Whole. Perfect. Complete. Indivisible. Infinite.

"How has your meditation practice evolved over the years, and what kinds of questions did you have for Francis Lucille? Rupert says: ‘For twenty years I practised mantra meditation very regularly, morning and evening. From my mid-thirties onwards, I stopped practising mantra meditation. The habit grew looser as the peace of my being became more integrated in everyday experience. The distinction between meditation and everyday life diminished more and more. With Francis, I had many philosophical questions – what’s true, what’s real, who am I really, what is the world? After the first few years, almost no questions. The questions were about applying understanding in different domains of life – intimate relationships, work, parenting. When I first started speaking, my formulations were very close to Francis’s because I had surrendered myself fully to my teacher. But quite quickly they diverged and I found my own language. The language has changed a great deal over fifteen years and differs greatly from Francis’s language. And that’s as it should be.’"

"How do we know when we’re making choices from being versus from the separate self? Are there cues to recognise which place we’re operating from? Rupert says: ‘If we were to assign qualities to being – we shouldn’t really, but if we were – peace on the inside and love on the outside. Those are the two most common feelings that most accurately express the nature of being. Peace in relation to our interior experience, love in relationship to objects and others. Being shines in a finite mind as the experience of peace and love. Being could shine in a finite mind as peace and love without your ever having formalised an interest in these matters. You don’t have to come to it through this or any formulation. It doesn’t necessarily come with the formulation attached to it.’"

If in internal experience you discard temporarily anything not essential – thoughts, images, memories, feelings, etc. – all that remains is aware being. Absent the qualities borrowed from experience, your being is at peace, whole, fulfilled, lacking nothing, needing nothing. Your nature is peace and joy. If in external experience you remove from all you encounter the qualities thought and perception confer, all that remains is being. Absent interior or exterior experience, nothing divides the being you essentially are, from the being everyone and everything essentially is. One being. Whole. Perfect. Complete. Indivisible. Infinite. What you are before you came into existence, what the world is before it was created – peace on the inside, love and beauty on the outside. This is all there is to understand of all the great religious and spiritual traditions. All that remains is to feel it and live consistent with the implications of this understanding, whatever that means for you.

"I’m noticing that serendipity seems to be more the rule than the exception now. And experience seems to be completions within completions – each moment feels perfect. Is this how it should be? Rupert says: ‘Absolutely right. Because of this deep correspondence between what we are on the inside and what the world is on the outside – they’re the same thing. At the level of manifestation, they are the same system. There’s a profound correspondence between our interior life of thoughts and feelings and the objects and events that appear in the world. This correspondence appears as synchronistic events in our lives. If being is one and everything is connected, that would have to be the case. It should be the inevitable consequence. You move from fulfilment to fulfilment. The search gives way to celebration. When the journey to God is completed, the journey within God begins.’"

"I came here with a full heart, and you poured more love to the brim. It’s flowing, and I don’t know what to do with it. Rupert says: ‘It’s a good problem, Divya. Just pour it out into the world, whatever that means for you.’"

"I believed children choose their parents, but after hearing the whirlpool analogy, I’m questioning this. Is there any truth in what I believed? Rupert says: ‘Children don’t literally choose their parents like you choose tea or coffee for breakfast. It’s not that literal. It’s the mind’s way of trying to express something it has an intuition of. Like when you come into a group and feel drawn towards certain people – you’re not consciously choosing, but you’re attracted, you’re drawn. The deepest aspect of the child’s mind or soul that has yet to coalesce and appear as a body may be attracted to certain energies in the stream, which would cause the child to be born from the conjunction of two whirlpools. There could be some truth in that. To say the child chooses the parent would be a naive and simplistic way of trying to say something that comes from an intuition of truth. Like many New Age statements, there’s an element of truth in it.’"

"When our first child was born, the love was so profound it wasn’t even humanly possible to comprehend. Through all the sorrow with that child later, there’s still nothing but love. Rupert says: ‘In all this sorrow, in that broken heart there’s nothing but love. That’s the truth of this teaching.’"

"I felt like my performance at last night’s celebration was the last time I would ever do something public like this. I don’t perform except here. This felt like a last gift. Rupert says: ‘It was a beautiful gift. Thank you.’"

"I appreciate your use of language – the precision with which you use words. Rupert says: ‘I had very good teachers – Wordsworth, Blake, Shakespeare, Rilke.’"

"Your responses are so perfect and complete. Are they generated from your mind or do they somehow bypass the thinking mind and come from being? Rupert says: ‘The responses are generated by the mind, but they’re informed by being. Being is the source, but the mind is the vehicle through which being expresses itself. The mind gives form to what comes from being.’"

"People tell compelling stories with emotion, but you don’t seem to get wrapped up in them. My stories create my suffering. How can I, as a songwriter, find freedom from stories without losing my art? Rupert says: ‘Leave the stories – they’re the raw material of your music. Don’t invest your identity in them or derive your identity from them, but you don’t do that by struggling with stories or pushing them away. You go repeatedly back to who you are – the simple fact of being. See that it’s already free of any story or narrative. The more you taste that, you don’t need to free yourself from narratives. You feel that what you are at the deepest level is already free. That gives you freedom from your narratives while still being able to use them in your songs. When your understanding outgrows your form, it requires courage to stay true to your understanding. Artists always feel their form is too small for their vision. No true artist can be imprisoned within their own creation. I would encourage you to break the shell, find a new form that’s more consistent with your new understanding.’"

"What is your intention from your non-dual point of view? Rupert says: ‘My intention is to create a form that expresses my love and understanding in the simplest, clearest, most effective, most beautiful way possible. It comes from my being. I feel this love and understanding and I can’t keep it in – there’s this impulse to give it a form. It’s like the impulse a woman has to have a child – there’s this love inside and this impulse to take the love on the inside and give it a form on the outside. For no reason, there’s no intention behind it. It’s just love overflowing from the inside into a form on the outside. An artist cannot not do what they do. What is trying to be birthed through them is much bigger than them. It simply cannot be contained in the small frame of their own mind and body.’"

"You said being fragments because of love, using the analogy of a woman giving birth. But a woman can see and hold and love her child. How can infinite being do this if it can only know the finite through a finite mind? Rupert says: ‘Infinite being doesn’t know the finite the way a mother knows her child. The mother is a finite self knowing another finite self. Infinite being doesn’t know the finite directly – it knows it through the agency of each of our minds. We are the eyes and ears through which infinite being knows its creation. It’s not a perfect analogy because all analogies use finite examples to illustrate the infinite. The impulse in being to manifest is the same impulse in a woman to have a child – love overflowing, wanting to express itself. But the mechanism through which infinite being knows its creation is different from how a mother knows her child.’"

"I read a statement in the Gita about “for the steady in mind, there is only one choice”. Could I rephrase that to “for the person in being, there is only one choice”? And how do we know if we’re in being or in mind when making a choice? Rupert says: ‘You know when you’re in your being and not in your mind when you no longer have to ask that question. When you’re in love, do you ever ask the question “Am I in love or am I in conflict?” The question doesn’t arise then. If we were to assign qualities to being – we shouldn’t really, but if we were – peace on the inside and love on the outside. Those are the two most common feelings that most accurately express the nature of being. Peace in relation to our interior experience, love in relationship to objects and others. Being shines in a finite mind as peace and love – they are its first expression in the finite mind. Being could shine as the experience of peace and love without your ever having formalised an interest in these matters. It doesn’t necessarily come with the formulation attached to it.’"

"I wanted to thank all of you. The seating arrangement reminds me of an orchestra – different voices, different instruments, different tones. When I think of the miles some of you have travelled to be here, it’s stunning. Rupert says: ‘Thank you.’"

"Yesterday, I asked about holding on to “there’s only the gold” and what I really wanted you to say was “don’t worry about it”. When I make the effort to hold on, something contracts. Rupert says: ‘Don’t worry about holding on to it. Just go back again and again to the experience “there is only the gold”. You’ve had that experience – you’ve been there. Keep going back to the experience. In that experience, there’s no question of how to hold on to it, because only something that could let go of it or be separate from it would want to learn how to hold on to it. But if there is only the gold, who would be the one that had let go and wanted to hold on? There is only the gold, so that understanding won’t answer your question – it will dissolve the question. The question presumes there is something other than the gold. There is no such finite being. Just go back experientially to the felt understanding: there is only the gold. You’re in the stream with all of us. The stream is carrying all of us. You’re on the train – sit down and relax. The train is taking you.’"

"Would you assert that our confusion about being the gold is the death of the ego and the finite mind? Is this confusion keeping us from our true nature so the ego can stay alive? Rupert says: ‘I never talk about the ego or its confusion, delusion or greed. Why would we want to spend time talking about an illusion? Why would we want to spend the week exploring the apparently limited space of this room when there is no such space? I would not assert anything about the ego, its fears, its desires, its illusion. I have no interest in the ego – none at all. I’m interested in that which is, not in that which is not. That’s why here we talk about the gold. We’re just interested in the gold. The only thing I know for certain, absolutely certain, is that I am. That’s the only thing I would assert for certain. All my other models are provisional – castles in the air that I build in response to a question. The only assertion I would stand by is the assertion “I am”. There is being, infinite being, God’s being – there is only that, and you are that.’"