One of the great mysteries of human existence is so basic that most people never think to ask about it: Can we ever know who we really are? Simply posing the question runs into an obstacle if we believe that who we are is a walking package of billions and billions of cells. Cells are little bottles of salt water that process chemicals in totally predictable ways. The same goes for brain cells, and no matter how closely you stare at a CT scan or fMRI of the brain, the hot spots that light up seem a long way from Shakespeare and Mozart. Nobody has convincingly shown how glucose – or blood sugar, which isn’t all that different from the sugar in a sugar bowl – suddenly learns to think after it passes through a thin membrane and enters the brain.
Rupert Spira belongs to a completely different branch of investigation, which takes ‘Who are we?’ as an interior question. Being human isn’t about cells and chemical reactions but about exploring the essential nature of ourselves and the world. Following this path, even science reaches non-dual conclusions. The great pioneering physicist Max Planck, who coined the term ‘quantum’, insisted that ‘Mind is the matrix of matter’. He elaborated on the point, speaking to a London reporter in 1931: ‘I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.’
Needless to say, modern science didn’t follow Planck’s lead – quite the opposite. We are in the midst of a headlong rush to solve everything in life through technology and compiling mountains of data for supercomputers to digest. But the total inability to explain consciousness by building it up from molecules, atoms and subatomic particles is a clear failure of science. To claim that discovering more and more complex particles will eventually lead to the emergence of mind is like saying that if you add enough cards to the deck, they learn to play poker.
In short, one can divide the argument between the ‘mind first’ position and the ‘matter first’ position. Far and away, the ‘matter first’ camp prevails at the present moment, since everyone accepts that the physical world ‘out there’ exists without question. Spira says, in his typically quiet, patient voice, that ‘matter first’ and ‘mind first’ are both short-sighted. Taking the simplest possible fact to be true – that there is only one reality – Spira concludes that there is also only one explanation for reality. In these essays he maintains unwaveringly that the only reality is pure consciousness, and everything else, including mind and matter, is a modulation of that reality. A thought is something consciousness does – it is not an entity in its own right; likewise an atom. Nature goes to the same place to produce the smell of a rose and a spiral galaxy.
The beauty of this position, which Spira expresses with eloquent conviction, is that the thorny question ‘Can we ever know who we really are?’ leads to the answer ‘Yes’. To be more precise we could say, ‘Yes, but…’, because finding out who we really are doesn’t come in words, but only as an intimate experience, an awakening. And although that experience confronts us at every moment and invites us in, it cannot be compared to any other experience. It lies outside the physical domain and the mental domain at the same time.
Where would such a place be located? Everywhere and nowhere. How do you get there? The journey doesn’t require you to go anywhere but here and now. Those answers, however frustrating, are the truth. There’s an ancient backlog of discussion on this paradox of starting anywhere and getting everywhere, sometimes called ‘the pathless path’. The time-honoured advice, echoed in every spiritual tradition, has pointed inward. The basic notion is that beneath the restless surface of the mind is a deeper level that is unmoving, silent and at peace. This journey relieves our sense of self of all superimposed limitations and reveals its true reality. Illusions fall away. The ego loses its grip. With the experience of the true nature of the Self, a transformation takes place. The key is to transcend our misguided sense of self, and then the light dawns.
In an ideal world, everyone would obey the Old Testament injunction to ‘Be still and know that I am God’. Not that religious terms are necessary: the great Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore declared:
Listen, my heart, to the whispering of the world.
That is how it makes love to you.
In other words, intimate contact with the Self is everywhere, and its allure is the same as love’s.
If we cannot hear what the world whispers, there is another way, pointed out by Tagore again:
I grew tired of the road when it took me here and there.
I married the road in love when it took me Everywhere.
To begin with, the outward world seems to be infinite and inexhaustible, but if we pursue it far enough we inevitably come to the conclusion that it is consciousness itself that is infinite and inexhaustible. The outward journey wears itself out, and then the inward one beckons.
If you try saying this to a sceptic, you run into the same objection: ‘Go stand in traffic. When a bus hits you, you’re dead. End of story.’ Materialists keep insisting that the physical world comes first and that no amount of tricky mental gymnastics can get around that fact. Even sympathetic listeners and committed seekers cling to materialism – perhaps secretly, perhaps guiltily, but mostly, I think, because the full story has yet to sink in. In his gentle but uncompromising way, Spira insists upon telling the full story and beyond that, making it an immediate personal experience.
The full story isn’t new. Its origins lie in India’s ancient past, although, history and human confusion being what they are, many other stories arose to overlap and muddle it. Someone with knowledge of Indian spirituality will read a few pages of this book – or even just the titles of the essays – and say, ‘Ah, Vedanta. That’s what he teaches.’ But to say this is merely to paste a label on Spira’s approach, which also includes the understanding found in the Tantric traditions of Kashmir Shaivism and Dzogchen Buddhism. The Vedas are the sacred scriptures of India, and Vedanta, translated literally, means the end of the Vedas. In other words, Vedanta is the last word in spiritual knowledge, the place you arrive at after absorbing everything else the scriptures can teach you. Vedanta’s promise can be stated in a single maxim: ‘Know that one thing, by knowing which, all else is known.’
There’s enormous appeal in Vedanta’s truth-in-a-nutshell, so why didn’t it become a kind of universal spiritual path? Why not skip the bulk of spiritual teaching – not just Indian but from all sources – and follow this golden thread? Rupert Spira is rare and all but unique in doing exactly that. In India, Vedanta has a reputation for being complex and intellectual, a subject to which professors and religionists devote their entire lives. What was meant to be practical advice – the one thing you need to know in order for all knowledge to fall into your lap – somehow became abstract and exhausting in its obscurity.
Vedanta needed to be revived for modern people who want practical results; otherwise, the most beautiful truths would be unreachable. Vedanta, to be blunt, was like opening a can of tuna with a piece of limp spaghetti. Spira has been through all that – although he modestly doesn’t lean upon his learning – and come out the other side. He has one thing to say because there is only one thing to know: It’s all consciousness. Because consciousness is creating everything, here and now, and because its creation is endlessly fascinating, he finds beautiful ways to express one thing, often poetically, always compassionately. With a diamond in his hand, he wants to show us every facet.
Forewords risk the pitfall of sounding fulsome, but in all candour, I’ve gained deeper understanding listening to Rupert Spira than I have from any other exponent of modern spirituality. Reality is sending us a message we desperately need to hear, and at this moment no messenger surpasses Spira and the transformative words in his essays.
Deepak Chopra
September 2016