This is a curated selection of Rupert Spira quotes on free will (primarily sourced from publicly available videos, and personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Rupert Spira’s books (Amazon).
Page Contents:
- Thought & Afterthought Quotes
- Responsibility Quotes
- Relative Free Will
- Absolute Freedom
- John Smith & King Lear Quotes
25 Rupert Spira Quotes on Free Will
Rupert Spira Quotes on Thoughts & Afterthoughts
“The first thing we would do if we could control our thoughts would be to choose for our thoughts to be totally okay with what’s going on … Just that should be enough to persuade anybody, everybody, that they don’t control their thoughts … What’s important is to realize that if we don’t choose our thoughts and therefore the actions that follow those thoughts, then nobody else does either.” — Rupert Spira
“The important question is not whether I choose or not, it’s who is this ‘I’ that may or may not choose? … The deeper question is whether you are a separate entity either to have free will or not to have free will.” — Rupert Spira
“No thought is chosen. All thoughts just appear … Choices arise in infinite awareness.” — Rupert Spira
“There is an activity of choosing, but there’s no actual chooser … There is a choosing thought, but there is no chooser … The choice is the thought. There is no chooser of the thought … Choice is an interpretation of an experience in which there is actually no choice.” — Rupert Spira
“It is a thought that attributes a choice to an apparently separate self … The ‘I’ is always an afterthought; it is never present in the action itself … The notion of a chooser is simply itself a thought which appears retrospectively. The thought says, ‘I was there in between each thought choosing it.’” — Rupert Spira
Rupert Spira Quotes on Responsibility
“There is nobody who is personally responsible for their personal conditioning.” — Rupert Spira
“We have been conditioned by our parents, our communities, our nations. We have been conditioned to feel we are separate selves. We are not personally responsible for feeling that we are personal people, for feeling that we are separate selves.” — Rupert Spira
“The personal conditioning of each of our minds is not simply the product of each of our minds. For instance, your mind is conditioned to speak English. You were conditioned by your culture to speak English. You are not personally responsible for the fact that you speak English. You were conditioned by something that is much bigger than your own mind to speak English, although the fact that you speak English is a personal conditioning of your mind … And, that goes for all the conditioning of all of our minds.” — Rupert Spira
“There’s no individual agent inside the body orchestrating the activities of that particular body and mind … There’s no entity that is responsible for a behavior. A behavior is a response that has been conditioned. The thoughts and feelings that lead to a behavior are just a result of that person’s conditioning, plus genetics, plus whatever it is that conditions any single action. But, there’s no individual responsible. There’s no personal responsibility.” — Rupert Spira
“Strangely, understanding this doesn’t make us behave in irresponsible ways. It’s when we believe there is personal responsibility that we find ourselves behaving in irresponsible ways. When we feel, ‘I am a separate person,’ it is that feeling that gives rise to irresponsible behavior … It’s the apparent presence of the separate self that makes us behave in irresponsible ways. When the sense of separation goes, our behavior is in line with the totality and serves the totality.” — Rupert Spira
Rupert Spira Quotes on Relative Free Will
“The mind is not, strictly speaking, an entity that may or may not have free will or make choices. It is the activity of thinking and perceiving. There’s no actual entity there. There’s no independently existing entity called ‘the finite mind’ … You’re under the illusion that you are a finite mind that may or may not have a choice.” — Rupert Spira
“The separate self, by definition, feels that it is choosing … The free will that the finite mind feels that it has is an echo of the only real freedom there is which is the freedom of consciousness echoing in our mind and being experienced as personal free will.” — Rupert Spira
“The nature of consciousness is freedom. Whether or not we have free will is really a moot question because there’s ultimately no separate entity either to have free will or not. Consciousness itself is freedom. At a relative level, that freedom shows up in each of our minds as the freedom to choose. So, at the individual level, we do feel that we have free will.” — Rupert Spira
“The illusion of free will is an inevitable consequence of believing yourself to be a temporary, finite consciousness. In other words, the belief of being a temporary finite consciousness is really the root of the illusion of free will. So, as long as that fundamental belief remains in place, then it’s inevitable that you will feel you have free will. Even if you impose on yourself the idea that you don’t really have free will, because the separate self is still intact, you will really feel as if you do.” — Rupert Spira
“Personal free will is an illusion, but it’s not unreal. It’s not what it appears to be, but there is a reality to it. There is something true about our belief that we have free will. What is that? It is the fact that our true nature, consciousness, is pure freedom. And therefore, there is something real about our intuition that we have free will. When we assign that free will to an individual, that’s the illusory part of it.” — Rupert Spira
Rupert Spira Quotes on Absolute Freedom
“The more deeply identified we are with our thoughts, feelings, activities, relationships, the more opaque our mind is (the less in touch it is) with its essence of pure consciousness and therefore it’s essential freedom. But the more transparent the mind is to its essence, the more it is in touch with its original and innate freedom.” — Rupert Spira
“Ultimately, everything is an act of universal consciousness simply because that’s all there really is. There is nothing else present, or no one else present, to whom any action or thought could be attributed. The one does everything … The one that is doing the thinking is the only one that is: infinite awareness.” — Rupert Spira
“There is just the freedom of the one. And this is reflected in each of our minds as the deep conviction that we all have: that we have freedom … We all feel at the deepest level that we are free.” — Rupert Spira
“At the deepest level, our nature is pure consciousness or pure awareness, and pure awareness is inherently free … Consciousness is free, inherently free, by definition because there’s nothing in consciousness other than consciousness with which its inherent freedom could be bound or limited. The nature of reality is freedom.” — Rupert Spira
“I don’t think everything is predetermined. I think God is more like a jazz musician than a classical musician. It’s not reading from a score that’s fixed, it’s improvisation … From the point of view of awareness, which is the only real point of view, there are infinite possibilities available at every moment, so there is complete freedom.” — Rupert Spira
Rupert Spira Quotes on John Smith & King Lear
“Does King Lear have free will or not? But, the real question is who is King Lear? Is there a character called King Lear either to have free will or not to have free will? If you discover who King Lear is, the question of free will and all the other questions will take care of itself.” — Rupert Spira
“It’s not that individual free will is illusory, it’s that the individual is illusory. Whether or not that individual has free will is like asking, ‘Does King Lear have free will?’ There is no character, there is no person, called ‘King Lear’. It’s John Smith dressed up … If the character is an illusion, then there’s no question of it asking a question (about free will) … There is no freedom in the actors lines, but the essence of the actor is totally free. As long as the actor is identified with her role, to that extent she gives up her freedom.” — Rupert Spira
“If John Smith has completely lost himself to King Lear’s part, then he is bound to King Lear’s life, to King Lear’s relationships, to King Lear’s feelings, to King Lear’s thoughts—and there’s very little freedom there. However, to the extent to which King Lear is transparent to the fact ‘I am John Smith’, to that extent he feels his innate freedom—and although he may continue to play the part of King Lear, he feels in his heart that he is free and not bound by his experience … We are not free to the extent of the depth of our identification with King Lear. And, correspondingly, the more transparent King Lear is to his true nature, John Smith, the more he feels his freedom.” — Rupert Spira
“The moment John Smith has the recognition ‘I am John Smith,’ his suffering leaves him because his suffering arose on account of his belief and feeling ‘I am King Lear.’ That’s what’s called enlightenment. It’s very important to understand that it is not King Lear who becomes enlightened, nor is enlightenment an experience that takes place in King Lear’s life. It has nothing whatsoever to do with King Lear. It is simply the recognition ‘I am John Smith,’ and that recognition is accompanied by peace and happiness because that is the nature of John Smith.” — Rupert Spira
“You’re an actor (John Smith) and you play the part of King Lear. You watch what King Lear is doing and what King Lear is thinking and feeling. You watch his actions and his relationships, but you don’t watch them from the distance of someone in the audience. You watch them from the inside because you are playing the part of King Lear. You’re involved, but you’re not involved. You’re one with everything he thinks and feels, all his actions and relationships. You participate fully in his life, you’re one with his life, but you’re watching it from the inside. You’re participating and watching at the same time, but you’re not implicated by what happens. You’re free.” — Rupert Spira
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