Presence, Volume I

From an early age, Rupert Spira was deeply interested in the nature of reality. At the age of seventeen he learned to meditate, and began a twenty-year period of study and practice in the classical Advaita Vedanta tradition under the guidance of Dr. Francis Roles and Shantananda Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of the north of India. During this time, he immersed himself in the teachings of P. D. Ouspensky, Krishnamurti, Rumi, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, and Robert Adams, until he met his teacher, Francis Lucille, in 1997. Lucille introduced Spira to the Direct Path teachings of Atmananda Krishna Menon, the Tantric tradition of Kashmir Shaivism (which he had received from his teacher Jean Klein), and, more importantly, directly indicated to him the true nature of experience. Spira lives in the UK and holds regular meetings and retreats in Europe and the United States. For further information, see www.rupertspira.com.

"Presence is a profound and luminous book with great power and is obviously the fruit of many years of contemplation. These two volumes together are a relentless and utterly thorough examination of the nature of experience, exploring every square centimeter of the territory with absolute excellence and ruthlessly precise analysis. Their astuteness and clarity will be extremely exciting to those readers who are ready for the next steps in lifting the veil of separation, and I suspect it will become a spiritual classic that readers will savor slowly and return to again and again." —Victoria Ritchie, former manager of Watkins Bookshop and editor for Eckhart Tolle