Get Started On The Transparency Of Things: Contemplating The Nature Of Experience Authored By Rupert Spira Released As Paper Edition

is a primer, a virtual consciousness for dummies, It will take many hour of contemplation on the very things he sights in this book, Excellent read. This is a step beyond mindfulness meditation, If you want to begin to understand the nature of our "I am" then this is a book for you.
Watching his YouTube videos will begin to put these concepts in context, This book is the technical companion to many moments for loving contemplations, Amazing short essays with the ability to transport a person into a state of deep presence and tranquillity.
.stars. This is the third book Ive read of his this year and with each book my understanding deepens.
He has a way with a metaphor like nobody else, demonstrating perfectly the meaning of nonduality through the metaphor and making something that seems difficult to understand suddenly illuminated with clarity by it.
The man is a genius, Now onto book number four, The Nature of consciousness, A contemplative masterpiece to be devoured a few lines at a time, Spira shares observations on the nature of consciousness and its relation to the self.
A powerful book but probably one that requires quite a bit of previous work and understanding on the reader's part to appreciate.
One of the most clear teachers of Non duality

Clarity is the strength of the teachings of Rupert Spira.
With this clarity it kills all doubts that arise in mind I started reading this book high expectations, since Rupert is an amazing teaching and one of the modern lights of contemporary 'nondual' spirituality.
He has a number of means and methods by which he introduces this teaching to his students in person and in talks and retreats.
However, this books seems to be a collection of writings that have been put together with an overall focus on awareness and the nature of experience as he sees it.
Read in the right frame of mind such as after a retreat or meditative session it can be really helpful.
Read in a 'normal' frame of everyday mind, it gets repetitive, laborious and boring very fast, I happened to be reading another of his books 'Essays in Consciousness' at around the same time, and I really couldn't tell the difference between either book in any way.
I prefer his shorter treatise "Being Aware of Being Aware", which cuts to the point and isn't as long or repetitive.
I know that RS has many, many talks, writings and even yoga type audios, so I'd advise people to check those out before dumping his work due to this or some of his other more bland writings.
This is really a 'love it or leave it' type of book, IMO, and not practical in any way whatsoever, but serves more as a gateway into the sort of experience and taste of 'awareness' that RS is trying to convey in his teachings overall.
The purpose of Rupert's book is to look clearly and simply at the nature of experience, without any attempt to change it.
A series of contemplations lead us gently but directly to see that our essential nature is neither a body nor a mind.
It is the conscious Presence that is aware of this current experience, As such it is nothing that can be experienced as an object and yet it is undeniably present.
However, these contemplations go much further than this, As we take our stand knowingly as this conscious Presence that we always already are, and reconsider the objects of the body, mind and world, we find that they do not simply appear to this Presence, they appear within it.
And further exploration reveals that they do not simply appear within this Presence but as this Presence.
Finally we are led to see that it is in fact this very Presence itself that takes the shape of our experience from moment to moment whilst always remaining only itself.
We see that our experience is and has only ever been one seamless totality with no separate entities or objects anywhere to be found.
Another brilliant work by a genius, Sanity on every page.

Best read a chapter at a time, as each conveys the same general idea in a slightly different way.
Probably also best if you've watched some of Spira's videos on Youtubesomething about the oral question and answer format, and the urgency of the questioner, conveys the ideas in a fuller way than they are here, especially if you're unfamiliar with NonDualism.


As a series of short reflections this is excellent, This is one of the clearest nondual texts I've ever had the pleasure to read, It is always on the table by my reading chair, Some time ago I gave this book a five star rating, years after having read the book.
It was the first book I read by Spira and I was delighted by how clearly he explained nonduality in plain English, to the point that I felt like exclaiming, "Why on earth didn't any of the other teachers explain it like this" It almost seemed as though others had deliberately mystified and obfuscated something that Spira was showing to be blindingly obvious and terribly simple once properly explained, and that anyone with basic intelligence could comprehend it if motivated to do so.
Either that or these other teachers really hadn't grasped nonduality themselves and therefore had no hope of conveying an understanding to their students.


Yet that idea didn't solve the conundrum either since some notable teachers of nonduality I previously investigated are considered to be highly self realised but still didn't convey the teaching in a way that I easily connected with through this book by Spira, a refined, Etoneducated but otherwise uncharismatic and seemingly "ordinary" Englishman as seen in his videos.
Consequently I felt a sense of being very grateful and cheated at the same time!

I've continued to find Spira's teaching very valuable, reading all of his books and watching most of the videos.
I appreciate the fact that over the ensuing years he hasn't been seduced into allowing himself to be elevated into an ostentatious, selfaggrandising guru roleno special clothes, hats, titles, thrones, wreaths, rituals, treatment etc.
No cult of personality. No grandiose claims of being a world saviour or avatar! What a relief, He's remained very "ordinary" and grounded despite becoming well known, This for me is a refreshingly rare sign of personal and spiritual maturity,

My only complaint is that he charges fixed fees even for his online events, which is insensitive to the fact of extreme inequality and excludes those who simply cannot pay, however modest the fee may be for the online events.
This is a serious issue, Although some would say that as a spiritual teacher he should not be charging fees at all, but only relying on whatever donations come, I appreciate that being able to engage in this teaching as his main occupation and hiring premises for retreats means a level of financial planning that may not work with the uncertainty of donations only.
But online events cost very little and I can't see any reasonable justification for excluding people on the basis of their financial situation, especially in an environment where many people are struggling to maintain the basics of life, and some, through no fault of their own, are even failing to do that, including in obscenely unequal advanced Western countries.


I do appreciate the many free videos on You Tube that Rupert provides as well as his several books which are inexpensive on Kindle.
However, I feel that on principle no one should ever be excluded from spiritual teaching events, where at all possible, such as online, based solely on their ability to pay.
Spira's apparent obliviousness to this issue of social equity gives an impression of him being insulated in a privileged, upper middle class bubble, whether or not this is the case.


The reason I'm commenting on this book is that I've just read a very interesting and incisive review sitelink advaita. org. uk/discourses of it by Dennis Waite, author of a number of books plus a blog on Advaita Vedanta.
When I say "incisive" I really mean to emphasise that this is a painstaking and perceptive examination of the book from the perspective of someone who "really knows his stuff.
" Waite finds fault with Spira's teaching and identifies ways in which it deviates from traditional Advaita Vedanta, or simply makes no sense to him, on a number of points, all of which I find persuasive.
In doing so he implicitly makes a good case for going beyond the Direct Path inluding Spira, Lucille, Goode, Klein and Menon, existent for approximately one hundred years, to study traditional Advaita Vedanta, which has refined the teaching over thousands of years.
During this time traditional Advaita Vedanta has had to answer every possible objection and challenge from other schools and thus has ironed out the kinds of contradictions and errors Waite finds in Spira's book.


As a counterbalance to these criticisms, Waite goes on to praise the book for its many insightful, accurate, poetic and aphoristic statements on the nondual nature of reality, quoting a number of these.
He mentions the "often very dense material that must be considered for some time, almost meditated upon, " This was certainly my experiencethat much of the content needed to be carefully read more than once to grasp its full meaning and then contemplated or meditated upon with no focus on getting to the end of the book but rather one of savouring it like a good piece of music.
This comparison with music is one that Spira himself has used to describe his work, in which the central theme is continually “explored, questioned, modulated and restated”.
Repetition is an integral part of the method here, as with classical Advaita Vedanta, necessary for patiently undoing decades of inculcation into false perceptions and beliefs about oneself and the world.


Waite concludes his review thus:

"I suggest that this book is going to be of most interest to seasoned seekers, who may find new and insightful views into some of the familiar topics in advaita.
I fear that those who are not already used to the manner of speaking about nonduality will quickly discard the book it will simply be too difficult for them.
It requires both serious interest and genuine commitment to stay with it, But, for those who are prepared to make the effort there is much to savour and I recommend it highly to them.
I personally found it to be a delight and a frustration in equal measure! and, on that basis, perhaps I ought not to award

more than.
But there is so much good stuff in here, and it towers above most other modern books on the subject, that I have few qualms about awarding.
"

I recommend both 'The Transparency of Things' as well as Waite's indepth review of it to anyone with a passion for nonduality.
This is a very solid book on nonduality, Parts of it are over my head, I must admit, and other parts shine in their clarity.
Rupert Spira has boiled down the nature of existence, as he sees it, to the basics, As such, the book is quite dense, I could only read it a bit at a time, One day I hope to be able to understand it all from my own experience, Yes, it's true. I give a lot of nonduality books high ratings, but when it comes to this subject, my ratings are based on whether the message is what I need at the time of the reading.
The same book I originally gavemight warrant onlyat another point in my search,

Spira's book was one in which the message, for me, was very timely, But since I do a lot of research on nonduality books before reading them, I'm not surprised that I find what I need just when I need it.


I'd highly recommend this one for those a reader who has already consumed those marketed in a more mainstream channel.
Excellent pointers. .