Who Really Makes Our Choices?

After losing my son, I’ve surrendered to God and found deep peace and love. However, persistent thoughts like ‘I should have done something’ keep returning like a mosquito. I’ve tried various approaches, including self-enquiry and surrender, but these intense recurrent thoughts continue. What would be the best approach for handling them? Rupert says: ‘I think that the best approach is no approach. I think it’s completely natural of your mind to be generating thoughts. “What if?” “If only . . .” And I wouldn’t fight it because then you have not only the “what if?” thoughts, which are distressing, but then you have your resistance to them, and then you have the failure of that resistance to have any effect on your thoughts. I would just consider it a completely natural phenomenon. Every mother and father in the world would be experiencing what you’re experiencing. I would simply let them be.’

You never spoke about the soul before, and now you do in the meditations in relation to Meister Eckhart. Many people have completely different interpretations of ‘soul’. Some say it’s the mind, some say it’s an extension of the mind, some say it’s being. Could you clarify? Rupert says: ‘You could say the soul is the mind in the broadest sense of the term. Meister Eckhart divides the soul into two aspects – what he calls the powers – and that’s what I call the faculties of thought and perception. But your mind isn’t just its faculties. It is also what Meister Eckhart calls its ground, which, in the context of this week, we would call it our being, but you could also call it consciousness. The mind is consciousness plus the content of experience.’

It seems that free will exists only when I choose an idea that springs from a quiet mind. When I choose from an active mind, it’s just conditioning. Is that accurate? Rupert says: ‘You could put it like that. The free will that you have in your mind is really God’s free will. It’s the free will of the freedom of infinite consciousness, but you could say that the thought that comes directly, so to speak, out of consciousness, unmediated by the sense of separation, is what you call a thought that comes from a quiet mind, whereas your agitated thoughts come from a felt sense of separation.’

I’ve seen experiments where electrodes showed brain activity determining yes/no answers 6-10 seconds before conscious choice. This makes me ask: who’s the doer? In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna that every leaf that falls is from the divine. If I’m not in charge, should I not feel guilty for choices that take place? Rupert says: ‘Yes. You should not feel guilty. That doesn’t mean it isn’t appropriate in the circumstance to apologise to someone for what you do. But in your heart, you needn’t feel guilty. There is no individual “me” who may or may not be responsible for where you are now. There’s just God’s infinite being, doing everything. God is the only one present to do anything.’

I’m in a relationship with somebody who has ADHD. Quite a lot of thinking goes on, and that can be quite chaotic. I find it difficult sometimes not to get drawn into that when we’re together, especially in difficult situations. How can I best keep a certain distance and remain in being? Rupert says: ‘Practise remaining in being, as being, when your circumstances are peaceful and benign. And then just welcome those opportunities that arise in your life that raise the bar a little bit, that test you a little bit. Actually, be grateful to your companion for providing you with a circumstance where your equanimity is tested, because that’s what’s going to deepen your equanimity. Just hold in mind Meister Eckhart’s image of the mountain that is unmoved by the winds of the fluctuations of experience.’

At what age would you recommend teaching the non-dual understanding to a child? And how would you teach them to recognise their being, or awareness, within? Rupert says: ‘I would start teaching this to them the moment they were born, but actually I’d start before that – the very first time the thought enters your mind to have a child with your partner. That’s the time to start infusing your child with love, thinking of your child as this ever-present, infinite being. And then when would be the right time to verbalise this teaching? I would suggest it’s when they ask you a question, but not before.’

I feel distanced from my family, possibly for being different or not engaging in old patterns. After situations where I was excluded from family gatherings due to conspiracies against me, I felt abandonment but reached a deeper place inside. I feel more detached now and not contributing to their story, but how should I handle this situation? Rupert says: ‘You just make sure that you keep loving all the members of your family unconditionally, even if you’re not in a position to express it to them. Think of them as they truly are – not as they’re behaving, but as they truly are. Don’t react, don’t collude with their narrative. But don’t fight it, because that’s an inverted way of colluding with it. Use this as an opportunity just to feel more deeply the complete imperturbability of your being.’

With my 6-year-old, I use simple cues like “we can be here and now”, but previously I used more direct language about consciousness at bedtime. I realised I was doing it from separation, wanting him to have this gift too much. Should I keep giving these simple cues or just let go completely and be present? Rupert says: ‘I would recommend the latter, but I don’t mean to be rigid about it. If there’s a circumstance where you feel it’s appropriate to say something, then, of course, do. But I would use those conscious cues very sparingly. The vast majority of cases, when parents try to impose this understanding on their children, it pushes them away. Don’t make it a formula. Don’t make it a habit.’

Sometimes emotional energy feels like an itch that needs to be scratched or reacted to. If I ‘stay with it’, it feels like suppression of that subconscious feeling. The energy either needs to be expressed or repressed. Sometimes it’s too late, and it comes out in automatic mode. How do I handle this? Rupert says: ‘I once saw a beautiful Indian miniature of Krishna. Krishna had been bitten by a snake, and he held the poison in his throat. He didn’t let it go inside, and he didn’t let it go outside. If you feel this emotional reactivity, don’t bury it inside. It’ll poison you on the inside, but don’t express it on the outside. That’ll poison your relationship. You hold it in your throat, which is an image of holding it in awareness.’

I originally learned letting go as bringing up emotions or memories from the past, holding them and letting them dissipate. But this week has been different – I find myself letting go more into the understanding, into God. Does letting go mean letting go of the past or letting go into understanding? Rupert says: ‘It’s really just letting go of whatever your current experience is, whatever you are giving your attention to at any moment – a thought, an emotion, a situation in the world, a physical sensation, a narrative, a relationship – that’s preventing you from subsiding into being. If you let go of the entire content of your experience, your attention has to go back to its source, which is being, or awareness.’

When Beethoven wrote his late quartets from agony over being profoundly deaf, or Messiaen composed in a prisoner of war camp, they were writing from profound separation. Yet art expressing friction and agony often evokes unity in listeners. Why do you think that is? Do artists know about unity before creating, or do they discover it through their work? Rupert says: ‘In order to write about your sorrow or your agony, you have to stand apart from it and view it. Otherwise, you couldn’t describe it. So, the artist separates themself from their experience and describes it. The artist places the viewer or the listener in the place where they stood when they were describing it or composing it or painting it. It’s not what the artist paints that is important. It’s where they paint from, the point of view they take.’

If there’s no separate self, you don’t need to protect something. What, then, do boundaries look like? How do you model appropriate boundaries for children, especially around unhealthy people, when you can go to being and aren’t hurt by words? Rupert says: ‘You don’t lay down a boundary to protect yourself. You do so for the sake of your children, because children have to know where there are legitimate boundaries – not egoic boundaries, but children have to know that there are legitimate boundaries in life. You are modelling for your child what it’s like to stand as being in the face of adversity or hostility. You are not explaining it to them. You’re demonstrating it to them.’

There is one phrase from Meister Eckhart that blows my mind, which you haven’t mentioned in the meditations. It says something like ‘I ask God to free myself of God.’ Maybe you can say something about it? Rupert says: ‘Juan, you’re stealing my thunder. It’ll come at the right time.’

I first came to your work through your dialogues with Bernardo Kastrup. Did your conversations with him just give you new language for what you already knew or help deepen your understanding? How do you view the scientific research on consciousness? Rupert says: ‘I’ve certainly learned a great deal from my conversations with Bernardo and from reading him. Our two minds flow very easily and very naturally together. We understand each other very easily. We finish each other’s sentences. We both, in our conversations, draw the very best out of each other, and we enable one another to say things that we might not otherwise say. It’s much more than just intellectual curiosity. I’m interested in how this understanding finds its way into our society, the different avenues.’