Rupert Spira Podcast

In this episode Simon Mundie hosts a conversation between Rupert Spira and Bernardo Kastrup.

Simon opens this wide-ranging and far-reaching dialogue by stating that most people’s everyday, ordinary experience is that they are themselves an entity that happens to contain a mind, within a world of entities.

The two-hour conversation that follows is all about how this so-called common-sense perspective is, in fact, false.

Bernardo has two PhDs, one in computer science and another in philosophy. He was employed first at CERN, the European council for nuclear research, where he began working in artificial intelligence (AI) in connection with the Large Hadron Collider. Then he moved on to artificial consciousness (AC), wondering if he could build an artificially conscious entity, which piqued his interest in philosophy.

Simon Mundie is the host of the podcast 'Life Lessons: From Sport and Beyond’, which explores life's bigger questions.

Moderated again by host Steve James, Rupert and award-winning poet and author Henry Shukman pick up their discussion from a few months earlier. Here they discuss the practice of art and its connection with spirituality.

Amidst sharing observations on one another’s artistic evolution, they discuss in depth their respective apprenticeships. At first artistic, then spiritual, the training for both men involved total immersion in traditional forms and, crucially, surrender to a master teacher. They consider such lengthy, one-to-one training in relation to their desire to make the teaching available to large numbers of people. Is it possible to go deeply with those few who are interested and, simultaneously, widely to many?

Regarding what makes impactful spiritual art, they concur that artists with great humanity can enter very deeply into the whole human drama with powerful empathy and understanding, and thereby convey what is eternal and universal.

This conversation covers several complex topics. It is a deep dive into matters such as the sharing of our being, how to love those who are causing pain and war, infinite consciousness’s experience of itself, and much more.

Bernardo has two PhDs, one in computer science and another in philosophy. He was employed first at CERN, the European council for nuclear research, where he began working in artificial intelligence (AI) in connection with the Large Hadron Collider. Then he moved on to artificial consciousness (AC), wondering if which inspired him to ponder whether he could build an artificially conscious entity and piqued his interest in philosophy.

In this latest Rupert Spira Podcast episode, Rupert joins David Chuter from Watkins Mind Body Spirit magazine for an eye-opening conversation about finding inner peace and lasting happiness, to mark the publication of Rupert's new book You Are the Happiness You Seek.

Watkins Mind Body Spirit magazine is a quarterly esoteric magazine published by Watkins Books in London. Like the famous bookshop (established over 100 years ago), the magazine covers a wide range of subjects from contemporary spirituality and self development to mysticism and Eastern philosophy.

In this episode, questioners ask if expressing emotions is a good spiritual practice; if there are positive aspects of the separate self; who is the self that seeks happiness; and whether identification with the ‘I’ of experience is actually a subtle layer of the separate self.

These dialogues are taken from Rupert Spira’s November 2019 weekend in Copenhagen, Sharing Our Being,and December 2019 retreat in Wales, Being Myself. For audio and video recordings of the full retreats and the entire library of Rupert Spira’s recordings and publications, as well as information about attending live and streamed events, please visit rupertspira.com.

The perennial, non-dual understanding that lies at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions – Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Sufism, Taoism and Zen, among others – allows us to investigate the essential nature of our experience. In the simple knowing of our own being, we discover the source of the peace and happiness for which all people long above all else.