Doesn’t God Care About Our Suffering?

"What is the difference between the knowing with which the finite mind knows its experience – like the meaning of a thought or the taste of ice cream – and the knowing by which all experience is known, the pure knowing of consciousness itself? Rupert says: ‘The infinite doesn’t know the finite directly. The infinite can only know finite experience through the agency of a finite mind. Of course, the finite mind is not something separate from the infinite. It is consciousness itself that rises in the form of the finite mind. In the case of the human being, the form of thought and perception. So, it is infinite consciousness itself that assumes the form of thought and perception, and through the faculty of thought and perception it knows objective or finite experience. But in the absence of a finite mind, in the absence of any perceiving faculty, the infinite doesn’t know anything. Brahman is the world or consciousness is everything – this is not true. There is no world for Brahman to be the totality of. There are no things for consciousness to be the all of. So a statement like “Brahman is the world” or “consciousness is everything” is a concession to the finite mind’s belief that there is a world as such, or that there are things as such.’"

"I understand the two thorns teaching – first being lost in experience, then taking the witness position. But I feel stuck at the witness stage. How do I move beyond it? Rupert says: ‘The first one is being lost in objective experience and the suffering that attends it. The second thorn: take a step back from the content of experience, whatever its content, and see that you are its witness, you are its observer. So here we’re in subject-object relationship. It’s why it’s called the path of discrimination. You discriminate between yourself as the subject and experience as the object. But if you stay there permanently as the witness of experience, you, in a sense, legitimise the reality of the object. So there’s a third step. You take a step back from that witness position, and you collapse the subject-object relationship altogether. There’s no longer a witness and a witnessed. There’s just knowing. Pure, seamless knowing. And it mustn’t stop short of the absolute. It has to go all the way back.’"

"In a discussion about whether consciousness dreams or imagines the world, you seemed reluctant but did say that consciousness imagines. How should I understand this distinction? Rupert says: ‘I use the words “dreaming” and “imagining” synonymously. The reason I use the word “dreaming” is to make a connection between your mind at night that dreams a dream world but simultaneously localises yourself within your own dream. I’m referring to the mechanism of a dream, the ordinary night-time dream, and then extrapolating that one level up to consciousness. I don’t mean to imply that what takes place here is identical to what takes place at night. There is more to this experience than an individual finite mind. The dream world that you have at night is the product of your finite mind. There is more to this experience than just the imagination of our own finite mind. So I sometimes use the word “imagine”. In the Western tradition, imagination is used by William Blake and ‘Ibn Arabi and Shakespeare. All I mean to convey by these two words is that the universe is a mental activity, not a physical one. It’s of the nature of mind, not of the nature of matter.’"

"When we say ‘I am’ and being is nothing – I picture it like clear jelly – why do we then describe the nature of being as loving, compassionate, peaceful? Doesn’t that mean it has to know upset and conflict? Rupert says: ‘You’re absolutely right. Take the analogy of empty space, which, relative to physical objects is nothing, similar to the sort of nothing that being or consciousness is. In being or consciousness, there’s no objective content. So, your question: why then is it legitimate to speak of being as peaceful, compassionate or loving? I don’t refer to it as compassionate, but I do refer to it as inherently peaceful and inherently loving. Strictly speaking, I shouldn’t assign any qualities to it. Why do I? Because I’m not trying to be accurate. I’m trying to be evocative. I’m trying to evoke in you the experience of being, the knowing of being. Love is the nature of being. Compassion is its expression in everyday life.’"

"If consciousness doesn’t change or is changeless, what is it that evolves? And if time is a concept of the mind, is there really any evolution? Rupert says: ‘From an absolute point of view, from the point of view of the absolute truth, no. But from the relative point of view of the mind, yes. From the relative point of view of the mind, there is change and therefore evolution. But if we want to stay with the absolute truth, there is only knowing, knowing only knowing, and there is no objective experience in that knowledge, because this knowing never really divides itself into a subject and object. It only seems to. So from that point of view, no, there’s no evolution of knowing. But the evolution – it could only be the evolution of something objective. Only something objective, like a mind or a body or a world or a company, only something objective could evolve. Strictly speaking, in the highest understanding, there is nothing objective. There’s just infinite being. And there’s nothing to evolve. There’s no evolution.’"

"If consciousness is manifesting itself through us, do we have a choice? Or are we living under the illusion that we have a choice? I’m asking from two perspectives: as the ‘I am’ and as the thinking mind. Rupert says: ‘You’re under the illusion that you are a finite mind that may or may not have a choice. The thinking mind thinks that he has a choice. What you call choice is simply thoughts and decisions arising in consciousness. There is no separate entity that possesses free will. The sense of agency, the sense of being able to choose, is real. But it doesn’t belong to a separate self. It belongs to consciousness itself. Decisions happen, choices are made, but there is no separate individual making them. They arise from consciousness, appearing as your mind.’"

"In this morning’s meditation, I imagined lying to somebody. All there was to that act was the knowing of the experience – the emotional turmoil, the thoughts. And the knowing was absolutely loving of that experience. It felt like a mother who loves me even when I’m being bad. That was horrifying. I could be bad and still belong. Rupert says: ‘Why is it scary for you to know that you are loved absolutely, irrespective of your thoughts or your behaviour? You do belong. Do you feel that there are people in this world who do so-called bad things or evil things, and therefore that they don’t belong, that they are not loved by God? If the relationship between our self as a finite mind and infinite consciousness was only one of love when our finite mind never told a lie or had a bad thought or did something dishonest, how many people would God love? Not many. Likely no one. Can you imagine having a child who you love profoundly and unconditionally? Can you imagine that child having difficulties, getting into trouble and doing something that was unkind, dishonest, bad, even evil? Would you stop loving them? That’s the nature of love. It’s unconditional.’"

"I come from a Sufi-influenced Muslim tradition. The Quran says God is aware of the distinction between being one and unique, that there is none like Him. So, when we get back into the fragmented mind, isn’t that knowledge being contained within consciousness itself? Rupert says: ‘In order for the mind to know who it truly is, it must reflect on itself. The finite mind must turn around. It must turn away from the content of experience and reflect and trace its way back to itself. So self-reflection is something that takes place in the finite mind, but there’s no self-reflection, nor need there be, in infinite consciousness, because infinite consciousness knows itself just by being itself. The sun illuminates itself just by being itself, without having to turn around and illuminate itself. Knowing-being should be written as one word. You’re absolutely right. In order to know anything other than being, you must stand apart from that thing. You cannot be a thing and know that thing at the same time. The one exception is being’s knowledge of itself. Being doesn’t stand apart from itself in order to know itself. It knows itself by being itself.’"

"Would it be true to say that we as finite beings are imbued with a primordial longing, and that primordial lack would be a case of mistaken identity? It feels like we’re looking for God speaking to us, but it’s really the longing for that which has never not known itself, directing us back to the wholeness that has never been divided. Rupert says: ‘Yes, that’s beautifully expressed. The primordial sense of lack arises from the belief that we are a separate, finite self. But underneath that sense of lack is a deeper longing – not a lack, but a longing to return to our true nature. This longing is consciousness itself, calling us home to our own being. It’s not that something is missing. It’s that we’ve overlooked what we are. The longing is the pull of our true nature, drawing our attention back to itself. So yes, lack is the misunderstanding. Longing is the truth of it – the infinite calling the apparently finite back to itself.’"

"If there is absolutely no separation between infinite consciousness and the finite mind, and all that exists is infinite consciousness, does that mean every horrific act was decided by infinite consciousness? Why would we have evil and suffering? Rupert says: ‘Infinite consciousness decides nothing. All decisions take place in the finite mind. In the absence of a finite mind, consciousness is not making decisions because decisions are, by definition, finite. In order to manifest its infinite potential in form, consciousness must overlook or sacrifice the knowing of its own being and localise itself as a finite mind through whose perceiving faculties it is able to know itself as the universe. But the price it pays for doing so is overlooking its true nature of peace and love, and hence the individual exists in a state of agitation and conflict and evil. Suffering is only known from the point of view of the finite mind.’"

"You’ve said animals have the same being we do, but I assume they don’t have self-reflection in the way we do. Do animals suffer psychologically, or do they just experience physical pain and pleasure? Rupert says: ‘Yes, anyone who has had a dog knows that their dog suffers psychologically. Not in the way that a human does, but yes, there is some psychological suffering. Dogs express sorrow. And excitement. Excitement is only possible when you anticipate the future. You’re never excited about what’s happening now, by definition, because it’s happening. You can only be excited about something that’s not yet happening. And dogs feel excitement. So, there is some modicum of suffering. It’s not the full-blown experience of suffering that we have. But yes, I would suggest that animals do suffer psychologically.’"

"Last year, you said God doesn’t care about our suffering, that God doesn’t mind about our suffering. I interpret that as because our suffering is ultimately an illusion. Rupert says: ‘I’m afraid the situation is worse than that. Not only does God not mind about our suffering, God doesn’t know about our suffering. Suffering is only known from the point of view of the finite mind. The finite mind consists of thinking, imagining, feeling, sensing and perceiving. Now imagine removing your faculties of thinking, feeling, imagining, sensing and perceiving. Is there any suffering there? Absolutely no. You can’t say this to many people because for some it would be crushing and nihilistic. This is a very unusual circumstance, a very unusual group of people. It’s beautiful to be able to talk like this, to explore these ideas and to go so deeply.’"

"Why is ‘I am’ more fundamental than ‘I’? Rupert says: ‘The word “I” is not a statement about yourself. It’s just the name you give to yourself. The statement “I am” is a statement about yourself. It says something about your knowledge of yourself. So strictly speaking, there’s no difference between the two. But if you were to ask the absolute, tell us your name, it would say “I”. But if you were then to say tell us something about yourself, it would say “I am”. “I” is the subject, “am” is the verb. In order to have a verb, you must have a subject and an object. So when you say “I am”, you have a subject, a verb, but no object. The “I am” can have no object other than itself. As long as you only go as far as the “I am”, there’s no subject-object there. And that’s knowledge in identity, not knowledge in relationship. As soon as you add something to the “I am”, you have a subject and an object.’"

"This morning in the second meditation, working with the knowing, I found myself adding ‘knowingness’ to it. And it seemed like ‘knowingness’ helped me drop even more deeply into understanding. Rupert says: ‘If the word “knowingness” does it for you, then stick to it. Strictly speaking, knowing is a better word than knowingness. The reason I use the word “knowing” as opposed to “consciousness” or “awareness” is that -ness reduces the word “knowing” from a verb to a noun. “Knowingness” is a noun. “Knowing” is a verb. So knowing is an activity. Knowingness is an object. That’s why I say you’re objectifying or reifying the absolute by referring to it as consciousness, awareness or knowingness. It’s closer to refer to it as an activity rather than an object. Knowing rather than knowingness or consciousness. That’s why I prefer the word “knowing”. As I’ve said a number of times, it’s not important for words to be accurate. They must be evocative. So if the word “knowingness” works for you, then keep it.’"

"What’s the experience of animals? They clearly have perception and mind, but I assume they don’t have self-reflection in the way we do. Rupert says: ‘Imagine you could communicate with your dog and you were to say: “tell me about your objective experience.” The dog would say, “I feel hungry sometimes, I feel excited sometimes, I want to go for a walk.” But then if you would say, “tell me about yourself, reflect on yourself, what could you say that’s true of yourself?” I think it would say “I am”. Of course it would say “I am”. To what experience would the words “I am” refer? Awareness, the experience of being, the awareness of being. Now just because the dog cannot formulate that experience doesn’t mean that it is not having it. The dog is having the experience of being. It just can’t formulate it as “I am”. But the dog’s primary experience of itself is the experience of being, which is identical to your experience of being. That’s why we love our dogs, because we feel that the being that we essentially are and the being that our dog or cat essentially is, is the same being.’"