Spira’s Non-Duality

Spiritual teacher (and pottery artist) Rupert Spira espouses non-duality as “the recognition that underlying the multiplicity and diversity of experience there is a single, infinite and indivisible reality, whose nature is pure consciousness from which all objects and selves derive their apparently independent existence.” He states, “The greatest discovery in life is that our essential nature does not share the limits or the destiny of the body and mind” (Section: Spira, n.d.).

To Spira, a non-dual understanding addresses two essential questions: one, “How may we be free of suffering and find the lasting peace and happiness for which all people long above all else?”, and two, “What is the nature of reality?” While the first is most meaningful to individuals and to the global community, only the second is relevant for this Landscape.

Spira begins his non-dual teaching with an investigation into the essential nature of our self, and it is this “clear knowledge of oneself,” he says, that is also the basis of the second aspect of the non-dual understanding, “namely, the recognition that reality is an infinite, indivisible whole, made of pure consciousness, from which all separate objects and selves borrow their apparently independent existence.”

Everything we know or experience, he states, “is mediated through the mind, and therefore, the mind's knowledge of anything can only ever be as good as its knowledge of itself. In order to know what anything truly is—that is, what reality truly is—the mind must first know its own essential nature. Therefore, the investigation into the nature of the mind must be the highest endeavor upon which any mind can embark, and the knowledge of its essence or nature the highest knowledge.”

Spira suggests that approaching non-duality as a means of finding an answer to the ultimate question about the nature of reality “is found at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions.” For instance, “In Christianity, it is said, ‘I and my Father are one’. That is, the essence of our self and the ultimate reality of the universe are the same.” Similarly, “in the Sufi tradition, ‘Whosoever knows their self knows their Lord’. That is, whoever knows the essential nature of their self knows the ultimate reality of the universe.” And “in Buddhism, ‘Samsara and Nirvana are one’, meaning the nature of the world and the essence of the mind are identical” (Spira, n.d.).