The Vehicle of the Understanding

Rupert thanks the Mandali team as well as his own. He then thanks the attendees and references his evolution in understanding the way the teaching is shared. It is the interactions, all of them, that are, itself, the vehicle of the teaching.

A man asks about the concept of the soul and whether it is something he must let go of. Rupert suggests that soul means the totality of each finite mind. Traditional paths are formulated in terms of a journey that that soul makes back to God; this is the progressive path. The Direct Path goes directly there. However, as a result of this understanding, our minds, bodies and souls may be gradually aligned, but it happens as a result of the understanding. It is not a prerequisite for it. You don’t need to let it go; it will let go of you, in time.

A woman asks why love wasn’t included in Rupert’s description of true nature with peace and joy. Rupert clarifies that our true nature is peace and joy on the inside and love and beauty on the outside. The experience of sharing our being with everyone is love; the experience of sharing our being with a thing is beauty.

A man shares his struggles with his monkey mind and his fear of getting lost if he drops techniques to quiet it. Rupert suggests that previously the feeling of getting lost was so intolerable that he would rather do his practice to keep his monkey mind at bay, which prevents him from feeling the discomfort, which is deeper than the monkey mind. That fear is the deeper level of the separate self. Allow the fear to come up and take his stand as the space of awareness. This neutralises it.

A man references the portal between the absolute and the manifest and wonders how it all comes together. Rupert says that ‘I’ is a portal that can be passed through in either direction, elucidating through the John Smith and King Lear metaphor. The first thought that John Smith must have is the ‘I’ thought. It is implicit in naming things. Anything he adds to the ‘I’, he becomes King Lear. For John Smith, it is the last experience he has before he loses himself. For John Smith, the ‘I’ thought is his portal to peace. The world is an expansion of ‘I’.

A man shares that his mother is ill and dying and expresses a desire to help and offer comfort as he learns about non-duality. Rupert suggests that it is not necessary to say something like, ‘you were not born and you will not die’ as we can convey that through the peace of our presence. The greatest gift is to give her a taste of her innate peace; we do that by being at peace ourself.

A man asks when there’s noise and thought during meditation if he should allow it. Rupert asks what the space of the room would do if we all started shouting. Nothing, because it is not disturbed by the shouting. That’s it.

A man asks about how to explain past life memories. Rupert uses the whirlpool analogy to describe the ripples that go into making a whirlpool. In time, that whirlpool dissipates but doesn’t disappear completely; there are ripples. Later on, they may gather together to form a new whirlpool, and there may be an intuition that one of the ripples that is part of him now started before this particular whirlpool started.

Rupert says, 'We part without parting' and says goodbye to those in the room and those listening from home.

Rupert thanks the Mandali team as well as his own. He then thanks the attendees and references his evolution in understanding the way the teaching is shared. It is the interactions, all of them, that are, itself, the vehicle of the teaching.

A man asks about the concept of the soul and whether it is something he must let go of. Rupert suggests that soul means the totality of each finite mind. Traditional paths are formulated in terms of a journey that that soul makes back to God; this is the progressive path. The Direct Path goes directly there. However, as a result of this understanding, our minds, bodies and souls may be gradually aligned, but it happens as a result of the understanding. It is not a prerequisite for it. You don’t need to let it go; it will let go of you, in time.

A woman asks why love wasn’t included in Rupert’s description of true nature with peace and joy. Rupert clarifies that our true nature is peace and joy on the inside and love and beauty on the outside. The experience of sharing our being with everyone is love; the experience of sharing our being with a thing is beauty.

A man shares his struggles with his monkey mind and his fear of getting lost if he drops techniques to quiet it. Rupert suggests that previously the feeling of getting lost was so intolerable that he would rather do his practice to keep his monkey mind at bay, which prevents him from feeling the discomfort, which is deeper than the monkey mind. That fear is the deeper level of the separate self. Allow the fear to come up and take his stand as the space of awareness. This neutralises it.

A man references the portal between the absolute and the manifest and wonders how it all comes together. Rupert says that ‘I’ is a portal that can be passed through in either direction, elucidating through the John Smith and King Lear metaphor. The first thought that John Smith must have is the ‘I’ thought. It is implicit in naming things. Anything he adds to the ‘I’, he becomes King Lear. For John Smith, it is the last experience he has before he loses himself. For John Smith, the ‘I’ thought is his portal to peace. The world is an expansion of ‘I’.

A man shares that his mother is ill and dying and expresses a desire to help and offer comfort as he learns about non-duality. Rupert suggests that it is not necessary to say something like, ‘you were not born and you will not die’ as we can convey that through the peace of our presence. The greatest gift is to give her a taste of her innate peace; we do that by being at peace ourself.

A man asks when there’s noise and thought during meditation if he should allow it. Rupert asks what the space of the room would do if we all started shouting. Nothing, because it is not disturbed by the shouting. That’s it.

A man asks about how to explain past life memories. Rupert uses the whirlpool analogy to describe the ripples that go into making a whirlpool. In time, that whirlpool dissipates but doesn’t disappear completely; there are ripples. Later on, they may gather together to form a new whirlpool, and there may be an intuition that one of the ripples that is part of him now started before this particular whirlpool started.

Rupert says, 'We part without parting' and says goodbye to those in the room and those listening from home.