The Separate Self’s Resistance to Intimacy with Experience

Why is there such a strong tendency in the separate self to shrink from intimacy with and openness to all experience, and why is this tendency so protected? Rupert says: ‘In order to know or experience anything, you must do so in subject-object relationship. All experience, without exception, takes place in subject-object relationship. The price consciousness pays for experience is this division of itself in two. So, in order for you to have experience, you have to seem to be a temporary finite self. This separate self is characterised by two essential emotions. One, I am temporary, finite, and therefore I’m not complete. And the second overriding emotion is resistance, because the separate self is always trying to protect its identity.’

From event 06 June - 13 July, 2025 Seven-Day Retreat at The Vedanta, 6–13 June 2025

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