Episode 35: Connor Beaton

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 into the intimacy of love, into the relationship with another, 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 ourselves 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.

So those are the words of my guest today, Mr. Rupert Spira, who I have very much been looking forward to having on the show. He is an English teacher of the quote direct path, which is a method of spiritual self inquiry. through talks and writing. He is a notable English studio potter as well with works in public and private collections. Rupert was deeply interested in the nature of reality and consciousness from a very early age and by age seventeen he was studying meditation

and practising a classic Indian method of spiritual inquiry called Advaita Vedanta. He has studied with doctor Francis Rolls, Shantananda Saraswati, and is steeped in the wisdom of thinkers and mystics such as Krishnamurti, Rumi, Sri Ramana Maharshi and Robert Adams. He regularly holds meetings and retreats worldwide exploring non dual teachings from a diverse array of sources.

From the Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mystical Christianity, Sufism, and Zen. He is the author of eight books, including The Transparency of Things, Contemplating the Nature of Experience The Ashes of Love, The Nature of Consciousness, and The Essence of Meditation, and his latest book is titled A Meditation on I Am. So this is a deep exploration into the nature of consciousness and time.

Rupert and I have a bit of a dialogue around his perspectives from a a non dual framework of reality. and uh he unpacks a little bit of what he perceives reality to be from the from this perspective and shares some deep insight into how we can move more into our consciousness, how we can be more conscious on a daily basis, how we can use some of these practices of awareness within our own meditation.

uh and just in our everyday life. So it's very much a uh a deep philosophical spiritual conversations, uh an ontological and teleological look at existence. And I hope that you very much enjoy it because I have been studying some of Rupert's work for a while and I very much enjoy his teachings and the way that he leads meditations. uh attended a few of his retreats and um done quite a few of his meditations and read quite a few of his books because I find the framework that he

uh puts out to be quite quite accurate in some ways based on my meditative experiences. So without any further delay, please welcome Rupert Spira.

that I feel f almost physically within me. And so I'm I'm very intrigued to have this conversation uh because it's out of all of the people, the teachers that I've listened to over the years, I mean, I've been exploring Buddhism and Xen and meditation for probably twelve to fifteen years now. And there's something about the way in which you're able to articulate it that I feel points to the thing.

points to awareness, you know, the the finger pointing to the moon in a way that that allows me to to comprehend it and experience it in a much uh more clear manner. And so first I just wanted to thank you for that because you've helped to shed light on something that I have been uh really exploring for a very long time. And and your words really ring true for me. So that's that's my fanboy uh appreciation and gratitude before we begin.

uh but I had a girlfriend uh not not not living with me or even near me, so we very rarely saw each other, but we had been together for a few years and in my um innocence and naivety, I just presumed we were going to uh you know, have have four children and live happily ever after. We'd been care together for a few years and I was very much in love. And um one night um Uh she called and ended the relationship in a conversation that can't have lasted more than two minutes.

We'd been together for about three years by this by this time. And uh the the the bottom just fell out of my world completely. It was i i in a moment or in a period of a of a couple of minutes. Uh everything in which I had invested my happiness.

in a passion that my happiness depended upon my relationship with this person and my projection into the future as to how my life was going to unfold. with her, and it seemed so secure. It had never occurred to me that we would separate or And then in a couple of minutes it just came to an end. And I really became So really for the first time in my life this event precipitated the question in me. Uh uh wha what is a reliable source of happiness?

if any objective experience, in this case a relationship, but uh a a a job, uh um one's finances, a house, uh uh a family, if if any Obje one's health. If any objective uh circumstance can uh disappear or come to an end at a moment's notice, Wha what sense does it make to to invest one's happiness in something so fragile, so fleeting, so insecure? and as I s said, I had already been interested in these matters, but this event injected intensity into my

into my spiritual search, w which was really the search what is the the the search for for lasting happiness. Wha where where can one find lasting happiness? What is the source of peace?

So this event really It shaped, it profoundly shaped. my life. My life really changed then. As I say I had been interested in these matters, but that my interest grew into a kind of it gr it grew in intensity and and passion. I was determined to find out Where can we find happiness?

To begin with, most people would say uh um an intimate relationship, a family, better health, a beautiful home, uh um, more money or uh and so on. But if we then asked, but but why do you want these things? they would say, on account of the happiness that I believe will be derived from them. If we were to ask someone, okay, if you were to if you were to To find that intimate relationship. you knew that it would be a source of misery to you. Would you still desire it? Of course not.

Even even if the the search for enlightenment if the if one was told, okay, you can have enlightenment if if some some magician Said I can give you enlightenment, but it will make you miserable. Do you still want it? Well of co of course we wouldn't. So the desire for happiness is even higher than the desire for enlightenment. In fact, we only desire enlightenment, or indeed whatever it is we desire. for for the happiness we believe will be derived from it. What did I what did I discover?

I discovered really and then now f fast forward s several several years, I discovered really what All the great religious and spiritual traditions have been saying for centuries, indeed millennia, namely that. Happiness is the very nature of our being. And therefore to find happiness one need only know the nature of one's being. One need only know oneself as one essentially is. That's it. And after

twenty years or so of of exploring i it became my experience. I found out that this was true, the happiness that I had been seeking all along was simply the nature of my being. And it's available to everyone and and I mean everyone, not not just those relative lif relative few of us interested in spiritual matters, but all It is not complicated. One does not have to become a Buddhist or a Christian, or one doesn't have to to to nor does one have to engage in elaborate

practices. So I I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with becoming a Buddhist or a Christian or but but it's it's simple. The the the the essential understanding that lies at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions is simple. If you want lasting peace and happiness, you have to go into yourself and recognize the nature of yourself as you essentially are. Now, wh why don't we recognize that? But everybody all

Eight billion of us, we all have a sense of ourself. Everybody has the sense of being myself. So everybody knows theirself to a degree. But not everybody knows their self clearly. And it is this lack of clear self knowledge, I would suggest, and all the great red traditions suggest, that is responsible for the for the veiling of our innate peace and joy. And that is why that self knowledge is is really the lies at the centre of all the great traditions.

It's why it's why the words know thyself are carved above the above the entrance of uh um Apollo in in Delphi. Th this this understanding of of the necessity to know oneself stands at the very foundation of Western civilization. And and of course, in the East there are many examples of

But to give the listener and and myself a little bit more context for what is the true nature of of us? What is the true nature of the self? And where does consciousness sort of fit into there and how you how do you define consciousness? Because I think the sort of thing is that we're going to do mainstream materialist viewpoint of consciousness is that it's it's a byproduct of of material. It's a byproduct of matter.

And I think that from my understanding, there's sort of an opposing view. Um spiritual teachings and and religions actually hold, which is that consciousness is is primary, consciousness is um a priori in some ways. And so I'm I'm hoping that you can maybe shed some light on it. I know I just sort of put out a few different components, so I'll let you sort of choose what pathway you would like to put out.

What we end up with is consciousness or awareness. For instance, Our thoughts are obviously not essential to us. If if a thought was essential to us, then every time a thought disappeared, we would feel that a little bit of us disappeared with it. But we don't feel that. They last for a while, they they vanish. Uh the thought doesn't actually add anything to us uh when it appears. It doesn't remove anything from us when it leaves. Likewise our emotions, they may be

uh very very intimate, very intense, but they're not essential to us. We exist in the absence of any particular emotion. The same with perceptions, sensations, activities, relationships. So if we if we remove everything that is not essential to us, Uh uh the the the one element of experience that we cannot remove experientially from ourself is consciousness. That that is our that is our bottom line. It is our primary experience. It is not possible to have an i an experience.

Of ourself or indeed of of anything without consciousness. So consciousness is is the the prerequisite for any experience or knowledge. Consciousness is primary in our experience.

now that I was yesterday, last year, and when I was a two year old boy, do you not feel that you're essentially the same self as you were as a two year old boy? Well, None of your thoughts, feelings, sensations, or perceptions are the same now. as they were yesterday, ten years ago, twenty years ago, or when you were a two-year-old boy. So none of your thoughts, feelings, sensations, or perceptions can account for your absolute certainty, I am the same self. So where does that sense of

The continuity of your identity come from. There must be one element of your experience that is continuous. Otherwise, you would not have the sense of continuity. Now, what is that? What has remained continuous throughout your life?

Identity. Now, we can go further. If I were to ask you now describe your thoughts or your perceptions or your your feelings, your bodily sensations, you would desire You you would describe their their qualities, their features, their their you you there would be something objective there for you to describe. What if I were to ask you And and refer to your experience of being aware, th n not not not your ideas or what you've read in a book. But if you were to refer now.

To the simple fact of being aware, nothing mystical or or spirit, just the ordinary, familiar feeling of being aware. How would you describe it?

It's not like a thought or a feeling or a sensation or a perception. It has no color or size or shape or taste or smell. So there's no language to describe it. In fact, your your your initial silence. w w was was in fact the most accurate thing.

And what we are aware of, that all of that is simultaneously us. Like how would you how would you break that down? Because I think, you know, there's Is there a difference between nondual this non-dual concept? What I believe that you're you're in um the Vedanta tradition, is there a difference between that and something like solipsism or or panpsychism? And are these labels even necessary?

But there's a a second aspect of the non dual understanding which relates to our external experience, that is our experience of of the world. And it states essentially that what we essentially are and what the world essentially is are one. In other words, that consciousness is the ultimate reality of the universe. It is the ultimate reality of ourselves. But it is also the ultimate reality of the the universe that we perceive. So that although it appears from our limited

perspective that reality is divided into two parts, a self and a world, mind and matter. I i in reality, This is just due to the limitations of our perceptual apparatus, and that in reality reality is a is a single, indivisible whole.

Now, how does that relate to um ideal um solipsism and panpsychism? So It's very different from solipsism. Solipsism states only my own mind exists. So I'm sorry, Connor, you don't have a mind. You're not hearing anything now, you're not experiencing anything, you're just an image in my perceptual field. And none of your listeners, I'm afraid, from the point of view of n none of them are really hearing this talk, because there are no other minds.

There are the no other uh um selves. Th there is n nobody else is having experience. Only I, only Rupert. That that's what Solitism states. Rupert's mind is the only mind there is. Now that is very, very different from the suggestion in the non-dual traditions, which is All reality is not contained in one single mind. It is contained in infinite consciousness. And that each of our minds is a localization. of that infinite consciousness.

So the the the non dual understanding suggests that the universe appears in consciousness. But it exists and ultimately is made of consciousness, but it exists outside of and independent of its being perceived by any individual mind. Hm. Now, we can come back to to that, explore that more i if you like in a minute. Because you you asked uh uh how this related to both solipsism and panpsychism. Panpsychism is another idea which is very, very fashionable in in um philosophy of mind circles now.

which is the idea basically that the universe is made up of of um particles, subatomics. particles, whatever exactly those particles may be. But and that each of these particles is conscious. This again is very different from the non dual understanding, which suggests that Only consciousness is conscious. The idea of panpsychism is an extension of the uh uh the primary mistake of materialism, namely that what we essentially are as a human being is a physical body.

and that we as a physical body have an attribute of consciousness. In other words, that we this body is conscious or has consciousness. Now, if we take that as the basic fact of our experience We then reason, okay, well dogs and cats also have consciousness, and and that's corroborated by the fact that when you tread on your cat's tail, it screeches. Why? Because it is conscious of the pain. Oh that makes sense.

And w we can do the same experiment with with with birds and fishes and uh and i even uh f fleas and ants. They seem to have

consciousness, they respond to their environment. So they must have at least a degree of consciousness. So reasoning in this way, we go on and on and on and we end up at the end with the idea, well, okay, everything has a degree of consciousness, not just humans and dogs and cats and fishes and birds and ants and fleas but but everything, even subatomic particles, have a modicum of consciousness.

And uh th this is this is a way Uh uh th th this idea, the idea of panpsychism, is based on the belief it is I, this body. who has consciousness or is consciousness. That's the primary belief that defines materialism. So panpsychism is just an extension of our materialist paradigm. Uh but it's a way in Philosophy of Mind circles, that philosophers, contemporary philosophers, are able to accommodate the idea that consciousness may be universal without giving up their materialist assumptions.

Sooner or later, in fact in fact it's already happening. There are a number of of uh uh philosophers now uh who who realise that it's not It's it's not uh uh matter that has consciousness. Consciousness is primary. And matter is what the activity of consciousness looks like from a localized perspective.

So those are my that's that's a brief response to your question about solipsism and panpsychism. We can uh and and how they're very different a and often mistaken. um uh on the contem in the contemporary uh in some con spiritual circles and philosophy of mind circles, how they're mistaken for the non dual understanding. So I'm happy to go into more detail if you like, but I I don't want to go too deeply into it.

uh into this movement towards I don't know how else to say it being in the seat of awareness. Because for me I've always I've had a a sort of experience that the the ego is caught within the finite, that the ego is the manifestation of all of these moments, and that the awareness is somehow m maybe not transcendent of that, but exists

in somewhat of a different playing field or plane. And I'm curious if you can speak to that. Like where does time fit into this? Cause even, you know, you have quantum physicists like um I can't remember what his name is Cur Corelli. He's a very famous It Italian quantum physicist and he talks about as we move, you know, down into the subatomic levels of quantum mechanics, that time sort of begins to break down and ceases to exist. and and that, you know, past and future are somewhat of

uh an illusion in in many ways that they're that there are entropic states that we can look back on. And I think what your maybe talking about in some ways is that the experience that we have of awareness is the maybe the only constant that we can that we are. I guess that I think that's a a good way of saying it. So I'll maybe I'll I'll leave that heavily that dense question at your doorstep and

And and just see what you have to say about it. Because I think for me, uh, in my meditations, I've experienced this sort of distinction that my ego is very wrapped in time. It's very obsessed with and and consumed by the experience of time and that outside of that experience my awareness is not It is the ever present aspect of me and maybe of existence. And so I'm I'm I'm hoping that maybe you can just that in some manner.

To define it in some way. So l let's agree that t time is the the space or the distance or the duration between a a a a point in the past and and an a now, or a point in the past and tomorrow morning, or tomorrow morning and tomorrow evening. So we can't uh make sense of time without in some way uh referring to the past and the future. So now in your actual experience Have you ever left?

what we call now and visited that place we refer to as the past. Not not thought about it. We can all think about it, but when we think about the past, our thought doesn't take place in the past, it takes place now. But have we ever actually experienced the place that we refer to as the past. Has anyone ever been there or experienced it? Could anyone ever experience it?

accurately portray the nature of reality. Because surely, in order to build a model of reality, we must start with our experience. Uh either we start with our experience or we start with an an an abstract model, but then we could choose any model at all. So if our models are going to be grounded in in reality, they must start with something that is verifiable in our experience. And nobody has ever experienced a past or a future. And therefore

So let me ask you another question. Uh y y you experience what we call now. We we are all experiencing. We know what we mean when we say now. Now, i is it your experience that now is a fleeting moment?

We're not experiencing millions of fractions of a second. No, it's just always now. And given that you've ne you you've you've you've admitted I've never experienced the past or the future, can you really say that it is your experience that? now is moving along a line of time, or is the now stationary?

However, when we think about that vertical dimension, the eternal now. thought refracts it and spreads out the eternal and makes it seem like the everlasting. So I would suggest that Time is what consciousness looks like when it is refracted through thought. And just to give you a something else to consider, we have time to go into it. I would suggest that space.

Is what consciousness looks like when refracted through sense perception. In other words, time and space are not fundamental to reality. Reality is dimensionless consciousness. It only appears as time and space when refracted through the limited, the prismic activity of thinking and perceiving.

uh really profound truth in there that I can I I think one of the things that I really appreciate is that you do bring things back to an experiential nature. And in a time where we are so riddled with and consumed by a the the addiction to thinking, which takes us out of experience, which takes us away I arguably further away from awareness itself, this nature of being that you're talking about, away from consciousness.

I appreciate the the the sort of relentlessness of pulling things back to that experiential aspect and elevation.

any theory will do. Mm-hmm. So I I I I love thinking, but thinking uh in my opinion, should should serve experience and come from experience. and and actually lead us to our actual experience. Because most of us most of us uh we we s we perceive the world, we p we we perceive uh uh we ex our our experience is filtered through.

the overlay of conceptual thought. So we don't really experience reality as it is. We experience reality as it is filtered through our faculties of thinking and perceiving. So the purpose of thinking, at least in this context, in the context that we're speaking, would be to probe deeply into what is true of our experience.

and to help us to experience reality in a way that is that is true and then that the the the primary, the fundamental fact about reality, uh I would suggest, is is that it is one. That there is one infinite indivisible reality and all people, all animals and all things derive their apparently independent existence from that single reality. In other words, we are We are one.

And as soon as we believe we are separate from another person, another animal or the environment, we can behave, we can treat that person or or that environment in a way that has no consequences for ourselves, because they are separate from us. Cruelty, in unkindness, exploitation, injustice, all all these v violence, hatred, all these are only possible if we think the other is is other. As soon as we have this felt understanding that the other is really myself.

The universe is myself, all animals are myself. This th that understanding alone compels us to to act and behave in i in a in a certain way. So this this understanding has has profound implications for our society, for us individually. but also i uh in terms of our internal happiness, but also in in terms of our relationships with each other and with the With the earth, with nature.

of the earth. Th th these are the inevitable con uh consequences of the materialistic paradigm, the the the paradigm of separation. Unhappiness on the inside. conflict on the outside. And um by contrast, the inevitable consequence of the non dual understanding is peace and happiness on the inside, and love and beauty On the outside, by by love and beauty, I mean the recognition that that that we are one, that we share our being with everyone and everything.

no other because it is so easy to create that objectification, you know, to objectify someone who who believes differently or thinks differently, ex et cetera. And so, um, you know, I I know that we're We're close on time here and I feel like I I could selfishly speak with you for an entire day and uh not not uh f not come away with uh without more questions and and comments and and I really l love this dialogue and so

Um, I'm wondering if you can speak to that because I I hear you sort of saying that this practice and there there's I'm actually gonna bring one of your own quotes into the fray here and and I'll just let you wrap up as you see fit.

But in the w meditation retreat that I took part in with you, you said prayer is an act of returning to the empty sanctuary of the heart. And there was something about that almost invocation, you know, invitation that felt so potent for our current time, where where we are we have become a culture.

that is just drenched in separation and and mired by our um propensity to objectify other people. Yes. And so I'm hoping that you can just speak to how we move more directly towards the not the elimination of that objectification, but the the return to our our natural being as we started off this conversation discuss.

Everyone's thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions are different, but the fact of being aware is identical for everyone. And it is our it has it is our essential nature. and it shares none of the limited qualities of objective experience. It has no there is no sense of lack in it, and thus its nature is joy. There is no agitation in it, thus its nature is peace. And I I I would suggest that it is the uh that that that we as individuals

Emerge out of the universe. So the fundamental nature of ourself must be the same as the fundamental nature of the universe, for the same reason that the nature of the wave is the same as the nature of the the ocean. So the essential nature of what we are, just infinite self-aware being, is, I would suggest, the same as the nature of the

universe. So this this uh recognition that this return to the empty sanctuary of the heart, we return to our naked being, and we first discover its nature as peace. And joy, that the peace that passeth all understanding. But then the more deeply we go into it, we realise that this being is the being that we share with everyone and everything. And this takes us out of the privacy of our own heart, out into the world, and we realise that

that the the being we are is is shared with everyone. And that this the the recognition of our shared being is the experience of love or beauty. So these two aspects uh uh uh the the i the the inner recognition of our being as peace and happiness and the recognition that we share our being with everyone and everything, the experience of of love or beauty. These are the two

the two um hallmarks really of the un of the non dual understanding. And you talked just a few minutes ago about purpose. And I would say that one's purpose could be framed in reference to these two essential understandings, that that uh a an inner purpose where our our purpose is to to rediscover our essential being and its innate joy. That that is our everybody's inner purpose, to return to the empty sanctuary of the heart.

to recognize or to know again their own being with its innate peace and joy. But then we also have a A purpose which relates to the second aspect of the non dual understanding, namely that we share our being with everyone and everything. And that second aspect would be to the second purpose would be Our outer purpose, so to speak, would be to bring this understanding out into the world, to share it in the world in some way.

And it might be uh w what I'm doing, speaking and writing, and uh it might be what you're doing, uh holding interviews and podcasts. And there are there are numerous other ways where this understanding can be communicated i uh i in in the world. So I I think these are our two the two tasks to discover the nature of our own being, and then to share that discovery in one way or another with humanity.

time, you know, Terrence McKenna at one point in his life talked about an archaic revolution that in order to solve some of the problems that we face in our current space, we have to reach very far back into the past. uh in some ways and and ex you know, be able to return to a sense of ancient understanding. And

called being myself. So yes, the nature of consciousness, being aware of being aware or being myself.