Ruben is the director of the Flourishing Intelligence Program (FLIP) at Linacre College, University of Oxford. Ruben is also co-director of the Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, a Senior Researcher within Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry, and fellow at Linacre College. Ruben has made significant theoretical and empirical contributions to the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness, meditation, and insight. His work also reveals a pathway towards better and safer artificial intelligence based on the science of consciousness and contemplative wisdom. Ruben has an eclectic contemplative background, including Zen, Advaita, and Theravada, and his first-person inquiry into the nature of reality continues to deeply inform his scientific research, and vice versa.

I didn’t set out to become a spiritual teacher. I was the kid with questions that wouldn’t let go — why are we here, what happens when we die, is this really all there is? At eleven, I had my first spiritual awakening, which introduced me to what I call my Inner Teacher, a wise guiding presence that’s been with me ever since.

Those early experiences set me on a long journey across traditions and continents, including several years on a mountaintop in India with a 120-year-old enlightened master. He used laughter, provocation, and paradox to dismantle every spiritual assumption I had — and showed me that real spirituality isn’t about rising above life, but stepping fully into it.

What came out of all that is how I teach now: Eastern depth, Western practicality. Spirituality that holds up just as well on a Tuesday afternoon as it does on a meditation cushion.

I’m not interested in quick fixes or spiritual highs. Over decades of teaching, I keep coming back to this: you already have an Inner Knowing, an intuitive wisdom that’s been there all along. Most of us have just been talked out of trusting it. My work is about helping you clear what’s in the way — the limiting beliefs, the mental clutter — so you can remember who you are at the deepest level.

Jonathan lived the definition of material excess, twenty-five years climbing the corporate ladder in marketing and technology as a C-level executive, accumulating possessions, and actively avoiding anything spiritual. That was until May 22, 2023.

On that day, Jonathan died. His skin turned yellow, his organs failed, and he was gone for three hours. What happened during those three hours wasn’t just a glimpse of white light. He experienced complete immersion in divine consciousness, received profound spiritual teachings and revelations, and was given a choice: stay on the other side or return to share with those ready to awaken.

He chose to return. But the being who returned bears no resemblance to the executive who died. Jonathan now helps individuals across the world through speaking engagements, group calls, and private sessions.