Non-Duality and Moral Responsibility

How can one reconcile the apparent privacy of individual experience with the understanding that consciousness itself is shared and unlimited? Rupert says: ‘Because you cannot know what another person is experiencing, you presume therefore that the awareness with which you know your experience and the awareness with which they know their experience must be separate. You’re conflating the contents of awareness with awareness itself, and you presume that awareness must share the limitations that your experience shares. But we don’t realise the extent to which we’ve been conditioned. We presume that the belief that our awareness is temporary, finite, and private. But it is our experience that awareness is unlimited.’

When being guided in meditation, is one engaging with pure awareness itself or with mind-based attention? Rupert says: ‘Awareness, or consciousness, is the knowing element in the mind. You could say the finite mind is a mixture of consciousness plus thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions. So when it is said the mind knows such and such, consciousness is the knowing element in the mind. Attention is just the directing or the focusing of awareness. The awareness with which your dog or your cat feels pain is the exact same awareness with which you and I are aware of our experience. There’s just one kind of awareness, and it’s always in the same condition.’

Why is this understanding termed ‘non-duality’ rather than ‘oneism’ or simply ‘the One’? Rupert says: ‘When we give anything a name, we make a noun out of it. Even the term “awareness” the subtle suggestion is that awareness is some thing, albeit a very subtle thing. So the ancient sages who first formulated this understanding, in order to prevent the mind appropriating awareness and making it into a subtle object, they prefer just to say what awareness is not rather than what it is. But they stop short of saying it was one, because we all know what happens when you reify the absolute and make a god or something out of it. Although I respect that philosophically and completely agree with it, I do sometimes refer to “the One”, because in the devotional traditions they like to have this devotional attitude towards the One.’

What guidance exists for someone experiencing fear and grief about the dissolution of the separate self and its relationships? Rupert says: ‘If you really understand what the separate self is, there’ll be no grieving about its dissolution. The apparently separate self is a mixture of the one infinite consciousness plus thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions. All that disappears – what’s traditionally referred to as the death of the separate self – is simply ceasing to identify yourself with the content of experience. The separate self doesn’t really die. It was never born or created. The separate self is just a belief: “I am defined by my experience”. What are you going to lose? Your suffering on the inside and your conflict on the outside.’

What is meant by ‘body-mind’, and how does it relate to awareness? Rupert says: ‘A body-mind is just that – what you seem to be as a person, a mixture of your physical body and your mind, that is, your thoughts, feelings, memories, images and so on. In this consciousness-only model, infinite consciousness is the sole reality. The activity of consciousness is what we call “mind”. And the body is what a portion of that mind looks like when it’s perceived from a second-person point of view. When one finite mind looks at another finite mind, it appears as a body. When you look inside yourself, you see thoughts, feelings, images, memories. But when I look at you, I see a body.’

How can the mind plot against one’s understanding if the mind is merely thought appearing in consciousness? Rupert says: ‘The mind is consciousness plus the content of experience. This apparently separate entity wants to perpetuate itself by continuing its activity. As long as the mind is continuing its activity – thinking, feeling, sensing and perceiving – it perpetuates itself. The one thing it finds really difficult is not to do anything at all. Not only to abandon the conventional search for happiness in the world, but to abandon the search for God in the religious traditions, or even to abandon the search for enlightenment in the spiritual traditions. A time comes when you have to let all of that go, and that doesn’t just feel like death to the mind, it is the death of the apparently separate self.’

How should one understand the relationship between consciousness being infinite and mathematical concepts of multiple infinities of different sizes? Rupert says: ‘To me, infinite means “not finite” – nothing to do with size. The infinite has no size. It’s not infinitely extended in any number of dimensions. Infinite, to me, means no finite dimensions. So, the only way we could represent that in the mind’s language is a point. But it would be a dimensionless point. To describe consciousness as being infinite is legitimate from the mind’s point of view. But consciousness itself would never say of itself “I am infinite”. All consciousness would say, if it could speak about itself, is “I am”. The words “I am” are the only words in the English language that express the ultimate truth.’

How does one synthesise consciousness-only understanding with scientific approaches, particularly in prescribing psychiatric medications? Rupert says: ‘From the consciousness-only perspective, the only reason the world appears made of matter is because we view it from the localised perspective of a finite mind. Matter is just what the activity of infinite consciousness looks like from our localised points of view. When you are prescribing a drug to your patient you are really planting an idea in their mind, a very powerful idea. The drug, the tablet is just what that idea looks like through the lens of sense perception. You can’t treat psychological disturbance with physical stuff. The physical stuff that you’re giving them is actually psychological stuff. From your point of view, you are working at the interface between these two world views. I think a psychiatrist’s work would be hugely enhanced by this understanding.’

"How does one reconcile non-dual understanding with moral and ethical considerations, particularly regarding how some have misused spiritual texts to justify harmful behaviour? Rupert says: ‘That is a very extreme example of the ego appropriating the non-dual understanding and using it to perpetuate its ignorance. To think that such behaviour is in any way condoned by any of the sacred scriptures is a gross misunderstanding and misrepresentation. Only someone whose mind is profoundly clouded by a deep sense of separation could possibly believe that was the case.’"

Why can consciousness be described as infinite when it cannot be objectified or measured? Rupert says: ‘We don’t know that we are infinite, because we distinguish ourself from objects. We, consciousness, know that we are infinite because our experience of our self is infinite. The reason we can say that consciousness is unlimited is not because we compare ourself with the content of experience. It’s because in our experience of our self, in consciousness’s experience of itself, there are no limits. You, consciousness, experience yourself as being present and aware, but without any finite qualities. I want you to taste consciousness, to taste its nature rather than infer its nature.’

How does one transform occasional experiences of peaceful awareness into a consistent lived reality? Rupert says: ‘Well, there are two things you can do. One is to visit regularly and often. Every time you go there and you rest there, it shines a little bit more brightly, and experience gradually loses its capacity to veil it. You can take these little micro pauses throughout the day. Get into the habit of tapping into your being until you feel that it’s available always in the background of your experience. The balance shifts after a while.’

How can profound connections with loved ones be reconciled with the apparent forgetting that occurs between lifetimes? Rupert says: ‘Think of infinite consciousness as a kind of wide open, unfocused field of pure aware being. The localisation process is whereby consciousness progressively narrows and focuses its capacity of knowing. Our five senses filter out the larger part of reality, which enables us to live a life. Your memory is like a filter that shuts out everything that you don’t need to know to enable you to live now. You’re not going to forget the connection because the real connection is the fact that you share your being with them. That’s the experience of love. That remains undiminished.’

How can the experience of infinite awareness feel consistently welcoming instead of overwhelming? Rupert says: ‘What you are essentially, at the deepest level, has no limits. When your thoughts are agitated, you are not agitated. You don’t share the limitations of your finite experience. I just mean you are not finite. Your thoughts are finite, your feelings are finite, but you don’t share their limitations. The felt implications of this understanding is that you find that you are peaceful and you feel this sense of sufficiency. Your desires no longer come from a sense of lack. Your desires come from fullness and you just want to share that fullness.’

How can one address the deep fear that consciousness might be impersonal and cold, and that personal awareness might cease at death? Rupert says: ‘You’re right, that consciousness is impersonal in the sense that it’s not generated by and doesn’t share the limitations of your body or your mind. But at the same time, it is intimate. Consciousness is even more intimate than our most intimate thoughts and feelings. It’s actually the self aspect of the personal self. It’s not that the personal self disappears, it’s that its temporary, finite, personal qualities subside. And what is left is the true self that the personal self really is. It’s actually what you love about yourself. The self that you love is not going to disappear. It’s gonna get stronger. Nothing actually disappears. It’s just a temporary configuration of yourself. It will subside, but you will remain as you are.’

How does one understand the relationship between the peaceful ‘holiday home’ of being and the concept of infinite awareness? Rupert says: ‘Your holiday home is your being, consciousness. The awareness with which each of us is now aware of this experience is just ordinary everyday unlimited awareness. It’s free. It’s at peace. That’s your home. It’s your being. It’s who you really are before you’ve clothed yourself in experience. Peace is not a feeling. Peace is the nature of being. It’s like looking at patches of blue sky. The blue sky is always there, but it sometimes appears and sometimes not. But it doesn’t come and go. It’s always there, but it’s sometimes obscured by anxiety or feelings.’