Everyone at some level is aware that right now, no matter how well we're doing, by whatever measure - loved & respected by family & friends, smart, well-educated, successful, healthy, attractive, financially-secure - our life as we know it & that of our loved ones, can radically change in an instant. Our fragility is partially because for many, happiness depends entirely on how well we can control our environment. But, again at some level we know that we have put our environment & ourselves into crisis. So our anxiety & stress appears to be because we cannot reliably control the basic, universal facts of life: constant change, aging, sickness & death.
Much of this is based on the simplistic materialist model of reality - a left-hemisphere-dominant perspective - which imagines life AS IF life was nothing more than accidentally-assembled machinery, meaninglessly churning away, then inevitably breaking down, end of story.
BUT WHAT IF our anxiety and pervasive sense of 'lack' or 'something missing' were caused not as much by our inability to adequately control life / fear of death, but MOSTLY by the gnawing discrepancy between how most of us perceive the world ("relative reality" "consensual reality") and our innate intuitive memory of "Ultimate Reality" which cannot be seen, nor adequately described. And because Ultimate Reality is far more complex than the reductionist model, many are not able to or not ready to deal with it.
Nevertheless, throughout history, from all traditions, from every corner of the globe, shamans, mystics, saints, philosophers, poets & other deeply spiritual seekers of Truth have continued to point us toward Ultimate Reality in the only possible way - by directly experiencing it.
In this tradition, Rupert Spira offers very clear, concise pointers to help us directly experience Ultimate Reality in his excellent 40-minute video (at the bottom of this page). His excellent talk (from the video) about how our Essential Nature is Happiness, is partially transcribed here :
“Could it be that the entire, what we call the universe, is an appearance within Awareness or Consciousness? After all, that is what our experience tells us.
Could it be that each of our minds are like localizations of an infinite field of Consciousness, through the agency of which Consciousness knows itself as the world? Just as when we fall asleep at night we dream, we imagine an entire world within our own minds, and yet, we view that world from the perspective of a separate subject of experience within that world.
Could it be that each of our minds are like dreams, in the mind of Infinite Consciousness? Or to use religious language, each of our minds are like dreams in the mind of God, through which infinite consciousness or God’s infinite being seems to divide itself into two parts: a subject that knows and an object that is known, just as we do at night when we dream.
Our own mind divides itself into two parts: a dreamed world and a separate dreamed character, from whose point of view that world is known. In other words, the dreamed character – the character in the dream – is the agency through which our mind knows itself as the dreamed world.
Could it be that each of our minds are like localizations through which Infinite Consciousness knows itself as the world? After all, that is in line with our experience. Is there anyone here who is currently experiencing anything other than the knowing or consciousness of your experience?
… if we investigate like honest scientists, relying only on the evidence of experience, this knowing or consciousness is all that is ever experienced. And it is possible to explain the whole of reality on the basis of consciousness alone, without recourse to an abstract world made of matter, which nobody has ever, or could ever come in contact with.
What are the implications of this possibility? It implies that whatever or whoever seems to be outside of ourselves, in other words all others, all objects and the world, although they may be outside of our limited, finite minds, they are not outside of the infinite field of consciousness, out of which our finite minds are made. In other words, the implications of this possibility is that everyone & everything is a modulation of a single infinite indivisible whole, seemingly separate from ourselves, seemingly made out of something other than ourselves, but in reality, an integral part of the same infinite, indivisible whole.
In other words, although experience seems to comprise a multiplicity & diversity of objects & selves, if we look through that appearance, trusting only the evidence of experience, we find no separate objects, people, entities, selves or things. We find only our Self, not our personal (small) self – a collection of thoughts and feelings, but our Self, that true and only Self of infinite, indivisible, self-aware Being – referred to as God in the religious traditions; referred to as Consciousness in gatherings such as this; and referred to as “I” in common parlance.
I’m not speaking of some extraordinary experience to which only a few enlightened sages have access. Everybody knows the experience to which I am referring. The common name for it is love. When you feel you love someone, or are in love, do you not feel, to a greater or lesser extent, that you are one with that apparent other? (Oneness, Unitive Experience, Unitive Consciousness) Is that not precisely what the experience of love is – the dissolution of the sense of separation between yourself & the other. In other words, love is not a relationship. It is the collapse of relationship. It is the absence of self & other. In other words, it is the recognition of our shared being. It is the recognition of Reality.
Why is it that everybody loves the experience of love above all else? It is because each of us, all apparently finite minds long, above all else, to be divested of their seeming separation. All the separate self truly longs for is to be divested of its sense of separation, it’s limitations.
The experience of beauty is exactly the same experience but in relation to an object rather than to a person or an animal. When you feel the experience of beauty whilst walking in a landscape or listening to a piece of music, do you not feel to a greater or lesser extent that you merge with the music or the landscape? Is there anyone here who has not had that experience? Is there anyone here who on listening to a piece of music or walking in the landscape has not felt themselves dissolve into the music or the landscape, who has not felt the sense of separation between themselves and the object dissolve? Isn’t that why we love to walk in Nature or to listen to music?
All the separate self truly longs for is to be divested of its sense of separation, to be relieved of the apparent limitations that seem to confine us to a cluster of thoughts, images, feelings, sensations & perceptions, and returns us, as it were, to our Origin, our Source, or our Essence.
In the non-dual traditions there are these two essential pathways.
First of all the inward-facing pathway through which we investigate what we call “I,” which culminates in the recognition that the “I” that we essentially are, the Awareness that we essentially are, is without limits & is inherently peaceful.
And then there is the outward-facing pathway in which our entire experience is realigned with this new understanding in which we not only understand but feel that everyone & everything is a modulation of our own essential infinite self-aware Being.”
Rupert Spira, “Your Nature is Happiness” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfQSbc42Uc4 - below
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