Everything is real | Rupert Spira

I was hoping you could help me with creation and non-causality, is that how you say it? I've been reading about gradual creation, big bang, birth, death, instantaneous creation, which is I see it, I exist it, like with the eye arises the object. And then non-causality, which is no creation, because only the self exists. So if I do what you were just talking about, eliminating, looking at what's essential, I would lose the two creations and I would just be left with non-causality, it feels like the umbrella truth. But what happens to the other two, because if everything is included and indivisible with the absolute, how could you say that they don't exist? How could you say that? How can you say that anything that's included in reality doesn't exist? Did I say that? No. But I'm wondering about the two creations, because… Tell me, describe the two creations again. Well, gradual creation would be cause and effect, birth and death, big bang. So it's existence as we know it without understanding. And instantaneous creation is more like I see it, I exist it, I mean with the eye. It's like insta-duality, it's sort of how I see it, insta-ignorance even, depending on how you see it. So let's say you have a dream and in your dream you go on a family holiday for three months and you take a road trip across America. So in your dream, the dream takes three months and how wide is America? Three thousand miles? And you travel a distance of three thousand miles in your dream. So then you wake up and you look at your clock and you realise you fell asleep for 30 seconds. So how long did your dream take and how much space did it take up? How long did the journey take and how much space was… how much distance was travelled? I want to say none but… It depends which point of view you take. If you take the point of view of the character in the dream, it took three months and you covered three thousand miles. If you take the point of view of the dreamer, the dream didn't take up any space in your mind and it didn't have any duration. So this absence of space and absence of duration is what's called eternity or infinity. Eternal, infinite awareness. But modulated through the mind of the dreamed character, the eternal, infinite nature of your mind appeared as time and space. In other words, the mind of the dreamed character, the character in the dream, refracted the eternal, infinite nature of consciousness and made it appear as time and space. So from the point of view of the character, all kinds of things happened in those three months, one leading on from the other. So cause and effect was real or is real from the perspective of the character in the dream. And the laws of cause and effect work in the dream. But from the point of view of the dreamer, those laws, the laws of cause and effect and time and space, they don't exist for the dreamer in the way that they do for the dreamed character. Now the dreamer is consciousness, the dreamed character is each of us. So can you say they coexist even though one is more ultimately true? Well you can't say that they coexist because there are not really two things there. One is simply a limited version of the other. Time and space is a limited version of eternity. It's not as if there are two things. You can't say that King Lear and John Smith coexist. For them to coexist, they'd have to be two people. They don't coexist because there's only one person there to begin with. So there is only eternal infinite awareness which appears as time and space when refracted through the prism of the mind. But the laws that govern time and space are still included in ultimate reality. So they are real, just not in the way that we think. Absolutely, yes. Everything is real. There's no such thing as a... Everything is real. Even if you have a dream at night, your dream is a real dream. It's not a real Caribbean beach. The Caribbean beach is not really there. But nevertheless, it is a real dream when you look at a mirage in a desert. There's no real water there. But nevertheless, there is a reality to the apparent water. It is a play of light, relatively speaking. When you look at a landscape in a movie, the landscape is an illusion. It's not really there. But nevertheless, there is something that is real about it, the TV screen. This confusion, I think, comes because we often hear in the traditional teaching that the world is an illusion, the world is not real. Doesn't exist. That it doesn't exist. I struggled with this or thought about this for many years. And it's because in the traditional teaching, very often a clear distinction is not made between that which is non-existent and that which is an illusion. The two ideas are conflated, that they're considered to be the same. So sometimes we hear the world is not real, it doesn't exist. And another time we hear it is an illusion and that they are understood to mean the same thing. No, they're different. There is a difference between something that is an illusion and something that doesn't exist. So let me explain the difference. Something that doesn't exist, something that is, let's start with an illusion. Something that is an illusion is something that is there, but it's not what it appears to be. So the mirage in the desert, the landscape in the movie, there is something there. When we're watching a movie, we're watching a conventional movie now, we're sitting on our sofa, we're watching the landscape, there is something there, but it's not what it appears to be. It's not a real landscape, but it is, relatively speaking, a real screen. So the screen is the reality of the illusory landscape. And in fact, all there is to the illusory landscape is the real screen. So all we're really seeing is its reality, is what is real. There's nothing unreal there. It's just that what is there is not what it appears to be. Are you with me? I am. And I think I have the most trouble with it when I put it into the context of, say, the Big Bang. Let me just, I'm just trying to make clear the difference between an illusion and something that doesn't exist. So something that doesn't exist would be a square circle. Have any of you, or can any of you now, imagine a square circle? So a square circle is not even something that exists, but is not what it appears to be. It is utterly non-existent. It is not an illusion. An illusion is something that is there, but that is not what it appears to be. The square circle is never even there. We cannot even visualize it. So the world is not non-existent. It is real. This experience is undeniably real. And all experience, even a dream, or a vision, or a hallucination, or a near-death experience, or all experience, is real. But not all experience is what it appears to be. This experience of the room, or let's call it the world, is real. But the question is, what is real about it? What is its reality? And if we investigate its reality, we don't find stuff called matter. We find stuff called consciousness. But it doesn't make the matter go away. The matter was never there in the first place. The matter is the illusion. Matter is the appearance. Seeing the screen, that is the reality of the landscape, doesn't make the landscape go away, because there was no landscape there to begin with. All there was to the landscape was the screen. So we can still see the appearance of the landscape, but know that it is a screen. In other words, it is ignorance that disappears, not maya. Maya, in this context, is the illusion. It's not maya that disappears, it's ignorance that disappears. So you know it for what it really is, and you just see the screen? Yes. You still watch the movie, like the example I gave this morning. Most people, when they watch a movie, they just see the contents of the movie. When Ramana Maharshi and the Buddha watched the movie, they still see the contents of the movie, but all they see is the screen. They watch the same movie, but they see its reality. They don't allow the content of the movie to obscure its reality. People like Ramana Maharshi and the Buddha, these were not people who had extraordinary experiences. Their experiences were the same as our experiences, just this ordinary experience. But they didn't allow the objective qualities of experience to veil or obscure the reality of experience. They saw, as it were, through the illusion, although it's not through it. You don't see through the landscape to see the screen, but you understand what I mean. They saw, as it were, through the illusion to the reality. They didn't allow the appearance of things to veil their reality. It's just so mind boggling. It feels, when I understand it, it feels true. When I read quotes like, there is no creation, there is no dissolution, there is no seeker, it just feels, intuitively it feels so right, it's such a relief to read that. You see, that is written from the point of view of awareness. That text is awareness speaking. Now remember, awareness is the self-aware dimensionless screen, but let's say it's the vast screen upon which all the colors of experience are playing. From the point of the screen, nothing other than the screen ever comes into existence. From the screen's point of view, there is just itself, modulating itself, coloring itself in all the forms of experience, but no thing, no separate object comes into existence. Existence from ex sistere, in Latin meaning to stand out from. To one watching a movie on the sofa, it seems that the people and the trees stand out from the screen and have their own independent existence, but from the point of view of the screen, not from the point of view of one watching a movie, but from the point of view of the screen, if the screen were watching a movie, no person or tree or object would stand out from itself, and with its own independent existence. It experiences everything as a play of itself, and that's what it means when we hear nothing exists. It doesn't mean that there is no experience, it means no thing, no independently existing thing stands out from awareness with its own being. The only being there is, the is-ness of all things is the screen of awareness. From that one's point of view, there is no creation in the sense that there are no created things. There is just the dimensionless screen of awareness modulating itself in all the forms of experience. Nothing is created, no thing comes into existence. That's why it says in the Bhagavad Gita, that which is never ceases to be, that which is not never comes into existence. But these statements, when they're taken out of context or when they don't come with an accompanying explanation, they appear from the point of view of the separate self to be very nihilistic statements, and they have led to a huge amount of misunderstanding in the spiritual traditions, particularly in the Vedantic tradition, a very dismissive attitude towards the world. If it doesn't exist, if it's just an illusion, don't pay any attention to it. If wrongly interpreted, these teachings can lead to a life-denying point of view, a point of view that denies anything to do with the life and the body and activity and relationship. So, going back to the Big Bang, it is... From the point of view and the character in the dream, it took place 13 billion years ago. From the point of view of awareness, it takes place now. In awareness. Yeah. And both are true, depending on whose point of view you are looking at. Are you looking at it from the point of view of the finite mind, from whose point of view time and space seem to be very real, or are you looking at it from the point of view of awareness, in which there is no time and space, although the other one is simply a limitation of the other? And if you can't, and this is an extreme comment too, but if you can't see the world when... If the world isn't seen when you see the self, and the self isn't seen when you see the world, where do you stand to be of the most benefit? Can you say that again? I feel like you can look at it really extremely, like if you're just awareness, you really... There is no world, there is no creation, you don't see the world. And if you see... If you're really focused on the world and ignorance, you're oblivious to who and what you really are. So it seems like there's some middle ground, where there's an understanding, and I'm wondering like how to be of benefit in the world with the understanding, like where... Is there a... You can't just be awareness and not see the world and be of benefit. Yes. Yes, what you've just said is a rephrasing of a passage in the Bhagavad Gita which says, well the way it is normally translated is, what is sleep for the sage is waking for the ignorant, and what is sleep for the ignorant is waking for the sage. My version of that translation is, what is sleep for awareness is waking for the mind, and what is sleep for the mind is waking for awareness. So the question is, can awareness remain awake whilst the mind wakes, or are they two mutually exclusive positions? And the answer is yes, absolutely. It's called lucid waking. John Smith can play the part of King Lear whilst still knowing that he is John Smith. So yes, it's the first step. The waking of the mind and the sleeping of awareness, awareness falls asleep, loses itself to experience. That's the first step. And then there is the tracing back of ourself to our true nature of awareness. And then that's the recognition of awareness. That's the second step. And then the third step, awareness doesn't fall asleep in experience anymore, but it remains awake to itself and it sees all experience as a play within itself, of itself, known by itself. That's what Ramana Maharshi meant when he said, the world is an illusion, only Brahman is real. Brahman is the world. That's what he was, that was what he was meaning. To begin with, we fall asleep, we lose ourselves to our experience. Awareness covers itself with its own creative, it veils itself with its own creativity. It loses itself in its own play. And as a result, it suffers. John Smith loses himself to King Lear and as a result suffers, and then has to trace his way back to himself. Awareness has to come back to itself. That's the process of self-inquiry or prayer. It's the essence of prayer or self-inquiry, this returning to the I am. And then the next night, John Smith plays Hamlet, but this time he doesn't, he doesn't lose himself to Hamlet. He stays where he is, and he simply puts on Hamlet's clothes, so Hamlet comes to him, but he remains himself. So in the first step, awareness loses it, awareness is merged with experience. It's lost in experience. The second step, there is this recognition, and then in the third step, awareness doesn't lose itself in experience, but experience loses itself in awareness. John Smith doesn't go out to Hamlet. Hamlet comes to John Smith. John Smith remains where he is, knowing himself, and plays the part of Hamlet without forgetting himself. That would be an example of awareness not falling asleep while the mind wakes. It's the turning inward. Sorry? Is that a turning inward? The turning inwards is the second step. In the first step, we're lost in experience, and as a result, we suffer, so that as a result of that, we retrace our steps. We turn inwards. That is, it's not really inwards, but it's away from the objects of experience. I'm not my thoughts. I'm not my feelings. I'm not my activities or relationships. What am I, essentially? That's the inward-facing path, the path of self-inquiry or the path of prayer. Then there is this recognition, I am naked awareness. I am John Smith. Then the outward-facing path is when we turn around again and face the objects of experience, but this time, we don't lose ourselves in them. They lose themselves in us. That's what I mean by inside, that you see things within you. Yes. It's just that the phrase, the inward-facing path is a phrase that I use for the return to our true nature, and the outward-facing path is a phrase that I use for when we go back to objective experience again and incorporate objective experience within our new understanding.