I spent a day at a Rupert Spira event last weekend. He is not a teacher to whom I would have initially been attracted because, although I didn't know it then, I was looking for spiritual "experiences" -- more and more deeper, better, satisfying experiences. I don't think this is a bad thing -- it's just the way the separate self looks at the falling into emptiness that is our truest nature. But when that emptiness becomes known, it is seen as a lack of "experience" in the sense of "something happening
to me" since the "me" is absent. That said, a teacher who aims straight for that, who continually undercuts the ego, would have seemed abstract and inaccessible to me in the beginning.
But what I'm looking for now is more of an explanation of what is realized. Often I lack ways of explaining what is known that make complete sense intellectually. Rupert has a very precise way of using language, and so, as I listen to him, things fall into place.
What I thought I would do, then, is transcribe the notes I took at his day-long satsang. I want to stress that these notes are not any kind of objective account of what transpired at the meeting, nor are they an objective account of Rupert's teachings in general. To get that, you should go to the source. What I'm offering here are just notes on what resonated for me. Perhaps some of them will resonate for the reader as well.
(These statements are approximate -- sometimes he spoke too fast for me to get the words exactly, but when I couldn't, I tried to paraphrase accurately.)
1. Space pervades the body and
that's why I feel the body is myself.
2. The name that Knowing gives
itself is “I.”
3. Self (capital S) is prior
to experience. Small “s” self is the mixture of Self and limited
self (personality, qualities, etc). So we need to separate out “Self”
from the rest to see it clearly. Then experience loses the capacity
to veil or muddy our Being.
4. Ask yourself “On whose
behalf am I feeling fear [or whatever the feeling]?
5. We fear our own
annihilation but also long for it [and this is basis of fear].
6. The drama of life doesn't
cease; it just loses its capacity to veil our True Nature.
7. Maya remains. Ignorance
goes.
8. Awareness assumes the form
of each of our minds for the sake of manifesting experience.
9. We are the activity of
consciousness through which consciousness knows itself in the world.
10. I'm not experiencing 10,000
things; it's always just an indivisible whole.
11. Each of us is a
localization of infinite consciousness.
12. Some minds are transparent
to their source.
13. Responses to the world are
informed by reference to Awareness. If not aware, Awareness is
distorted and opaque and doesn't come out with clarity but is
influenced by belief in separation.
14. The investigation of the
body is not a prerequisite to knowing the Self.
15. After recognition of
the true nature of Self is the time to wash the body clean of residue
of belief in the separate self.
16. Soul is the deepest aspect
of the separate self.
17. Love is the recognition of
our shared Being (infinite consciousness).
18. The only thing the separate
self really wants is to be divested of its sense of separation.
19. Grace is the movement back
to the naturally expanded state. Individually, this is experienced as
the desire for happiness.
20. Suffering is the price
consciousness pays for manifestation.
21. If you know there is no
otherness, this will express as qualities of Love, e.g., peace,
justice, compassion.
