Presence, Volume I Quotes

“Only that which is always with you can be said to be your self and if you look closely and simply at experience, only awareness is always ‘with you’.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“This perpetual longing for happiness—which can, by definition, never be fulfilled because that very search itself denies the happiness that is present in our own being now—condemns us to an endless search in the future and thus perpetuates unhappiness. It is for this reason that the poet said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“In other words, in reality, there are not two things—one, the screen and two, the document or image. There is just the screen. Two things (or a multiplicity and diversity of things) only come into apparent existence when their true reality—the screen—is overlooked. Experience is like that. All we know is experience but there is no independent ‘we’ or ‘I’ that knows experience. There is just experience or experiencing. And experiencing is not inherently divided into one part that experiences and another part that is experienced.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“In reality, which means in our actual experience, all experience is one seamless substance. The duality between the inside self and the outside object, world or other is never actually experienced. It is always imagined.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“And this ‘knowing’ is our self, aware presence. In other words, all that is ever experienced is our self knowing itself, awareness aware of awareness.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“See clearly that we have no knowledge of our self ever having been born, changing, evolving, growing up or growing old and that we can never have the experience of death.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“Nor have we, aware presence, ever become sad, angry, anxious, depressed, in need, agitated, jealous, etc. At the same time, we are intimately one with all such feelings when they are present. Although we are the substance of all such feelings, just as the screen is the substance of all images, we are inherently free of them. Unhappiness is made out of our self, but our self is never unhappy.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“And what is it that experiences our self? Only our self! There is only one substance in experience and it is pervaded by and made out of knowing or awareness. In the classical language of non-duality this is sometimes expressed in phrases such as, ‘Awareness only knows itself’, but this may seem abstract. It is simply an attempt to describe the seamless intimacy of experience in which there is no room for a self, object, other or world; no room to step back from experience and find it happy or unhappy, right or wrong, good or bad; no time in which to step out of the now into an imaginary past or into a future in which we may become, evolve or progress; no possibility of stepping out of the intimacy of love into relationship with an other; no possibility of knowing anything other than knowing, of being anything other than being, of loving anything other than loving; no possibility of a thought arising which would attempt to frame the intimacy of experience in the abstract forms of the mind; no possibility for our self to become a self, a fragment, a part; no possibility for the world to jump outside and for the self to contract inside; no possibility for time, distance or space to appear.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“The belief that we were born, that we change, evolve, grow old and die is simply a belief to which the vast majority of humanity subscribes without realizing that they are doing so. It is the religion of our culture.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“the way a person sees or understands him or herself deeply conditions the ways he or she sees and understands objects, others and the world.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“It is prior to all thinking, feeling or perceiving.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“If we look closely at the actual experience of the body rather than the idea we may have of it, we find that our only experience of it is the current sensation or perception. All sensations and perceptions appear and disappear, but our self, aware Presence, remains throughout. This ever-present ‘I’ cannot therefore be made out of an intermittent object such as a sensation or perception.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“In this exploration the deeper layers, such as feelings of fear, guilt, shame, inadequacy, unlovableness, etc. are allowed to surface without resistance or agenda and slowly reveal the sense of separation that lies at their heart.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“When the fan, the hand or indeed anything else are experienced, their apparent existence is not separate from awareness. All experiences are equally close, equally ‘one with’, awareness. When the apparent object disappears, awareness remains as it is.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“The apparent separation of experience into two essential parts is similar to imagining that a screen is divided in two when two images appear on it side by side. If thinking imagines that the screen is only contained in only one of the images, then thinking will also have to imagine a substance that is ‘not the screen’, out of which the second image is made.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“In other words, in reality, there are not two things—one, the screen and two, the document or image. There is just the screen.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“In fact, we don’t know objects; we just know ‘knowing’. And who is it that knows ‘knowing’? ‘Knowing’ is not known by something or someone outside or other than itself. ‘Knowing’ is known by ‘knowing’. In other words, all that is experienced in the experience of an object, other or world is ‘knowing’.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“We have forgotten that we are the one that is aware of thoughts, feelings, images and sensations and instead believe and, more importantly, feel that we actually are those thoughts, feelings, images and sensations.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“Every limit that the mind suggests turns out to be some kind of an object. The mind claims that our self is a body and, having made this initial presumption, subsequently claims that it has an age, a history, a future, a nationality, a gender, a colour, a weight, a shape and a size. However, all these characteristics are qualities of the body, not of our self. They are known by our self but do not belong to our self. They do not limit our self any more than an image limits the screen on which it appears.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“This forgetting or overlooking of our most intimate being, although apparently such a small thing, in fact initiates almost all of our thoughts, feelings, activities and relationships and turns out to be the source of all unhappiness.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“The history of humanity, on both the individual and the collective scales, is the drama of this loss of our true identity and the subsequent search to regain it.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“It is not about life everlasting. It is about eternal life.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“Likewise we cannot ‘see’ our own being and yet all we ever know, in all experience, is the light of our self. It knows only itself. All experience first and foremost announces the presence of awareness, the light of our own b”
― Rupert Spira, Presence: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“we now confuse these new states of mind for enlightenment.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“We are given a glimpse of that same happiness, which we now call awakening or enlightenment,”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“acquired states of mind bring the spiritual search to a temporary end.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“enlightenment is simply a rebranding of the conventional search for happiness.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“most activities are undertaken with a view to obtaining happiness.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“dissolving quality rather than their ability to formulate something”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness

“Our true self is known in a more intimate and direct way, simply through being. In fact, we discover that the only way to know our self is to be our self and not to mistake our self for any kind of an object.”
― Rupert Spira, Presence, Volume I: The Art of Peace and Happiness