God Knows Nothing But Is Everything

You use the analogy of a rubber ball contracting to describe infinite consciousness becoming finite mind. After that initial impulse to contract, is there a stop point or is it continuous depending on where attention goes? Rupert says: ‘This self-contraction, the apparent contraction of the infinite into the finite – it’s not a fixed thing. The contracted “rubber ball” is kind of pulsating there. Sometimes it’s more densely contracted when the sense of separation is really intense. And there are also times when that intense sense of separation relaxes and expands. So, it’s a kind of contracting and de-contracting, it’s never a fixed state. But even when in a state of contraction, that contraction is always pulsating.’

When listening to you, I sometimes reach a state where it feels like there’s no world, like coming out of the womb. The first thought that arises is, ‘I don’t want to come out, I want to go back in.’ Nowhere in myself can I find the impulse to have arisen into thinking and perceiving, or to have come into separation. How can this be accounted for? Rupert says: ‘It is out of God’s superabundance of itself that it overflows within itself and gives birth to itself in us as the self in each of us. It’s not an impulse that you as an individual have. It’s not you as an individual that births yourself into existence. It’s out of God’s superabundance of itself that it overflows within itself, for no reason – just as an overflowing of its own superabundance within itself.’

In Vedanta and Meister Eckhart’s teachings, it’s said that the ground of being, or Brahman, does not know the Creator, as if God is unaware of the manifest world. This seems like a limitation. How do we understand this? Rupert says: ‘God’s infinite being doesn’t know the self, or the soul, or the world, or the creator God directly. All it knows directly is its own being. It only knows, or seems to know, the world through the thinking and perceiving faculties of the separate self. God cannot both be the world and know the world. It’s gotta be one or the other. God knows nothing but is what the mind calls everything.’

We’ve been listening about Meister Eckhart for days, but other than him being a 12th-century priest, I don’t think many people know much about him. Do you have historical information? Rupert says: ‘I’m not a historian. I’ve never been very interested in his life. I’m just interested in his mind and his heart. He was a Dominican monk. He was persecuted in his time because he said that you could have direct access to God’s being through your own being. And of course, that’s heresy because it cuts out the priesthood and the church. He died before he ever came to trial. But after his death, his teachings were condemned.’

My brother died from an avoidable overdose. I had distanced myself due to past abuse, and others who knew his state did nothing to help. If we are just being lived by awareness, does this mean this situation could not have played out differently? Was he destined to die this way and nothing anyone could have done would’ve stopped this? Rupert says: ‘It could have played out in other ways if people had acted differently. During your brother’s lifetime, and during the last few months of his life, you were protecting yourself. You had put up some boundaries. You acted. You were doing your very best at that time. You couldn’t have done it differently. Now you’re trying to find resolution for this situation in the situation itself, and you’ll never find it there. The resolution you’re looking for is not on the line of time on which the events unfolded; it’s in the vertical dimension of your being.’

Regarding our ongoing discussion on the cause for manifestation, while consciousness in itself needs no reason, I would say the first thing it would say about manifestation is: ‘I love. I want to love myself in every way possible.’ It’s so overflowing with love that it wants to do the impossible – to love itself in ways that shouldn’t be possible because it’s already absolute. That’s why it creates a relative domain. Rupert says: ‘Thank you for sharing it. It’s a perfectly valid point of view.’

When I was a child, I created imaginary characters in my mind and projected feelings onto them. I know they’re imaginary, but sometimes they have such a pull and attract my attention so much. When they come, they last for weeks. I can only ignore them during meditation. Rupert says: ‘If it’s really true that your thoughts – this narrative in your mind – are so strong that they prevent you from going directly back to your being, then you have to take the Progressive Path and interpose some intermediary step that takes your attention off your narrative. Use some kind of sacred object, a mantra, an image or a prayer. These objects contain within them a certain energy whose purpose is to take you back to God’s being.’

There’s a Meister Eckhart meditations expression that blocks me: that at a certain point, the longing for God becomes blasphemy. I don’t understand this, because longing for God is a gift or grace that God has put inside me. Rupert says: ‘Your longing for God is God’s love refracted in your finite mind. However, if you remain with a longing for God, you will remain as a separate self apart from God. Because you can only long for God if you stand apart from him. What God really wants for you is not to love him as a separate self. It is to cease being a separate self and realise that you are God’s infinite being. So, longing is the veiling of love.’

You’ve said trauma is stuck in the mind, not the body. I had an experience where someone grabbed my arm in the same place that’s related to a childhood incident, and I had an immediate body reaction. This left me believing the body does store trauma. How do you reconcile this? Rupert says: ‘Your body is completely free of the trauma. It was an association in your mind. Your mind made the association between your friend grabbing your arm and some previous memory and put you back into that same state of mind. Your body is fine. Look at your body now. It’s perfectly okay. You’re telling yourself a story and then believing it. That’s your trauma.’

There’s one sentence from Meister Eckhart that always snags me: ‘If God should ever let go of my hand, I would petition him with all my might.’ This seems to imply separation could return. Rupert says: ‘When Meister Eckhart speaks like that, he’s speaking at a more relative level than we have been speaking here. He was probably talking to someone who didn’t understand what he meant when he said all there is to my being is God’s infinite being. Let that sentence go. It’s not for you. Meister Eckhart was not speaking to an enlightened audience like this. He was talking to people who had a very conventional notion of God.’

You’ve helped me connect with being, but there’s something I don’t quite get. You say, if you look for the ‘I’, you can’t find it. But I can find thoughts that judge the body and world, and an ‘I’ that has a narrative. How can I have conviction in this when my mind seems strong? Rupert says: ‘When you feel “I am lonely, I am hurt, I am upset, I am agitated”, don’t be interested in the loneliness, the hurt, the upset, the agitation. Be interested in the “I” on whose behalf these feelings arise. Try to find that “I”. It is the attempt that you make to find that self that takes you to the true and only self of infinite being. Don’t worry about the narratives and the feelings, just be interested in the “I”.’

I had my first experience of non-duality earlier this year – very quiet, peaceful, aware. Given your years of being in that state, would you say the qualities change? When I deepen meditation, I find new levels of peace. Do you perceive different qualities over time, or does it just always remain the same? Rupert says: ‘Non-duality, as you call it, or your being or awareness is not a state. It is the background of all states. Your being is like the ever-present blue sky. The peace isn’t really getting deeper. Your being is always the same, but it feels as if the peace is getting deeper because there’s less and less agitation and sorrow in your thoughts and feelings. All being would say about itself is “I am” – that pure “I am” is being’s quality-less experience of itself.’

While rearranging my books recently, it called to mind all these events in my life, and it got me to think about how I’ve been led here. Are we guided in our life like this? Is there something that takes me from one place to another? Rupert says: ‘Yes, there is. God’s being is attracting you back to itself. That circuitous journey that each of us makes consists of all the teachings, all the teachers, all the experiences, everything that happens to us. Every moment of our life is just part of our individual journey that we had to take in response to God’s attraction. The guide is God’s being, the light of God’s being shining in you as yourself, attracting you back to itself along your unique pathway.’

You’ve talked about peace as opposed to agitation, joy as opposed to sorrow, love as opposed to conflict. Another word commonly used is ‘emptiness’. Do you see the use of emptiness in the same way as these words? Rupert says: ‘The nature of the mind is only said to be empty with reference to its content. If you were to ask being, “What is your experience of yourself without referring to the content of experience?” being would never say, “I am empty”. If it were to say anything, it would say “I am full”, or “I am full of myself alone”. To say “I am fullness” is more accurate than to say “I am empty”.’