UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
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Hello friends and welcome. Welcome to this episode of Insights at the Edge with Rupert Spira. Rupert is a leading voice in contemporary spirituality. In fact, in the past couple of years, several Sounds True authors have mentioned to me when it comes to where do I go when I want to go on a meditation retreat on a spiritual retreat, I go to study with Rupert Spira. From an early age, Rupert was deeply interested in the nature of reality and the source of lasting peace and happiness. He began to meditate at the age of 17 and he spent the next 20 years immersed in the teachings of classical Advaita Vedanta. In 1997, he met his teacher, Francis Lucille, who introduced him to the direct path approach of Atmananda Krishna Menon and the tantric tradition of Kashmir Shaivism.
For many years, three decades in total, Rupert worked as a ceramic artist and he exhibited worldwide. And then in 2011 he closed his studio and he now devotes his time to sharing the non-dual understanding through his meetings and writings. Rupert lives in Oxford in the United Kingdom, and he’s the author of 12 books, including Being Aware of Being Aware, The Heart of Prayer, and a book that I found to be a terrific introduction to Rupert’s teachings, it’s called You Are the Happiness You Seek: Uncovering the Awareness of Being, and this notion of being the happiness we seek is what will form the core of this conversation. Rupert, welcome.
Rupert Spira: Thank you, Tami. Lovely to see you again.
TS: Yeah, terrific, terrific. So, I mentioned Rupert, your book, You Are The Happiness You Seek, and you begin asking a rhetorical question, how may one find lasting happiness? And what I really appreciated was that you didn’t fixate on the word happiness because quite honestly, that’s a word that I notice I can bounce off of. I’m a little bit like happiness, happiness comes and goes, why happiness? And you’re very clear, don’t get concerned about the word. Maybe it’s peace that you’re looking for. I want a sense of inner peace or contentment. So let’s just start there. What do you see is this treasure, maybe you call it happiness, but what is it that you see most people are really looking for?
RS: I’m glad you mentioned that right at the beginning of our conversation, Tami, about the word happiness. Because some people object and legitimately to my use of the word happiness in this context, and I say legitimately because most of us feel that happiness is a sort of effervescent, exotic experience that we experience from time to time, that it’s a fleeting emotion that alternates with all our other emotions. And that’s not what I mean when I refer to happiness. You are quite right. It could equally be possibly more accurate to be peace, contentment, fulfillment. The Buddhists, careful not to objectify it, just refer to it as the absence of suffering or the ending of suffering. So you are right, but by happiness I don’t mean a gleeful, effervescent state. It’s just this natural feeling of sufficiency, well-being, peace, and I believe that it’s what everybody wants above all else.
TS: Now, this word sufficiency, I love that word. So maybe we can work with that just because I love it. Maybe it’s a word that hasn’t been over trodden yet.
RS: Yeah, sufficiency, plenitude. Just that the way things are, the way I am now, the way things are is sufficient. I don’t need anything. I’m not in a state of either straining at the edges of the now looking for the next experience, nor am I in a state of resisting. I don’t like what happens. I don’t like what is happening, I want what is not happening. Just a state of ease with one’s present experience, not seeking anything, not resisting anything, not wanting anything, just I am exactly where I want to be. And that’s the experience that we call happiness. And it does sometimes come, it’s sometimes accompanied by a tremendous feeling of relaxation in the body or an excitement in the mind, but it can also just be a quiet feeling, more like peace, just ease. Just I need nothing in this moment, sufficiency. I’m full, I’m complete, I’m whole.
TS: Now I realize, Rupert, there’s another word that troubles me, which is the word lasting. Because what occurs to me is what if even this feeling of sufficiency, ease, what if any feeling, any experience, even this terrific feeling of feeling at peace, it just comes and goes. That’s the nature of things. We shouldn’t be looking for a lasting anything.
RS: Okay, okay. Yes. Normally we think that, let’s call it happiness or peace or sufficiency, we normally think that happiness is an emotion that fluctuates with all our other emotions, sorrow, grief, fear. So we experience sorrow and peace and then fear and then happiness. And there are these fluctuating emotions, some pleasant, some unpleasant. What I’m suggesting is that peace or sufficiency or happiness is not actually an emotion along with all our other emotions of agitation and sorrow and lack, and so on, that it is the nature of our being and is as such always present. In other words that it is lasting. Now you might say, well, if this happiness is the nature of our being and our being is obviously always present, I am always present whatever I am experiencing. So if this happiness is the nature of my being and I am always present, then surely I should be experiencing it all the time and clearly don’t experience it all the time.
Does this not suggest, as your question implies, that happiness is a fleeting emotion like any other emotion? Well, I would suggest that this happiness that I suggest is the nature of our being is like the blue sky, it’s always present, but that doesn’t mean to say that it’s always seen. So this happiness that is the nature of our being is always present. In other words, it is lasting, but that doesn’t mean that it’s always experienced. Why is it not always experienced? Because it’s covered up by the gray clouds of our emotions. Now, you have a gray sky, a sky that is completely covered in gray clouds, that would represent the state of someone who is suffering, unhappy. And then imagine the gray clouds part and the little patch of blue sky becomes visible. Now one might say to begin with, oh, a blue cloud has appeared in the sky, but it’s not a blue cloud.
The blue cloud would represent a fleeting appearance of the blue sky, but the blue sky is not fleeting, the blue sky is lasting. It’s always there. What happens when the clouds part is that it suddenly becomes visible. It’s not created in that moment, it was always there, it just becomes visible. So what I’m suggesting is that this peace or quiet joy or sufficiency that is the nature of our being is always there because it is our being. But it gets covered over by the clouds of experience. And then when these clouds dissipate or when there’s a pause in the flow of emotions, the background of happiness shines briefly or for some period of time before it’s closed over again. And this makes us think that happiness is a fleeting emotion that fluctuates with all our other emotions, but that’s like saying the blue sky is a fleeting cloud that fluctuates with all the other clouds.
TS: That’s helpful and clarifying. Now, in the introduction, I mentioned that you’ve been meditating since you were 17. You’ve been at this a long time. And I’m curious to know, do you always feel in touch with that blue sky nature or do you have times when it’s a really cloudy day today, come on?
RS: Tami I have times when it’s a cloudy day, so I would not say I always feel in touch with this background. I would say that I nearly always feel in touch with it. And what I’ve noticed as I’ve grown older is that fewer and fewer experiences retain the capacity to veil this background of peace and quiet joy. Some experiences do still retain that capacity, so I don’t always feel it, but fewer and fewer experiences have the capacity to veil this peace. And when they do, they don’t last long. It’s not like the olden days when a feeling could obscure this background of peace and last for a week or even a day. So, yes, in answer to your question that there are days or times when the gray clouds temporarily cover this, the blue sky of happiness, but it happens less and less often and lasts for less and less time.
TS: And is there something in those moments that’s your personal Rupert Spira go-to move, this is what I do when that happens?
RS: Yes. There are two things I do, Tami, one of two things that I do. One is pause, turn my attention away from whatever it is that is causing the gray clouds in that moment. And if my circumstances permit, I will literally pause and close my eyes and if not, I’ll do it in the midst of my experience and I just go back. Instead of being engaged with the foreground of my experience, the activity, the relationship, the object, whatever it is that is causing the gray seeming to cause the gray clouds. Because the gray clouds are never really caused by something outside of ourself, but whatever it is that seems to be causing the gray clouds, I’ll pause and I’ll go back and I just go back to the fact of being, I just go back to my being. My being and your being and everyone’s being is always at peace.
It’s like the screen before it’s colored by the image, it’s colorless, it’s unqualified, it’s always at peace. So that’s one thing I do. It’s a turning away from experience, just a resting, going back to being. Now the other thing I do is rather the opposite of that, instead of turning away from whatever it is that seems to be causing the gray clouds, the unhappiness, I’ll turn towards it. And instead of saying no to it, because that’s what causes the sorrow, it’s not the situation itself that is causing the unhappiness, it’s our saying no, I don’t want this. This shouldn’t be happening, I don’t like it. It’s our inner no or resistance to the experience that causes the unhappiness. So in that moment, I’ll turn towards the situation, whatever it is, and instead of saying no to it, say yes to it. I just embrace it.
I just turn towards it fully and open myself to it. And I say to it, you have no power to cause me happiness unless I grant that power to you that the resistance is in me, you and you. That the situation, the person, whatever it is, are not causing the resistance, I’m doing that to myself. And so I positively affirm that this complete openness, this complete yes to my current experience. And in that yes, there can be no suffering because suffering is always no, I don’t like what’s happening. So I do one of those two things. And of course just one more thing to say, Tami, I don’t wonder which of these two approaches to take. It’s a spontaneous thing.
TS: Let me ask you a question about going back to the sense of being. So if someone is disturbed by something, something’s happened, and they say, okay, I’m spontaneously going to go back to this sense of being you talk about the I am name, divine name, sacred experience. Okay, I’m going back to I am, I am-ness, but what I find immediately in my experience is a type of electrical buzz or heat because I’m disturbed. I’m really disturbed about this thing that’s happening. It’s not like it’s just, “Oh, it’s a cloudy day.” I’m experiencing energetic disturbance at this point. Do you know what I mean?
RS: Yes, yes.
TS: Heat something intense in the body. I’m trying to find that sense of I am-ness or being, but I’m all plugged in to explosive inner energy inside. Help me sort through that. How do I find this peaceful being quality in the midst of what feels like a fire inside?
RS: Yes. Well, you said, Tami, I’m experiencing this explosive energy, I think that was one of the things you mentioned, I’m experiencing this explosive energy. So right there, even in the way you formulate or express your experience, you say, I am experiencing this explosive energy. So what is the I that is having this experience? Because two hours later you might say, I’m experiencing a delicious dinner, or I’m experiencing a walk with my friend or I’m… So it’s true in that moment you are experiencing this explosive energy, but if you take your attention off the explosive energy, the fireworks inside, the heat, and ask yourself, but who is the one that’s experiencing?
What is it that is having this experience? In other words, you go back more within the statement, I am experiencing this explosive energy instead of being involved as we normally are with the feeling of explosive energy because it’s so all-consuming. But if we pause, turn our attention away from the explosive energy and say, but what do I mean when I say I am experiencing this explosive? What is experiencing it? And is that one on fire, is that one hot? Is that one explosive, or is that simply the one that is experiencing?
TS: Take me more into this notion of I am as a prayer one could use potentially in a moment like that.
RS: Can I answer that question, Tami, with an experiment?
TS: Please.
RS: Imagine you’ve just been born and you haven’t yet opened your eyes, the birth was easy, you’re comfortable, there’s no pain, you haven’t opened your eyes, there are no sounds. You’re not experiencing anything objective. Obviously there are no thoughts, there are no memories, there are no images, there are no sounds, there are no perceptions, there are no sensations. What are you experiencing in that moment? You have no idea that you’ve just been born, you have no idea that you are a body or that you have a body. What’s your primary experience in that moment?
TS: Well, I’m noticing this is a difficult thought experiment for me and maybe you can help me some. When I imagine just being born, I think of all kinds of painful and terrible things. So now I’m trying to be born, I’m trying to be a little baby. I’m having trouble.
RS: Sorry, Tami.
TS: That’s okay.
RS: Use your imagination. Just imagine a birth that was completely easy, painless, and there are no physical sensations, just I realized… It’s just a hypothetical situation. It’s not important how accurate the metaphor is. I want you to try to get in touch with what’s your primary experience before thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions have begun.
TS: I’m having a hard time Rupert, and I really want to go with you here. And I think the challenge is incarnation to me seems like one of the… We were talking about gray clouds, now we’re talking about the hardest thing possible.
RS: Okay. All right.
TS: And so I’m like, what?
RS: All right, let me answer for you.
TS: Please, please, help me out here.
RS: What I’m trying to draw attention to is our primary innermost experience before thoughts, sensations, perceptions and so on have begun, what is that? It’s just the experience of being. Just a simple, ordinary, intimate, colorless, silent experience of being, and then thoughts, sensations, perceptions, and so on, are so to speak, added to that. But our primary or our innermost experience is just being, the awareness of being. Everything else we experience is added to that. And when we say I am, when we just say the pure I am rather than I am a man, I am a woman. I’m 22, I’m 46, I’m a doctor or a cab driver, just the pure I am refers directly to this primary awareness of being, just our being before it is qualified by experience.
And that being before it is qualified by experience, it has no limits. We have no idea in that raw experience of being, we don’t know that we are a girl or a boy. We don’t know that we have a body. We don’t know that we’ve just been born, but we know that we are. So even before we know that we are a person, even before we say I am a person, we know I am, it’s everybody’s basic, primordial, innermost, simplest, most familiar experience, just the experience of being before it’s qualified by experience. And this is the experience that in the Zen tradition, they try to precipitate in us when they say, what is your original face or who are you before you were born? All these questions are trying to take us, not intellectually, but experientially just to this simple experience being prior to experience. And because it is prior to experience, it’s like the screen before the image, it’s uncolored, it’s unqualified and therefore unlimited, unlimited being, infinite being, which in religious terms is referred to as God’s being.
So that was a long way around because you asked me about going back to the I am as a form of prayer and that’s why I link it to the word God’s being. Because if we go back to the I am, if we trace our way back through the layers of our experience and just arrive at this simple feeling of being, I’m not referring to something extraordinary or exotic or spiritual, just the simple feeling of being that all 8 million of us have, if we go back to that, that being as it is now, not as it might be after 30 years of meditation practice, but as it is now is already unqualified, unlimited, untarnished by experience at peace, needing nothing, in other words, sufficient. And I would suggest that that’s what is referred to in the religious traditions as infinite being, God’s being. The infinite being that at the deepest level everyone and indeed everything essentially is.
TS: So one of the things I hear you saying that I could imagine practically using when I’m seriously upset or someone is seriously upset is when we’re saying inside of ourselves, I’m experiencing blah, blah and we’re in touch with these physical sensations that are very intense. Go to the I am and not the I am experiencing content. Go back to the am-ness separated from the content.
RS: Yes. Exactly. It’s like going back to the screen in the midst of the movie, the content of the movie is agitated, but the screen is at peace. The I am. You’re right, I am upset. Yeah. The upset is an agitated feeling, a dark, sorrowful, agitated feeling. But the pure I am, the being at the heart of that feeling is colorless, transparent, it’s at peace, it’s still, and it shines not just in the background of our experience, like the screen shines at the background of the movie, but it also shines in the midst of our experience.
We don’t have to close our eyes and shut the door and sit down in a formal meditation. While we’re walking down the street, whatever we are experiencing, I mean even our common parlance, common language indicates this. I am thinking, I am walking, I’m talking, I’m eating, I’m lonely, I’m sad, I’m depressed. Whatever we are experiencing, even a deep depression, I am depressed. The I am is shining there. But we give so much attention to the depression, the darkness of the depression that we overlook the I am that is shining in the midst of it.
TS: You mention how we have something that you call jokingly original ADD, Awareness Deficit Disorder, and I thought that was a funny way to talk about awareness deficit disorder. Yeah.
RS: I’d forgotten about that, Tami. It came up spontaneously. It was at a retreat I think on the West coast. I don’t know how it just came up in a conversation. ADD, Awareness Deficit… Well, now we’re talking more about our being than about awareness, but they’re the same thing. So, yes, let’s stick with the example of being depressed or lonely or agitated. We give all our attention to the depression, the loneliness, the agitation, and we overlook the fact that we are the one that is aware of it. We overlook the awareness, the awareness that illuminates the experience, that knows the experience. And that one is always at peace, always sufficient. So, yes, the Awareness Deficit Disorder, in our culture we tend to just overlook the presence of awareness and it’s innate peace.
TS: So is it fair to say when you talk about the simple feeling of being and awareness and the contemplation of I am, that these are really all pointing to the same kind of inner state. Is that fair to say?
RS: Absolutely. Inner nature, yes, absolutely. They’re all different phrases. The feeling of being, which is not really a feeling in the normal sense, the experience of being, the feeling of the fact of being aware, the knowledge I am, yes, these are all just different phrases that are all used to try to, not just to refer intellectually, but to evoke in us the actual experience of our original nature, our essential nature. And it’s not something… I think this is the thing that we were talking earlier about how my expression has changed over the years. It’s not something. When I embarked on this exploration at the age of 17, I heard about this thing called enlightenment and I read about it. I had no idea what it was, but I read enough about it. I had enough of an intuition that what was being referred to was something true, something real.
I knew when I read the Shankaracharya and Rumi and Ouspensky, all these people, I knew that what they were referring to was true. But I conceived of it as an extraordinary experience at an infinite distance from myself that if I practice long enough and hard enough and I might one day reach. And what I realized after many, many years, that is a misunderstanding that even the use of the word enlightenment somehow makes what is really just unnatural, familiar, intimate, ordinary nature. It makes it something exotic, something that only a few special qualified people might find or might have access to, are authorized to speak about. And I realized over the years that what is referred to in the traditions as enlightenment or awakening is just the simple recognition of the nature of our being. And there’s nothing exotic about that. It’s just this recognition of the nature of what we are, what we all are, not what we might become if we practice hard enough, but what we all are now underneath all the layers of experience.
TS: My name’s Tami Simon, and you’re listening to Insights at the Edge From Sounds True. Chris Rock, our creative director here at Sounds True recently launched a new podcast called Dying to Tell You. It’s a series that shares the stories and life-changing wisdom and insights of people who are facing a terminal diagnosis. The team at Dying to Tell You is looking for more storytellers. Perhaps someone you know is facing a terminal diagnosis and they would like to share their story. If so, you can have them reach out to dying to tell you at dttypodcast.com. When people share their stories with dying to tell you and their listeners, they make it easier for others to talk about this often difficult and important subject. Again, you can send people to dttypodcast.com, and they can click the link share your story. And now back to Insights at the Edge.
So, Rupert, I feel very grateful and honored to be having this chance to have this conversation with you. So I’m going to go right into the heart of it for me and make the most use of our time together. Because you mentioned this Koan, that’s the way I heard it introduced. What was my original face before I was born? Do you know your original face before you were born? And as you’re talking here about awareness and the simple feeling of being and the sense of I am, I have a sense of what that is, what blue sky is as an incarnate being, having this conversation with you incarnate Rupert, but I don’t know what was the face before I was born and I think to myself, how could I know? All I know is what I know here as a born being. How do I know that? How do I answer that Koan?
RS: Can I rephrase the traditional Zen Koan, please?
TS: Help me.
RS: Who are you before you were born? Who are you prior to the arising of experience, who are you in the absence of your thoughts and feelings? You’d agree, Tami, I know that your thoughts and feelings are always coming and going, your sensations, these are all coming and going. So imagine the current thought was to leave and was not to be replaced by the next one. Imagine that what every emotion you may be experiencing now was to come to an end and was not to be replaced by the next one and so on. What would remain of you when all the temporary experiences that you are now having were removed from you, what would remain?
TS: Right. And so just to keep tracking with you, I think that many people have the same experience I’m about to share, which is we can recognize gaps, that there are these gaps and thoughts, feelings we can recognize “Oh, there it is.” Wide open space there it is touching it right now.
RS: Okay, how would you describe your experience? Perfect, Tami, you’re referring to exactly what I was referring to… I expressed it prior to experience, you referred to it as the gaps in between experience. It’s the same thing. How would you describe your experience in those gaps in your experience?
TS: Total openness. That’s how I can connect to what you mean I think by being or I am or awareness, it’s through those gaps that I can have some knowing of that. Yeah.
RS: Yes. And then in these gaps in experience like the parting of the clouds and your being shines so to speak, shines through when experience begins again, the next thought, the next theme, the clouds, what happens to your being? The being that shone briefly in the gap.
TS: It is still there.
RS: Does its nature change?
TS: No.
RS: Exactly. Exactly. It’s present both behind experience in between experiences, but also it continues to be present in its natural condition, inherently peaceful. Even in the midst of all the experience, even when it’s covered by a dark cloud of depression, the I am is still there and it’s still in exactly the same condition that it was in in that gap between your experiences. In other words, it’s at peace.
TS: And what will be the experience of that gap space without a human body? It seems like you’re not when I die or what was happening before I was born, it seems like you’re not particularly concerned with that or you’re directing this inquiry away from that.
RS: I tend not to go there too much. I’m happy to go there, but I tend not to go there because that takes us into philosophy and speculation. But I’m happy to go there. But again, let’s try and go there experientially. Whatever we’re going to call it that is present in the gaps between our experiences, can we call it the fact of being or being aware? Just that the pure experience of being or being aware? Have you ever had the… Sorry, let me back up. You’ve had the experience of the beginning and ending of a thought or a conversation or a meal or a sensation, obviously all thoughts and feelings-
TS: For sure. For sure. This conversation is going to end as fast as [inaudible 00:38:28].
RS: Yes, our current thought is going to end, our current perception, all thoughts, feelings, they all begin and end. That is our experience. Now, have you ever had the experience of the beginning or the ending of just being? Okay if you’ve never had I agree, but if you’ve never had, and would you agree that if we asked anybody that question as long as they were understanding our conversation, they would have to answer no. Like you answered.
TS: I’m not going to speak for other people, so I don’t know. I’m not going to say that.
RS: All right. Okay. But let’s stick with our own experience. If you’ve never had the experience of the beginning or the ending or indeed the changing of being, why do you believe that it does begin and end?
TS: I don’t know.
RS: Tami, I’m going to push you here. I’m going to-
TS: We’re pushing each other. It’s good.
RS: I’m going to push you here. I find that an unsatisfactory answer, Tami, to say I don’t know. There is a reason why we believe that our being begins and ends.
TS: Well, it’s because we’re identified with our body in our national form.
RS: Exactly. Exactly. That’s the reason. Contrary to our experience, our experience, I would say, as you rightly said, no, I’ve never had the actual experience of the beginning or the ending of my being. And yet contrary to my experience, I believe that it does begin and end. Why do we believe that it begins and ends because we think that it’s subject to the conditions of the body? Can we do another experiment?
TS: Sure.
RS: Another thought experiment, it’s going to involve-
TS: Our first one was so successful, Rupert.
RS: Well, it’s an extension of the first one. Imagining your very first experience as a newborn baby. Fast-forward several decades, you’re on your deathbed. Now, you may have certain associations with death as you did with birth, but please imagine that you’ve lost your mental faculties. It’s 2:00 AM in the morning, your friends-
TS: This one’s easy for me. This one’s easy for me.
RS: Great. Okay.
TS: This is easier.
RS: Good. It’s two o’clock in the morning. It’s dark. There’s nobody in the room. It’s silent. You’ve long since lost your mind. You can’t think of anything, are completely comfortable and you’re going to pass away in two minutes, but all your experience has left you. What are you experiencing?
TS: Well, of course, this is just a thought experiment and we don’t know, and I’m presuming I’m not feeling a lot of physical pain at that moment.
RS: You have no sensations.
TS: I feel utterly free.
RS: Yes, you feel free. What I want you to say, Tami, and what you have said in your own words, but in the context of this conversation, what I want you to say is I’m just experiencing being, and as you rightly say, one of its innate qualities is freedom. The newborn infant, before experience begins, there’s just the experience of being, the awareness of being. On our deathbed just before we pass away, all experience has left us. There’s just the experience of being. Now, this is the question I want to ask you. Imagine these two samples of the experience of being, the very first experience you ever had prior to experience in the last experience, what’s the difference between them?
TS: I’m not experiencing one.
RS: There isn’t, no. Because any difference would be in your objective experience, thoughts, feelings, but pure being, it’s the same experience. Now think about all the experiences you’ve had in the intervening years between your birth and your death, millions of experiences, and yet your being… This thought experiment shows that our being remains in the same pristine condition after these millions of experiences as it was in when we were firstborn. In other words, our being has not been tarnished by experience. Nothing that happened to the mind or the body tarnished or solid or changed or aged or hurt our being.
So the reason I say this is in response to your question about embodiment. What I’m trying to show but in an experiential way, not an intellectual way, is that our being… This experience, this thought experiment shows that our being is not qualified by our body. If the experience of being when we’re a newborn infant is the same experience decades later when we’re on our deathbed, this shows that whatever happened to the body didn’t happen to our being, it remained. It’s like the screen in the movie. The movie leaves no trace on the screen. Experience leaves no trace on our being. So if it is our experience, and I hope you can see that I’m trying to stick very close to our experience now, I’m not asking us to believe anything. I’m trying to base the ideas. I’m expressing that they’re derived from experience. But if it is our experience that our being is not subject to the limitations or the condition of the body throughout our life, then why should our being be subject to the birth or the death of the body?
TS: This has been very helpful. Now I do have a follow-up question for you, Rupert, which is I read in You Are the Happiness You Seek: Uncovering the Awareness of Being that you suggest that people pay attention to how becoming all the energy we put into becoming this, becoming that, let it subside into being. And this follows what we’re talking about here. Throughout our entire life, all of these experiences, all the weightlifting I did and healthy eating and psychological work and everything doesn’t really matter at the end beings being at the beginning, beings being, I thought to myself, let becoming subside into being. And I think I understand the value of honoring being, so I don’t want to discount that in any way, but I also place a lot of value on becoming, I do. And I was like, “Why can’t we value both of these things?”
RS: Yes, Tami, I totally agree with you. When I suggested let becoming subsiding being, I was referring to a very specific type of becoming. Becoming that a spiritual somebody in the early stages of their spiritual practice feels when they want to become enlightened. I was one of those for many years. I wanted to become enlightened. So it was that particular type of becoming that I was referring to when I said let becoming subside in being. I didn’t mean to imply that we shouldn’t become an excellent interviewer or a good cook or a good parent or a good tennis player, I didn’t mean that. I agree that the level of the mind and the body, I think it’s absolutely valid, more than valid, necessary, for there to be becoming, for there to be evolution.
TS: Because that’s really the question I’m pointing to because in the book ended thought experiment you did, which I found very valuable, very helpful. So, thank you, Rupert, a bow to you. You helped me see something and I appreciate that. But what came up for me then is I don’t want to discount the growth work, the evolutionary work I’m doing in my lifetime that’s going to disappear. It’s going to disappear. But how do I also value it at the same time? And I’m curious your perspective on it.
RS: Yes. The way I think of it, Tami, is this, that the evolution, let’s just talk about the mind to begin with, psychological, emotional life, that there is an evolution, there is a becoming, there is a development at that level. Now in the context of this understanding, what would that development look like? And I would suggest that our emotional, psychological life would evolve in a way that expressed more and more clearly the qualities that are innate in our being. So, first of all, there is this recognition of the nature of our being, which I refer to usually as peace or quiet joy, you refer to it earlier as freedom one could use many words, peaceful, loving, quietly, joyful, free and so on. So that I would suggest is the nature of our being. But then there’s an evolution of the mind whereby the mind evolves in a way that is consistent with and an expression of this new understanding of ourself.
So the mind then becomes the vehicle through which this understanding is felt and lived and expressed and communicated in the world. And whilst there is no evolution of our being, this thought of experiment we did from birth to death shows that our being doesn’t evolve and cannot evolve, but our mind, and of course, our body, does evolve and should evolve and should go on evolving I think forever. We could never say that there’s no more evolution or development of the mind. There can always be more and more refinement of the mind. The mind can go on expressing, being informed by and expressing this understanding more and more deeply.
TS: Without getting abstract, Rupert, but I do want to ask you this. In Buddhism they talk about the absolute level and the relative level, and that’s how they explain all this, the absolute unchanging, relative, always changing work on both levels if you will, know your being but honor the relative. Does that mapping absolute and relative, does that work for you? Is that how you experience things?
RS: I like it very much. I agree that there’s the same understanding in the Vedantic tradition that I was raised in more than the Buddhist tradition, but it’s very similar, the absolute truth at the deepest level, there is only the one infinite unchanging being that appears as all of this but never actually ceases to be itself. So at that level, there is no world in the way we normally conceive of it. The world doesn’t have a reality of its own, it borrows its apparent reality from infinite being, and so on. That’s the absolute approach. And from that point of view, you don’t pay attention to the world or the ego or your emotional life because it doesn’t have any real existence of its own.
However, at the relative level, of course there is a world, we have a body, there are thoughts, there are feelings, there are relationships, and so on. And we need to pay attention to all of those and paying attention to those, and for instance, working on the evolution of your mind or exploring your inner emotional life does not conflict with your understanding that at the deepest level you are already this inherently peaceful, quietly joyful being. These two, the relative and the absolute, they don’t contradict one another. There’s room. I think it’s necessary to take both points of view in response to different times or circumstances in one’s life.
TS: Let’s say someone’s listening, Rupert, and they’re both intrigued and they’re like, come on, what does all this have to do with the real problems I’m facing and the world is facing? I’m glad Tami’s interested in this kind of thing. Rupert’s dedicated his whole life to helping people deepen this I am recognition. What are the practical implications of this?
RS: Tami, I would suggest to your listener who raises this objection that what we’re speaking of has absolutely everything to do, not only with their own personal life, but with what’s taking place in the world. Can I suggest a single sentence that I think, it’s not by any means, the only way that this non-dual understanding could be expressed, but if one were to feed 3,000 years of spiritual and religious teaching, if one were to ask ChatGPT to summarize it, 3,000 years of religious and spiritual teaching across all the traditions, summarize it in a sentence, I think that this would be one possible response, peace and happiness are the nature of our being, and we share our being with everyone and everything.
Now I say that by way of preparation to your viewer who raised this objection. So this two part statement, peace and happiness of the nature of our being. Everybody in the world is in search primarily of happiness. That’s what everybody wants. So what could be more valuable? This is what they want on the inside. What could be more valuable in everyone’s search for happiness to know that happiness is the very nature of their being because the vast majority of people are seeking happiness in objects, substances, activities, states of mind, relationships. And then when those have failed us sufficiently often, we then start seeking for happy… We rebranded enlightenment and we then start seeking for it in the religious and spiritual traditions.
What could be more important to know that the happiness or the enlightenment we seek is the very nature of our being as it is now, not how it might become but as it is now. And it only needs to be recognized as such. So that would be the very practical response I’d give to your viewer in terms of their inner life. But now what about… Because it’s not just about our own personal happiness. What about what’s taking place in the world? We don’t need to mention what’s taking place in the world, the terrible things that are happening. How does this understanding… Is this understanding just highfalutin philosophy that has nothing to do with what’s taking place in the world. And that’s where the second aspect of this phrase, peace and happiness are the nature of your being that takes care of our inner life. We share our being with everyone and everything. This sharing of being is the experience we refer to as love.
That’s what I would suggest love is, that the felt sense that we are one that we share our being. So if you think of all the things that are happening in the world at the moment, I’m talking about all the terrible things that are happening in the world, are they not almost all, if not all, caused by one fundamental feeling that is, I’m separate from you? The situations that are taking… The conflicts in the world between groups, between nations, are they not all based on one fundamental feeling? What I essentially am I being and what you essentially are your being, they’re separate. And therefore what I do to you, I’m not implicated by it.
What happens? How would it be if this one understanding we share our being? How would it be if we lived in a culture that was founded on this understanding? We all share our being. We share our being with all people, with all animals, with all things, and with all of nature. What would our society look like if that one idea, if it was founded on that one idea? And I don’t think that the conflicts in the world are ever going to come to an end. I think all the conflicts that we witness at the moment, sooner or later, they’ll all come to a temporary end. But they’re only going to start again somewhere, sometime. And what will the cause of that new conflict be? Exactly the same of the cause of the current conflict. We are from one another. We don’t share our being.
And I think humanity will go on in a state of conflict, add infinitum until this understanding, the understanding that we share our being, that being is one, that we are one, it becomes the foundation of our society. So in response to your listener, I would say that this understanding, this practical understanding was very relevant both to our inner life, our desire for happiness on the inside, and our outer life, that is our desire for harmony and absence of conflict on the outside.
TS: Well, it’s a beautiful answer, Rupert, and I especially like that you were willing to summarize 3,000 years of spiritual wisdom in a two-part sentence. I really appreciate that. And if it’s okay with you, I am going to avail myself of this opportunity in this dialogue to ask you a further question, which is when I reflect on sharing our being and that big blue sky that we started with, that we all are, I can appreciate that, honor that. And there’s a uniqueness to each one of us. You’re appearing here in your form different than the form I am appearing in. And this is something that I’ve always wanted to find the right way to articulate. So I’m wondering how you see it, which is how we have this shared being and yet are truly different, unique individuals at the same time. And how you hold that, and how do we honor our uniqueness while recognizing our shared grounded being?
RS: Yes. I agree, Tami. The level of the mind, our thoughts, our feelings, the body, our actions, and so on, these are all utterly unique. But the being that we all are at the deepest level is one. It is all shared. And I think that what is usually referred to in the spiritual traditions is the ego or the separate self. The sense of being a separate being, an isolated being, is in fact, a conforming element. And I think the more deeply we recognize and are established in our true nature that this conforming element of the ego begins to dissolve and the uniqueness of each mind and body, actually it shines even more brightly.
In other words, we are liberated to the extent that we recognize our being and are established in that as that. We are are so to speak, liberated from the tyranny, the conforming tyranny of the ego. And as a result, our character, we don’t become little bland wallflowers. Our characters-
TS: Thank goodness.
RS: … Are liberated. We flourish. And for one person, that may mean retiring to the countryside and leading a quiet, but to another person, it may unleash an explosion of creativity. And so I think our characters flourish, our individuality flourishes in direct proportion to the depth of our felt understanding of what we’re speaking of here.
TS: Recognizing our oneness doesn’t mean sameness.
RS: Yes. Actually, I think it implies greater individuality, greater expression, a more diverse expression at the level of our individuality when we’re relieved of the conforming tyranny of the ego and our characters flourish. Artists are one very good expression of this. And not suggesting that all artists are necessarily free of the sense of being a separate self, not at all. But artistic creativity is often expression of this unfiltered expression of the deepest level of the mind. So that’s why artists often have these. They’re not confined by the constraining parameters of the ego very often, at least when they’re creating their work very often. When they’re in their studio or they tap into this place in themselves that is free of the tyranny of the ego. And that is why really an artist’s work is to bring this understanding out of the depths of the mind and share it with humanity. Because when an artist is in their studio, they’re in touch with what we’re speaking of. So that’s just one example of flourishing of individuality that is the inevitable of this understanding.
TS: The unique individual, Rupert Spira, on the quiet joy of being. I’ve so enjoyed talking with you, Rupert. You’ve really helped illuminate some important things from me. Thank you so much. Thanks for being a guest on Insights at the Edge.
RS: Thank you, Tami. It’s been a pleasure seeing you again and talking with you. Thank you.
TS: Yeah, what a great time. Thank you. Thank you so much.
RS: That was lovely Tami. Really nice to talk with you.
TS: Rupert’s the author of the book, I think this is a great book. If you’re interested in an entree into his work, You Are the Happiness You Seek: Uncovering the Awareness of Being. And if you’d like to watch Insights at the Edge on video and participate in the after show Q&A session with our guests, come join us on Sounds True One, a new membership community featuring award-winning original shows, live classes, community learning, guided meditations and more with the leading wisdom teachers of our time. Use promo code PODCAST to get your first month free. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com. Sounds True, waking up the world.
