Non-Duality and the Mystery of Consciousness by Peter Russell

[Music] you I want to start by giving you my version of what non-duality is this is just my version but we hit you hear the word a lot and as I go around I hear people say on non-duality that means everything is one and the world is an illusion rather people say oh it means there's no polarity there's no positive negative if we have to get beyond that we have to get beyond male/female all that stuff I seen on you ality is it's not really about that the word is a translation of the sanskrit ad vitae which literally means not to and it goes way back to really three thousand years ago to Vedanta through the earliest visit really the earliest teachings we have on the planet and the best introduction that I know of it in that tradition is in the Upanishads which is really the beginning of Vedanta and in one of the Upanishads the chandogya upanishad a father sends his son off to school when his son is 12 years old he says you must go and study with the Rishi's and the Vedic scholars and the son goes off for 12 years and comes back really full of it you know is this knows all about the stars in astrology and the herbs and the medicine and the rituals and all that stuff and his father says well did they teach you about that which cannot be seen cannot be heard and cannot be known yet without which nothing can be seen heard or no and the son says no what's that and it says surely if they'd known about it it would have taught me can you tell me sir very reverent in those days so as father starts his long teaching and watched the beginning of the teaching he says you see these two pots made of clay they're clearly very different pots there's a duality here the pots are real and they're each made of clay the essence is the same and the pots wouldn't exist without the clay they're totally dependent upon the clay for their existence and yet what we see is the pots their shape their size their color the clay on the other hand is always there the essence and it's completely untouched it's untainted by the pot Ness the pot can be this or that it can be this color it can be broken the clay is always the same and it says you know by knowing the essence of clay you know the essence of all things made of clay and then the teaching goes on and he says you know know your own essence when you know your own essence then you know the essence of all things and there's the famous line at the end of each of these passages where he says that that being which is the subtlest level of everything that are thou tat 1rc and that's where that line which Deepak was referring to last night it comes from that your pan chef tat from I see that art thou so he's saying no your own essence and you know the essence of everything and what is really pointing to is we have we live in we live in duality that's real what I prefer the word diversity to duality duality implies sort of one or the other we live in a diversity of real experiences you know this is real we can't doubt this is real to say oh it's all an illusion no this is the reality we live in our experiences the thoughts we have whatever thoughts you are having now that they're real they're real they exist and they have no independent existence they only exist because of an underlying essence which we don't normally notice because we're so caught up on what we're experiencing what we're thinking what we're feeling we don't notice the essence so what he was saying is there's an essence there and by knowing that essence you know the essence of everything your experience so that that's really what I see non duality is saying it's not that the duality is an illusion whatever it's saying there is this real world and we miss the fact there is also an underlying essence and the question is what is that essence and it's interesting because he never defines the essence he says look within explore yourself and you will discover it but he doesn't give it a name which is true in many mystical traditions they say this essence it cannot be given a name it cannot be defined and yet it is so familiar we all know it so well and by inquiring within we can begin to discover for ourselves what that essence is we tend in these circles to give it the name consciousness I think that can be misleading firstly consciousnesses are now and it makes it a thing and we start looking for something and the whole science of consciousness is trying to describe some thing called consciousness what is consciousness where does it come from etc we're not really talking about a thing when you add any SS to a word you're taking an adjective and turning into noun so we can talk about it and it means the state Ness means the state or quality of being conscious which is what we all absolutely know for sure is the fact we are conscious we are experiencing and that just needs pointing out really it doesn't need any great long arguments or anything but weak and if we can actually divide non-duality into two areas there's the philosophy of non duality and there's many many non dual philosophies you know we non dual philosophies in Indian traditions in Buddhist traditions in Sufi traditions in Christian traditions in this tradition that's arising now in the 21st century a whole new spiritual tradition there's non-dual philosophies which are all sort of pointing to the fact in one way or another that there is just there is an essence that we don't know they're all pointing to it and saying that this is the essence of everything the problem with non-dual philosophies is we get our intellects get engaged like which one is right or you know which one has limitations is my one the right one they're all constructs as Deepak was talking about last night you know and everything Deepak was talking about was a construct all non-dual philosophies they're all just more constructs in the mind and we start getting into debates and arguments I happen to feel pretty sympathetic to Deepak's construct that's just because my construct resonates with his but they're all just constructs that we can debate them till the cows come home but what the teachers are really talking about is what is the path to experiencing that to actually tasting that essence the path to it and that's what I'm really more interested in because it's really about how do we wake up to this in our own life the philosophies can be they can be great they can be inspiring they can be frustrating at times but they can be inspiring to help us find a path to follow a path to wake up to this essence but in the end it's like how do we each of us in our own lives begin to let's say wake up to rediscover this for ourselves because that's what it's really about and that's what changes their lives and somewhat ironically most many non-dual teachers will point out there is no path that's an odd sort of characteristic of non dual teachings they say there is no paths to this by which they mean there's nowhere to get to one of my favorite lines is from a Buddhist teacher who said there's nowhere to get nowhere to go nothing to do no one to be there's nowhere to go we're not trying to reach some exalted marvelous exotic state where everything's transformed and we see the world differently I used to think that way when I first got involved in all this I thought oh it's going to be like some amazing trip or something and everything should it be Wow there's no different state we're trying to get to which means the second line is there's nothing we need to do because we're not trying to be something else get somewhere else in fact the doing is actually what gets in the way and certainly teachings talking about stepping back doing less and less to begin to notice what is already there and there's no one to be so much the time user I am this I am that and I am Peter Russell whatever it is I am meditating etc it's letting go of all those identities and coming back to discovering really the essence is what is it we truly are JP says last night was pointing out jokingly about that question Who am I which is one of the sort of the essential questions of the non-dual path that's the way Ramana Maharshi phrased it Who am I that inner exploration the problem with that question is it's it's very deceptive it leads us off in a wrong direction because soon you say Who am I to anybody do this in exercises you put people down you put them in pairs and say you know explore the question who are you and people say oh I am this I am that and they go on for hours there used to be in the 80s there was this very popular workshop called the Enlightenment intensive we've sat down for a weekend seeing who am i no I'm not this I'm not this I'm not that I'm not this and not that I'm this no I'm not this and I'm not that ultimately ultimately the mind let's go and people go it's just this it's just this this meanness the sense of being you cannot define it as soon as you ask Who am I you're off in the wrong direction because you're looking for some thing some object some experience you can identify with the word identify means it comes from the Latin it means to make the same as if you're making yourself the same as something and it's clearly not what you are so the question I mean I prefer to put the question what am i or what does the word I what is the word I actually point to do when we use the word I and that's an that's an inner exploration inner inquiry what do we actually mean by I and as you know most of you know as you do this exploration what you're coming in touch with is that sense of being presence meanness of being conscious that's always there that's the same sense of eyeness that's always present the same sense of eyeness that was there when you were a child experiences our personalities their philosophies their lives have changed but that sense of that core sense of me doesn't change it's always there and that's what they're pointing to is recognizing that that sense of self but we don't normally recognize it because the mind is so full particularly our Western minds so full of thinking and we get caught up in our thoughts and follow our thoughts because most of them seem really important they're things we've got to do things we've got to work out things that you know things I might need to take care of if something happens or or whatever in fact most of our thoughts if you look at them they're trying to solve problems which don't actually exist and probably never will exist it was Mark Twain who said something to the effect of my life has been full of disasters most of which never happened but you know what's your own thoughts those who meditate upon this is quite familiar just how easily we get caught up in some stories thinking about something that our attention is totally absorbed in some imagined reality and this imagined reality we have an imagined self that's going through the world facing these obstacles these successes and these challenges there's this whole story we imagine about ourselves getting through the world and trying to solve the problems we live in this sort of whirlpool of thoughts and that's why so many traditions point to letting the mind become still letting the mind stop and I say letting that's that's very important I think one of the misunderstandings is you've got to stop the mind you're to control the mind it's more just learning the skill of allowing the mind to pause and just noticing what's there when you pause another great teacher Indian teaching on this many of you're probably familiar with the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali it was really it's not about physical yoga as much that includes that but it's really about the whole philosophy of yoga which is the word yoga means oneness or joining coming together again I don't see it means attaining something is it sometimes understood but you know oneness 3 is the end of separation it's coming back to our own oneness and the first line the very famous first line which is almost every yoga school has it somewhere Yoga is the ceasing of the whirling of mind stuff Yoga is the ceasing of the whirling of my stuff you go back to 19th century translations and it's all about we've got to stop it we've got to stop the whirling of mind stuff and then you watch the translations they go through the 20th century they get softer and softer it's allowing it to cease or it's just a statement when the whirling of mind stuff ceases then the separation ends and then even deeper the word that's translated as ceasing also has the meaning of freedom it's freedom from the whirling of mind stuff and then the second line people just go for the first slide I think that's great and then they the second line is really interesting this is then when the whirling of mind stuff ceases then there is abiding in the true nature of the knower that's how we come back to knowing our essence when the whirling of the mind stuff ceases then the true nature of that which knows all things the true nature of that which knows what can be seen heard and known then that starts becoming apparent but again not as some amazing cosmic experience with just as it's that simple and I think in my own my own journey it's just like almost year by year it's like oh it's that simple oh it's that easy oh it's that obvious how could I have missed it I think we miss it because our minds get engaged in looking for something one of my favorite person alas for ever isms is seek and ye shall not find because the very attitude of seeking is looking for something else and the very attitude of seeking there's a tension that comes into the mind the mind becomes slightly focused you're looking for something the mind becomes tense which is the opposite that just letting the mind totally relax it's giving up seeking it's letting go it's just I mean just now wherever your mind is wherever you're going whatever you're thinking you could be in a complete you could be imagining something different not listening to me I hope you hear this little bit wherever you are just let this pause we can always just pause our thinking for a moment just pause and just let the mind relax just let the attention relax the thinking comes back within a minute or two second or two but in that pausing we just begin to touch something and when I ask people what it is I won't do it now but the sort of things that come up it's like oh is a sense of ease a greater sense of stillness a sense of spaciousness a sense of clarity a sense of contentment a sense of lightness of being these are all the qualities that we begin to touch into and we step back into our true nature so I'd like to just leave you that as a what I call a micro meditation you know those big meditations we can do our long as there's mini meditations you can do is like sitting down for two or three minutes and just stopping then there's micro meditations where you can just pause for a moment and just notice how it is when you just pause and just reconnect with that essence which is the Upanishads say is the essence of all beings thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Science and Nonduality

Views: 472,568

Keywords: science and nonduality, consciousness, nonduality, Peter Russell

Id: BZ0YFoUcY0s

Length: 19min 50sec (1190 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 27 2016