Rupert Spira

Summary

Podcast Summary: You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes — Rupert Spira (June 3, 2026)

Overview

In this highly anticipated episode, host Pete Holmes sits down with Rupert Spira—nondual teacher, author, and major personal influence on Pete—for a deeply engaging exploration of nonduality, consciousness, and the shared human journey to peace and happiness. The conversation is heartfelt, candid, and accessible, serving as both an introduction to Rupert’s teachings and a reflection on the intersection of comedy, spirituality, and everyday life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Parallel Between Comedy and Spiritual Teaching

Timestamps: 06:23–18:55

• Both Pete and Rupert explore how their work, though vastly different in content (comedy vs. nonduality), shares the intention to bring people relief, joy, and deeper understanding.
• Preparation styles differ: Pete meticulously prepares for shows, while Rupert does none ("I do no preparation at all." — Rupert, 07:26).
• Both seek audience connection. Pete looks for laughter as a sign of resonance; Rupert seeks the subtle shift in someone’s face: a frown softening into a smile.
• Notable Quote
  • "The same joy that the person you are speaking to feels when they come to understanding, I feel the same joy when we meet in understanding." (Rupert, 13:39)

2. Authenticity, Attunement, and Vulnerability on Stage

Timestamps: 18:55–21:07

• Pete shares about the vulnerability required to truly connect in performance.
• Discusses "doing the album" vs. taking risk: sometimes the atmosphere is hostile, and authenticity is harder to reach.
• Rupert explains the art of responding not just to the question, but the "question behind the question".
• Notable Quote
  • "That’s more to do with empathy, intuition. That’s why two people can ask the same question and get two completely different responses from me. Because it’s really… you’re responding to the question behind the question." (Rupert, 20:24)

3. Nonduality: Direct Experience and the Nature of Self

Timestamps: 22:12–41:00

• Pete expresses the desire to keep the conversation rooted in direct, present experience.
• Rupert critiques the misleading idea of "enlightenment" as a future state, saying instead it’s about recognizing what we are right now.
• Explores the concept that awareness is the constant, unbroken thread of experience, and all phenomena appear within awareness, not the reverse.
• Analogy of the "string and the pearls": thoughts, feelings, sensations are pearls on the unchanging string of awareness.
• The illusion of consciousness as "inside the head" is deeply ingrained but, according to Rupert, not our true experience.
• Notable Quote
  • "Awareness is the constant thread that runs unbroken throughout our life." (Rupert, 29:01)
  • "What is referred to in the great traditions as enlightenment is literally available to everybody without exception now. Nobody has privileged access to it." (Rupert, 25:09)

4. Shared Being, Love, and Religious Language

Timestamps: 45:02–66:53

• Pete and Rupert unpack parallels between nonduality and religious teachings, focusing on the biblical "I am" and the concept of God as universal being.
• The experience of "I am" in each person is fundamentally the same; separation is illusory, like the same space in different rooms.
• Love is reframed not as an emotion, but as recognition of our shared being.
• Notable Quote
  • "Love is the felt sense that at the deepest level, beneath all our thoughts and feelings... we are the same being." (Rupert, 63:39)
  • "There is only God’s being… the word God refers to that." (Rupert, 59:41)

5. Practical Application: Suffering, Sleep, and Everyday Obstacles

Timestamps: 49:14–80:13

• Using the analogy of sleep: in deep sleep, all identity and suffering are absent, and this is everyone's experience, regardless of personal history.
• Everyday irritations (e.g., losing earplugs) are explored as moments where we lose sight of our being, but the essential awareness is never lost.
• The process of stabilizing in this recognition takes time, and doesn’t mean never feeling upset; it means these experiences lose their power over us.
• "You are always your being. Always, always, always. Sometimes it’s true. Our felt connection with our being gets eclipsed by the intensity of our experience." (Rupert, 77:46)

6. The Spiritual Teacher as 'Final Disappointment'

Timestamps: 82:35–86:28

• Discussion of projection onto spiritual teachers and the dangers of idealizing perfection.
• "The spiritual teacher should be the last disappointment," meaning no one can deliver us peace from the outside; ultimately, it is found within.
• "Sooner or later the teacher has to become the final disappointment. Because nobody and nothing can give us this deep sense of fulfillment. It has to be found inside yourself." (Rupert, 85:14)

7. Death, Eternal Being, and the Wave Analogy

Timestamps: 97:53–104:59

• Rupert answers Pete’s question about death in two parts:
  1. The essential being is eternal and unchanged when the body dies (like the space in a room when the walls come down).
  2. The body and mind's energies disperse and contribute to the "ocean" of awareness.
• There is nothing to fear in death because our true nature is eternal, but how we live, think, and act matters and carries forward in some way.
• Notable Quote
  • "What happens to your essential being when you die?… Nothing will happen to our being when we die. Being is eternal." (Rupert, 99:14)
  • "No, we shouldn’t be afraid of death. The recognition of the nature of our being puts an end to the fear of death." (Rupert, 102:56)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Time | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|---------------|-------------| | 07:26 | Rupert Spira | "I have to confess, I do no preparation at all." | | 13:39 | Rupert Spira | "The same joy that the person you are speaking to feels when they come to understanding, I feel the same joy when we meet in understanding." | | 25:09 | Rupert Spira | "What is referred to in the great traditions as enlightenment… is literally available to everybody without exception now." | | 29:01 | Rupert Spira | "Awareness is the constant thread that runs unbroken throughout our life." | | 49:53 | Rupert Spira | "In sleep, we all know from the experience of sleep that our perceptions leave us, the sensations of the body leave us… We just remain as just pure being." | | 59:41 | Rupert Spira | "There is only God’s Being… the word God refers to that." | | 63:39 | Rupert Spira | "Love is the felt sense that at the deepest level, beneath all our thoughts and feelings… we are the same being." | | 77:46 | Rupert Spira | "You are always your being. Always, always, always. 24/7." | | 85:14 | Rupert Spira | "Sooner or later the teacher has to become the final disappointment. Because nobody and nothing can give us this deep sense of fulfillment. It has to be found inside yourself." | | 99:14 | Rupert Spira | "Nothing will happen to our being when we die. Being is eternal." | | 102:56 | Rupert Spira | "No, we shouldn’t be afraid of death. Because really, the recognition of the nature of our being puts an end to the fear of death." |

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Timestamps for Major Topics

• [06:23] Comedy, Teaching, and Performance
• [13:39] The Joy of Connection & Group Understanding
• [22:12] Identity, Awareness, and Nonduality
• [29:01] The "String and Pearls" Analogy
• [49:53] Sleep as Innocence, Relief, and Universal Experience
• [59:41] Nondual Christianity and "I Am"
• [63:39] Love as Shared Being
• [77:46] Everyday Upset, Habits, and the Ever-Present Being
• [85:14] Projection onto Teachers and Final Disappointment
• [99:14] Death, Eternity, and the Wave on the Ocean

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Tone and Language

The tone of the episode is warm, playful, contemplative, and deeply compassionate. Pete is enthusiastic, occasionally irreverent, and always searching, while Rupert is gentle, clear, precise, and open—never dogmatic, always inviting.

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For Listeners New and Returning

This episode offers a powerful, jargon-free introduction to nonduality and Rupert Spira’s approach—grounded not in esoteric dogma, but in the simple, direct experience of being. It’s equally valuable for those new to these ideas and longtime seekers hungry for a fresh, sincere presentation.

Whether you’re a "weirdo" drawn to Pete’s comedic heart or a Rupert fan, this conversation makes timeless spiritual truths accessible, practical, and alive—inviting you, again and again, to notice the peace and happiness at the core of your experience, right now.

Transcript

[Pete Holmes]

Lemonade. You made it weird with Pete Holmes. What's happening, weirdos? This. If you know me at all, if you know this show is a huge day for me. This is the Rupert Spira podcast. He's the guest on this podcast. He's sort of the unspoken guest on so many episodes of this podcast. Because I am constantly quoting Rupert. If you've heard me say Rupert, I mean Rupert Spira. Today's guest. He is a non dual teacher. He is my friend. I absolutely love him. The book that I always encourage people to try read first is called being aware of being aware. But he has many the nature of consciousness. He has a book called you are the happiness you seek. And he has a daily free meditation app called luminous that I also highly recommend. I've been doing the Luminous meditations. They're only like 10, 15 minutes. I'm also a member on a member. I subscribe. I don't know how to say this. Rupertspira.com I get. I download full retreats, full meditations, full dialogues. That's what I listen to in the car. That's what, that's what I do when I meditate. I listen to the meditations on Rupertspire.com this man has changed my life beyond words. He's unbelievable. And I'm so glad that he's finally on the show. Not too much for me to say up top. Other than that, if you go to peteholmes.com you'll see my tour dates. Silly, silly fun boy. My newest Special is on YouTube as well as I'm not for everyone. My previously on Netflix special is also now on YouTube. So there are two full, full hours of standup comedy available from me on YouTube. I said YouTube too many times. I'm also on the road. I'm about to be. Let me see, where's the tour? Tour. I'm going to click my own link.

[Rupert Spira]

Tour.

[Pete Holmes]

I know I'm going to be in Denver. I know I'm going to be in Aspen, Colorado. I'm going to be in San Diego. I'm going to be in Los Angeles for my monthly show at the Largo. The next One is on June 17th. I'm going to be in North Carolina, South Carolina, Sacramento. I'm going to be in Portland, Maine. Verona, New York. I'm going to be Vancouver. This is often when I find out I didn't know I was going to be in Verona, New York. Verona. I'm going to be at the Romeo and Juliet theater in Verona that I don't know where it is. Oh, no, it's at the casino. Anyway. San luis Obispo, Madison, Wisconsin, Seattle, Portland. Those are all on peteholmes.com and as I always mentioned, my book spells to cast on your parents, which I am very, very proud of, is available for pre order. It'll ship in September, but you can order it now and that helps us out. It's just a book that helps you and your or your loved one grandchild, doesn't matter. Can cast spells on you that makes you do silly, ridiculous things within reason that you'll both enjoy. Spells to cast on your parents. All right, everybody, again, I'm just over the moon that Rupert is here. We did a Talk Together on YouTube that was sort of diving into the deep end. I think we did a good job with this chat, covering the basics and being a good intro to Rupert's approach to non duality. And I hope you like it because it's just given me so much peace and happiness.

[Rupert Spira]

So.

[Pete Holmes]

So I'm glad you're here. Enjoy. Get into it. You made it weird is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you out when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance, Progressive Casualty Insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

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[Rupert Spira]

Pete.

[Pete Holmes]

Hello, Rupert.

[Rupert Spira]

Hi.

[Pete Holmes]

How's it going?

[Rupert Spira]

Good to see you. Fine, thank you. How are you?

[Pete Holmes]

It's good to see you too. I'm sorry that link wasn't working.

[Rupert Spira]

No, it's fine. No problem.

[Pete Holmes]

I feel, yeah, all these meetings start with some technical difficulty. That's just normal.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah. Yeah. Good. There you are. Lovely. Good. How are you?

[Pete Holmes]

I'm doing great. What? What is it afternoon there?

[Rupert Spira]

It's 4pm okay.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow. All right.

[Rupert Spira]

Well, early in the morning for you?

[Pete Holmes]

It's eight. I You're going to hear, you might hear my wife and daughter having breakfast in the other room, but it's very sweet. I secretly, I secretly hope that she comes in and interrupts us because it'll brighten both.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah, of course. I'd love to meet both of them.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, it's so sweet. Well, Leela has a hard time when I'm on a zoom, and she has a rascal quality, so she likes to come in and interrupt.

[Rupert Spira]

Okay. I wonder where she gets that from.

[Pete Holmes]

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. Well, I'm so happy to see you. Thank you for taking the time to do this.

[Rupert Spira]

No, it's a pleasure. It's lovely to, Lovely to see you.

[Pete Holmes]

It's, it's lovely to see you too. And I, I've been looking forward to this, and I don't like, like when we met in real life. I'd like it to just be a natural conversation, and there's just. Good.

[Rupert Spira]

Perfect. Likewise. I haven't, I'm just happy to, you know, obviously I haven't done anything prep. There's nothing to, to prep. I just. Is this just happy to follow the conversation wherever it goes? Peter, as always.

[Pete Holmes]

Me too. Me too. I'm glad. That's actually one of the first things we bonded over was it's, it's weird to call you a performer, but I have a very broad interpretation of show business, meaning any, Anything that you're asking people to look at a teacher in a classroom is in show business. So I kind of, if you'll go with that.

[Rupert Spira]

I feel like just, I don't exactly see myself as being in, in showbiz, but, but by that definition, I, I, I guess I qualify.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, the only reason I'm inviting you into my broad definition is because I was very intrigued what you do to prepare. And, and that was one of the disparities I noticed between us is I'm, I'm rather almost OCD about, like, what I need to do, especially if I'm going to talk about non. Duality, like the mood I want to be in. I want to do a little breath work. I want to make sure I've had my coffee or all these things. And, and do you remember having this conversation? It was two years ago.

[Rupert Spira]

You were like, I do.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, go on.

[Rupert Spira]

I have to confess, I, I do no preparation at all.

[Pete Holmes]

I sort of love that.

[Rupert Spira]

But, but, but then, you know, Pete, in a way, my, my job's easier than yours because if I can't think of what to say or if nothing comes to mind, I. I just go silent, sit in silence for five minutes until the next thing comes into my mind. Yeah. And. And that's. That. That's considered normal in the kind of field because I'm speaking about sort of contemplative, meditative subject matter. So. But, but for you, I don't think that would go very well if you just went silent on stage for 10 minutes.

[Pete Holmes]

No, it's a bizarre.

[Rupert Spira]

That.

[Pete Holmes]

It's a bizarre agreement that we go into that. I'm like, I'm. We don't talk about it. It's like you don't want to talk about. You don't want to look it right in the eye, but you go like, I'm here to make you laugh. You know what I mean? And, and they know that. So people know when you're succeeding or failing. Whereas, yes, although I have noticed, you know, we, we share a desire. Well, you tell me if we share a desire. It's like I see a longing that you have, a compassionate longing for people to understand. And again, I'm just looking for common ground here. I don't want to manufacture it. But you and I are both speaking to people and we want to meet. Does that make sense?

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, Pete. We both have something in our hearts that we're passionate about and that we want to communicate to other people. And for you, that the sign that you've communicated or that you've been understood is laughter. You're not happy if your audience just smiles gently at you. You need more than that. You need. Because laughter. In your world, laughter is the sign that you've touched someone's heart. You've opened them up. You've melted some feeling of contraction or sorrow or separation. For me, the feedback. Feedback is different. I. It's, in a way, it's. It's subtler. It's a very. I can see it on people's face. But I'm, I'm. I'm looking for that same moment of recognition when somebody goes, ah, yes, usually it comes with a. You know, a frown is. Relaxes into a. Into a smile. It's not quite as obvious as. As the laughter that, that you get.

[Pete Holmes]

But.

[Rupert Spira]

But certainly I'm. I'm looking for that. I want to meet people. I want. I want us to meet in understanding. And if I, If I don't get that, then I feel that it. It's my responsibility, in a way. It's my. If I'm putting myself in the position that I am Speaking about these matters, if somebody doesn't understand, it's because I failed, not because they failed. So I feel I'm not doing my job well. I haven't found a pathway, I haven't found a way of meeting them that I've tried two or three ways. They haven't understood that experiment, that line of reasoning. So then it's not on account of their misunderstanding or their lack of understanding. It's because I haven't found a way to meet them specifically. So that's what I'm always trying to meet in understanding. And in that sense, I think we are, I think what we do is very, very similar in some ways.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I, I like that. I, I, I know what you mean. I think people might think that that's absurd because I might be talking about something wicked or, or taboo or whatever it is. But the result is this merging. Everybody feels together, everybody feels like one undulating thing that we call a show. And we're all not there and very there at the same time.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes. And when somebody leaves your show, you want them to leave relieved of a burden.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Rupert Spira]

So it's not just, it's not just the joke in the moment and then it's gone. You want your work to have a long lasting effect on people. And in that sense it's not just entertainment. It's entertainment on the surface. But I think I've seen you in action. I think it's something much deeper than you do. And you want people to walk away from a show like, relieved of the burden of separation, the heavyweight of separation that most of us carry around with us. And really, it doesn't matter how you do that. You can do it through humor, you can do it through poetry, you can do it through the way I do it. There are different ways you can do that. You give people a taste of what they are deeper than the self that they normally consider themselves to be.

[Pete Holmes]

It might be a strange question, but what I do feels really good. And I've never heard anyone ask you if it feels good when you see that click, you've done it with me. I've been to three retreats and the feeling of standing up and having a direct question addressed. And there is like a, a softening or a relenting of a burden. People's shoulders go down, they smile, they laugh, you know, how does that, I mean, is it gauche to like say, does that feel good for you?

[Rupert Spira]

No, it does feel good. Or let me ask them, respond to the opposite question. Does it feel bad if I, if I'm not able to meet someone in understanding. Yes. If. If I've had, as you know, my dialogues, they last a couple of hours. Let's say over the period of two hours, I've had 10, 12, 15 brief conversations with people. After the meeting, I'll go away. The one conversation that I will remember will be the one. The person that I didn't manage to meet or find. The other ones, they are transparent. They vanish. I forget the content. But later on that evening, I'll think it'll trouble me. I didn't find a way to meet them. So, yes, it does the same joy that. That the person you are speaking to feels when they come to understanding. I feel the same joy when we meet in understanding. I feel that same moment of joy. Absolutely. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I think the group does too.

[Rupert Spira]

It's so. I think the group. I think the group does exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

We love it. I think it's. I'm one of these people that I sometimes forget what I like. But when I'm on a retreat, one of your retreats, I'm like, this is exactly what I want and why. It really is kind of. Tatiana, my friend, who, you know, we go like, this is our Netflix. We love when somebody's kind of in the weeds. We're kind of on the edge of our seat going like, is it gonna happen? And when it happens, it's happening for us. Like, it's. It's actually really fun to put yourself in their shoes and go, like, I know what they're talking about. Not going like, I know what Rupert's gonna say, but going like, no, I know that feeling that shows up when I don't have enough rest or whatever it might be. Yes, please.

[Rupert Spira]

Absolutely. It's exactly the same for me. Because when you listen to someone struggling with something or asking a question, or you in that moment, you. You become them. You are them. You feel what they feel as if it were your own emotion. You put yourself in the place of the others and you go through. And this happens for me as well. You go through the ordeal or the struggle or the investigation that. That they' through, and when they come to understanding you, you feel that as your own. We all participate in it. And I feel that very much. And I'd be interested to know what you feel as a. As a comedian. But I don't feel that I'm on stage telling people something or disseminating spiritual knowledge. I'm participating in the exploration with the person as I do. We're going. I'm not just telling them what to. We're going on a walk together through this thicket and it's dense and it's dark and it's difficult and there are obstructions and we're going on that. I'm with them, I'm doing it with them. And then you come out into the clearing, the open space, and it's a joy for all of us. I think we all do that. We all participate in the exploration. And you've probably heard me say it, Pete, and I mean this really sincerely. The community create the teaching that the so called teacher. It's not like being a history professor where you have a syllabus and you come in and you disseminate it to your students. It's. The teaching is created in the moment out of the interaction, myself and the conversations. And that's what keeps teaching something alive and free of dogma and free of particular formulations so that it can. It can use different language, it can use dualistic language if necessary. It can. It keeps it free and fresh and free of dog man.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. I was going to say so many things came up for me from doing comedy, you have to remember why you thought it was funny. You have to get in touch, not with the concept, but you have to get in, in that experience and communicate that feeling. Does that make sense? You can't just like, say the words, you have to go like, no, they haven't heard it. Invite them into the experience you had and recreate it. You can't just dictate it, you have to communicate it. Right.

[Rupert Spira]

It's something. Something I've always noticed about you is that. Is that when you're telling a story, you're telling a joke, and at the end of the joke you just burst out laughing. You find it so funny. And I love that, Pete, because it shows that you're actually. But it's what I was saying afterwards, you're participating, you're experiencing it as if for the first time and you genuinely find it funny. So it's not. You're not just performing from a distance, you're participating and going through the experience. That, to me is a sign of real authenticity. I love that. The way you find your own jokes hysterical.

[Pete Holmes]

It's an effort. Like I'm trying to get in that place where I find them funny and if I can't, that's a failure for me. There's this Bono, you know, Bono. Oh, sorry, yes.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah, no, no, go on.

[Pete Holmes]

I was just gonna say Bono from YouTube says if I'm not feeling it, I literally can't hit the note. Like he can't sing the note if he's not feeling.

[Rupert Spira]

Exactly, exactly. That's it. If you're not finding it genuinely humorous, if you're not taking the journey, the story that you're winding up leading us towards, the punchline. If you're not taking that story, and if you don't feel the same release of tension when you come to the end of the end of the joke or the story, then it's like you're standing apart and telling us something.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Rupert Spira]

And rather than actually communicating it viscerally to us and such a difference.

[Pete Holmes]

Completely agree. And what a beautiful way to start my morning. I love this kind of stuff. It's like it is emerging and it's very vulnerable. I think that's why some of my comedian friends, Mike Birbiglia, when we do a bad show, or if the crowd is hostile or drunk or rowdy, you get off stage and you're like, how was it? And you go, I did the album. That's a way of saying, like, I just said the act, it was too risky. I couldn't extend a bridge because they were. They were wrong. It was wrong. It wasn't safe.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

So you just said there are times when you have to do that. But in the. I did a show last night where you're just like, this is such a, in quote, spiritual thing to say. But it's the moments in between the jokes, it's these looks, it's this hyper attunement to every sound they're making. And I think, don't let me lead you there. But I feel like you're doing the same thing. You're very attuned to the people you're talking to, their body language, their voice. How are they saying it? What are they really saying? Because sometimes a crowd will say, we don't like that. And I'm like, actually, I know what you actually like. And I'm gonna give you that. Even though you just told me you didn't want that.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah. Yes. You know, you've heard me do this. When I. When I listen to someone asking a question, I'm listening to the question, of course. But I'm really listening to the question behind the question. And that is. That's more to do with empathy, intuition. And that's why two people can ask the same question or make the same observation and get two completely different responses.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Rupert Spira]

From me. Because it's really. You're responding to the. The question behind the question.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. It. Well, it keeps it.

[Rupert Spira]

That's the question you really want to answer.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, that's exactly right.

[Rupert Spira]

Sometimes the person is not even aware of it themselves, that they're trying to articulate it. They know there's a question there. They try to put words to it, and they just can't quite articulate it. And that, in a way, is the art of what I do, not just the skill of what I do, but the art of what I do is to really. To be sensitive, to intuit. What. What does this person. What do they. What do they really want to know? What. Where are they really struggling? What are they really trying to ask? Which may not be the question they actually ask.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, that's right. And I share your. I don't want to say obsession, because that sounds negative, but I share your interest sometimes. I have a bachelor. I'm thinking one now, and I'll go like, I know there was a combination of that safe. I know there was. And I just couldn't find it. And I'm sweating and I get off stage and I'm like, ah. And what is it? Who said, all I see are my mistakes? That's. You quote that often?

[Rupert Spira]

It was a Zen master at the end of his life when one of his. One of his students asked him, how are things for you now? Or something like that. And.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Rupert Spira]

What's it like for you looking back on your life now? And he said, all I see are my mistakes.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. Which makes me. Me too. Me too. It's very human, though, right? I mean, you don't expect a Zen master to say that.

[Rupert Spira]

It's very human. It's because the things. The things that weren't mistake, the things that went well, there's no need for the mind to register them, that they've. They've evaporated, they've become transparent. It's just those. Those times where you made a mistake, that they're the ones that stick it. It's so. I think it's so true, but also so human, so humble.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. This is a slight gear shift. I'm realizing, like, I love talking with you, and I discovered you through a podcast I was listening to. I was looking for someone else. It doesn't matter. I listened to you by accident. And I'm realizing that this is a comedy podcast. We do a lot of guests like you as well. But I know there are people listening that are gonna be dropping into something that I find really, really exciting. So I'm aware that there's this, like, opportunity that I could get that same reaction that I had in this Episode with you. So shifting a little bit, if you may. I really don't wanna. I love where we are, so I don't wanna take you through the album.

[Rupert Spira]

I'm happy wherever you want to go. I know you lead. Don't be apologetic.

[Pete Holmes]

As your friend, I'm like, I do feel bad going, like, okay, identity, let's talk about identity. But, like, I think there is something. The benefit of non. Duality. This isn't even something I was planning on saying is like, when you're talking about it, it's here now. It's the apparatus that we're saturated in right now. This being, this aware, spacious presence. So it's here and alive right now. So whenever I like to talk about it, I try to start there and go like, let's not get lost in concepts. I'm certainly not coaching you. I'm just saying to the people listening what we're talking about. What I'd like to talk about with you is your experience right now. When we talk about emptiness or awareness, sometimes people get like. They feel like they're at a museum and they don't understand the art. You know what I'm saying?

[Rupert Spira]

I totally agree with you, Pete. I think that the word enlightenment is one of the most misleading terms in the spiritual literature and has led to more misunderstanding probably than any other word because it by definition refers to some marvelous experience that's going to happen in the future as a result of what you either do or cease doing now. And this gives the exact opposite impression from what you have just said, which I wholeheartedly agree with. Namely, that what all the great religious and spiritual traditions speak about is

[Pete Holmes]

who.

[Rupert Spira]

Who we are now.

[Pete Holmes]

Who we are now.

[Rupert Spira]

Who we are now underneath all the. Behind the narratives, the memories, the, the. The. The. The. The thoughts, the feelings. Who, who, who. Who we are now. Not how we might become if we start doing this or stop doing that or change or discipline ourselves or practice meditation. It's who we are now underneath experience that we've accumulated. Yes, so. So, yes, absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

And that's really exciting, right? I mean, it's like we're, We're. We are pointing somebody to something that's present right now that you can, to use your word, you can taste and experience right now. And it's really exciting. I'm an excitable person.

[Rupert Spira]

Literally, what. What is referred to in the great traditions as enlightenment or awakening is literally available to everybody without exception now. Nobody has privileged access to it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, but the mind, if I'm correct, like the mind we let's we're quiet for a moment and it is this non conceptual meaning. It's not a concept, it's not an object. What we experience when we're still or when we're quiet. So the mind looks back on that experience and goes, well, that was nothing. Is that, is that, is that something?

[Rupert Spira]

Yes, yes. If you, if we trace our way back through the layers of experience, you start with, start with our outer experience of the world, our perception of the world. We obviously, when we look at the world, when we look at the landscape or the street, we obviously think, I'm not the street, I'm not the landscape because I'm that which perceives it. But we then tend to think, well, I'm not the street or I'm not the world, but I am the body and the mind. But if you look at say, the body to take your experience of the body, now it's a collection of sensations and perceptions. We experience the body in much the same way that we experience the world. We are that which experiences it, we are not that which is experienced. So if you go even close, you go inside, you encounter thoughts and feelings that obviously they're more subtle than the world. But just as we understand I'm not the world, I'm that which perceives the world. So likewise our thoughts and feelings, I'm obviously not essentially my thoughts and feelings. I'm that which knows them or that which is aware of them. So as we can travel back, so to speak, through the layers of our experience, we come to our essential being, which is, which is not a thing, not an object in this. It's not a physical object, it's not a thought, it's not an emotion, it's not a memory. So in that sense it's not a thing, it's not something. And as such one could say it's nothing. But I think we have to be really careful saying that it's nothing. Because nothing in common parents just means a blank, empty void. But our being is not a blank, empty void. It's luminous. It's luminous, it's aware, it's the fullness of being. It is actually what we refer to as happiness or peace. It is the experience. Whenever we experience happiness or peace, we are actually tasting our being. So yes, it's nothing in the sense that it's not a thing. But really it's the fullness of being or being aware. And the taste of that in our experience is, is happiness or peace.

[Pete Holmes]

And when we talk about thoughts and perceptions, these are things that come and Go. That was something that clicked for me. It's like what you essentially are is always with you, it's always been here. And thoughts, emotions, the sight. Like when it comes to the body, it's easier for me with my eyes closed. You see that your body is just like, you know, like a little firework of a feeling here and there. And these sensations that come and go and what you've pointed out to me is out of what did they emerge and into what did they recede? Like what do they rise out of and what do they set into? What is, as I've heard you use the analogy of what's the string in the necklace? The pearls are the thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions. But the constant is, is the string and that is knowing. Knowingness?

[Rupert Spira]

Yes. Awareness of being or being aware or awareness or pure knowing. Yes. It's the continuous thread that runs unbroken throughout our life. If you think about it, we all call ourselves I and we all feel that we've been the same I or the same self. I feel now that I'm the same self that I was at breakfast this morning. Yesterday, last week, last year, ten years ago, when I was a ten year old boy. When I was a two year old boy, I had this sense of being myself. Everyone has the sense of being yourself throughout life. And it's continuous. We all feel that we're the same self. So there's something that persists when we say I dreamt last night or I slept well last night again. There is this thread of iness or selfness that we all feel remains unbroken throughout life. Well, where does that come from? What is there in our experience that is unbroken or continuous? Well, no thought is continuous. No emotion, no feeling, however intimate and intense and the feeling may be. No feeling lasts forever. No sensation of the body, no perception of the world. In fact, no experience lasts forever. Most experiences are brief. That, that's the, those are the beads on the necklace. But there is. But, but we don't feel that our experience is a series of intermittent thoughts and perceptions. Yeah, we feel that our experience is one long smooth flow. Yeah, well, where does that one. What is it that that gives the continuity to experience? It is awareness. It is the fact of awareness. Awareness is the, the constant thread or the, you've heard me refer to it as the, the screen behind the ever present screen behind the continually changing movie. How many frames are there in it per second in a movie? The 30, 45. 30, I don't know. But why don't we experience a movie as a series of Intermittent images. It's not a movie is one long continuous flower. What is it that's continuous in the movie? It's the screen. So the continuity of the movie is borrowed from the screen. It's the same. The continuity of ourself, the selfness of ourself is derived from awareness, from the, from the fact of being aware. Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

That was the one that I was reading one of your books. I remember where I was and I was like, it's like a knowing screen. It's like on, on what is your experience appearing? Or in what is your experience?

[Rupert Spira]

And I was like, yes.

[Pete Holmes]

I had been waiting my whole life for the language that made sense. I was like, I've been waiting for someone to say, what, what is this? And we go, oh, there's a knowingness in which or on which everything appears. And you are that.

[Rupert Spira]

Exactly. And, and everybody understands that their thoughts and emotions appear in awareness. In, in this space like presence of awareness. That, that, that, that's obvious to everyone. But what's not so obvious is that the sensations that constitute our experience of the body, our perceptions of the world, the sound of my voice, the sight of your face, it all happens in awareness. And we have a model in our world. Culture is predicated on the model that awareness lives in the head, just behind the eyes, and everything else is outside of that. But actually this contradicts our experience. The entirety of our experience, both of the so called outside world and the so called inner world of thoughts and feelings and the intermediary world of our body, it all takes place in awareness. That that is our experience.

[Pete Holmes]

Mm. It's funny that one took a while for me because when I would look for a center, sometimes teachers say there is no center. The space like presence of awareness is centerless or it's just vast. And then you go like. But when I close my eyes and I look is there origin point? I feel the sensation of my face. I've heard you talk about it like a mask floating in space. You feel your nose or your lips and, and you can go, well, that's, that's the starting point. But you have to. It took real looking to go like, no. Isn't that feeling of face just another appearance in the, in the vast emptiness?

[Rupert Spira]

Yes. I mean, we are all so accustomed to this model that we've. This paradigm that we've been brought up with, that the materialist paradigm, that there is a physical world that gives rise. Our body is born into the physical world and then the awareness or consciousness is then generated by the brain. Inside the body. This is the kind of model that we've been brought up with. And that model, although it contradicts our experience, as we said before, if you just look closely at experience, all thoughts, feelings, sensations, perceptions, they all rise in awareness. Awareness is not located in the body. However, even when this idea is. When you begin to see the truth of this idea, the old belief that awareness is located just behind the eyes, in the head, and is generated by the brain, it's so strong, it's so deeply wired into us that it's takes quite a lot of. Very often it takes quite a lot of persistence to really be willing to explore one's experience and to trust the evidence of one's experience and to put on one side the beliefs that we've inherited from our culture. Because those beliefs, that they're, they're pernicious, that they, they take a while to subside.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, they're old. Old habits. Right. I mean, it's so deeply, deeply ingrained.

[Rupert Spira]

Old habits. Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

I mean, this is something that I'm. I'm still sort of massaging in my own experiences. Like the idea that they're the separate I, or the separate self is a fiction because there is no separate self standing apart from this awareness. Everything. I know, it seems so simple. Everything appears in this awareness and we are guilty of thinking, but I somehow am outside of it or I am the generator of it. When. When really everything that we experience appears and sets inside of it.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes. It's a very reasonable mistake, a very reasonable understanding mistake that we all make. We close our eyes with our eyes open. We see the world. We close our eyes, the world disappears. We open our eyes again, the world appears. So it's reasonable to conclude that whatever it is that is seeing the world is located just behind the eyes. But think of what happens in a dream. Dream. Imagine you dream. You're on a Caribbean beach. You're on your deck chair. You're looking at the world. You close your eyes, the Caribbean beach disappears. You open your eyes again, it reappears. So the character that you seem to be in your dream reasonably concludes that whatever it is that is seen, the Caribbean beach is located just behind the eye. And then you wake up.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Rupert Spira]

And you realize. No. That what the. The knowing with which I was aware of the Caribbean beach, the awareness with which I was aware of the beach in my dream was not located anywhere in the time and space that seemed to be real in the dream. Well, I. I would suggest that something similar is happening now. We. We look. We look through the eyes. Yes. But the awareness with which we are now aware of the world, I would suggest, is not located anywhere in the world, anywhere in the time and space that seem to be real from the point of view of the waking state. Although even when we have this understanding, we continue to perceive the world from the localized perspective of our body and we continue to perceive through the eyes. So the. The illusion of being located behind the. That doesn't disappear. That's just an illusion that's generated by sense perception. But our understanding overrides that illusion. Right.

[Pete Holmes]

That's the idea that there's one consciousness, there's one. I am. And it localizes. This is. I'm always ripping you off, but here I'm ripping you off to you. It localizes itself inside of itself. Create. So we're not denying that we're having the experience. I'm in here, you're in there.

[Rupert Spira]

Absolutely. Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

But it's like waves on an ocean. It has an apparent. It appears to have its own reality or. I like what you talk about space in a room, if you want to.

[Rupert Spira]

Which.

[Pete Holmes]

Your choice.

[Rupert Spira]

Exactly. The space in the room that the. The spacing in your room, you're in. Where are you now?

[Pete Holmes]

I'm in Ohio. Yeah.

[Rupert Spira]

So the space in your room in Ojai, it has a particular shape, it had a particular size, it has a particular color. And. And the space in my room here in Devon where, what, I don't know how many thousand miles, five or six thousand miles apart.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Rupert Spira]

From each other, they. They seem to be two totally different spaces. Different location, different age, different shape, different color, different size, everything. But if you were to take a sample of the space in your room and I were to take a sample of the space in my room, the two samples would be identical because they are the same space. That there aren't millions of different spaces in the universe, one for each building or one for each container. There's just one vast physical space seemingly enclosed within the four walls of each building, but not really enclosed in them, I would suggest it's exactly the same. There's one. One being oneself, one awareness seemingly enclosed within numerous body minds. But. But not really. If you were to take a sample not of your thoughts, feelings, memories, narratives and so on, but if you were to take a sample of yourself, the golden thread that we were talking about earlier, the experience to which you refer when you say I am, if you were to take a sample of that experience and I were to take a sample of the same experience, they would be identical.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Rupert Spira]

And they would be identical in everyone. The saint, the criminal and everyone is the same.

[Pete Holmes]

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[Rupert Spira]

Easy. Easy.

[Pete Holmes]

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[Rupert Spira]

That's article.com weird for $50 after off

[Pete Holmes]

of your first purchase of $100 or more. This episode is sponsored by Roe. A lot of people are talking about how effective GLP1 medications are, but they're also talking about how expensive they are, which is what I like about roe. They help people find the lowest cost path to FDA approved GLP1 treatment. They have a free insurance checker that lets you see insurance company may cover and if insurance isn't an option they also offer lower cost cash pay FDA approved GLP1 options including GLP1 pills. The process is incredibly simple. You submit your insurance information and RO provides a coverage report. And if you decide to move forward, eligible patients can complete an online medical visit, any necessary lab work, and work with a ROE affiliated provider to see if treatment is right for them. If I were going to explore GLP1s, this is how I would do it. Hands down. It's like having a clear starting point and understanding my options before making any decisions. When you become a RO member, you'll have access to your provider on demand for questions and support throughout the process. And you'll be joining over 1.5 million people who've trusted Ro on their weight loss journey. So go to Ro Co weird to see if you qualify. That's Ro Co weird to get started on Ro and go to to Ro Co safety for box warning and full safety information about GLP1 medications. When you I talked about seeing a pig that was deeply asleep. We were at a petting zoo and I saw a pig deeply asleep and I was like, that pig's having the exact same experience that I have when I'm in deep sleep. And so does my worst enemy or my favorite person. When we're absolutely stripped of all the content, that naked shining awareness is how many. I've heard you say this. How many infinite boundless things can there be? There's. There's. There's one. And we're apparently splitting it. We're pretending to split it. We're playing that it's been split.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes, it's sense perception that that divides that one being into numerous beings. And as you say, everyone. Everyone is that everyone is that now that, that. That. That naked being underneath all the layers of experience, everyone is that now. Yes, but everybody, without exception, has the feeling of I. Everybody uses the word I more often than any other word. Every day. Everyone has a feeling I am myself. This feeling of selfness, yes, pervades everyone's experience. But. But not everybody knows their self as it essentially is. Clearly, for the vast majority of people, their sense of their self is mixed up with their thoughts, their feelings, their relationships, their activities, their history, their memory and so on. So everyone has this sense of being their self, but in most cases, it's mixed up with the content of experience. It's like you saying that the space in my room is square and light and 50 years old. And it's like me saying that the space in my room is octagonal and dark and 200 years. No, the space is not any of those things. The space is, is. It has none of those. What we're describing when we are the walls. The walls have a certain shape, a size and age, but the space itself is free of. Of all those limitations. It's the same, yes, with. If we, if we all describe our thoughts, our feelings, sensations, perceptions, these are all different, of course. But if we were just to go to that raw experience, simple feeling of being before it's qualified by experience, that is the same.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Rupert Spira]

In everyone.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. I had it.

[Rupert Spira]

That's what.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, God.

[Rupert Spira]

That's what all the great religious and spiritual traditions are trying to get us to see one way or another is to recognize, not intellectually, of course, but experientially, to really taste the nature of the being that we essentially are underneath all the layers of experience and that

[Pete Holmes]

peace and happiness are the nature.

[Rupert Spira]

And, and, and I would suggest that. That whenever in ordinary life, whenever we experience peace or happiness, that is our being filtering through the layers of our experience. And that's exactly what you do as a, As a. As a comedian. You're telling a story. You're. You're. You're winding up people's expectation and the story goes on and on for two or three minutes. And in other words, you're perpetuating the narrative line, the line of time on which our normal life takes place, and you're just winding that. You're winding up a sense of expectation that something's going to happen in the future. So you're doing what we're all doing all the time, but you're making it even worse. You're making it more intense. You're building up this sense of anticipation and expectation. And then, then the punchline comes. And what happens at the moment the punchline comes the expectation comes to an end. You cease looking to the future. The punchline brings the expectation, the anticipation to an end. And in that moment, the narrative that the self, that the apparently separate self requires to perpetuate itself comes to an end. And in that moment, someone gets a brief taste of their true nature. As a result of that, there is this relaxation in the body. And laughter or tears are two of the very. Or laughter in your case, one of the ways this, this deep relaxation of the body, that the tension of separation, the cramp of separation comes to an end on. On tasting your. Your true nature and laughter is the expression of that in the body. So yes, peace. Peace or joy, that they are. That they are the taste of being.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. I've heard you say, like, we all look forward to sleep. Sleep isn't a void. We look forward to it. We love it. I love sleep. Now that I have a daughter, I cherish it, the sleep that I can get. And I had this joke years and years ago that later after I found you, I was like, oh, I was saying more than I thought I was. Which was this. I go, whenever I'm afraid of somebody, I remember that everybody sleeps. Like somebody scares me. I think of them on their pillow, just like me, and I go, that's not scary. And what I'm saying, that's beautiful. Exactly right. I mean, go with that, please.

[Rupert Spira]

That, that's so intense. That's so intelligent. I love that, that it's a kind of spontaneous. Because what you doing? Because in sleep, we all know from the experience of sleep that our perceptions leave us, the sensations of the body leave us, our activities and relationships leave us, our thoughts and we just remain as just pure being. There's no experience. And it's peaceful there. That's why we look forward to it. If it was a blank, empty void, if it was annihilation, we would all dread every night. Because we know, yes, from repeated experience, it's peaceful there. And in that, we can't. In that place, if we can call it a place, we are innocent. We are free of everything we have ever thought or done. And we know that from our own experience. That's why we look forward to sleep. We are liberated temporarily from the burdens of guilt and shame and sorrow and fear and so on. And by exactly the same token, we know that everybody else, when they are deeply asleep, are free of everything they have ever thought or done. So when you think of someone, that's what's so beautiful about this spontaneous practice you do. When you think of someone Deeply asleep. You are thinking of them in their innocence, in their purity. You're thinking about them as they truly are. And in order to provoke that you have imagined them asleep.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Rupert Spira]

That's beautiful. It's beautiful. My son, Matthew, when he was very young, he would sometimes get uncontrollably upset or frustrated about something. And you well know what it's like when your daughter is just uncontrollable. You try everything and nothing works. It didn't happen very often, but there were a few times when he was quite young, when he was uncontrollably upset and neither his mother nor I could do anything to confirm, he would sometimes just lie down. He'd say, I just want to go to sleep. And I was so touched when he did that. It's what. Of course, he didn't realize what he was saying, but what he was saying was, I know from my past experience that whenever I am deeply asleep, I'm relieved of my sorrow and my anxiety.

[Pete Holmes]

It doesn't come with you.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah, it doesn't come with you. And he knew that. And he'd tried everything else, and his mother and I had tried everything else. Nothing worked. But he knew all I need to do is go to sleep. What he was really saying was, all I need to do is just go back to my being.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Rupert Spira]

And for him, falling asleep was his access to that. Well, that's all meditation is, just falling. You've heard me say this. It's falling asleep but remaining awake. In other words, just going back to the simple fact of being or being aware behind the layers of your experience.

[Pete Holmes]

And we can do it right now. Sailor Brown said, what's wrong with right now if you're not thinking about it? That's a way of dropping or effort. It's not really efforting, but you just go like, wait. It's a good pointer. Like, what is wrong with right now if you don't think about it? It's like a really funny riddle. Like, don't think about it. Tell me what's wrong. But you can't think about it. And you go like. That's a way of just briefly being asleep and going like, oh, right.

[Rupert Spira]

Exactly. Yes. It's like falling asleep whilst remaining awake. In other words, going back to who you. You essentially are behind your thoughts and feelings. You can. Anyone. You can do it at any time during the day. Anybody can do it. Nobody has privileged access. The Buddha, the Ramana, Maharshi Lautsu, Jesus Christ. None of these people had privileged access to their being. They had access to Their being. And they went there and they stayed there.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah,

[Rupert Spira]

maybe more, more, more easily than some people. But. But, but the being to which they return, the being that they knew as their essential self, is the same being that is available to you and I and to everyone 24 7.

[Pete Holmes]

And that's. That's the good news. I wrote this in the margin of a book I was reading. I wrote, can I be more of this later? I really think that's the trap is you're like, oh, if I could really understand what. What Rupert and Pete are talking about, I'll get it. But there is this, like, your brain is postponing it. I'm just bringing us back to, like, it's here now, what we're talking about, that wow, wow, wow, wow, when you're asleep is what is what this is appearing in.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes, it's the script behind the image. Whatever is taking place in the movie, however beautiful it is, however awful it is, however distressing it is, whatever is going on in the movie, the screen is. It's not even behind the movie, but we can say it's behind the movie. And the screen is. It allows the movie without resistance, but it's not affected by anything. When the movie comes to an end, the movie doesn't stain the screen. It's still the transparent screen that it was before the movie began. And no matter how many movies play on the screen, that the screen remains unchanged. Our being is like that. It's the screen behind the drama of experience. Always present, always available, never, never harmed or hurt or tarnished or traumatized by experience. The mind and the body can be hurt and traumatized, but our being, our essential being, or being aware, awareness itself, that is like the screen behind the image. It's always in the same pristine, peaceful condition, and that is available to Everybody without exception. 24 7.

[Pete Holmes]

Right. It's funny. We do. I had a. I grew up Christian, so I don't say this looking down on anybody, but I had Christian on my podcast this week, and I quoted the verse in John that we both like, which is before Abraham was. I am this idea that it's a radical thing for Jesus to say before Abraham. So like, like the guy of their faith, before he even was. I am. What a weird. It seems like something like a mystic today might say. It seems very new age, but it's like a very radical thing to say. But what they responded, and I'm not putting this down, but they were like, yeah, he's talking about the nature of God and. And what's Interesting about this. As I'm going through your work and through conversations like these, I'm like that. I am. We are drawing a boundary. We'll go, well, that was Jesus. This. There's a. There's a wall between me and him. He was talking about God, and my. I am is limited. I mean, what do you feel about that?

[Rupert Spira]

What I thought. Let's go back to the analogy of space. Pete, take the space in your room in Ojai and just imagine that the space was conscious. So it's not just physical in that space. Imagine that the. The space is aware. Now. Now, if we were to say to the space, tell us about yourself. Tell us something about yourself. To begin with, the space might look around at the four walls and say, well, I'm square, I'm light, I'm covered in paintings and photographs, and I'm 50 years old. And then we say, no, no, no, you're telling us about the walls. Look at yourself. Tell us about yourself. And the space would then, and as it were, turn its attention away from the walls, the content, and look at it somehow. What's the very first thing the space would say about itself? If it could speak, it would say, I am. Because the words I am refer to its being, its presence. Now, think now of the vast space of the universe, not the space in your room, the vast space of the universe, and do the same. Imagine that it's a conscious space. Do the same experiment we asked. The vast space of the universe. Look at yourself. Tell us about yourself. What's the first thing you can say about yourself? The space would pause, look at itself, so to speak. It would say, I am. Now, now, take the two I ams. The I am that the experience to which the space in your room referred, that enabled it to say I am. And the experience to which the vast space of the universe referred, that enabled it to say I am. What was the difference between those two experiences? They were the same, right? They were the same. So that's what. What Jesus was trying to say before Abraham was, I am. The I am. The I that I am is present before Abraham. In other words, it's not in time. It's not finite. It's not a personal, temporary being. It is infinite. Being that I am is God's being. In other words, the knowledge I am is God's presence shining in us as our very own being, just as it is the vast space of the universe that is present in your room as the space of your room. In other words, there is only God's Being that there are no other beings apart from the one infinite being. And that is what the word God refers to.

[Pete Holmes]

To. Yes. And the ground of being is another term from the Bible. It's like everything is grounded. Ground of being.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah. Yes. Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

When we get. It's so. Again, a lot of people I think, that listen to the show come from the same background as me. And when we get into ideas like, we need to be atoned, what you've really showed me is, like, when we get into the question of identity, like, who are you? And you go like, well, Pete needs to be atone. Well, you go like, are you, Pete? Is the answer to do you need to be atoned? Would you agree with that,

[Rupert Spira]

Pete? Say that again. Sorry, I didn't understand your question.

[Pete Holmes]

What I'm saying is, when we look at, like, the classic Christian narrative, like, Jesus dies to wash away Rupert sins, and then you won't be tortured or you'll go to heaven or whatever.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

The question of identity. Am I the same I am. That is the only I am Removes.

[Rupert Spira]

I see. Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't want to say removes the need, but it kind of goes. When I was talking to that person on my podcast, I was like, we need to be forgiven and be saved. And I go from who. Who are we being saved from? And I go from God. And we're standing apart from God as something that needs. Am I being clearer?

[Rupert Spira]

Absolutely. Yes. Yes. I think they. The ultimate atonement or salvation. Salvation is the Western term for the Eastern term, enlightenment. The ultimate salvation is to recognize that we don't actually have our own individual being. In fact, to set ourself up as a being as opposed to God's being or alongside God's being or coexisting with God's being is. That's blasphemous because it's. To suggest that there is God's being and there are also billions of other beings. Well, if there's God's being plus billions of other beings, then God's being is not very infinite.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rupert Spira]

So really, to set oneself up as a self apart from infinite being is. Is to deny God. So whilst it's legitimate as a concession to the separate self, to speak about the separate self, devoting oneself, surrendering oneself, the ultimate devotion, the ultimate surrender, the ultimate salvation, I would suggest, is to recognize that the only being there is in us is God's being.

[Pete Holmes]

And that's peace.

[Rupert Spira]

Peace.

[Pete Holmes]

Even you just saying that. I'm like, that's. That's peace. That's what I mean by going like, it kind of uproots the whole narrative.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes, yes. Much of the narrative is said as a concession, a completely legitimate concession to the separate self that we seem to be. And so, but, but, but in the, in the, in the higher expressions of the non. Dual understanding, the teaching doesn't make that concession. It undermines the existence of an individual being that needs to be atoned or forgiven. Or. That's what, that's why Jesus message was a message of love, not of. That was the essential measure. What is love? Love. The recognition of our shared being, the recognition that we are one being, the recognition of our oneness.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Rupert Spira]

That's. That's the fundamental message of the, of the Christian tradition.

[Pete Holmes]

And that, like, that goes back to what we were saying about sleep when you're deeply asleep, and when I'm deeply asleep, exact same experience. And that recognition is an. It's like a. It's not thinking about qualities of you, Rupert, that I like and me saying I love you, it's me going like, no, we're actually the same. It's like when I look at my daughter, I go, we're the same. You're. You're me.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah. Yes. When you say I like you, or indeed I dislike you in relation to person, what we mean is I like the way you think or I don't like the way you think, I like the way you look or I don't like. I like the way you behave or I don't. So whether we like someone or not is to do with our personalities, our characters, the way we think, the way we act and so on. But when we say I love someone, and we usually conflate these two and we don't make a distinction, but they mean two completely different things. When we say I love you, what we're really saying is, I feel that I share my being with you. I feel that I am one with you. So really, love is. It's not really an emotion as such, although it expresses itself as an emotion. It's the felt sense that at the deepest level, beneath all our thoughts and feelings and actions and so on, we are the same being. Just like the space in your room and this in Ohio and the space in my room in the uk, they are not two similar spaces. They are the same space. That recognition that we are the same being is love. And most people only extend the circle of their love to their nearest and dearest, or at least to the people they like. But love's got nothing to do with whether we like someone or not. We share our being with, with everyone, whether we like them or not. And so in a way that I feel we have those of us that are interested in these matters. We have a sort of sacred duty to love everybody. We don't have to like everybody, but to love everybody, irrespective of their political views, their behavior and so on. Because if we can't love everybody body and how on earth can we expect that the leaders of our nations and institutions to feel that they share their being with everyone and act accordingly?

[Pete Holmes]

With the space thing, it's so interesting. So many teachers talk about knowing who you are is the answer. So when I have anxiety, like old Christian anxiety, I need to be rescued or fixed or redeemed or cleansed or whatever. It is interesting to take it to the space. I am looking at the walls and there might be a framed picture of some bad thing I regret doing or saying or feeling or. And I feel us saying like, knock down the walls. Like the. I believe it's in the Dao de Ching. They talk about the. The air in a vase. When the vase breaks, the question is, does it reunite with the air around it or is it revealed to have never been separate from that air around it? It and you. This is why I get so excited. That's the good news. It's.

[Rupert Spira]

It's like, yes, the good news that the space in your room is already the vast space of the universe.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Rupert Spira]

Tweaking, tweaking the images on your walls, rearranging the furniture or even taking the walls down. It's not going to have any effect on the space, nor need it. The space does not need, nor can it be improved.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Rupert Spira]

So. So in order to recognize who you deeply are and to feel its innate peace, and you don't have to change the content of your experience. That doesn't mean that it's not valid to take a painting off the wall or change. It's valid to look after one's body, to feed it well, to exercise it well. If you have some psychological tendencies that a deep seated habit left over from the felt sense of separation, it may be legitimate to pay attention to those habits. If there is some lingering trauma from your childhood, it may be appropriate to pay attention to that narrative. And so I'm not. I don't mean to imply that one shouldn't take care of all of that, but one doesn't need. All I mean to imply is that it's not necessary to change any of that. It's not necessary to change anything about one's current circumstances in order to recognize one's true nature and avail yourself of its innate peace. And that's the really good news. It's not something's going to happen to you in 10 years time.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, and the here and nowness. If we take psychedelics and have some extraordinary experience, then I can know that I'm the space within which that extraordinary experience appeared. The mundane experience appears in the same phenomenon. Isn't this something close to your heart?

[Rupert Spira]

Yes, yes, absolutely. The most wonderful experience you've ever had, the most awful experience you've ever had, and everything in between all takes place in the same space of awareness. And that space of awareness is never itself affected, it's never enhanced or diminished by anything that takes place within it. Just as a space in home is never is not affected. Whether you're dancing or fighting or whatever. The space allows it all contains it all, but remains undisturbed by it.

[Pete Holmes]

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[Rupert Spira]

I'm Dr. Susan Swick, a child psychiatrist and the host of Talk About Able. This season, I'm talking with parents and experts about how we tackle the everyday challenges of raising kids. We'll get real about those pebble in the shoe issues we all face as parents and how to build resilience and community through our own experiences. Talk About Able Season 2 from Lemonada Media, in partnership with Montage Health and their Ohana center for Child and Family Mental Health, is out now.

[Pete Holmes]

Boy, I love this so much. It's just. I think I'm like you, maybe. I. I understand these things, and I still love hearing them over and over. I just. It. It's just a fun song to listen to. I. I noticed. And I'm. I've been one of these people that gets very interested in your. And I've seen this happen to other teachers where they say, like, you always keep it cool. You're always calm or whatever. And there's this interest that I hear maybe every 15th question is about you. Do you get mad? Do you get. Whatever it might be? What I'm. What I'm realizing in this conversation is I, Rupert, is an appearance on the screen. It's. It's. It's missing the point, right? This. This isolation of awareness is a character in the dream. And if we go, does that character in the dream get mad when he burns his hand on the stove? Isn't. Wouldn't you say that's missing the point? With all. With all love and understanding. That's the wrong question.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes, it's. It's very easy to project. And we've all done this. I've certainly done this. It's very easy to project perfection onto someone who speaks or writes about these matters. And. And it's none. I can only speak for myself. I am far from perfect.

[Pete Holmes]

The.

[Rupert Spira]

The. The. The. This. This recognition of one's. You could recognize your true nature. You have genuine recognition of your true nature. To begin with, it's usually a brief glimpse, and then you go back to the old thoughts and feelings, and then you trace your way back to your being again, and you have another brief glimpse. And to begin with, there's quite a lot of backwards and forwards, but in time you begin to get more and more established. Instead of just visiting your being, so to speak, from time to time, you begin to live there. However, this does not eradicate overnight the old tendencies of thinking, feeling, acting and relating. They, they carry on. We've been rehearsing them for 20, 30, 40, 50 years and they have some momentum behind them. And it takes time. I think it takes a lifetime for all these habits of thinking, feeling, acting and relating to, to gradually realign themselves with this new understanding. Now, how long it takes varies from, from person to person that the, the analogy that. I can't remember who it was. Borrowing this analogy from someone, maybe Ramana Mahashik. I can't remember that, that this recognition of one's true nature is like turning the. There's a boat on the ocean and it's like turning the engine off. What it is that's propelling the boat forward comes to an end, but the boat still has some momentum behind it. Now, depending on whether it's an oil tanker or a fishing boat, the oil tanker will take 30 miles to come to an end and the fishing boat will take 30 meters to come. It varies depending on the weight of momentum. So each of us is like that. We have a different momentum behind us. Old habits of thinking, feeling, acting, relating, and these take time to be aligned with this understanding. Yeah, but no one's perfect.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, and, and that's missing the point. No one's perfect. Sorry to lead you this way, but like, it's granting the separate self an identity, right?

[Rupert Spira]

It, it's, it's missing the point. Yes, yes, of course. And you, you don't, of course you don't mean this. We shouldn't by saying that it's missing the point. We're not suggesting that, that it doesn't matter how one thinks and acts. Of course it does. Does matter, but it doesn't affect one's being. Right. So you can, you can have a genuine recognition of your true nature. Stabilizing in that recognition takes time. And it takes different people different, different amounts of time depending on their past conditioning.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. I remember when I came home from the last retreat, I was with you and I really wanted to go for a swim. Cause it's very hard for me to go from that just back into full family mode. So I was like, I'm gonna swim. And I went out and I couldn't find my earplugs. My daughter and her friends love to find my swimming stuff and just throw it away, basically. And Rupert, I got so mad. Like, this story swelled up in me. I can't have any stuff.

[Rupert Spira]

Stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, I go, like. I just go, like, I don't even have that much stuff. This house. There's only a few things. One of them is my earplugs. I just need earplugs. And then what's worse is I go, you just came back from a spiritual retreat. Look how mad you are. And then this is why I wanted to talk about this. Valerie, my wife, is brilliant. And she was like, pete, what are you talking. It's totally normal. You were just in the serene place. You're having a little frustration. It's okay. Nothing went anywhere. Nothing changed. Everything's fine.

[Rupert Spira]

Fine.

[Pete Holmes]

She's very good at that. But, like, confusing that in my old Christian way of, I had it and I lost it. I'm turning it into worshiping my good mood, basically feeling groovy all the time. It's very different from going, no matter what's in the movie, this guy's mad. That it. And look how you laughed at that. It's like, part of my job is, like, bringing these foibles and these flaws into the light, and we delight in them. They're good stories. I liked telling you that story. But in the moment, it can feel like such a failure. But speak to that, please.

[Rupert Spira]

It's not even, I had it and I lost it. Although I completely understand it to begin with, we tend to think, oh, I had this marvelous experience when I was on retreat last week, and now I've completely lost it. It's not. It's. It's. That's like saying, when you get so absorbed in a movie that you suddenly cease seeing the screen. No, there's no question of having it and losing it. You are always your being. Always, always, always. 24 7. Sometimes it's true. Our felt connection with our being gets eclipsed by the intensity of our experience. Our experience is either so pleasant or so unpleasant that we lose ourself in it. In the case of you and the earplugs. So unpleasant, you just got it, this feeling in you. And you were completely lost in your feeling. But your being was just there, just quietly behind the upset. And five minutes later, Valerie says something to you. You find your earplugs, that the feeling subsides, and there's your being just in the background. It was always there.

[Pete Holmes]

It was always there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rupert Spira]

And in my experience, what I find is that the more established one is in one's being, the Fewer and fewer experiences still have the power to take you out, to take you away from yourself. So some do, usually with your nearest and dearest. They're the ones that still have the.

[Pete Holmes]

My own family threw away my earplugs. It's a very juicy story.

[Rupert Spira]

Whereas if it had been the neighbor, you would have just smiled sweetly at them or a stranger. But in time, the things that used to upset us and irritate us, they. They lose that power to take us away from the peace of our being. And if a few experiences still retain that power, well, it doesn't happen often and it doesn't last for long.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. You don't seem burdened by a need to perform. I'm really happy. That's a wonderful thing to see at the retreats and stuff. I'm very sensitive to performance and stuff. And I just, just don't see a person that's going well. I have to say how delicious the food is. And I have to smile and wave at everybody. I'm like, you take time for yourself. You know, whatever it might be. You're just, you're just being natural.

[Rupert Spira]

If I could do what I do and remain invisible, I would. I'm not like you. I think you are a natural performer. It's a gift. It's, it's a beautiful thing. I don't think I'm a natural. I'm more introverted. I'm not a natural public figure. I, I, I. When you've seen me on retreats, I like to, I get up on the platform, I do my thing, and then I, and then as soon as I'm off, I just want to be invisible. When we all sit down for, for lunch together around the table, the, the best thing that can happen to me is when everybody ignores me. Yes. And just, or just chats with me about my favorite movie or my summer holiday or something like that. But yes, please just, I like just to be sorry. Go.

[Pete Holmes]

No, no, I see that. I think the reason I bring it up is such a part of Western spirituality is the mascot, mascotification of the leader, meaning a pastor in my church is the pastor. He preaches, but the real show. And I say this with a, like, I feel bad for him is being so nice to my mother. Like, that's the real show. Like my mom and I, all of his church wives. You know what I mean? Like these surrogate wives, like projecting onto him, be the perfect man, always be in a good mood, always smile, always have time. Never, never, never. And I'm so happy when I meet People that are like, that's. This isn't a song and dance. We're going to do our thing and we'll have a normal lunch. But you're. You know what I mean, that church. And I say this with love. I am being a little critical. But that, like, that sort of plastered smile of the mega pastor, like, it's. It's a relief to be like, that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about. Richard Rohr has this great line where he goes, the word nice isn't in the New Testament. There's. It never says the word nice.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

And we've turned it into the worship of pleasantness. Niceness. And there's some really great stuff about that. Niceness sets up the guest bedroom when someone doesn't have a place to stay. There's great stuff. There's.

[Rupert Spira]

There.

[Pete Holmes]

But when it gets a little toxic is when it's like. And we used to do this. Oh, the pastor, my youth pastor got mad today. Well, I guess, you know, I guess he doesn't. I thought Jesus lived in his heart sort of stuff, you know.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It's nice to see that that's not what we're doing here.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes, I think it's. I think it's inevitable. I've done it. We all project perfection onto anyone that speaks particularly that speaks about these. These things. We don't expect our football stars to be perfect, but we do expect anyone that speaks about spiritual matters or meditation or enlightenment, we do expect them to be perfect. And it's a projection that comes from, I think, a need that the individual has to somehow project perfection onto someone or something. But it's. I was very naive about this. When I first started speaking and writing about these matters, I had no idea that this projection would take place. And then after three years, I began to, rather reluctantly, I began to admit that it was happening. And then as soon as I admitted it and could see it, then I could become more skillful. I would notice it and just. I could just make sure that I was doing absolutely nothing to collude with it or even to reject it, which is a sort of subtle inverted way of colluding with it because you're giving it more substance that it really. You're substantiating it by rejecting it. So I learned that kind of handle it over the years. And now I think I'm very lucky that the people that come to my gatherings, a lot of you been coming for many years. There's very little projection. And I just Feel totally normal and natural. Everybody just lets me be.

[Pete Holmes]

I think I'm almost. Well, no, I'm definitely speaking for myself. I think there's an unconscious desire for the peatness, the separate self to go. If we can disprove it, if we can. I see Rupert losing his mind at the southwest gate at the airport. Then the separate self will go. I knew I was separate. I knew I was real. There does seem to be an engine behind this, like a natural attraction towards things that validate our separate existence. Yes, I think that might be one of them.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes. I'm sure you've heard me say this sometime, Pete, that the spiritual teacher should be the last disappointment. Yeah, yeah. You know, we've all, we've all looked for peace and happiness in the world through substances, activities, relationships and so on. And usually the reason why we go to a retreat or to a teaching or a teacher is precisely because all these conventional means for seeking fulfillment, for finding fulfillment have failed us. So we go to spiritual teaching or teacher or treatment with the hope. Okay, everything else has failed me. There's got to be one thing, there's got to be one person that, that, that, that's reliable, that's going to give me that. And, and so we project a huge amount, an unreasonable amount. People project the most unreasonable amount onto a spiritual teacher because everything else has failed them. So the teacher becomes like the last hope. And then so, and I feel that inevitably sooner or later the teacher has to become the final disappointment. Because nobody and nothing can. Can give us this deep sense of fulfillment. It has to be found inside yourself.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Rupert Spira]

So even the so called spiritual teacher must sooner or later, if we've projected that, that ideal onto them and we've given them the role of providing peace and fulfillment for us, sooner or later they're going to let us down. They're going to disappoint us.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I have that with my book. Sometimes I go, you know that warm good feeling you have when you're just sitting reading a book and it. And it's reminding you of your nature, all these pointers and you're like. And then I'll be like in a situation. I'm like, oh, I wish I could read one of my books right now. And you remember that all the books are doing are pointing you towards yourself. And we're back to the good news. It's with you right now like you're actually settling for a surrogate. I, I've heard, I don't think it was my circuit, but it was somebody talking about they Were talking about the top of the mountain, and they're walking up the mountain with Jesus and the sadness of. To get to the very top. I say goodbye to Jesus. He goes, I can't come. Nothing can come with you. No concept, no person, no other other. It's just you alone. And there is a mourning and, and even a fear. There could be a fear of going, like, I can't. This has been my thing. And then you go up, by the way, we see this in, in stories all the time. And you realize what you thought was death was. Was. Was life. What you thought was alone was everybody.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes. Meister Eckhart as, as you know, he. Meister Eckhart himself said he, He. He prayed to God to rid him of God because he knew that any last belief, any concept that he was one attachment to, he just wanted to be naked being without anything attached to it. Because he knew that in being, simply being, just naked being, he was in fact being God's being. But in order to recognize himself as such, he had to. To remove all his ideas about God as something other than himself. So he prayed to God to take that God takes God away from him.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, that's standing on the peak of the mountain alone.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah, that's standing alone. Just the pure I am without any qualification. And there you're alone. Not alone as a person, but alone as your being. And you're not identified as a Christian, an atheist, a man, a woman, or you're just your body.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. And that's right here, right now. Sorry, I don't know why. I love just reminding myself what we're talking about is right here, right now

[Rupert Spira]

for everybody, without exception.

[Pete Holmes]

And forgive me for almost going back a little bit. There was something I wrote on my mirror that you said said. It said, go to the experience of being. Don't say, I don't know what that is. You're having it right now. It's that, that question you ask people, are you aware? And people check and you say, to what experience are you referring? That enables you to say yes, so sorry to. I'm just trying to go like, everybody's invited to this conversation. Everybody's included. It doesn't matter what your beliefs are. Are you present? And you could even lose present. You could just say, are you aware? Everyone listening is aware. To deny your awareness, you'd have to be aware to deny your awareness. So you are aware. So it's not exotic, it's not weird. My voice is like. I like to think, sorry, I'm on a tear. It's just like ink in water. Like the sound of my voice appears like ink and water. The feeling of my chair on my body. Body when I go to. It appears like ink and water and then vanishes. The water is the awareness, and it's what every single person is experiencing right now. And it is. Okay. I mean, yeah, that. That I'd like.

[Rupert Spira]

Exactly. And a simple question like, are you aware? You imagine taking any one of the 8 billion of U.S. and. And asking them the question, are you aware? And as long as they understood the question, they would pause, check their experience, and say, yes. Well, what experience do they check? They don't go back to their memory of breakfast or their childhood. They go to the experience of being aware. The simple, ordinary, intimate, familiar experience of being aware. And then they answer, yes. Well, you could ask someone in a prison cell, Mother Teresa, anybody, any. All 8 billion of us. If you ask that question, are you aware? Pause. Yes. In that pause, everybody briefly touches their true nature if they. All that's required is to. Is to go deeply into that experience of simply being or being aware. Am. And see that. It's like sampling the space in your room. It's got nothing to do with the walls, the pictures, the furniture. It's just the pure experience of being. And that is. It lacks nothing. It needs nothing. It resists nothing. It's disturbed by nothing. It's pure peace.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Rupert Spira]

And everyone has direct access to their being.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. Not later.

[Rupert Spira]

24.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. Not later. While you're listening to the podcast. What this podcast is appearing in is your awareness. You could say it's on the screen.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

And you don't know. You're looking at the screen. You're. And that's that idea of one taste. It's like without. Without taking too much more of your time here. It's like a sound is made of the knowing of it. A feeling is made of the knowing of it, and an emotion is made of the knowing of it. It's all one screen. It's one thing.

[Rupert Spira]

It's one thing. And that one. The taste of that one. Of the experience of being where that's what peace is. The French writer Albert Camus, he said, in the depths of winter, I finally realized that there is within me an eternal summer that says it's so beautifully in the depths. In spite of all my turmoil of thoughts and feelings, there is deep within me what you call the eternal summer. This quiet but bright light of just pure being or being aware. And it's always at peace. It lacks nothing. That's Never been touched.

[Pete Holmes]

My surrogate has never been a place that's never been touched.

[Rupert Spira]

It's never been touched. Yeah. It touches all experience intimately, but it is never itself touched or affected by any experience.

[Pete Holmes]

Experience. Yes. And I take comfort in this. When I'm dysregulated or having a. A rough moment, I comfort myself. It's not. It is sort of a bypass, but a good bypass. I go. Even my doubts emerge in and recede back into even my next question.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

I told you that John Wheeler said this great thing where it's like before the question arises, the. That's the answer. And then the question arises and then the teacher satiates it and then it recedes and you're left with where you were before you had the question.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Pete Holmes]

So you go. It's not really about answering questions or not having doubts. It's about recognizing that within which all phenomena. Or that's too fancy of a word. Everything is happening when you're.

[Rupert Spira]

When you're answering questions or when I'm answering questions. All I'm really doing is helping someone remove the obstacles to their recognition of their own being. I. I can't give them their being. I don't need to. It's present. But there is. In that moment of frustration or upset or hurt or what. Whatever it is, there is something that in their experience which seems to be obscuring their being. It's usually a mixture of thoughts and feelings. All I'm doing is. Is helping them trace, not. Not intellectually, but experientially trace their way back through this layer of thoughts and feelings back to their. To their being and what. And whatever that takes for each individual.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Rupert Spira]

And you're doing the same thing, Pete, when you are talking with people, winding them up with expectation and anticipation. And then you. You give them the punchline of the joke. You are skillfully bringing to an end this narrative that exists along the line of time. You're interrupting that narrative. In that interruption, your being briefly shines. You get a taste of your being and it tastes delicious. That's why you love. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That's why we go back. And I'm thoroughly addicted to it in a wonderful way. It's interesting, as you say that I'm like, there's so many movies and stories. We tell this story even if we're not in, quote, spiritual people. Harry Potter, he's actually a wizard. His parents are. He's not who he thinks he is. He lives under the stairs.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

He's confined and he's trapped he gets a letter. Just a hint. Your parents are actually these powerful wizards. You're more powerful than you can. Jason Bourne. Do you know, kind of the modern day James Bond. Jason Bourne has a journal in that movie and in big marker he writes, who am I? He's trying to figure out who he is, is. But he has a sense. He knows karate. Why do I know karate? He's more powerful. We like. We like making it power and agency and effect, but really don't. Do you see that we can't stop telling ourselves this story, even if we're not spiritual, religious, or even interested.

[Rupert Spira]

Oh, yes. Yeah. And everybody, even if they have no. No interest in these matters, everyone has brief glimpses of that true nature, really, on a daily basis, on the end of a thought, on the fulfillment of a desire, the experience of deep sleep and sometimes tremendous grief or heartbreak. Everybody has these moments when the narrative line of time on which they live their life is interrupted either by an experience that is so pleasant or so unpleasant that it just halts us. That's what we say when we say. It took my breath away. It brought me to a standstill. It blew my mind. All these expressions, they're expressions of when the horizontal line of the flow of experience that takes place on the horizontal line of time, it's briefly interrupted. And in that interruption, the vertical dimension of being shines.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. I would add to that. People say I'm dead. Like, that's a. That's a big one.

[Rupert Spira]

I'm dead. Exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

Something so amazing you go, I'm dead. Like you're not there.

[Rupert Spira]

Exactly. That's it. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've fallen deeply asleep whilst remaining awake. Exactly, exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. And just. Just in closing here, thank you so much for this time. I've absolutely loved it. It's been like. You use the analogy of a warm bath. I think that's such. That's one of my favorites is that the. That this stuff isn't a clinging or even a. An excellence or an a, A plus on a paper. It's. It's actually just this very natural relaxation into something very warm and familiar.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah, it's so familiar. It's so you don't have to cling on to. To it. It's with you. It's who you are. It's always with you.

[Pete Holmes]

It's inescapable. Yeah. Some people might not like inescapable because it kind of sounds like paranoia. But I go like, you can't leave it. You've never been apart from it and you can't leave it. Which brings us. We. It's not just with you. We talk about death on the show. It's. I think it's one of those things that people just go around and they have this unconscious dread. And so in closing. How fitting. Let's close on death. We've talked about the air in the vase and the wave being on the ocean and it. And it reaches its finale on the shore, but really nothing happens to it. Time being an illusion. I've heard some masters explain reality like this. They just go. The whole thing is just perceived as this life, but really it's all one pancake. Would you talk a little bit about death? Not, not just to. To be right or be interesting, but in the interest that people are listening, everybody listening has some fear or interest or concern.

[Rupert Spira]

All right, I'm going to answer the question in two parts, Pete, and for each one I'll use a different analogy. First of all, what happens to your essential being when you die? I would suggest it's exactly what happens to the space in your room when in 50 years time your home is. Is demolished.

[Pete Holmes]

What.

[Rupert Spira]

Something will happen to the walls and the furniture and the pictures and. But nothing will happen to the space. As you said earlier, it won't suddenly reunite with the vast space of the universe because it was never separate from it to begin with. So nothing will happen to our being when we, when we die. Being is eternal. Now. What will happen to the. To our accumulated experience? What will happen to the body and the mind as it fades, subsides, dissolves? Let's use another analogy. Consider the individual. Like a wave on the ocean. The ocean is the one vast being. Each of us individuals are like waves. And every wave. Wave has. Has a particular size, a particular shape, a particular age, and so on. So each, each wave is unique, as indeed all individuals are unique, although they're all made of the same water. So when, when we die, I would suggest that the wave subsides on the ocean. But the, the energies that went into the. That constituted the wave, they lose their integrity. The wave has disappeared. But the. It doesn't necessarily mean that the content of your mind is extinguished. When a wave dissolves on the ocean, the ripple. The energies that constituted the wave expand out into the ocean as ripples. And in that way the energies that constituted the wave are dispersed in the broader medium of the ocean. And in that sense, you could say the wave donates its energies to the ocean, which then become incorporated in the ocean. And I would suggest that although nothing happens to our being Nothing happens to the water out of which the wave is made. The energies of our mind and body, our accumulated experience, everything we've ever thought and felt and understood, all of that disperses into the broader medium of awareness in which all of our minds arise. And in a way, we donate the content of our life's experience to the broader medium of mind in which all humanity is immersed. And in that sense, we, we, we, we. We. We contribute our experience to humanity because all the. All the subsequent waves that develop on the ocean are. Are generated out of the ripples that exist on the ocean. So the ripples that are left over from our dissolving waves may find themselves part of a new wave down the line. So in that way. So what I'm trying to do is give a picture of two. Two things. One, that our being. Nothing happens to our being. That is eternal, it's changeless, ever present. But that the body and the mind are not. That the mind is not completely extinguished. That's a mind. It carries on its trajectory on the ocean of awareness. In the ocean of awareness.

[Pete Holmes]

So this is a very simple question, but I think you like simple questions. Is there anything to be afraid of? Should we be afraid of death?

[Rupert Spira]

No. No, we shouldn't be afraid of death. Because really, the recognition of the nature of our being being puts an end to the fear of death. Because we know that what we essentially are. We feel that what we essentially are, our being is not going to die. It remains as it is now. It's ever present. However, I. I do think it matters how we live and how we think and how we feel and how we behave. Because that's not going to come to an end when we die. The mind, it's not. If in the old materialistic model, where what we are was generated by the body, when the body comes to an end, that's it. Everything about you is extinguished. And then. Then if that's the case, it doesn't matter how you live. It doesn't. Your life doesn't matter. You're going to come to an end when you die. But I do think it matters how we live, how we think, how we act, how we feel, we behave. Because that carries on in some form. It carries on in the form of mind. So that's not a reason to fear death. But. But it's a reason for. To value life, for taking our life. For taking our life seriously. Valuing. We don't take our life seriously for that reason. We do so for a present reason. But. But I think there is a Consequence to how we live.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, there was. There was a. There was a cult in some TV show. I. I think it was. I forget what it's called on hbo. And the cult was like, so spiritual that they smoked cigarettes all the time. That was their practice to say, like, I'm not my body. None of this matters. There's. There's certain things like that in India too, where, where people are like, so disregarding of their life. That's the way. That's not what you're saying. You're saying there is something beautiful to. To God's dream. Let's make it. What you said is a little boy boy. Let's make God's dream as pleasant and beautiful as possible.

[Rupert Spira]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I like that. Well, Rupert, thank you very, very, very, very, very, very, very much.

[Rupert Spira]

Thank you, Pete. It's always a pleasure to be with you. See you, talk with you. Thank you.

[Pete Holmes]

Absolutely. I. Is there anything that I left. Do you have any unsatisfying feeling?

[Rupert Spira]

No, I'm just sorry. Sorry not to have met your daughter.

[Pete Holmes]

I know.

[Rupert Spira]

But apart from that, man, she's behaving very well today.

[Pete Holmes]

I know. I really wanted her to run in. Her name is Leela, which, you know, means the play of the universe, which is kind of talking about.

[Rupert Spira]

I remember. Lovely. Well, another occasion.

[Pete Holmes]

And I'll tell you one other thing about Leela, just because it'll make you smile. Valerie was like, can you stop working your non. Dual agenda into bedtime? Because when I'm. When I'm trying to calm my daughter down for sleep, I go. And I don't expect her to get it, but I just whisper to her. I'm like, you're like the space of this room. Look, your feelings and your thoughts, they all appear and disappear. And she falls right asleep. I think, even if she doesn't fully understand. You're like the space of this room. I think a 7 year old can understand that. It's very calming. And then Valerie teases me, she's like, you are always working your non. Dual stuff into bedtime. But I'm like, it's so calming. It's so beautiful. And this was such a gift, and you are a gift and I like you and I love you both. Thank you for doing this.

[Rupert Spira]

I like you and I love you too. It's a pleasure. Lovely to be with you. Thank you.

[Pete Holmes]

Perfect way to start my day. Thank you. And we'll plug everything that, you know, who cares now that show business. Thank you for doing it. We have the guests say, keep it crispy. It's not a trick, it's not a trap. It's just a way of. You do the sign off. You say, keep it crispy. It doesn't mean anything. Don't worry about it. Would you please say it?

[Rupert Spira]

Say. Say.

[Pete Holmes]

You say, keep it crispy.

[Rupert Spira]

Yeah, keep it crispy. Let's keep it crispy.

[Pete Holmes]

What a delight. I couldn't have thought of a better way to start my day. Thank you, Rupert.

[Rupert Spira]

Well, I couldn't think of a nice way to begin my evening in in the uk. So lovely to. Lovely to be with you.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, thank you, Rupert.

[Rupert Spira]

Bye for now.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay, bye. Bye.

[Rupert Spira]

Bye.