Oneness: The Only Medium

What is the purpose of the suffering we encounter while manifesting as body-minds? Rupert says: ‘Consciousness doesn’t manifest for a purpose; it does so because it is its nature. Manifestation comes at a price because an object can only be known from the point of view of a subject. Consciousness cannot know manifestation directly, only from the localised point of view of a finite mind. Suffering is not that it happens for a purpose, but is the inevitable consequence of consciousness’s apparent contraction into a finite mind. When consciousness contracts, it forgets its nature of peace and quiet joy, which is why all finite minds seek happiness. The best use of suffering is to seek the source of happiness, rather than distracting ourselves from discomfort through substances, activities, or relationships.’

How can one reconcile profound spiritual experiences of disappearing completely with returning to everyday life? Rupert says: ‘You are having authentic experiences when you disappear in the bathtub or driving your car, and you’re not imagining this. It’s very natural when you feel this overflowing of understanding to want to share it or express it. The impulse to communicate about this understanding is not something to suppress. Your experience in these moments is that of the character in the movie who has recognised the essential nature of herself as the screen, and also realises that the essential nature of everyone else and the entire landscape in the movie is also made of the screen. This recognition that we are all made of the same indivisible screen is what we feel as the experience of love.’

What is the role of suffering in the creative process, particularly the dissatisfaction one feels when making art? Rupert says: ‘Almost all artists are dissatisfied because they’re trying to express something which cannot be expressed. As an artist, you’re always trying to express the inexpressible. Nothing you ever make will perfectly say what you want to say, though you’ll come closer and closer. This continual process of refinement continues until you need to say almost nothing. This dissatisfaction doesn’t need to feel like intense suffering. It’s a suffering that comes from love, like the suffering a parent feels on behalf of their child. It’s a suffering you are willing to bear, that you bear happily, because it’s part of your work as a creative artist.’

A participant relates her experience of how these sessions have created a profound inner shift. Rupert says: ‘Thank you for this. I appreciate your sharing how these sessions have affected you.’

How should one approach yoga meditations when they’ve triggered overwhelming emotions in the past? Rupert says: ‘If the yoga meditations weren’t effective for you and you want to look for an alternative method like Feldenkrais, that’s fine. The yoga meditations don’t require any preparation – it’s best to come to them completely unprepared. You could certainly do them alongside any other practice you are doing.’

How can one reconcile the non-dual perspective of time with the apparent continuity of time in everyday experience? Rupert says: ‘When you dream at night, what takes no time in the waking state can take weeks in the dream state. Similarly, what takes weeks in the waking state takes no time in consciousness. The appearance of time and space correlates directly with thought and perception – when there is thinking and perceiving, there is time and space. When there’s no thought and perception, there’s no time and space. Time and space are not inherent in reality; they are how reality appears when perceived through the filter of thought and perception. The world doesn’t veil its reality; it shines with it. Every object, every pebble, every blade of grass, every tree, every mountain is shining with being. It’s only our belief that objects are made of something other than infinite consciousness that causes the world to seem to veil its reality.’

Is the realisation that oneself is the only medium in which all experience arises a correct understanding? Rupert says: ‘You’re correct. You are like the character in the movie who has recognised the essential nature of herself as the screen, and also realises that the essential nature of everyone else and all the landscape in the movie is also made of the screen. The recognition that we are all made of the same indivisible screen is what we feel as the experience of love. Everybody, every single person in the world knows the experience of love, though they interpret it differently. Here we cultivate that experience and interpret it in a way consistent with the consciousness-only model.’

Is the experience of joy that arises spontaneously when looking at simple things like flowers an experience of one’s true nature? Rupert says: ‘You’re not mistaken. Each time you have this experience of joy, you are tasting your being. Some experiences like seeing a flower have the power to interrupt the normal flow of experience on the horizontal line of time. Your mind stops traveling back and forth in time, and in that interruption, your being shines. You taste that shining of being as the experience of joy. The experience of joy itself is always the same because it’s always the same shining of being. Peace, joy, love, beauty – these are all different words for the same experience, but the different words we use depend on the context in which the taste of our being shines. If it shines in relationship, we call it love; if it shines in relationship to an object, we call it beauty.’

What happens when the finite mind meets consciousness? Rupert says: ‘When the mind, which can only know objects, looks at consciousness, it sees the absence of an object because it’s accustomed to seeing objects. From consciousness’s own point of view, it experiences itself as peace. So, what is peace from the point of view of consciousness looks like boredom from the point of view of the mind. If you’re bored in meditation, you are in your mind, not resting in your being. Rather than either falling asleep or taking off into the past or future, we should take one step back from the blank state of mind, go all the way back to our being. And there it’s peaceful.’

How can one know that the joy felt during spiritual insights is causeless and not just the ego making a story? Rupert says: ‘You’re overthinking this. Just trust the joy. Joy is its own evidence. You’re not fooling yourself, and if you recognise that you have understood something, that is not egoic. It’s true, and it’s fine for your mind to acknowledge it. It’s also fine to share that with a friend. Being is uncreated, and joy is always the shining of being. The comfy bed, the flower, meditation, music, delicious meal – whatever it was interrupted the flow of your experience. These objects and events caused this interruption, but they don’t cause the joy that flows into that empty space. The joy itself is causeless. The great secret is to find a way of putting a pause in the horizontal flow of your experience without having to have a substance, activity, relationship, or object.’

What to do when one falls asleep during meditation and cannot stay in the present? Rupert says: ‘It’s okay. You’ve got jet lag. You’ve just flown halfway across the world. Don’t worry. It’s okay to fall asleep. I get tired sometimes in meditation and feel sleepy. It’s natural. Whether you are doing something, the brief moments when you feel you are in the now, and as you rightly say, when you’re deeply asleep, you don’t worry. You’re always in eternity. Don’t worry. Just go with the flow. You are already in God’s lap. You don’t have to worry about anything.’

Is there a distinction between the ‘I’ and the ‘am’ in ‘I am’, with ‘am’ being God’s dream? Rupert says: ‘Amness is just pure being. You know that from your experience. If you go to the experience that enables you to say “I am”, there’s no movement there. There’s no form there. It’s just pure empty being. “I” is just the Christian name of amness. “I” is the name that being gives to itself, because “I” is the name that that which knows itself gives to itself. “I am” is the first thing that I can say for certain about myself. The “I” that can say “I am” for certain about myself is already present. Amness is already present in it.’

How can one reconcile feeling peace inside while experiencing restlessness, anger or boredom on the outside? Rupert says: ‘It’s possible to feel anger but simultaneously peace inside. When anger is impersonal – not because you’ve been triggered but because it’s an appropriate response to a situation – you can be fierce if necessary and peaceful inside. But if your anger comes from emotional reactivity, you could still feel peace inside, but ideally you want the peace inside to permeate your whole being, to permeate your emotional reactivity. Ideally you want it to flow into your emotions as well.’

How does an interruption of experience relate to the experience of joy? Rupert says: ‘An event like winning the lottery might not be sufficiently powerful to bring your wandering mind into the present moment if you’re still concerned about the future. But for someone whose fears about health and security would be resolved by winning the lottery, it would interrupt their experience and into that gap, the joy of being would flow. It can be a very small thing – just the taste of coffee, something a good chef creates that gathers all your faculties onto this moment. The nature of being is joy and being accompanies all experience, but much of our experience veils our being and therefore veils its innate joy. Suffering is not really the absence of joy but the veiling of joy.’

What is the purpose of the suffering we encounter while manifesting as body-minds? Rupert says: ‘Consciousness doesn’t manifest for a purpose; it does so because it is its nature. Manifestation comes at a price because an object can only be known from the point of view of a subject. Consciousness cannot know manifestation directly, only from the localised point of view of a finite mind. Suffering is not that it happens for a purpose, but is the inevitable consequence of consciousness’s apparent contraction into a finite mind. When consciousness contracts, it forgets its nature of peace and quiet joy, which is why all finite minds seek happiness. The best use of suffering is to seek the source of happiness, rather than distracting ourselves from discomfort through substances, activities, or relationships.’

How can one reconcile profound spiritual experiences of disappearing completely with returning to everyday life? Rupert says: ‘You are having authentic experiences when you disappear in the bathtub or driving your car, and you’re not imagining this. It’s very natural when you feel this overflowing of understanding to want to share it or express it. The impulse to communicate about this understanding is not something to suppress. Your experience in these moments is that of the character in the movie who has recognised the essential nature of herself as the screen, and also realises that the essential nature of everyone else and the entire landscape in the movie is also made of the screen. This recognition that we are all made of the same indivisible screen is what we feel as the experience of love.’

What is the role of suffering in the creative process, particularly the dissatisfaction one feels when making art? Rupert says: ‘Almost all artists are dissatisfied because they’re trying to express something which cannot be expressed. As an artist, you’re always trying to express the inexpressible. Nothing you ever make will perfectly say what you want to say, though you’ll come closer and closer. This continual process of refinement continues until you need to say almost nothing. This dissatisfaction doesn’t need to feel like intense suffering. It’s a suffering that comes from love, like the suffering a parent feels on behalf of their child. It’s a suffering you are willing to bear, that you bear happily, because it’s part of your work as a creative artist.’

A participant relates her experience of how these sessions have created a profound inner shift. Rupert says: ‘Thank you for this. I appreciate your sharing how these sessions have affected you.’

How should one approach yoga meditations when they’ve triggered overwhelming emotions in the past? Rupert says: ‘If the yoga meditations weren’t effective for you and you want to look for an alternative method like Feldenkrais, that’s fine. The yoga meditations don’t require any preparation – it’s best to come to them completely unprepared. You could certainly do them alongside any other practice you are doing.’

How can one reconcile the non-dual perspective of time with the apparent continuity of time in everyday experience? Rupert says: ‘When you dream at night, what takes no time in the waking state can take weeks in the dream state. Similarly, what takes weeks in the waking state takes no time in consciousness. The appearance of time and space correlates directly with thought and perception – when there is thinking and perceiving, there is time and space. When there’s no thought and perception, there’s no time and space. Time and space are not inherent in reality; they are how reality appears when perceived through the filter of thought and perception. The world doesn’t veil its reality; it shines with it. Every object, every pebble, every blade of grass, every tree, every mountain is shining with being. It’s only our belief that objects are made of something other than infinite consciousness that causes the world to seem to veil its reality.’

Is the realisation that oneself is the only medium in which all experience arises a correct understanding? Rupert says: ‘You’re correct. You are like the character in the movie who has recognised the essential nature of herself as the screen, and also realises that the essential nature of everyone else and all the landscape in the movie is also made of the screen. The recognition that we are all made of the same indivisible screen is what we feel as the experience of love. Everybody, every single person in the world knows the experience of love, though they interpret it differently. Here we cultivate that experience and interpret it in a way consistent with the consciousness-only model.’

Is the experience of joy that arises spontaneously when looking at simple things like flowers an experience of one’s true nature? Rupert says: ‘You’re not mistaken. Each time you have this experience of joy, you are tasting your being. Some experiences like seeing a flower have the power to interrupt the normal flow of experience on the horizontal line of time. Your mind stops traveling back and forth in time, and in that interruption, your being shines. You taste that shining of being as the experience of joy. The experience of joy itself is always the same because it’s always the same shining of being. Peace, joy, love, beauty – these are all different words for the same experience, but the different words we use depend on the context in which the taste of our being shines. If it shines in relationship, we call it love; if it shines in relationship to an object, we call it beauty.’

What happens when the finite mind meets consciousness? Rupert says: ‘When the mind, which can only know objects, looks at consciousness, it sees the absence of an object because it’s accustomed to seeing objects. From consciousness’s own point of view, it experiences itself as peace. So, what is peace from the point of view of consciousness looks like boredom from the point of view of the mind. If you’re bored in meditation, you are in your mind, not resting in your being. Rather than either falling asleep or taking off into the past or future, we should take one step back from the blank state of mind, go all the way back to our being. And there it’s peaceful.’

How can one know that the joy felt during spiritual insights is causeless and not just the ego making a story? Rupert says: ‘You’re overthinking this. Just trust the joy. Joy is its own evidence. You’re not fooling yourself, and if you recognise that you have understood something, that is not egoic. It’s true, and it’s fine for your mind to acknowledge it. It’s also fine to share that with a friend. Being is uncreated, and joy is always the shining of being. The comfy bed, the flower, meditation, music, delicious meal – whatever it was interrupted the flow of your experience. These objects and events caused this interruption, but they don’t cause the joy that flows into that empty space. The joy itself is causeless. The great secret is to find a way of putting a pause in the horizontal flow of your experience without having to have a substance, activity, relationship, or object.’

What to do when one falls asleep during meditation and cannot stay in the present? Rupert says: ‘It’s okay. You’ve got jet lag. You’ve just flown halfway across the world. Don’t worry. It’s okay to fall asleep. I get tired sometimes in meditation and feel sleepy. It’s natural. Whether you are doing something, the brief moments when you feel you are in the now, and as you rightly say, when you’re deeply asleep, you don’t worry. You’re always in eternity. Don’t worry. Just go with the flow. You are already in God’s lap. You don’t have to worry about anything.’

Is there a distinction between the ‘I’ and the ‘am’ in ‘I am’, with ‘am’ being God’s dream? Rupert says: ‘Amness is just pure being. You know that from your experience. If you go to the experience that enables you to say “I am”, there’s no movement there. There’s no form there. It’s just pure empty being. “I” is just the Christian name of amness. “I” is the name that being gives to itself, because “I” is the name that that which knows itself gives to itself. “I am” is the first thing that I can say for certain about myself. The “I” that can say “I am” for certain about myself is already present. Amness is already present in it.’

How can one reconcile feeling peace inside while experiencing restlessness, anger or boredom on the outside? Rupert says: ‘It’s possible to feel anger but simultaneously peace inside. When anger is impersonal – not because you’ve been triggered but because it’s an appropriate response to a situation – you can be fierce if necessary and peaceful inside. But if your anger comes from emotional reactivity, you could still feel peace inside, but ideally you want the peace inside to permeate your whole being, to permeate your emotional reactivity. Ideally you want it to flow into your emotions as well.’

How does an interruption of experience relate to the experience of joy? Rupert says: ‘An event like winning the lottery might not be sufficiently powerful to bring your wandering mind into the present moment if you’re still concerned about the future. But for someone whose fears about health and security would be resolved by winning the lottery, it would interrupt their experience and into that gap, the joy of being would flow. It can be a very small thing – just the taste of coffee, something a good chef creates that gathers all your faculties onto this moment. The nature of being is joy and being accompanies all experience, but much of our experience veils our being and therefore veils its innate joy. Suffering is not really the absence of joy but the veiling of joy.’