Being Truly Human November 1995 Newsletter

From the Editor

Ron Kett is arranging a short retreat for readers of the Newsletter in Berkshire in the early part of 1996.

The venue is a beautiful old house in lovely, peaceful surroundings, and is an ideal place for a retreat. Accommodation will be in beautifully appointed rooms each with en suite facilities. The cost will be extremely reasonable, at £10 per person per night, on a self-catering basis.

Anyone interested is asked to contact the Editor as soon as possible.

From the Editor

“Kingfisher”, whose aphorisms are a feature of the Newsletter, has collected together a selection of these, and produced a booklet entitled “Reflections.” Copies are available for sale from the Trust at a cost of £1 per copy, including postage and packing. All proceeds will be donated to the St. Francis Hospice, Havering-atte-Bower, Essex. If you would like to support this very good cause, please order your copy from the Editor.

From the Editor

The Autumn School took place at Lillian Road from 29th September, to 1st October. We played a number of tapes from the Park Place Summer School, May, 1975, and we also had two video talks by Phiroz, made and presented by Ron Kett, one of a talk at the Buddhist Society Summer School, 1987, and the other of Phiroz’s 90th birthday party, 1992. Liz David led a session of Chi-Kung, we had some stimulating discussions, and we also went out for walks along the Barnes towpath in the lovely autumn weather. Altogether, we had a very happy and rewarding time together, in the enjoyment of one another’s company, learning from each other and from ourselves, and benefiting from the infinite wisdom and compassion expressed in the talks.

A talk given by Phiroz Mehta on 13^th April 1957

Continued from part 1, part 2 and part 3

Let us consider only the final step, for we have insufficient time at our disposal for an exposition of the intermediate steps.

Just as Adam falls from grace according to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, so too Yima falls according to the Iranian tradition. Adam’s fall is redeemed, successively, by Enoch, Elijah and Jesus, Yima’s fall by Zarathushtra. But in the Rig-vedic tradition about Yama, there is no fall. Yama, it is taught, chooses death, abandons his body and passes to the inner world, and is given lordship over the highest of the three heavens. Yama becomes the Master of Death, not to be confused with Mrityu or Mara, the death-dealer. Yama chooses death — that is, he frees himself from all bondage to the sense-life and worldly values. He grows to understand that the cycle of births and deaths is the stream of samsara in his own moment-to-moment consciousness, the stream which flows unbidden. He learns through discipline to master the unbidden flow of discursive thought, and to enter and abide in the profounder states of consciousness. At last he is able, in full self-possession, to die altogether to mortal consciousness, that is, whilst fully awake, to completely stop the flow of feeling and discursive thought. In other words, he completely transcends the awareness of existence in terms of entity, which is limitation and mortality. This is the meaning of Yama abandoning his body and passing to the inner world. This inner world is not the world of exalted feelings, nor of discursive thought however profound, nor of trances, nor of any of the visions and ecstasies of the saints. All these latter belong to the sphere of mortality, for in all of them one is aware in the mode of uprising-proceeding-dying. But when, fully awake, the flow of discursive thought is deliberately stopped, then there is no uprising-proceeding-dying in one’s consciousness. This is the full asamprajnata samadhi of the Hindu, the Eighth or Final Deliverance of the Buddha. It is the actual condition of Revelation. It is Superconsciousness, the transcendent awareness in terms of “As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be”, all in simultaneity, in wholeness. And this, wherein all discursive thought is completely stilled, and all birth and death is overleaped, is the full experience and meaning of immortality. Time and space, the precondition for bodily being, pain and pleasure or stimulus-response, the touchstone of our psycho-physical life, and good and evil as we know them here, are all transcended, and you eat the fruit of the Tree of Life which stands in the self-same garden in which stands the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And that garden of Eden is your own bodily being.

This attainment of Superconsciousness is the meaning of Yama being granted lordship over the highest of the three heavens, and of his becoming the Master of Death.

When you realize Superconsciousness, you have made real the Silence, for all the noise of the mental chatter which is the expression of your mortal awareness of an entity universe is stilled. Now you are the fully Self-awakened One, the Enlightened One, the Anointed One. You have transformed your mortal awareness of a space-time world into the immortal Superconsciousness of eternal existence. Well may you triumphantly cry “O death, where is they sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” This entry into Superconsciousness is the meaning of “And Enoch walked with God; and Enoch was not, for God took him” before the death of the person called Enoch; the meaning of Elijah being transported to heaven in a chariot of fire; the meaning of “Be still and know that I am God.” The entry into Superconsciousness is the meaning of both the Resurrection and the Ascension of Jesus; the meaning of his words “And now I am no more in the world … and I come to Thee”, and of his great affirmation “I and my Father are One”, which the Hindus before him expressed as “Pratyagatman and Paramatman are One.” This Superconsciousness is the meaning of that sentence in the Rig-veda, “We have drunk Soma and become immortal”; the meaning of those phrases in the Upanishads, realizing the Atman, knowing Brahman, becoming Brahman. It is the meaning of the words in the Aitareya Upanishad of the 8th century B . C . that “Vamadeva having said this ascended aloft and became immortal” — the Ascension is indeed a very ancient symbolical doctrine. This Superconsciousness was known to the Egyptian initiates; it was the supreme mystery which was kept secret in the Mystery cults of ancient civilizations; it was experienced four times by Plotinus and once by Porphyry. This Superconsciousness is the very heart of the Enlightenment of the Buddha; it is the true meaning of Nirvana here-now; it is the Kingdom of Heaven within you. This is the meaning of Eternal Life, the meaning of immortality, the meaning of God-realization or of union with God. It is the supreme religious experience.

In that Superconsciousness, all that our sublimest thought and our most profound intuitions have grasped are as nought. There is no God there, the God of our conceptions; there is no time, no space. You by virtue of having become the Absolute Good are united with the ceaseless creativeness of all existence with the as-it-is-in-itselfness of existence. You, the within-the-self Infinite, are one with the Infinite which is the Universal Transcendent.

Whosoever realizes Superconsciousness is the embodied Revelation, the fount and source of religion. The attainment of Superconsciousness, which is the experience of the Silence, the Void, the Plenum, the Infinite, the Absolute, is the source-experience from which have emerged the deep teachings embodied in words like Atman and Brahman, Godhead and God, Eternity and Immortality, the Kingdom of Heaven and Nirvana, soul and spirit, and all other similar words which are current specie on the counters of theology and philosophy.

Now we can see that the inspired utterances of the great teachers are the first translations of the experience of Superconsciousness from the infinite realm of the immortal into the limited sphere of the mortal. They are the attempt to infuse the transcendent reality of unitary, eternal being into the common reality of multitudinous, transient entities. As pointed out earlier, speech-thought is the means for re-presenting our awareness of existence in terms of name-form. Thus these religious truths which are formulated for our guidance to salvation are like crucified fragments of Divine Ideation. Nevertheless, these fragments which fall from the lips of the great teachers, our most precious heritage through all time, are glowing pointers of light brightening the path we should tread, if indeed we seek the realization of eternal life. But there are always those men — and they are legion — who wish to relate the heart of religion to the knowledge which is the fruit of searching for what is other than man’s spiritual fulfilment. Let us then clearly understand the nice distinction between the heart of religion on the one hand, and science, philosophy and theology on the other. Functioning within the sphere of sense-activity and discursive thought, restless, probing intellect poses many questions. These questions as well as their answers lie within the realm of speech-thought. All philosophy and science is a speech-thought product of the effort by man as he is, viz. a person capable of being conscious in the mode of mortality only, to comprehend what he wishes to comprehend. In contrast to this, the heart of religion is concerned with changing the comprehender. It is concerned with perfecting his character, so that he plumbs the depth of selflessness and stands on the height of sinlessness. It is concerned with enabling him to realize God-communion, union with Brahman. And so, the heart of religion enables a man to transform his mortal awareness of a space-time world into the immortal Superconsciousness of eternal existence.

Now, because there are those who wish to make and possess a philosophic system, a verbal system, answering questions about the heart of religion in a manner satisfying the discursive intellect, and formulated in the context of the limited and the particular, a theology comes into being. A theology is an exposition of religious conceptions; and we have already seen, earlier, in this talk, how scientific thought affects the formulation of a theology.

Modern science is presenting new world-views, and these views compel a reformation of religious conceptions. A new and suitable theological formulation will have to arise. Only forward steps can be taken, or else there is decay and death. Catholic orthodoxy, for example, cannot go back, as it is trying to do in some quarters, to Thomistic Aristotelianism in the face of modern science. All forward movement entails sacrifices — but remember that pure and holy sacrifices are gains, not losses, growth, not stultification. Let me mention only one of the sacrifices necessary today: it is the sacrifice of exclusiveness, and all that is implied in it.

Spiritual and religious tension today is greater than ever before in the world’s history because our progress has pushed us to the very frontiers in several ways. The globe is known, space is by-passed, time is foreshortened, matter is transformed into immaterial but harnessable energy, and strange new realms of the mind are being explored. Today is the fateful moment of opportunity. No new religious formulation which is merely a construct of the discursive mind will prove to be the spring waters of the spirit. That way will lie only frustration and suffering. Mankind fundamentally needs to be reminded that the heart of religion is concerned with the realization of Superconsciousness. This means the stopping of the flow of discursive thought; it means a ceasing to churn up the oceans of words and to produce philosophies and theologies which have forgotten the real meanings of immortality and eternal life. When proper account is taken of this truth, and when each one of us individually lives the good life and successfully reaches the end of the road, we ourselves shall realize here-now that ineffable felicity which is ‘the transcendental consummation of our human existence. And this is the most powerful, the most swift and the most practical way in which we can promote the greatest good of all mankind.

A talk given by Eileen Benson at the Phiroz Mehta Trust Spring School on 4^th March 1995

Most of us have been very fortunate in life in that we have know Phiroz. We have sat and listened to him dozens upon dozens of times, listened again and again to his tapes, read his books, marvelled at him. What have we done with that privilege? Are we any different? Have we understood? Have we lived the teaching? Or, has it all gone by as nothing — and now we are busy doing other things, finding new teachers, etc?

Through all Phiroz’s words there is a very strong golden thread. Every talk, every tape, every book quietly but firmly points this out. It is that we are all asleep, unawakened, self-oriented, imprisoned in a body, totally unaware, suffering, confused, conditioned automatons. In seeing our mechanicalness and in awakening to its control over us, we may then see what it is we have to do.

We go through life like Daleks. Daleks are programmed, just like us. They play their old records over and over again. We also are machines, doing the same things, saying the same things, day in and day out, yet we actually believe we are fully conscious beings. Unfortunately we are not. We think we are in control of our lives, and that we have free will, we even think that we can “Do”. Little do we know that, as we are, we can do nothing. Everything just happens — it happens as a result of all that has happened before, a long chain of cause and effect — the effect being the cause of the next event. We make up our minds to do this … and finish up doing that. Just watch it, and you will see.

As Phiroz so often said, everything revolves around our sense of “I”. ”I” comes into everything we say and think — we are self—oriented. Here I am also pointing out that there is not just a single “I” in us, there are dozens of “I’s” in us. It is not until we are aware of all these different characters that live through us that there is any hope of escape from our prison house.

If you cannot see this, think of the “I” that makes a New Year’s resolution, i.e. “Tomorrow I shall get up at 6.30 a.m. and exercise.” Three days later a different “I” says, “I’m tired, or it’s cold — I won’t exercise today, the sleep will do me far more good”. Or on dieting … Need I say any more? There is the “I” that loved someone yesterday, and another who can’t stand that same person today. There is even an “I” who thinks it loves the whole world — until it meets X, Y or Z. We don’t seem to see how fragmented we are.

In The Heart of Religion, page 342, Phiroz writes:

When sense-functionings are pacified, the mind is unified, not fragmentary. Thereupon the multitude of “I’s” which plague me by their clamour, roguery, folly and many other ills in everyday life, become a crystal clear unit.

On page 220, he says:

From childhood I am conditioned to use the word ‘I’, or the word ‘myself’, when referring to the living organism that bears my name. In practical everyday life such use is sensible and not misleading. Other people, traditional doctrines and beliefs, my own feelings, my fear of losing self or my unwillingness to be deprived of my separate individuality or ego, condition me still further. So I think of, believe in and passionately cling to, an intellectual abstraction, namely, an arbitrarily postulated immortal soul or spark of God which is the ‘I’, a separate eternal entity which survives bodily death. As long as this concept and belief that a finite but eternal entity is the real ‘I’ is obstinately upheld by me, it exercises a dominant influence for ill over my whole life and environment.

Now there are two aspects of ourselves, one I shall call Personality and the other Essence. We need to feel the difference. When we are born, we are pure Essence — no Personality has formed. That Essence is active.

As we grow up, Personality is formed. This is due to our conditioning, our parents, our environment, other people, teachers, etc. We are programmed. If we are lucky, we grow up with a pleasing Personality, if we were rejected or abused, we grow up unhappy, violent and sad. In either case, gradually Essence is covered over, made passive and the acquired Personality becomes active. This is as it should be. We do have to form Personality.

On Page 317 of The Heart of Religion, Phiroz says:

Nature brings the body to maturity in a couple of decades or so.

Then what? Nature then hands over the task to us. And this is where we get stuck. Our life task then is to return by our own efforts to Essence. Instead we go into overdrive and cruise helplessly through life with no direction, no goal and no help. Between the ages of twenty and thirty there should start a second education. Sadly this is missing. The real task starts here. The inner development of ourselves depends on the growth of Essence. We are barely even aware that Essence can grow. It is what Phiroz called the growth of Being, or the growth of Consciousness. We sincerely believe that we are already conscious — we are not. Our Personality has developed habitual ways of reacting to circumstances and events, and to others, and also all the contradictory “I’s”, negative emotions and attitudes, the fantasies one has about oneself, the protective “buffers” we have, imagination, pictures of oneself, playacting, cheating, lying and so forth. In truth we are not really very nice people.

What we have to do is to see the two-way mental traffic that goes on, not just to see what (in our opinion) others are doing wrong, but what our true thoughts and feelings are about that action or event. We must make ourselves passive to our reaction, not to the people we are reacting to. There is a great freedom in not reacting at all.

This of course is a very difficult task. It needs constant mindfulness, vigilance, complete self-honesty and a willingness to see with unerring insight. We have to make real effort if we want to escape from life as it is, this prison we are in. In a group like this, we have a chance of awakening. We could use the understanding that Phiroz has given us to work together, to help one another towards enlightenment, by being in communion with ourselves and with one another.

Phiroz says in The Heart of Religion, page 348:

In my fallen or ignorant or unredeemed state I am not in communion. I am aware of existence in the mode of mortality, that is, of uprising-proceeding-ending in constant succession. This endless, unbidden and uncontrollable stream of births and deaths in my own consciousness during my single lifetime is the real meaning of rebirth for me the individual, for with every uprising (be it of a thought or thing or event or whatever it may be) I associated myself in consciousness with it. ‘I’ am born in it. When it is over ‘I’ am dead, and am born again with the very next feeling or event that has uprisen in consciousness.

Let us stop here to take the above short passage in the light of what has been said. “In my fallen or ignorant or unredeemed state I am not in communion.” Could my fallen state be Essence covered over by Personality? He says:

This endless, unbidden and uncontrollable stream of births and deaths in my own consciousness.

As I said earlier, I am unable to do anything, things just happen and my Personality reacts (identified, lives it and moves on). As Phiroz says:

‘I’ am born again with the very next feeling or event.

That is to say, that particular “I” in me dies and a different aspect of “I” arises and identifies with the next thing.

All these “I’s” are just different “people” that live in and through me. They are not the Real I, which is Essence.

What we have to escape from is not life, but ourselves. Our juggernaut keeps rolling, we are it, it controls us. We may have flashes of consciousness, a few marvellous experiences, a few moments of seeing with clarity, and then our streets paved with gold turn to dust. These moments are moments of awakening, moments when we are free of the juggernaut of Personality, free of this monster which is ourselves. At these times we may catch a glimpse of what it is we have to Do. Then we fall asleep again.

How many times did Phiroz use that word “Mindfulness”? On page 302 of The Heart of Religion, he writes:

Mindfulness which glows with the intensity necessary for revelation means that there is no intrusion by memories or images to disturb the effortless silence of the mind.

There is no uprising of any desire or thoughts or feelings common to the ambivalent state. The mind is void of all ill — a meaning of the empty mind. In this state I can look, listen, touch and use all my senses without being sullied by memories, images or any conditioning.

The Buddha declares that “mindfulness is the one way to release oneself from sorrow, to set oneself on the right road.” Krishnamurti emphasises intense, choiceless awareness or complete attentiveness.

The dragon of mythology, i.e. the Personality, is what has to be overcome. We cannot run away — that will not free us. We must turn about and face ourselves as we are — and it is not a pretty sight.

In making Personality passive, in uncovering that light that we were born with — that is the Task — that is the Way — the Only Way.