Niall: Okay, Rupert, welcome to the show. To get started, for anybody that has never come across this before, could you maybe start with giving us your sort of definition of what non-duality is? And could you maybe tell us about the significance of the phrase, if I speak, I tell a lie, but if I remain silent, I am a coward.
Rupert: Okay, well, first of all, hello, and thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to speak with you again. Can I sum up non-duality in one or two sentences? Yes, non-duality is really the understanding that underlies all the great religious and spiritual traditions. And if we were to distill the essence of that understanding and express it in contemporary terms, it would sound something like this. Peace and happiness are the nature of our being, and we share our being with everyone and everything. Now, the first part of this phrase, peace and happiness are the nature of our being, refers to our inner experience, our thoughts and feelings. And the second part of this definition, we share our being with everyone and everything, refers to our exterior experience, that is our relationship with people, with animals and things. To rephrase, in order to answer your second question, now, what does it mean if I speak, and this is a quote from a Zen Master, if I speak, I tell a lie, but if I remain silent, I am a coward. So let me now, in order to answer this question, let me rephrase the non-dual understanding in a different way. The non-dual understanding suggests that reality is a single, infinite and indivisible whole, and that everyone and everything borrows its apparently discreet and independent existence from that one whole or reality. Now, that one reality, the one infinite, indivisible whole, cannot be defined in the terms in our language, because our language has evolved to describe all the individual parts of reality, people, trees, atoms, planets, thoughts, feelings, and so on. So our language has evolved to describe the parts of the whole, but the whole itself cannot be described in terms of those parts. So really, we don’t have a language for describing or defining reality. And in fact, this is why we have poetry and art, that they attempt to evoke reality in our experience, but they don’t attempt to define it. So the reason the Zen Master said, if I speak, I tell a lie, this was said in acknowledgement of the fact that anything we say about reality is ultimately untrue. Well, we could then just simply agree to remain silent. That would be the most accurate way of speaking of the non-dual understanding would be to remain silent, but that would not be very effective, just to remain silent in the face of people’s suffering. So that’s why the Zen Master, first of all acknowledged, if I speak, I tell a lie, nothing I say about reality is ultimately true. However, he suggested by saying, if I speak,
I am a coward, he suggested that one that has this understanding has a kind of loving obligation, a loving duty to speak of it, because it is the source of peace and happiness on the inside and the source of love on the outside. We have a loving obligation to speak of it. That’s why he said, if I speak, I tell a lie, but if I remain silent, I am a coward. If I remain silent, I’m not, I’m shirking my loving, the loving duty that this understanding confers upon me.
Niall: That’s very well said. And it just struck me there as you were speaking that this understanding seems to be what they were talking about. I’m not sure, I don’t know that much, but in the gospels, whenever they talk about the good news, this seems to be the good news.
Rupert: Absolutely. This is the good news that they talk about in the gospels. It’s expressed in all the different traditions. Form is emptiness and emptiness is form. The individual self and the universal self are one, that’s in the dantic tradition. It’s expressed in various different ways in the religious and spiritual and philosophical traditions. But yes, this is the good news, the good news that the kingdom of heaven, the realm of peace and happiness for which everyone longs above all else is inside one. It is the very nature of one’s being. Yes, it’s the good news. Yes.
Niall: Now in your book, You’re the Happiness that You Seek, you give the metaphor of a man called John Smith who plays King Lear. And in the metaphor, he forgets, I’ll let you describe it, but if you can maybe explain the significance of that metaphor for understanding of who we really are.
Rupert: Yes, it’s a metaphor that, as you know, I use a lot. In the analogy, John Smith represents our essential self, who we really are before who we are is qualified by our thoughts, our feelings, our actions, our relationships. John Smith represents our essential self. King Lear represents the persona, the character that we play at the mixture of who we are with our thoughts, our feelings, our memory, our history, our relationships and so on. So in the analogy, John Smith lives alone at home, he lives a peaceful and happy life, he’s content and fulfilled. He goes to his theater and he puts on the character of King Lear, which involves not only putting on a costume, but also adopting a series of thoughts and feelings and engaging in a series of activities and relationships. He’s married, he has three daughters, he’s the King of England, and he’s at war with the French. In short, he’s miserable. So now, who he really is, John Smith is, of course, not miserable. He’s in the context of the limitations of the analogy. He’s at peace, he’s fulfilled, he’s happy. But when John Smith becomes mixed with the thoughts, feelings, actions and relationships of the character King Lear, he seems to become King Lear, and as such, he suffers. Now, he doesn’t really become King Lear, he’s still John Smith all the way through. There isn’t one person called John Smith and another person called King Lear, there’s just John Smith. But John Smith has forgotten, he’s overlooked, he ignores the fact that he is John Smith because he’s allowed himself to become entangled up with, identified with King Lear’s thoughts, feelings, actions and relationships. And he seems, as a result, to cease being John Smith, and he seems to become King Lear. And at that moment, he gives up or forgets his innate peace, and his suffering begins. And this is a very close analogy to what I would suggest, and it’s what the non-dual understanding in general suggests, that our essential nature is inherently peaceful. What we essentially are, our being, prior to our thoughts, feelings, actions and relationships, is peaceful. But we have allowed our being to become entangled in and identified with the content of experience. And as a result of that, we overlook our innate being, and with it, we overlook our innate peace and quiet joy, and our suffering begins. Now, what does King Lear do about his suffering? Well, he thinks that his suffering is caused by his terrible relationship with his three daughters, or the discontent in his kingdom, or the war with the French. So he spends his entire life trying to improve his relationship with his daughters, and the state of affairs in the Kingdom of England, and so on. Well, of course, none of these things work, because they’re not the real cause of his suffering. The real cause of his suffering is that he’s forgotten who he really is. Now, imagine the play ends, King Lear goes backstage, where he would normally just take off his costume again and revert to being John Smith. But in this occasion, John Smith has lost himself so fully in the part he plays, that he goes backstage, and he forgets to revert to being John Smith. He remains King Lear, even after the play has ended. So his friend, who is in the audience, comes in to congratulate him on his great performance, but finds him miserable. And he says, well, what’s the matter? Why are you miserable? King Lear says, because my daughters, the war with the French, the troubles in my kingdom. And his friend says, don’t be silly. You’re not miserable because of any of those reasons. You’re miserable because you’ve forgotten who you really are. Who are you really? And then King Lear, of course, starts relating his thoughts and his feelings. And his friend says, no, no, those aren’t really who you are. Those are just thoughts and feelings that you’ve adopted. King Lear starts talking about his actions, his relationships. And his friend says, don’t be silly. These are not really who you are. Go more deeply into yourself. Who are you really? So King Lear traces his way back through his thoughts, through his feelings, through his activities and relationships. And eventually, there is this recognition, oh, I’m John Smith. And at that moment, his happiness is restored. And this tracing his way back to his essential being is really what’s called prayer in the Western tradition and meditation in the Eastern tradition. We go deeply into ourself, discarding all the elements of our experience that are not essential to us, our thoughts, feelings, memories, actions, relationships, until we come to our essential, irreducible self or being, our unqualified being, by which I mean our being, before it is coloured or qualified by the content of experience. And the nature of our being is peace. It’s like the screen behind the image. It’s transparent. It’s silent. It’s still. It’s at peace. I think it’s such a brilliant metaphor. I particularly liked in the book, whenever you talked about, you know, King Lear has the sense, he has a very vague sense that he is John Smith or the John Smith. But it’s so small that he projects it outside of himself. Yes, but you’re right now. There is this deep memory in King Lear of his innate happiness. And that’s what causes him to long for happiness. If he didn’t know the experience of happiness, he wouldn’t long for it. So he thinks that the happiness was something he experienced in his past when he was a child. No, the happiness, his intuition of happiness doesn’t come from the past. It comes from deep within him. He knows somewhere that there is this thing called happiness, but he doesn’t yet know that it lies within him. And therefore, he searches for it outside of himself in his actions, relationships. And it’s exactly the same with us. Each of us longs for peace and happiness above all else. We have this memory of happiness. We all know the experience of happiness. Now, we may project that into some early part of our life. We think there was a time in the past when I was happy. But no, our intuition of happiness comes from a memory that somewhere in us now, happiness is available. But we don’t know that. And so we seek it outside of ourselves. We seek it in objects, substances, activities, relationships, and so on. And some people go through their entire lives seeking happiness in objective experience. Some people notice at some stage in their life, they begin to doubt whether objective experience can ever really be a source of happiness. And this is where for many people, the spiritual journey begins. We realize none of the conventional objects that are on offer in the world, the substances, activities, relationships, we have an intuition, if not yet a full understanding, but an intuition that no, what I deeply long for can never be found in this direction. There’s another direction, the inward-facing path. And this recognition or this intuition is what initiates a spiritual practice for many people.
Niall [14:42]: 100%. So we were talking before, just before we started recording about, you know, I discovered this idea not long after you spoke with the Weekend University, or yeah, not long after you spoke with the Weekend University. And I took some time to really think about it and did some writing on it, whatever. And whenever the penny dropped a little bit, it had a huge impact on my quality of life. And I suppose just how I felt in the world almost, you know. So the question I’m curious to ask you, Rupert, is I know it’s probably been a long time since the penny did drop for you, but what’s the difference been in your own quality of life since you really understood this and started living in accordance with this?
Rupert: Well, there are two things really, and they relate back to my very first attempt to suggest what the non-dual understanding is about. One relating to our inner life, our desire to be at peace and happy on the inside. And one relating to our outer life, our desire to have loving relationships, to be free of conflict. And it became clear to me that the peace that I seek above all else, the happiness that I want to above all else, is the nature of my being. It can never be found through objective experience, substances, activities, relationships. Now, I should emphasize at this point, I don’t mean to imply that one should not seek objects, substances, activities, relationships, and so on. It’s perfectly legitimate and necessary to do so. All I’m suggesting is that one should not do so for the purpose of seeking happiness and object relationship and so on, can never be the source of happiness. And this became clear to me. And so it came clear to me very early on, or quite early on in my life, in my early 20s. And it didn’t bring my search for happiness in the world to an abrupt end. I continued for some time the momentum, the habit of seeking happiness in the world continued for some time, but I knew it didn’t belong there. I knew that if I wanted to find lasting peace and happiness, I had to go within and find it within myself. So that was the change in relation to my internal experience. In relation to my external experience, particularly in relationship to people, I realized first intuitive, but then it became clearer and clearer to me that I share my being with everyone. I don’t share my thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, and so on with everyone, but I do share my being with everyone. And I would suggest this recognition of our shared being is the experience we call love. And it became clear to me, and this is something that just goes on and on and on deepening, it became clear to me that whether I like somebody or not is not important. When I like someone or not is to do with the extent to which my thoughts, feelings, actions, conditioning, and so on coincides or harmonizes with theirs, but irrespective of the extent to which I like someone, we share our being. In other words, the being that lies behind my thoughts and feelings and the being that lies behind everybody else’s thoughts and feelings is the same being. Now, that doesn’t mean to say that at the level of our thoughts and feelings, we’ll always agree with one another and smile sweetly with one another. Not at all. There may still be disagreements, but these disagreements, they don’t prevent us from not just understanding but feeling that we share our being with everyone. And this recognition has had a profound effect on my relationships, family, friends, strangers. It’s my primary relationship with everyone, the fact that I love them. But by love, I’m not talking about a warm and fuzzy feeling. I’m talking about this felt understanding that irrespective of how they think and feel, irrespective of how they act and relate, at the deepest level, I am one with them. And that’s my primary relationship with everyone. And so it’s transformed my relationships with people.
Niall [19:33]: Brilliant. Just to go back to what you were saying about seeking, this idea that you can’t find it by seeking, but the quote I really love from the book was, I’ll just read it out here, that for which we long can’t be found by seeking, but only seekers find it. That’s by Bayezid Bastami.
Rupert: A Sufi mystique by Bayezid Bastami. Yes, that for which we seek cannot be found by seeking. And like a lot of these enigmatic statements, they seem to contradict each other. But of course, they don’t really, if one understands that, for which we long above all else cannot be found by seeking, and yet only those who seek find it. Let’s translate that into our analogy of John Smith and King Lear. King Lear cannot find John Smith by going out into the world in search of him, because he is already John Smith. John Smith is not something he can find in his life. He is John Smith. He simply needs to recognize that. He never lost John Smith. He never ceased being John Smith. He just overlooked it and forgot it. So King Lear cannot find John Smith by searching for him. And yet, if he doesn’t seek for John Smith, he’ll remain as King Lear, and as a result, he’ll remain miserable. So King Lear has to go out into the world seeking King Lear until he becomes so frustrated in his inability to find John Smith out in the world that either through desperation, either through meeting a friend, reading a book, watching a YouTube clip, something brings his search for John Smith in the world to a halt. And he starts this inward facing, this inward search, this search within himself for John Smith. And then he doesn’t find John Smith because he always is John Smith. John Smith recognizes who he essentially is. So exactly the same. We, the apparently temporary finite self that we seem to be, cannot search for ourselves because we already are ourselves. We can overlook that and we can remember that. We can forget that and we can recognize that. But in order to do so, most of us, if not all, have to go out into the world in search of objects and relationships and so on until these fail us sufficiently often for us to begin to at least intuit maybe the peace for which I long doesn’t live there. And then we begin this inward search, which culminates in this recognition, oh, I am the fact of simply being whose nature is peace and happiness. It struck me there, just as you were explaining that, that do you think this is what the metaphor of the prodigal son is about? Do you think that’s what they’re talking about? Absolutely. Spot on. It’s very specifically the prodigal son. He leaves the kingdom. He leaves his father. He leaves the kingdom. The kingdom represents the kingdom of abundance, of peace, of joy, of fulfillment and loving relationships with his father. He leaves his birthright. He was born with it. He didn’t earn it. It’s his nature. He left and he went out into the world. And in the example of the prodigal son, he had to explore everything that was on offer in the world. He didn’t just have a few failed relationships or a few bouts of ill. He had to go so far that he ended up eating the food that the pigs were eating. He had to try everything. He was destitute. He was on the brink of despair. And only then did he turn around. This turning around, it’s the conversion. It’s the turning around when we cease directing our attention towards the objective content of experience, objects, substances. This turning around and this retracing our steps, going deeply within until we recognize the innate piece of our essential self or our essential being. So yes, absolutely, that this is exactly what is portrayed in the prodigal son. Now, most people don’t need to go as far as the prodigal son went. Most people don’t have to go to the brink of despair, but some do. And for some people, this despair, there’s just nowhere else they can go. And this can lead to a spontaneous turning around or sometimes that’s the time when people realize they need to go for help. But yes, you’re absolutely right. This is exactly what the story of the prodigal son portrays. Yes.
Niall [24:55]: So what is your understanding of consciousness, Rupert? How do you help people understand what consciousness actually is? Consciousness is both. First of all, I use the words consciousness and awareness synonymously. Strictly speaking, consciousness cannot be defined for the same reason that I suggested earlier, that the ultimate reality cannot be defined, but it can be invoked in our experience. So I would, this is not a definition of consciousness, but it is an attempt to make people aware of the fact of their own consciousness, the fact of being aware. So I would say that consciousness is this. It is that with which all experience is known. It is that within which all experience arises. And ultimately it is that out of which everything is made.
Niall: That’s very well said. And the metaphor that really helped me to grasp this was the metaphor of the cinema screen. Could you maybe elaborate on that a little bit?
Rupert: Yes. The cinema screen with the movie playing on it. Okay. But it’s a magical cinema screen. In this analogy, it’s not a cinema screen that is being watched by somebody sitting in the cinema. Imagine an aware screen that is a screen that has the ability to watch the movie that is playing on it. Now, the movie in this analogy is our experience, thoughts, images, memories, feelings, sensations of the body, perceptions of the world, activities, relationships, the conversation you and I are having, et cetera. That’s what I call the content of experience, the objective content of experience, the drama of experience, the movie of experience. And the screen is the medium on which all of that plays. Thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, and so on. These are continually arising, existing, and vanishing. But anything that arises or appears must appear or arise on something or in something. You can’t have a movie without a screen or a wave without an ocean or a cloud without a sky. So what is it that our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions are arising in or on? That is consciousness. Consciousness is the screen upon which or the space within which all experience arises. And it is at the same time that with which all experience is known. Ultimately, it is that out of which all experience is made, just as everything that takes place in the movie is made of the screen.
Niall [27:54]: And I think the beautiful part about that metaphor is that, you know, there are many different movies that are played on the cinema screen, but the screen itself remains unchanging.
Rupert: Let’s say one day you were deeply depressed and I were to ask you the question, what is it that is aware of your depression? Don’t go towards your depression, but I was to draw your attention to that which is aware of your depression. Something is aware of the feeling of depression. Now, the next day, you fall deeply in love. You’re now no longer depressed, you’re in love, but you are aware of being in love. Of being in love. Well, is the awareness with which you are one day aware of your depression and the awareness with which you are the next day aware of being in love, is it the same awareness or a different awareness? It’s obviously the same. The awareness that is aware of the conversation you and I are having now is exactly the same awareness that was aware of the taste of breakfast this morning. So, yes, awareness is always the same. What we are aware of always changes thoughts, images, feelings, and so on. So the content of experience always changes. The fact of being aware or awareness itself never changes. It is the ever changing background of the always changing foreground of experience. Most people spend their lives completely immersed in the foreground of experience. They don’t even realize that there is this background. There is this presence of awareness that lies in the background of experience that’s always peaceful. Even if our thoughts are agitated, even if our feelings are heavy or sorrowful or in the background, there is this peaceful presence of awareness that is both one with the content of experience, like the screen is one with the movie, but at the same time, it is free of it. It is independent of it. Just as the screen is not affected by the drama in the movie, so this background presence of awareness is not affected by the content of experience. It’s just always there, present in the background at peace and knowing or being aware of our experience.
Niall [30:35]: So this is essentially the thing through which everything that we experience is experienced or the thing through which everything we know is known. Exactly. So what I’ve heard you say in your talk with us is that there’s nothing more important than understanding this thing.
Rupert: Of course. You’re right, Nan. If awareness is that, awareness or consciousness is that with which and through which everything is known, then our knowledge of the known can only ever be as good as our knowledge of the knower. So in order to know what anything truly is, we must first know the nature of that which knows it. So yes, the knowledge of the nature of consciousness is the highest knowledge and the exploration of the nature of consciousness is the highest science. It’s fascinating. And from learning a little bit about your work, Rupert, it’s made me realize about the power of metaphors for understanding these sorts of things. And you give a great one for this. It’s the orange glasses when someone goes skiing. Can you tell us about the importance of that? Yes, you’re right. It’s an analogy I use often. Someone’s skiing, they have orange tinted goggles on. But of course, when you’ve had your orange tinted goggles on for 10 or 15 minutes, you forget that you’re wearing goggles and you think that you see the snow as it really is. The human mind is like a pair of orange tinted glasses and it has two basic faculties. One is thinking and the other is perceiving. And everything we know or experience, we know through the mind, we know through our faculties of thinking and perceiving. And thinking and perceiving are our orange tinted glasses that tint reality with their own limitations. Or just as when we look at snow through orange tinted glasses, we are still seeing the snow. There is something there that’s prior to and independent of the fact that we are perceiving it. However, our perception of it is colored and distorted by the lens through which we look. Well, I would suggest exactly the same is true. There is a reality out there that is independent of each of our finite minds. In other words, what I know of the world is not just taking place in my finite mind. If I believe that, I’d be a solipsist. I think that the world, including all the 8 billion people in the world, are just a fabrication of my own mind. That’s not what the non-dual understanding suggests. Non-dual understanding suggests that there is a reality that is prior to and independent of its being observed by the finite mind. But as human beings, our only way of perceiving that reality is through our limited finite minds. Our limited finite minds are the orange tinted glasses tinted with the faculties of thinking and perceiving. Where thinking confers names upon reality and perceiving confers forms on reality. So what we look at when we see the world is a multiplicity and diversity of names and forms. Those names and forms, they’re not really there. Reality is really there, but it appears to us in accordance with the limitations of the faculties through which we perceive it. If our minds were, and because our minds are configured in terms of thinking and perceiving, we see a four dimensional world. Thinking confers, thinking takes place in a single dimension, that’s time. And perceiving takes place in three dimensions. So it’s not a surprise that when we look at reality, we see time and space. Time and space are not inherent in reality. Contemporary physics confirms this now. Time and space are not inherent in reality. Time and space is part of our cognitive apparatus, is our cognitive apparatus, the human mind that projects time and space onto reality and all the events and objects that time and space are populated with. So we see a and we see a filtered version of reality. It’s what Wordsworth, William Wordsworth, so beautifully expressed in the poem he wrote called, Minds Composed a Few Miles Above Tintin Abbey. He said, I won’t repeat the poem, but he said that we half create, half perceive the world. And what he meant is that we perceive the world in the sense that there is something out there, let’s call it reality. We’re perceiving reality, but we create, we, the human mind, create its appearance. So what we know of as the world, what we experience as the world, is a mixture of reality, which the nondual understanding would say is infinite consciousness or pure spirit or pure love. What we experience of the world is a conjunction of reality and the limitations imposed on it by our finite mind. So we both perceive and create the world we experience. So I’m not suggesting that the world is not real, nor am I suggesting that the world is just an appearance in our finite mind. The world is real, but it’s also an illusion. An illusion is not something that is not real. It’s something that is real, but is not what it appears to be. So the world is real as infinite consciousness or spirit or love or whatever. Ultimately, it’s unnameable, but whatever term we use, it is real. But the appearance of 10,000 things are ultimately illusory. In other words, in the ultimate analysis, there are no independent things or people. There are only 10,000 things at the level of appearances. Behind that reality and appearing as those appearances, there is a single indivisible hole. Just as when you watch a movie, you see 10,000 people in the crowd, but when you run your finger across the 10,000 people in the crowd, you don’t find 10,000 people. You find a screen and there’s no divisions in the screen. There’s only one thing there. That’s what the non-dual understanding says. There’s only one thing which is not a thing. It’s pure consciousness.
Niall [38:13]: It reminds me of just the idea that if human sensory systems or even any animal sensory systems are required to bring this world into being, without those senses there, without that perceptual apparatus, sunlight or photons of light would remain as photons. But because we are here to bring the world into being and convert those photons into light.
Rupert: I would go even further, Niall. Even the photons are part of how reality presents itself to us, to a finite mind. The photons are not out there. The photons are just how reality appears to a human mind. They’re not even photons.
Niall: Okay. Well, fair enough. Fair enough. The next thing I wanted to ask about, Rupert, is this summit is primarily for mental health professionals, people working one-on-one with other people to help them reduce unnecessary suffering from their lives. I’m curious to ask from your point of view. I know you don’t practice in that way, but why do you think this might be important for mental health professionals to be aware of the non-dual understanding?
Rupert: Niall, I think this is the most important thing that any mental health professional should know about, irrespective of the articular branch of mental health that they work in. Everyone that comes to them comes to them with a problem, some degree of suffering. What’s the most important thing for the mental health professional to know is that even now, in the midst of their suffering, the nature of the person who is facing them, their nature is peace and joy. It’s not that they might become that at the end of three months or three years of treatment. It’s that they are that now, but the content of their thoughts and emotions have veiled that, and as a result, the innate peace of their patient is not available to their patient. Now, I don’t mean to imply that a mental health professional can speak to their patient in the way that I’m speaking to you. I’m so cool. I don’t like the term, but for want of a better term, I’m a teacher or a speaker of non-duality. It’s my job, and not just non-duality, but the particular branch of it that’s sometimes referred to as the direct path, where we go directly to our true nature. We don’t get involved with King Lear’s thoughts and his feelings and his relationships with the daughter, his daughters and the troubles in his kingdom and the war with Frank. We just go straight to the heart of the matter. Who are you really, King Lear? That’s all we’re interested in. That’s what I do. Now, a mental health professional won’t be able to do that, except possibly in very rare circumstances, but for all intents and purposes, they won’t be able to do that because the degree of suffering will be so intense that to suggest they go all the way back to their true nature in one step would be too big a step. It would be over their heads. A mental health professional will have to go more slowly and deal with the issue at more relative levels, investigate the problem. Okay, tell me about your childhood. Tell me about your relationship and to start exploring their experience and slowly, slowly, slowly work their way back to the essential nature of their patient. This is the skill required of each therapist or counselor practitioner. Most will have been trained in a certain modality, so they will have skills and tools that enable them to address and explore the suffering of their patient. It’s necessary that they use those tools, but what’s important is that the work they do with the patient is informed by this understanding because much of the effectiveness of the therapeutic work doesn’t lie in the content of what takes place between the patient and the therapy. It takes place in the field, in the context of which the relationship takes place, the openness, the acceptance, the unjudgingness, the lovingness. It’s the therapist’s job is to provide that context. Yes, it’s necessary to dialogue about the content, in almost all cases, it’s an essential part of the treatment, but in the end, it’s the space in which the relationship takes place that is really the effective agent. The therapist needs to know, but more importantly, not just to know and understand, but to feel that the person that sitting across from them, that their being is right now, their being is at peace and in perfect health. All that’s necessary is to recognize that and something about the quality of the relationship, not the content of the relationship, the quality of the relationship enables the patient to begin to experience this for themselves.
Niall [44:30]: That’s very, very well said. And as you’re speaking, another thing I suppose came to mind, there’s a concept in mental health called psychological flexibility. And the guy that sort of came up with this, he’s called Steve Hayes. And his description of this skill is probably one of the most important variables in well-being is that it’s not about changing what you think or feel that matters. It’s changing how you relate to what you think or feel. So in other words, you’re untangling yourself from the content of experience. And I suppose what this reminds me of in this kind of approach, the direct path, is you are disentangling yourself from the content of your experience and you’re realizing who you really are. And then you realize that all of these things are not essentially you. And that can be a very direct path to healing.
Rupert: Yes. I like that. Psychological flexibility. That’s very nice. You say it’s not about changing your experience, it’s about how you relate to it. In doing that, you’re taking one step back. Instead of being entangled with your thoughts and feelings, you’re saying, no, we’re not going to touch our thoughts and feelings. We’re going to take a step back and explore the way we look at them. So it’s beautiful. It’s not a step all the way back to your true nature. It’s not the question who is looking at them, but it’s halfway back to your true nature. Let’s explore the way we look at them. Do we look at them with judgment? Do we look at them with love? That’s a beautiful halfway step. Let’s explore the way we relate to this content. And the next step would be, okay, but who is the I? Who is the one that, first of all, knows this content and who is the one that relates to it? Let’s take another step back. I’ve not heard of that before, but it sounds a very intelligent approach to me. And that would be a very nice example of what I suggested before, that a therapist or a practitioner may not be able to go all the way back to their patient’s true nature in one step, but could go halfway back. That would be a lovely example of going halfway back, not getting tangled in changing thoughts and feelings. Let’s take a step back and explore the way we relate to it. Maybe we do that for a couple of months and then the patient, as you said, has disentangled themselves from the content of their experience, at least to a degree, but enough to enable them a couple of weeks or a couple of months later to say, okay, now who are you behind your experience? Who is the one that knows and relates to? That’s a very nice example of the way a practitioner could understand this approach, but would tailor this approach to their patient.
Niall [47:50]: A big thing that I think might get in the way of really embracing this understanding of who we are and the fact that happiness isn’t going to be found in the world outside or whatever to a certain extent. For me, the thing that will come to mind is if I just have this understanding that happiness and peace and everything is within, then I’m going to lose my motivation and my drive. But then what I would say to that is whenever I even caught a glimpse of this, it was really enlivening for me and I wanted to share it with others. When I look at yourself and I look at Bernardo Castro and Eckhart Tolle or Alan Watts who are all these people that are putting this understanding out into the world, they’re some of the most motivated people, but it’s not like a-
Rupert: Yeah, exactly. Now we don’t lose our motivation. All that we lose is our suffering. That’s what we lose. As everybody knows, when they feel happy, what do you do when you feel at peace and happy? Do you go into your bedroom, close the door and sit on your bed? No, you don’t. There’s just this bubbling up inside. Happiness, it’s almost impossible to contain love. When you feel love, do you go into your bedroom and sit there on your- No, you don’t. You call a friend, you play a song, you dance, you write something, you cook a delicious meal. Happiness and love are almost impossible to contain. They just flow out of you. It’s natural to want to express and communicate and celebrate and share peace and joy and love in some ways. There’s no question of losing motivation. The motivation that we lose is the old motivation that was based on our feeling of being a temporary, finite, limited, separate self that was always going out into the world, seeking reassurance from other people, seeking acknowledgement from other people, seeking praise from us, seeking love from other people. We lose that because we know that it no longer lives there. Maybe sometimes people relate a kind of interim period when all their old motivations, which they engaged in the service of the ego, subside. But then fairly quickly, a new motivation arises that is no longer based on the old egoic feeling of lack and sorrow and conflict. It’s based on this innate peace and joy and love. As I said earlier, it just bubbles up in you. It’s almost impossible to contain it.
Niall: As you’re speaking there as well, another metaphor comes to mind. You always hear about this idea of your cup overflowing into the world. Like you said, it’s bubbling up. The thing that came to mind there was the person that doesn’t understand this, they are always going out into the world looking for people and things to fill up their cup, but it always runs out. Whereas if you have this understanding, it’s like your cup is plugged into the mains or a fountain that is everlasting.
Rupert: Exactly. Before we have this felt understanding, we use the world in service of our happiness. After we have this understanding, we use our happiness in service of the world.
Niall: 100%. We’ve got a few minutes left, Rupert, and there’s a lot of things I could ask you. I’m trying to think what would be the best way to wrap this up. There’s two questions I want to ask. What would the world look like if this was our default paradigm, if this is what we grew up knowing and feeling? What might the world actually look like for everyday people and the planet if this was the default understanding and not the materialist paradigm?
Rupert: Well, for a start, people would feel peace and joy without needing to derive that from objects and substances. It doesn’t mean to say that we wouldn’t still require objects and substances, but not for the purpose of seeking and finding happiness. That itself would have a profound effect on us. People would be at peace. People would feel fulfilled. There would be much more creativity. People’s lives would be engaged in creative ways of bringing this understanding into the world, sharing it with society. I’m just doing it in one way, but there are innumerable ways of doing it, and people’s lives would be spent sharing, communicating, celebrating this understanding. Everyone would feel fulfilled and creative, and there’d be very little conflict. Look at all the conflicts in our lives. Nearly all of them originate in the feeling of separation. I am separate from the other. It’s that fundamental feeling that is the cause of our conflicts. There’d be much less conflict. As I said earlier, it doesn’t mean to say there wouldn’t be disagreements. People would have different political persuasions and so on, but there’d be very little conflict. There’d be no conflict. It would be almost impossible, but it would be impossible to be unkind, unjust, cruel. Why? Because we feel that the other is ourself. Nobody is unkind to somebody they love. Why? Because they feel that the other is their self. People are only unkind and unjust and cruel to someone they think is other than themselves. That’s why we’re not cruel and unkind, except for exceptional circumstances, to our children, for instance, because we love them. We show kindness to them. But some people who are kind and loving towards their children can be extremely unkind and unloving towards others. But in the end, your feeling of love is not just extended to your own small circle of family and friends. You feel that you love everybody. As I said before, it doesn’t mean to say you like everybody. You don’t smile sweetly at everybody, but you feel at the deepest level you share your being with everyone. That understanding informs your relationship with people. Even when there are disagreements, the disagreements are explored in the context of this understanding that at the deepest level, we are one. And this makes conflicts, violence, war impossible.
Niall [55:21]: The implications of what we’re actually talking about here is a radical shift in identity from viewing yourself as this one individual egoic self into essentially everything and everybody around you.
Rupert: That is exactly right. We understand, but more importantly feel, that what we essentially are is not just limited to this little corner of the universe called my body and my mind. But what we essentially are is the being, the uncolored being from which everyone, and not just everyone, but all people, all animals, and all things, derive their existence. And we feel we are that. So yes, we still perceive the world through the faculties of this little body mind, but we feel that our identity is not limited to that. Our identity expands way beyond the limitations of our own body and mind and encompasses everyone and everything. It’s the experience we call love. Everyone knows the experience of love, and what is the experience of love? It’s when we feel that the sense of separation diminishes. That’s what love is, the absence of the sense of separation. It’s the natural condition of all relationship. It’s our primordial condition, the condition of love, the condition of our shared being. We share our being with everyone and everything. That should be the foundation. You talk about a new paradigm. The new paradigm, there would be a single principle underlying this new paradigm, namely that we share our being with everyone and everything. There is one infinite, indivisible whole or reality whose nature is consciousness or spirit or love, from which everyone and everything derives its independent existence. That would be the fundamental understanding, felt understanding, that underlies all our actions, thoughts, feelings, relationships, and so on.
Niall: And if that’s the case, if that’s your fundamental understanding and you see your fellow human beings as yourself, then that completely changes how you treat them, because you wouldn’t treat yourself with hatred or anything.
Rupert: Exactly. You treat everyone as yourself.
Niall: And the planet then, this is very esoteric, but the planet is like in the same way that you wouldn’t litter in your house, your own house, your own home, then you’re not going to litter in the planet because you realize that is your home.
Rupert: Exactly. Because the being that you know to be your own essential nature is the same being from which not just all people and animals, but all things, nature, the planet, everything, that everything share, everyone and everything shares its being. And for exactly the same reason that you don’t trash your own home, you don’t trash your own body, you don’t trash your own home, you don’t trash your own planet, because you feel yourself identified with all of that. You feel yourself as everything, not just this little corner of the universe called my body.
Niall: Okay, so one last question just to finish up, Rupert. It’s okay to intellectually know these things at a head level, but how do you move this from the head to the heart? Is it something that just has to happen by itself or are there ways that people can accelerate this process? Because I know even yourself, you had a mentor, I think it was Francis de Sille.
Rupert: Yes, I became interested in these matters in my early teens and I had various teachers and explored a lot and practiced in the Vedantic tradition, the Sufi tradition, the Tantric tradition. So I’ve explored these matters a lot. And really, in terms of the inward exploration, which is the initial exploration, it involves going deeply into ourselves, going through the thoughts, feelings, actions, elationships and tracing one’s way back deeply into oneself until we get to that aspect of us, which is essential. When I say essential, I mean, the aspect of us that can’t be removed from us. It’s what remains when you take all the images, the emails, the movies, the documents and YouTube did. What remains? The screen, the transparent screen. It’s like when we undress at night, we take off everything that we can take off. What remains? Our naked body. We do the same thing. Imagine taking off, not your clothes, but your experience, your thoughts, your feelings, your sensations, your perceptions. And this is not difficult to do. We do it every night when we fall asleep. Every night when we fall asleep, our thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, actions, relationships, all of these leave us naturally. So we do that, but we do it whilst remaining awake. And what I’m describing to you is really the process of meditation or prayer. What remains when we have removed, or at least if not removed, when we’ve let go of everything that we can let go of? Just the fact of being, the fact of simply being. And that being is at peace. And it needs nothing. It lacks nothing. It wants nothing. It resists nothing. That’s the direct path to peace and happiness.
Niall [1:01:18]: And that, again, that even changes our understanding of death,
Rupert: absolutely. Yes. When the character on the screen dies, the screen doesn’t disappear. It just loses one of its temporary appearances. When we die, the being we essentially are, which is not a personal being, which is utterly intimate, but it’s impersonal and infinite. Being loses one of its appearances. So yes, the body and the mind disappear, but what we essentially are remains as it always is.
Niall: A hundred percent. So, Rupert, just to wrap up, for someone that’s interested in exploring the non-jewel understanding further and learning more about your work, where would be good places for people to start? Any particular books you’d recommend people to check out?
Rupert: I think the best place for someone to start would be YouTube, because I have numerous YouTube clips, responses to questions, lots of meditations. It’s all free. There are several hundred YouTube clips. That would be the place to begin. If they want to go into it more deeply, I recommend starting with the book, You Are the Happiness You Seek, a more philosophical book, The Nature of Consciousness, a couple of short books about meditations, being aware of being aware and being myself, and very shortly a meditation app, which I’m making called Luminous. That will be the main place to go. So sometime early next year, I would recommend the meditation app called Luminous.
Niall: I’m looking forward to that. Rupert, I will let you go. It’s been an absolute pleasure to speak with you and I want to wish you all the best going forward in your continued efforts.
Rupert: Thank you, Niall. As always, it’s a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you for inviting me again.