Ethics and the Non-Dual Understanding

"Nisargadatta had little formal education yet could answer profound questions. How could someone with so little objective knowledge answer questions with such profundity? Rupert says: ‘The Shankaracharya gave a beautiful analogy: consciousness is like an ocean with no shape or form. Every question is like a bucket dipped into the ocean, and every bucket has a slightly different shape and size. No matter what the shape of the bucket, the water it draws is perfectly tailored to it. One who knows the nature of consciousness can answer all questions because the question is like a bucket. Nisargadatta had very little formal education – he was a cigarette maker. The only thing he knew for certain was “I am”. His knowledge was like an ocean with no form or content. But every question dipped into the ocean of his mind came out with an answer uniquely and exquisitely tailored to the shape of the question, precisely because he had no objective knowledge of his own.’"

"You spoke about the conscious effort of being to override personal structure. But isn’t being inherently effortless? Where does the impulse to override the appearance of duality come from? Rupert says: ‘Being is inherently effortless – it cannot make an effort. The conscious effort is made by the mind, not being. The mind makes the effort to overcome the apparent evidence of sense perception, the appearance of duality. You have to make the effort to overcome that appearance and realise it’s just an appearance, not reality. The impulse comes from the desire to live your understanding. When you understand you’re not separate but it seems you are, there’s a contradiction. The impulse is: how can I resolve this? I don’t just want to understand intellectually – I want to live it. The impulse comes from the desire to live this understanding, to live the truth that at the deepest level we are one.’"

"As a physician caring for patients in vegetative states, I wonder if they’re suffering or perhaps in a higher state of consciousness than I could dream of. Are my good intentions to help them misguided? Rupert says: ‘I don’t think your good intentions are misguided. If there’s no thought or perception, they won’t be suffering. But you can’t be sure there isn’t just because they’re not responding. The fact they can’t communicate doesn’t mean there isn’t internal experience. I would err on the side of caution and presume there is. Even if there isn’t, consciousness is wide awake in them. That’s the important thing to know – you’re speaking to consciousness. Consciousness is the only one that’s aware, the only one that knows, the only one that experiences. I would continue with your intuition and always have the attitude that you’re speaking to a conscious being. Nothing’s going to happen to that conscious being when they pass away. So you wouldn’t be robbing them of experience.’"

"How can we be sure we’re not anthropomorphising, attributing to all reality the defining characteristic of one small portion of it? If life on earth was obliterated, what would become of the assumption that consciousness is all there is? Rupert says: ‘That’s not an assumption – it’s your experience. What’s an assumption is that consciousness is secondary and there’s something other than it. It’s not an assumption that consciousness is primary and all there is – it’s your experience. There are no galaxies in reality. Galaxies are what reality looks like from a localised point of view. Time and space are not inherent in reality – they’re just how reality appears to a human mind. We use human words like awareness, being, consciousness, knowing – obviously they’re human words, but they don’t refer to something exclusively human. They refer to that which is aware in all experience. Consciousness is not a human faculty – it’s that in which all apparently human faculties appear.’"

"When you ask if I can say “I am”, I know it absolutely. But where exactly am I going to find this experience of being? Rupert says: ‘When I ask, “Can you say from your experience ‘I am’?”, you pause. Where do you go in that pause? You don’t go to sensations, thoughts or memories. You go to the self-evident experience of being. That’s self-knowledge – knowledge of yourself. Your being has always been with you. Imagine you’re a five-year-old boy and I ask the same question. You’d refer to the same experience – your being. That’s the continuous element, the golden thread that runs through all experience. Every other experience has vanished and therefore doesn’t qualify as yourself. Self-knowledge is knowledge of being, awareness of being. You’re always having the experience of being, but normally it’s so mixed up with content that you don’t see it clearly. When I ask the question, you go to the pure experience of being.’"

"I had the recognition that there’s only one substance, “only the gold”, and felt it viscerally for months. But now I’ve lost that felt sense. How can I return to it? Rupert says: ‘Once you’ve known that, tasted it, experienced it, you may have forgotten or overlooked it, but now you just have to find ways of taking yourself back to that understanding experientially. Keep taking yourself back. You can go numerous different ways – take all the different pathways, thoroughly take every route back to that recognition until it’s not just something that happens fleetingly but begins to override the evidence of sense perception. It’s like binge-watching movies but pausing between each to see the screen. To begin with, you just see the screen occasionally. But after continual recognitions, it dawns on you that the screen is not just available between movies but is the background of the movies. The movie becomes transparent – ignorance is being removed. Just keep going back there until this recognition of oneness filters through the apparent evidence of sense perception.’"

"After being vegan for ten years, I started eating eggs again and felt less judgment in regards to my choice, more connected to others. How does non-dual understanding help evolve ethical intelligence beyond moral performance? Rupert says: ‘Take the basic understanding that peace and happiness are the nature of your being, and you share your being with everyone and everything. Allow that single understanding to guide the way you live your life, whatever that means for you. And allow other people to live the implications of that understanding, whatever that means for them. Different people will live this understanding in different ways. Some will be vegan, some won’t. The important thing is that your actions come from love, from the recognition of shared being, not from judgment or separation. Let your understanding inform your choices, but don’t impose your choices on others. Respect their freedom as you respect your own.’"

"Is it effortless to release attention and return to being? And is there similar ease when moving back into experience whilst trying to remain in touch with being? Rupert says: ‘What is effortless is your being. You may need to use effort on the inward-facing path to extricate yourself from the content of experience and come back to yourself. You may need to use effort on the outward-facing path to remain in contact with your being in the midst of experience. Otherwise you get lost in experience. So effort could be used on both paths, but in being itself there is no effort. Being is effortless. The problem is you lose contact with being without knowing you have lost contact, until suddenly it occurs to you. When you come to yourself, by definition you’re back in touch with being. Places like this train the mind, increase the likelihood of remembering the presence of being. Fewer and fewer experiences take you away from yourself. When you are taken away, it doesn’t last so long because your mind is much more inclined to remember. You’re creating a new habit.’"

"Adding to what Brad said, I also felt during meditation that recognising I’d lost contact with my being meant I’d regained it, and the fact it had been lost is just fine. Rupert says: ‘Yes, it’s not a problem. No regrets. It’s natural to forget. It’s natural to remember. Absolutely – thank you.’"

"For years, I’ve experienced brief, familiar-feeling fragments – like wisps of dreams or memories – that flash through me randomly. They feel like something I’ve experienced before but can’t place. What are these? Rupert says: ‘In the waking state, you’re only aware of a small portion of your mind. Much of the content of your mind is not accessible to you in the waking state. What emerges in dreams is present in your mind now but is obfuscated by waking content – it’s drowned out. When your mind is relatively open and relaxed – walking, driving, watching TV – there’s an opening. Some material not normally accessible filters through into your mind, either from the personal unconscious (deeper regions of your individual mind) or from the collective unconscious (deeper regions common to all minds). Your mind has its own intelligence. Just like in dreams, your mind is working things out. You don’t have to analyse these. As long as it’s not causing harm or distress, you could just say “that’s the nature of my mind” – these little mini dreams that happen in the waking state. They’re daydreams. Little homeopathic daydreams.’"

"You said desire is the gravitational pull of God on the finite being. But how do we know if a desire comes from fullness or lack? When should we pursue desires versus dropping into being? Rupert says: ‘If your desire is initiated by a sense of lack, I would investigate the one on whose behalf that desire arises rather than trying to fulfil it. But if the desire comes from a sense of fullness, I would try to fulfil it. A desire from fullness comes from love. For instance, a close friend’s birthday – you love them deeply, want to express that love, so you want to buy them a gift perfectly tailored to them. You go to endless lengths to find just the right thing that will give them a burst of joy. Or you invite friends for dinner to share your fullness with them, not because you’re lonely and want others to fill up your sense of lack. If you have a dinner party for that reason, your friends will temporarily fill the lack, but when you wake up the next morning, it’ll still be there.’"

"From this understanding, it seems whatever happens simply happens – there are no accidents. And I don’t think anything happens to me. Is this the right understanding? Rupert says: ‘A peaceful mind is one that doesn’t desire anything, doesn’t resist anything, doesn’t get upset about anything, doesn’t grieve about anything. It doesn’t need, reject or long for anything. It’s the nature of awareness – totally open without resistance from moment to moment. The mind that takes its tune from the nature of awareness is a peaceful mind. That’s what Krishnamurti meant when he said, “I don’t mind what happens.” He didn’t mean he wasn’t caring or compassionate. He meant that what he truly was wasn’t implicated by the content of experience. Nothing happens to you in the sense that nothing affects you. Like nothing happens to the space in this room whether we’re dancing or fighting. Not because it’s defended against what’s happening, but because there’s nothing in it that could be hurt. It’s on account of its openness, not its defensiveness, that it’s free.’"

"I’m vegan and have been wondering about the food choices at retreats. When I talk about being vegan, it’s like saying I’m six-foot-two – it’s just a fact, not an identity. Could you speak to this? Rupert says: ‘I don’t have an opinion about what other people eat. I respect everyone’s freedom absolutely. When Mischa spoke earlier about eating eggs again to feel less separate from his girlfriend, I thought how generous it would be for him to make that sacrifice for her. It would be like a gift – it would bring them closer. She would no longer feel judged, no longer feel on the other side of a line. That would bring them much closer. I think the fish might possibly willingly sacrifice its life for that closeness. We can’t say for certain, but why not? The fish might be delighted that Mischa and his girlfriend become that much closer. But I respect your choice completely. I don’t give people advice about what they should eat. I very rarely suggest what someone should do, and if they don’t take up my suggestion, I respect them for it.’"

"How does one make a decision without judgement? Rupert says: ‘You make a decision with discrimination. But discrimination doesn’t imply judgement. You can make a discrimination either between two behaviours you’re choosing between or about the behaviour you see in someone else. You can feel whether that behaviour comes from separation or from love. You can make that discrimination without judging either yourself or the other person. If you see behaviour that doesn’t come from love but from separation, and that causes you to judge those people, then you’re doing the very thing they’re doing that you find distasteful. You can judge the behaviour of another person, but you must love the person, even the perpetrator of unloving behaviour. If we, with access to this understanding, can’t do that, we can’t expect them to. They behave the way they do because they don’t know they share their being with their neighbour.’"

"Does your being make decisions, or is it your mind? I often feel I make decisions through my body, not my mind. Rupert says: ‘It’s your mind that makes decisions. When you say you make a decision from your body, what you really mean is you make your decision from a part of yourself deeper than the rational mind. You don’t work it out rationally – it comes from deeper in you. It’s an intuition, a gut reaction. But it’s not your being itself that makes the decision. Your decision may be informed by the two qualities of being – its inherent peace on the inside and the fact you share your being with everyone. These qualities might inform the decisions your mind makes and the way you express them. But it’s the mind that makes decisions and expresses them. Your choices and decisions can either rise on behalf of separation, or they can arise on behalf of love or shared being.’ "

"If we are love, can we ever experience someone or something loving us? Or don’t we just experience loving? Rupert says: ‘You’re right – you just experience loving. Because love is not a personal emotion that you extend towards another person. You can express love towards another person in a personal way or particular way, but what’s actually being expressed is not something that one person feels for another. Love is your shared being. It’s not something that goes from one person to another. So yes, the implication of your question is right – you really experience loving, and you express that love in unique ways towards different people. Love is always impersonal, but its expression is always personal.’ "