Where Does Soul Fit in the Non-Dual Understanding? from the media Guided by the Love of Truth

Be guided by the love of truth, suggests Rupert in response to a man who expresses conflict over his forty-year dedication to an inward-facing path and his more recent exploration of the Direct Path. Rupert expresses compassion for this dilemma – he had a similar experience – and suggests that he recognise that his love of truth brought him to his practice, and it is that love that has sustained him all these years. His exploration of the Direct Path is an expression of that same love. This is loyalty to the truth. Rupert suggests he continues with both approaches and allow the way forward to gradually become clear.

When the mind stops, times stops, and we step out of time into eternity. Grief, and other intense experiences, can bring an end to the mind, suggests Rupert in response to a man who refers to an experience he had as a child of being pulled through a tunnel and then coming back to himself, to his body. The man shared that his daughter, in response to the loss of a family dog, expressed the same experience. Using the analogy of Mary and Jane, Rupert clarifies: Unlimited being is not in time and space. Time and space is in consciousness.

The content of awareness is limited, not awareness, suggests Rupert in response to a woman who is new to non-duality and asks if given that her awareness is limited – for instance, she doesn't know what is happening in the next room – how can she conceive that her awareness is unlimited, as was explored in meditation.

Happiness is true nature filtering through into experience, suggests Rupert in response to a woman who experiences awareness as blank and impersonal. Peace is the word we use to describe when the agitation of our thoughts comes to an end, just as the subsidence of the movement in a movie leaves the screen visible. Happiness is the positive way of expressing the absence of lack. Peace is the positive way of expressing the absence of agitation. Love is not a relationship between two people; it is the collapse of the distinction between selves.

This exploration opens a door with tremendous implications, suggests Rupert in response to a sceptical man who struggles to find evidence that confirms that awareness is unlimited and not just specific to him. Rupert encourages scepticism both for what he says and for our own beliefs. Rupert then leads the man through the exploration of locating awareness and the man discovers that he can’t find awareness by looking for it because it is the looker. Rupert mentions the meditations as pathways to explore and experience for ourself the limitless of awareness, which can dismantle our previous conviction that awareness is limited. So many of our activities are based on the assumption that we are limited separate selves. Rupert suggests that we experiment with assuming that everyone we see shares our being.

The awareness of being is not mediated through mind, through thought or perception. Rupert responds to a woman who asks whether consciousness can ever know itself in form, when reality is filtered through it. Rupert clarifies that Kant said that we cannot know the nature of reality of the world because we perceive it through the filter of our senses. In other words, the world appears to us in a way that is consistent with the limitation of our own mind; we cannot know reality, only phenomena. However, Rupert clarifies, because each of us emerges out of reality, in the same way that a wave emerges from the ocean, we have direct access to our self. The awareness of being is not mediated through thought or perception. There is one aspect of our self that we have direct access to: the awareness of being. Rupert uses the analogy of John Smith and King Lear to further clarify this point. We know ‘I am’ directly. This is lucid waking.

Rupert brings clarity to two examples of emotional response that a man had, first to the news and then to a public experience. The man says he had difficult emotional responses, grief and anger respectively and asks about what level of engagement should be had with the world. Rupert suggests that his grief in response to news about people you don't know – in this case, children who were hurt –is compassion, which doesn’t arise on behalf of the personal self. It is the experience of our shared being. The second example was a personal response to a man who said that you and your girlfriend shouldn’t walk so slowly. This response rose on behalf of the separate self, or ego, that said, ‘I don't like what he said’. To the best of your ability, live this understanding in your life.

Rupert suggests that while it's not necessary, suffering is the inevitable consequence of separation; that is, feeling our self as temporary, finite, limited selves. There is an impulse that every separate self feels to reach for something in order to complete itself, through an object, subject or relationship. No amount of acquiring objects, substances, relationships will alleviate this sense of lack. Ultimately, the only way to alleviate it is to recognise who we essentially are. ‘Would I still feel this emotion if I wasn't a separate self?’, is a quick check for sensing on whose behalf emotions arise, the sense of a separate self or of our shared being.

Be guided by the love of truth, suggests Rupert in response to a man who expresses conflict over his forty-year dedication to an inward-facing path and his more recent exploration of the Direct Path. Rupert expresses compassion for this dilemma – he had a similar experience – and suggests that he recognise that his love of truth brought him to his practice, and it is that love that has sustained him all these years. His exploration of the Direct Path is an expression of that same love. This is loyalty to the truth. Rupert suggests he continues with both approaches and allow the way forward to gradually become clear.

When the mind stops, times stops, and we step out of time into eternity. Grief, and other intense experiences, can bring an end to the mind, suggests Rupert in response to a man who refers to an experience he had as a child of being pulled through a tunnel and then coming back to himself, to his body. The man shared that his daughter, in response to the loss of a family dog, expressed the same experience. Using the analogy of Mary and Jane, Rupert clarifies: Unlimited being is not in time and space. Time and space is in consciousness.

The content of awareness is limited, not awareness, suggests Rupert in response to a woman who is new to non-duality and asks if given that her awareness is limited – for instance, she doesn't know what is happening in the next room – how can she conceive that her awareness is unlimited, as was explored in meditation.

Happiness is true nature filtering through into experience, suggests Rupert in response to a woman who experiences awareness as blank and impersonal. Peace is the word we use to describe when the agitation of our thoughts comes to an end, just as the subsidence of the movement in a movie leaves the screen visible. Happiness is the positive way of expressing the absence of lack. Peace is the positive way of expressing the absence of agitation. Love is not a relationship between two people; it is the collapse of the distinction between selves.

This exploration opens a door with tremendous implications, suggests Rupert in response to a sceptical man who struggles to find evidence that confirms that awareness is unlimited and not just specific to him. Rupert encourages scepticism both for what he says and for our own beliefs. Rupert then leads the man through the exploration of locating awareness and the man discovers that he can’t find awareness by looking for it because it is the looker. Rupert mentions the meditations as pathways to explore and experience for ourself the limitless of awareness, which can dismantle our previous conviction that awareness is limited. So many of our activities are based on the assumption that we are limited separate selves. Rupert suggests that we experiment with assuming that everyone we see shares our being.

The awareness of being is not mediated through mind, through thought or perception. Rupert responds to a woman who asks whether consciousness can ever know itself in form, when reality is filtered through it. Rupert clarifies that Kant said that we cannot know the nature of reality of the world because we perceive it through the filter of our senses. In other words, the world appears to us in a way that is consistent with the limitation of our own mind; we cannot know reality, only phenomena. However, Rupert clarifies, because each of us emerges out of reality, in the same way that a wave emerges from the ocean, we have direct access to our self. The awareness of being is not mediated through thought or perception. There is one aspect of our self that we have direct access to: the awareness of being. Rupert uses the analogy of John Smith and King Lear to further clarify this point. We know ‘I am’ directly. This is lucid waking.

Rupert brings clarity to two examples of emotional response that a man had, first to the news and then to a public experience. The man says he had difficult emotional responses, grief and anger respectively and asks about what level of engagement should be had with the world. Rupert suggests that his grief in response to news about people you don't know – in this case, children who were hurt –is compassion, which doesn’t arise on behalf of the personal self. It is the experience of our shared being. The second example was a personal response to a man who said that you and your girlfriend shouldn’t walk so slowly. This response rose on behalf of the separate self, or ego, that said, ‘I don't like what he said’. To the best of your ability, live this understanding in your life.

Rupert suggests that while it's not necessary, suffering is the inevitable consequence of separation; that is, feeling our self as temporary, finite, limited selves. There is an impulse that every separate self feels to reach for something in order to complete itself, through an object, subject or relationship. No amount of acquiring objects, substances, relationships will alleviate this sense of lack. Ultimately, the only way to alleviate it is to recognise who we essentially are. ‘Would I still feel this emotion if I wasn't a separate self?’, is a quick check for sensing on whose behalf emotions arise, the sense of a separate self or of our shared being.