Familiarizing oneself with Rupert Spira’s nonduality teaching is like being a surefooted mountain goat all our lives only to be suddenly transformed into a free-flying common crane that glides above the clouds. As much as it is liberating to gain a panoramic perspective on the presumed aspects of our lives, it is also disorienting to abruptly lose our footing on the solid ground upon which we had based all of our understanding.
Everything we know of ourselves and this world comes to us through sensations and perceptions further filtered through prejudices and beliefs. But if we fine-tune this understanding, we will notice that what we really know is only the thought that reinterprets these sensations and perceptions through language and not the actual objects they represent. Ask Spira and he would go one step further to say that we don’t even know the actual thought, but only the ‘experience of knowing’ the thought.
If this perspective shift that is happening from the viewpoint of the subject – we, the experiencer of the thought – is challenging to accept, brace yourself for Spira’s claim about the object of our experience – the world.
According to Spira, there is no world outside of our consciousness. We don’t perceive the world through our senses and perceptions, but the world comes into existence because we perceive it.
“Nobody has ever experienced or could experience anything outside awareness, so the idea of an independently existing substance, namely matter, that exists outside awareness is simply a belief to which the vast majority of humanity subscribes.”
Rupert Spira
This is not a simplification of some lofty philosophical observation or a nod to sci-fi brain plots, but rather a straightforward leveling of what is within everyone’s experience. A world that exists separately by itself, that has got nothing to do with an observer, cannot be known by anyone because to verify such a world’s existence we would still need to ‘know’ it. There cannot be a blue sky out there by itself without the element of my knowing attached to its existence. This is not to say that there is no blue sky in reality, but what it means is that there is no way for us to prove whether the blue sky exists outside of our awareness or not.
So, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Science settled this thought experiment by stating that the falling motion of the tree will certainly kick up vibrations in the air but for those vibrations to be considered to have made a sound, they need to be sensed by the tympanic membrane in the ears and perceived as ‘sound’ in the brain or picked up by the diaphragm of a microphone and registered as an electrical signal to be interpreted by an observer. Sensory experiences like sound, sight, taste, smell, or touch are physical concepts that exist in the mind. The vibrations released in the air by the kinetic energy of the falling tree are real but assuming it will make a sound even in the absence of an “experiencer” is not real.
It is also what is at the heart of the Double-Slit Experiment of quantum physics which states that things in the universe exist as a wave of possibilities until we observe at which point it collapses into a singular reality. We may observe the quantum particle with a measuring device like our eyes or a recorder that has a set of attributes but those attributes are not going to explain the particle in its entirety. We assume that what we see is what there is, but in truth, what we see only proves that we can see and how we process it and nothing about what is seen.
But what happens when I am not looking at the blue sky and someone else looks at it and sees what I have always seen and known as my reality. Isn’t that evidence of the blue sky’s existence independent of my perception? When I slip into a deep sleep and everyone else still sees the world as one reality, doesn’t it prove that the world is quite real and that it must still exist independent of an observer? I could take comfort in the fact that Albert Einstein too shared the same discomfort, albeit in a different context, when he wondered, “Do you really believe that the moon exists only when you look at it?” It is a million-dollar question but the answer for it lies in the direction we are not looking.
“The reason we all seem to share the same world is not that there is one world ‘out there’ known by innumerable separate minds, but rather that each of our minds is precipitated within, informed by and a modulation of the same infinite consciousness. It is the same world because all finite minds are refractions of the same consciousness.”
Rupert Spira
One cannot know another’s perception. I cannot explain to my kid what broccoli exactly tastes like or describe to a perfumer the specific fragrance I have on my mind. Each is privy to his/her own sensations and thoughts and what we experience is only for us to know. So when we experience a world that is confirmed and corroborated to be the same by every one of us, we think the world has to exist separately, untouched by our perceptions.
But we also know that there is a complete, unified world out there, of which we can only see a sliver and not the whole. The world is an illusion because what we all are seeing is a limited fabrication of the real world. Then the true million-dollar question is how is it possible for all seven billion of us to perceive the same fabrication despite separate minds? If there is one world out there and each of us has an individual, unrelated mind, then shouldn’t we all be seeing seven billion different worlds?
We look at one side of our experience and think there is one world while we should really be looking at the other side of our experience where we will find one consciousness holding us together in one forgiving embrace, despite our differences, mistakes, prejudices, and discriminations.
From where I see, consciousness feels like one great bear hug from God.
“The world is not what you think it is.
The world is exactly what you think it is.
Find the place within you where both
these statements are true.”
Mooji
