That was the first book, The Transparency of Things. And
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I then, to my surprise, started receiving invitations to speak
18:18
at conferences. I was then asked to give a retreat
18:21
at the Omega Institute on the East Coast. And one
18:25
thing led to another. And I found over the period
18:28
of a couple of years, quite quickly, what had always
18:32
been my passion private passion turned into something that I
18:36
now found myself doing and enjoying very much in life.
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So I had been exploring these matters for 35 years
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by the time I started writing and speaking. Without my
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realizing it, I found that I had developed a language
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and at least a degree of skill. at explaining these
19:07
matters because I'd been on the path for so long myself.
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I had refined the process for myself that then when
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I found myself giving a retreat, I found that I
19:17
had a language, a repertoire. And then, of course, that
19:21
has been refined and I hope continues to be refined
19:26
as I speak more and write more about these matters.
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Speaker 1: And you do have a wonderful way of explaining things
19:32
very simply. And yet to a newcomer to the concept
19:39
of non-duality, the language can seem confusing because it's not
19:46
what we're used to. It really does cause you to
19:48
practice selfishness. Why don't you share with us what self-inquiry
19:53
is about? I wrote about this in my book, The
19:55
Awakened Way, and it's so important.
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Speaker 2: Self-inquiry is very simple. It's really what it says it is.
20:07
It's an investigation into the nature of yourself. But when
20:13
most people think of their self, they think first of
20:16
their body, and then as they go, if they are
20:20
then asked, no, go into yourself, go inside yourself. People think, oh,
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you mean my thoughts and my feelings. I would suggest
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that our bodies and our thoughts and our feelings are
20:33
obviously very intimate to us, but they are what we
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know They are not what we are. And this is
20:43
even enshrined in common parlance. We say, I know my thoughts.
20:50
I feel sad. So thoughts are unknown by us. They
20:58
are experienced. They are not what we are. They are
21:00
what we know. We say, I am sad. But really
21:05
we should say, I feel sad. Sadness is not what
21:08
we are. If sadness was what we are, we would
21:11
always be sad because what we are, by definition, is
21:16
always with us. But what we are obviously cannot be
21:19
removed from us when we get undressed at night. We
21:22
take our shirt off because our shirt is not what
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we are. It can be removed. The feeling of sadness
21:30
is not always with us. We are sometimes sad, but
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we are sometimes not sad. So sadness can't be what
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we are. It's what we know. So when we say,
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I am sad. It's a mistake. We should say, I
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feel sad. So what is self-inquiry? It's not an investigation
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into our thoughts, our feelings, even our most intimate thoughts
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and feelings, our deepest memories. It's not an investigation into that.
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That's what we know. But what are we? When we say,
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I know my thoughts, who is that I? When we say,
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I feel sad, Normally, when we feel sad, we give
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all our attention to the sadness, trying to get rid
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of the sadness. But we don't give our attention to
22:18
the I. Who is the I when we say, I
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feel sad? Who is that I? When we say, I
22:25
am listening to a conversation, normally we give all our
22:28
attention to the conversation, but we neglect the I.
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Speaker 1: And is that I separate from the sadness? Yes.
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Speaker 2: The sadness is not separate from the I, but the
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I is separate from the sadness. Let me explain what
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I mean by that, because these words could be interpreted
22:48
in different ways. It's like saying, is the movie separated
22:52
from the screen? The screen, in this analogy, represents what
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we essentially are, and the movie would be the content
23:02
of experience. Let's say, in this case, the sadness. Now,
23:06
You cannot separate the movie from the screen. So whenever
23:11
there is a movie, it is one with the screen.
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But the screen exists without the movie.
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Speaker 1: There we go.
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Speaker 2: So when there is sadness, it is one with what
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we are. You cannot separate it from the awareness that
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we are. But the awareness that we essentially are exists,
23:30
or more accurately, is present independently of the sadness. And
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then you find happiness. And that experience, if the nature
23:44
of the being that we essentially are is inherently full, complete, whole,
23:52
lacking nothing, needing nothing, desiring nothing, that is, when we
23:59
experience happiness, we are tasting our being. We are tasting
24:05
its inherent nature. fullness it's completeness it's wholeness and happiness
24:10
is the taste of that experience if we can call
24:14
it an experience i say if we can call it
24:19
an experience because happiness is not something we experience it's
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what we are and and this is as often happens
24:28
this understanding is enshrined in common parlance we call suffering
24:33
unhappiness We don't call happiness unmisery. Why do we call
24:41
suffering unhappiness? Because we understand or enshrined in the word
24:48
unhappiness is the understanding that happiness is our natural condition
24:53
and that suffering is the obscuring of that. So unhappiness
24:59
is defined in terms of happiness. Suffering is unhappiness. But
25:05
you never describe happiness in terms of suffering. And this
25:10
indicates the recognition that we know that happiness is primary
25:15
and suffering is just the veiling of that happiness, not
25:17
its absence. So unhappiness is not the absence of happiness.
25:23
It is the veiling of happiness. Like on a cloudy day,
25:30
the blue sky is present, although not experienced. Why don't
25:35
we experience the blue sky on a cloudy day? Because
25:38
it's covered by clouds. Our happiness is like the blue
25:42
sky of happiness that is covered temporarily by the gray
25:47
clouds of experience. But the blue sky is always there,
25:51
sometimes felt and sometimes obscured, but never absent.
25:56
Speaker 1: This is what I've loved about your teaching all along
25:58
is your fabulous analogies. that make what to some people
26:02
may seem challenging, very, very simple to understand. Yeah. As
26:07
before we get off of that, you talked about suffering
26:09
and happiness as we're talking about this being that's always present.
26:14
I want to know when Rupert Spira catches himself upset
26:19
at some human experience, something just knocked you off balance.
26:23
Because I know you understand all of this. You know
26:27
deeply who you are, but you're still human. When Rupert
26:31
Spira gets knocked off balance, what do you do?
26:37
Speaker 2: First of all, resist the temptation of blaming anyone or
26:43
anything for whatever unhappiness I may experience. Because as soon
26:50
as you blame your circumstance for your unhappiness, you give
26:58
the person or the circumstance the power to take away
27:04
your happiness. And you just have to wait till the person,
27:08
if you, let's say you believe your unhappiness is caused
27:11
by something that somebody is doing to you. Now, if
27:15
you have allowed your happiness to become hostage to that
27:19
person's behavior, then you're just going to have to wait
27:22
till they stop behaving in this way in order to
27:25
be happy. And you might wait a very long time
27:28
if it is there, if it is there. tendency to
27:31
behave in that way. So first thing I do is
27:35
not allow myself to blame anyone or anything for my unhappiness.
27:40
Second thing, I'm explaining it to you, Suzanne, as a
27:46
linear process. But I've been through this process so many
27:51
hundreds and thousands of times in my life. It takes
27:57
a moment. And that's the goal. And I'm explaining it
28:00
to someone now who may never have gone through this process.
28:04
So I'm explaining it in kind of gradual pedantic terms.
28:07
So one, I don't blame the object, the circumstance, the
28:12
other person. And then I ask myself, when I say
28:16
I am unhappy, who is this I? So that I
28:20
go from the experience of unhappiness, I use the experience
28:24
to take me back to myself. Now, who am I really?
28:29
When I say I am unhappy, who am I? Well,
28:32
I'm obviously not my thoughts, because my thoughts are not
28:35
essential to me. Even since we've been having this conversation,
28:39
you and I and your listeners have had dozens of
28:42
thoughts that have appeared, existed briefly, and vanished. And whenever
28:46
a thought vanishes, you don't feel, oh, a little bit
28:49
of me has gone with it. You remain complete and whole,
28:54
and the thought has vanished. So our thoughts are obviously
28:56
not who we are, they're what we know. So I
28:59
begin to trace my way back through the layers of
29:01
my experience. I'm obviously not my thoughts. I'm that which
29:04
is aware of my thoughts. I'm obviously not this feeling
29:08
of whatever it is, sorrow, or I'm that which is
29:12
aware of the feeling. And in this way, I trace
29:15
my way back to my, I go back as far
29:18
as I can go, discarding everything. And by discarding, I
29:24
don't mean rejecting. I'm not rejecting the validity of thoughts
29:28
and feelings. I'm just temporarily turning away from them in
29:31
order to recognize who I really am because I feel
29:34
I am sad. Well, am I really sad? And then
29:39
I go back and back. until I arrive, so to speak,
29:43
at myself, my pure self, which is just the simple
29:48
fact of being or being aware. And there is no
29:52
sorrow there. Or anger or Or anger or resentment or
29:59
jealousy or hostility or regret or shame or guilt. Being
30:05
is like the screen. It has the capacity for all
30:08
movies to play on it. But by itself, it is
30:12
empty of all content. That's why any movie can appear
30:17
on the screen, precisely because it is empty. It has
30:20
no inherent color of its own. So when you trace
30:24
your way back to your own being in this way.
30:27
You find that your being is peaceful, is fulfilled. There's
30:31
nothing missing there. So in this way, you restore your
30:35
innate happiness. So I've described it as a pedantic process
30:40
in time. And to begin with, it may take someone
30:43
10 minutes. I'm not my thoughts. I'm obviously that which
30:48
knows my thoughts. I'm not my thing. You go back
30:51
and back and back. But each time you go back,
30:54
it The process gets more and more familiar until in
30:58
the end, as you say, this is a moment of
31:02
sadness and you just go straight back to your true
31:05
nature and the sadness dissolves.
31:21
Speaker 1: There's a bit of training in that. That's actually, you're
31:23
training your nervous system, aren't you?
31:26
Speaker 2: You're training your nervous system.
31:27
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
31:27
Speaker 2: You're training your nervous system. And that not only takes
31:30
you back to your true nature in the moment, it
31:33
begins to recondition your mind, your nervous system and your body.
31:38
And that reconditioning, I think really it goes on forever.
31:42
You can never say that the nervous system is washed
31:45
completely free of the old habits of thinking and feeling it. It,
31:49
I hope it's a never-ending process.
31:53
Speaker 1: But the suffering period is shorter and shorter and shorter.
31:59
Speaker 2: Exactly. And you find, my experience is that fewer and
32:03
fewer experiences retain the capacity to take you away from
32:09
the peace of your true nature. And when they do,
32:14
it lasts for less and less time.
32:16
Speaker 1: And haven't you found that those moments that are so
32:23
opposite from your true nature truly stand out?
32:28
Speaker 2: It's like the princess and the pea. You become exquisitely
32:31
sensitive to not the great big intense drama, emotional drama
32:36
that used to be the content of your suffering, but
32:39
even the slightest, just the slightest instance of suffering. You
32:46
may think unkindly about someone, Now, to somebody who normally
32:52
spends much of their time with a lot of emotional
32:57
drama and reactivity and so on, thinking unkindly about someone
33:03
would barely register as suffering. But the more accustomed we
33:09
become to abiding in our true nature, this is my experience,
33:15
the more sensitive I become to the slightest instances of negativity,
33:22
even those instances that we would not even previously have
33:28
registered as suffering.
33:32
Speaker 1: What a beautiful path for people to be on if
33:34
only more people would practice self-inquiry and be curious about
33:37
these things.
33:38
Speaker 2: It's so simple.
33:41
Speaker 1: I seem to recall you just naturally have it in
33:44
you to want to know more. Is that right? From
33:47
a teenager, right?
33:49
Speaker 2: Well, yes, but I was very fortunate. My mother was
33:55
a lovely, eccentric, bohemian, artistic woman who I was very
34:03
close to, and she was very interested in non-duality, and
34:08
she and my stepfather used to hold meetings in their home.
34:11
So I was brought up with this around me, which
34:14
is by no means a guarantee that I would be
34:16
interested in it. One of my siblings, actually, who had
34:20
exactly the same upbringing, completely reacted against it and has
34:24
no interest at all. But I was, through absolutely no
34:29
merit of my own, I just found that I was
34:31
very interested. And as a result, I had very easy
34:35
access to it.
34:36
Speaker 1: That's a blessing. For others like me, it takes a
34:39
major wake-up call and some intense suffering.
34:43
Speaker 2: For some people, just a small dose of suffering is enough.
34:48
One failed relationship and you realize, oh my goodness, I
34:53
allowed my happiness to be a hostage to another person.
34:58
That is a recipe for disappointment and failure. That's one
35:02
end of the spectrum. Just that experience, in theory, should
35:08
be enough to let us know not to invest our
35:11
happiness in the content of experience. Most of us need
35:13
more than that. And then at the other end of
35:15
the spectrum, and this is what the story of the
35:19
prodigal son illustrates, others have to go to the very extremes.
35:24
They have to be on the brink of despair before
35:27
they turn around. So some people have to be profoundly
35:32
depressed or to be on the brink of despair. And
35:37
it varies. We're all on that spectrum somewhere.
35:41
Speaker 1: Yeah. you keep jogging thoughts in my mind that I'm
35:45
writing down here. And one of them was you spoke
35:47
about how you have come up with your own language,
35:49
your own way to explain things. And you just did
35:51
it there because that's one of your pieces that really
35:55
stuck with me is you said, don't invest your happiness
35:58
in the content of experience. Most people would just say, well,
36:03
these are my experiences. This is life. But the content
36:07
of your experience, would you.
36:08
Speaker 2: Just riff on that for a moment? But By the
36:11
content of experience, it's the content of the movie. Everything
36:16
that appears in the movie, your thoughts, your feelings, your memories,
36:19
your bodily experiences, pain and pleasure, the world, relationships, activities,
36:27
the entire, everything you can experience. And we are encouraged
36:34
by our culture to seek happiness, seek fulfillment, through the
36:41
acquisition of some kind of an object, a substance, an activity,
36:47
a relationship, a state of mind, something where most people
36:51
spend most of their life seeking fulfillment in objective experience
36:58
and it's just not there. It was Thoreau who said
37:03
most people lead lives of quiet desperation and what was
37:09
being referred to is this quiet desperation. As we go
37:14
on through life more and more, we find that nothing
37:17
really fulfills us completely. And of course, the more, the
37:22
older you get, you've explored, you get to a stage
37:27
where you've explored everything, usually many times only and many
37:33
times over. And still there is this dissatisfaction in us.
37:39
There is this tension of seeking in us, but we've
37:44
tried everything, usually many times over. There's nothing else to try,
37:49
and yet we're still not fulfilled. That's a life of desperation.
37:54
Speaker 1: Because you're looking to the content of experience.
37:58
Speaker 2: Because you have been encouraged, we have all been encouraged
38:01
by our culture to believe that fulfillment is a given experience.
38:06
by the content of experience, your family, your finances, your job,
38:13
your home. I want to be clear about this. I'm
38:16
not meaning to imply that it is not valid to
38:20
seek those things. It is, but not for the sake
38:24
of finding happiness in them.
38:27
Speaker 1: Yes, and as you're speaking then, I could feel many
38:30
people listening right now saying, So you're saying that just
38:35
getting rid of experience is the goal? That sounds so
38:38
boring or so empty. This is all there is? Yes.
38:43
Speaker 2: No, it's not getting rid of experience. It does involve
38:47
a temporary turning away from the content of experience in
38:51
order to recognize who you truly are. If your attention
38:54
is continually caught up with your thoughts, your feelings, your activities,
38:58
your relationships, your memories, your hopes, then you're you're never
39:02
going to recognize who you are because your attention is
39:04
given constantly to the content of experience. So there has
39:08
to be just a temporary pause. And this is what
39:12
really all meditation techniques, whether they are on the progressive
39:17
path or the direct path, doesn't really matter. All techniques,
39:21
one-way meditation techniques, and indeed prayer techniques, one way or another,
39:27
um try to um interrupt the flow of experience try
39:34
to try to take our attention off the content of
39:38
experience because normally our attention is glued to the content
39:43
of experience, a thought, then a feeling, then a perception,
39:45
then a sensation, then a relationship, then another thought, then
39:48
on and on and on all day long. And we
39:51
get brief respite from this during deep sleep, and then
39:54
it starts all over again. So meditation or prayer really
39:57
tries to interrupt that process and introduce a pause where
40:02
we temporarily turn away from the content of experience in
40:06
order to recognize who we essentially are behind experience or
40:12
prior to experience.
40:15
Speaker 1: And so I just feel this has to come out
40:18
right now because so many people that are desperate, that
40:21
are leading those lives of desperation, that are in deep grief,
40:24
they'll just for a second taste that peace and it
40:28
may not feel like enough. But once you know you
40:33
can find that anytime, that is what takes you to
40:38
what the sages have called The peace that passes all understanding.
40:43
Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. The peace that is not derived from what
40:48
is or is not taking place in your experience. The
40:51
peace that is prior to and independent of the content
40:56
of experience. That's the peace that passeth understanding. That's why
41:00
I call it joy.
41:02
Speaker 1: It's joy.
41:02
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. And it's available to everybody. It's not mysterious information.
41:09
It's not even spiritual. There's nothing mystical about it. We
41:14
shouldn't call it enlightenment because the word enlightenment confers an
41:19
air of the exotic on something that is natural. It
41:23
is unnatural condition. The idea of enlightenment suggests some marvelous
41:29
attainment that one in a million extraordinary people may attain
41:35
if they practice spirituality. hard enough for 30 years. No,
41:39
it's available to everyone all the time.
41:43
Speaker 1: And it's such a relief when you get knocked out
41:47
of balance to turn back and find that peace quickly.
41:52
Speaker 2: Yes, yes.
41:54
Speaker 3: Yeah.
41:57
Speaker 1: You said something earlier. Maybe you can put it in
42:01
the right context again, in the context you use. You said,
42:04
when I take this shirt off, What was the rest
42:07
of that sentence? Because it led me to a question
42:09
I want to ask next.
42:10
Speaker 2: I think I use that to illustrate something, relatively speaking,
42:15
that is not essential to us. We all know that
42:18
our shirt is not essential to us because every night
42:21
we take it off and we're not diminished. I use
42:24
that to illustrate that our thoughts and feelings, although they
42:27
are very close to us, closer to us than our shirt,
42:30
but still they are not essential to us.
42:34
Speaker 1: All right. So that's the follow-on question to that. In
42:38
your experience of meditation and self-inquiry, what experience have you
42:44
had when you take the body off? Or what would
42:47
people experience when there's no longer a body? We can't
42:50
know it right now while we're in a body, but
42:52
you can taste that the body is not essential either.
42:56
Speaker 2: Actually, Suzanne, you can experience it. It sounds... Let me
43:03
explain what I mean. All we know of the body
43:08
is a flow of sensations and perceptions. That is the
43:12
sum total of everything that anybody knows of their experience
43:17
of the body. Of course, we conceptualize a solid physical
43:23
body lasting for 20, 30, 40, 50 years. But what
43:28
is that concept? It's really the sum total of all
43:31
the sensations and perceptions we have ever had. But the
43:35
actual experience of the body moment by moment is a
43:40
flow of sensations and perceptions. And these are continually appearing
43:45
and disappearing. So although we tend to think being a
43:50
body is my primary experience and being aware is a
43:57
function of the body, like breathing or digesting. Actually, our
44:02
experience is the opposite. Being aware is our primary experience,
44:08
and the body is a flow of sensations and perceptions
44:12
that we are aware of. And actually, I would suggest
44:16
there are many times during the day where your experience
44:22
of the body and We mainly experience the body through sensations.
44:27
We experience the world through perceptions, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting,
44:30
and smelling. The body is mainly sensations, the tingling of
44:36
your hands or face or feet, the experience of hunger
44:40
or thirst.
44:40
Speaker 1: You also have the experience of seeing it, so that
44:42
makes it feel real.
44:44
Speaker 2: Yes, but if you close your eyes, what remains of
44:48
the experience of the body is almost entirely sensations. And
44:52
there are many times during the day when sensation, even
44:56
if it doesn't completely disappear, it recedes so far to
45:02
the periphery of your experience that you are almost not
45:06
aware of it because your attention is given so exclusively
45:10
to the world. Let's say you're totally involved in something
45:15
in the world. You're barely aware of your body. Because
45:20
as long as your body is not in pain, the
45:23
body is at that moment just a neutral flow of
45:27
sensations that are not calling for your attention. All your
45:30
attention is given, say, to the world. It's also possible
45:36
in meditation for the experience of your body to recede,
45:41
if not completely disappear, at least to recede into the background,
45:45
so far into the background of experience that you are
45:48
almost not aware of it.
45:52
Speaker 1: What is your belief about after the death of the
45:54
physical body? Will this consciousness from which you perceive now continue?
46:02
Speaker 2: I believe it will, yes. Let me give you an analogy.
46:09
Take an ocean. And the ocean is one within the
46:17
limits of the analogy. The ocean has no limits. particular
46:20
shape of its own. It is formless and it is indivisible.
46:24
It's just one homogeneous substance. This represents consciousness. And the
46:31
ocean has the ability to rise as waves, as temporary waves.
46:38
And each temporary wave has a certain shape, a certain amplitude,
46:43
a certain frequency, a certain speed, and so on. And
46:47
the wave would represent each of our finite minds. In
46:52
other words, each of us, the body-mind. So I would
46:57
suggest that reality is one infinite, indivisible whole whose nature
47:04
is consciousness or love or spirit, but it has the
47:08
ability to rise temporarily in the form of waves, body-minds, individuals.
47:15
That's all of us. So when the body is born,
47:20
Nothing new really comes into existence. It's a temporary modulation
47:26
of the one infinite whole that is ever-present. In other words,
47:35
who we essentially are is not born when the body
47:39
is born, just as the water that constitutes the wave
47:43
isn't created when the wave is created. The water is
47:46
already there. It just takes a temporary form. So that's
47:50
what I would suggest. Our being is temporarily clothed in
47:55
human experience and seems as a result to become a person,
48:00
an individual. And then at death, the wave then disbands
48:05
on the ocean. But the energies that constituted the wave,
48:12
those energies, they no longer appear as the wave. but
48:17
they may be dispersed across the surface of the ocean
48:20
as ripples. So I would suggest that when we as
48:23
an individual die, the energies that constituted us while we
48:29
were alive spread out into the broader medium of consciousness
48:33
in which we are now temporarily located as individuals and
48:38
may exist there in some quote-unquote disembodied forms.
48:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then people become fearful. What if my loving
48:50
who has passed dissolves back into that great sea? And
48:54
I have found through personal experience that because that sea
48:58
is quite conscious and intelligent and interacts with itself, that
49:05
narrative continues even if the body doesn't. It can continue.
49:10
Speaker 2: It can continue, but even if it didn't, What does
49:15
this mean? It means that the wave that the person
49:21
loved one, you were like two waves on the ocean
49:24
alongside each other on the vast ocean, and your loved
49:28
one has passed away, that their wave has dissolved into
49:32
the ocean. Let's say it dissolves completely and leaves no
49:37
trace of itself. What does this mean? Your loved one
49:41
is still the water out of which you are made.
49:46
It means your loved one is your very own being.
49:50
They haven't left you as a result of passing away.
49:54
If anything, they've come closer. They are now who you are.
49:59
In fact, they were always that. And the recognition of
50:02
your shared being is what you used to call love.
50:05
And in fact, you still call it love. But you
50:08
now feel... Dear mother, who I referred to earlier, passed
50:15
away a couple of years ago. We were very, very close,
50:18
but we didn't see that much. Well, we saw a
50:21
fair amount of each other, but maybe I saw her
50:24
probably once every fortnight in the last year or so.
50:28
So much of the time, I was not in physical
50:32
contact with her, although I always felt very close to her.
50:35
So I used to feel when she was alive that
50:37
she lived partly... um 150 miles away from me and
50:41
partly in my heart but then when she passed away
50:45
i just felt she lives now a hundred percent in
50:47
my heart she she is my very own being so
50:51
actually she came closer she is with me as my
50:55
very own being.
50:56
Speaker 3: Yeah and many people feel that they feel that and
51:00
many people feel this yes yeah so i and again
51:03
i don't mean to imply by this that that that
51:06
there isn't still a tremendous poignancy that accompanies the passing
51:12
away of a loved one.
51:13
Speaker 2: That poignancy doesn't go away. Every Sunday morning now, I
51:19
still find myself, not quite physically, but emotionally, reaching for
51:24
the phone to call my mother. And I miss her.
51:29
I don't mean to deny that very human, poignant aspect
51:34
of the experience, but at a deeper level, I know
51:37
that she is my own being, and I feel her
51:41
as that.
51:42
Speaker 1: Yes, and that is why we feel them. But the
51:45
beautiful point, and we're not going to harp on this
51:46
now because these are my experiences, that the ocean will
51:50
wave at us as our loved ones in interactive conversations
51:54
with evidence that you can't deny is coming from this field.
51:58
That's also true.
51:59
Speaker 2: Yes, it's also true that our loved one may remain as...
52:04
ripples in the broader medium of the ocean, and that
52:07
those ripples, just as their previous wave communicated with your wave,
52:12
you shared information, their ripples continue to do so. And
52:19
that can be quite vague, and this is your area
52:23
of expertise, not mine, but it can also be quite specific.
52:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's both. You mentioned love there, and I always
52:31
love to come back to that. at the end of
52:33
the show, what is your definition of love?
52:37
Speaker 2: The felt recognition that we are one. It's when one
52:43
wave recognizes that another way, that the water that constitutes
52:52
one wave is exactly the same water that constitutes all waves,
52:57
that there are no divisions in the oceans. There are
53:01
divisions in appearances, numerous waves, but really it's all one ocean.
53:08
We all look like numerous beings, eight billion beings, but
53:14
there aren't eight billion beings. There's one infinite being, and
53:18
we all borrow our existence from that being. That recognition
53:24
is love, that the felt sense that we are one.
53:30
Speaker 1: And what I love in human terms about that definition
53:33
is that we can then find that kind of love
53:37
for everyone. Absolutely.
53:40
Speaker 2: Absolutely. That's the great secret. It's not a secret. The
53:50
implications of this understanding. We don't have to like everybody
53:54
because whether we like someone or not depends on so
53:57
many conditioned factors. whether we like someone or not is conditioned.
54:02
It's to do with the way our minds are conditioned,
54:04
the way our thoughts are conditioned and so on. So it, it, it,
54:08
it's natural to like some people more than others, but
54:12
the extent to which we like someone has nothing to
54:15
do with our love for them. And particularly those of
54:18
us that are deeply involved in, in this understanding as
54:23
you and I, and all your listeners are, I feel
54:26
we have, really it's, it's, We're required to love everybody,
54:32
not to like everybody, not to agree with everybody, not
54:34
to sanction what everybody does, but to love everybody. Our
54:40
love for someone must be our primary relationship with everyone
54:45
simply by virtue of the fact that we share our
54:47
being with them. I love that.
54:49
Speaker 1: We are required to love everyone. That is a very
54:51
definitive statement.
54:54
Speaker 2: I feel particularly those of us that share this understanding,
54:58
we have a kind of I don't mean to be
55:01
heavy about this, but a kind of loving duty. Unconditional
55:06
love is one of the hallmarks of this understanding. The
55:10
hallmark of this understanding is not being able to speak
55:13
or write eloquently about it. Some people have that, some
55:16
people don't. But that's not the test of this understanding.
55:19
The test of this understanding, I would suggest, is imperturbable peace,
55:24
causeless joy, and unconditional love.
55:29
Speaker 1: Everybody, I know you can feel that. You can feel
55:31
this energy. And every so often when I just need
55:35
to bask in that to get a dose of it,
55:37
I'll pull up one of his books on my Kindle
55:39
reader and just get a dose of that. All of
55:42
his books are written with that beautiful energy that we've
55:46
just experienced here. He has a way of putting all
55:49
of this into words in a way that you feel it.
55:53
It brings your true being to the surface. So RupertSpyro.com
55:59
is your website, correct?
56:01
Speaker 2: RupertSpyro.com is the website. As you mentioned, I have an
56:07
absurd number of videos on YouTube. And something also, if
56:13
I could let you and your listeners know about, I
56:16
have now a meditation app. It's called Luminous. It's available
56:21
in the App Store. And it's completely free. And it's...
56:26
One free short 10-minute meditation every day.
56:31
Speaker 1: Wow.
56:33
Speaker 2: So anyone, it's just a little homeopathic dose of this understanding.
56:39
Speaker 1: Every day. That's going to spread some ripples on the ocean, Rupert.
56:44
That's outstanding.
56:45
Speaker 2: I also have a Substack channel when I write two
56:49
or three times a week. So there's plenty of fun. Okay.
56:51
Speaker 1: Okay. And 10 minutes is just the ideal time. It's
56:56
just enough time to drop into that beautiful expanded state
56:59
and not too much time that we can't do that.
57:02
Speaker 2: It's exciting. Not everyone has an hour a day, but
57:07
most of us can find 10 minutes a day.
57:13
Speaker 1: Well, what a joy it's been to listen to you today,
57:16
to have you just scratch the surface, really. I hope
57:19
people will want to dive in now and learn more
57:21
about you if they don't already know you.
57:24
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Suzanne, for inviting me. I think the
57:28
work you do is wonderful and it's a pleasure to
57:30
speak with you.
57:32
Speaker 1: Thank you, everybody. I hope you're motivated to dive into
57:35
Rupert's work. It really has been transformational for me on
57:38
my journey. What a pleasure today. Everybody go out and
57:41
live up to your responsibility. You are required to love everyone.
57:45
I love that. So go out and love everyone with
57:48
all of your heart and soul. I love you all.
57:50
We'll see you back here next week.