The emptiness of self and matter......Rupert Spira

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:16]If we take any object, not just >> [music] >> the tingling sensation of the face, but if we take a a flower or a or a glass or a chair or anything [music] at all, before we know anything about that apparent object, the first thing we can say for absolute certainty is it is.

[00:00:35]In other words, this isness or the existence [music] of things is not a property of any one particular thing. It is what all objects share in common.

[00:00:49]So, because this isness is not the property of any particular object, it is it is colorless. It is empty. It has no objective, definable qualities. So, this is the first emptiness, and it is an emptiness that is confirmed by contemporary physics. If you look into the nature of matter, what you find there is empty.

[00:01:16]This is the first kind of emptiness, pure being.

[00:01:21]This empty being is appearing in this moment. It takes [music] the shape of this vibration.

[00:01:30]Or it comes into existence as this vibration. And then this morning we explored that further.

[00:01:38]And >> [music] >> we had to admit there was one more thing we could say for absolute certain about the experience of this tingling [music] vibration.

[00:01:47]And that is that it is known.

[00:01:51]It's not just [music] being and vibration.

[00:01:55]And when we look into this knowing, as we sought to begin with this morning, we in order to visualize it, we added a spatial quality to it, and we called it a knowing field or a knowing space. As I described, this was just to enable us to think about it.

[00:02:13]And then as a halfway stage, we contemplated this the existence of this vibration >> [music] >> suspended as it were in this knowing field, and the knowing field [music] is empty.

[00:02:29]It's empty of objects. So, this is the second emptiness.

[00:02:36]The emptiness of consciousness. [music] The first emptiness [music] is the emptiness of pure being that we find when we explore matter.

[00:02:50]The second emptiness is the emptiness of thought.

[00:02:56]If we explore [music] thought, if we explore mind, the second emptiness is the emptiness that we find at the heart of the mind, at the heart of that which knows.

[00:03:06]That is pure knowing.

[00:03:10]So, these are what appear at first sight to be two emptinesses.

[00:03:18]The emptiness of matter or things made out of being >> [music] >> and the emptiness of thought or mind made out of knowing or pure consciousness. [music] And if we didn't take our investigation any further, we could legitimately say >> [music] >> there are two kinds of emptiness.

[00:03:41]One called being and one called knowing.

[00:03:45]But then as we went on in our meditation this morning to having expanded this вибрация [music] to to so that it fills the whole field of of knowing. Then we go even more closer we ask >> [music] >> what is the difference between the substance of the vibration and the substance of the field of knowing.

[00:04:08]Don't forget that vibration is made out of this empty being >> [music] >> and the knowing in which it supposedly appears is made out of the empty emptiness of knowing.

[00:04:20]And then we look for the line between these two emptinesses. [music] It's not there.

[00:04:27]It's not there.

[00:04:30]That is [music] the great discovery of the non-dual understanding.

[00:04:37]That the reality out of which objects, things are made pure being.

[00:04:47]The reality out of which matter is made and the reality out of which knowledge or the mind is made which seem to be two.

[00:04:57]I, the inside self made of mind and you or it, the outside other or world made out of matter.

[00:05:05]If we explore them both yes, they're both empty.

[00:05:10]The emptiness of being and the emptiness of knowing or pure consciousness, but if we go further not intellectually, I'm giving you an intellectual explanation now, but this these two emptinesses [music] are identical.

[00:05:26]That is the great [music] understanding that lies at the heart of all the great religious, spiritual spiritual and philosophical traditions and [music] is is formulated in the terms of that particular religion.

[00:05:43]So, 2,000 years ago it was formulated with the words I and my father are one, just because that was the contemporary language of that particular [music] place and era.

[00:05:57]I, that is, the essential [music] the ultimate reality of what I, this mind that knows, is, and the essential reality of that that is known, uh called my father, the ultimate reality, infinite being, are are identical.

[00:06:36]In in most most people that their experience and their beliefs about their experience are the same thing.

[00:06:47]What we do here is prize open the difference between our experience and our beliefs about experience. You for you and until this evening, possibly, you thought that sleep was the disappearance of awareness.

[00:07:04]You thought that was your experience.

[00:07:06]That's what I mean by saying your experience and your beliefs about experience are the same thing. You don't even realize that it's a belief.

[00:07:13]You just presume that awareness sleep is the absence of awareness. Why? Just because it's what your culture has told you. So, here we we we really we put a magnifying glass on the actual experience. Is it actually true that in deep sleep I experience the absence of awareness?

[00:07:32]Or do I believe that in deep sleep there is no awareness? Which is true? That's why I asked you, do you actually experience the absence of awareness?

[00:07:41]Quite right, you you said or in so many words you said, "No, I've I've never experienced the absence of awareness." Which shows that your belief that deep sleep is the absence of awareness is simply that, it's a belief.

[00:07:58]It's not your experience.

[00:08:02]And it's a belief that is supported by all the other beliefs that you have about consciousness.

[00:08:08]So, here with every question we ask, one belief about consciousness after another is being dismantled.

[00:08:16]That's what I referred to earlier when I say gradually, gradually, gradually this understanding begins to colonize the entire way we think and feel. So, here we are just dismantling this edifice that our culture has built about the nature of reality, the nature of ourselves, the nature of consciousness.

[00:08:37]It's one belief at a time. It's a bit like um What what's that game with all the the um you build a tower out of wood and Jenga. It's a bit like Jenga. It's true. So, you have this edifice which seems to be solid and you start to to take out you just take out one piece. These are These are the take the dismantling of our beliefs. You take out one, then you take out another and you take out one but but after a while you get what, halfway and after a while you take out one of the and the whole edifice comes down. It happens a bit like that. So, it accelerates. The To begin with it's just one belief, then the next belief, then the next belief but after a while we we don't need to examine every single belief. The whole edifice begins to First of all, it begins to crack, then it and it's a certain point it it crumbles, it falls down that the we begin to see our experience in in a way that is consistent with the understanding that all there is is infinite consciousness and all of this is a is a modulation of that. It's suddenly it begins to make sense. It begins to come clear and we oh and all the time we get confirmation after confirmation after con- yes, of course. Of course, that makes sense now. Of course, I couldn't see it before because I had this this this these [music] old ideas that I inherited from my culture.

[00:10:05]But you're doing the right thing. Just questioning every single but you just just keep doing that.

[00:10:26]And I find the consciousness only model enormously compelling. And [music] when you talk about it from an individual perspective when you talk about experience from an individual perspective, it all makes perfect sense to me.

[00:10:40]What I have trouble with is [music] thinking about the world when there's no one there to be conscious of us. No none of Well, not humans, I suppose.

[00:10:50]I've heard you talk in reference to that phrase if a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there to hear it.

[00:10:58]How does it go? Um If the tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, doesn't make a sound.

[00:11:05]>> Doesn't make a sound.

[00:11:06]>> I'm much more radical than that. I say that if the tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it presumably also there is no one there to see it. So, how do we know there is a tree or a forest in the first place?

[00:11:19]>> Well, that's what I want to ask you about.

[00:11:21]>> [laughter] >> Because um when we go to sleep at night, these hills and forests don't disappear.

[00:11:31]There are still animals in them.

[00:11:34]So, >> [laughter] >> how can you say we don't know there's a forest there?

[00:11:41]You you've you've got a foot in both camps.

[00:11:45]You're presuming that when we do see the world, when we do perceive the world, it exists.

[00:11:54]And you're therefore having a difficulty with accepting the possibility that when we don't perceive the world, it ceases to exist.

[00:12:06]This seems impossible. And And you're right. If when we perceive the world, the world exists, then how could that existent world possibly disappear simply on account of the fact that we no longer perceive it?

[00:12:22]This is a This is a This just um >> [clears throat] >> it's an intolerable proposition.

[00:12:29]It can be resolved like this.

[00:12:32]Not only does the world, as we normally think of it, exist when it is not perceived.

[00:12:41]I'm afraid the world, as we normally conceive of it, doesn't exist when it is perceived.

[00:12:48]If the world existed as it seems to exist when it is perceived, then it would just it would be inconceivable that simply closing my eyes and the preexisting world disappears.

[00:13:05]That would it cannot be so.

[00:13:09]However, what you have to see is that your question is is based on an assumption. I I understand that you're open to these ideas, but underneath these ideas, there is still this materialist presumption that the world is the way it seems to be. And as a result, you think this world could not possibly disappear when it is not being perceived. But maybe this world doesn't exist in the way we think it exists when it is being perceived.

[00:13:41]Maybe this world exists in exactly the same way that the dreamed world exists in a dream.

[00:13:50]After all, the dreamed world appears to us exactly like this world appears to us. It seems to be solid.

[00:13:58]It seems to have been here for longer than we seem to have been here.

[00:14:04]But when we wake up in the morning, we realize what appeared to be a solid, independently existing world was simply the activity of my own mind.

[00:14:17]In other words, the dream character looks through her her orange glasses, her her her finite mind.

[00:14:25]And she sees as a result the activity of the dreamer's [clears throat] mind as the outside world.

[00:14:33]Could it be that the same thing is happening here?

[00:14:37]That infinite consciousness is dreaming a world within itself self and simultaneously localizing itself as each of us.

[00:14:49]And that it views the activity of its own mind through the agency of each of us and sees itself as the world. [music] So, there is never really a separate, solid, independently existing physical world out there that exists whether or not we are perceiving it. This is just the activity of consciousness. And the activity of consciousness looks like a world when viewed from the perspective of a separate subject of experience.

[00:15:42]Yeah, well, from an individual perspective, it all makes sense to me. I just still have trouble with thinking about the world when >> [music] >> there aren't people to be conscious of it.

[00:15:54]I I've obviously missed something crucial.

[00:15:59]No, no, you haven't meant missed something, but you're you're still um reminds me of the story that Shankara used to tell about him.

[00:16:11]That there were two two colonies of of ants. One of them lived on a a mountain made of sugar and the other made of lived on a mountain made of salt.

[00:16:21]And um one day one of the ants that lived on the sugar mountain strayed into the territory of the ants that lived on the salt mountain and explained to them that there is something called sweetness.

[00:16:39]And the ants on the salt mountain just couldn't conceive of the possibility.

[00:16:45]So, the sugar mountain ant invited a delegation of ants from the salt mountain to come to [clears throat and snorts] his mountain to to taste the sugar.

[00:16:58]So, the ants conferred amongst themselves and they agreed to go, but they thought we'll be we'll be gone for a long time and what happens if it's not true? What happens if there is no such thing as sugar? We better take some salt with us.

[00:17:12]So, they each tucked a grain of salt into their mouth and they made unbeknown to the Sugar Mountain and they made the journey to the Sugar Mountain. They got there and with great ceremony they were each presented a grain of sugar to taste. They all tasted it.

[00:17:30]They conferred amongst themselves and they said no, this tastes like salt.

[00:17:34]>> [laughter] >> So you still have a grain of salt in your mouth.

[00:17:44]>> [laughter] >> We and I don't mean that you personally then the materialistic worldview has been so profoundly inculcated into our minds, into the way we think and feel that I have known people who have a deep understanding of non-duality and have been studying and practicing non-duality for 40 years but still at the core of their thinking and feeling there is this materialistic view.

[00:18:23]It's it's not just one day we just give up the belief in matter. It's not like that. It it it has infiltrated all our thoughts and feelings. It's very deep and it takes time to really expose [clears throat] and excavate this materialistic worldview that we've all been brought up with. So I don't mean to criticize you or to imply that you are somehow failing to understand [clears throat] this. You're being very honest.

[00:18:58]It it is a huge leap to even to be open to the possibility as everybody is here that what we experience as the world may not be a thing, that there may be no things in existence.

[00:19:18]That there might just be consciousness and its activity.

[00:19:25]And the world is what that activity looks like from a separate point of view.

[00:19:34]Okay, I think I'm getting it.

[00:19:36]Yeah, I like the way you don't buy it.

[00:19:38]I'm not asking you to believe it. I'm not replace a materialistic belief with a non-dual belief. I'm asking you, and you obviously already are, just simply to be open to this possibility and to subject this possibility to the scrutiny of reason and to the evidence of experience. It's because the materialist model has provided has failed to provide happiness for us.

[00:20:04]>> [music] >> So, ultimately, it's none of my arguments. My arguments are not meant to persuade you that this consciousness-only model is true. What will persuade you that it is true is if you follow it in your experience and as a result you find yourself becoming happier and happier.

[00:20:39]So, what about music? Which is the big thing for me.

[00:20:47]You know, going to a concert and feeling it feels like and then I'm going to have to try again, you know, at a concert. Feels like it just moves in this maybe it causes sensation.

[00:21:03]>> Next time you go to a to a concert He He your eyes for for for a couple of minutes before the concert begins and and meditate in the way that we're meditating here. In other words, know yourself as this It's not even a vast open field of sensitivity. It's a limitless open field of just pure sensitivity.

[00:21:31]Pure knowingness.

[00:21:34]It It's that one. It It's not It's just made out of empty knowing.

[00:21:41]You can't find it an edge to it. You can't find a shape to it. You can't find an age to it. You can't find a gender to it. Without reference to memory, you you would have no idea that you were sitting in a concert hall.

[00:21:54]Oh, just so as establish yourself in your simple experience that you just are this limitless sensitive luminous luminous in the sense that it lights up experience. This knowing openness.

[00:22:16]And then, when you when the music begins, just see that that the music is just made of hearing.

[00:22:24]Hearing is is a modulation of this knowing.

[00:22:29]No new substance comes into existence when the music begins. It's just this pure knowing that is now taking the shape of hearing.

[00:22:40]The music is is It's not just appearing in you. It's made out of you.

[00:22:44]Try Try ask yourself, where do where do where does hearing that this is the music Where does the hearing end and the knowing of it begin?

[00:22:54]Do it with this voice now. Where does Because our only knowledge of this sound is the experience of hearing. Where does hearing end and the knowing of it start?

[00:23:07]It doesn't make sense. Hearing is only the knowing of it.

[00:23:12]And what is that knowing made out of? It It's your the intimacy of It's yourself, this transparent, empty openness that takes the the shape of all experience.

[00:23:27]Listen to music like that.

[00:23:31]You see that ideas about music taking place inside a body. I mean, they're so remote from experience that there's no body no physical body present when you're listening to music. There's just this field, this sense field of sensitivity or openness or or knowing and and it just suddenly takes the shape of hearing.

[00:23:57]So, is this Is it a story that I tell myself that the body is >> Yes.

[00:24:03]is thrilled.

[00:24:05]You know, or is relaxed >> Yes, that's true. So, why is the body thrilled? It's because certain certain some music has has the power within it to take us to this experiential understanding that I'm speaking of. It kind of dissolves the sense of separateness.

[00:24:30]Mhm. So, when when this when this takes place, the body, which has been feeling on behalf of a separate self all day long is now is now bathed in in the is now brought to this experiential understanding. The body the the body relaxes. It It opens up. It no longer has to serve and protect and aggrandize the separate self. It it the body relaxes. There is a And that that is the aftershock, the aftereffect of this understanding on the body. The tension, the knots in the body are are are relaxed. And we may find ourselves with tears running and that. We may find goosebumps. We may find we may find us kind of joy that makes us just want to burst out of it. All all sorts of different ways that These are all signs of of a body that has been >> [clears throat] >> uh serving a separate self being relieved of of the tyranny of the separate self. And as a result, there is this relaxation which feels And that is pleasurable.

[00:25:46]That is a wave of pleasure that passes through the body. But the pleasure that passes through the body is not itself the happiness or the beauty.

[00:25:57]It's an aftereffect of it in the body that inevitably comes or goes. But what the music in this case is pointing towards is the the real nature of our experience, this seamless intimacy of our experience. That doesn't come and go. That realization is the experience of beauty or love or happiness.

[00:26:18]And this pleasurable wave in the body is just an aftereffect that that lovely aftereffect. Enjoy it.

[00:26:24]But don't think that that is happiness because when it goes, which it will, you'll think that happiness has gone with it. No, happiness doesn't come and go.

[00:26:32]Happiness is the nature of all experience.

[00:26:53]That is the great discovery of the non-dual understanding that the reality out of which objects, things are made, pure being, the reality out of which matter is made, and the reality out of which knowledge or the mind is made, which seem to be two, I, the inside self made of mind, and you or it, the outside other or world made out of matter.

[00:27:27]If we explore them both, yes, they're both empty.

[00:27:33]The emptiness of being and the emptiness of knowing or pure consciousness, but if we go further, these two emptinesses are [music] identical.

[00:27:44]And that is the great understanding >> [music] >> that lies at the heart of all the great religious, spiritual, spiritual, and philosophical traditions, and is is formulated in the terms of that particular religion.

[00:28:00]So, 2,000 years ago, it was formulated with the words I and my father are one, just because that was the contemporary language of that particular [music] place and era.

[00:28:15]I, that is the essential, >> [music] >> the ultimate reality of what I, this mind that knows, is, and the essential reality of that that is known, uh called my father, the ultimate reality, infinite being, are identical.

[00:30:00]>> Mhm.