Author and spiritual teacher Rupert Spira says that what you have been seeking all your life is available at your core.
Show Notes
Lasting peace and happiness is all everyone really wants, says spiritual teacher Rupert Spira in conversation with Omega digital media director Cali Alpert. But, how do we miss accessing it, when peace is available to us at our core?
Rupert describes his work in nonduality as an exploration into the nature of awareness. As we draw attention to that within ourselves which is ever-present, which never changes, we realize that peace and happiness are the nature of our being.
This episode is part of Season 4 of Omega's award-winning podcast, Dropping In. Join us for intimate conversations with some of Omega's trailblazing spiritual teachers, thought leaders, and social visionaries, to explore the many ways to awaken the best in the human spirit.
Rupert describes his work in nonduality as an exploration into the nature of awareness. As we draw attention to that within ourselves which is ever-present, which never changes, we realize that peace and happiness are the nature of our being.
This episode is part of Season 4 of Omega's award-winning podcast, Dropping In. Join us for intimate conversations with some of Omega's trailblazing spiritual teachers, thought leaders, and social visionaries, to explore the many ways to awaken the best in the human spirit.
Creators & Guests
What is Dropping In (Audio)?
Join Emmy award-winning producer and Omega director of digital media Cali Alpert for Season 4, as she drops in for intimate conversations with some of Omega's trailblazing spiritual teachers, thought leaders, and social visionaries, to explore ways to awaken the best in the human spirit. New episodes will be posted weekly.
Cali Alpert:
Welcome to Dropping In from Omega Institute, a podcast that explores the many ways to awaken the best in the human spirit. I'm Cali Alpert. Dropping in today, Rupert Spira. As an author and teacher, Rupert is a leading voice in the studies of contemporary spirituality and non-duality. From an early age, he was deeply interested in the nature of reality and the source of lasting peace and happiness. Rupert began to meditate at the age of 17 and spent the next 20 years immersed in learning a variety of ancient wisdom traditions, including Advaita Vedanta, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sophism, and Zen. Rupert is the author of 12 books, which have been translated into a dozen languages. He is also a globally-recognized ceramic artist who exhibited worldwide for 30 years before closing his studio in 2011 to devote his time to sharing non-dual teachings throughout the world. Welcome Rupert, and thank you so much for dropping in today. It's a pleasure to have you.
Rupert Spira:
Thank you, Cali. It's a pleasure to be here again.
Cali Alpert:
So how does it feel, number one, to be back here at Omega after so many years?
Rupert Spira:
It's lovely to be back here again. As you say, it's several years since I've been here and as soon as we turned into the drive this afternoon, I immediately started recognizing the buildings and the landscape and it was just such a pleasure to be here again and to see that so little has changed in a rapidly-changing world.
Cali Alpert:
Yeah, it's so true. Talk about a duality, that's the perfect segue to get into our conversation today, the duality between things that haven't changed and that are constantly changing. How do you as a non-dual expert and teacher and author even reconcile those two things when you're observing that?
Rupert Spira:
Really the essence of the non-dual understanding is to draw attention to that which never changes. And by that of course, I'm not referring to a campus, an organization, I'm referring to the eternal, that in us which never changes, as contrasted with that in us, which is always changing, namely our thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, and so on. And really the essence of the non-dual understanding is to draw attention to that element of ourself which is ever present and unchanging.
Cali Alpert:
Before we get into what it means to become familiar with non-duality or non-dualism, which one do you use number one as terminology? Do you have a preference?
Rupert Spira:
Non-duality, but actually I very rarely even use that term because I... And that term for some people sounds a little exotic and if you ask most people, "What do you understand by non-duality?", most people would never have heard of it. And yet what the so-called non-dual teaching speaks of is something very familiar and intimate to everyone, so I don't even tend to use that term very much.
Cali Alpert:
So for the sake of people that are listening and watching our conversation today that aren't familiar with the concept, if we can use it at least just to start the conversation-
Rupert Spira:
Yes, of course. Yeah.
Cali Alpert:
The idea of non-duality. Why is it important for people to know what it is and what is it to you after all these decades of studying it?
Rupert Spira:
Okay. The non-dual understanding is the understanding that underlies all the great religious and spiritual traditions. And if we were to take the last two and a half or 3,000 years of religious and spiritual instruction and practice and we were to distill it all into a single sentence, it might sound something like this, peace and happiness are the nature of our being and we share our being with everyone and everything. If one has understood that, if one feels that, and if one leads one's life to the best of one's ability in the way that it's consistent with that understanding, then one has really understood everything there is to understand about the great traditions.
Cali Alpert:
So basically you've just done the most beautiful distillation for everyone who's a seeker or a spiritual aspirant looking for the magic sauce.
Rupert Spira:
Yes, in whatever tradition, the same understanding whether you are a Christian, a Buddhist, a Sikh, a Hindu, a Jew, or an atheist, an agnostic, whatever tradition one is in, really all these traditions distill to the same essential understanding, peace and happiness are the nature of our being and we share our being with everyone and everything.
Cali Alpert:
So if peace and happiness are the nature of our being and we are happiness based on this teaching, then why does it elude so many people?
Rupert Spira:
That's a beautiful question, it's the essential question. If as you say, peace is our nature, then surely we should be experiencing it all the time because after all, we are experiencing ourself all the time. And the reason is simple. Whilst everybody does experience their self all the time, most people's sense of their self is so thoroughly mixed up with the content of their experience, thoughts, feelings, activities, relationships and so on, that whilst everyone experiences their self, not everybody experiences their self clearly as it essentially is. And it is this lack of clear self-knowledge that is responsible for the veiling of the peace and quiet joy that are the nature of our being or ourself. And it is for this reason that self-knowledge or the recognition of the nature of the mind is considered the essence of the great tradition.
Cali Alpert:
So I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about that because self-inquiry is paramount to the direct path.
Rupert Spira:
Yes, yes.
Cali Alpert:
Or the road to freedom or liberation or whatever words we want to use. I know you're not a huge fan of the word enlightenment, if I recall.
Rupert Spira:
That's very true. Yes, yes.
Cali Alpert:
That's a little bit heavy, that's a big responsibility, the enlightenment thing. How does one begin to see themselves clearly? What if this is a language or conversation that is really new to somebody? What does it even mean to start that process?
Rupert Spira:
Well, the name that each of us gives to ourself is I. I'm having a conversation with you, I am sitting on a chair, I have just traveled from the UK, I am staying at Omega for the weekend, I am cold or tired or hungry, and so on. Always each of these statements contains this reference to ourself, I or I am. And then this basic I or I am is then qualified by an activity such as a conversation or by a state of the mind, such as, I am sad, or a condition of the body, I am tired, but always the basic I or I am, which is subsequently qualified by some experience. So the experience, having a conversation sitting on a chair, being tired, is always changing, the experience is not essential to us. We are not always tired, we are not always having a conversation, we're not always sitting on a chair, but we always are. I always am.
So this phrase, I am, is really the key, the phrase, I am, before anything has been added to it, before I have become this or that, just the pure, I am, refers to our essential irreducible self or being, just the fact of being or being aware. So this is what is sometimes called the practice of self-inquiry or the direct path, is to go directly to that essential, irreducible, unchanging, ever-present aspect of ourself that we refer to when we say simply I or I am.
Cali Alpert:
I'm thinking of a blank canvas is coming to mind as you're talking about that, the idea that the canvas, this is just a visual metaphor that's coming to mind right now, the idea of a blank canvas as our beingness.
Rupert Spira:
Perfect.
Cali Alpert:
And then all the colors of paint that gets splattered on, experiences, relationships.
Rupert Spira:
Those are our experiences, exactly.
Cali Alpert:
The things you perseverate about as the-
Rupert Spira:
Yes, yes. That's a beautiful and an appropriate analogy, the blank canvas of our being, the fact of being or being aware upon which, or within which, the entire content of our experience, thoughts, images, feelings, actions, relationships and so on, arises. But the colors that are painted on the canvas are not essential to the canvas. You have a painting, colorful, exotic painting. When you remove all the brush strokes, all the colors that have been superimposed onto the canvas, what remains, what cannot be removed from the canvas? Just the canvas.
Cali Alpert:
The canvas.
Rupert Spira:
What cannot be removed from ourself? Only that can be considered to be our essential self. Let's take a thought, for instance. Thoughts are continually coming and going. And when a thought disappears, none of us feel, "Oh, a little bit of myself has gone with it." No, the thought vanishes and it leaves ourself intact. When a feeling disappears, a feeling lasts a little bit longer than a thought, and we might have a mood or it might last all afternoon, but sooner or later the feeling goes, but our self remains. So yes, ourself is like the canvas, it is that aspect of ourself that cannot be removed from us.
Cali Alpert:
So in essence, what I'm hearing again for someone who may be as an early directive, if someone were to start the process of self-inquiry, is the idea of separating out are being from everything else that's going on and stirring around, and some-
Rupert Spira:
Exactly.
Cali Alpert:
Smiling and laughing at the idea of separate even, because that's antithetical to the concept of non-duality [inaudible 00:10:45] you achieve it, right?
Rupert Spira:
Exactly, exactly it is. Can I upgrade your metaphor from the canvas with paint on it to the screen with images on it?
Cali Alpert:
Please. Right.
Rupert Spira:
Now, the reason I do that is because it is possible physically to scrape the paint off a canvas. In other words, it is possible to separate the paint from the canvas. However, we can't scrape an image off the screen. So that's closer, you've put your finger on an essential point. We are starting by separating the image from the screen, we are the blank screen of awareness or being. And the images, that is a content of our experience, thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, and so on. So just to one who is lost in the content of a movie, we might say, "Turn your attention away from the content of the movie, maybe even turn off the movie in order to see the screen." In other words, we make a distinction between the screen and the movie, for the purpose of drawing attention to the screen, which up until that moment had been overlooked. Why? Because we were so fascinated by the content of the movie.
Now, we know that the screen cannot really be separated from the image, they're not really two separate things, but at the early stage of our investigation, it is legitimate to separate them simply to draw attention to the presence of the screen. So we separate our self-awareness or pure being from the content of experience. Why? Because most of us are lost in the content of experience, our thoughts, feelings, relationships, and so on. So to such a one, we start by saying, "No, turn away from the content of your experience, your thoughts, and feelings, and so on. Become aware of your being, become aware of the fact of being aware." Having recognized awareness is what I essentially am, we then explore the nature of awareness. And then this division of our experience into awareness plus experience has done its job. We then collapse the apparent distinction and come to the true, non-dual understanding in which there is no distinction between our essential being and anyone and everything.
Cali Alpert:
So this is not an overnight process for most humans.
Rupert Spira:
It's not an overnight process, it is not an overnight process. Exactly, exactly. Very, very rare are the people who can ask themselves the question once, "What is it that cannot be separated from me?" Or, "What is it that knows or is aware of my experience?" And as a result of that question, will go directly to their true nature and stay there. It's possible that there, I know of one instance in the entire history of spirituality, but-
Cali Alpert:
Am I looking at that?
Rupert Spira:
No, no, absolutely not. No, certainly not. No, it took me many years to recognize what I'm suggesting and then to be able to speak about it clearly and simply. So yes, it's a process, it's called the direct path, not because we necessarily go there instantaneously, but because we go there directly. You can fly from Heathrow to New York directly without going via Madrid, but just because you go there directly doesn't necessarily mean you go there instantly. So the direct path doesn't mean instantaneous, it just means we go directly.
And by that I mean we don't give our attention, for instance, to repeating a mantra, that would be to give our attention to an object of experience. And I mean no criticism of mantra meditation, I practiced it for 20 years myself. We don't give our attention to a flame or to the breath or to the pause between breaths or to the teacher or to an image, we give our attention to... Or attention gives its attention to itself, to its source. So that's why it's referred to the direct path, we give our attention directly to the source of the mind, the essential nature of the mind or our original being.
Cali Alpert:
I've always believed that it also takes a lot of courage to look at yourself in the mirror and start the process, and continue, and commit to the process of self-inquiry. Do you agree with that?
Rupert Spira:
Yes, I think it does require courage. Most of all it requires love. Love for the truth, irrespective of the consequences that it may have for your life. And as a result of that, it may also require courage because our sense of ourself is so invested in our activities, our relationships. So the more we investigate our essential self, the old sense of ourself, which is referred to as the ego, the sense of ourself that is derived from and dependent on the content of relationship. Sorry, the content of experience, activities, relationships, beliefs, feelings, and so on. Our sense of ourself begins to be divested of all those qualities, activities, relationships, with which it previously defined itself.
So there is a kind of letting-go process, a letting go of all the beliefs we had about ourself, sometimes activities that we engaged in or relationships. So this love to explore the nature of ourself does sometimes require the courage to let go of any of our previous investment in the content of our experience. So yes, it starts with this love of truth. And that, as you rightly say, does indeed imply the courage to go for the truth of one's true nature, irrespective to the personal cost to you.
Cali Alpert:
Yeah, to have the desire for the truth supersede how concretized and caught up we humans are in our patterns, and our so stories, and our narratives, and-
Rupert Spira:
Yes, exactly.
Cali Alpert:
And letting all that loosen up-
Rupert Spira:
Absolutely.
Cali Alpert:
... could be uncomfortable to dismantle.
Rupert Spira:
Some people seem to have this love of truth from a very early age, that they just, even if they weren't quite born with it quite early on in their childhood or their teenage years, they developed this love of truth. And that love of truth becomes a guiding principle of their lives, but for other people say, have to take a harder route, they have to learn by experience, constant failure after failure, after failure in life until after numerous failed relationships, failed jobs, failed health, failed financial, whatever it is for each of us, it begins to dawn on us that the peace and happiness which we previously sought in objective experience can't be found there. Now, to some people, they just recognize that once, one failed relationship should be enough for all of us to enable us to understand, to seek peace and happiness in something objective is destined for failure.
But in practice, most of us need a series of failures to gradually cease investing our desire for peace and happiness in objective experience. And so we gradually develop this love of truth until in the end it becomes an overriding, until we understand clearly nothing objective can give me the happiness for which I long. And at that point there is this intense desire for truth, but it may take someone a number of years to come to that.
Cali Alpert:
For some knocking their head upside the brick wall many, many times over and over again until they're looking in a different direction.
Rupert Spira:
Exactly. And for others, age 16, one small failure is enough to awaken this keen interest in the nature of their self, yes.
Cali Alpert:
That's always been amazing and interesting to me too, it's the different paths that are charted for humans and people's moment of awakening or some revelatory experience at age five, or 16, or 72. It's fascinating.
Rupert Spira:
I agree. It's fascinating and very hard to account for.
Cali Alpert:
Yeah.
Rupert Spira:
Why is it that two people with almost identical, same parents, same upbringing, same education, one will be, this interest in the nature of their being or the nature of reality will be awakened very early on in their life and the other will have to go through life experience suffering and may never ask this question. How do you account for that? Well, of course a theory of previous lives is a reasonably satisfactory way of accounting for that, but I prefer just to leave it a mystery and to say it's very difficult to account for that. What is it that, why did we, for instance, develop this love of truth? Was it a result of, did we earn it? No, I just found myself at an early age, passionately interested in these matters. Why? I don't know. Did I do anything to earn that or deserve that? No, it was just given to me as a gift.
Cali Alpert:
And now a word about Omega Teachers Studio. Get ready to be inspired from your very own cushion, yoga mat, or couch. Omega Teachers Studio brings your favorite teachers direct to you live and online from their studios for one-plus hour classes on topics that matter the most. They're easy to fit into your schedule and affordable too. Learn more at eomega.org/studio. To receive a 10% discount on any Teachers Studio tuition, enter the code DI10 when registering. That's the letters D and I, and the numbers one and zero. Now back to our episode.
Speaking of you starting at an early age, did I read that it was like at age seven, you went to your mom and said something to the effect of, "All of the world is God's dream"?
Rupert Spira:
I did. My mother reminds me of this regularly, I think it was age seven. I said to my mother, "I think that the world is God's dream and that our role in the world is to make God's dream as beautiful a dream as possible." So yes, I had this early intuition, which I then lost. I didn't completely lose it, but it was obscured as I grew up by the usual boyish and teenage pursuits, but it was reawakened again in my mid teens. So yes, it was always something in me from a very early age. At that stage, I conceived it simply as God. It was a label, I was brought up as a Christian, so it was the conventional label that I put onto it. And it took many years before I really understood what was meant by that.
Cali Alpert:
Was there an event or a moment that brought you back to it when you were a teenager, or did it just sort of happen?
Rupert Spira:
I think there have been many defining moments. There were two defining moments. One at the age of 15 when I came across the poetry of Rumi, I was studying science, wanting to become a biochemist or to study medicine. And I came across Rumi's poetry, and I was very, very touched by that. When I read it, I recognized something, so that I think was the first event that really reawakened this childhood intuition that I had had. And then some years later, aged 21 or 22, my first intimate relationship came-
Cali Alpert:
That'll do it.
Rupert Spira:
... to an end in a phone call. I, in my teenage naivety, just presumed that we'd live happily ever after. And then after three years, a brief phone call put paid to that. And I was so shocked by it, although I didn't formulate it in these terms for some time, but the result of that event was I would later formulate in this way if an object, a person, an experience, an event, if we can invest our desire for lasting happiness, well, in my case it was a person, can come to an end so swiftly, so unexpectedly, in what can we reliably invest our desire for lasting peace and happiness? Because lasting peace and happiness is all, anyone really deeply once. And of course, I wanted lasting peace and happiness, and I had invested it in this relationship, it came very abruptly to an end.
And so this question was precipitated in me, "Is there anything that I can reliably invest my longing for happiness in?" And it became very clear to me that nothing was reliable. And this precipitated this inward search, "What is there in my experience that I can rely on? Is there anything stable? Is there anything reliable? Everything changes, thoughts, images, feelings, activities, relations, is there anything that doesn't change? Is there anything that I can rely on or that I can hold to?" And so I had the intuition when I was seven years old, it was reawakened by my reading of Rumi age 15. But age 22, when this event happened, my interest in these matters became a passion.
Cali Alpert:
Finding Rumi, connecting with Rumi at age 15, and then finding the awareness that all is transitory in your early 20s sounds like your course was perhaps charted for you.
Rupert Spira:
It was charted and it started with, as I said, this simple intuition, everything is God's dream. So it was formulated in Christian terms. Then age 15, I was introduced to Rumi's poetry and the Mevlevi Turning, which I went on to learn. So that was a Sufi, it took the shape of a Sufi influence. And then age 22, when I first asked this question, "Is there anything stable and unchanging in myself?" That's the path of knowledge to the Dantic approach.
Cali Alpert:
So you've been on this path for a handful of decades now?
Rupert Spira:
For, yes, nearly 50 years. Yes.
Cali Alpert:
I'm curious what it's like to be you and I say that with a smile, but what does it feel like for you to be in your body with all of this wisdom, and experience, and expertise around the idea of being this and one consciousness and non-duality? Do you feel like you're most often in a state of being this without the content in the mind flow, mind stream?
Rupert Spira:
Cali, I never feel that I have any extraordinary knowledge or extraordinary experience, I never feel that I'm a teacher. No, it's just clear to me that the nature of my being is peace. And as I get older, fewer and fewer experiences have the capacity to veil that peace. And it's also increasingly clear to me that I share my being with everyone and everything. And that's all. It's nothing special, it just seems simple and obvious.
Cali Alpert:
What does that feel like to share your being?
Rupert Spira:
It feels like peace on the inside and love on the outside.
Cali Alpert:
Do you feel that way most of the time?
Rupert Spira:
Yes. As I say, fewer and fewer experiences have the capacity to veil that experience, so I'm not saying that some experiences don't still have the capacity to veil this feeling of peace on the inside and love on the outside, but it's not veiled for long. And when they are veiled, it doesn't last very long, so it happens less and less often and lasts for less and less time.
Cali Alpert:
Do you attribute that to practice and fortifying those spiritual muscles that you've been working with for so many decades, that reserve of spaciousness kicks in faster than it might for somebody sitting on the bus next to you?
Rupert Spira:
Yes, yes. The reason I'm hesitating, Cali, is because I want to answer yes and no. Certainly early on in my life I was very disciplined. After I learned to meditate when I was 17, for 20 years, I practiced mantra meditation for half an hour every morning, every evening I practiced the Mevlevi Turning, [inaudible 00:28:39] movements. I was disciplined and practiced, I studied a lot. But in time, self-inquiry gives way to self-abidance. So what started off as a practice, my understanding of practice over the years became more and more refined. And I realized that we can't practice being what we already are. We can only practice, like for instance, if we are interested in playing tennis and we're not a very good tennis player, well, we can practice playing tennis or playing the piano or cooking because we don't have those skills yet. But we are already ourself, our being is already fully present, unconditionally peaceful. It doesn't need to be made such, it only needs to be recognized as such.
So what started off in me as an intense and disciplined practice, gradually gave way over the years to self-abidance or self-resting. In the spiritual community, there is such an idea that enlightenment is the ultimate attainment. And as you quite rightly mentioned early on, I don't use that term because for many years, for 20 years, I thought of enlightenment as a marvelous exotic experience that one might acquire if one-
Cali Alpert:
It's a very romantic concept.
Rupert Spira:
It's a very romantic concept, but a lot of people have, a lot people feel that you need to devote yourself to a teacher or to a tradition that you need to... The enlightenment is an extraordinary experience that one might acquire if one meditates for long enough or practice hard enough. I suddenly subscribed to that belief for many, many years and it dictated my spiritual practice as a result. And then I came to realize that enlightenment is not an exotic experience that we acquired. Indeed, it's not an experience at all. It's simply the recognition of the nature of our being, it's the least exotic experience there is. I mean, sometimes I say even the taste of tea is exotic compared to the recognition of the nature of our being. Because as you said earlier, our being is like the blank canvas or the transparent screen or the silent space. It's not something that we acquire, it's what we are. We don't become it, we recognize it.
And it's not difficult to recognize. When we are watching a movie, however intense or dramatic the content of the movie is, it's not difficult to see the screen. In fact, we are always seeing the screen, we just don't realize it. Why? Because we're lost in the drama of the movie. So the essence of meditation or prayer or practice is just this coming back to ourself. Nothing could be less exotic, nothing could be easier, nothing could be simpler.
Cali Alpert:
I think a lot of people would find relief in actually hearing and knowing that.
Rupert Spira:
It's a relief.
Cali Alpert:
It takes a lot of pressure off people that are really [inaudible 00:32:02] onto spiritual stuff.
Rupert Spira:
I aimed for enlightenment for 20, 25 years. I was aiming for an extraordinary experience. And of course I always felt that I was failing because I never had that marvelous experience. But even in the thought, "I am failing," the, "I am" is shining there. All you need to do is soften the focus of the attention from the sense of failure and allow them, I am, your being, to shine. It was even in the sense of failure, even in the sense, "I am seeking enlightenment." The, "I am" is present there at the beginning of the search. It's not something we find at the end of the search, so it's such a relief. It's such a relief. Yeah.
Cali Alpert:
There's another beautiful teacher that was here about a month ago, and in one of his teachings he said, "It's all so simple that we don't trust it."
Rupert Spira:
Yes, it's true.
Cali Alpert:
It's very much in tune with what you're saying.
Rupert Spira:
Yes, yes.
Cali Alpert:
It's really. Did you have, now that we're relieving everyone of this aha moment, this elusive aha moment that doesn't necessarily exist, did you have a moment or a time in your life where at least you realized your transition from the seeking to the being and let go of the seeking?
Rupert Spira:
No.
Cali Alpert:
Just kind of happened, it just melted into it?
Rupert Spira:
Yeah. No, I didn't. It's like I flew in from Heathrow yesterday and woke up this morning, jet lagged after a sleepless night with a headache, so drank lots of water and got some fresh air and then got on with the day's activities. And at some stage, mid-afternoon, I noticed that my headache had gone. Was there a wonderful moment halfway through the day when the headache just... I didn't notice the headache going. I just looked back mid-afternoon and thought, "Oh, my headache's gone." But I hadn't formulated it to myself, so it's like it's happened like that for me, the headache is of course sorrow, suffering. No, there wasn't one big moment when I thought, I've never had the thought, I've recognized my true nature. I just noticed that my suffering had left me.
Cali Alpert:
If I may ask, did you know deep suffering in your life?
Rupert Spira:
Yes. Yes, I have had moments of deep suffering. I've never been deeply depressed for long periods of time, so I've never known suffering for an extended, long period of time. But yes, there have been moments of suffering certainly. And I know what it's like to suffer. Yes, yes.
Cali Alpert:
Let's talk about suffering on a global scale right now. The world has been through so much, especially in these last few years, and it seems like there's a lot that's not letting up. There's more dismantling and more uprising and lots of political divide and all the things that we know about what's going on. How do you speak to the idea of being this with people that are really in the throes of deep suffering, tragedy, loss in all kinds of ways that are happening on this planet right now?
Rupert Spira:
It's very difficult, Cali, to answer that question generally because to a mother who has just lost her child, I would never say, "There is a place in you that is untouched by your suffering, simply take the thought I am and allow yourself to be drawn into that place." That would be insensitive in the face of her trauma and her loss. I would say... Well, I don't know what I would say, but I wouldn't disregard her suffering and take her directly to her true nature. In somebody else who told me about their suffering, I might disregard it and I might ask them, "When you say I am hurt or upset, tell me about the I or the I am." And in that way try to take their attention away from the feeling of hurt back to towards their being.
But I don't have a prescription, I think although it's true that in theory everybody's being is present and available, one can't just say to everybody, "Turn away from the content of your experience, go back to your being." You have to be sensitive. One has to intuit the kind of level of understanding that the person is speaking to and take a step towards them, so I don't have a general answer for your question.
Cali Alpert:
I know it's a loaded one. So many people are looking for guidance right now.
Rupert Spira:
Yes, but having said that, if you were to ask me in general, why is it that there is so much despair in the world on the inside and so much conflict on the world, on the outside, I would say the reason there is so much despair is because we have overlooked the nature of our own being. And the reason there is so much conflict is because most of us don't recognize that the being that we essentially are is shared with everyone and everything. For instance, if we look at the conflicts that are taking place in the world today, would those conflicts be taking place if the people who are participating in them knew that they shared their being with the people they were in conflict with? So that single understanding, this is why distillation of the non-dual understanding piece is the nature of our being. That takes care of the despair and the sorrow we feel on the inside and we share our being with everyone and everything, that takes care of the conflicts between individuals, between communities, and between nations.
Cali Alpert:
Do you dream or vision a world where people speak this language a little bit more commonly in the name of believing that it can really bring people together and create more peace and harmony on this planet?
Rupert Spira:
Yes, I do, I do. I see no reason why everybody shouldn't know that there is a place in themselves that is free of sorrow and always available. And that what they essentially are is what everyone and everything essentially is. Yes, why shouldn't everybody know that? It's not complicated, anyone is capable of understanding that, yes. Why shouldn't that message be made freely available to everyone? And the means by which one may discover that for oneself, likewise be made freely available, a simple means. Yes, I do have a vision, and I hope and pray that that will come about.
Cali Alpert:
May it be so.
Rupert Spira:
May it be so. Yes.
Cali Alpert:
It's a beautiful dream.
Rupert Spira:
Yes, yes.
Cali Alpert:
So I'd like to ask you these three final rapid-fire questions that I like to ask everybody on Dropping In. The first one is, I'd like to grant you one wish for our listeners and our viewers. What would you wish for them?
Rupert Spira:
I would wish that they discover the place in themselves that is already and inherently free of sorrow.
Cali Alpert:
And if I were to grant you one wish for yourself, what would that wish be?
Rupert Spira:
So my wish for myself would be that I spend the rest of my life, however long that may be, in sharing and communicating this understanding as simply, experientially, and effectively as I am able to do so.
Cali Alpert:
And finally, if there were one takeaway from our conversation today that you hope our viewers and our listeners take with them, what would it be?
Rupert Spira:
It would be that what they have been seeking all their lives in activities, substances, objects, relationships, and so on, is simply available in the core of themselves. And that all that is necessary to do is just to turn in one's self to one's essential being. And although that may at first feel neutral, the blank canvas, as you say, in time, its innate quality of peace makes itself known to them. And in time its quality of unconditional joy makes itself known.
Cali Alpert:
Well, speaking of joy, this has been such a joy to spend this time with you today. Thank you so very much for making yourself available.
Rupert Spira:
Thank you, Cali. It's been a beautiful conversation. Thank you.
Cali Alpert:
It's such a pleasure. If people would like to find out more about you, where can they find that information?
Rupert Spira:
Well, the two places I would recommend, my YouTube channel has an embarrassing number of YouTube clips on it, so go to my YouTube channel, there's lots of material there. Or my website, rupertspira.com, lots of details of events, publications, audios, videos, and so on. They would be the two main sources.
Cali Alpert:
Thank you so much.
Rupert Spira:
Thank you, Cali.
Cali Alpert:
It's a pleasure. Thank you.
Rupert Spira:
A real pleasure. Thank you.
Cali Alpert:
Thanks for Dropping In with Omega Institute. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps new listeners find us. If you'd like to see what we look like, watch the video version of Dropping In on Omega's YouTube channel. Dropping In is made possible in part by the support of Omega members. Omega members enjoy a host of beneficial experiences when they donate to help sustain Omega's programming. To learn more, visit eomega.org/membership and check out our many online learning opportunities, featuring your favorite teachers and thought leaders at eomega.org/onlinelearning.
I'm Cali Alpert, producer and host of Dropping In. Our video editor is Grannell Knox. The music and mix are by Scott Mueller. Thanks for dropping in.