It's Not Enough to Discover What You Are Not: Rupert Spira

[Music] hi Rupert thing I had an experience this morning actually before the morning meditation when as I was sitting quietly and I was thinking about the day and I suddenly realized I was thinking and I realized that thought I was having the perspective the person I thought myself to be was simply the thought that I was having I was mistaken myself for that thought and then I realised that that applies to every thought that the person I think I am the life I think I've had this body mind and everything is boils down to just a thought and it blew me away did you have a question about in I suppose I don't have a particular question just it was a realization that yeah all I think is merely a thought and a thought in consciousness not not my consciousness but I thought in consciousness of which I am conscious yes so if you if you understand that what you previously considered your self to be is just a thought about yourself but is not yourself then who are you because it's it's not enough to discover what you are not although that is a very good and necessary first step it's necessary to discover what you are so having discovered I am NOT a thought what are you I am the awareness that realized I was thinking tell us about that it's the presence that is always here yes but I meant to tell us about its qualities its nature don't describe to try to tell us about its nature because which is another way of saying tell us about the nature of yourself you have discovered that this is what you essentially are so the the first step is to discover what I am NOT the second step is to discover what I am and the third step is to discover the nature of what I am so having discovered I am awareness tell us about the nature of the awareness that you know yourself to be always available yes open yes accepting warm compassionate can it be disturbed awareness cannot be disturbed no do you awareness lack anything no so all that is necessary having recognized this is to stabilize this in your felt understanding so that it is not a brief glimpse of yourself that is your stable felt understanding of yourself and to live the implications of this recognition in all aspects of your life that's a lifelong task for you I'm up for it thank you when the journey to God ends the journey in God begins hi there my question is how does transcendence transcending a particular the separate self interact with desire desires of the most superficial nature and all the way to the most universal desires what is the relationship of walking above it and desiring good for the world just keep the mic just for a moment and your vision of transcendence is that awareness is somehow above and beyond experience it is not it is within and prior to experience you don't have to escape from experience in order to access your true nature you have to go deeply into the heart of experience find out what is the source from which your experience Rises and having and so it's an its own it's not a movement of transcendence it's a it's a movement of going deeply into yourself in words or self words or backwards and I say backwards I mean away from the objects that you are aware of into the very essence of your self the source of your experience which is aware of these objects so it's it's a it's an inward movement it's not an escape from experience and then having touched that in yourself investigate its qualities its nature just as we discussed in the previous conversation and then you allowed that felt understanding to inform first of all your thoughts and your feelings and subsequently your activities and relationships so most people when they go back they when they go to what they call themselves they don't go all the way back to their essential irreducible self they just go to this self made out of thoughts and feelings the apparently separate self and having only gone that far most people's thoughts and feelings are based or Express that self are informed by that self and their subsequent activities and relationships are an expression of that sense of one's self so here we have to go further back not just to this bundle of thoughts and feelings called myself we go through the month of thoughts and feelings to that which is prior to them our essential irreducible being and then we allow our thoughts and feelings to be informed by that felt understanding and then are subsequently our activities and relationships express those thoughts and feelings so it's not that we cease having desires it's rather that our desires no longer Express the the fears the neuroses the frustrations the sense of lack that is inherent in the separate self but our desires come directly from the fullness of our essential irreducible being and our desires as such are the means by which our essential being is brought out into the world of activities and relationships thank you I revert I got um what would I've kind of a curious about and I also feel like it would be useful for police myself and perhaps many others just curious what is your if you could share if you wouldn't mind sharing what are you finding is a spiritual challenge for yourself what like what are in part of me what do I find is a spiritual challenge in your life and if you don't mind sharing the process you undergo or anything you wouldn't mind sharing because I I feel like that kind of helps put it into concrete terms and I don't know might might provide some insights that you could utilize the the the the challenge is to continually surrender one's mind and one's body to this presence of awareness or in religious language to God's presence and allow one's thoughts and feelings and activities and relationships to be more and more deeply informed by this felt understanding so I am in the midst of that process and I hope I always will be just as everybody else's and so it's this this this understanding is is tailored to every single situation at the moment this understanding is being tailored to your question when I leave here I may get a message from my son on my voicemail I will then tailor my felt understanding to whatever situation is presented and it's just a moment-by-moment response to whatever presents itself in my life from the place of this felt understanding and if there is if something in my life triggers a residue of belief or more importantly feeling of the separate self rather than responding in that moment from the separate self the challenge then is to pause trace my way back to my essential self reassert my feeling understanding of myself that has that and then turn outwards again and respond to the situation thank you just-just thanks to you thanks my question relates to the status of awareness and deep sleep and if you'd be so kind could you try to describe the difference between your experience and waking state and your own experience in deep sleep well the waking state is awareness in the presence of objects deep sleep is awareness in the absence of objects as regards the status of awareness in deep sleep the status of awareness is always the same ever-present without limits inherently peaceful and unconditionally fulfilled its status it the status of awareness doesn't change with the fluctuating states of mind and so because of the absence of objects in the deep sleep there's nothing to codify into memory to come back from deep sleep and say aha this was my experience in deep sleep so you're saying it's not an absence of awareness it's just an absence of something to bring back from that state yes deep sleep is not the absence of awareness it is the away absence of objects deep sleep is not the absence of awareness it is the awareness of absence it's highly not descriptive when your companion or a friend asked you in the morning did you sleep well do you either say yes or no if you say no it meant that you were not sleeping but if you say yes it means that you slept well do you ever answer the question did you sleep well with the answer I don't know does anyone here ever answer I don't know when they are asked how do you sleep no you answer I think yes or no so you must have some it's a non objective memory there is some residue of what you experienced during deep sleep remains over in the waking State now you're quite right it's not a memory of something that took place at a certain time which is now no longer taking place because all that was present in deep sleep was the presence of awareness and awareness having no objective qualities cannot be remembered however the awareness that is present in deep sleep that awareness that is present all alone in deep sleep is the same awareness that is present in the morning when your companion asks you the question did you sleep well so although the mind thinks that it refers to a period of deep sleep when it answers yes but the mind actually refers to is the presence of awareness that is present now so the mind that answers yes is a mind that is still transparent to the presence of awareness yeah the activities of the day have not yet risen risen sufficiently to obscure the presence awareness so that is why in the when we wake in the morning we if we have slept deeply we still feel bathed with the peace of deep sleep that peace is not a memory of something that happened three years ago it is our current experience of the piece of awareness shining through our still transparent mind what I compare it to is in my own practice I have a long term sitting practice and and my practice has become sort of the eradication of all form of sensation thought and wonderful things arise out of that but I know that when I'm and it's not a really an experience per se because all you're doing is resting and your essential awareness resting in your essential being and that's the best I can use to describe it however the Qualla qualitatively is what the experience of that you know extreme stillness and and resting and that native awareness is different from what I experience or don't experience in deep sleep and it's just it's just a curiosity to me but any differences that you described are not differences in the state of awareness they are differences in the fluctuations of your mind so if you just say that deep sleep is different from deep meditation which is different from the waking state what you are describing is the state of your mind not the nature of awareness awareness is always in the same condition it's it's like your imagine your computer screen this that there's the screen there's your blank screen saver and then there's your email program and your eye photos and and if you look at the eye photos your emails your screensaver and the screen you'll say these are four different states but if during whenever the iPhoto or the email or the screensaver is present you actually go up to them and come close to them touch them you always find the same reality they're relatively speaking you always find the same screen the screen doesn't share the limited qualities of the email the photos the screensaver so what you are describing are the differences between the the photos the emails and the screensaver there are difference between photos emails and the screensaver but there's never a difference in the screen and it is not necessary to shut down all the programs on your computer in order to recognize the nature of the screen because the nature of the screen is equally present during the presence of photos and emails as it is in their absence likewise awareness is equally present during this experience as it is during a deep depression a moment of ecstasy the dream of a Caribbean beach or deep sleep so it is not necessary to annihilate your sensations to bring your thoughts to an end to change your perceptions all that is necessary is at any moment of experience to go closely up to your experience and touch the stuff it is made of if you do that if you go deeply enough into experience whatever the experience and for this purpose is a deep depression is as good as a moment of ecstasy you will always find at its heart it's reality inherently peaceful unconditionally fulfilled awareness have you got a question okay it's a very personal what is personal but I've noticed over there so high road but I've noticed over the past past few years that the more I become aware of the dynamics of my mind or let's put it like that the more there is this awareness of becoming aware of the dynamics of the mind the models this experience of of suffering and but I've also noticed I you know initially started this path many many years ago of in order to become you know liberated from the experience of suffering someone an even though I know whenever is suffering is that writing it's it's it's a thought that is arising and then you have the emotions around it I'm wondering there's a deep sense of of sadness and that all the identification that I've that was that were so solid are not are not solid and are fluent and are not permanent and are not substantial surveys I'm feeling others I'm stocked and I I and I also feel like all you know what I've started it doesn't take me further or back or somewhere so I'm wondering if you have any advices you you started your your question with a statement it's something like the more I am aware of the dynamics of my mind the more I saw that said something like that tell us about that which is aware of the dynamics of your mind do you refer to it as AI so it's another way of saying tell us about yourself I mean there is only my god and I come from a very information but there's only the eye when there is the thought so um there is often you know no sorry to interrupt I I don't mean I don't mean the I that the separate I the separate self that as we've understood is made out of thoughts you said when I when I beckon the more I am aware of the dynamics of my mind and then you rephrased it the more there is awareness of the dynamics of my mind so let's take do you have a Buddhist background yes okay let's take I out of the equation because Buddhists don't like the word I understand me I use the word I in a different way but if you have a Buddhist background let's take this obstacle out of the equation you said the more there is awareness of the dynamics of my mind the more suffering there is so tell us about the awareness that is aware of the dynamics of your mind it's really hard for me to sing into it and not going into the intellectual intellectual part of but that's very good I asked you the question not because I want to verbal answer but because I want you to go there if I were to ask you tell us about the sensation at the soles of your feet before you tell us anything about it you would have to go there with your attention so when I ask you tell us about the awareness that is aware of the dynamics of your mind I want you to go there I don't really want you to describe it so I liked your silent answer because that silent answer is the answer to your question but there's still a lot of suffering tell us about whatever it is that is aware of it so even knowing that and even maybe having a Clem's internet and maybe even having an insight experience of that No but you are not someone who can have a glimpse or experience of that there is no you apart from awareness that can have a glimpse of awareness you are awareness when you when you it's it's like visualise awareness as a self-aware scream not like a TV screen that is being watched by somebody sitting on the sofa but this is a magical TV screen that has the ability to watch the movie that is playing on it so the experience is like a movie playing on the screen of awareness made of the screen of awareness and it is awareness that and the movie just as the movie could be said to be the activity of the screen so all of experience that's all thinking sensing and perceiving is the activity of awareness now awareness loses itself in its own activity and thus seems to veil itself from itself with its own activity the essence of meditation or the essence of prayer is this return of awareness to itself awareness cannot be known by anything other than itself it is eye awareness that knows that I am aware and did the scream of awareness does not share the limits of any of the objects that seem to appear in upon it or or within it so then if you want relief from your suffering if you look for relief from your suffering in the objects of experience activities states of mine relationships non dual teachings non dual teachers however find yet the objects of experience in which you seek relief maybe you will always be disappointed if you want relief from your suffering you have to go back deeply into yourself to find that place that is inherently free of suffering it's true that through force of habit the old activities of thinking and feeling may come back very swiftly and an eclipse awareness is knowledge of itself and in that sense you may say I only get briefly glimpses of it what you're really saying is i awareness only get brief glimpses of myself before I lose myself again in my own creativity so that's fine if you lose yourself again in thinking feeling acting relating just come back to yourself just touch yourself again taste yourself come back to yourself then through force of habit you lose yourself in experience again you just come back to yourself and ever time you come back to yourself you erase the old habit of losing yourself in experience the old habit will continue to arise for some time because we have all been rehearsing it for decades but every time we come back to ourselves we erode that habit and we find that it takes us less and less time to return to ourselves and in time fewer and fewer experiences have the capacity to take us away from ourselves this is why when at Menander krishna menon was asked what are the best circumstances for spiritual practice he said the police force or the military what what he meant was if you put yourself in extremely intense circumstances and in those circumstances you are still able to trace your way back to your essential inherently peaceful self and stand there rest there be that whilst still responding to your circumstances if you can make it in those circumstances you will be able to make it anywhere so that is obviously an intense Sun most of us are a retreat and stunted or a creeper to a retreat setting such as this are provided because they are relatively speaking benign and peaceful circumstances so we are not having to struggle with our experience it is relatively easy to go back to ourself but then when we take this understanding out into the world again into activities relationships etc then the temptation to lose ourselves again in experience becomes higher and higher but the more we go back to ourselves the more we find that fewer and fewer experiences have this a paucity to take us away from myself in other words we begin to become established in the peace of our true nature thank you hi how are you doing hi um so my question is if I'm trying to change this as far as you you're trying to gauge it that means I had my own spiritual awakening of like the absolute light and what I'm hearing people speak about it's like self realization Who am I and my experience that's the most obvious thing being like african-american all that skull so as soon as I hear it does what's happening so have you gone further than self realization because man my experience is I went I let it all go I became the awareness what I would call nothing and then you see the aspect of the coin is that nothing into something is the one as a whole like a yin and yang but so when you let everything go what remained nothing what is it hang on hold on a minute if you say nothing remained if you claim nothing as your experience there must have been something that was aware the wear of of the nothing yeah so it wasn't just nothing yeah but those awareness of nothing so I know that this is our read Reagan words in a e i o you and we cannot even comprehend how deep this goes but have you given up the awareness or getting to that spot to be when you say have you given up awareness usage has awareness realized it is awareness and then that realization realized that that awareness did not make awareness itself and go to even like going beyond that have your experience like the ultimate like let's say I had experienced the ultimate light what is it that would have experienced it that's what everything is if the source of awareness had experienced the ultimate light would the ultimate light or the awareness that knows it be more primary or essential say again if awareness had experienced the ultimate light which of these two the ultimate light or awareness would be primary it is the same it's like saying I'm trying but words cannot even grasp this because it's like it's true that word is untrusted but if you don't want to to speak about it don't we want to have this conversation oh I am saying well I'm trying to clarify it I'm trying to say like if we say self awareness will be to realize you are a drop but then God realization or what that absolute was that drop returning back to the whole eye it was like getting behind you're all over the map we're talking about the waves real ultimate light the drop God can you formulate your question in one sentence how far have you went how far have you went how far have I been yeah have a bit I've been nowhere I I'm afraid I haven't even taken a single oh I'm such a beginner I haven't it was be single step away from myself so have you experienced beyond beyond beyond awareness yes I am that which experiences whatever it is that is experienced including although I have never experienced it the beyond beyond I am NOT beyond I awareness are not beyond beyond I am prior and prior and prior and prior yeah but you just flipping the words but the words are constantly not gained and not playing word games with you I'm just speaking simply of my experience which is in fact I would suggest nothing special just the same as everybody's experience here I awareness have never gone anywhere I have never left myself I have never journeyed away from myself towards some ultimate light eye awareness and the light that illuminates yes I was like you exactly what you say how do you know you are there light it is self evident self everything so you don't know it is self Evelyn if I were to ask you now are you aware what would you say what is aware that I'm aware no if I were to just ask you the simple question are you aware what would you say yes how do you know it's self-evident yeah but your fire stand the game I'm really trying to it's that the Xperia know I know the experience of being aware is not some extraordinary experience beyond and above it the experience of being aware is the most obvious simple intimate experience there is the experience of being aware is even closer to us than our most cherished thoughts and themes there is nothing extraordinary about it there is ramana maharshi's experience of being aware of the buddhas experience of being aware was exactly the same experience that each of us is currently having of the experience of being aware I'm not talking about an extraordinary awareness and enlightened awareness a self-realized awareness of mystical awareness there is no such awareness the only awareness that there is is this ordinary intimate everyday awareness with which each of us is aware of our experience in which all experience appears and ultimately out of which all our experience is made the only difference between the likes of the Buddha and the Ramana ma and Ramana Maharshi and that Sue and meister eckhart and most people is that in most people their experience obscures the experience of simply being aware for these people and indeed for many others who many others present here and the experience doesn't cease but it loses its capacity to veil its reality that's the only difference and the reality of experience is not something mystical not something extraordinary not something that the buddha had some privileged access to that you or i don't have access to we all now in this ordinary experience have the same degree of access to awareness as the buddha had sitting under the lotus tree so as artists prospective because when you says when you say awareness is ordinary it's just it i only say it is ordinary is in a reference to the belief that it is extraordinary but having established that it is not extraordinary it is ordinary i would then also this root dismiss the idea that it is ordinary it is neither ordinary or extraordinary it is just this intimate familiar so intimate the reason why awareness seems not to be known is not because it is so far away it is because it is so close it is it's like it's someone that says I don't know awareness is like someone that says I can't see my eyes it's true weak relatively speaking we can't see is are our eyes why because they are so far away from us no it's because they are too close to themselves to be able to be seen as an object of experience awarenesses seems to be unknown seems to be unknown not because it is so mystical so extraordinary so far away so unknowable it is because it is so close to itself that awareness cannot separate itself from its a from itself and say oh there I am I can see myself as an object in other words awareness is knowledge of itself is a unique knowledge it is the only knowledge there is that doesn't take place or seem to take place in subject object relationship it is as such said to be absolute knowledge the only knowledge that is not relative to the conditions of the finite mind it is an awareness his knowledge of itself is absolutely true for all people at all times under and under all circumstances and each of us has the same direct access to it it's not even access to it because something we access when I say we have access to it it implies that you are we have to we have access to we are it now each of us is the only infinite awareness there is that awareness has colored itself or veiled itself with its own activity thinking feeling sensing and perceiving and seems through the filter of thinking feeling sensing and perceiving to have limited itself just as the unlimited screen appears as the limited landscape but it never actually becomes a limited landscape it just appears to be so it is in fact always the unlimited screen likewise it is this intimate ordinary familiar and unlimited awareness that each of us is that has colored itself with this thinking and perceiving and appears to be limited it has seemingly veiled itself with its own activity but even this veiling this expression is only aid of infinite awareness there is nothing in experience other than unlimited so so it's like the virtual reality game that you take off right you have could stay experience of it when you let it all go you could say that that awareness we could say that awareness has dreamed the world within itself but in order to perceive that world it has had to localize itself in that world has a separate subject of experience that's each of us from whose perspective it is able to know itself as the world just as when you have a dream at night you dream the world within your own mind but you don't view the dreamed world from your bed asleep at night when you dream the Caribbean Beach within your own mind you simultaneously enter into your own dream and you localize yourself in your own dream as an apparently separate subject of experience from whose point of view you view the inside of your own mind as an outside world well consider the possibility that infinite consciousness is doing the same thing now that infinite consciousness is dreaming the world within its own mind but it cannot view the world directly from where it is asleep in its bed so to speak in order to view the world it has to simultaneously dream or imagine the world within itself and then localize itself in that world as a separate subject of experience that's all of us from whose point of view it knows itself as the world this is the inside of God's mind that we are looking at you are guys we there is no medium so if the only difference between our finite minds which are able to have one dream at a time when we fall asleep at night we localize ourselves as one person in the dream I would suggest that that each of us are numerous localizations numerous simultaneous localizations in the single dream of consciousness and that each of us are different viewpoints the whole anxiousness has of itself and this that the one it the the main argument that the materialist that supports the materialist belief is that we all view the same world this is that the the main argument that that when ism we all view the same world and therefore the reality of the world must be outside of an independent of consciousness I would suggest that we all view the same world because it is the same well it's the same consciousness and each of us are just different viewpoints of that consciousness through which consciousness sees itself as the world or as the universe always uses like the hand a pinky and a thumb but same hand different perspectives different youth but same oh yes the best of that class c-2 yes just in front to you hello Rupert hi and so my question is about exactly what you just said about the global consciousness and us as localized awareness looking from within this global consciousness and and so I know because awareness consciousness is limitless doesn't have limits but when I look at you I experienced limits because I don't see I can't see through your eyes and I know you what you're going to say you're gonna say well this is not a limit of consciousness it's a limit of your mind but remember your mind is the activity of consciousness your mind is not an entity when you dream a world inside your own mind at night there are no actual objects ourselves in your dream the entire dream is the activity of your mind so remember there are no objects here there are no selves here experience is the activity of consciousness there are no entities or objects present but I interrupted you carry on so my question is so I can't see for your eyes and you can't me I don't think you can see from my eyes either and so I experience that as a limit of awareness and and so how do you make there's not listening to it where it's a limit of what how you are aware of so how do you know it's not a limit of awareness because I just look at the experience of being aware and I ask awareness because remember awareness is the knowing element in all experience awareness is the only one that is aware so if we want to know about the nature of awareness we have to ask awareness what is your experience of yourself if we ask thoughts what do you think the nature of awareness is thought will tell us well I think awareness is generated by the brain it lives in the body it shares the limits and destiny of the body etc so we're but we're not asking thoughts because thoughts don't know anything they are not they unknown we have to ask the one but if we want to know about awareness we must ask the one that knows when the one that is aware of awareness so only awareness knows anything about to when so to answer your question how do I know that awareness is unlimited because I awareness ask myself do I find any limits in myself there is a limit to my perceptions there is a limit I'm speaking on behalf of awareness i awareness find that my current perception is limited I'm not seeing my kitchen in Oxford I awareness find that my thoughts are limited I can only have one thought at a time i awareness find that my sensations are limited but if i awareness turn my the the light of my attention away from the objects if we can call them objects for the time being of my experience and turn it towards myself if i become aware of myself aware of being aware and asked myself what what do I find there I find that I am ever-present I find no lack there I find there is it is undisturbed ball I find the limit in myself it's like asking empty space imagine if you were to save to empty space do you find an limit in yourself just imagine that empty space was add the quality of awareness to empty space you know just imagine physical space but add the quality of awareness to it and now ask awareness not what is the shape of this room oh don't ask awareness did the aware space about the objects in the room but ask this aware space do you find any limits in yourself does anyone here as a young child not at some stage my awake and wonder how far this physical space go on does that anyone here not ask themselves that question now just imagine you do exactly the same thing now but you add the quality of awareness to physical space and you wonder again how far does this aware space go on now all you have to do having taken physical space and added awareness to it in your imagination now remove physical space from this compound what you have left is awareness now ask that awareness the very simple experience of being aware to eye awareness have any knowledge of any limit in myself and do the same experiment that you used to do as a child with physical space but this time you're referring to the field of awareness in which your experience appears see now if you can for instance if awareness was limited you would have to be able to leave that field yeah we this room is limited because at the end of this conversation we'll all walk out of the door we can leave the space of this room so it is legitimate to say the space of this room is limited now if you want to say the same thing about to you had in other words that it is limited you must be able to leave it you must be able to step outside it and say there I found the border of awareness now try with your attention to leave the field of awareness in which your experience appears could all try to do this instead of giving your attention to the objects of experience thoughts feelings sensations allow your ex your attention to explore the field or the medium within which your experience appears see if you can find its edge or its Bota anyone find an edge or a border so we have to be clear is experience the test of reality or is it belief that is the tester Briona these are the only two options we have experience or belief what are we going to use we believe our culture believes that awareness is located in derived from and shares the destiny of the body is that true in your experience have you ever experienced the disappearance of awareness this will take care of your question have you ever Disick's perience the disappearance of awareness no all of you ask yourself this question have you ever experienced the disappearance of awareness would it be possible to experience the disappearance of awareness how do we know that there is something called the absence of awareness we don't it's a belief it happens to be the belief upon which our world culture is founded the belief that awareness appeared at some late stage in evolution derived from the body that it stays for a brief period and then it disappears when the body disappears but you've all just done the experiment you've admitted from your experience that we have never had nor could we ever had nor has anybody ever had the experience of the disappearance of consciousness if we want to build a model of reality we have to build it on firm ground the model has to be derived from experience not from beliefs what is the primary element of experience consciousness that's where any model of reality must start and we should only imagine that there is something other than consciousness if we cannot explain our experience using only consciousness but we can explain our experience using only consciousness everything that takes place in experience can be explained with the consciousness only model materialists have to in order to explain their worldview they have to imagine that there is something outside conciousness its called matter if you look at matter in Wikipedia it said something like matter is that stuff that exists outside of an independent of consciousness have any of you ever found anything that exists outside of all independent of consciousness what would it be possible to find anything that existed outside of or independent of consciousness so matter is is something that has never been touched that was a quick on matter is something that not only has never been experienced but could never be experienced matter if by matter we mean something that exists outside of consciousness our world culture believes that that which is never experienced matter it generates that which is always experienced consciousness that's how upside down our culture is and look around you in the world look around at the extent of the this there that people feel individually and the extent of the conflict that exists between communities and nations and look at the crisis we are experiencing with the environment could it be that the despair the conflict that we experience has something to do with a fundamental paradigm could it have something to do with the a deep understanding of reality I would suggest it has everything to do with that have we got time for for one more question not sure that I'll manage to answer a question from Daniel in five minutes but I'll do my best he just hits thank you Robert someone suggested that you and I do a panel at some point it would actually be wonderful this I'm sorry that I missed your um talk this morning but I came to your room conversation and I enjoyed it very much Oh beautiful operator that I joined this too so in the morning I talked about a a way of really combining I think the beautiful teachings that you're offering with a kind of a perspective on this centrality of awareness that might come from a kind of it's a long story but this plane of possibility this notion of what physics you can call the quantum vacuum so it's consistent with everything you're saying yet it also allows for the things you're calling perceptions these emergencies from possibility into actuality to certainly be the perceptions you're talking about but it also allows for things to exist in the world outside of consciousness so the question I have for you is this let's say you and I were to go have a meal and we're talking with each other we're very aware of our conversation with each other so we eat our food and the body is going to be digesting the food while we're having our conversation about awareness being aware of each other looking each other and the experience that we're having as a lovely conversation at dinner and yet outside of awareness you have your body digesting food with all of the different molecular reactions and all the things that happened with enzymes and finally you know 12 hours later you to process through the food and you were not aware of all the metabolism going on with insulin and bringing the sugar out from the intestines into the bloodstream and then so all of those physiological things which are not thoughts they're not you know activities of the mind in quote that are so beautiful the way you're describing them but it also gives room to say that in reality you have a body I have a body we had a great time at dinner and outside of awareness our body was doing its body thing so that we could survive in a body and I just want to see how you feel about that in your awareness in otherwise I think because that you didn't hear the morning thing it would be so much fun to do a panel let's do that that would be fun but just for the moment that be responded to this and maybe we don't have time to really explore it but become aware now of the sensation of your right toe were you aware of the sensation before I draw your drew your attention to it no okay did the sensation start when I when I drew your attention to it or was it already present but eclipsed due to the focus of your attention on our conversation so say the question again you you acknowledge that the that the sensation of your toe didn't start when I drew your attention to it well that I wasn't aware of the sensation in my toes okay so do you think is it yeah okay you weren't went about where Victoria I jumped ahead you weren't aware of the sensation do you think that my asking you the question about the sensation in your toe triggered the sensation or do you think it was always there but you were simply not aware of it because of the exclusive focus of your attention on how a conversation yeah it's a fabulous question so I'll give you I'm sure what you call the materialistic for smile but just give me a it's simple I don't want a theory I want your experience do you feel that the sensation started when I drew your attention to you or do you think that it was always there but you were you didn't notice it because you were focused on our conversation yeah I would say that you're asking me to focus my attention on it brought the sensation into awareness yeah but the sensation was probably there before perfect that's what I was holding yeah let's agree that the sensation was probably there before I would suggest the sensation was there before I would suggest suggests that the sensation of the soles of our feet the each of us for each of us the sensation of the soles of our feet has been present throughout this conversation for the last hour but very few of us would have been aware of it because we were so focused on the content of our conversation in other words attention acts as a kind of filter yeah that filters out by far the larger part of our experience that controlled our conversation my words and your words are a very small percentage of what is taking place but due to the exclusive focus of our attention on the current object of experience the rest is filtered out now I would suggest that the finite mind is like a filtering process that filters out by far the larger part of consciousness and that all the digestive processes that you describe outside the finite mind but inside consciousness so then what is consciousness if it's not an awareness in the conscious - when I use the word synonymous are you just sorry I use them since - no no that's great okay so so but if you're not aware of the digestive process going on then how can you say you're it's an awareness when it's not an awareness well you're now confused about you are not aware of the woman sitting behind you in other words the perception you have no perception of the woman sitting behind you the woman sitting behind you is not of your finite mind but the woman sitting back behind you is part of my finite mind so we we know from this that there is more than the content of our individual finite minds we are not solipsistic ignite that there are other finite minds but I'm suggesting that there is more to consciousness than the content of the finite mind so you mean an individual awareness like I'm not aware of I want to look back at you high enough so I'm not aware of her because I can't see her with my eyes now I'm aware because yeah yeah she doesn't appear in your finite mind in my perception but your intersection yeah same thing yes so so if I were to say then she is not in my awareness but you would say that she is in in consciousness but no awareness and consciousness are the same okay then it's okay but what I would say is that your finite mind each of our finite minds are a temporary limitation of the only that's called consciousness of the only consciousness there is in other words the content of our minds is individual and limited but I would suggest that each of our minds share the same consciousness you think them I do think so okay so just as like where's your experience of it let me just imagine the the the analogy I sometimes use imagine a night watchman who sits in in a on the edge of a construction site at night and he has a screening a monitor in front of him that with with a grid of ten by ten images there are hundred CCTV cameras dotted around the construction site they each convey a single image to his screen but he sees all the images on the same screen now the the content of each image the content of this image and the content of this image are completely separate but the screen they share is the same I would suggest that is an analogy the contents of each of our finite minds are separate but the reality of each of our mind is the same infinite and indivisible screen of awareness what is the evidence for that I would suggest it is love I go with that to be continued very good [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: scienceandnonduality

Views: 66,916

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Keywords: Nonduality, Advaita Vedanta

Id: gmDTwg8fAlE

Length: 66min 42sec (4002 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020