Rupert Spira and Swami Sarvapriyananda discuss nondual consciousness. The conversation is moderated by Rick Archer of Buddha at the Gas Pump.
A precious meeting of the hearts and minds of three very wise and loving people (including moderator Rick). Swami ji and Rupert are wonderful and very clear teachers, who can bring out the very best in all of us.
Soul erosion is a gradual process—a slow, creeping, chipping away of our inner being, resulting in the inevitable death of all we know to be our truest selves. It’s a disease that begins in childhood and spreads contagiously, especially in women. Its symptoms include loss of power, authenticity, voice, and vision. Soul erosion is essentially an obliteration of our inner knowing. Each incident in which we suppress our inner truth, we engage in the erosion of our most precious treasure—our essence.
A Radical Awakening: Turn Pain into Power, Embrace Your Truth, Live Free
Vedanta is to know man as he really is, and this is its message, that if you cannot worship your brother man, the manifested God, how can you worship a God who is unmanifested?
Do you not remember what the Bible says, “If you cannot love your brother whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you have not seen?” If you cannot see God in the human face, how can you see him in the clouds, or in images made of dull, dead matter, or in mere fictitious stories of our brain? I shall call you religious from the day you begin to see God in men and women, and then you will understand what is meant by turning the left cheek to the man who strikes you on the right. When you see man as God, everything, even the tiger, will be welcome. Whatever comes to you is but the Lord, the Eternal, the Blessed One, appearing to us in various forms, as our father, and mother, and friend, and child — they are our own soul playing with us.
Jesus speaks of the innermost I Am, the essence identity of every man and woman, every life-form, in fact. He speaks of the life that you are. Some Christian mystics have called it the Christ within; Buddhists call it your Buddha nature; for Hindus, it is Atman, the indwelling God. When you are in touch with that dimension within yourself—and being in touch with it is your natural state, not some miraculous achievement—all your actions and relationships will reflect the oneness with all life that you sense deep within. This is love.