Michael Cardew, one of the founding fathers of the  
British studio pottery movement, had a retrospective exhibition at the  
Camden Arts Centre in London to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday. I knew of Michael through his wife, Mariel, who attended The Study Society  
at Colet House where I had just been introduced to the non-dual under -
standing, and I visited the exhibition at her suggestion. Michael’s pots were raw, energetic and powerful. They seemed to me  
more like brief moments of condensed music than physical objects. It felt as  
if they were fluid, arrested only by the act of perception, as if my senses were  
apprehending the energies of the universe and conferring upon them a tem -
porary, static form. However, I was not observing them from a fixed point. 160* ‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’ ( c. 1810 ), Selected Poems from William Blake , edited by P . H. Butter  
(Everyman, 1982). the all-pervasive spirit
I too was part of the indivisible flux of energies out of which the observer  
and the observed condensed in a reciprocal and mutually sustaining rela -
tionship. Little did I know at the time that this confrontation was to put an end  
to my incipient desire to study medicine, or that five years later I would  
spend the last two years of Michael’s life living and working with him at his  
pottery in Cornwall. Suffice it to say that I left with a simple desire, ‘I want  
to learn to make pots like that’. At the time I could not have known that such objects are ‘born, not  
made’. Michael’s pottery was more laboratory than studio, where the energies  
of nature were harnessed and condensed. One did not make things; one par -
ticipated in their emergence. And should one ever forget this, one could be  
certain that Michael’s anger would re-establish the balance. On one such occasion, after being at Wenford Bridge for about six months,  
I had been making bowls all day and was beginning to feel that I was gaining  
some mastery over the medium. Michael came into the workshop at one  
end and made his way slowly through the long, narrow room, once used as  
a skittle alley, attached to the former inn which he and Mariel had converted  
into their home and the pottery. Michael surveyed the shelves of bowls for  
an alarmingly long period of time and, turning to me with a withering  
expression on his face, exclaimed, ‘You haven’t begun to take that shape into  
yourself’. And with no further discussion he left. It was the first time that I was to experience the restorative power of im -
personal anger. Such outbursts were not infrequent, and no explanation was  
ever offered. One was expected to take the medicine and make the necessary  
changes. It was in this way that I gradually came to understand that the mak -
ing of a good pot involved a kind of sacrifice. How naïve of me to have im -
agined that the price of beauty was anything less than oneself. Later on, whenever I found myself in a foreign city, I would spend hours  
in the ceramics department of the national or archaeological museum. Looking at the pots there, I would often have the feeling of experiencing  
them from the inside, as if I knew what it was like to be that object. I felt  
its body as my own body. This capacity was no doubt partly due to a natural  
affinity, but it had also been refined over the many years I had spent making  
such objects. 161you are the happiness you seek
     It was as if my own understanding of the materials and processes that are  
gathered together in the making of a bowl had given me access to the inner  
life of the object I was contemplating. Over the years, I noticed that this  
capacity extended beyond my chosen medium of ceramics and included,  
to a greater or lesser degree, other art forms, such as painting, music, sculp -
ture, architecture and dance. The Greek philosopher Plotinus referred to this when he said, ‘In this  
state of absorbed contemplation, there is no longer any question of holding  
an object in view; the vision is such that seeing and seen are one; object and  
act of vision have become identical’. *   
     The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer referred to the same  
experience when he said, ‘Aesthetic pleasure in the beautiful consists, to a  
large extent, in the fact that, when we enter the state of pure contemplation,  
we are raised for the moment above all willing, above all desires and cares;  
we are, so to speak, rid of ourselves’. †   
 
the taste of nature’s eternity  
 
Everyone experiences this collapse of the subject–object relationship many  
times in their lives, although it is not always recognised as such. In fact, when  
we seek an experience, we invariably do so not for the sake of the experience  
itself but for its capacity to bring to an end the subject –object relationship,  
and the inevitable feeling of separation that attends it, thereby giving us a  
taste of the unity of being. In sexual intimacy, all one’s disparate energies are gathered together in  
the intensity of the moment, suspending the thinking process which habit -
ually divides the intimacy of experience into the subject –object relationship,  
and through which the apparently separate self escapes the now. There is just  
the moment, no self and no other, no body and no world, no lover and  
no beloved. Not even a moment, for without reference to thought, there is  
no experience of time. We are taken to eternity. For the apparently separate self, this collapse of the distinction between  
itself and the other feels like a death. Of course, in reality, an illusion cannot die. 162* Plotinus, The Enneads  v.1–8. †  Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation , Vol. 1, Sect. 68 (1819). the all-pervasive spirit
It simply ceases to veil its reality. However, the ego does not know this. Thus,  
what it experiences as death is, in reality, the shining forth of our shared  
being. It is the experience of love. This is why love and death are so closely  
related in art and literature. It is for this reason that the poet Kathleen Raine wrote, in ‘Woman to  
Lover’, ‘I am the way to die’. * Little does the separate self realise that in all  
of its desires, and perhaps especially in its desire for sexual intimacy, all that  
it is really seeking is to bring itself to an end, like the moth that seeks to  
unite with the flame. When the separate self is reconstituted after its dissolution in eternity,  
it emerges ‘trailing clouds of glory’, † still shimmering with peace and joy,  
which, at least until it fades, it will bestow on everything and everyone with  
whom it comes in contact. It is the experience to which writer W . B. Yeats  
referred when he said, ‘I felt that I was blessèd and could bless’. ‡   
 
Many people enjoy walking in the countryside because, in the absence of  
any sense of separation in nature, they access their shared being, which is  
prior to the arising of ego. For the same reason, many people love to live  
with animals because they model the quality of just being, wordlessly  
awakening the same being in us through sympathetic resonance. For others food may be a portal into their true nature, although it is  
usually not recognised as such, not least because it is more often appropriated  
by the ego to satiate its voracious sense of lack. Little do we realise that, when  
eating a delicious meal or savouring a fine wine, we are literally tasting our  
self. Stephen Mitchell’s rendition of Rainer Maria Rilke’s  Sonnets to Orpheus  
illustrates how just the taste of an apple has the power to divest reality of the  
limitations that the mind confers upon it, revealing its nature of beauty. What miracle is happening in your mouth? Instead of words, discoveries flow out  
from the ripe flesh, astonished to be free. 163* Kathleen Raine, Collected Poems , Counterpoint Press ( 2001 ). †  William Wordsworth, ‘Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’, Poems, in  
Two Volumes  (1801). ‡ W . B. Yeats, ‘Vacillation’, Verse iv. you are the happiness you seek
Dare to say what ‘apple’ truly is. This sweetness that feels thick, dark, dense at first;  
then, exquisitely lifted in your taste,  
 
grows clarified, awake and luminous,  
double-meaninged, sunny, earthy, real –  
Oh knowledge, pleasure – inexhaustible. * 
 
     In many ancient cultures, aesthetic experience was considered sacred . In these cultures, the making and drinking of tea, walking in the landscape,  
the playing of a musical instrument, sharing a meal, the raising of children,  
the making of a home, in fact every moment of embodied experience, was  
considered an opportunity, even an invitation, to merge with the divine. We may place flowers in our home, a painting on the wall, a jar on a shelf  
or a bowl on the table. In doing so, we intuitively recognise the power of  
certain objects to solicit the mind, to invite it away from its habitual discur -
sive patterns and introduce a pause in which its background may be revealed. In a glance at a photo of a loved one on the mantelpiece, we are taken first  
to the person and then to the love we share. Our shared being shines. *     *     *  
 
Sensory experience is, for many people, the primary portal through which  
they briefly taste their innate joy. As William Blake observed, the five senses  
are ‘the chief inlets of Soul in this age’. † That is, sense perception is the  
means by which the mind briefly returns from its adventure in time to the  
immediacy of the now. Without the filter of thought and feeling that char -
acterises our normal experience, the distance between our self and our cur -
rent experience subsides, and the joy that is the very nature of our being  
shines forth. In the experience of enjoyment, we, awareness, are tasting the innate joy  
of our own being. This understanding is concealed in common parlance in  
a phrase such as, ‘I enjoyed myself at the party last night’. The object, event  
164* Rainer Maria Rilke, The Sonnets to Orpheus  1, 13, translated by Stephen Mitchell (Vintage, 2009 ). †  William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell  (c. 1790). the all-pervasive spirit
or person was simply the context in which this enjoyment was invited,  
courted and revealed. It was not the party we enjoyed; it was our self that  
we enjoyed, that is, our self was enjoying itself. Awareness was tasting or  
knowing its own being. The party was a gathering of the senses on the thresh -
old of the divine. Art is a formalisation of this process. The ultimate purpose of art is to provide  
access to the sacred dimension of life, without the need for renunciation  
or asceticism, but through the very energies of life itself. As the writer  
D. H. Lawrence observed, ‘Art is a form of supremely delicate awareness…
meaning at-oneness, the state of being at one with the object’. *  
     Nowhere, to my knowledge, is this understanding stated more clearly  
than by the painter Paul Cézanne: ‘Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn’t it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art  
must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the ap -
pearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of nature’s Eternity.’ †  
     All we know of the world are perceptions, and perceptions are intermit -
tent. They fall apart, vanish. And yet in spite of the fact that everything we  
know about the universe is constantly changing, we recognise that there is  
something that persists through it all that is greater than our self as a person  
and beyond the limits of the finite mind through which we perceive it. At the same time, we realise that we too emanate from the universe and that  
whatever limitations our finite mind superimposes on it, its essence is the  
same as our own. This intuition of the unlimited nature of our being and its interconnec -
tion with all things is always accompanied by joy, ‘the thrill of her perma -
nence’. It restores our original innocence and freedom. The purpose of art,  
according to Cézanne, is to use the changing elements of experience – sights  
in his case, sounds in the case of musicians, tastes for cooks, textures for  
sculptors, words for writers and poets, and so on – and bring them together  
in such a way that they take us, not intellectually but experientially, to this  
ever-present reality. They give us a taste of nature’s eternity. 165* D. H. Lawrence, ‘Making Pictures’, The Creative Process: A Symposium , Brewster Ghiselin Ed. (Uni -
versity of California Press, 1985). †  J. Gasquet, Cézanne  (1926 ), as translated in: John Rewald, ‘Catalogue’, Cézanne: The Late Work  (1977 ).you are the happiness you seek
restoring the sacred  
 
There are many other occasions when, in the natural course of our everyday  
life, a window opens up in the flow of experience, allowing the qualities that  
are inherent in our true nature to flow into the situation, informing it with  
its innate intelligence. Many people report that the experience of bereave -
ment is often accompanied by a quiet joy. In this case, the immensity of the  
loss brings their life, as they know it, to an end. The normal filter of thoughts  
and feelings through which experience is filtered collapses, and in that mo -
ment their true nature shines. In other cases, a person’s first glimpse of their true nature is sometimes  
preceded by a period of great sorrow or despair. In the hopelessness that en -
sues, all future possibilities are removed and, with nowhere to go, one is  
brought back to the sanctity of the now. Such experiences bring the activity  
of the ego, which is always invested in future happiness, to an end and thus  
provide an opportunity to sink into the vertical dimension of our being. However, through lack of guidance, such invitations are often missed and,  
as a result, simply compound our suffering. For others it may be an illness, a failed relationship, the loss of financial  
security, the onset of old age or the imminence of death. Unlike normal cir -
cumstances, in which a person usually feels that they can intervene in order  
to effect the change that they believe is required for their happiness, experi -
ences such as these, where the intensity of feeling is such that we find ourself  
powerless in the face of it, overshadow any such attempt to negotiate. In the spontaneous surrender that ensues, we find ourself open without  
resistance to our current experience. The layer of personal psychology, built  
almost entirely of resisting, holding on and seeking, which constitutes the  
activity of the separate self or ego, has dissolved. No longer able to muster  
the strength to resist, we find ourself at one with the experience and, as a result , 
our innate peace emerges from the background. The peace was, of course, present in us all along but was veiled, not by  
the sorrow, the despair or the loss but by the activity of resisting, holding on  
and seeking. This is the quiet joy that can emerge even in the depths of suffer -
ing. It is referred to as ananda  in the Vedantic tradition and as ‘the peace  
that passeth understanding’ in the Christian tradition. It is the peace that is  
prior to and independent of the content of the experience. 166the all-pervasive spirit
In an emergency, the situation is sometimes so demanding that we do  
not have time to refer to the thought processes with which we would nor -
mally respond to such an event. Our response to the situation is, as a result,  
not mediated through a layer of past conditioning. It comes sponta -
neously, as a direct response in the moment. This allows the person to  
draw on a source of strength that lies behind their conditioned thoughts  
and feelings, in the very heart of themselves, and accounts for acts of  
courage and compassion that often extend far beyond a person’s normal  
capabilities. When the emergency is over, people will often praise the one who  
acted in this way. However, the person will not have any sense of having  
undertaken or achieved anything remarkable. They will know intuitively  
that their actions came not from themselves as a person but from a deeper,  
impersonal source within them, and therefore they will not lay claim to  
them. Intense fear is another experience that brings one abruptly into the now  
and may thus be a natural portal to one’s true nature. In a culture where the  
egoic activity of seeking and resisting, and the inevitable suffering and con -
flict that attend it, dominate both individuals and institutions, the possibility  
of finding a means whereby one may access the awareness that lies behind  
the mind and thus transcend the ego is still relatively rare, although this is  
beginning to change. However, in the absence of such guidance, the innate  
intelligence that is the essence of each person’s mind will find its own way of  
making its presence felt. It may be felt as a person’s yearning for happiness or love, a devotee’s  
longing for God, a scientist’s desire for understanding or an artist’s love of  
beauty. Or it may find more extreme ways of infiltrating a person’s experi -
ence. When a young man launches himself from a great height with only an  
elastic cord tied around his feet, he is, probably without realising it, putting  
himself through a self-ordained initiation rite in which he faces and over -
comes the fear of death. As he propels himself into an experience that, on  
account of its intensity, brings him into the immediacy of the now, he is di -
vested of the limitations of time – memories, fears, anger, sorrow, resentment,  
hope, and so on – and tastes his innate freedom. Another may train for years at a sport, always pushing the edge of her  
endurance and capacity, in order to expand beyond the limits which she  
167you are the happiness you seek
intuitively knows do not define her. T o expand beyond our limitations is like  
a death for the one who is identified with them; for others, it is a rebirth. Divested of the constraints that thought imposes upon her self, she finds  
herself in the zone, at one with the flow of the universe, and able to perform  
at a level well beyond her normal capacity. Others may marvel at what appear to be super-human accomplishments. Indeed, they are super-human, in the sense that they are inspired by, and an  
expression of, an aspect of ourself that is prior to our human limitations. Even as a spectator one partakes of this moment of transcendence, and it is  
for this reason that we confer god-like status on highly skilled athletes. And there are quieter ways of inviting our true nature to reveal itself. Consider,  
for instance, the poet who sits in front of a piece of paper, the mind open  
and receptive, inviting that which lies behind the mind to assume a form  
within the mind. As Rilke wrote, ‘I love the dark hours of my being. My mind  
deepens into them.’  *   
     In his book Pioneer Pottery , Michael Cardew said, referring to the capacity  
of a pot to draw the mind into its source, ‘Its presence will fill the gaps be -
tween sips of tea or coffee at those moments when the mind, not yet focused  
on activity, is still in an open and receptive state; and it will minister quietly  
to the background of consciousness with a friendly warmth, even perhaps  
on some occasions with a kind of consolation’. †   
     For others it may take place unsolicited in the natural pause after the  
ending of one activity and before the mind reaches for the next. Or simply  
walking in nature, surrendering one’s body to its immensity. When we are at home or in our workplace, the familiarity of the environ -
ment is such that many routine activities can be undertaken without our need -
ing to attend to or focus on them. With nothing particular to interest or engage  
the mind, we are free to wander into the past or future seeking relief from the  
tedium of the now. However, when we travel, the sights, sounds, tastes, textures  
and smells that we encounter are often sufficiently unfamiliar to fascinate us  
and, as a result, command our attention. The mind returns to the now from  
168* Rainer Maria Rilke, Untitled (‘I Love the Dark Hours of My Being’), The Book of Hours: Love Poems  
to God , translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy (Riverhead, 1997 ). †  Michael Cardew, Pioneer Pottery  (The American Ceramic Society, 2002 ).the all-pervasive spirit
its adventure in time. The happiness we feel on this occasion does not rise on  
account of our new environment; it is the taste of our true nature. A good storyteller will eke out a joke, gradually winding up his listeners  
into a state of heightened expectation, knowing that the greater the tension,  
the deeper the feeling of relief upon hearing the punchline. And the listener  
will readily participate in this heightened state of anticipation for the pleasure  
of having it come to an end in the moment of understanding. Before the  
joke has come to an end, the understanding has not yet taken place. By the  
time the laughter begins, the understanding has already  taken place. In the timeless moment between the end of the joke and the beginning  
of the laughter, understanding occurs. That which ‘stands under’ the mind  
emerges from obscurity beneath the mind. The smile or laughter that follows  
is the relaxation of the body in response to this plunge into our true nature. Indeed, every time someone smiles at us, we receive a blessing in which the  
light of being shines on us. Every time we smile at someone, we bestow that  
blessing on them. Suffice it to say that there are innumerable ways, some effortless and spon -
taneous, others cultivated, whereby the obscuring activity of the mind may  
be dissolved and, as a result, its essence revealed – ‘hints of the beloved’, as  
they say in the Sufi tradition. In fact, I would suggest that the mind is always  
tending towards its source, the heart always longing for its home, and that  
almost all people are most of the time, whether they realise it or not, engaged  
in this attempt to return to their true nature. Of course, this is said from the perspective of an individual mind. In reality,  
it is unlimited awareness that, identifying itself with, or losing itself in, the  
content of experience seems to have become localised and limited. In the form  
of this apparently limited mind or self, awareness is always attempting to divest  
itself of this limitation and return to its natural condition. It is for this reason  
that an individual mind or self constantly feels the gravitational pull of its true  
nature in the form of its search for happiness, truth, love or beauty. Whether or not the finite mind seeks to alleviate the suffering that is  
inherent in its own limited condition through the acquisition of objects,  
substances, activities, circumstances and relationships, or by going directly  
to its essence by means of meditation, self-enquiry or prayer, depends upon  
its maturity. 169you are the happiness you seek
     But either way, the mind is destined sooner or later to be dissolved in its  
essence. Just as water evaporates from the ocean, forms into clouds, drifts  
over the earth, falls in rain, turns into wine, is shed in tears, gathers into  
rivers and returns to the ocean, continually changing its name and form but  
never changing its essence, so the apparent individual, feeling itself to be  
separate from the whole, embarks on a great journey, passes through many  
adventures, assumes many guises and eventually returns to its original nature,  
without ever actually having ceased to be as such. Each of the examples above indicate some of the many instances during  
our lives when our customary thought processes are interrupted and, as a re -
sult, the peace and joy of our true nature, which lies just behind the mind,  
emerges naturally and effortlessly into the foreground of our experience. Although the event which precedes the emergence of our innate peace  
and joy differs in each case, the effect it has on us is the same: surrender. A wise person is one who does not wait for circumstances or events to initiate  
this surrender. They simply make it their moment-by-moment attitude. the peace of deep sleep  
 
One last example will illustrate that, concealed within our ordinary experi -
ence, there lie numerous traces of the divine. Many people believe that  
deep sleep is the absence of awareness. The reason for this is that awareness  
is considered dependent upon the content of experience. No experience,  
no awareness. However, deep sleep is not the absence of awareness; it is the awareness  
of absence. When we fall asleep at night, the mind lets go of all objective  
experience naturally and effortlessly, leaving its essence, pure awareness,  
all alone, resting in its own being. That is the experience of peace. When my son was very young, he would sometimes get upset. During  
these times there was nothing his mother, Caroline, or I could do to con -
sole him, and he would often say, ‘I just want to go to sleep’. He had ex -
perienced the peace of his true nature in deep sleep on numerous  
occasions, as we all do, and now, in the face of his distress, he instinctively  
knew how to find his way back there. It was for the same reason that  
Ramana Maharshi once said, ‘Meditation is like falling asleep whilst re -
maining awake’. 170the all-pervasive spirit
     After a period of deep sleep, the dreaming and waking states emerge again,  
but nothing happens to the presence of awareness which shone there all along. Layers of experience are simply added to it: images and thoughts in the dream  
state, to which sensations, perceptions, activities and relationships are added  
in the waking state. However, just as the transparency of a screen seems to be  
veiled when a movie begins, so the peace and joy that is the nature of pure  
awareness seems to be obscured when objective experience resumes. In this case, all one need do is to invite the mind gently back to its source,  
the abode of peace and happiness, the presence of awareness. For one who  
has been exploring these matters for some time and is accustomed to return -
ing again and again from the adventure of experience to the peace of their  
true nature, the first taste of suffering that accompanies this forgetting will  
be sufficient to initiate the return home, without the need for a method or  
practice. However, for one in whom this habit is not yet established, the mind  
may need to be coaxed away from its fascination with and reliance upon the  
content of experience. For such a mind, a question such as, ‘Am I aware?’,  
‘What is it that knows or is aware of my experience?’, ‘Who am I?’, ‘What  
is it that can never be removed from me?’ or ‘What element of my experience  
is always with me?’ will suffice. Each time we disengage from the content of experience and return to  
our true nature of pure awareness that lies in the background, we are eroding  
the power of objective experience to take us away from our self. In time, less  
and less effort is needed and less and less time required. We begin to be  
established in the peace and happiness of our true nature. The greatest discovery one can make in life is to find one’s way back to  
one’s innate peace and joy, without the need for circumstances to align them -
selves with our preconceived ideas, and without having to fall asleep. 171 conclusion
An Invitation
Pour yourself out like a fountain. Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking  
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins. rainer maria rilke
There are essentially two models for civilisation. The first is one in which the  
ideas and attitudes of individuals are informed by an understanding of their  
relationship to the whole, and their activities and relationships are the means  
by which this understanding is expressed in society. The second model is one in which individuals overlook their relationship  
to the whole and, as a result, believe and feel themselves to be discrete,  
independently existing entities. This is a paradigm of separation that inevi -
tably leads to unhappiness on the inside, conflict on the outside between  
individuals, communities and nations, and the exploitation and degradation  
of the earth. History has repeatedly shown that a civilisation in which individuals  
neglect their relationship with the whole will collapse. Our own civilisation  
is showing all the signs of this disintegration but has as yet failed to em -
brace the understanding required to remedy it. We are like a patient who  
has been diagnosed with a terminal illness but refuses to take the medicine. We have alienated ourselves from the whole by believing ourselves to be  
separate parts. three essential questions  
 
The non-dual understanding that lies at the origin of all the great religious,  
spiritual and philosophical traditions is formulated in response to three exist -
ential questions: ‘How may we find lasting peace and happiness?’, ‘What is  
the nature of reality?’ and ‘How should we live?’  you are the happiness you seek
The first question, ‘How may we find lasting peace and happiness?’, relates  
to our inner life, and to this the non-dual understanding replies, ‘Peace and  
happiness is the very nature of your being’. We arrive at this understanding by separating our self from everything  
that is not essential to us: our thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, percep -
tions, activities and relationships. All that remains is our essential, irreducible  
being. Divested of everything with which we previously defined our self,  
we find our self empty, silent and at peace. The second question, ‘What is the nature of reality?’, relates to our outer life,  
our relationship with all people, animals and our environment. In response  
to this the non-dual understanding suggests, ‘We share our being with every -
one and everything’. That is, there is a single, infinite and indivisible reality  
from which everyone and everything derives its apparently independent exist -
ence. As we sink more and more deeply into our being, it loses its agitation on  
the inside and, at the same time, its limitations on the outside. The being  
that we essentially are is the same being that everyone and everything essen -
tially is. Being is infinite and indivisible. Previously the multiplicity and diversity  
of people, animals and things veiled their shared reality. Now they lose their  
veiling power and become transparent to it. If we understand these two aspects of our self and lead a life, to the best  
of our ability, in a way that is consistent with their implications, no other  
spiritual instruction or practice is necessary. If we understand that happiness is the very nature of our being, we  
cease expecting or demanding that other people and the world provide  
it. Our happiness is no longer a hostage to circumstance. We cease using  
the world to serve our happiness and instead use our happiness to serve  
the world. If we understand and feel that we share our being with all people, animals  
and things, no further code of ethics or morality is required. That under -
standing is the foundation of all ethical behaviour. The response to the third question, ‘How should we live?’, is an inevi -
table consequence of this understanding. When asked the same question,  
174conclusion
St. Augustine replied, ‘Love, and do whatever you want’. That is, recognise  
and feel the prior unity from which everyone and everything derives its  
apparently independent existence, and act in a manner that expresses and  
communicates this understanding in the world. There is almost no field of human endeavour in which it is not possible  
to allow this understanding to inform our thoughts and feelings and to ex -
press itself in our activities and relationships. All the qualities that we most admire in a human being are those that ex -
press, or are informed by, the recognition that the nature of our being is hap -
piness and that we share our being with everyone and everything. Qualities such as kindness, humility, dignity, compassion, respect, gen -
erosity, courage, integrity, humour and creativity all arise from the recogni -
tion or intuition that beneath our differences we share our being. Such  
qualities are expressions of the divine in a human being. For one in whom this understanding is alive, the unity of being increas -
ingly outshines the apparent multiplicity and diversity of people, animals  
and things. Everything becomes transparent to and shines with its reality. know thyself  
 
The unity of being is refracted through the faculties of thought and percep -
tion and appears, as a result, as a multiplicity and diversity of objects and  
selves. If we take the evidence of sense perception and the categorising faculty  
of thought at face value, and we consider everyone and everything a discrete  
entity with its own separate and independent existence, then suffering, con -
flict and destruction are inevitable. Individuals pay for this paradigm with their happiness; humanity is pay -
ing for it with its sanity. If pursued unchecked, it must eventually lead to  
a catastrophic outcome. If, instead, we take the evidence of reason and experience, we see through  
the illusory appearance of separation to the single, infinite and indivisible  
reality that underlies it and of which it is an expression. Every thought or feeling that we entertain, and every action or relation -
ship in which we engage, can be traced back to one of these two possible  
perspectives. Our life as an individual and the destiny of our civilisation as  
a whole depend upon which of these two perspectives we subscribe to. 175you are the happiness you seek
     It is in response to the paradigm of fragmentation and separation that the  
founders of all the great religious and spiritual traditions have, in numerous  
different ways, implored humanity to awaken to a single understanding:  
happiness is the nature of our being, and we share our being with everyone  
and everything. All that is necessary is to understand this, feel this and lead a life, to the  
best of our ability, in a way that is consistent with it, engaging in activities  
and relationships that, in one way or another, communicate and celebrate it. We cannot know the nature of the universe directly, because the instrument  
through which we perceive and explore it, namely the mind, imposes its own  
limitations on everything that it knows. We cannot see white snow through  
orange-tinted glasses. However, we can know our self, because we have direct, unmediated  
knowledge of our self before it is filtered through the limitations of thought  
and perception. Divested of the limitations that our self acquires from  
thought and perception, we know our self simply as infinite, impersonal,  
self-aware being. Whatever the universe is, we as apparent individuals emerge from it. Therefore, whatever we essentially are must be the reality of the universe  
from which we seem to emerge, just as the nature of the wave must be ident -
ical to that of the ocean. It is from this observation that the central tenet of all the great religious  
and spiritual traditions is derived: in Christianity, ‘I and my Father are one’;  
in Hinduism, ‘Atman and Brahman are identical’; in Buddhism, ‘Nirvana and  
samsara are one’ and ‘Form is emptiness and emptiness also is form’; and in  
Sufism, ‘Whosoever knows their self knows their Lord’. That is, the awareness  
that is the essential nature of our self is the ultimate reality of the universe. Thus, self-knowledge is not only the direct path to peace and happiness;  
it is also the pre-requisite for understanding the nature of the universe. The reason why scientists have yet to discover the nature of the universe,  
in spite of searching for it for over two thousand years, is that they have yet  
to recognise the nature of their own minds. If we make a deep investigation into the nature of our self, we find only  
infinite, impersonal, self-aware being. It finds and knows itself. From a human  
perspective these qualities, if we can refer to them as qualities, are felt as peace  
176conclusion
and happiness in relation to our inner experience, and as love and beauty in  
relation to all people, animals and objects. They are the very fabric of reality. In other words, the universe is a manifestation of joy, love and beauty. If this seems not to be the case, it is only because we believe ourself to be  
temporary, finite and separate, and view the universe through the limitations  
of this filter. For this reason, the words Know Thyself,  which stood, two and a half  
thousand years ago, as an invitation to humanity at the dawn of Western  
civilisation, now stand as a prayer to our world civilisation as a whole. The knowing of our own being is the means by which our innate peace  
and happiness may be restored. It is the means by which tolerance, com -
passion, cooperation and harmony may be established between all peoples. And it is the foundation on which depends the reparation of our relationship  
with nature. T o know the nature of one’s self is the great understanding upon which  
any true civilisation must be founded. 177quotation sources
epigraph  
J. Krishnamurti, from the essay ‘Creative Happiness’  
 
introduction  
T . S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’, Four Quartets  (Harcourt, 1941) 
 
chapter one  
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics , Book 1, Section 7  
 
chapter two  
Ramana Maharshi, Who Am I? (Sri Ramanasramam, 2008 ; orig. 1923) 
 
chapter three  
Herman Hesse, Wandering  (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1972 ) 
 
chapter four  
Attributed to the sixteenth-century Zen patriarch Ikkyu, source unknown  
 
chapter five  
Attributed to the thirteenth-century German Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, source  
unknown  
 
chapter six  
Frances Nuttall, ‘The Prayer of the Chalice’ ( 1962 ) 
 
chapter seven  
Alice Meynell, ‘T o the Beloved’, The Poems of Alice Meynell: Complete Edition  (McClel -
land and Stewart, 1923) 
 
chapter eight  
Plotinus, The Enneads  vi.9.11 . you are the happiness you seek
chapter nine  
Catherine of Siena, ‘Consumed in Grace’, Love Poems from God , translated by Daniel  
Ladinsky (Penguin Compass, 2002 ) 
 
chapter ten  
Li Po, ‘Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain’, Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems  
from the Chinese , translated by Sam Hamill (BOA Editions Ltd., 2000 ) 
 
chapter eleven  
Awhad al-din Balyani, Know Yourself , translated by Cecilia T winch (Beshara Publications,  
2011) 
 
chapter twelve  
Jelaluddin Rumi, ‘An Empty Garlic’, The Essential Rumi , translated by Coleman Barks  
(HarperOne, 2004 ) 
 
chapter thirteen  
Lao Tzu, Tao T e Ching, Chapter 26, as translated by Stephen Mitchell (Harper Perennial,  
1994 ) 
 
chapter fourteen  
Anandamayi Ma, Life and T eaching of Sri Anandamayi Ma , edited by Dr. Alexander  
Lipsky (Motilal Banarsidass, 1977 ) 
 
chapter fifteen  
Leo T olstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul Written and  
Selected from the World’s Sacred T exts , translated by Peter Sekirin (Scribner, 1997 ) 
 
chapter sixteen  
Lao Tzu, Tao T e Ching, Chapter 47, as translated by Stephen Mitchell (Harper Perennial,  
1994 ) 
 
chapter seventeen  
Albert Camus, from the essay ‘Return to Tipasa’, Personal Writings , translated by Ellen  
Conroy Kennedy and Justin O’Brien (Vintage, 2020 ) 
 
180quotation sources
chapter eighteen  
Jesus, Gospel of Thomas, Saying 3 
 
chapter nineteen  
‘Listen, O Dearly Beloved’, based on a translation of Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi, ‘The  
Theophany of Perfection’ in Henri Corbin, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination  
in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi  (Routledge, 2007 ) 
 
conclusion  
Rainer Maria Rilke, ‘Want the Change’, In Praise of Mortality , translated by Anita Bar -
rows and Joanna Macy (Riverhead, 2005 ) 
181The Transparency of Things – Contemplating the Nature of Experience  
 
Presence, Volume I – The Art of Peace and Happiness  
 
Presence, Volume II – The Intimacy of All Experience  
 
The Ashes of Love – Sayings on the Essence of Non-Duality  
 
The Light of Pure Knowing – Thirty Meditations on the Essence of Non-Duality  
 
Transparent Body, Luminous World – The T antric Yoga of Sensation and Perception  
 
The Nature of Consciousness – Essays on the Unity of Mind and Matter  
 
Being Aware of Being Aware – The Essence of Meditation Series, Volume I  
 
A Meditation on I Am  
 
The Essential Self  – Three Meditations  
 
Being Myself – The Essence of Meditation Series, Volume II  
 
 publications by rupert spirawww.rupertspira.comyou are the happiness you seek   rupert spira
SAHAJAWhenever we are seeking happiness, it is in 
fact our innate happiness that is seeking us. The happiness we seek is the happiness we are.’  
–rupert spira‘
Rupert Spira is renowned for his ability to
guide people to a direct experience of their
innate happiness or true nature. He is a teacher 
of the Direct Path, which is the epitome of the 
non-dual understanding that lies at the heart 
of all the great religious and spiritual traditions, 
such as Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, 
Hinduism, Buddhism, mystical Christianity, Sufism and Zen. You Are the  
Happiness You Seek
Uncovering the Awareness of Being
rupert spiraIn this book, Rupert Spira distils the message of all the great  
religious and spiritual traditions into two essential truths: 
happiness is the very nature of our self or being, and we share
our being with everyone and everything. Drawing on numerous examples from his own experience, 
Spira demonstrates that to seek lasting happiness through 
objects, situations and relationships is destined for failure 
and disappointment, and skilfully guides the reader to
recognise that we are already the happiness we seek. This book is for anyone who yearns for lasting happiness 
and is open to the possibility that it is continuously available
within ourselves, irrespective of our circumstances. Could there be any greater discovery in life than to know 
that we are already that for which we long? How may we find lasting peace and happiness? ‘I’ve gained deeper understanding listening to Rupert Spira  
than I have from any other exponent of modern spirituality. ’
deepak chopra‘Rupert Spira’s articulate and very intimate style of teaching
is truly transformational. I’ve read and treasure all of his books. ’
–rhonda byrne , author of The Secret and The Greatest Secret 
‘Let Rupert Spira, one of the ﬁnest teachers of the present time,  
gently guide you home to your innate peace and happiness. ’
–peter russell , author of Letting Go of Nothing
*     *     *
SAHAJA
$21.95    £ 15.99 SPIRITUALITY   
ISBN 978  -1-  68403 -012-5 
www.sahajapublications.comYou Are the Happiness You Seek Cover with 12.2mm spine.qxp_Layout 1  21/01/2022  17:39  Page 1you are the happiness you seek   rupert spira
SAHAJAWhenever we are seeking happiness, it is in  
fact our innate happiness that is seeking us. The happiness we seek is the happiness we are.’    
– rupert spira‘
Rupert Spira is renowned for his ability to  
guide people to a direct experience of their  
innate happiness or true nature. He is a teacher  
of the Direct Path, which is the epitome of the  
non-dual understanding that lies at the heart  
of all the great religious and spiritual traditions,  
such as Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism,  
Hinduism, Buddhism, mystical Christianity,  
Sufism and Zen. You Are the  
Happiness You Seek  
  
 Uncovering the Awareness of Being
rupert spiraIn this book, Rupert Spira distils the message of all the great  
religious and spiritual traditions into two essential truths:  
happiness is the very nature of our self or being, and we share  
our being with everyone and everything. Drawing on numerous examples from his own experience,  
Spira demonstrates that to seek lasting happiness through  
objects, situations and relationships is destined for failure  
and disappointment, and skilfully guides the reader to  
recognise that we are already the happiness we seek. This book is for anyone who yearns for lasting happiness  
and is open to the possibility that it is continuously available  
within ourselves, irrespective of our circumstances. Could there be any greater discovery in life than to know  
that we are already that for which we long? How may we find lasting peace and happiness? ‘I’ve gained deeper understanding listening to Rupert Spira  
than I have from any other exponent of modern spirituality. ’ 
deepak chopra‘Rupert Spira’s articulate and very intimate style of teaching  
is truly transformational. I’ve read and treasure all of his books. ’  
– rhonda byrne , author of The Secret and The Greatest Secret  
 
‘Let Rupert Spira, one of the ﬁnest teachers of the present time,  
gently guide you home to your innate peace and happiness. ’ 
– peter russell , author of Letting Go of Nothing
*     *     *
SAHAJA
$21.95    £15.99     SPIRITUALITY   
ISBN  978  -1-  68403  - 012  - 5 
www.sahajapublications.comYou Are the Happiness You Seek Cover with 12.2mm spine.qxp_Layout 1  21/01/2022  17:39  Page 1
You-are-the-Happiness-You-Seek-Rupert-Spira.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        Michael Cardew, one of the founding fathers of the  
British studio pottery movement, had a retrospective exhibition at the  
Camden Arts Centre in London to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday. I knew of Michael through his wife, Mariel, who attended The Study Society  
at Colet House where I had just been introduced to the non-dual under -
standing, and I visited the exhibition at her suggestion. Michael’s pots were raw, energetic and powerful. They seemed to me  
more like brief moments of condensed music than physical objects. It felt as  
if they were fluid, arrested only by the act of perception, as if my senses were  
apprehending the energies of the universe and conferring upon them a tem -
porary, static form. However, I was not observing them from a fixed point. 160* ‘A Vision of the Last Judgment’ ( c. 1810 ), Selected Poems from William Blake, edited by P. H. Butter  
(Everyman, 1982). the all-pervasive spirit
I too was part of the indivisible flux of energies out of which the observer  
and the observed condensed in a reciprocal and mutually sustaining rela -
tionship. Little did I know at the time that this confrontation was to put an end  
to my incipient desire to study medicine, or that five years later I would  
spend the last two years of Michael’s life living and working with him at his  
pottery in Cornwall. Suffice it to say that I left with a simple desire, ‘I want  
to learn to make pots like that’. At the time I could not have known that such objects are ‘born, not  
made’. Michael’s pottery was more laboratory than studio, where the energies  
of nature were harnessed and condensed. One did not make things; one par -
ticipated in their emergence. And should one ever forget this, one could be  
certain that Michael’s anger would re-establish the balance. On one such occasion, after being at Wenford Bridge for about six months,  
I had been making bowls all day and was beginning to feel that I was gaining  
some mastery over the medium. Michael came into the workshop at one  
end and made his way slowly through the long, narrow room, once used as  
a skittle alley, attached to the former inn which he and Mariel had converted  
into their home and the pottery. Michael surveyed the shelves of bowls for  
an alarmingly long period of time and, turning to me with a withering  
expression on his face, exclaimed, ‘You haven’t begun to take that shape into  
yourself’. And with no further discussion he left. It was the first time that I was to experience the restorative power of im -
personal anger. Such outbursts were not infrequent, and no explanation was  
ever offered. One was expected to take the medicine and make the necessary  
changes. It was in this way that I gradually came to understand that the mak -
ing of a good pot involved a kind of sacrifice. How naïve of me to have im -
agined that the price of beauty was anything less than oneself. Later on, whenever I found myself in a foreign city, I would spend hours  
in the ceramics department of the national or archaeological museum. Looking at the pots there, I would often have the feeling of experiencing  
them from the inside, as if I knew what it was like to be that object. I felt  
its body as my own body. This capacity was no doubt partly due to a natural  
affinity, but it had also been refined over the many years I had spent making  
such objects. 161you are the happiness you seek
     It was as if my own understanding of the materials and processes that are  
gathered together in the making of a bowl had given me access to the inner  
life of the object I was contemplating. Over the years, I noticed that this  
capacity extended beyond my chosen medium of ceramics and included,  
to a greater or lesser degree, other art forms, such as painting, music, sculp -
ture, architecture and dance. The Greek philosopher Plotinus referred to this when he said, ‘In this  
state of absorbed contemplation, there is no longer any question of holding  
an object in view; the vision is such that seeing and seen are one; object and  
act of vision have become identical’. *   
     The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer referred to the same  
experience when he said, ‘Aesthetic pleasure in the beautiful consists, to a  
large extent, in the fact that, when we enter the state of pure contemplation,  
we are raised for the moment above all willing, above all desires and cares;  
we are, so to speak, rid of ourselves’. †   
 
the taste of nature’s eternity  
 
Everyone experiences this collapse of the subject–object relationship many  
times in their lives, although it is not always recognised as such. In fact, when  
we seek an experience, we invariably do so not for the sake of the experience  
itself but for its capacity to bring to an end the subject –object relationship,  
and the inevitable feeling of separation that attends it, thereby giving us a  
taste of the unity of being. In sexual intimacy, all one’s disparate energies are gathered together in  
the intensity of the moment, suspending the thinking process which habit -
ually divides the intimacy of experience into the subject –object relationship,  
and through which the apparently separate self escapes the now. There is just  
the moment, no self and no other, no body and no world, no lover and  
no beloved. Not even a moment, for without reference to thought, there is  
no experience of time. We are taken to eternity. For the apparently separate self, this collapse of the distinction between  
itself and the other feels like a death. Of course, in reality, an illusion cannot die. 162* Plotinus, The Enneads  v. 1–8. †  Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1, Sect. 68 (1819). the all-pervasive spirit
It simply ceases to veil its reality. However, the ego does not know this. Thus,  
what it experiences as death is, in reality, the shining forth of our shared  
being. It is the experience of love. This is why love and death are so closely  
related in art and literature. It is for this reason that the poet Kathleen Raine wrote, in ‘Woman to  
Lover’, ‘I am the way to die’. * Little does the separate self realise that in all  
of its desires, and perhaps especially in its desire for sexual intimacy, all that  
it is really seeking is to bring itself to an end, like the moth that seeks to  
unite with the flame. When the separate self is reconstituted after its dissolution in eternity,  
it emerges ‘trailing clouds of glory’, † still shimmering with peace and joy,  
which, at least until it fades, it will bestow on everything and everyone with  
whom it comes in contact. It is the experience to which writer W. B. Yeats  
referred when he said, ‘I felt that I was blessèd and could bless’. ‡   
 
Many people enjoy walking in the countryside because, in the absence of  
any sense of separation in nature, they access their shared being, which is  
prior to the arising of ego. For the same reason, many people love to live  
with animals because they model the quality of just being, wordlessly  
awakening the same being in us through sympathetic resonance. For others food may be a portal into their true nature, although it is  
usually not recognised as such, not least because it is more often appropriated  
by the ego to satiate its voracious sense of lack. Little do we realise that, when  
eating a delicious meal or savouring a fine wine, we are literally tasting our  
self. Stephen Mitchell’s rendition of Rainer Maria Rilke’s  Sonnets to Orpheus  
illustrates how just the taste of an apple has the power to divest reality of the  
limitations that the mind confers upon it, revealing its nature of beauty. What miracle is happening in your mouth. Instead of words, discoveries flow out  
from the ripe flesh, astonished to be free. 163* Kathleen Raine, Collected Poems, Counterpoint Press ( 2001 ). †  William Wordsworth, ‘Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’, Poems, in  
Two Volumes  (1801). ‡ W.
The writer attended the retrospective exhibition of Michael Cardew's pottery at the Camden Arts Centre in London to celebrate his 75th birthday.
What was the occasion for the writer to visit the Camden Arts Centre in London?
According to the writer, Michael Cardew's approach to pottery was not about making things, but about participating in the emergence of the objects. He believed that the mind and the object were one, and that the maker and the thing made were the same.
What was Michael Cardew's approach to pottery, according to the writer?
The author suggests that the concept of "I" and "me" is an illusion, and that the true nature of our being is prior to and independent of our thoughts and feelings.
What is the author's perspective on the concept of "I" and "me"?
The author argues that the ego is an illusion and that our true nature is not separate from the universe, but rather an integral part of it. The author suggests that this understanding is the foundation of all the great spiritual traditions.
What is the author's view on the relationship between the ego and the universe?
The main theme of the book is that the pursuit of happiness is an illusion, and that true happiness can only be found by recognizing that our true nature is the same as the universe, and that we are already the happiness we seek.
What is the main theme of the book "You Are the Happiness You Seek"?