This is a curated selection of Rupert Spira quotes (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:
- Mind & Suffering Quotes
- Duality & Nonduality Quotes
- Self-Inquiry & Investigation Quotes
- Awareness & Consciousness Quotes
- ‘I’ & ‘I am’ Quotes
25 Rupert Spira Quotes on Inquiry, Awareness, Nonduality, & More
Rupert Spira Quotes on Mind & Suffering
“We’ve been educated by our culture from a very early age to believe that what I am is a thought, or a collection of thoughts and images, plus a cluster of bodily sensations. And, not only have we been told it, but our entire culture is subliminally feeding us this message all the time.” — Rupert Spira
“Mind is the activity of consciousness through which consciousness refracts itself into an apparent multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves. Thought refracts reality and makes it appear as time. Perception refracts reality and makes it appear as space. As such, time and space are simply how eternal, infinite consciousness appears when filtered through the limitations of a human mind. They are the illusion whose reality is consciousness.” — Rupert Spira
“Many of us have to suffer intensely before life pushes us to ask the fundamental questions … The experience of suffering is itself like a wake-up call telling us, ‘Stop! You have mistaken yourself.'” — Rupert Spira
“All suffering is resistance, and because awareness does not know the meaning of the word ‘resistance’, awareness knows no suffering.” — Rupert Spira
“You, awareness, cannot have a problem because you offer no resistance to anything … All our psychological problems are problems for the imaginary self. If they’re traced back to their origin, it always comes down to mistaking ourselves for a cluster of thoughts, and images, and sensations.” — Rupert Spira
Rupert Spira Quotes on Duality & Nonduality
“Nonduality is not just a philosophy. It’s a philosophy that relates to an actual experience, the experience of our shared oneness with all beings and all things.” — Rupert Spira
“‘Duality’ is the belief that experience is divided into two essential ingredients: 1) mind on the inside (out of which my thoughts, images, and feelings are made), and 2) matter on the outside (out of which objects, others, and the world are made). This basic duality between mind and matter is the foundation of our world culture.” — Rupert Spira
“What is meant by ‘nonduality’ is that in reality the distinction between mind and matter doesn’t exist. There is a fundamental underlying reality of which the inside self (made out of mind) and the outside world (made out of matter) partake from which they derive their apparently separate existence.” — Rupert Spira
“‘Nonduality’ refers to the recognition that what we essentially are behind this seeming multiplicity and diversity of objects, and others, and selves is this single indivisible reality … In the nondual understanding, which is the essence of all the great religious and spiritual teachings, there is this recognition that underlying all the multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves is this single indivisible shared being.” — Rupert Spira
“The direct path, which is really the essence of the nondual approach, doesn’t involve going through a series of steps purifying the mind and the body before it finally reaches the goal of fulfillment or enlightenment. It’s based on the recognition that we are, right now, already the essential, unlimited, infinite presence of awareness.” — Rupert Spira
Rupert Spira Quotes on Self-Inquiry & Investigation
“The nondual tradition starts with this investigation into our essential nature. What is it that we refer to as ‘I’? … Why don’t I look at the fundamental presumption, and that starts with what am I?” — Rupert Spira
“Spiritual life is not complex. It’s not about lots of different ideas, lots of different experiences. It’s really about one thing, and when this becomes clear, it focuses our interest and our love for the truth. What am I really, and what is the nature of this aware presence that I am?” — Rupert Spira
“There can be no higher endeavor nor any greater knowledge than to know the nature of the mind through which all knowledge and experience are known.” — Rupert Spira
“If we make a deep investigation as to what this ‘I’ is, we just find the experience of being aware or awareness itself … The separate self that we have invested our whole identity in is being exposed in this investigation as being completely non-existent. It’s not there.” — Rupert Spira
“Every time we make this investigation into ourself, into the nature of our being, we erode the old habit of believing and feeling that we are a cluster of thoughts, images, feelings, memories, sensations, perceptions, activities, and relationships. These are things that we are aware of, they are not what we are. When everything that can be removed from us is removed from us, what remains is just the simple fact of being aware or awareness itself. Everything that we are aware of appears, exists for a while, and vanishes. The fact of being aware, or awareness itself, alone remains consistently present throughout all changing experience.” — Rupert Spira
Rupert Spira Quotes on Awareness & Consciousness
“Awareness, or the fact of being aware, is not something that we become as a result of this investigation. It is not something that requires effort, or practice, or discipline. It is what each of us already and always essentially is, but most of us overlook ourself because we have allowed ourself to become so thoroughly entangled in the content of our experience.” — Rupert Spira
“We, awareness, are not just the the knower or the witness of experience, we are the medium or the space within which all experience arises … We, awareness, know that our peace and our sense of wholeness or fulfillment is not dependent upon what does or does not happen in experience.” — Rupert Spira
“Consciousness is that which knows the experience of being itself. Or, more simply, consciousness is that which knows the experience of being.” — Rupert Spira
“I have no idea what consciousness is, but we don’t need to say what it is because it is what we are … We don’t have to know what it is, but we know that it is. It’s an undeniable experience in this very moment that there is something present now which is conscious.” — Rupert Spira
“Nobody has ever, could ever, or will ever find anything outside the knowing of experience, that is outside consciousness, because all experience appears in consciousness, is known by consciousness, and is made of consciousness.” — Rupert Spira
Rupert Spira Quotes on ‘I’ & ‘I am’
“The first step is the recognition ‘I am awareness’. The second step is the recognition of the nature of the awareness that I am … There is this recognition that the essential nature of what we are is unlimited self-aware being … It’s more to do with recognizing what we are than becoming something new.” — Rupert Spira
“Before we know anything about ourself. we know that I am. That is beyond doubt. It is self-evident. We may not know what I am, but we know that I am … Nobody can deny right now the experience ‘I am aware’. We don’t believe ‘I am aware’. We don’t think ‘I am aware’. We all know for absolute certain ‘I am aware.’” — Rupert Spira
“If our own mind turns its knowing upon itself and sinks its attention deeper, and deeper, and deeper into the source of its own knowing, at some point there is this revelation: the knowing with which I know my experience is eternal and infinite, and everything I experience is made of that.” — Rupert Spira
“What are we essentially? We are obviously that which is aware of experience … I am aware of my thoughts. I am aware of my feelings. I am aware, I am aware, I am aware. It pervades all experience. The experience of simply being aware. The only experience that never disappears. The only experience that never moves or changes. The only experience that doesn’t appear, grow old, or disappear. This simple experience of being aware.” — Rupert Spira
“‘I’ is the name that whatever it is that knows itself gives to itself … ‘I’ indicates this the ever-present element in all changing experience … The ‘I’ in each of us is God’s infinite being. The very knowing with which each of us is now knowing their experience is God’s knowing.” — Rupert Spira
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