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#3441 -
Thursday, February 12, 2009 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
RUPERT SPIRA: The
Transparency of Things: Contemplating the Nature of Experience
In this issue, a review
by Joan Tollifson and an excerpt from the new book from
Non-Duality Press, The Transparency of Things:
Contemplating the Nature of Experience, by Rupert Spira
Review by Joan
Tollifson:
Rupert is a contemporary
British ceramic artist and student of Francis Lucille who is now
holding meetings on non-duality. This beautiful and exceptionally
clear book leads the reader through a series of
"contemplations" designed to explore and illuminate our
actual experience here and now. This is a rare and excellent book
that I very highly recommend, perhaps the best book on
non-duality I've seen. The insight and expression is clear,
simple, subtle, intelligent, and truly non-dual. Rupert avoids so
many pitfalls that I see many other nondual teachers fall into,
pitfalls such as turning themselves into special people, making
enlightenment into a coveted future attainment, getting stuck on
one side of an apparent duality like choice or no choice, falling
into new belief systems, or withdrawing into a kind of detached
transcendance that regards the world as merely an illusion.
Rupert steers clear of all such pitfalls and reveals the Truth
with such clarity, simplicity and subtlety. You can also see two
very fine interviews with Rupert on Conscious TV: http://conscious.tv/consciousness.html. And you can find more about Rupert here:http://www.rupertspira.com/ Very highly recommended.
Excerpt from The
Transparency of Things: Contemplating the Nature of Experience,
by Rupert Spira
Whatever it is that is
seeing and understanding these words, is what is referred to here
as 'Consciousness.' It is what we know ourselves to be, what we
refer to as 'I.'
Everything that is known
is known through Consciousness. Therefore, whatever is known is
only as good as our knowledge of Consciousness.
...
The mind has built a
powerful edifice of concepts about Reality that bears little
relation to actual experience and, as a result, Consciousness has
veiled itself from itself. These concepts are built out of mind
and therefore their deconstruction is one of the ways through
which Consciousness comes to recognise itself again -- that is,
to know itself again.
Consciousness is in fact
always knowing itself. However, through this deconstruction of
concepts, Consciousness comes to recognise itself, not through
the reflected veil of apparent objects, but knowingly and
directly.
Concepts are not
destroyed in this process. They are still available for use when
needed.
In the contemplations
that comprise this book it is acknowledged that the purpose of
reasoning is not to frame or apprehend Reality. However, it is
also acknowledged that the mind has constructed complex and
persuasive ideas that have posited an image of ourselves and of
the world that is very far from the facts of our experience.
These ideas have
convinced us that there is a world that exists separate from and
independent of Consciousness. They have persuaded us to believe
that 'I,' the Consciousness that is seeing these words, is an
entity that resides inside the body, that it was born and will
die, and that it is the subject of experience whilst everything
else, the world, 'other,' is the object.
Although this is never
our actual experience, the mind is so persuasive and convincing,
that we have duped ourselves into believing that we actually
experience these two elements, that we experience the world
separate and apart from our Self, and that we experience our own
Self as a separate and independent Consciousness.
In the disinterested
contemplation of our experience we measure the facts of
experience itself against these beliefs.
The falsity of the ideas
that the mind entertains about the nature of Reality, about the
nature of experience, is exposed in this disinterested
contemplation.
All spiritual traditions
acknowledge that Reality cannot be apprehended with the mind. As
a result of this understanding some teachings have denied the use
of the mind as a valid tool of enquiry or exploration.
It is true that
Consciousness is beyond the mind and cannot therefore be framed
within its abstract concepts. However this does not invaldiate
the use of the mind to explore the nature of Consciousness and
Reality.
Ignorance is composed of
beliefs and belief is already an activity of mind. If we deny the
validity of mind, why use it in the first place to harbour
beliefs?
By reading these words,
we are, consciously or unconsciously, agreeing to accept the
validity and, by the same token, the limitations of the mind.
We are giving the mind
credibility in spite of its limitations. We are acknowledging its
ability to play a part in drawing attention to that which is
beyond itself or outside the sphere of its knowledge.
It would be disingenuous
to use the mind to deny its own validity. Our very use of the
mind asserts its validity. However, it is a different matter to
use the mind to understand its own limits.
It may well be that at
the end of a process of exploring the nature of experience, using
the full capacity of its powers of conceptual thinking, the mind
will come to understand the limits of its ability to apprehend
the truth of the matter and, as a result, will spontaneously come
to an end. It will collapse from within, so to speak.
However, this is a very
different situation from one in which the mind has been denied
any provisional credibility on the basis that nothing it says
about Reality can ultimately be true.
As a result of the
exposure of beliefs and feelings that derive from preconcieved,
unsubstantiated notions of Reality, a new invitation opens up,
another possibility is revealed.
This possibility cannot
be apprehended by the mind because it is beyond the mind.
However, the obstacles to this new possibility are revealed and
dissolved in this investigation.
They are dissolved by our
openness to the possibility that in this moment we actually
experience only one thing, that experience is not divided into
'I' and other, subject and object, me and the world,
Consciousness and Existence.
We are open to the
possibility that there is only one single, seamless totality,
that Consciousness and Existence are one, that there is only one
Reality.
The edifice of dualistic
ideas, which seems to be validated by experience, is well
constructed with beliefs at the level of the mind and feelings at
the level of the body, which are tightly interwoven, mutually
substantiating and validating one another.
In the disinterested
contemplation of these ideas and feelings their falsity is
unraveled. We see clearly that our ideas do not correspond to our
experience. This paves the way for experience to reveal itself to
us as it truly is, as in fact it always is, free from the
ignorance of dualistic thinking.
We begin to experience
ourselves and the world as they truly are.
Our experience itself
does not change but we feel that it changes. Reality remains as
it always is, for it is what is, independent of the ideas we
entertain about it.
However, our
interpretation changes and this new interpretation becomes the
cornerstone of a new possibility.
This new possibility
comes from an unknown direction. It does not come as an object, a
thought or a feeling. It is unveiled, in most cases, as a series
of revelations, each dismantling part of the previous edifice of
dualistic thinking.
And the unfolding of this
revelation, in turn, has a profound impact on the appearance of
the mind, the body and the world.
The Transparency
of Things: Contemplating the Nature of Experience, by Rupert
Spira
Rupert Spira's home page is http://www.rupertspira.com