Rupert Spira Session

January 14^th, 2018

In attendance—Rick M. & Laurie S.

In today’s session, we listened to a section on Disc 3, The Second Awakening.

Rupert explained that, although Reality is One, three states of Being appear to manifest themselves in Consciousness. The first is the dream state. In the dream state, everything is projected from mind. That is to say, for example, when you travel to Hawaii in a dream, you only travel there in your mind.

You have to wake up and enter the waking state to realize that the hallucination you were having was only a dream. The waking state is based on the life of a subject, moving about a world of objects in space and time.

According to Rupert, you can have a second awakening. You can move into the experience of pure consciousness and finally know who you really are. That is to say, you can become aware of being aware. In that state, you see that the basis of Reality is Consciousness, not mind or matter. When you have that second awakening, the waking state is seen as very dream-like in nature. In the third state, a person experiences being in the Now, in the flow of life—moving freely in dimensionless, timeless Reality. At that point life becomes peaceful, clear, tranquil and joyous.

After listening to the tape we discussed these matters further and then had some delicious refreshments. It was a very worthwhile way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

 

Krishnamurti Study Session
Saturday, January 6, 2018

Six participants gathered to explore J. Krishnamurti’s book The First and Last Freedom, Q & A # 22. The chapter was entitled “On Love.” It began with a question put to Krishnamurti, “What do you mean by love?” K. responds by saying that we would find out what love is by first seeing what it is not. In his usual style of negation, he strips away all the conventional concepts about love, fundamentally saying that love is not of the mind and that all projections of thought are not love. “Love is the unknown …. What we are going to do is … look at the known, and when that is looked at purely, without condemnation, the mind becomes free from the known; then we shall know what love is… It is only when there is love that all our problems can be solved, and then we shall know its bliss and its happiness.”
The material in the text gave the group plenty to grapple with in the discussion that accompanied the reading and we had a very interesting investigation of the topic. There were a couple of newcomers along with some of the more regular attendees, all of whom were most welcome.

A dozen of us gathered for a year-end meetup, enjoying the film – Being Here – A Beginner’s Guide to Non-Duality.  As a follow up from film-makers’ production of “Who’s Driving the Dream Bus“, Being Here was released in fall of 2017, capturing an ambling drive through the UK countryside as filmmakers re-visit a few local characters who describe their own sense of what non-duality means (and, what it doesn’t mean)! The interviewer posed questions that many have asked:  Is there some knowable reason to pursue a non-dual type of knowing? Does it mean something? Is there a way one can get there?

The answers always seemed to circle back to a few key messages:

• there isn’t any ‘one’ who can get this ‘truth’… it’s beyond any kind of mental concept;
• it isn’t actually elusive – it’s right here to be felt within every moment of existence (it is existence after the filtres we tend to see through have fallen away);
• there aren’t notable benefits to the individual to acquiring this type of knowledge – what Tony Parsons calls “The Open Secret“… (the ‘me’ frequently hopes for some gain or reward yet finding the absence of a ‘me’ within spacious awareness is the ultimate discovery)

The group also watched a Jetz TV interview with Mooji, followed by a guided meditation exploring facets of our own awareness. We also enjoyed some wonderful discussion and sharing of people’s inquiry journeys.

Krishnamurti once suggested that “From innumerable complexities we must grow to simplicity; we must become simple in our inward life and in our outward needs.” This seems to speak to letting go of expectation and striving, relaxing into the current moment.  In my own experience, when ‘efforting’ and striving fall away, one can find something beautiful and mysterious in it’s wake!

Thanks so much for hosting us – people were very grateful for the gathering!

At the December meetup, six of us gathered to enjoy a recent talk by Eckhart Tolle.  The talk delved into the two ways of knowing:  conceptual and intuitive.  Eckhart emphasized that while both are necessary, in modern society we have over-valued conceptual knowledge, leading to widespread habitual or even compulsive thinking. He also suggests that while thinking can be used to manifest our reality, it is only through spaciousness and the cessation of thinking that we are able to create from the depths of Being.

Members resonated with many of the key messages such as taking many small moments each day to rest into beingness and allowing thoughts to settle.  Eckhart for example, pauses in between activities to enjoy the sense of ‘un-doing’.  It was fun to imagine those around him asking why he is sitting in his car so long after turning it off!  In a society that often calls us to move immediately to the next priority or activity, I loved this affirmation of the joy of stopping to simply remember our essential beingness.

“There is a great happiness in not wanting, in not being
something, in not going somewhere” Jiddu Krishnamurti

In another example, Eckhart talked about making the present moment your friend – saying yes internally to whatever arises.  Tricky – for sure when things are not what you would have chosen!  Eckhart suggested that accepting ‘what is’ is a first step – denying or getting angry about what’s happening, often leads to greater suffering and less effectiveness in addressing situations.  He could have had a wonderful discourse with Krishnamurti on this topic, who linked back to the concept of true knowing:  “The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence“.

Thank you to those who came out as well as to KECC for their support for this event.

Inquiry Sunday
December 3, 2017

For our morning session we showed part of a talk by Jac O’Keefe at a recent Science and Nonduality Conference in Italy and a full talk given at SAND in San Francisco. The first talk, entitled “Trust and Spirituality”, dealt with the importance of trusting one’s own intuition and insight rather than giving authority to a teacher, book, or other source of information. We are all unique, with different issues and conditioning, and will have different experiences of the unfolding of our true nature. Noone can actually know what is the truth of our experience except ourselves. The second talk focused largely on the state of nondual teaching as Jac sees it. She questions the perspective of those who bypass the need to be fully with our conditioning and our emotional life, particularly with the use of concepts which tend to explain everything away. She also wonders if there should not be some way of evaluating the effectiveness of teachers in producing an awakening in their students. A number of teachers in the audience were very supportive of the necessity of facing our conditioning directly. The sound quality of the video was unfortunately not very good, but it gave some interesting material for group discussion amongst the four people in attendance.
In the afternoon we looked at a number of videos produced by the Krishnamurti Foundation of America with the intention of appealing to young people, and they therefore presented the teachings in a more modern context. Titles included “Understanding Yourself and the World,” “Who Am I?” and “Revolt.” They presented some of the basics of K’s teachings in a straightforward manner which we felt was quite interesting and useful.