Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day
How to submit material to the Highlights
#3938 -
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Timothy Conway
writes in
http://www.americanpendulum.com/2010/06/nondual-spirituality-or-mystical-advaita/
Humanity’s
most ancient wisdom text is the Brihadâranyaka Upanishad,
the “Great Forest Secret Teaching.” This remarkable
Sanskrit oral scripture from nearly 3,000 years ago in northern
“The Âtman
(Absolute Self) alone is to be meditated upon, for in It all are
one… By It one knows all this…. Whoever knows thus,
‘I am Brahman/Reality’ becomes this all. Even the gods
cannot prevent his becoming thus, for he becomes their
Self…. This Divine Self is a world for all beings—gods,
seers, ancestors, humans, livestock, and tinier creatures….
All the vital breaths/energies, all worlds, all gods, and all
beings spring from this Âtman. Its inner meaning (upanishad) is
‘the Real behind the real, or Truth of truth.’…
When there is some other thing, then one can see the other,
smell… taste… greet… hear… ponder…
touch… perceive the other. [But in Self-realization] one
becomes the single ocean, the nondual Seer. This is the Brahman
Reality….
"This is the highest
goal, the highest treasure, the highest world, the greatest
bliss…. A verse says: ‘When all desires dwelling in the
heart are banished, then a mortal becomes immortal; he becomes
Brahman here (in this life).’… Knowing that immortal
Brahman, I am immortal. Those who know the life behind breathing,
the eye behind seeing, the ear behind hearing, the mind behind
thinking, have realized the ancient, primordial Brahman. With the
(intuitive) mind alone must one realize It. In It there’s no
diversity; one goes from death to death seeing diversity in It.
This un-showable, constant Being can be realized as One only. The
Self is taintless, beyond space, unborn, vast, and immovable. Let
a wise aspirant directly realize this insight, not just reflect
on tiresome words.”
~ ~ ~
Read the entire article, Nondual
Spirituality or Mystical Advaita, by Timothy Conway:
http://www.americanpendulum.com/2010/06/nondual-spirituality-or-mystical-advaita/
An Interview with
Rupert Spira
Part I
Publication: The
Transparency of Things
(Non-Duality Press, 2008)
Visit Rupert's website, http://rupertspira.com, for more information about his work.
The following interview
was conducted by email by Paula Marvelly and
is from
http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/teachers/spira_marvelly1.htm
Q. Could you give a
short factual biography of your life up to the age of 16.
I come from a large,
close family. Both my parents are kind and loving and gave
everything they could, in their very different ways, to their
children. My childhood was essentially happy and free.
My parents separated when
I was six and we lived with my mother in Hampshire. However, I
also saw a lot of my father. My mother is eccentric, artistic and
has a deep interest in spiritual matters; my father more measured
and conventional. I learned a lot from both of them.
Q. At 16, you say you
started to meditate. Was there something specific – an event
perhaps – that precipitated such a thing?
At the age of 15 I became
disenchanted with the life towards which my scientific education
was preparing me. At the same time I saw an exhibition of the
work of Michael Cardew, which stirred my imagination beyond
anything it had previously encountered. I also started to read
Rumi and Shankaracharya which awakened the sense of a completely
new possibility within me.
Q. You say you
started to read Rumi, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Krishnamurti, Ramana
Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj and Shankaracharya, amongst
others.
Somehow, I had the deep
intuition that was I was reading was true. Their words resonated
deeply within me and kindled an intense desire to know for myself
what they were speaking of.
Q. You say you wanted
to make a career in science but felt it wasn’t the right way
to go. Why was that? What was it about science that you felt
didn’t appeal to you?
It wasn’t so much a
rejection of science as an attraction towards art. Art seemed to
engage my whole being, not just my intellect. I felt that art
provided the means to explore and then express the deepest realms
of experience in a way that science could not.
Q. You went to art
school. Was there any particular discipline that inspired you
– pottery and ceramics presumably – and why?
I first saw Michael
Cardew’s work and, later on, pieces from the early ceramic
traditions of
These objects were like
condensations of intelligence, love and beauty. I would spend
hours in museums looking at them. At times I would feel my body
dissolving in front of them. It was exactly the same experience
that I had many years later with my teacher in satsang.
Q. You spent a number
of years at the Study Society, which was set up by Dr Francis
Roles, under the guidance of HH Shantanand Saraswati, the
Shankaracharya of the North. What philosophy/teaching did you
learn there and how was that helpful?
When I arrived at The
Study Society the last remnants of Ouspenky’s teaching was
being ushered out in favour of the Shankaracharya’s Advaita
Vedanta, which was considered to have been the source of
Ouspensky’s teaching.
I immersed myself in the
teaching and also learnt Gurdjieff ‘s Movements and the
Mevlevi Turning - beautiful, contemplative movement practices.
These teachings were my home – I lived in them and they
lived in me.
Q. After leaving art
school, you worked as an artist to make a living. You say you
believed that beauty was linked to spirituality and it was a way
in which you could bring that concept to life. It reminds me of
Keats’ lines:
Beauty is truth,
truth beauty – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Could you expand on
that?
Our apparently objective
experience consists of thoughts, sensations and perceptions
– that is, the mind, body and world.
When Awareness
‘takes the shape’ of thinking, it seems to become a
thought. When it ‘takes the shape’ of sensing, it seems
to become a body and when it ‘takes the shape’ of
perceiving, it seems to become an object, other or world.
When thinking comes to an
end, the apparently objective part of it (the thought part)
disappears but its substance, Awareness, remains. In that
timeless moment (timeless because the mind is not present)
Awareness tastes itself as it is, unmediated through the apparent
objectivity of thought. This experience is known as
Understanding.
When sensing comes to an
end, the apparently objective part of it (the sensation or body
part) disappears but its substance, Awareness, remains, knowing
itself as Love or Happiness.
And when perceiving comes
to an end, the object, other or world disappears but their
substance, Awareness, remains, knowing itself as it is, unveiled
by the appearance of objects. That is the experience known as
Beauty.
In other words,
Understanding, Love, Happiness and Beauty are all different names
for one and the same experience, the presence of Awareness, the
knowing of our own Being.
The paths through
Understanding and Love (the paths of Jnana and Bhakti) are well
documented but the path through perceiving is less often
mentioned. The path of perceiving or the Way of Beauty is the way
of the artist.
It is a path through
which it becomes clear, and the means through which it is
expressed, that the substance of all perceptions is made out of
Awareness.
Although all seeming
objects are made out of Awareness, it is not, at a relative
level, the function of all objects to reveal this. For instance,
the purpose of a kettle is to boil water, not to reveal the true
nature of experience.
However, there is one
category of objects, which are made specifically with the
intention of revealing the true nature of experience and such an
object is what we call a work of art.
The function of a work of
art is not simply to point towards, but actually to reveal the
true nature of experience. As Cezanne said, to ‘give us a
taste of Eternity.’
Like the words of the
teaching, such objects come pregnant with their origin, the
silence and love from which they originate and, as such, are
tremendously powerful.
So, Beauty is the
experience through which we come to know and feel that all
seeming things are made out of that which knows them.
Keats was right. 'Beauty
is truth, truth beauty.' The experience of Truth and Beauty are
one and the same experience.
'That is all ye know on
earth.' The mind (which is the expression of Truth) and the world
(which is the expression of Beauty) are one. That is, the
apparent ‘knower’ and the apparently ‘known’
are one. Whether we recognize it or not, this is always our
experience. It is, as Keats says, ‘all ye know on earth'
– the knowing of our own Being in and as all seeming things.
'…and all ye need to
know.' Yes, this knowledge alone, if deeply considered and made
one’s own and subsequently applied to all circumstances, is
all that is required to lead a sane, happy and loving life.
Keats was rather more
economical with his words than I am!
The great artists of the
past, of whom Keats was one, were perhaps the vehicles through
which this knowledge was communicated most powerfully in our
culture but it is not their provenance alone.
This experiential
knowledge of the true nature of experience is, in fact, known by
all but sometimes seemingly forgotten. However, it is never far
from the surface and even in popular culture - music, fashion
etc. – we see this same longing for Love, Beauty and
Happiness, all of which are simply variations of our longing to
return to the true nature of our most intimate being.
When this Love, Beauty
and Happiness is seemingly veiled by the appearance of the
‘I’ entity, it cries out all the more loudly. All
around us in our culture we hear these ‘love cries’ all
desperately searching in the wrong place for what lies at their
heart.
Q. For myself, I
attended the sister school of the Study Society, called the
School of Economic Science, where beauty was also exulted.
Inasmuch as I agree that beauty is a means by which the heart may
be opened, I wonder if it is at the exclusion of other parts of
life that are very ‘unbeautiful’. On a day-to-day
level, the cult of physical perfection is effectively distorting
people’s attitudes to their own and other people’s
bodies and causing a great deal of suffering. As a woman, I feel
forever judged by my physical appearance.
The cult of physical
perfection is a pale reflection and a misinterpretation of our
innate knowing of Beauty. When we forget about the presence of
Awareness, Beauty is relegated to the status of an object, in
just the same way that when Awareness is seemingly forgotten, the
self, other, object and world seem to become real.
If Beauty is considered
to be a property of objects then it will be considered to be just
the opposite of ugliness. Even in some expressions of
contemporary advaita this is sometimes misunderstood and in these
expressions of the teaching, Beauty is relegated to an objective
experience that is considered to be just one more
‘appearance within Awareness.’
But it is not. Beauty is
another name for Awareness, the knowing of our own Being.
And likewise when we love
another, it is truly the Self in the ‘other’ that is
loved. And it is the Self that loves. That is, the Self is the
lover and the beloved. In other words it is Love itself, with no
other. That is what Love is – the absence of the apparent
other. We all know that experience of dissolving in Love. All
that keeps us separate and apart is dissolved and that
dissolution, even in common parlance, is known as Love. Of course
when the mind returns, it appropriates the non-objective and
timeless experience of Love and creates out of it a
‘lover’ and a ‘beloved’ and then wonders why
the experience of Love itself has seemed to disappear!
So, Beauty and Love are
one and the same experience. It is only in our culture where this
has been overlooked that they have been reduced to objects. The
cult of physical perfection you refer to springs from this
misunderstanding although there is still a flame of recognition
of the true nature of Beauty and Love that burns at its heart.
Shakespeare knew this
well: 'All things seem but cannot Be. Beauty brags but ‘tis
not She.'
All things seem to have
an existence of their own, separate and independent of Awareness,
but do not. The ‘Isness’ of an apparent object belongs
to Awareness alone.
'Beauty brags,' that is,
the beauty (with a small ‘b’) that seems to belong to
the object 'brags,' pretends to be the real thing, draws
attention to the object, 'but ‘tis not She,' that is,
‘tis not She, the true love of our hearts, objectless Beauty
itself.
Q. During this period
of your life, you say that you had a model of the truth and then
there was living a life (relationships, having a family, earning
an income, etc.). Effectively, there was a split between them.
Can you expand?
My models were the great
sages of previous eras and foreign cultures such as Ramana
Maharshi, Nisargadatta and Rumi and for a while I mistook the
cultural expressions of their understanding for the truth itself.
I felt that I had to turn
away from the world in order to access this truth. This attitude
is enshrined in some traditional teachings. For many of us, the
belief and feeling that it is ‘I,’ the body/mind that
knows the world, is initially replaced by the experiential
understanding that ‘I’ is the witnessing Awareness that
is aware of the body/mind/world.
In order to see this
clearly, it may be necessary to temporarily place the
body/mind/world at a seeming distance, as it were, in order to
establish experientially that we are the witness and not the
witnessed. For many people, and I was one, this position of the
witness is an important step and establishes the presence and the
primacy of Awareness.
This position is
enshrined in some monastic traditions where the world and even
the body are denied in order to focus on the presence of
Awareness.
However, in this position
there is still a subtle presumption of duality between the
perceiving ‘I’ of Awareness and the perceived object,
other or world. This distinction is sometimes naturally dissolved
over time or may dissolve as a result of further exploration of
experience. Either way, the result is the utter saturation of the
body/mind/world with Awareness (in fact, it was always thus but
is now known and felt to be so) in which the body, mind and world
are no longer believed and felt to be dangerous or threatening
and can again be fully embraced.
Q. Why did you leave
The Study Society? You mention you felt like something was
missing.
Yes, there was still a
distance. I couldn’t completely make the teaching my own, so
to speak.
Q. And then you met
Francis Lucille. How did he help you?
Something about our
encounter made it clear that what I am is ever-present and
without limits or location. As a side effect of this discovery,
the ‘me’ that was looking for help was found to be
non-existent.
Q. Would you say that
you are Self-realized/enlightened, for want of a better
expression?
Both the answer,
‘Yes,’ and the answer, ‘No,’ would presume
the presence of one that may or may not be enlightened. In the
absence of such a one, only the Light that enlightens all seeming
things remains. In fact, it does not ‘remain’ in time.
It is realised to be the ever-present reality of all experience.
It is experience.
Q. What does it mean
to be Self-realized/enlightened?
These words can be used
with different meanings. The meanings with which I use them are
as follows:
To be enlightened means
to know oneself as Awareness and to know that this Awareness is
ever-present and without limit or location.
To be Self-realized means
to think, feel and act in line with that experiential
understanding.
Enlightenment is
instantaneous although it may not be immediate. Self-realization
takes apparent time and involves the gradual dissolution of all
the olds habits of thinking, feeling, acting and relating on
behalf of a separate entity and, as a result, the realignment of
the mind, body and world with the experiential understanding of
our self, Awareness, as the sole witness and substance of all
seeming things.
Q. Why aren’t I
Self-realized/enlightened?
Because of that very
question. With that question you presume yourself to be an entity
that is other than and separate from the light of Awareness. This
presumption is known as the ‘person’ or the
‘separate entity’ and seems to veil the Love and
Happiness that are inherent in Awareness’ knowing of its own
Being.
This apparent veiling of
Happiness is synonymous with the search for enlightenment or the
feeling of being unenlightened. That search is what the separate
entity is, not what it does.
Once we have imagined
ourselves to be such an entity, the search for Happiness in the
objects of the mind, the body and the world is inevitable. If we
believe and feel ourselves to be such an entity and believe at
the same time that we are not in search, we are simply deluding
ourselves. We have simply buried the subtle rejection of the now,
which is another name for the search, under a new belief in
non-duality.
However, sooner or later
this search comes to an end, in most cases, as a result of
suffering and enquiry. At this point, we may, as it were, turn
round and question the very one who is in search only to find it
to be utterly non-existent. In its place, where we are expecting
to find the ‘I’ of the separate self, find only the
‘I’ of Awareness.
It is inevitable that the
search up until this point will seem to have been undertaken by
the separate entity we believe and feel ourselves to be. However,
even if we provisionally credit the apparently separate entity
with this activity, it does no more than this. In fact, in realty
it doesn’t even do this. What can a non-existent entity do?
However, we should be wary of buying the ‘there is nothing
to do’ belief while the feeling of separation is still
present.
Q. How is
Self-realization/enlightenment attained?
In order to think that
enlightenment can be attained we first have to believe that it
has been lost. Once enlightenment is believed to have been lost
we will, by definition, consider ourselves to be a separate
entity on an inevitable search for Happiness. This search
revolves around the separate entity we consider ourselves to be
and who is felt to be unhappy. Therefore, in such a case, the
very best thing we can do is to turn towards this unhappy self
that is longing for Happiness. When we turn towards this
‘I’ that we intimately know ourselves to be, we do not
find a separate entity. We find Awareness, Presence. And what is
it that finds Awareness? Awareness is the only one present
‘there,’ capable of being aware of Awareness.
Simultaneous with this
Self-recognition comes the recognition that Awareness is, in
fact, always only knowing its own Self and at this point we can
truly say that there is never any ignorance.
However, until this
recognition has taken place it would be more honest to recognise
that we feel ourselves to be a person on an inevitable search of
Happiness. As this apparent person we turn round, as it were,
towards the source of our being and, like a moth flying into the
flame we, this imaginary entity, seems to dissolve in it.
Only then do we realize
that there was never an entity to begin with. Then it is clear
that there was no one who turned round towards the source of
their being. There was always only Presence, seemingly veiling
itself with the belief in separation and seemingly unveiling
itself with the recognition of its true nature, but never, in
fact, for a moment knowing or being anything other than its own
Self.
~ ~ ~
Read Part II of the
interview of Rupert Spira by Paula Marvelly:
http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/teachers/spira_marvelly2.htm