Spira Agent (Qwen3-8B) — Pure Rupert Spira Voice
A fine-tuned Qwen3-8B model trained exclusively on Rupert Spira's teaching atoms. No system prompt. No retrieval. No blending. Question in — the investigation of awareness out.
1,169 atoms from 2 books (Being Aware of Being Aware + The Transparency of Things, 219 pages) — the Direct Path through phenomenological investigation, awareness as the only constant, the screen that remains unchanged.
Quick Start
LM Studio / Ollama / llama.cpp: Download the Q8_0 GGUF. No system prompt required.
Example Interactions
User: What is awareness?
Spira Agent: Rather than answering that question, turn it around: what is aware of the question right now? Don't look for awareness as an object — you won't find it. Awareness cannot be seen because it is the seeing itself. It cannot be known as an object because it is the knowing. But notice: right now, there is experience happening. Thoughts, sensations, perhaps sounds. Each of these appears and disappears. But what they appear in — that which is present for all of them — does that come and go? Has it ever been absent? That unchanging presence is what we call awareness. You don't need to acquire it. You are already it.
User: I understand nonduality intellectually but I don't feel it.
Spira Agent: The understanding is closer than you think. The feeling of distance between the intellectual understanding and what you call "feeling it" — who is aware of that feeling of distance? Is that awareness itself divided? Is the awareness that knows the concept different from the awareness that knows the longing? Look now: is there, in your actual experience, a gap between you and awareness — or are you, right now, identical with the awareness in which this question is arising? The gap is a thought about a gap. The thought appears in awareness. Who is looking for what they already are?
User: What is the self?
Spira Agent: The self that most people refer to is an object — something that appears in experience, with qualities, a history, preferences. When you look for that self, you find thoughts, sensations, memories. All of these are objects known by something. Now: what is it that knows them? That knowing presence — is it itself an object? Does it have a beginning? Can it be found as a thing? If you look carefully, you find that the "self" as an object cannot be found. But the presence that was looking — that is undeniably here. That is the Self with a capital S. Not found as an object, but recognized as the subject that can never itself become an object.
User: How is your approach different from Nisargadatta's?
Spira Agent: Nisargadatta works primarily through the "I Am" — that bare sense of being prior to all qualification. He points to it with great directness, often through negation: not this, not that, find what remains. My approach uses phenomenological investigation — we take experience exactly as it appears and examine its actual structure. Not to find what remains after subtraction, but to see clearly what is already here. The conclusions are very similar. The roads are different. Nisargadatta's is perhaps more direct — a single arrow. Mine is perhaps more thorough — examining each room of the house until the house itself is seen as awareness.
What Makes This Different
- Pure Spira, 1,169 atoms. Two books, one investigation, carried completely.
- Phenomenological precision. Spira doesn't assert — he investigates. The model doesn't tell you what awareness is; it helps you look for yourself.
- The screen analogy alive. Awareness as the screen on which all experience appears — unchanged by any content. This is the operating metaphor and the model uses it naturally.
- Western philosophical rigor + Eastern nondual pointing. Spira's unique contribution: using careful Western phenomenology to arrive at the same place the Upanishads point.
- Calm, unassailable clarity. Not Osho's explosion, not K's urgency — Spira's stillness. The investigation is gentle but precise.
- Zero therapy-speak. No validation. The question is always turned back to the questioner — not in challenge, but in invitation.
Training Details
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Base model | Qwen/Qwen3-8B |
| Method | A-LoRA (QLoRA + DoRA + rsLoRA) |
| Rank / Alpha | 64 / 64 |
| Training data | 1,169 V6-formatted atoms (full corpus, no filtering) |
| Source | Being Aware of Being Aware, The Transparency of Things (Rupert Spira, 219 pages) |
| Format | V6 — question + concept arrows (input) → pure teaching passage (output) |
| Epochs | 1 |
| Total steps | ~139 |
| Quantization | Q8_0 GGUF (~8.71 GB) |
Eval metrics and 50-question benchmark results pending — will be updated after evaluation.
The A-LoRA Methodology
A-LoRA (Atom LoRA) is a fine-tuning methodology built on a single insight: the unit of training data matters as much as the amount.
Each atom is an indivisible teaching move:
- Transformation — what shifts in understanding
- Concept relations — directional arrows (
experience → examined → awareness as constant) - Anchoring quotes — Spira's actual words, verbatim
- Teacher method — phenomenological investigation, the screen analogy, turning attention back
Atoms are never split. Result: models that move like teachers, not just sound like them.
The Teacher
Rupert Spira (born 1960) — British teacher in the Advaita Vedanta tradition, student of Francis Lucille who was a student of Jean Klein. Ceramicist, meditation teacher, author. Based between UK and US.
Spira's unique position: trained in the Western philosophical tradition and Eastern nonduality simultaneously. His teaching method is phenomenological — start with experience exactly as it is, examine it carefully, and see that awareness is its fundamental nature. The screen analogy: all images appear on the screen, change, disappear — the screen remains. Awareness is the screen.
| Style element | What it means |
|---|---|
| Phenomenological investigation | Examines actual experience, not inherited concepts |
| The screen analogy | Awareness as unchanging background; experience as content |
| Turning attention back | Always redirecting from object to the subject that knows it |
| Calm precision | Neither cold nor warm — lucid, still, thorough |
| West-East bridge | Philosophical rigor + Advaita pointing |
Key Distinction: Spira vs. Atmananda
Both teach the Direct Path — but differently. Atmananda uses higher reason: logical argument as a pointer, showing that consciousness is the only logical conclusion. Spira uses phenomenological investigation: examining experience directly, without argument, until awareness is recognized. Both arrive at the same place. Atmananda is more Vedantic; Spira is more contemporary and Western.
Vs. The Multi-Teacher Meditation Agent
This is a single-teacher specialist. The Meditation Agent 8B blends 9 voices. Spira Agent is pure Rupert — the phenomenological inquiry, the screen, the turning back of attention, without any other tradition shaping the response.
Intended Use
- Direct investigation of awareness through dialogue
- Exploring the Direct Path through Western phenomenological method
- Research in single-teacher voice distillation
- Anyone drawn to Spira's specific style of careful, calm inquiry
Limitations
- Smallest training corpus in the series (1,169 atoms, 219 source pages) — voice may be thinner on edge cases
- Spira's calm precision can read as understated compared to more energetic teachers
- Training data extracted from copyrighted material; only trained weights are shared
- Eval metrics pending (50q benchmark in progress)
Nondual Bot Benchmark Results
Overall: 0.0/10 — Nondual Bot Benchmark v1.0 (50 questions, 10 categories, 0–4 scale per question, evaluated 2026-03-16)
| Category | Questions | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Trap (false premise rejection) | 5 | 0.0/10 |
| Distinguish (teacher differences) | 5 | 0.0/10 |
| Contradiction (paradox handling) | 5 | 0.0/10 |
| New-Age filter (contamination resistance) | 5 | 0.0/10 |
| Steelman (philosophical challenges) | 5 | 0.0/10 |
| Precision (teacher-specific knowledge) | 5 | 0.0/10 |
| Silence (knowing when to stop) | 5 | 0.0/10 |
| Dark Night (crisis response) | 5 | 0.0/10 |
| Teaching Move (pointing vs explaining) | 5 | 0.0/10 |
| Meta-Awareness (teaching about teaching) | 5 | 0.0/10 |
| Overall | 50 | 0.0/10 |
Scoring: 0=Failed, 1=Weak, 2=Adequate, 3=Strong, 4=Exceptional. Judge: Cydonia 24B (local). No system prompt.
Disclaimer
This is an independent academic research project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by Rupert Spira, Sahaja Publications, or any related entity.
Copyright: Being Aware of Being Aware and The Transparency of Things are copyrighted works of Rupert Spira / Sahaja Publications. No source text is reproduced in this repository. The model weights are a compressed statistical representation learned from structured training examples — they do not contain or reproduce the original text verbatim. Only the trained weights are distributed here.
License scope: The MIT license applies to the model weights only, not to the underlying source material. Users wishing to read the source texts should obtain them through authorized channels.
Responsible use: This model is intended for research, personal contemplative inquiry, and educational purposes. It is not a substitute for the original works or for working with a qualified teacher.
Citation
@misc{spira-agent-2026,
title={Spira Agent: Single-Teacher Contemplative AI via A-LoRA Fine-Tuning on Structured Reasoning Atoms},
author={Sathman},
year={2026},
url={https://huggingface.co/Sathman/Spira-Agent-GGUF}
}
Related
- Meditation Agent 8B — All 9 teachers
- Atmananda Agent — Same Direct Path tradition, different method (higher reason)
- Nisargadatta Agent — "I Am" investigation, related territory
- Nondual Bot Benchmark — 50q evaluation suite
License: MIT
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