Rupert Spira
Appearances
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
There's one physical space in the universe. There are not numerous physical spaces. There's just one vast boundless physical space in the universe that seems to be contained within numerous buildings or within numerous rooms. And each of those rooms, like the room we're sitting in now, lends a quality to the space. The space seems to, as soon as the building is put up,
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
The building seems to limit, put a boundary around a certain portion of space. And the space then seems to share the qualities of the building, large, small, dark, light, and so on. The space never actually becomes limited. The space in this room is not actually limited by the four walls of this room.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
If we were to take a sample of the space inside the room and investigate it, and we were to take a sample of the vast space outside the room, they would be identical. Now, imagine that the space were aware. And if we ask the space in this room
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
describe yourself it would look around and it would say i'm small i'm dark i'm cozy i'm full of objects and and it's not describing itself it's describing the the walls within which it seems to be contained but if we said to it no don't tell us about the walls and the objects and the people Look, tell us about yourself. We want to know about the nature of yourself.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
The space would, so to speak, look at itself, taste itself, become aware of itself. And if it were then to describe its quality, it would never say, I'm small, I'm dark, I'm limited. It would just say, I am vast. I am without limits. I am boundless. The space hasn't become boundless as a result of doing this. It was always that.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
It just mistakenly identified itself with the four walls within which it seems to be contained. And just one clear look at itself liberated, not from its limitations, but it was never limited in the first place. It liberated it from the belief that it was limited.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
So instead of the space now feeling I am confined, I'm limited, I'm a fragment, I need something, I'm incomplete and so on, the space now feels I'm whole, I'm perfect, I'm complete, I need nothing. Okay, that's the analogy. So let's go back to our experience, try to make contact with this in our experience. Leave the analogy of this vast boundless space, go to the analogy of being.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
Consider one being, whole, without borders, unlimited, infinite, a single being like the single space. And now consider the single being temporarily enclosed within the body-mind and mixed with the content of our experience. By content of our experience, I mean thoughts and feelings, sensations on the inside and perceptions of the world on the outside.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
So our sense of ourself is a mixture of the fundamental being or being aware or awareness itself, plus the contents of experience. So I would suggest that our being is like the space. It's fundamentally unlimited. And this is easy to check in one's experience. We could perhaps go there later. It's easy to check in one's experience that one's being is without limits.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
It has no shape, no size, no gender, no color, no age, and so on. But in each of us, our being, our essential self is mixed with our experience, with our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions. So we don't experience ourself as this complete, inherently peaceful, whole. We experience ourselves as a being that is limited, temporary, finite, and therefore lacking. Because we're a fragment.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
We feel incomplete. This mixture of infinite being plus the contents of experience makes for a finite being. Like the space in this room seems to be a finite space. So although infinite being is... is whole. It lacks nothing. So the common name for the absence of the sense of lack is happiness. It's complete. It seeks nothing. It needs nothing.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
It's in a state of equilibrium, sufficiency, plenitude. But when our sense of ourself, the fact of being or awareness itself is mixed with the content of experience, mixed with our thoughts and feelings, it seems to acquire limits. I no longer feel that I am this inherently free, inherently peaceful, unconditionally fulfilled, being or awareness.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
I feel that I am a temporary finite self that is made partly of being or awareness and partly of the content of experience that the body and the mind. And so we feel we're a fragment And as a fragment, we feel I'm missing something. So this sense of missing something and the attendant longing to find something is the core feeling of the separate self that we seem to be.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
It's the one feeling that defines the apparently separate self, this feeling I'm incomplete, I lack something. And therefore, in response to that feeling of lack, all separate selves manifest. all apparently temporary finite selves, are motivated by one thing, to be completed, to be whole again.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
Because in the memory, deep in the memory, deep in the hearts of all temporary finite selves, there is this memory of our existence. of our essential nature, this memory of our eternity, this memory of our innate happiness. But it's been veiled. Our innate happiness has been veiled by the content of experience, and therefore everyone is longing.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
Now, to begin with in life, we try to relieve this longing through the acquisition of objects, substances, activities, relationships, and so on. And for many people, I suspect for many of your listeners, when... Most people, at least many people, they've been failed often enough by the world. The world has failed to produce the happiness they seek often enough.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
They begin to suspect that happiness can't be found in the conventional world. And then we start on a great spiritual search. We rebrand the search for happiness in the world, the search for enlightenment. But it's just the same thing. It's just a rebranding of the same thing. longing for something. Only now what we're longing for is a little bit more refined.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
And the objects or activities in which we seek it are a little bit more refined than the objects and activities that we used to seek it in the world. It's no longer substances and so on. It's meditation practices and teachers and teachings and traditions and disciplines and so on. But they're all, in effect...
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
activities of the mind that we engage in for a sole purpose, bringing to an end this longing, this existential longing that lives in each of our hearts. We now call it the longing for enlightenment. If we're in a religious tradition, we call it the longing for God. But it's all the longing for something, something that's going to put an end to this unbearable longing.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
The dissolution of a separate self. Yes. So the... most, if not all the, I would say, all the great spiritual and religious traditions in one way or another. say that what we're really seeking is not an object, however refined and noble that object may be. It's within ourself.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
And for this reason, all the religious and spiritual traditions have elaborated numerous different pathways, basically to come back to the recognition of the nature of our being. Because when we recognize the nature of our being, like the space in this room, recognizing... It's essential nature. It recognizes that it is already free. It is already whole. It is already perfect.
Know Thyself
E129 - Know Your True Nature & Unlock Your Purpose in 2025 (Know Thyself Best Moments)
It is already complete. And it is that recognition that brings to an end this unbearable longing. So that is why in one way or another, all the religious spiritual traditions say, know thyself. It's only that self-knowledge that will put an end to this longing.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
This paradigm, it leads to sorrow on the inside and conflict on the outside. To know the truth about oneself must therefore be the greatest service one could render humanity.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
All our experience revolves around ourself. And the common name we give to ourself is I. And that is why everything we say about our self.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
experience and contains the word i am i'm having a conversation with you i'm seeing this room i'm experiencing such and such so ourself stands at the at the very heart of our experience ourself is the most important element of our experience and and therefore there can be no a more important question than to know the nature of ourself. Our whole life revolves around ourself.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
We live our life in service of ourself. So the most important thing to know in life is what is the nature of myself if my entire life is lived on its behalf, if my entire life revolves around it, then should we not know the nature of ourself before we know any other thing? Could there be a more important question than to know the nature of ourself?
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
And it is for this reason that the words know thyself We're carved above the Temple of Apollo at Delphi because this understanding, the importance of self-knowledge stands at the very foundation of Western civilization. Of course, your podcast is named after that. You undertake all these interviews in honor of that, of that quest to know oneself.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
So yes, self-knowledge is, I would suggest that self-knowledge is the most important knowledge that anyone could ever attain. And anything we know about the universe is filtered through our knowledge of ourself. As William Blake said, as a person is, so they see. as we understand ourself to be, so we understand the universe.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
So we can't really understand the nature of the universe before we understand the nature of ourself. So, yes, self-knowledge is the most important, the highest knowledge. And the greatest service to know the truth about oneself must therefore be the greatest service one could render humanity.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
Yes. So everything we know or could ever know about the universe is filtered through our finite minds, filtered through the perception, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. And then thought then adds its own layer of conceptual knowledge to the knowledge that our sense perceptions give us.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
So everything we know about the universe appears through our finite mind and appears in accordance with it. Our finite mind consists of thought and perception. Perception, that is, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling. And it's no coincidence that the universe appears to us in the form of sights, sounds, tastes, textures, and smells.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
There's a direct correlation between our perceiving faculties and the way we perceive reality, the universe. So it's not possible to know the nature of the universe if we approach it through the finite mind. All we will ever know when we look at the universe through the finite mind is a reflection of the limitations of our finite mind.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
If you look at white snow through orange tinted glasses, the snow is always going to appear in accordance with the limitation of the medium through which you see it. The white snow will always appear orange. You cannot see the nature of the snow if you're looking at it through orange tinted glasses.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
It's not possible to know the nature of reality when we view it through the lens of the finite mind. And obviously knowing the nature of reality is important. It's the quest of science, philosophy, the spiritual traditions. So we have to ask, is there any experience we have that is not mediated through the finite mind? Only that experience would give us direct access to reality.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
mediated access to reality and therefore cannot be absolutely true. So if we want to know what's absolutely true, we have to go to an experience that is not subject to the limitations of the finite mind. So do we have any experience that is neither a thought or a perception?
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
And in order to... We can't go outwards into the universe to find the answer to that question because everything we know appears in accordance with the limitations of the finite mind. So if you go inwards, what happens? If we travel, as it were, backwards... through the layers of experience, thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, all of these are limited.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
So they can only give us a limited or relative view of reality. But if we go all the way back behind, as it were, the content of thought and perception, we arrive at one experience, namely the awareness of being.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
aware being awareness itself and this this this experience we have the experience of being aware or aware being is the only experience there is that is not mediated through the finite mind and therefore it is the only access we have to reality and that is why The words, know thyself, were carved above the temple of Apollo.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
The early Greek philosophers realized, if you want to know the nature of reality, you have to know the nature of yourself. It's the only way to know the nature of reality. And this truth is expressed in many different ways in the Sufi tradition, as you know, Balayani, whosoever knows their self knows their Lord.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
That's religious language for whoever knows their self as they truly are, knows the ultimate reality of the universe. So that's why all the religious and spiritual traditions, one way or another, point to self-knowledge as the key to understanding and the principle really which on civilization must be founded.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
if a civilization is going to evolve in a way that is consistent with truth, rather than evolve in a way that is consistent with the apparent evidence of sense perception, in other words, separation. Our world culture now is... predicated on a paradigm of separation because we have allowed our sense perceptions to dictate their model of reality. Everything and everyone is separate.
Know Thyself
E142 - Merging Science & Ancient Wisdom “We're All One Consciousness” (Compilation)
That's the foundation on which our world culture is based. And of course, we all know This paradigm, it leads to sorrow on the inside and conflict on the outside. So this self-knowledge must be the foundation of a peaceful, harmonious, loving society.