The True Goal of Life | Rupert Spira

I have a question about the purpose of life. Can you say something about this? Is there a real purpose of life? The purpose of life is to find happiness. Is that the only purpose? Yes. Because, as I told you yesterday, I'm coming from a bit different background, from the Course of Miracles, in which there's a belief that we are, eventually we'll return to the mind of God, or return to God. And I hear you quite often speak about the infinity of God's mind. Is there a similarity in this? God is just a religious name for happiness. Happiness is the knowing of our own being as it is. That's what happiness is, the knowing of being. The common name for the knowing of being is I. We call ourselves I, I am, and the religious name for the same experience is God. When we overlook the knowing of our own being, or we mix our own being up with a cluster of thoughts and feelings, we obscure the true nature of I, and therefore we obscure happiness. That is why the separate self is always unhappy, always seeking happiness. Because the separate self is a limitation on our essential nature of pure being. It's the I am the body as opposed to I am. So that is why the path of knowledge and the path of devotion are the same path. The one who seeks God, the one who seeks happiness, the one who practices self-inquiry, the one who prays, they're all seeking the same thing. This might shock you, but while we're in Amsterdam it probably won't. I referred on the first evening, I think, on the second day, on the first evening, to a walk that Bernardo had taken me on in the north of my hotel. We started at the King's Square, we went past all the coffee shops, and then we went to the King's Square where there was a bungee capsule. Two or three people could get into this capsule which was projected, I don't know, 30 metres up into the air, and then it just plunged. Not only was it plunging downwards, it was also swivelling backwards and forwards like this. And just before it hits the ground, I don't know, five metres before it landed, it's caught on the rubber and it goes again. People were willingly putting themselves through this experience. Seeking for love. What were they doing? What were they really doing and why? They were invoking in themselves the fear of death. It was a self-generated brush with death. You're up 30 metres and you're plunging towards the earth. The message you're giving the body is you're about to die. And all the resistance of the body comes up, and yet you know it's safe. So you're faking the fear of death in very safe circumstances. Why? Why would you do that? What happens in this intense fear? There is a kind of surrender. People are inducing a heightened state of fear in order to experience the subsequent release from it. In that release, there is an ahhh. In that moment, the finite mind plunges into its source. The finite mind is the fear of death. The finite mind has been wound up into this incredibly intense state of fear and then it's released. And in that release, the mind plunges into its source and tastes its true nature. And then we walked from there across the road. There's a church. I think it's the church of St. Nicholas. And we went and sat in there for 5 or 10 minutes and they were just starting a mass and people were coming in and praying. And what were they doing? And why? They're doing the same thing. They're going towards the same experience. They want to lose themselves in God. They want to lose their sense of separation. They're wanting to precipitate exactly the same experience that the people on the bungee jump were trying to precipitate. And then we walked on round and we walked back down through the red light district through one of the streets and all the windows on the side. Some of the curtains are drawn and some of them are open with almost naked women advertising and opening the door. Why are people going there? What are people looking for in that experience? In this merging? I often wonder. You know, I presume all of us know that from our own experience of this merging and particularly in the experience of orgasm there is a kind of loss of identity. There is a dissolution of the sense of separateness. That's all people are going there for. Do you honestly think it's for a few pleasant sensations? No, it's not. It's because in that moment of merging in that moment of, in this case, it's not heightened fear it's heightened sensation in that moment the separate self is expanded beyond its limits. There is this collapse of separation this merging, this apparent merging and in that moment exactly the same experience takes place the finite mind plunges into its source. In all these three cases the bungee jump, the church the red light district the same experience in fact it's the only experience the separate self ever seeks is the loss of its separate identity. It's not possible for the separate self to seek anything else. Every desire the separate self has is only the desire to cease being separate. And people find that experience in different ways. The most direct way that I know is what we speak of here is what from Manu Maharshi called Atma Vichara or self-abidance because there's no distance between being aware and being aware it is the shortest route it doesn't go via the object or via a sensation and in fact this fear of death that people try to induce in the bungee jump is actually what occurred to Ramana Maharshi spontaneously. His awakening was precipitated by exactly the same experience although he didn't have to go bungee jumping to have the experience he just felt spontaneously that he was going to die and his body even took up the position and went through some of the symptoms of physical death and then in that moment there was this, in his case, this spontaneous inquiry into his true nature but it was precipitated by the fear of death. But you're talking now about all kinds of ways to reach that goal but is the real goal eventually is achieving true nature? That's it? Yes, the real goal is the unveiling of awareness from all its self-imposed limitations. Yes, it is the return to its natural condition. It's like a rubber band attention attendere Every time that awareness assumes the form of the finite mind it limits itself, it freely limits itself and it's a sacrifice it has to limit itself in order to appear as the world but there's a payoff it loses its freedom in doing so it loses its innate peace and happiness because it has limited itself so in order to appear as manifestation it has to sacrifice itself it turns away from itself it seems to overlook the knowing of its own being and with the overlooking of its own being the peace and happiness that is innate in itself or rather that is itself gets veiled and that is why that this the separate self, that is awareness that has been limited that is why the separate self there is always a wound in the heart of the separate self that's why the separate self longs for happiness because the separate self is only infinite consciousness to which a limit has been imposed that's why all selves know the experience of happiness it is a memory, we all how would it be possible to seek happiness if we didn't know what it tasted like so at the heart of all separate selves there is this memory of peace, of love, of happiness which we often associate with an experience in childhood if we had happy childhoods but it's not really a memory of something in the past it's a memory of something that is present now that is covered over by superimposed beliefs and feelings everything the separate self does is done only to divest itself of these limitations so it is not necessary to finish the finite self first to achieve that? what do you mean by finish the finite self? so then it should be possible to achieve this goal here within the finite self? yes, it's available to everybody because everybody knows themselves as I the essential nature of that I is infinite awareness and it has become veiled by beliefs and feelings and instead of being experienced as the infinite I of awareness it is felt and experienced as the finite I of the separate self but in both cases it's the same I there is infinite consciousness and there is infinite consciousness with a veil of thoughts and feelings superimposed onto it that make it seem finite with this veiling of our true nature the peace and happiness of our true nature is lost and that is why this veiled awareness which is the separate self longs to return so I thought we should get rid of the veil completely in order to return to the infinite mind yes, that's it we don't even need to get rid of the veil we just need to turn our attention towards the essential nature of what we call I most of us when we say I we think of a collection of thoughts feelings, sensations and perceptions but if we really turn our attention towards I we just find the experience of being aware we don't find a collection of thoughts and feelings I is just the experience of being aware and that experience is available to everybody irrespective of their intelligence their health, their wealth, their creed their nationality, their age it's available equally to everybody because everybody knows the experience I the experience I or I am is refers to our essential being that is our being that is not mixed with anything other than itself such as a thought or a feeling it is totally available 24-7 to everyone and that is the purpose of life for the separate self the only purpose in life everything the separate self does it does only to divest it to divest itself of its limits and why do I say with such confidence that happiness is the purpose of life it's because you know that from your own experience because when you are happy there is no desire to achieve anything else when you are happy you are fulfilled there is no more reason for doing anything because you've already got what you would seek through doing anything you've already arrived at the happiness that you seek although I make a difference between types of happiness there are no types of happiness there is just happiness when you were a 5 year old boy it made you happy it made you happy if you were given a toy car for your birthday when you were a 10 year old boy it made you happy if you got into the local football team when you were a 15 year old boy it made you happy if the girl next door smiled at you when you were a 20 year old boy young man you were happy if you got into your university when you were 25 etc. but all things outside of yourself no no no at each experience of happiness it was always the same experience yes it may have been precipitated by an external experience the car the football club the girl next door the university your first job etc. but the actual experience of happiness itself is always the same there isn't a chocolate happiness and a car happiness and a girlfriend happiness and a university there is just happiness have you noticed that it is always the same experience and therefore it cannot be conditioned by any of the objects that seem to precipitate it when that becomes clear to us and this is really a real revelation in one's life when it becomes clear to us that happiness is always the same experience and doesn't belong to the object in other words when it becomes obvious to us that happiness cannot be delivered by an object a circumstance, a situation, a relationship that is a profound realisation the happiness always comes from the inside it is never given by the outside therefore happiness must be in potential within us all the time ready to be triggered by the external circumstance but never delivered by the external circumstance it is just the external circumstance that seems to trigger it but whenever it is experienced it always arises inside us and it is always the same experience so there is no difference whether it is triggered from the outside or from the inside no, the trigger is not important because the happiness itself is independent of the trigger and what we do here what is different from what we do here from the people that are bungee jumping or going to the church or going to the red light district is that here we go directly to the source of happiness that is why it is called the direct path we just go straight to the place where happiness resides which is the knowing of our own being we don't go via an object or a state not even a subtle meditative state it is called the direct path it is the shortest path because there is actually no path at all it is not even the direct path that is why it is called the pathless path because there is no difference from the I that wants to know and the I that is known there is no distance between being aware and being aware it is quite surprising for me but I have to get used to it happiness don't think of happiness as a state of the mind happiness is just a common name for the knowing of our own being it is knowing of itself