Can I Bridge Deep Meditation States with Ordinary Activities? from the media Experiencing Sharing of Being

I understand that happiness lies in being rather than external pleasures, but I still enjoy travel and meals with friends. Does this mean I’m not truly established in being since I still seek these pleasurable experiences? Rupert says: ‘If one can be established in one’s being, and one can know that the source of happiness is your own being, you can still enjoy friendship, enjoy travelling, going out for a nice meal with friends . . . but it’s just that you no longer engage in those activities for the purpose of making you happy. You are perfectly happy. You know where your happiness lies. It lies in your being . . . you can still be engaged in life, very fully engaged in life, still participate in all those activities, but no longer for the purpose of finding happiness.’

I believe we’re in a similar situation to when the Church was challenged by Copernicus and Galileo, and now science has become the new church. Do you believe there will be a paradigm shift from separation to unity before it’s too late? Rupert says: ‘Yes. From the paradigm of separation to the paradigm of unity, but before it’s too late. Yes, I do . . . If you asked me to validate or substantiate that, I would find it difficult. Someone, if they wanted to, could present me with all the facts that proved that this was not going to happen . . . But I’m just eternally optimistic. I just have a positive outlook . . . And I think, ultimately, yes, there will be a shift of paradigm . . . I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of what has to happen before that will take place. But I do think eventually it will take place.’

I had a childhood conviction that what I am cannot cease to exist. Using Heidegger’s question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ I experimented: if everything material disappears — what remains is what truly is, transparent and void. What would you say to this reasoning? Rupert says: ‘It’s very beautiful intuition that you had as a child, that what you are cannot cease to be . . . I also was very fascinated by Heidegger’s statement . . . But I realised after some time thinking about it that his statement was predicated on the existence of things . . . both the idea of something and nothing are all predicated on things . . . If you ask, what is the experience of that which truly is, it would never formulate its experience of itself in relation to things, neither their presence nor their absence, because it has never experienced those things . . . For that which truly is, there is neither everything nor something. And most importantly, nor nothing . . . there’s a flaw in the question.’

I don’t believe in reincarnation, but where do all my learning and development go when I die? Do they go on to benefit the whole, and if not, what’s the point? Rupert says: ‘When you die . . . when every finite mind, when every individual wave dies, I would suggest that it donates its content to the whole . . . The residual energies of your mind are then dispersed as ripples . . . and become part of the collective mind, the collective unconscious. And some of those ripples might gather together again and form the basis of a new wave, which would satisfy your question about reincarnation . . . I don’t think your experience is wasted. I think our experience, we donate residual experience to the collective mind of humanity . . . Our lives are not meaningless.’

Please elaborate on the concept of ‘the collective unconscious’. Rupert says: ‘It’s a term I borrow from Jung. The term “unconscious” doesn’t quite make sense in the context . . . because it doesn’t mean unconscious in the sense of “not made of consciousness” . . . it means, not accessible under normal circumstances in the waking state . . . some dreams reach even further into the depths of your mind and access a realm that is not just your personal unconscious, but is the collective unconscious that region of each of our minds that is shared by all minds . . . these are archetypal dreams . . . that bring some impersonal, universal knowledge out of the depths of your mind into your conscious awareness.’

I can see nature and some human creations as expressions of love, but when I see people with challenging ideas, I struggle to see that as unity rather than creating separation in myself. Rupert says: ‘Have you ever had a nightmare where some really mean guy was attacking you? . . . But your own mind created that guy . . . So that gives you just a sense of how, in the dream of infinite consciousness, in the collective unconscious of humanity, it’s not all just sweetness and light . . . some people whose minds have not been touched by this understanding or whose hearts have not been touched by this understanding, embody these energies and represent them in our world . . . all minds are localisations of the same one that you are . . . all these people, all of them without exception, are your very own self . . . we have a sacred duty to think of them in that way.’

I understand that everything is accepted, and I believe I’m the one who resists as the separate self. But regarding difficult emotions, should I feel them completely or rest as being? You mention asking if you can live with feelings forever, but if time doesn’t exist, how does this work? Rupert says: ‘You’re slightly mixing up levels of the teaching there. Yes, ultimately time doesn’t exist. But if you’re talking about painful, unbearable emotions . . . I might suggest to feel yourself as this totally accepting, loving presence of awareness within which this dark cloud of grief appears and see that the sky of awareness has no resistance to it . . . you can only live with the unbearable feeling forever if you are standing as awareness . . . the purpose of asking you, “can you live with this unbearable feeling forever?”, is to viscerally put you in the right place . . . to help you to stand as awareness.’

When I meditate and rest as being, my body shakes intensely with sounds in my skull. Sometimes it’s so strong I could fall off my chair. This has been going on for two years. What suggestions do you have? Rupert says: ‘You’re a very passionate, intense character . . . there’s tension and trauma held in your body as a result of your past experience. And now you are spending these long periods of time meditating. So your body is beginning to relax and unwind . . . in doing so, as it releases its stored up energies and tensions, it’s releasing them with these movements . . . if you start having these experiences when you are meditating and you are hurting yourself . . . I would stop meditating or certainly open your eyes or keep meditating, but go for a walk . . . I would recommend a gentle yoga practice . . . Yin yoga, very slow . . . contemplative yoga practice.’

During meditation, I experienced the dissolution of my body’s boundary, where it seemed to dissolve and go out. It was scary and disorienting, so I stopped. What should I do in this moment? Rupert says: ‘What you actually felt, although you haven’t formulated it to yourself like this, is that the separate self in you, which invests its identity in your body, felt like it was dying. And that’s terrifying for the separate self . . . should it happen again, just be courageous, because you are not going to die. Just a belief, an old belief and an associated feeling . . . is going to die . . . if it happens again, just let go into it, let it happen.’

What are your views on vegetarianism or not eating animals? Rupert says: ‘I don’t like to tell people what to do or how to live. I do my best to express my understanding, such as it is. And I do my best to live my understanding, but I respect everybody else’s freedom . . . It’s for you to decide how best to live your understanding in the world . . . I would never presume to tell anyone.’

If awareness only knows itself directly, what are the mechanics of grace in realisation? How do they impact the mind? Rupert says: ‘Infinite consciousness contracting or at least seeming to contract into a finite mind, that sets up a tension in the finite mind. And that tension is always trying to return the finite mind to its natural state of equilibrium, namely infinite consciousness . . . that impulse in the finite mind to go back to infinite consciousness is grace . . . that pull, the gravitational pull that infinite consciousness exerts on the finite mind is grace. And it’s acting on the finite mind all the time . . . once consciousness has seemed to contract into a finite mind, the impulse to return is always acting on it by definition. That’s what we call grace.’

If whatever we experience in the outside world is ultimately a dream of consciousness, how does this fit with our perceived circle of life? When we’re born, does the dream start, and when we die, does it end? Rupert says: ‘Our birth is when infinite consciousness contracts or seems to contract into a finite mind . . . when we are born, we fall asleep to reality and wake up in the dream . . . infinite consciousness has fallen asleep to itself and has woken up in this waking state as an illusory separate self . . . you – who you truly are is – already infinite consciousness now. You don’t have to die to be reunited . . . you are that now . . . The knowledge “I am” is the portal in the mind. The experience “I am” seems to be an experience that each of us have in our own minds . . . But when you go closely into the experience I am . . . you go out of your mind, you pass through a portal in your mind, and you touch the infinite.’

I’m a trauma therapist. Where is the line between dissolving in the body during deep meditation and dissociation? As a child, I was very dissociated as an escape mechanism. Rupert says: ‘There’s a big difference. When you are dissociating . . . you are facing a situation that is unbearable and terrifying . . . you learned to escape your body . . . that’s not an escape from experience. It’s going deeply into experience and discovering who you are at your core . . . When the abused child takes the emergency exit route . . . that would be an opportunity for someone to realise ‘I still am . . . but I’m not my body’ . . . that could initiate a process of self investigation . . . In meditation, you are reversing that dissociation. You are going back to the One . . . you’re not going into a dissociated state of mind . . . you’re going to your true nature.’

I’ve had experiences where I suddenly see that whatever’s happening isn’t outside of me but in consciousness. Sometimes that’s scary because I feel alone. Sometimes it feels good with oneness. How do I handle when it’s scary? Rupert says: ‘It’s not all happening in your head; it’s all happening in consciousness . . . including your head . . . You have to use your understanding to override the apparent evidence of sense perception . . . everyone and indeed everything is an appearance of the same being . . . Your primary experience of everything is its being . . . being is the fundamental quality or the reality of everything . . . There isn’t a little packet of being for every object . . . There’s just one being and everything borrows its existence from that one underlying being.’

I understand that happiness lies in being rather than external pleasures, but I still enjoy travel and meals with friends. Does this mean I’m not truly established in being since I still seek these pleasurable experiences? Rupert says: ‘If one can be established in one’s being, and one can know that the source of happiness is your own being, you can still enjoy friendship, enjoy travelling, going out for a nice meal with friends . . . but it’s just that you no longer engage in those activities for the purpose of making you happy. You are perfectly happy. You know where your happiness lies. It lies in your being . . . you can still be engaged in life, very fully engaged in life, still participate in all those activities, but no longer for the purpose of finding happiness.’

I believe we’re in a similar situation to when the Church was challenged by Copernicus and Galileo, and now science has become the new church. Do you believe there will be a paradigm shift from separation to unity before it’s too late? Rupert says: ‘Yes. From the paradigm of separation to the paradigm of unity, but before it’s too late. Yes, I do . . . If you asked me to validate or substantiate that, I would find it difficult. Someone, if they wanted to, could present me with all the facts that proved that this was not going to happen . . . But I’m just eternally optimistic. I just have a positive outlook . . . And I think, ultimately, yes, there will be a shift of paradigm . . . I don’t think we’ve seen the worst of what has to happen before that will take place. But I do think eventually it will take place.’

I had a childhood conviction that what I am cannot cease to exist. Using Heidegger’s question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ I experimented: if everything material disappears — what remains is what truly is, transparent and void. What would you say to this reasoning? Rupert says: ‘It’s very beautiful intuition that you had as a child, that what you are cannot cease to be . . . I also was very fascinated by Heidegger’s statement . . . But I realised after some time thinking about it that his statement was predicated on the existence of things . . . both the idea of something and nothing are all predicated on things . . . If you ask, what is the experience of that which truly is, it would never formulate its experience of itself in relation to things, neither their presence nor their absence, because it has never experienced those things . . . For that which truly is, there is neither everything nor something. And most importantly, nor nothing . . . there’s a flaw in the question.’

I don’t believe in reincarnation, but where do all my learning and development go when I die? Do they go on to benefit the whole, and if not, what’s the point? Rupert says: ‘When you die . . . when every finite mind, when every individual wave dies, I would suggest that it donates its content to the whole . . . The residual energies of your mind are then dispersed as ripples . . . and become part of the collective mind, the collective unconscious. And some of those ripples might gather together again and form the basis of a new wave, which would satisfy your question about reincarnation . . . I don’t think your experience is wasted. I think our experience, we donate residual experience to the collective mind of humanity . . . Our lives are not meaningless.’

Please elaborate on the concept of ‘the collective unconscious’. Rupert says: ‘It’s a term I borrow from Jung. The term “unconscious” doesn’t quite make sense in the context . . . because it doesn’t mean unconscious in the sense of “not made of consciousness” . . . it means, not accessible under normal circumstances in the waking state . . . some dreams reach even further into the depths of your mind and access a realm that is not just your personal unconscious, but is the collective unconscious that region of each of our minds that is shared by all minds . . . these are archetypal dreams . . . that bring some impersonal, universal knowledge out of the depths of your mind into your conscious awareness.’

I can see nature and some human creations as expressions of love, but when I see people with challenging ideas, I struggle to see that as unity rather than creating separation in myself. Rupert says: ‘Have you ever had a nightmare where some really mean guy was attacking you? . . . But your own mind created that guy . . . So that gives you just a sense of how, in the dream of infinite consciousness, in the collective unconscious of humanity, it’s not all just sweetness and light . . . some people whose minds have not been touched by this understanding or whose hearts have not been touched by this understanding, embody these energies and represent them in our world . . . all minds are localisations of the same one that you are . . . all these people, all of them without exception, are your very own self . . . we have a sacred duty to think of them in that way.’

I understand that everything is accepted, and I believe I’m the one who resists as the separate self. But regarding difficult emotions, should I feel them completely or rest as being? You mention asking if you can live with feelings forever, but if time doesn’t exist, how does this work? Rupert says: ‘You’re slightly mixing up levels of the teaching there. Yes, ultimately time doesn’t exist. But if you’re talking about painful, unbearable emotions . . . I might suggest to feel yourself as this totally accepting, loving presence of awareness within which this dark cloud of grief appears and see that the sky of awareness has no resistance to it . . . you can only live with the unbearable feeling forever if you are standing as awareness . . . the purpose of asking you, “can you live with this unbearable feeling forever?”, is to viscerally put you in the right place . . . to help you to stand as awareness.’

When I meditate and rest as being, my body shakes intensely with sounds in my skull. Sometimes it’s so strong I could fall off my chair. This has been going on for two years. What suggestions do you have? Rupert says: ‘You’re a very passionate, intense character . . . there’s tension and trauma held in your body as a result of your past experience. And now you are spending these long periods of time meditating. So your body is beginning to relax and unwind . . . in doing so, as it releases its stored up energies and tensions, it’s releasing them with these movements . . . if you start having these experiences when you are meditating and you are hurting yourself . . . I would stop meditating or certainly open your eyes or keep meditating, but go for a walk . . . I would recommend a gentle yoga practice . . . Yin yoga, very slow . . . contemplative yoga practice.’

During meditation, I experienced the dissolution of my body’s boundary, where it seemed to dissolve and go out. It was scary and disorienting, so I stopped. What should I do in this moment? Rupert says: ‘What you actually felt, although you haven’t formulated it to yourself like this, is that the separate self in you, which invests its identity in your body, felt like it was dying. And that’s terrifying for the separate self . . . should it happen again, just be courageous, because you are not going to die. Just a belief, an old belief and an associated feeling . . . is going to die . . . if it happens again, just let go into it, let it happen.’

What are your views on vegetarianism or not eating animals? Rupert says: ‘I don’t like to tell people what to do or how to live. I do my best to express my understanding, such as it is. And I do my best to live my understanding, but I respect everybody else’s freedom . . . It’s for you to decide how best to live your understanding in the world . . . I would never presume to tell anyone.’

If awareness only knows itself directly, what are the mechanics of grace in realisation? How do they impact the mind? Rupert says: ‘Infinite consciousness contracting or at least seeming to contract into a finite mind, that sets up a tension in the finite mind. And that tension is always trying to return the finite mind to its natural state of equilibrium, namely infinite consciousness . . . that impulse in the finite mind to go back to infinite consciousness is grace . . . that pull, the gravitational pull that infinite consciousness exerts on the finite mind is grace. And it’s acting on the finite mind all the time . . . once consciousness has seemed to contract into a finite mind, the impulse to return is always acting on it by definition. That’s what we call grace.’

If whatever we experience in the outside world is ultimately a dream of consciousness, how does this fit with our perceived circle of life? When we’re born, does the dream start, and when we die, does it end? Rupert says: ‘Our birth is when infinite consciousness contracts or seems to contract into a finite mind . . . when we are born, we fall asleep to reality and wake up in the dream . . . infinite consciousness has fallen asleep to itself and has woken up in this waking state as an illusory separate self . . . you – who you truly are is – already infinite consciousness now. You don’t have to die to be reunited . . . you are that now . . . The knowledge “I am” is the portal in the mind. The experience “I am” seems to be an experience that each of us have in our own minds . . . But when you go closely into the experience I am . . . you go out of your mind, you pass through a portal in your mind, and you touch the infinite.’

I’m a trauma therapist. Where is the line between dissolving in the body during deep meditation and dissociation? As a child, I was very dissociated as an escape mechanism. Rupert says: ‘There’s a big difference. When you are dissociating . . . you are facing a situation that is unbearable and terrifying . . . you learned to escape your body . . . that’s not an escape from experience. It’s going deeply into experience and discovering who you are at your core . . . When the abused child takes the emergency exit route . . . that would be an opportunity for someone to realise ‘I still am . . . but I’m not my body’ . . . that could initiate a process of self investigation . . . In meditation, you are reversing that dissociation. You are going back to the One . . . you’re not going into a dissociated state of mind . . . you’re going to your true nature.’

I’ve had experiences where I suddenly see that whatever’s happening isn’t outside of me but in consciousness. Sometimes that’s scary because I feel alone. Sometimes it feels good with oneness. How do I handle when it’s scary? Rupert says: ‘It’s not all happening in your head; it’s all happening in consciousness . . . including your head . . . You have to use your understanding to override the apparent evidence of sense perception . . . everyone and indeed everything is an appearance of the same being . . . Your primary experience of everything is its being . . . being is the fundamental quality or the reality of everything . . . There isn’t a little packet of being for every object . . . There’s just one being and everything borrows its existence from that one underlying being.’