From the Editor
Dr. Karen O’Brien-Kop was a recipient of the Phiroz Mehta Memorial Scholarship at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, in 2013–2014. The scholarship enabled her to complete her MA in Traditions of Yoga and Meditation and subsequently go on to gain a PhD in Religions and Philosophies, specialising in early Hinduism and Buddhism.
Karen is now lecturer in Asian Religions and Ethics at the University of Roehampton, teaching on the BA in Philosophy, Religion and Ethics and the MA in Theology and Religious Studies. She has recently been awarded funding by the Southlands Methodist Trust to undertake research on the work and impact of Phiroz Mehta. The project is entitled ‘Phiroz Mehta: A Social History of an Indian Philosopher in South London, 1970s–1980s, and his Impact on the Development of Yoga and Meditation in Britain’.
The project will examine the publications of Phiroz Mehta and seek to assess how his teachings impacted upon public knowledge and discourses about yoga and meditation, as well as Indian philosophy and religion, during the 1970s and 1980s. Karen hopes to interview some individuals who were present at Phiroz’s talks or retreats — or who have read his books — and to understand how they have responded to the ideas he discussed and taught.
Karen also hopes to view some of the books from Phiroz’s private collection to consider the scholarly marginalia that he wrote in his books, in which philosophical ideas were also noted or expressed. Do get in touch with Karen at karen.obrien-kop@roehampton.ac.uk if you would like to share your experiences via a chat conducted over the phone, Zoom, or e-mail.
Dr. Karen O’Brien-Kop is a specialist in the historical study of meditation and yoga traditions within Asian religious traditions and analyses early Hindu and Buddhist meditation manuals in Sanskrit. Through her intensive teaching on the MA in Traditions of Yoga and Meditation at SOAS from 2017–2019, and the launch of an academic summer school in 2019, she also became interested in contemporary global meditation and yoga.
From 2018–2020 she served on the committee for the SOAS Centre of Yoga Studies, an academic research and teaching centre focused on public engagement. Through the Centre and online teaching she has shared cutting-edge research with meditation and yoga teachers, trainers, therapists and governing bodies worldwide, offering online academic courses through the Oxford Centre of Hindu Studies, as well as disseminating research through community enterprises such as wisestudies.com and yogacampus.com.
In the American Academy of Religion she is a committee member for the Yoga in Theory and Practice Unit and co-chair of the Indian and Chinese Religions Compared Unit.
She has published peer-reviewed articles in Religions of South Asia and the Journal of Indian Philosophy, and is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Yoga and Meditation Studies. She was the co-founder of the Sanskrit Reading Room seminar at SOAS and has a forthcoming monograph entitled Rethinking Classical Yoga and Buddhism (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).
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By Tim Surtell
Over fifty percent of people visiting the Trust’s website today do so using a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet. With this in mind we have redeveloped the website so that it scales to fit displays of every size and is easier to use via touch input.
There have been improvements to the media player, menus, glossary and Phiroz Mehta’s biography, along with many smaller tweaks and corrections.
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It is not known when or where this talk was given by Phiroz Mehta. It does not appear to have been recorded
We all regard ourselves as separate individuals. From our infancy we are brought up with such distinctions as ‘I’ and ‘you’, ‘mine’ and ‘thine’, dominating our whole life. We think this is natural. And yet, careful observers of children note that in the earliest stages a child naturally refers to itself impersonally: “Krishna likes milk;” “Radha wants doll.” But the elders bringing up the child soon dispel such impersonality and foster, instead, the consciousness of separate personality. Most of us have little sense of our underlying unity, and we deny in practice our derivation from a common source.
Matter, mind and spirit are matter, mind and spirit everywhere. Their synthesis in each living complex called man always makes a new pattern. But even as two leaves, though never identical, derive from a single tree, even as all the literary works of a Tagore, though strikingly different from each other, derive from the single genius, so do all men and women, uniquely different though they are, derive from a single source.
In essence, one; in expression, infinitely diverse. Expression, being more obvious, rivets our attention more than essence. So our fundamental unity awaits rediscovery and revitalization, whereas our sense of separateness is so overwhelming, that we behave as if our limited ‘I’, which is predominantly if not wholly egoistic, is our whole self.
This separatist ego, the ‘I’ of everyday life, is the root source of all our troubles. We must note it is not the true individual but the limited ‘I’ — consciousness which is the source of trouble. To make the problem more difficult, this separatist ego is part and parcel of the whole self! More difficult still, it is precisely this limited self-consciousness which has to be fashioned into the instrument of our redemption. The discerning mind has to penetrate deep into trust; active understanding has to transform our consciousness; living the spiritual life has to restore our unity with reality.
The ego is not intrinsically evil. The ordinary conviction we all have – ‘I am’ – is empirically correct. But trouble enters because we do not really know in which sense it is correct, and consequently, desire, thought and action become distorted.
If we try to answer what we mean by ‘I’ we shall find ourselves in difficulties. We behave throughout life as if this ‘I’ were a real entity, something quote unmistakeable, so much so that all our desire, thought and action is prefixed by ‘I’ (as when we say, “I will”, “I want”, “I like”, “I am going”, “I am working”, “I am eating”, “I am studying” etc.) and our whole life is unceasingly devoted to — ourselves!
But what is this ‘I’? Is the ‘I’ which thinks the same as the ‘I’ which eats, goes, plans, works, suffers etc? Or is it that we have a vague sense of selfhood which identifies itself with whichever part of our whole being is in the immediate limelight so to say? In that case, though we do not really know the ‘I’ (perhaps it does not exist at all!) we may reasonably say “I weigh 10 stone” or “I eat oranges” or “I think” or “I enjoy”.
A little examination shows us that there is no substantial, unalterable entity called ‘I’, materially or mentally or in any other sense. From the moment a fertilized ovum comes into being there is perpetual change. After birth there is the continuous change of mind and consciousness accompanying the continuous change of the body, in accordance with the changeless laws governing such change. ‘You’ are the result of all the previous forces which operated to produce you, at any given moment. Rather than say ‘my mind’ or ‘my body’, we should observe the presence at any given moment of a complex pattern of mental states or physical conditions. Since nothing is static, we should recognize ourselves as a continuous stream of becoming. But because we are able to recognise that there is relationship between the ‘you’ today and the ‘you’ of last year or of ten years ago, we can for all practical purposes recognize you today as the same you we always knew, and not mistake you for some other person. Further, although we, as we appear, are a continuous stream of becoming, there is in us something of the nature of a creative synthesizer which holds the dynamic pattern of our being together and causes the recognition of our distinct personal existence.
But, unfortunately, in maintaining this sense of distinct personal existence the emphasis is on ‘I am separate from you.’ Of course you and I are each distinct, in fact unique individuals. But the separatist ego, instead of merely recognizing objective facts, assumes sovereignty over us, and behaves as if it were our whole self, and as if it were unrelated, in fact opposed to, other selves. Hence I become the slave of my separatist ego (Satan!) who usurps the divine authority of the real me.
What is the part played by our ordinary ‘I’-consciousness? It is largely, but not entirely, that of a distorter and a deceiver. This self-conscious part of my being is like a corrupt messenger giving me a twisted, falsified message from the universal, the infinite, to my whole being which is the individual and finite. Why the corrupted message? Because the ‘I’, unaware of the truth, cannot help it. Imbued with a sense of separateness, the ‘I’ does not perceive, despite all protestations born of superficial knowledge to the contrary, that I and you, my self and my environment, the particular and the universal, the finite and the infinite constitute one reality, a single integrated whole of uniquely different parts. Hence I cannot put my trust in the universal. So I believe and act as if I would starve, be hurt, suffer deprivation and grief unless I lived unto myself, at the expense of others if necessary. Therefore I act in competition with or even in enmity against my fellow man, to fulfil my needs, which are also his needs. Worse still: my separatist ego misinterprets my real needs. He lays down that security means a permanent job, a house with a garden, a large bank deposit, and what not else; otherwise says he, I would just perish. Similarly, he asserts that happiness means that I must have such and such pleasures, surroundings, successes, applause, and what not else. But these fantastic pictures of security, love, happiness, well-being and fulfilment, arbitrarily imposed on me, have little or no resemblance to true security, love and happiness, or to the true nature of my actual situation. They are distortions, since the self-conscious ‘I’ is the controller of my waking state — the driver of the engine — he drives me off the rails continuously, and heaps trouble upon trouble for me, and also for you, since you and I are mutually involved in our interdependent world.
Strutting on the world stage with pathetic self-importance, this petty ‘I’ so successfully deceives me that I forget that security, love, happiness and well-being are all a natural and inevitable part and parcel of the world process; that I have not to fight or struggle for them but to let them come to me in their proper destined measure and shape as the natural consequence of true perception and of duty done; that they are not rewards in a distant future of futile turmoil today but are immediately present in the process of right living here and now. How many happy things we miss now because we thrust our noses into the mire of thoughtless, anxious, violent, muddled, unfruitful actions in vain hopes of a future happiness! Think! While we are engaged in egoistic living we miss the comfort of trees and sunshine, the charm of sea and sky, the inspiration of meadows, mountains and stars, the delight of children’s laughter or intelligent conversation, the peace of just being, the ecstasy of that larger consciousness which would be ours when the limited ‘I’ becomes the servant that he is instead of the usurping master.
The question will now be asked: Very well, what do I do to free myself? Consider first the real power of this pretender, the egocentric ‘I’, as compared with the unknown power that lies within my whole being. Who, or what, performs or directs processes of major importance to life like digestion, the functioning of the vital organs and ductless glands, instinctive reactions which may save life in some emergency, healing when sick or wounded, revitalizing through sleep, procreation, the mechanism by which sense impressions and experience are converted into ideas, and very much else besides? Not the ‘I’! They go on in obedience to beneficent universal forces operating within my whole being, unconsciously, whereas the conscious ‘I’ can do nothing about them. In fact passing moods and actions are very much under their thumb. So I begin to see how the ego is a thievish appropriator of my whole being; how something much more inclusive, wiser, more able and more powerful is the real inner sovereign over me; and, above all, how this something is in tune with the forces of life, of creation, preservation and regeneration. Not only religion and philosophy, but psychology too recognizes that our roots lie deep in this unseen and unknown part of our being. From within we draw our substance and nourishment. From the hidden depths wells up creative energy which it is the duty of the self-conscious ‘I’ to use rightly. The understanding of these facts grows with careful observation. Self-knowledge, self-responsibility and self-realization are the steps involved in this process of freeing ourselves from bondage to the ego, and allowing the deeper levels of consciousness which are in alignment with universal reality to function. In this way the self-conscious ‘I’ is freed of separative egoism, and is fashioned into the instrument of our redemption.
We must note that it is the self-conscious ‘I’ alone which can, and has to, make the effort for liberation. The ‘devil’ of his own free-will and effort, has to transform himself into ‘god’! The little self dies, by willing and intelligent sacrifice, in order that the true self may be born. When this happens, the clamorous, egoistic ‘I’ will become quiet, the wise direction and creative expression, and the still small voice of the spirit will be heard. Amidst the bustle of everyday life, the disciplined ‘I’ will always be aware of the sure touch of the guiding hand of our inner being. True individuality will have flowered out, and rampant egoism, the maker of disorder, will be a thing of the past.
“But we know all this” says the impatient man. “We have heard all this philosophy long ago.” It is one thing to have superficial knowledge, which merely means an untidy mind cluttered up with inanimate thoughts. It is quite another thing to realize the transformation of mind and consciousness through faithful discipline and long experience. Then only can we truthfully say “we know all this”. Superficial knowledge is a burden. Real knowledge is the source of practical efficiency.
The universal forces of creation, preservation and regeneration are eternally active. When they operate through our own being we become aware of them primarily as the stream of desire which is undefined in its inception — ‘pure energy’. But the separatist ego mistranslates this pure energy into petty personal wants and desires, dressed in fantastic shapes. He tries, ludicrously and tragically, to bottle up the universal ‘Spirits’ into a misshapen vessel of his own making. Thus arise all the perverted forms of desire — and pop goes the cork, with results too well known in our experience. Thus selfishness comes into being and ruins our lives.
In the article ‘Heart’s Desire’ we saw that the purification of desire by freeing it of all lust was each individual’s responsibility. To do this successfully, we now see that there is a deeper and a more primary responsibility — to free the ‘I’-consciousness of its enslaving egoism. When this is done, the former is quite easy. In fact, experience will show that when the ego is the servant, when the awareness of our inner self and of the Universal is the strongest feature of our consciousness, all the petty “I want”-s or “I like”-s will vanish like shadows of the night. The lurid fires of lust will be extinguished. Only the steady light of pure desire will remain as the dynamic inspiration for right action, which creates and maintains true security, love, serenity and well-being.
A lecture delivered by Phiroz Mehta at Attingham Park, Shropshire on 26th February 1956 as part of a conference on ‘Christianity and Politics’
Continued from part 1
In the Aristotelian-Thomistic scheme, the soul of man is identified with the rational form of the living body, and God with the rational form of the universe. For Aristotle, the word ‘soul’ meant the final form of the organism, form being conceived as a causal principle determining the growth, development and characteristics of the organism. And for him, as it also is for the Thomistic Catholics today, the individual person was one substance, body and soul being its material and formal components. Aristotelian science shows also that the formal and final causes of all individual things fit together organically into a hierarchic unity and pattern. Good conduct, ‘practical wisdom’ as Aristotle called it, occurs only when man acts upon the basis of the scientifically verified hierarchical conception of his own nature. Since man, being limited, has only partly verified this conception, St. Thomas and his followers were able to express the distinction between reason and revelation in completely Aristotelian scientific terms: It is the function of revelation to make us continuously aware of the existence in perfection of the whole rational system or final cause of nature, that is, God, which human beings, through science with its reason, know only in part.
The birth of modern experimental science in the 16th century and its subsequent swift growth exposed the inadequacies of Artistotelian science. Descartes’ (1596–1650) doctrine of material and mental substances, and his follower Malebranche’s (1638–1715) theory of mind and matter as an occasion of the activity of God, had a great influence upon John Locke (1632–1704). Newton (1642–1727), following the scientific work of Galileo (1564–1642) and Huygens (1629–1695), provided in his Principia (1687) the mathematics and physics which formed the basis of Locke’s philosophy. According to Galileo and Newton’s physics, sensed colours, sounds, tastes, smells, and warmth do not characterize material objects, but are mere appearances projected back upon material objects by the observer. Newton went a step further when he said that sensed space and time are also appearances. So Newton propounded his absolute, true, mathematical space and time, in contrast to the relative, apparent, common space and time of personal experience. The former world is mathematically postulated by rational thought and verified by experimental science; the latter world of personal experience is the one aesthetically sensed by sight, sound, touch and so on. So the question arose, what is the nature of the observer who projects back sensed qualities upon material objects which in reality are devoid of the qualities, for what we sense as qualities are mere motion, are simply rates of vibration giving us the impression of colour when apprehended by our eyes, of sound by our ears, and so on.
Locke answered that the observer is an entity such that when the material objects in Newton’s mathematically defined space and time act upon it, it is conscious of colours, sounds, pains, pleasures and so on in sensed space and time as appearances. This is precisely what Locke meant by a mental substance. It is a substance capable of consciousness which, when material substances affect it, is aware of qualities in sensed space and time as appearances. Thus, reason in science and the philosophy of science provided Locke with a ‘new state of nature’ and a new content for the ‘law of Reason’. This prescribed a new idea of the good in religion and politics: in religion, toleration rather than the theocratic rule of a Presbyterian magistrate or the divine right of the king’s Church of England; in politics, popular democracy rather than Calvinistic theocracy or the divine right of kings defended by Filmer. As a consequence of the Lockean formulation of Newton’s mathematical science, the soul of man and the political person were identified with a single mental substance. The person’s body was, on the other hand, an aggregate of material substances or atoms moving the accordance with the mechanistic laws of Newton’s science. The person in his moral, religious and political aspects, and as the observer of nature, was the single mental substance. His body was his property, just as a house, similarly composed of material atoms, was his property.
Locke postulated each individual mental substance as being completely self-sufficient and independent. Hence each man, consulting his own soul introspectively was the only judge of the correctness of his religion, and could not be shown to be incorrect by appeal to another man’s doctrine. Thereby Locke laid the philosophical foundations for the doctrine of complete religious toleration as a positive good, now taken so much for granted in several democratic societies.
Modern American democracy stems largely from John Locke. The celebrated author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, had scant respect for Aristotle’s political writings. J. C. Miller wrote in his Origins of the American Revolution:
“If any one man can be said to have dominated the philosophy of the American Revolution it is John Locke.”
But Lockean philosophy also has its inadequacies, such as the impossibility of prescribing social action for the good of the community, since each soul was a lonely atom quite unrelated to any other mental atom. Moreover, the philosophy had several other weak points. Locke and his successors — Hume, Berkeley, and the physiocrats Adam Smith, Ricardo, Bentham, Mill and Jevons —all influenced the shape and trend of Anglo-American culture in the direction of believing, and acting upon the belief that good conduct, both for the individual and for the political and economic order was free and independent individual activity governed by the law of free competition. The ideas of Malthus and Darwin supported this view. Thus 18th and 19th century Christendom saw laissez-faire as never before or since in world history. America had no counter-influence, derived from an ancient past. The only tradition governing the United States almost up to our own day was Non-Conformist Protestantism, and the Lockean and Humean laissez-faire assumptions of modern political and economic theory.
The contrast with Britain is stark. Graeco-Roman, Celtic and Teutonic influences, and both Augustinian Platonic and Thomistic Aristotelian Christian doctrine together with the rigidly authoritarian and hierarchic influence of the Church of Rome went into the moulding of mediaeval merrie England. Aristocratic socially, regal politically, and Roman Catholic in religion was English culture, like mediaeval culture generally. Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy in 1535 was intended to make the English people identify their religious loyalty with England; and with the inception of a Church of England with the Sovereign as the Defender of the Faith, the severance from the Pope and Rome was sharply defined. But the attitude to religion as a whole — and this is the important point — was that a middle course should be steered between extreme Catholicism and extreme Protestantism. Edward VI’s reign exemplified the evils of extreme Protestantism, and that of his successor Mary of extreme Catholicism. But from the time of the great Elizabeth I, something like a tolerant impartial attitude has prevailed, with a few exceptions here and there, during the last four centuries. And in Elizabeth’s reign, what was previously done for Catholicism by St. Thomas Aquinas with his Summa Theologica was done for Anglicanism by Richard Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity. This Polity was anti-laissez-faire, and was organic and hierarchical; and though based on Aristotle, it also drew freely upon Greek and Roman classics, and Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Thus Hooker’s formulation was less rigid and more latitudinarian than St. Thomas’s, thereby marking the main difference between Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism. The original ancestor in England of a conservative was the Englishman who was a good patriot and a good Anglican, and who had a strong sense of responsibility for the welfare of all those who came under his wing. In fact, he contrasted somewhat with the Tory of later days.
Here we can appreciate the contrast between British democracy and American democracy. The culture of the United States, based so broadly on the Lockean idea of the equality of all men, tends to accentuate individual conformity and equality, and to regard government as a necessary evil. In Britain, partly due to Mill’s protagonism of individual uniqueness as being good, English culture fosters individual independence and differences, and regards government as a positive good, for it is the instrument for peacefully introducing and firmly establishing changes for the benefit of society.
Liebnitz and Kant revealed the incapacity of either Locke’s or Hume’s philosophy to account for mathematics and mathematical physics. Kant transformed modern western Man’s conception of himself from a merely passive to a systematically active and creative being. Kant and his successors, Fichte and Hegel, and in contrast to them, Feuerbach and Marx, laid the foundation stones of German idealism and Kultur, and Russian Communism.
How now shall I, a simple man from India, speak of this great culture? Look at its achievements in the world of learning, knowledge, science, exploration, discovery and invention! Look at its great architectural monuments! Read its erudite philosophies and its incomparable literature and hear its music! Look at its industry and commerce, its vast enterprises and its giant activities! Look at its law and order, its education and reform, its immense striving and progress! Look at it as it stands today, rich and dominant in the world! See the complete polities and economies of the great Christian nations! Consider the humanitarian work in medicine and science, by individuals and societies and governments! Observe how some Christian nations uphold freedom, so that Telispero Garcia in Mexico could write in La Libertad in the latter part of the last century:
“In the country where positivism is rooted in the national character, where it enjoys its proper status, where the experimental method is applied to all the manifestations of life, in short, in England, there is the more security of liberty and the greater guarantee of right.”
…whereas countries such as:
“Germany, the cradle of the absolute idealisms; France, mother of all the absolute rights; Spain, Italy and the other nations which nursed themselves at the breast of those beauties which the Sr. Gabilando is afraid to see disappear from this land, have been the victims of every sort of tyranny.”
Is it easy then to speak of Christian culture? I might liken it to a marvellous cathedral: or to a woodland rich in the variety of its beautiful trees and its native flowers: or to an extraordinary human being possessed of wonderful abilities. Yet one thing there is to which I cannot liken Christendom: the heart of Jesus Christ. And if now it is asked whether Christian culture can be a way of life for all human beings in the world, and further if it is asked whether the exclusive claim of supremacy, of truth, of finality made by Christians on behalf of both Christ and Christianity is at all acceptable or would stand investigation, the unequivocal answer of the non-Christian world is a decided “No!”
Very early in this talk attention was drawn to the commandments in Deuteronomy and Leviticus to love God and our neighbour, which Jesus strongly emphasised in his own teaching. We do know the beautiful ways in which Christendom has exemplified, and today is fulfilling, this divine command, obedience to which spells true freedom. But we also know the wars, cruelties, intolerances, barbarities and hatreds of which Christendom cannot be acquitted. We know of Crusades, Inquisitions, the Thirty Years’ War, the Slave Trade, Racialism, political and economic self-aggrandisement by dominating other peoples, militant evangelism, the lawless and conscienceless robbery of other continents and the inhuman savaging of the cultures which flourished in those lands, the endless internecine strife between Christian nations and between the denominations of the Christian religion itself. We see no grounds for the assumption that no other religion taught love as Christianity does, and that no other teacher exemplified love as Jesus Christ did. Non-Christians request you to cease flaunting words like agape and charis. The Brahmaputras, or Sons of God, who taught in India for at least two millennia before the birth of Jesus, could not realize their son-ship without agape and charis. It may be gently suggested that you read the Vedas — but read with an enlightened mind or else it were useless to read —and see for yourselves whether even the earliest teachings on love were short of fullness. Read of Love as the all-encompassing, supreme Value expounded by Yājñavalkya in the Bṛhad-āraṇyaka Upaniṣad. Read the many teachings of the Buddha on Love. Read the wealth of teachings on Love in the Hindu scriptures and in the Chinese teachings, and see for yourselves, after cleansing the heart of prejudices and assumptions, whether they are short of the Christian teaching in content. See, too, for yourselves, the innumerable exemplifications of Love in other lands by other people, and see, with clear-seeing eyes, if they are not as wonderfully glowing as the heart of Jesus.
Jesus triumphed over the temptation of sovereignty. He lived the life of poverty. But the Church assumed unbestowed power and became a self-authorised sovereign body. It has exercised and continues to exercise sovereignty. It possesses and administers wealth, even worldly wealth. Jesus had no vested interest whatsoever — thus only was it possible for him to be the unresisting instrument of God’s Will, and teach God’s Word by living the godly life. Can the same be said of Christendom? Has not Christendom displayed, far more successfully than any non-Christian culture, how the worldly pursuit of wealth and power has been the dominant drive animating most of the activities of Christian peoples? We do not see how this is in harmony with entering the kingdom of heaven by means of repentance, and by following the example of the Master and his apostles. Remember, Jesus did suggest it was slightly inconvenient for the rich to attempt entry into heaven. Yājñavalkya taught in India many centuries before Jesus that there was no hope of immortality through wealth; and the Buddha made absolute poverty — complete non-possession in every sense — one of the rules for the members of his Order. Wealth, goods, pleasures, achievements are all part of the determinate and therefore mortal aspect of things. Attachment to them means bondage to mortality, to suffering and anxiety, and to a state of sin, which means that state of awareness which is insensible to the ever present reality of God; insensible because you have been seduced by the glamour of temporal things, the vain trinkets of the Lord of Death. Where is the repentance if we do not turn away from attachment to the ephemeral?
Jesus never propounded a philosophy nor laid down any dogmatic doctrines. Instead, He gave authoritative teachings, as in his beatitudes, of the Way which led to the realization of the Kingdom of Heaven. He spoke, in the Jewish way, of God who is the father in heaven. But St. Paul clothed the naked word made flesh of Jesus’ teaching partly in the garments of Platonic philosophy. He introduced the idea of a sacrificial person, offered up to God as an atonement for sin. The man Jesus replaced the bull of Mithras. In time, the Christian Trinity because the analogue of the older, and in some respects more complete Hindu Trinity of Brahmā, Viṣṇu, Śiva. The other Trinity of God, the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ was the analogue of the Alexandrine Serapis-Isis-Horus.
Whereas with Jesus God has to be the experience of immediate realization here-now, Christian doctrine laid down that Jesus Christ and the Church were indispensable intermediaries between man and God for a fulfilment not possible here and now but only in a spiritual world after death. Theologians and doctrinaires quote the Bible to the effect that no man hath seen God, or that no man can see God and live. But Jesus himself taught, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” He also taught, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” Who is he, here or elsewhere, who will sit in judgement and say, “This one or that one is not sinless, has not made the peace?” For which man can dare to judge unless he himself be sinless and have made peace, and therefore be qualified to judge? And if he be one who is indeed sinless and has made peace, he, I assure you, will not sit in judgement on his brother.
Please permit me a short digression here. My critical remarks have no sting to them. We do not sit in judgement upon you, for it would be sinful to do so. Who are we? We are as yourselves: human beings, fellow pilgrims on various paths leading to the single summit of the supreme fulfilment. From that summit we all see only one view, however different the narrower views may be from different points on the various paths. Let us meet together in living fraternity on the summit. And in order to meet thus, let us ponder in our hearts over what each of us brings as the treasured essence of his own realization for cheering and helping all others.
At all periods during the last six or seven thousand years, there has been a small number of persons whose main interest and pursuit was to discover the meaning of life, its purpose and its goal; to find a happiness and peace, a satisfaction that would last always; to triumph over sin and evil, sorrow and pain; to realize immortality. Far back in time, some of these persons discovered that by pacifying the superficial and chaotic activity of the senses, by purifying the mind of all bias, prejudices, preconceptions and assumptions, and by becoming free of all desire or lust and of all egoism, they became aware of existence in a different way. What is this different way? Our normal awareness functions in the mode of mortality. That is to say, we do not have, excepting in rare moments, a full consciousness of the eternal as underlying, permeating and transcending the temporal. Our consciousness flits from event to event, mood to mood, thought to thought, wholly wrapped up in this ephemeral, deterministic and inevitably mortal becoming-process which is universal manifestation. Thus we are aware in endless succession of pleasures, pains, hopes, fears, anxieties, successes, failures, joys, griefs, depressions, elations, in short of the entire range of the infinitude of mortal experience. Over all of it, Death is Lord. Even our worship, our adoration of what we call Immortal God, is but a temporary thought and a transient emotion, to be replaced soon, all too soon, by the kaleidoscopic, deathful procession. You approach near to the eternal for one phantasmal instant, you experience a flash of the Light of the Godhead for a single ghostly moment, only to fall back into this glamorous darkness of laughter and tears, of yea and nay, of the rose and the thorn, of the ecstasy of love and the unendurable laceration of frustrated longing, all, all, the sphere of the Lord of Death, the womb and also the world of suffering, the suffering which measures our painful distance from the supreme Reality, from blissful immortality.
But those who trod the Way I briefly mentioned a moment ago — and each of several paths is that self-same Way — went all through this world of experience; they plunged into the fires of hell; they ascended the heights of heaven and roamed through those realms which, with charming symbolism, are named the easeful home of angelic hosts; and slowly they who trod the Way became free of this world, of the underworld and also of the heavenly world. They discovered that all these spring from the activity of the discursive mind, the activity of speech-thought; and as such, back into the mind they sink, ephemeral, deathful. Thus all the seductive patterns of speech and thought and described feelings, whether presented as profound theology, sublime philosophy, ravishing art, wonderful science, noble deeds of loving service and all the rest of them, beautiful and necessary as they are, are but mortal man’s temporal creations, useful for a time, but which must be transcended if immortality you seek.
Continued in part 3
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