10 Sayings on the Essence of Non Duality by RUPERT SPIRA
Truth is silent but, when met with questions about its true nature, is compelled to speak. The sayings in The Ashes of Love were taken from conversations with friends over a three-year period. I am deeply grateful to these friends who, through the intensity of their interest and their great love of truth, have called these words out of Being into existence. ~Rupert Spira
- From the viewpoint of the earth, the sun comes and goes, whereas it is, in fact, always present. Likewise, from the viewpoint of the body and mind, our essential nature of pure Awareness comes and goes, but, in its own experience of itself, it is ever-present.
- All experience is illuminated, or made knowable, by the light of pure Knowing. This Knowing pervades all thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions, irrespective of their particular characteristics. We are this transparent, unchanging Knowing.
- Our self – luminous, open, empty Awareness – cannot be enlightened. It is already the light that illuminates all experience. Nor can a separate self be enlightened, for when the separate self faces the light of Awareness, it vanishes, just as a shadow does when exposed to the sun.
- To invest one’s identity and security in something that appears, moves, changes and disappears is the cause of unhappiness.
- The separate self is not an entity; it is an activity: the activity of thinking and feeling that our essential nature of pure Awareness shares the limits and the destiny of the body and mind.
- Just as a screen is intimately one with all images and, at the same time, free of them, so our true nature of luminous, empty Knowing is one with all experiences and yet, at the same time, inherently free of them.
- We are the open, empty, allowing presence of Awareness, in which the objects of the body, mind and world appear and disappear, with which they are known and, ultimately, out of which they are made. Just notice that and be that, knowingly.
- When everything that can be let go of is let go of, what remains is what we desire above all else.
- In ignorance, I am something; in understanding, I am nothing; in love, I am everything.
- Our self – luminous, empty Awareness – knows no resistance and is, therefore, Peace itself; it seeks nothing and is, thus, happiness itself; it is intimately one with all appearances and is, as such, pure love.
*Download a .pdf sample to read the Foreword, Introduction by Rupert and the first ten pages of aphorisms (which the above was culled from).
About the author
From an early age Rupert Spira was deeply interested in the nature of reality. At the age of seventeen he learnt to meditate, and began studying and practicing the teachings of classical Advaita Vedanta under the guidance of Dr. Francis Roles and Shantananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of the north of India, which he continued for the next for twenty years.
During this time he immersed himself in the teachings of P.D.Ouspensky, Krishnamurti, Rumi, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta and Robert Adams, until he met his teacher, Francis Lucille, in 1997. Francis introduced Rupert to the teachings of Atmanada Krishnamenon, Jean Klein, and the Tantric tradition of Kashmir Shaivism, and, more importantly, directly indicated to him the true nature of experience.
Rupert lives in UK and holds regular meetings and retreats in Europe and USA
Visit Rupert’s Website
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