I recently watched a deeply moving episode of the Know Thyself podcast featuring Rupert Spira, and it left me, once again, swimming in that vast inner ocean of wonder—where science, spirituality, and direct experience swirl into one cosmic dance. Rupert, ever so gently, lays down the central insight that has illuminated the path of mystics across ages: “If you want to know the nature of reality, you have to know the nature of yourself. It’s the only way.”
And if you'd like to watch the
full conversation that inspired this post, I encourage you to do so here:
👉 Watch the full
“Know Thyself” podcast with Rupert Spira
As someone devoted to the unfolding journey of awakening—one guided by the radiant footprints of Jesus, Adi Shankara, Nisargadatta Maharaj, and my beloved Paramahansa Yogananda—this conversation was like balm for my soul. It wasn't just philosophy. It was direct pointing: a transmission, not merely information.
Rupert speaks of the wound we all carry—the longing etched deep in the heart for something we can’t quite name but know intimately. “If we didn’t know the taste of happiness, we wouldn’t know what to seek.” That longing, he says, is the memory of our eternity. Yogananda might have said it this way: “You are walking on the earth as in a dream. Our task is to awaken.”
And I’ve come to see this too: we are each the Infinite temporarily wearing the costume of finitude. We are the lighthouse looking for its own light, blind to the fact that what we seek is already who we are. The Sufis captured it well: “Whosoever knows their self knows their Lord.” This is not religious dogma. This is mystic science.
There’s a remarkable honesty in Rupert’s words when he dismantles the myth of Enlightenment as some exotic state available only to mystics in Himalayan caves. The “I am”—what Nisargadatta called “the first and last word”—is ever-present, waiting patiently beneath every flicker of thought, every sorrow, every pleasure, every breath.
“Who am I?” Adi Shankara asked not as a riddle but as a doorway. Not this body. Not this thought. Not even this subtle mind. I am the witness of all these. I am awareness itself—whole, indivisible, untouched by the content of experience.
Rupert echoed this beautifully: the mind cannot know awareness, only awareness can know itself. And when we ask awareness, “Who are you?” it replies with the only truth it knows: “I am.”
In that moment, the seeking collapses.
This vision that Rupert shares—that the universe is like a dream in the Universal Mind of Consciousness—is an idea that finds home in my heart. The great yogic tradition calls this maya, and it doesn’t mean illusion as deception, but illusion as misidentification. As Yogananda once wrote, “The wave forgets it is the sea.”
And yet, Consciousness dreams not to be lost, but to rediscover itself—again and again—through our eyes, our hearts, our joy, and yes, even our suffering. Spira says, “Consciousness pays for manifestation with its innate happiness.” That is the crucifixion and resurrection writ across the arc of every soul’s journey.
I can’t help but feel that
this mirrors what Lalleshwari, the great Kashmiri mystic, once sang:
“With love and devotion I am joined
to my Self. There is no separation now.”
One of the most practical implications of this teaching—and one of the most beautiful—is that true morality doesn’t need to be taught. As St. Augustine put it, “Love and do what you will.” When we see others not as others but as extensions of our own being, love becomes spontaneous. Forgiveness becomes natural. Service becomes joy.
Nisargadatta Maharaj once said, “Wisdom is knowing I am nothing, love is knowing I am everything, and between the two, my life flows.” And so it has been for me. The more I abide in awareness, the less I need to extract from the world. The more I discover the joy of simply sharing my being—whether with a loved one or a stranger on the street.
I smiled when Rupert said his own awakening wasn’t marked by a grand experience, but by a gradual quieting. No trumpets. No fireworks. Just a slow unraveling of misidentification. I, too, have found that the more I release, the more remains. The ego doesn't die in dramatic spectacle—it just slowly stops pretending to be real.
The danger of turning these teachings into intellectual trophies is real. But Spira reminds us: the highest teaching is silence. Not the absence of sound, but the presence of being.
If you’ve made it this far, dear reader, then perhaps your own longing is speaking. I invite you, not to adopt a belief, but to pause. Right now. Turn attention inward. Notice that which is aware of these words. That still, silent, boundless presence. That is you. That is I Am.
Let your meditation become abidance. Let your abidance become living.
And if you'd like to watch the
full conversation that inspired this post, I encourage you to do so here:
👉 Watch the full
“Know Thyself” podcast with Rupert Spira
As a fellow traveler on this path—a soul dancing between the worlds of science and spirit—I offer you this: There is nothing to become. There is only something to remember. The remembering of your infinite self, your true nature, your eternal joy.
As Yogananda said, “You do not have to acquire divine qualities. You already have them. You only have to remove the negative coverings.”
Let’s help each other remove them.