When the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready…the teacher will disappear.
– Tao Te Ching
About a year ago, I stumbled upon a video by Rupert Spira on the non-dual approach called The Direct Path, and I immediately recognized I had found my teacher. (He does not know it yet! Haha!)
This was a clear and contemporary articulation of Advaita Vedanta, in the spirit of self-inquiry that Ramana Maharshi had taught more than a century ago, pursuing the singular question: Who Am I?
The Direct Path provides an experiential understanding that resolves two vexing questions at once: what is the source and means for lasting peace and happiness? And, what is the nature of reality? Seemingly disparate on the face of it, the answer to both questions surprisingly happens to be the same.
I did not stumble upon The Direct Path at a time of my lowest lows but interestingly it came into my life after I had begun to slowly wake up from the daze and shock of losing my brother.
The practice that gave me some energy initially to feel alive again, to find a footing of sorts after the ground beneath my feet had been yanked away, was chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. After I had been able to say yes to life, in spite of everything.
It was the chanting that brought an initial energetic shift – giving me the courage to meet the challenges of life rather than wishing them away – and it was followed by a few small but significant tangible changes that gave me confidence. So it was on my way up that I came across the video by Rupert Spira and it immediately felt like I was ready for this teaching now. Just as the chanting was exactly what I had needed a couple of months earlier.
It is really interesting when you come across something valuable in your life and you ask “Why did I not have this earlier? Could I not have saved myself so much trouble and not wasted so much time?” There is no easy answer. Perhaps one might have, but then maybe not. Why things seem to happen when they do may have something to do with being ready.
This notion of readiness is a curious thing; it makes sense when one sees life as an organic unfolding rather than as a linear trajectory driven by our will trying to move it to some predetermined outcome. There are seasons in our lives: they come, stay for a while, and then move on to reveal the next season. The why of this mystical process is not as important though as the welcoming acceptance of it as it happens. In the absence of that readiness, the same message would simply not have the same impact.
What struck me about Rupert Spira’s teaching was that it was accessible in terms of language while plumbing the depths of the non-dual approach. I had read a fair bit of Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj, so the concepts and process of self-enquiry in the Advaitic tradition were not entirely new. What was novel was the clarity of expression and the experiential aspect of “understanding”, which moved it beyond a conceptual grasp to a direct knowing of our essential self.
For a large part of my life, I had been immersed in the teachings of J Krishnamurti, who famously proclaimed that “truth is a pathless land.”
I noticed that K’s teachings tended to create a lot of discontent but didn’t bring about an energetic shift to resolve it. There was more often than not a stuckness, a point beyond which there was the need for a leap that wouldn’t come. That was my experience, and I noticed the same stuckness in a lot of people who had given their lives to living K’s teachings.
Reading Ramana Maharshi’s Nan Yar? (Who am I?) brought about a shift in my understanding of self-enquiry. It is not quite outward-directed towards one’s thoughts and feelings (why that is “outward” is part of the understanding) through “choiceless awareness” as I had tended to do earlier, but more inward-directed towards the “self” that is aware of those thoughts and feelings, and sinking into the heart of it until both the illusion and truth of that “self” are revealed and self-evident.
It is like dropping an anchor and watching the anchor sink effortlessly on its own.
There is a very interesting phenomena called the Streetlight Effect:
Often our search for happiness is similar. We look for it where we think we may find it despite knowing it is the wrong place! This could be in work, relationships, activities, experiences, substances, and so on. As one might expect, this search is frustrating because it is ultimately futile.
Rupert Spira points out that we tend to search for happiness in the content of our experience and this is doomed to failure because it is the wrong place. All things in that content are transient – they will end – and hence cannot provide lasting peace and happiness.
An interesting insight that emerges from Spira’s teaching is what explains the few moments of happiness that we seem to experience when we do obtain the object of our desire. We mistakenly ascribe the happiness to the object obtained, and hence we go in search of it again, with renewed vigor, though it is essentially the chasing of a mirage.
Pallavi Mahajan brings this out quite beautifully in her spoken poem Sukoon Ki Talaash Mein as she finally ends with the compassionate and wise advice: you are peace, stop searching for it and thus know what it is! The knowing is in the cessation of the search. I am not sure if she is a student of Advaita but she hit the nail on the head with this one!
So the happiness we seem to experience with the attainment of the object we chase is not inherent to the object but is the underlying essential nature of ourselves that is revealed when the agitated mind becomes quiet with the fulfilment of the desire.
With this understanding, we can direct our attention to that which already and eternally is, rather than on that which is transient and fleeting.
How do I access this happiness?
You are this happiness! You cannot access yourself; you are yourself! Simply cease investing your happiness in objective experience and a causeless joy will begin to emerge from the
depths of yourself. If objective experience could fulfil your desire for happiness, you would not be interested in these matters. In fact, you are interested in these matters precisely because objective experience has failed to provide you with the peace and happiness for which you long above all else.Consider the possibility that happiness cannot be provided by objective experience but that it is the nature of yourself. It is because you demand that objects and people make you happy that you are always disappointed in them. Withdraw that demand and not only will your life become much more enjoyable and people much more lovable, it will begin to be pervaded by the inherent peace of your true nature.
– Rupert Spira, The Recognition of Our Essential Nature
When we read the above, we might think of “you” as the person (name, form, story). Hence, the suggestion that this person’s true nature is happiness – in the face of so much overwhelming evidence to the contrary – might seem ridiculous! It is ridiculous only because of a sense of mistaken identity.
Self-inquiry then is the effortless undertaking to discover experientially the illusion of who we think we are, and what our true nature is.
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