Rupert Spira Quotes

We take that which is unreal to be real and that which is real to be unreal.

However, love, peace and happiness are inherent in the knowing of our own being. In fact, they are the knowing of being. They are simply other names for our self.

Only that which is always with you can be said to be your self and if you look closely and simply at experience, only awareness is always ‘with you’.

That is, a single sensation/thought/perception appears in consciousness and thinking alone conceptualises

Cease being exclusively fascinated by whatever you are aware of and be interested instead in the experience of being aware itself.

No formulation of the reality of experience is completely true. Once we acknowledge this, we relieve words of the impossible burden of trying to express the nature of experience and, as a result, leave them free to be spoken and heard in playful and creative ways that evoke Reality itself without trying to frame or grasp it.

I am that which knows or is aware of all experience, but I am not myself an experience. I am aware of thoughts but am not myself a thought; I am aware of feelings and sensations but am not myself a feeling or sensation; I am aware of perceptions but am not myself a perception. Whatever the content of experience, I know or am aware of it. Thus, knowing or being aware is the essential element in all knowledge, the common factor in all experience.

And this ‘knowing’ is our self, aware presence. In other words, all that is ever experienced is our self knowing itself, awareness aware of awareness.

In reality, which means in our actual experience, all experience is one seamless substance. The duality between the inside self and the outside object, world or other is never actually experienced. It is always imagined.

This perpetual longing for happiness—which can, by definition, never be fulfilled because that very search itself denies the happiness that is present in our own being now—condemns us to an endless search in the future and thus perpetuates unhappiness. It is for this reason that the poet said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.

See clearly that we have no knowledge of our self ever having been born, changing, evolving, growing up or growing old and that we can never have the experience of death.

Seeking happiness in objective experience is the activity that defines the apparently separate self.

Nothing ever happens to the knowing with which all experience is known.

the separate self is not in fact an entity but rather an activity that appears in Consciousness.

Understanding is the dissolution of the mind into its support, into its ground. It is the experience of Consciousness knowing itself, returning to itself knowingly.

It is impossible to experience the appearance of awareness. We are that awareness to which such an appearance would occur. We have no experience of a beginning to the awareness that is seeing these words. We have no experience of its birth. We have no experience that we, awareness, are born. Likewise, in order to claim legitimately that awareness dies, something would have to be present to experience its disappearance. Have we ever experienced the disappearance of awareness? If we think the answer is, ‘Yes’, then what is it that is present and aware to experience the apparent disappearance of awareness? Whatever that is must be aware and present. It must be awareness. When we are born or when we wake in the morning, we have the experience of the appearance of objects. When we die and when we fall asleep at night, we have the experience of the disappearance of objects. However, we have no experience that we, awareness, appear, are born, disappear or die. That

The belief that we were born, that we change, evolve, grow old and die is simply a belief to which the vast majority of humanity subscribes without realizing that they are doing so. It is the religion of our culture.

Love is the experience of our shared being. When we love another person we feel, to a greater or lesser extent, that the separation between us dissolves.

Our true nature of eternal, infinite awareness is never completely forgotten or eclipsed by objective experience. However agitated or numbed objective experience may have rendered our mind, the memory of our eternity shines within it as the desire for happiness, or, in religious language, the longing for God.

In other words, in reality, there are not two things—one, the screen and two, the document or image. There is just the screen. Two things (or a multiplicity and diversity of things) only come into apparent existence when their true reality—the screen—is overlooked. Experience is like that. All we know is experience but there is no independent ‘we’ or ‘I’ that knows experience. There is just experience or experiencing. And experiencing is not inherently divided into one part that experiences and another part that is experienced.

when the Indian sage Atmananda Krishna Menon was asked how to know when one is established in one’s true nature, he is said to have replied, ‘When thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions can no longer take you away’.

Nor have we, aware presence, ever become sad, angry, anxious, depressed, in need, agitated, jealous, etc. At the same time, we are intimately one with all such feelings when they are present. Although we are the substance of all such feelings, just as the screen is the substance of all images, we are inherently free of them. Unhappiness is made out of our self, but our self is never unhappy.

Awareness is inherently whole, complete and fulfilled in itself. Thus its nature is happiness itself--not a happiness that depends upon the condition of the mind, body or world, but a causeless joy that is prior to and independent of all states, circumstances, and conditions.

The great secret that lies at the heart of all the main religious and spiritual traditions is the understanding that the peace and happiness for which all people long can never be delivered via objective experience. It can only be found in our self, in the depths of our being.

We do not have to eradicate a separate self in order to be knowingly eternal, infinite awareness or God’s infinite, self-aware being. There is no separate self to be eliminated. To attempt to dissolve or annihilate a separate self simply perpetuates its illusory existence. To discipline the separate self is to maintain the separate self.

It is the self-aware screen of awareness, upon which the drama of experience is playing and out of which it is made, that becomes so intimately involved with the objective content of its experience that it seems to lose itself in it and, as a result, overlooks or forgets its own presence, just as a dreamer’s mind loses itself in its own dream at night.

Every word on this page is in fact only made of paper. It only expresses the nature of the paper, although it may describe the moon.

The abstract concepts of the mind cannot apprehend Reality, although they are an expression of it.

We cannot know happiness as an objective experience; we can only be it. We cannot be unhappy; we can only know unhappiness as an objective experience.

However, love, peace and happiness are inherent in the knowing of our own being. In fact, they are the knowing of being. They are simply

In other words, in reality, there are not two things—one, the screen and two, the document or image. There is just the screen.

Suffering ensues when we allow awareness of objects to eclipse awareness of being. Happiness is revealed when we allow awareness of being to outshine awareness of objects.

mind is awareness in motion; awareness is mind at rest.

Being aware of being aware is the essence of meditation. It is the only form of meditation that does not require the directing, focusing or controlling of the mind.

The known always changes; knowing never changes.

The mind that seeks awareness is like a current in the ocean in search of water. Such a mind is destined for endless dissatisfaction.

the way a person sees or understands him or herself deeply conditions the ways he or she sees and understands objects, others and the world.

the presence of awareness becomes increasingly our natural condition, until there is no longer a distinction between meditation and life.

When the doors of perception are cleansed, everything will appear as it truly is, infinite.

reveal themselves as none other than the shape that our self is taking from moment to moment.

For anything to be known, its apparent ‘thingness’ must dissolve in Awareness and become pure knowing.

It is experience itself. Experience is not a collection of objects known by an inside self. ‘Experience’ is just another name for our self,

But the utter intimacy of the knower and the known is a well-known and familiar experience.

Nothing new needs to be added to experience for us to become aware that our self is always being

although seeming to take place outside, in fact take place within Consciousness

The true non-dual understanding is like an explosion – it cannot be contained in any form.

An object is only an object from the point of view of the mind.

It is prior to all thinking, feeling or perceiving.

we do not really see trees, fields, hills and the sky; we always see only the screen. The screen is their reality.

unclouded Awareness, knowing-being-loving itself. It is not known by someone.

This absence of otherness, objectness, selfness is love itself. It is what we are and all we know.

The separate entity we imagine ourself to be cannot reside in the present.

objects and entities are all abstract conceptions that are superimposed by thinking onto experience itself.

There is only experiencing from moment to moment, and this experiencing is one ever-present, seamless whole.

aware Presence loses its apparent witness-ness and stands revealed as pure Awareness alone,

Awareness has no experience of its own appearance, beginning, birth, duration, disappearance or death.

What is real for Awareness is abstract and utterly mysterious for the mind, and what is seemingly real for the mind is utterly non-existent for Awareness.

time is only in thought. Experience is eternally now.

Awareness takes the shape of thinking and appears as the mind; it takes the shape of sensing and appears as the body;

There is no knower of this experience and nothing that is known. There is just the knowing of it,

Knowing or being aware is never modified by experience. It never moves or fluctuates. It is the only

Meditation is what we are, not what we do; the separate self is what we do, not what we are.

There is just knowing. And what is it that knows that there is knowing? Only that which knows can know knowing. Therefore, only knowing knows knowing.

That is, it knows itself as the totality of experience. This could be formulated as, ‘I, Awareness, am everything’,

Knowing or experiencing is not what it does; it is what it is.

although meditation may seem at first to be an activity that the mind undertakes in order to achieve some new state or experience, it is later understood to be the very nature or essence of the mind itself.

Security and happiness cannot be found in anything that comes and goes. Find whatever it is in your experience that doesn’t appear, move, change or disappear, and invest your identity, security and happiness in that alone.

In this exploration the deeper layers, such as feelings of fear, guilt, shame, inadequacy, unlovableness, etc. are allowed to surface without resistance or agenda and slowly reveal the sense of separation that lies at their heart.

When the fan, the hand or indeed anything else are experienced, their apparent existence is not separate from awareness. All experiences are equally close, equally ‘one with’, awareness. When the apparent object disappears, awareness remains as it is.

a mind that is accustomed to repeatedly dissolving in its source or essence becomes progressively saturated with its inherent peace. When such a mind rises again from the ocean of awareness, its activity makes that peace available to humanity. Such a mind may also be inspired by knowledge that is not simply a continuation of the past but comes directly form its unconditioned essence. This inspiration brings creativity and new possibilities into whatever sphere of knowledge or activity in which that mind operates.

Mind is the activity or creativity of awareness in which awareness itself seems to become entangled. Awareness seems to lose itself in its own creativity; it veils itself with its own activity. Meditation is the disentangling of awareness from its own activity.

Allow your self to be coloured by experience temporarily, but do not become limited by it. To say and identify with the statements ‘I am sad’, ‘I am lonely’, ‘I am tired’, ‘I am hungry’, ‘I am a man’ or ‘I am a woman’ is to allow infinite being to become limited and personal.

It is impossible to experience the appearance of awareness. We are that awareness to which such an appearance would occur. We have no experience of a beginning to the awareness that is seeing these words. We have no experience of its birth. We have no experience that we, awareness, are born.

In fact, we don’t know objects; we just know ‘knowing’. And who is it that knows ‘knowing’? ‘Knowing’ is not known by something or someone outside or other than itself. ‘Knowing’ is known by ‘knowing’. In other words, all that is experienced in the experience of an object, other or world is ‘knowing’.

Paul Cézanne referred when he said, ‘The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will trigger a revolution.’* It is the revolution to which Max Planck, developer of quantum theory, referred when he said, ‘I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.

The apparent separation of experience into two essential parts is similar to imagining that a screen is divided in two when two images appear on it side by side. If thinking imagines that the screen is only contained in only one of the images, then thinking will also have to imagine a substance that is ‘not the screen’, out of which the second image is made.

Just as the screen does not share the qualities, characteristics, or limitations of any of the objects or characters in a movie, although it is their sole reality, so the knowing with which all knowledge and experience are known does not share the qualities, characteristics, or limitations of whatever is known or experienced. Thus, it is unlimited or infinite.

What remains when we have let go of all thoughts, images, memories, feelings, sensations, perceptions, activities and relationships? Our self alone remains: not an enlightened, higher, spiritual, special self or a self that we have become through effort, practice or discipline, but just the essential self or being that we always and already are before it is coloured by experience.

If we look closely at the actual experience of the body rather than the idea we may have of it, we find that our only experience of it is the current sensation or perception. All sensations and perceptions appear and disappear, but our self, aware Presence, remains throughout. This ever-present ‘I’ cannot therefore be made out of an intermittent object such as a sensation or perception.

I’ve been operating according to the idea that it is almost impossible to let go of mental patterns that operate unconsciously and that I have to know such a pattern of thinking first in order to let go of it and abide in my true nature. Leave all those mental habits and patterns alone. The self that is apparently operating, that seems to know these patterns and that would ‘let go of them’ is itself simply one such pattern.

As we sit allowing these thoughts and, more importantly, uncomfortable feelings to arise, it is important not to have any subtle agenda with them, not to ‘do this’ in order to ‘get rid of them’, That would be more of the same. Just allow the full panoply of thoughts and feelings to display themselves in your loving and indifferent presence. In time their ferocity will die down, revealing subtler and subtler layers of thinking and feeling on behalf of a separate entity, until we come to the little, almost innocuous background thinking about which we were speaking earlier. This is the sense of separation, the ‘ego’, in its apparently mildest and least easily detectable form. Be very sensitive to this. Be sensitive to the ‘avoidance of what is’ in its subtlest forms. It is the sweet, furry baby animal that later turns into a monster! As time goes on we become more and more sensitive and we see how much of our thinking and feeling, as well as our activities, are generated for the sole purpose of avoiding ‘what is’, of avoiding the ‘this’ and the ‘now’, It is this open, un-judging, un-avoiding allowing of all things which, in time, restores the ‘I’ to its proper place in the seat of awareness and which, as a natural corollary to the abiding in and as our true self, gently realigns our thoughts, feelings and activities with the peace and happiness that are inherent in it. Nobody Has, Owns or Chooses Anything Q: While allowing the body, mind and world to be as they are, different thoughts arise, some not so savoury and others that might be better left not acted upon. You have said that, once one begins to abide knowingly as presence, responses to situations will flow naturally from there. Some thoughts will engage the body, others

I’ve been operating according to the idea that it is almost impossible to let go of mental patterns that operate unconsciously and that I have to know such a pattern of thinking first in order to let go of it and abide in my true nature. Leave all those mental habits and patterns alone. The self that is apparently operating, that seems to know these patterns and that would ‘let go of them’ is itself simply one such pattern. These patterns of thinking and feeling have taken their shape, over the years, from the belief that we are a separate self, without our making any particular effort. In just the same way, as our experiential conviction that we are not a limited, located self deepens, so our thoughts, feelings and subsequent behaviour will slowly, effortlessly and naturally realign themselves with this new understanding. In order to know our self we do not need to know the mind. No other knowledge than the knowledge that is present right now in this very moment is required to know our self. What does it mean to know our self? We are our self, so we are too close to our self to be able to know our self as an object. Our simply being our self is as close to knowing our self as we will ever come. We cannot get closer than that. In fact, being our self is the knowing of our self, but it is not the knowing of our self as an object. To say ‘I am’, (in other words to assert that we are present), we must know that ‘I am’. Being and knowing are, in fact, one single non-objective experience. But we do not step outside of our self in order to know our own being. We simply are our self. That being of our self is the knowing of our self. This being/knowing is shining in all experience. This experiential understanding dissolves the idea that our self is not present here and now and that it is not known here and now. And when our desire to know or find ourselves as an object is withdrawn, we discover that our own self was and is present all along, shining quietly in the background, as it were, of all experience. As this becomes obvious we discover that it is not just the background but also the foreground. In other words, it is not just the witness but simultaneously the substance of all experience. Completely relax the desire to find yourself as an object or to change your experience in any way. Relax into this present knowing of your own being. See that it is intimate, familiar and loving. See clearly that it is never not with you. It is shining here in this experience, knowing and loving its own being. It runs throughout all experience, closer than close, intimately one with all experience but untouched by it. As this intimate oneness, it is known as love. In its untouchable-ness it is known as peace and in its fullness it is known as happiness. In its openness and willingness to give itself to any possible shape (including the apparent veiling of its own being), it is known as freedom and, as the substance of all things, it is known as beauty. However, more simply it is known just as ‘I’ or ‘this’. Who Is? Q: All these questions about consciousness

There’s nothing that we’re saying that is incompatible with leading a very regular life. Having a family, if you want a family. Having a job, earning your living. Going on holiday, paying the rent... What is being suggested here is not in conflict with any of that. And its indeed possible to lead a very ordinary life without there being any sense of being a separate inside self. And still to be in a relationship, to have a family, to have a job, earn a living.

That is, only gradually, in most cases, will it become clear that meditation is what we are, not what we do, and that the separate self or finite mind is what we do, not what we are. Until this is recognised, meditation will seem to require an effort, and if this is the case, and for as long as it seems to be so, we should make the effort. In time it will become clear that we cannot make an effort to be or know our self – we can only make an effort to be or know something apparently other than our self – and at that point our effort will come spontaneously to an end.

And what is it that experiences our self? Only our self! There is only one substance in experience and it is pervaded by and made out of knowing or awareness. In the classical language of non-duality this is sometimes expressed in phrases such as, ‘Awareness only knows itself’, but this may seem abstract. It is simply an attempt to describe the seamless intimacy of experience in which there is no room for a self, object, other or world; no room to step back from experience and find it happy or unhappy, right or wrong, good or bad; no time in which to step out of the now into an imaginary past or into a future in which we may become, evolve or progress; no possibility of stepping out of the intimacy of love into relationship with an other; no possibility of knowing anything other than knowing, of being anything other than being, of loving anything other than loving; no possibility of a thought arising which would attempt to frame the intimacy of experience in the abstract forms of the mind; no possibility for our self to become a self, a fragment, a part; no possibility for the world to jump outside and for the self to contract inside; no possibility for time, distance or space to appear.

The experience of being aware is in exactly the same condition now as it was two minutes ago, two days ago, two months ago, two years ago or twenty years ago. The awareness with which our experience as five-year-old girls or boys was known is exactly the same awareness with which our current experience is known. Thus, our essential nature of knowing, being aware or awareness itself has no age. It is for this reason that as we get older, we feel that we are not really getting older. The older we get, the more we feel that we have always been the same person. The sameness in ourself is the sameness of awareness.

If we are absorbed in a movie it may seem at first that the screen lies behind the image. Likewise, if we are so captivated by experience that we overlook the simple experience of being aware or awareness itself, we may first locate it in the background of experience. In this first step, being aware or awareness itself is recognised as the subjective witness of all objective experience. Looking more closely we see that the screen is not just in the background of the image but entirely pervades it. Likewise, all experience is permeated with the knowing with which it is known. It is saturated with the experience of being aware or awareness itself. There is no part of a thought, feeling, sensation or perception that is not infused with the knowing of it. This second realisation collapses, at least to a degree, the distinction between awareness and its objects. In the third step, we understand that it is not even legitimate to claim that knowing, being aware or awareness itself pervades all experience, as if experience were one thing and awareness another. Just as the screen is all there is to an image, so pure knowing, being aware or awareness itself is all there is to experience. All there is to a thought is thinking, and all there is to thinking is knowing. All there is to an emotion is feeling, and all there is to feeling is knowing. All there is to a sensation is sensing, and all there is to sensing is knowing. All there is to a perception is perceiving, and all there is to perceiving is knowing. Thus, all there is to experience is knowing, and it is knowing that knows this knowing. Being all alone, with nothing in itself other than itself with which it could be limited or divided, knowing or pure awareness is whole, perfect, complete, indivisible and without limits. This absence of duality, separation or otherness is the experience of love or beauty, in which any distinction between a self and an object, other or world has dissolved. Thus, love and beauty are the nature of awareness. In the familiar experience of love or beauty, awareness is tasting its own eternal, infinite reality. It is in this context that the painter Paul Cézanne said that art gives us the ‘taste of nature’s eternity’.

Just as the clouds are the veiling of the blue sky, so unhappiness is the veiling of happiness.

Happiness is our very nature and lies at the source of the mind, or the heart of ourself, in all conditions and under all circumstances. It cannot be acquired; it can only be revealed.

It is not about life everlasting. It is about eternal life.

Once this recognition has taken place it is never possible to invest our desire for lasting peace and happiness in objective experience with quite the same conviction again. Although we may forget or ignore it and, as a result, repeatedly return to objective experience seeking fulfilment, our understanding will impress itself upon us with greater frequency and power, asserting its undeniable and unavoidable truth with ever-increasing clarity, demanding to be heard. We turn away from this intuition at our peril.

Even in the presence of thinking, there may be the belief in time but never the actual experience of time. There is just the current experience, appearing now. Age is never an experience; it is always a concept.

Stay with the pause between these two thoughts. When we remain in this pause before the answer formulates itself, what takes place ‘there’ is the most valuable and, at the same time, the most underrated or overlooked experience that one can have.

The past is made of memory, the future of imagination. Neither has any existence outside the realm of thought.” Rupert Spira, from The Ashes of Love

most ordinary, intimate and familiar experience there is. Everybody can say from their own direct experience, ‘I know that I am’, irrespective of the condition of their mind or body, or whatever is taking place in their environment. It is our experience that I am. ‘I am’ refers to our knowledge of our self before it is qualified by experience. Before we know that I am a man or a woman, of such-and-such an age, married or single, a mother, father or friend, before we know anything about our self, we simply know that I am. Before we know what I am, we know that I am. Everything we know about our self is added to the simple knowledge ‘I am’. If we feel that our self is not clearly known as it essentially is, it is not because we do not know it but because we have forgotten or ignored it in favour of objective experience. We have become so accustomed to giving our love and attention to the content of experience that we have simply overlooked that which is closest and most familiar to us. To remedy this, we first make a distinction between the knower and the known, the experiencer and the experienced, the witness and the witnessed. Later on we will collapse this distinction, but for one who is lost in experience, who identifies with every passing thought, feeling, activity and relationship, it is first necessary to make the distinction.

However agitated or numbed objective experience may have rendered our mind, the memory of our eternity shines within it as the desire for happiness, or, in religious language, the longing for God.

As Rupert Spira says, “Objects do not have existence. Existence has objects.” Existence may be equated with the word consciousness. Consciousness beholds objects; objects do not exist independent from awareness of them. Thus in order to truly understand things, we need to look primarily not at the things themselves but at the consciousness that is beholding them. That consciousness transcends all of the relationships between the forms that it is beholding, and is much more than all of them.

We could say that when the knowing of any object is relieved of its objective qualities, the identity of Consciousness and Existence is revealed. This revelation is known as Happiness in relation to the body, Peace in relation to the mind and Beauty in relation to the world.

Across spiritual traditions, sages and mystics have recognized a divine essence underlying all existence, often described as the "light behind the clouds." From Rumi's poetic verses to the Diamond Sutra's teachings, Meister Eckhart's sermons to Ramana Maharshi's insights, this fundamental awareness emerges repeatedly. Contemporary teachers like Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, and Rupert Spira continue sharing this perennial wisdom, which the IFS model translates into a modern psychotherapeutic framework. The technique complements rather than replaces contemplative paths, offering a modality for directly experiencing the shared spiritual recognition permeating sages' teachings across cultures and eras. Through IFS, individuals can connect with the higher insights found within the world's great wisdom traditions.

I searched for myself and found only God I searched for God and found only myself SUFI SAYING