Episode 47: The Weekend University

Everybody, I'm here with our uh second speaker here today, uh Rupert Spira. Um so Rupert has been deeply interested in the nature of reality and the source of lasting peace and happiness since an early age. After spending twenty years immersed in the teachings of classical Adva Aidvata Aidvata Vedanta, he met his teacher, Francis DeSile, who introduced him to the direct path approach.

whereby it is possible to recognize the source of peace and happiness in oneself. Rupert has written several books and holds regular meetings and retreats online, as well as in Europe and the United States. He is also a noted potter, trained in the British Studio Pottery School, with work in public and private collections.

You can keep up to date with his latest publications and works at www.ripertspira.com and follow him on Twitter at ripertspyra. So Ripert, whenever you're ready, um please feel free to get started. And it's absolutely brilliant to have you with us here today.

Thank you, Niall, and uh thank you for inviting me. It's a it's a pleasure to be with you all. So I would like to start with a provisional definition of consciousness. And I say Provisional because, as I will try to demonstrate, I consider consciousness the ultimate reality of the universe. and is as such that in terms of which everything else may be defined, but which cannot itself be defined in terms of anything else.

Therefore, if we want to to speak accurately about the nature of consciousness, we should really remain silent. Sen Master once said If I speak, I tell a lie. But after a brief pause he continued But if I remain silent, I am a coward. Why would one be a coward if one refrained from speaking of these matters? Because I would suggest that the most profound problems that Humanity faces. uh the despair felt by many people The conflict experienced between individuals, communities, and nations.

and the exploitation and degradation of the earth all stem ultimately from our mistaken notion of the nature of reality. Therefore, although reality cannot be accurately spoken of There is nothing more important to speak about.

So n I will attempt two definitions of consciousness. In fact The first is not really a a definition but more of an evocation, that is, an attempt to the recognition of consciousness and its nature in each of us, rather than to define it. Consciousness is that which knows or is aware of our experience. So let us take some time to explore this in our experience. Whatever we are experiencing, we are aware of it. The current thought the singling sensation of our face or hands or feet.

Our legs on the chair? The sound of my voice or the sight of our room. Whatever it is that knows our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions is not itself but a thought-feeling sensation All of these experiences are unknown. We are aware of them. How come we are aware of them? Indeed, how come there is experience? What is it that knows or illuminates all That is consciousness or awareness. I use the words consciousness and awareness synonymously and sometimes the word knowing. Strangely.

People completely ignore the presence of consciousness or awareness in favor of the content of their experience. feelings, sensations, perceptions, activities, relationships, and so on. How many people? attending this gathering were ever asked by their parents, teachers, Mr. Or professors. What is it that knows or is aware of your experience? I have asked this. asked question to literally thousands of people around the world, and no one has ever answered in the affirmative.

And yet Without consciousness there would be no experience. Consciousness is as such, that which makes all experience possible. but is not itself an experience. Just as relatively speaking the screen enables the movie. but never itself appears as an image in the movie. Is it not extraordinary that as a culture we have Almost universally ignored that through which In which and by which all experience is known. Indeed, she Until we know the nature. Of that with which everything is known.

We cannot possibly know the nature of any particular thing, be that thing an atom, a thought, or the universe. Strangely. Until the presence of consciousness is noticed It seems to be to be the most mysterious and fleeting element of our experience. It becomes the most obvious, substantial element of experience. Everything that is known is known. have filtered through the medium with which it is known. them and appears in accordance with its limitations.

Can there be, therefore, any higher endeavour, or more urgent and investigation? than to know the nature of that. him with which and through which everything is known. It is inconceivable. meet one who spends her life painting. The presence of light. After all, then I'm not sure. Without it there would be complete darkness and All she really sees in the landscape is light. Most of us completely overlook the light of pure knowing, the light of consciousness, which illuminates our experience.

The sun's light renders all objects visible. So consciousness renders all experience as Indeed, All that is ever truly known is the knowing of experience, the consciousness of experience. We ignore the only thing which is the same thing. of course not a thing that is ever truly known. in favour of that which, as I hope to demonstrate later, is never actually known. In other words, not only is, For all experience and the primary element in all experience.

In time we will discover that it is the only element of experience.

So let us just take some time to explore the nature, having recognised the present. of our consciousness, let us take some time to explore its. All experiences appear and disappear. Consciousness remains consistently present throughout all experience. and remains over when any experience disappears. that is as such the alpha and the omega the first. And the last and everything in between. It is the eternal in the temporary. All experience changes.

But consciousness always remains the same as The consciousness or the awareness with which we are aware of this experience, our current experience. Is the same away? With which we were aware of our experience. Two minutes ago, or two days ago, or two years ago. Or when we were two year old. Consciousness is as such the changeless factor in all changing experience. the knowing element in all that is known. in the ever present in the always changing.

Consciousness is always in the same pristine condition. It is never it is never aged or modified or tarnished by experience. In fact, consciousness is the only element of our experience that never disappears. The reason why experience is felt as one smooth, continuous flow. Rather than a series of intermittent and disconnected experiences, thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, perceptions, and souls. It is because these are they are unified by the presence of consciousness.

A movie is not experienced as a series of fleeting intermittent images on account of the presence of the screen, from which it derives its seeming continuity. In other words, What we consider to be continuity in time. God is in fact the ever presence of consciousness, perceived through the narrow slit of a human mind.

The the awareness. with which we are aware of our experience. does not share the characteristics or the qualities or the limitations of whatever we are aware of. The known is dependent on consciousness. But consciousness is independent of the known. A movie is dependent on the screen, but the screen is independent of the movie. Our thoughts. May be agitated. the the awareness with which they are known, although intimately one with them. is not qualified by them. Thus its nature is peace.

Our feelings may be characterized by a sense of lack or disase. But the knowing with which they are experienced, although utterly permeating every part of them. is not conditioned by them. And being free from Any sense of lack of Quiet joy are the very nature of the awareness that we essentially are. Not um not a peace or a happiness that I are dependent upon what is or is not taking place in our experience. but one that is prior to and independent of It is the peace that passeth understanding.

However, awareness is is not only the the knower of the known but the witness of the witness, the experiencer of the experience.

It is also the medium within which all experience takes place. Thoughts and feelings take place within awareness. The sensations and perceptions that constitute our experience of the body and the world also take place in awareness. When I was a child I would lie awake in bed, wondering how far physical space went on. Whilst there was obviously a limit to everything that appeared in space, I could not find or even imagine the A limit to space itself.

What about the space of awareness within which all experience arises? Try to find an edge. To the field of awareness within which your Experience takes place. We believe that awareness has a border. or an edge. Only because we believe it to be contained within the body. our feelings. Simply. Conform two. and substantiate that belief. mind this belief does not stand the scrutiny of experience. If we stay here. to the evidence of experience.

The body and world are Experienced as a flow of sensations and perceptions all contained within Please understand, said That I'm not suggesting that all there is to the world is the context of the Our finite mind or even the sum total of the Of all finite minds that would be a slippery slope. I'm suggesting that if Everything appears in awareness which is itself not limited to an individual mind or even the sum total of all individual minds, human or otherwise.

Indeed, The individual mind is one such appearance within the infinite field of universal awareness. Whilst awareness is the the innermost aspect of our self. At the same time it has no Personal qualities. It is the essence of ourself. Sharing none of the limitations of our objective experience. It is impersonal. Unlimited. Utterly intimate. But at the same time the Impersonal and immanent. and transcendent.

So let us just do a a quick experiment. If I were to ask each of you now to Are you aware? Each of you would pause and answer yes. What happened in the pause between my question are you aware? And your answer yes. You became aware of being aware. You became conscious of being conscious. When I say you became aware of being aware, I do not mean to imply that you are one thing, and awareness is something else that you are aware of.

No, only awareness is aware, only consciousness is conscious. And therefore only awareness itself can have the experience of being aware. In other words, it is not we as a person Who are aware? Of being aware. It is we awareness. That are aware of being aware. In other words, awareness is self-aware. Awareness is the same. Self aware just as the sun is self luminous. Consciousness knows itself just by being itself. The sun illuminates itself. Just by being it.

And therefore just as it is not possible for the sun to cease illuminating itself. So it is not possible for consciousness to cease knowing itself. So when I ask the question, Are you aware? You do not pause and become aware of being aware, but rather you awareness cease directing the light of your knowing, that is, attention. towards the the content of experience and you so to speak come back to yourself, you recognize yourself. That is you disentangle yourself from the content of experience.

The knowing of your own being, the awareness of being. ceases to be veiled by the awareness of objects. So

Consciousness never ceases to be aware of itself. but its awareness of itself is, in most cases, So so thoroughly mixed with the content of ceases to know itself as it essentially is, and knows itself in a modified form. and the best analogy I know too. Illustrate this is uh that of an actor. John Smith, who plays the part of King Lear, John Smith always knows himself as John Smith.

But his knowledge of himself is mixed with King Lear's thoughts and feelings, and he seems as a result, to cease knowing himself as John Smith. and to know himself instead as King Lear. But even then he never really ceases to be John Smith. He just believes and feels that he is the primary and essential nature of our self pure consciousness becomes mixed with and seemingly qualified by the content of experience. The infinite becomes or seems to become the finite. and the eternal appears as time.

By conflict.

So uh let me try to relate this. to the perennial non dual philosophy that underlies and is expressed to a greater or lesser extent in all the world's great religious and spiritual traditions. which said at the beginning that I would give. Two definitions of consciousness or remote. Evocation. One definition. evoke the recognition of consciousness within us. I suggested that consciousness is that which knows or is aware of our experience.

We pose the question what is it that knows or is aware of our experience and resist the temptation to answer that question with a word. our attention is gently invited away from its contents. In most cases gradually, occasionally, suddenly, Sinks back into its source, the presence of awareness from which it is. This sinking of the mind into the heart of awareness is the essence of meditation. It is the highest form of prayer.

However, I would uh like to try to take a more philosophical approach now, perhaps less experiential, at least to begin with. but one which which addresses the relationship between consciousness and reality. So having tried to evoke or precipitate a taste of consciousness in our own direct experience. Let me let me suggest a second part of the Definition Consciousness is that Consciousness is that reality whose activity appears to us as the universe.

I first I intuited this as a a seven year old boy when I apparently said to my mother that I thought that everything was God's dream. But as often happens this this early childhood intuition was eclipsed, and perhaps necessarily so. by the challenges of growing up, and I later had to reclaim it through introspection and reason. What does this imply in practice?

that what we perceive as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves is, in fact, the activity of a single a homogeneous and indivisible whole. whose nature is consciousness. Spirit or not simply um an abstract philosophical idea? I would suggest not. For for two reasons. One, that I that as I have Already alluded to. All that is or could ever be known by anyone is the knowing or the consciousness of experience.

Even even God, whatever exactly God may be, could only ever know the knowing of whatever it knows. Knowing is all that is or could ever be known. And what is it that that knows this knowing? Only that which knows could know knowing. In other words, only knowing knows knowing. In other words, all we can be sure of is that there is knowing, knowing only Now, if we want to build a model of reality, Does it not make sense to start with what we know for sure, the one given fact?

The ontological primitives and only resort to something outside of and other than consciousness if our model cannot accommodate everything that we experience within it.

And I would suggest that we get a hint of the nature of reality every time we fall asleep at night. When we dream at night, our own mind, which is um a homogeneous Limited field of consciousness. Imagines a whole world, the dreamed world, within itself, the It cannot perceive the dream world directly. In order to perceive the dreamed world. The dreamer's mind must overlook or forget itself. can localize itself within its own dream. As an apparently separate subject of experience.

From whose perspective it perceives its own activity as an outside world. from the perspective of the character in the dream. The dreamed world is outside of and other than her own mind. The name that she gives to the stuff, out of which this world outside of herself is made is master. And everything inside herself, her thoughts, images, feelings, perceptions, and so on, she refers to as mind and And Everything in her seems to everything in her experience seems to corroborate this view.

When she closes her eyes the world she sees that is the dreamed world, although of course she does not know that it is a dreamed world, disappears, and when she opens them again it reappears. She reasonably concludes from this that Whatever it is that is seeing or knowing the world. is located. just behind her eyes, in her brain. And from this basic assumption. She builds a model of consciousness located in limited to And derived from the brain.

Now that the dreamed character would never question her model of reality. But for two experience. Suffering on the inside and conflict on the other on the outside. Little does she realize that both experiences, the suffering and the conflict, are the inevitable consequence. that the consciousness that she essentially is Limited by the body, contained within it, and destined eventually to suffer its unavoidable fate. Of course when she when the dreamer wakes up.

She realizes that the entire dreamed world was simply how the content of her own mind appeared to itself from the localized perspective of the dreamed character that she seemed to be within her own dream. Consider them. The implications of this possibility more deeply imagine that uh one who uh has a fearful disposition in everyday life. And she falls asleep and dreams that she is being chased by a tiger.

In other words, what was inside her as mind in the waking state, that is her fear appeared outside of her. The tiger in the dream state, that is matter. Her thoughts and feelings in the waking state appear as her environment one level down, that is in the dream state. But what if we go one level up from the waking state? Consider the possibility that What appears to us as our environment in the waking state is in fact the A dream state for universal consciousness.

That is, th the universe as we know it is in reality. How universal consciousness, or in religious language, the mind of God, appears to us from our limited and localized perspectives. In other words, consider the possibility that the Same pattern that we observe in dreams. Is taking place. In the waking state one level up, so to speak, and In other words, consider the possibility that a universal consciousness is, so to speak, dreaming or imagining the universe within itself.

This would correspond to the the logos or the word in St. John's Gospel. and simultaneously localizing itself in the form of each of our minds. Through whose agency. or from whose perspective it perceives its own activity. as the universe as we know it. In other words, the universe as we know it results from the The interaction of two segments of reality. The universal and the individual.

Just as the dreamed world comes into apparent existence when the dreamer's mind interacts with a part of itself, namely the dreamed character.

Why is it necessary for universal consciousness to Overlook or forget or ignore itself? In order to bring forth manifestation within it, why cannot universal consciousness simply perceive the world directly? Because to do so would require viewing the world, indeed viewing the universe, from every possible point of view within Which would result in innumerable images superimposed one on top of the other.

In other words, in order to see an object It is necessary to do so from the localized perspective of a single society. As such, consciousness localizes itself within itself in order to actualise what lies in potential within it, in form. It gives birth to existence within itself. In the form of the subject object relationship. However, this comes at a price that we have to do that.

Consciousness brings forth manifestation within itself by overlooking or forgetting itself, by collapsing or contracting into an apparently separate subject of experience. And in doing so it loses touch with its innate peace. It sacrifices itself for the sake of its creation. Mother sacrifices herself to bring forth her children. Consciousness. for manifestation with its own innate peace and happiness.

And it is for this reason that The longing for happiness, peace and love burns in the hearts of all people. What we really seek is not an experience. To be added to us. What we really seek is to be divested of all that makes us feel that we are temporary, finite selves, separate from one another. Separate from nature. Separate from God. Returned to our natural condition.

return to the question of the relationship between The universe. The finite mind and consciousness through the through the lens of a well known question. Does a tree in the forest exist? If no one is perceiving it. I would suggest that this question cannot be satisfactorily answered because it is founded on a false premise. that namely that the tree exists as such when it is being perceived. But suspend the idea that the tree has its own standalone existence.

And consider the possibility that what we perceive as a tree is simply the way, a particular segment of the activity of universal contemplation. and appears when it interacts with another segment of itself, namely the finite mind. In other words, the world as we experience the world. is the result of an interaction between infinite consciousness. And the finite mind. And this is, I believe, what William Wordsworth was referring to in his poem.

Lines composed of the Above Tinton Abbey in which he writes Therefore am I still a lover of the meadows and the woods and mountains. And of all that we behold from this green earth, of all the mighty world of eye and ear, both what they half create and what perceive. I am well pleased to recognise in nature, and the language of the sense the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart. Soul of all my moral being.

We half create the world in the sense that we impose the limitations of perception on its reality. we half perceive it in the sense that its reality exists independently of each of our minds and precedes its being perceived. So what we really see when we look at the world is its pre existing reality, infinite consciousness, modulated by our finite mind. The world as such owes its reality to infinite consciousness. It borrows its appearance from the finite mind.

Wordsworth does not imply a turning away from the world as do so many religious and spiritual traditions. He has penetrated through nature's appearances. And recognized its reality. And then sees those very appearances shining in and as that very race.

As he says, and I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevating. A sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of earth. And a spirit that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things. What uh William Blake another of the great seers of the Western tradition.

Meant when he said Every bird that cuts the airy way is an immense world of delight, enclosed by the senses. That is, every object is An immense world of delight, that is, of the of the nature of pure consciousness, which is peace and joy itself, filtered through the Enclosed by our faculties of It is perception that reduces the infinite to the finite or more accurately makes what is truly infinite.

from the localized perspective of each of our minds as the infinite makes makes what is truly infinite appear. As the finite. as William Blake said on another occasion, when the doors of perception are cleansed, everything will appear to man. as it is infinite. For man has closed himself up till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern. The narrow chinks of our car of our cavern are the limited faculties of our senses.

Our senses are, as such, not a not a clear window onto reality. They mediate reality through their own limitations. Conferring onto reality the limitations that properly belong to the human mind, rendering reality in a way that is consistent with the limitations of that mind. Divested of the limits that Sense perception confers upon reality, reality shines as it is. Infinite. and in human experience. The infinite shines in the form of peace. and beauty.

And this is the world that. Artists want us to see. And the world is not what we see, it is the way we see. And the artist is a function in humanity. whose purpose is to show that way. Remember the story. returning one evening from his work on Hampstead Heath, and one of the local residents approaches him and asks to have a look at his his painting, his day's work.

And after surveying it for some time he says, Mr Turner, I have lived in Hampstead for forty years, but I have never once seen a view on Hampstead Heath like that. Ah, to which Turner replies No, but don't you wish you could? It's exactly the same vision that William Blake writes of in A Vision of the Last Judgment. And when he says I assert for myself that I do not behold the outward creation. And that to me it is all hindrance, and not out.

It will be questioned when the sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a guinea? Oh no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying holy, holy, holy. He's the Lord God Almighty. We do not think of objects. Because they existed. They seem to exist as such because we think of them. Perception fragments the whole.

And makes it appear as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves, and thought then abstracts each of these entities and confers upon them their own apparently independent existence. Ten thousand things. But as uh Ian McGilchrist said on a conversation. Recently heard beautiful Succinct observation relationships are prior to That is... We think that things first exist. and are subsequently related to one another. In reality it is relationship that brings things into apparent existence.

I say apparent existence because in the final analysis there are no things. But this is not an Hilistic view. I am not denying the reality of things, I am upgrading it. In Pasolini's words, I am restoring to reality its original sacred significance. There is just relationship. Relationship of the whole, within the whole, to the whole, never admitting the existence of anything other than the whole Things.

selves, individual selves, are just how the whole appears from our localized, limited, and ultimately illusory.

All the great religious and spiritual traditions speak of this identity of the inner and the outer. I and my father are one. That is what I am on the inside mind, and the ultimate reality of the universe on the outside matter are one. Two different perspectives on the same infinite indivisible reality whose nature is consciousness spirit. Why is it referred to as love? Because as human beings love is the experience of our shared being. In relation to people and animals.

When we experience our shared being in relation to objects and nature, we refer to it as beauty. Thus, love and beauty are the very nature of reality. Or we could say that the experiences of love and beauty are intrusions of reality into our normal, dualistic way of perceiving it. They are portals through which we step out of time into eternity. Nirvana and Samsara are identical.

The objectless consciousness we know as the essence of ourself on the inside is And the reality of appearances on the outside are a single, infinite, and indivisible whole. The amnes of selves is the isness of things. Form is emptiness. And emptiness.

Every tradition, indeed every person that has intuited or recognized this unity that underlies the apparent multiplicity and diversity of the Objects and self. speaks of it in their own unique way. In the end, it cannot be accurately spoken of. And yet, there is nothing more important to speak of. We do not speak of it in order to describe or define it. We speak of it in order to evoke the recognition of it. Even that is not quite true. In the end we speak of it or express it in some way.

Simply because But we are compelled to do so. Without having to know how or why. I'm sorry, I've just noticed the time I've got carried away and um having told Nile that I probably wouldn't speak for more than half an hour. So my apologies. Um But I think there are uh a few minutes left. Um so I'm so sorry to have um overshot my time. If there are a few questions, uh I'd be very happy to to respond.

Rupert, I don't think you need to apologise. That was that was incredible, so I don't think anybody minds. Um yeah we've had we've had a few questions, so I'll just invite the first one. It's from Ben, Ben Spelos. Ben, I know you've asked quite a few questions. So, um... Yeah. I w how about you ask I think the first one you asked about difference between awareness and uh consciousness. So um I'm just gonna invite you into the room here, Ben. So just give me a second. Yes, hello Ben.

Um, so yeah, I asked a couple of questions. Now do is it okay if I asked the question on choice? Yeah, no problem. We've probably only got time for one, so I would go for that one, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so um uh like one consistent aspect through experience is like this this awareness or consciousness, right? Um but uh Victor Frankel argued that also like um the last human freedoms could be taken away except for uh Um someone's ability to choose their own attitude, to choose their own decide their own. Ben j just speak slowly, Ben. I'm not hearing you clearly. It's more difficult with your master. J just just keep going, but speak slowly. What would Victor Franco say?

Victor Frankel mentioned how to Consistent through experience as well, there's a man's ability to choose his own way, like the last of human freedoms to choose their one's attitude in any given circumstance. And so I was curious if like that can be seen as a consistent part of experience as well with consciousness is personal freedom or choice. If that makes sense. Yes, what appears to us as individual freedom or choice is

The the innate i i is the quality of freedom that is innate in consciousness, that is consciousness. Consciousness is freedom. the feeling that we have individual freedom is a reflection of consciousness's nature of freedom in our individual mind. So uh the the belief and the feeling that we have free will is partly true, partly untrue. It is true in the sense that what we essentially are is Infinite consciousness, whose nature is freedom.

And we feel that freedom. That is why all human beings without exception love freedom, because we all love our true nature. What is not true about our belief in free will is that it belongs to us as a person. Ultimately there are no individual entities in reality, either to have free will or not. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you Ben. Um we've probably got time for one more question. So the next one is from uh Marco. So Ben I'm just gonna turn your uh Camera off here?

Um okay, so Marco, I'm just gonna invite you into the room here now. Marco, you might need to switch your your microphone on if you can. Ah Marco, hello. Hello Rupert, great to see you. Thank you so much. If we consider the body-mind complex, as they call it in the Eastern tradition, Would it be good to say that the mind has a set of thoughts, has a particular role, because it not only makes addicted to thought, opinions, prejudice, Slowly Marco. Slow slowly, Marco. Sorry about that.

Would it be right to say that if we consider the body-mind complex The mind has a particular role because it not only makes addicted to opinion, fear, prejudice. but also leads to physical compulsion such as drug addiction or other addiction. I'm not sure that I've understood your question, Marker, but let me respond briefly anyway, that um addictions drug addictions or or drug Any form of addiction is um Almost always comes from um a sense of lack in us.

We feel a sense of lack, why? Because we feel we are a fragment, we are incomplete. We feel we are temporary, finite, limited. We don't recognise our identity as unlimited consciousness. And because of this feeling of being a fragment, incomplete, we seek to complete ourselves. Through the acquisition of an object, a substance, an activity, a relationship.

And when we acquire the object, the substance, when we have the glass of wine, the cigarette, whatever it is, our sense of lack does indeed briefly come to an end. And we wrongly conclude from this that it is the object or the substance or the relationship It's not the object or the the uh the acquisition of the object, the substance, and so on that that gave us this. Brief taste of happiness.

What happened is that the acquisition of the object or the substance brought our seeking, which means at that moment it brought the mind to an end, because the mind It was expressing itself in the form of seeking. So when the seeking comes to an end, the finite mind comes briefly to an end. And in the ending of the finite mind, our true nature of consciousness shines briefly. That is the experience of happiness. But of course the finite mind is not So it wrongly supposes

that the happiness experienced was derived from the substance, and then it goes out again in search of the substance. And in this way, this cycle of seeking Gratification, brief moments of happiness, the old despair comes back, initiates the next round of seeking, we go for the object again, only this time we need a little bit more of the object or the substance to produce the same effect, and hence addiction um follows. So Ultimately, what is the um the remedy?

For this addictive behavior it is to recognize that uh the nature, the essential nature of our being, which is peace, although for one who is addicted to a substance This may be too direct a step to take immediately and some intermediary process may need to be put in place before it is possible to go all the way back to our true nature. So thank you, Marco. Nice to see you.

Okay. Thank you, Marco. And uh yeah, that's all we've got time for. So Rupert, I just wanna say on behalf of everybody, thank you so much for taking the time today to give this presentation and all that you've shared with us. Um the the feedback on the chat has been incredible. So you've you've obviously you've touched a lot of people here today, so so well done. Um before you go before you go have you got any parting words for the audience or any any sort of Thing you'd like to share?

W um well uh perhaps I n I I don't need to um apologize again. So I perhaps I should just say thank you for for bearing with me as I as I got carried away um Uh it's it's my uh th th the nature of reality has just been my my my my one passion for the last forty five years and and as some of you that uh know me know uh I could Talk forever about it, so thank you.

Um all of you for for bearing with me. Thank you all of you for your love of truth and and thank you, um Niel and and and your team for inviting me and and um um it's been a a pleasure to to to be with you all today and to participate. Okay. Thank you, Rupert. Um, so everybody else, we're back at uh four PM UK time for our final talk of today with uh Annie Murphy Paul. So we'll see you guys all then and uh I hope you hope you enjoyed this one.