Being Truly Human September 2022 Newsletter

By George Piggott, Chairman of the Phiroz Mehta Trust

It is with a sense of sadness, regret and our happy memories, that the trustees have no choice other than to unanimously agree that the Phiroz Mehta Trust will no longer be able to continue. This is due to the senior age of three of our trustees, with their associated age-related health conditions, that regrettably present no other option.

In this, our final newsletter, we inform all readers that we are no longer allowed to accept any donations in any form as we abide by Charity Commission rules, and we will remove links of communication relating to the charity, including our charitable registration number.

Our website, beingtrulyhuman.org, will receive no further updates and no additional subjects will be added. It will be frozen in a time capsule for at least the next five years. In this state of undisturbed peace, it will be accessible to our members and others to reap and gather the harvest of philosophical insights of wisdom that our founder, Phiroz Mehta has offered in this festival of oneness.

Each person is unique. Their enquiring minds can read, listen, or download in whatever form they wish, in their own moments of time. To conclude: Our individual journeys continue in harmony with ‘Being Truly Human’.

By Tim Surtell

Phiroz’s 1976 book The Heart of Religion has recently been digitised by the Trust and is now available for download as a free PDF e-book from our website.

In a work which combines scholarship with deep spiritual insight Phiroz Mehta draws on more than fifty years of study and practice to interpret the meaning of spiritual evolution.

E-book versions of Buddhahood, Holistic Consciousness and Insight into Individual Living are also available online.

By Doctor Karen O’Brien-Kop, lecturer in Asian Religions and Ethics at the University of Roehampton, London

In 2020 I was granted a generous research fund by the Southlands Methodist Trust at the University of Roehampton to research the works of Phiroz Mehta, including his impact on notions of spirituality in the UK.

I am now wrapping up the project, which has focused on interviews with people who attended Phiroz’s talks during the 1970s and 1980s, as well as archival research in his personal library and research papers.

The project has proved to be an interesting and important investigation into a scholarly life that spanned most of the 20th century.

The story of Phiroz Mehta is one that traverses early Theosophy in India and Sri Lanka, health and fitness developments around ‘physical culture’ in the UK during the 1920s–1930s, the perennial philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurti, the human potential movement of the 1970s and transnational concepts of Indian spirituality and their dissemination and growth in the UK through practices of yoga and meditation.

But, despite this long and varied history over the 20th century, at the heart of this project is a local history of South London, capturing the oral recollections of a community who attended talks at Dilkusha, Mehta’s Victorian family home in Forest Hill, throughout the 1970s and 1980s. The project aims to preserve the memories and reflections of those interviewed about their time with Mehta, and the impact of his ideas, talks and publications on their worldviews.

A talk about the project was given at at Southlands College, University of Roehampton, on June 9th 2022.

I will be publishing an academic article on my findings in a peer-reviewed journal later on this year, and an accessible visual timeline with annotations will be launched online in autumn 2022, designed for public engagement.

I will also be giving a talk to the Methodist London Learning Network as part of a study event for local preachers and worship leaders in London and recording a podcast for the New Books Network.

I would like to issue my sincere thanks to all of the persons associated with the Phiroz Mehta Trust, who took part in this project or supported it in various ways.

A link to a video of Dr. Karen O’Brien-Kop’s talk will be posted here when it is available.

By Phiroz Mehta

The way to the eternal home!
But the home is nowhere, and it is everywhere.
And the way has neither beginning nor ending.

With the heart lighted by love,
and the mind shining with understanding,
the way is the way of constant action,
the action which is peace and beauty.

Moving, it stands still; resting it spans the world.

Like the bud which is here-now,
and its Blossoming, here-now,
the whole way is here-now.

By an anonymous author

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.”

“One is Evil — it is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

“The other is Good — it is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

An excerpt from page 115 of Holistic Consciousness by Phiroz Mehta

So let the senses function freely. Look, listen, touch, taste and smell, observing with as full attention as possible. At first, reactions for or against what you observe will arise within; and the brain will talk back all the time, saying: ‘That is right … I don’t agree … That is new to me … How absurd …! What a bore …!’ etc., etc. — ad infinitum. Keep observing as patiently and dispassionately as possible, not like a tourist who wants to see a whole continent in a week! Reject nothing, accept nothing, condemn nothing, approve nothing. In this way you will see the fact as the fact and understand how it comes into being, how it changes and what are its consequences. Similarly, the total factual observation of your brain talking back at your sense impressions will reveal to you exactly what you are. You will then understand yourself thoroughly and also understand what any person who is talking or working with you is like inwardly.

In due time you will find that the brain’s reactive chatter will calm down. Finally, it will stop and the calm and clarity of the inner silence will enlighten you. In the ancient school of Pythagoras, freshmen spent their first two years as akoustikoi, listeners, just as sravana, listening, was the first stage of learning for the pupils of the Upanishadic teachers. It is a most arduous discipline, but if you care for Truth above all else such pure, bare observation will tell you the truth of all things as they are. This means that you become clearly conscious of that which you observe. You are then on the way to knowing by being what you observe. In the process all the beliefs, convictions, anxieties and fears characterizing your worldly state of consciousness will disappear. You will know the Truth — and ‘the Truth will make you free’ (John 8. 32). The psyche, emptied of all clutter, will be filled with the knowledge which is Truth, and you who are belief-empty will be faith-full. Unknown to you, Pure Mind, functioning freely through your empty psyche (the clean temple) will release a constantly self-replenishing spiritual energy which will enable you to be a still, silent observer, just as Transcendence attentively observes the entire cosmos.

By Sylvia Swain

Continued from part 1

The ‘shadow’ person has had much such experience, but the lack of open relationship contains their communion in a closed circuit until they are unable to partake in the totality of life. So we begin to realise that, until we experience psychological wholeness, we all remain immature, whatever our category or our age in years, each on a closed circuit, the one type gyrating in the external world and the other in their inner world.

We are now touching on that phenomenon the midlife crisis, which is a spiritual turning point like, for example, the crisis in a physical illness when the high fever begins to abate. The passing of the crisis heralds the turning point from which the healing process takes over. But the open sesame to the human psychological closed circuit is love, that love which by accepting ourselves and others as we are, with understanding but no blame, points the way from what we are to what we can become.

Love in its many forms is a constant need from cradle to deathbed and, if in the course of their lives the gyrating ones of the day or night meet with the teaching and example of those rare teachers who have the wisdom and the compassion to establish with them lines of communication at the deepest level, inspiring them to brave the new dimension of Transcendence, they then find the inspiration and the confidence to face up to that inner or that outer life, whichever they lack, and then they truly begin to grow. They are like seeds in the desert, seemingly static, and then the rains come and the desert blossoms like the rose.

The secret is that the closed circuit breaks and there is no longer any gyrating around the self centre; the will to communicate for the sake of others brings about a change in our orientation and we are weaned from our self preoccupation. It is in this way, by unselfish and loving communication, that miracles of development and healing, big and small, slow and sudden, can and do come about.

Throughout the recorded history of the human race, in myth and legend and in religious parable, the mysterious process of divine redemptive healing has been described in many ways and they are all variations on the archetypal myth of the wounded healer.

We do not need to go into too many complexities, the important point to establish is the fact that the divine healer was initially himself wounded in some way, and carries with him constant knowledge of the wound. The whole mystery of the healing process turns on this fact; it is the wounded one who heals, it is the eternal paradox at work again and again, because it is an archetypal situation.

One is reminded of Chiron who, wounded by a snake bite, developed powers of healing and went on to become the teacher of Asclepius who, in his turn, became a great healer. His symbol was a staff with a single snake entwined about it, representing transcendence and rebirth. Another outstanding example is, of course, Jesus, whose transformative redeeming communion on the cross is a clear archetypal illustration of wounded healing.

In Buddhism, the equivalent example is the Bodhisattva ideal, in which, as most of us have heard, the Bodhisattva or archetypal healing-teacher, often depicted in both male and female form, has arrived at the threshold to Nirvana, but, stopped short by the cries of the suffering world, makes a vow not to enter therein until the last suffering being is liberated. This vow is inevitable because, although enlightenment can be realised only by and through the individual by personal effort, it is no resting place for the individual, who is transformed by the very nature of the awakened state to taking upon him or herself the healing or the teaching role. Such is the religious life to all who open their hearts and minds to compassion.

Today this eternal myth of sacrifice signifies the value of the acceptance and mindfulness of our own suffering stemming from our own conditioning, no longer merely an unjust burden to be carried on one’s back. In the light of awareness, all experience, pleasant or painful, becomes that knowledge which is the raw material of compassion and healing. But without the example of the wounded healer, we would not see this.

Communion with the wound has shown him both sides of the coin and so he discovers the transformation of pain into knowledge and compassion. This is a healing which transcends the dualism of the wound and therefore bestows the power to heal both self and others.

Of course, improved efforts of a political and scientific nature will go on and take us who knows how many millennia to achieve maturity. However, any individual of sincere intent can take up the religious life at any time and by doing so come full circle from the original primal state, through all the suffering of the conditioning processes to holistic consciousness, of which P. D. Mehta wrote:

Holistic consciousness is not “attained” or “achieved” by a holy one. It supervenes when the organism, purified and well prepared to sustain the action of transcendent energies, is in a properly receptive state; that is, when it offers the right conditions for ordinary everyday consciousness to change into holistic consciousness. A bud does not “attain” or “achieve” anything when it flowers. It undergoes a natural transformation out of the bud-state into the flower state. So too holistic consciousness represents the full flowering of a human being. And just as the flowering of a bud happens, so too flowering of the person into fully fledged human-ness happens. To strive to attain, to try to storm the ramparts of heaven, would be quixotic. Simply be good, naturally and happily, and the best will make you its place of rest (Sabbath). In holistic consciousness you are at-oned within Transcendence. And since Transcendence is always blissfully creative — not merely pro-creative — you the fully-fledged human are a blissful creator.

Holistic Consciousness, p. 80

So our quest for justice has brought us full circle to the mystery of that Transcendent from which we will get no dualistic answers but only its own transformative responses. All religious answers end in paradoxical union because the secret of the divine wholeness is in its ambivalence. Our dualistic self-centredness limits us either to jumping from one pole to its opposite, or to trying to compromise with a reality which does not accept compromise. The divine wholeness, which alone can reconcile the duals, can be experienced by the individual only when he or she is willing and able to endure and to contain for a proper period of time the strain of those tearing energies in their personal lives, Phiroz Mehta would say, by ‘practising continence’, both in the inner life of the psyche and in the field of relationship.

Communion, then, is direct experience, where conditioning does not interpret and so divide us, and from this silent blending of essence comes wisdom.

Our lives need to be rounded out and those things we never thought to do can be revelation when we do them and prove to be the key to the ancient city of our wholeness. As we grow in self-knowledge and our conditioning loses its grip, fears and aversions abate and, increasingly, we each become the whole person we were originally born to be and in this we each attain to our true beauty and human dignity.

Being in communion — this is the heart of religion.

Phiroz Mehta, The Heart of Religion, p. 52

An excerpt from a talk given by Phiroz Mehta at Elmau, Bavaria on 21^st September 1975

Notice particularly the subtle forms which greed takes, particularly culturally. You may say that there are no thoughts or desires in my mind at the moment, perhaps tunes are running through your mind or pictures, or your thoughts are towards some teacher whom you follow or would like to follow, or some particular ideal which you have. But notice the power of greed at work in all these subtle forms. You enjoy these, you want to possess them. The very act of giving yourself to God or the teacher or anything has a possessive element in it. Watch it very carefully, it is very subtle, very deep. And whatever it is, don’t say to yourself, “I must get rid of it.” Don’t get rid of it. This is your teacher, this is the actual fact about oneself. I am like that, I am this greed. Look at it that way. Look quietly… The vigilance centre, the attentiveness, which is the officer in command, so to say, must remain perfectly poised, giving no orders either for or against, but just watching, watching… As you watch don’t say, “I am experiencing this” or “I am like this”. Just observe the fact, that this is greed… You may notice if you are attentive intensely and rightly that when you see, actually see, not merely say, but really see, that this is greed, you are aware of the force of greed throughout the world. And you see how greed, not only in oneself but throughout the world, gives rise to evil, to the diseased state of the mind, and therefore to sorrow, unnecessary sorrow. See it, don’t be shocked by it, don’t be afraid of it, just quietly look at it. Don’t dislike it or hate it. There it is — greed. And if your attentiveness is pure and you are calm inside, you will experience the reality of compassion coming right out of your innermost being, your very physical heart, so to say, and spreading through you, just compassion, something which we do not experience in the ordinary way. And you will realize in actual awareness the unity with all mankind. There is this suffering for oneself, for mankind through greed. See it…

An excerpt from a talk given by Phiroz Mehta at Dilkusha, Forest Hill, London on 9^th June 1974

So you see, no chasing of the Truth, but caring for the Truth, loving the Truth, and in that state of Love there is no Self to obstruct the Truth from being in us, permeating our being and flowing out freely. These are not mere words, these are not just airy-fairy poetic fancies, they are of the very life, the very throb of the heart of Truth itself. This is what happens to you, a Man, and only through Man can this happen. It cannot happen through a cat or a lion or a bird or a tree, but it can happen through you, your divine destiny, the purpose of our existence in this world. And it is not you who can fulfil it but the purpose and the totality fulfils itself through you. Let it do so and this world will know no shortage of Love. It will be full of Love and it will be full of that Love which will heal the strife and the sufferings and the sorrow of Man. It will be the Love that will bring the strength, the extraordinary comfort and that infinite resilience which will enable each and everyone to take the whole of life, of circumstantial life, in their stride, and circumstantial life will always present the dualities, pleasure/pain. That is the nature of concrete physical existence. That you can never get rid of, never try to get rid of it, but learn out of it all the time. Then you will find that your intelligence will be wholly awake. There will be real wisdom because of this ‘feeling’ aspect particularly, this knowing through the power of the Divine unknowing, and that will mean the transformation of life and being.