From: The Nonduality Blog
Jerry Katz's report on the
Science and Nonduality Conference 2010
Here are excerpts from Rupert Spira's talk at the SAND 2010:
All we know is experience. Check that that is true for you. Have you ever known, do you know, or could you know anything other than experience? And whatever it is that knows experience intimately, utterly, pervades all experience equally. No part of experience is further from or closer to myself, whatever my self is, than any other part. In fact we don't really know experience, we just know experiencing. And if we stay close to experiencing, we never find a separate self, object, other, or entity. We just find the pure intimacy of experiencing. There is no inside of experiencing, there is no outside of experiencing. ... All experience takes place now. Check that for yourself. Can you move just a second away from now? ... The past and the future are never experiences, they are concepts. That is, time is never an experience. Now is not a moment in time but is truly timeless or eternal. Experience takes place here. ... Try to move just one millimeter away from here. ... All experience is here. We never experience distance or space. ... This locationless dimension which has no finite qualities (is) called here. ... It is known by all of us. It is what we refer to when we speak of love. Love is absolute intimacy, immediacy, innocense of experience. It is not just the condition of our relationship with one or two special friends. It is the name we give to the fundamental condition of all experience. ... The moon is only ever the sight of the moon. The sight of the moon is made only of seeing, as seeing takes place here, not there. The American poet e.e. cummings tried to describe this in this poem:
love is a place
& through this place of
love move
(with brightness of peace)
all places
yes is a world
& in this world of
yes live
(skilfully curled)
all worlds
So how is it that this absolute intimacy of experience, the lack of any distance, otherness, separation, or objectness of experience, which is the fundamental quality of all experience, how is it that it sometimes seems to be missing? … How does thought veil love? …
…
The separate entity never finds love; it dissolves, or dies, in love. This is in fact the only thing the separate entity ever truly seeks: it’s own death or disappearance. When the mind re-emerges again after this timeless experience of love about which it knows nothing, it recreates again the separate self in here and the separate other out there. And as we all know, before long the experience of love seems to be lost again, so again we go out in search of an object or an other that will deliver the experience of love.
Rupert Spira's website here.
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8 comments:
I thought that e.e. cummings poem sounded familiar, it was featured on my Desert Colors blog in March. :D
"Now is not a moment in time, but is truly timeless - eternal." I love Rupert Spira. His Stillness is tangible... Christine
Lovely! And perfect photos to go with the poem!
I like Spira's pointing, particularly "this locationless dimension called Here."
But then he says, "It is known by all of us" which actually contradicts his entire preceeding line of argument.
I prefer the pointer that, "Here can never be known, nor not known."
Tom, Interesting points and pointers, thank you! I need to mull them over, "knowing" is such a sticky point for me, still not sure what can and can't be known.
Diane, I'm guessing that part of the difficulty stems from the use of one word, 'knowing', for 2 different things.
There is the knowing of an object by a subject. This is what is ordinarily called 'knowing.' This is obviously relative, dualistic, as such.
Then there are pointers to What IS that use words such as Apperceiving, One Mind, Being-Knowing, Experiencing. These pointers use things that we are familiar with to make a kind of bridge to "THIS WHICH IS", but can never be objectified.
Obviously, people speaking and writing on the subject of Advaita, etc. don't always do so in a way that is consistent and clear when it comes to terminology.
Tom - Thanks, I appreciate your insight.
Now maybe I'm understanding your pointer better, "Here can never be known, nor not known", because Here is What IS and can never be objectified.
You're welcome, Diane.
Yes, that's the jist of it.
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