My first teacher, Dr. Francis Roles, once said to me, “The truth needs to be reformulated by every generation.” It is my hope that this book reformulates the Direct Path for those who travelled to the East, intellectually if not physically, but found it difficult to extricate the simplicity of the non-dual understanding from the wealth of exotic concepts in which it was shrouded, as well as for a new generation of truth seekers who are not burdened by previous religious and spiritual teachings.

However, it is important to recognise that the inward-facing path explored in this book is only half the journey. Once the essential, irreducible nature of the mind has been recognised, and its inherent peace and unconditional joy accessed, it is necessary to face outwards’ again towards objective experience, realigning the way we think and feel, and subsequently act, perceive and relate, with our new understanding.

The culmination of the inward-facing path is the recognition of the presence, the primacy and the nature of awareness – or, in religious language, spirit or God’s infinite being – which transcends all knowledge and experience. However, it is not yet the full experiential understanding in which awareness itself, or Gods infinite being, is known and felt to pervade and saturate all knowledge and experience, and indeed to be its sole substance and reality. It is to recognise the transcendent nature of awareness but not its immanence.

Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware