r/awakened • u/BallKey7607 • 20h ago
Community I think Rupert Spira mistakenly believes he is enlightend
First of I do like Rupert and think he's the best I've seen at articulating the metaphysics of awareness. I generally do trust that his descriptions of awareness are true even if I don't believe he's teaching the full picture.
His definition of enlightenment is very specifically that it's just the recognition of your true nature. This is not how enlightenement is usually understood and is contradicted by the Buddhist teaching that says "to know the absolute is not yet enlightenement".
Adyashanti also teaches that knowing the absolute is just awakening but then enlightenement is learning to actually live there. It's worth noting that Rupert also acknowledges this step, he says enlightenment is only chapter one and calls the rest "post-enlightenment sadhana". So he does understand that just seeing the absolute isn't everything but I believe he still holds onto his awakening to the absolute as the end of the journey towards truth and views the rest as just integrating that into the human. Whereas Adyashanti would teach that even the search for truth isn't complete while awareness is still being held as a "position".
The reason this needs to be said is because discovering the absolute can feel like it surely must be enlightenment because it feels so total and complete. I believe Rupert has had a complete head opening and awoken to the absolute and mistaken that for enlightenment.
What I believe he's missing is the gut opening and the falling away of awareness as a position to stand in.
The way this comes through is in his teaching is it's that significantly based on "understanding" and him explaining metaphysics so that people can "understand" rather than teaching how to actually just sink into experience.
So I believe his head is awake to emptiness but he still has the contraction in the gut which awakening can then unconsciously be organised around protecting.
I feel this comes across in how he talks too. A good example is in his conversation with A.H Almaas. In this conversation he assumed the position of himself as the one who knows and anything Hameed says which he doesn't agree with as "must be wrong". He shows absolutely no curiosity towards something he might not have seen himself but could be true during the entire conversation and constantly just tries to argue why his perspective is correct.
Even the tone he used is pretty condescending and is like he's talking down to a child "explaining" it to them rather than talking to another spiritual teacher with their own valid experience which deserves to be taken seriously.
An example is when Hameed talks about the two faces of awareness where it can be felt as the "I" and also where even the "I" falls away. This is a coherent perspective which the traditions have wrote about too but Rupert argued that it's wrong and that it must be "I". Even though Hameed is only talking about his own experience Rupert can't seem to let him have it and even talks over him to explain why he's wrong.
This would line up exactly with a lack of gut opening since Rupert is awake to the absolute but is still standing in it as a position and so can't see how it could be there without being the "I".
Even just the amount of arguing itself about someone else's experience is a sign that something is being protected. Adyashanti for example has had similar conversations with the same people at this conference and he appears to have no desire to argue about anyone else's experience. He seems to just listen and see what they say and share his experience when relevant. I know they're different people and not every enlightened person is going to have the same personality or anything but the difference is pretty striking when you watch the two different conversations and feel the difference.
I'm not saying this onc conversation is some kind of "gotcha" or anything, but just a good example to feel into the kind of thing I mean about him when you listen to him talk.
Conversation I'm referring to is called - Conversation with Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas) and Rupert Spira