Being Truly Human March 2007 Newsletter

From the Editor

Our Summer School this year will again take place in West Sussex, from Friday 20th to Wednesday 25th July. The accommodation is good, with twin and single-bedded rooms, and the food is excellent.

We shall be listening to recorded talks by Phiroz, and this year we are hoping to have an outside speaker as well.

The cost will be £150 for the five nights. We are not taking bookings yet, however, if you would like to hear more about the Summer School, please contact the Editor.

A talk given by Phiroz Mehta at Park Place Pastoral Centre, Wickham, Hampshire on 15^th June 1976

Meditation essentially means being in communion, in the state of the supreme togetherness. This is the fundamental, the real, the all-inclusive meaning of the word samādhi. It has usually been translated as concentration, but to translate it as concentration is a little bit misleading. Concentration in this context means that the whole of you is completely self-collected and in complete harmony with the total self which is the total universe. In that sense you are concentrated, but only in that sense, not in the sense of paying exclusive attention to any one particular point or subject or whatever it may be, because there you are still confined to the realm of the finite and the particular, and everything that is finite and particular is mortal. It comes into being, it makes its passage through time and it dies. But samādhi is the timeless state. This communion, this supreme togetherness, is timelessness realized here and now through every single moment in time. This is the great mystery. You are aware in terms of timelessness but the organism functions thus in terms of movement through time. The astonishing part of this process is that, during this state of supreme samādhi, there is no decay taking place in the organism. That is the difference. But that lasts only for a certain while because the organism cannot defy the laws of nature and continue perpetually through time and space as a finite organism. Anything finite has to disrupt sometime or other.

So now, meditation means being in that state of communion in the supreme sense. And it implies most importantly the emptying of the content of the mind. Why? Because the content of the mind simply is a collection of mental constructs, and all constructs, howsoever sublime or wonderful, are themselves finite and particular. As such, they belong to the realm of mortality, and, as such, belong to the realm of that which is obstructive to the timeless, the infinite, the immortal. So, it is the dissolution of these, the quietening down of these. It becomes the whole mind which, in the ordinary way, is like a muddied stream. It becomes a perfectly pellucid stream. It is a pellucid stream which is moving through time and space in terms of an integrated space-time consciousness, in harmony with the stream of life eternal. This is what meditation really implies and means. This is the climactic point of all religious disciplines, of all spiritual realization, of all complete and utter human fulfilment, the Nirvana here-now. The literal meaning of the world Nirvana is extinction, that is its first meaning. But it means the extinction of all that obstructs the inextinguishable, and that is our particular, finite, limited mortal thoughts, feelings, ideas, states of mind, desires, everything that has a particular manifestation. These things could not be said at all, had they not been realized, become real, made real, by living human beings, the great spiritual teachers. And that is our most supreme and most precious heritage, and it is that which we can treasure, the spirit of it. Do not bother about the words too much. Here is a set of words which, if they inspire you, you can muse upon when you are by yourself.

In the ordinary way the time sense is associated with space, space in the sense of a limited locality, not in space in its infinitude. When this timeless condition is realized, is being experienced in immediate awareness, as such, then you are functioning in the real integrated space-time. This old teaching about the infinity of space and time was not very happily presented as separate stages, infinity of space, ākāśa, and then the infinity of consciousness, because consciousness is tied up with time and emerges after bondage to time into timelessness. It was spoken of in separate terms. It is an integrated unity, this space-time consciousness, and it is a curious thing that, at the beginning of this century, Einstein presenting his special theory of relativity brought out this space-time integration concept through sheer mathematical and scientific genius. He penetrated, without being able to form pictures of it, concepts of it, through the right utilization of pure symbols, which means functioning in the realm of pure mind, into this inmost reality, and it has made all the difference from 1905 onwards to our conception of the fundamental nature of things. This fundamental nature of things and the understanding of it has come so close now to the profound truths which were presented partly in Upaniṣadic terms and largely in terms of Mahayāna Buddhism, so many centuries ago. (In Mahayāna Buddhism these great teachings were presented eighteen or nineteen centuries ago). We live in a wonderful world. Our modes of meditation also must necessarily introduce the newness, the creative renewal which should characterize our present age and our present stage. This is where we make a little mistake if we just hark back to the age-old set-down lines. We start with them, of course, we must understand them, thoroughly know them, and then, if we thoroughly know them and they have become simple enough for us, we transcend them and are able to enter into the new. This is how mankind progresses in any and every sphere of life, isn’t that so? It is the simple fact of how mankind progresses, otherwise there is no meaning to the word progress, no real worthwhile meaning.

What can we do as a group here and now immediately? We can try out certain little things. Most of you know what I have called the Earth Meditation. It is a simple way of unifying our idea of time and space and extending it, making it inclusive. Don’t imagine for a moment that when we practise this we shall all sort of fly off into celestial realms of integrated space-time! Nothing of the sort! Let us just practise this and get the feel of this inclusiveness, and see how it affects the whole psycho-physical organism.

So, let us start. Let the body be comfortable, not slack, but free of strains and stresses, and let your breathing be just quite easy. … Now be aware of the fact that each one of us (I’ll use the term “I”), that I am in this room. Be conscious of this body-mind organism. Let the rhythm of the breath affect the body in a happy way so that the whole body feels peaceful, feels alive, calmly alive, not restless, just calmly alive, but so happily alive that one says, “It is good to be alive.” …

Now be aware of the fact that there are forty-two people here present. We are all one group. In mind and consciousness I don’t come to the end of my universe with my own skin, but in mind and consciousness I can hold all of you in a single awareness of a unitary whole. Now in this unitary whole all antagonisms sink into nothing, in actual fact are resolved into right relationship. We must not picture this right relationship, just hold the idea of right relationship pervading all of us here. We are a unity, a great organism instead of the little organism which is oneself. There is nothing sentimental about it, nothing emotional, nor is there a cold impotent thought, nor a disturbing hot feeling, but a comfortable, warm feeling conducive to life in terms of wholeness. Let the breath rhythm embody that for each one of you and make it spread through the body and include everybody. This is what we are doing at this moment here, at this time of the day, nearing five o’clock. Let your imagination carry you right along the longitude in which we live from the North Pole to the South Pole in this half of the world, with the different people doing similar things and different things, having tea, talking, etc., at this moment all along this longitude. And in imagination (you will need some time over this), go eastwards where time is further on. They will be having supper perhaps, they will be going to theatres or discussing business or whatever it is. See this great arc of life from our longitude steadily sweep round the globe, the regions of midnight, of the small hours of the morning, of five o’clock on the opposite side of the globe in the morning. Gradually see that you are sweeping round and coming back to where we are. Hold it in your imagination and see that all mankind at this single moment is thinking, feeling, speaking, doing all the things that characterize the life activity of man in every different place. There is war, horror, destruction, scheming, machinations, there is kindness and courtesy and the work of healing and constructing and so on; everything is taking place simultaneously now. In this single moment of the planet’s life, everything that happens in this life of mankind during twenty-four hours is taking place now. Get the feel of that now in the here, the here being the planet, not just this room in Park Place. Get the feel of it. … Let the mind see clearly how unhappily man pursues the wrong things, how few there are who have true vision, who have inner poise and skill of hand, cool judgement of the head and the warm, healing compassion of the heart. It is these things which can heal individuals and mankind. Just feel it all at once now. The whole Earth in a single instant is equal to all mankind’s twenty-four hours. … So get the feel of living relationships. It is these living relationships as they are which have to be cherished, fostered, loved, understood and healed, made whole, holy. … If you can feel this and understand it with intensity you will experience even here now a certain freedom in inner consciousness from the limitations imposed by space and time and by confinement to the drive of desire, the drive of pleasure, the cloying fear and anxiety which overcomes us and so on. My life, your life, mankind’s life are all one universal life in reality, however disparate they may appear to the superficial glance.

And if oneself is in a state of calm now, come back quietly to where we are at Park Place. And maintain this state of mind which you have entered into because this is our limited expression and experiencing of a state of wholeness, and to that extent it is a holiness, despite our knowledge of the deficiencies and defilements that lie within us. Now try and preserve this state as we go out.

But before we go out, there is one little point we might emphasize. If we can maintain this state of mind, we might associate our meditative walking with the idea of an exercise in freedom from greed, from lust, which is perhaps one of the fundamental ills of the mind, lust for possessions, power, security, lust for God, for perfection, for Nirvana, and all the rest of it. Just to illustrate how universal all this teaching is, I am just going to read a few words from Clement of Alexandria’s Stormata:

“The divine law trains men specially to self-restraint, laying this as the foundation of the virtues. If then we are to exercise control over the belly and what is below the belly, it is clear that we are to check lust by the law.” (Remember that this is ancient formulation, the beginning of the Christian era). “And this will be completely effected if we unfeignedly condemn what is the fuel of lust, I mean pleasure.”

That is what Clement wrote. It is a remarkable thing that he used the word fuel, the fuel of lust, a word which you find frequently in the Buddhist texts. “This is the fuel for so-and-so.” And just one other sentence:

“The Gnostic, the knowing one, is firm, not alone, so as not to be corrupted, but so as not to be tempted. For he never exposes his soul to submission or capture at the hands of pleasure or pain.”

After this talk Phiroz led the group into the grounds for meditative walking

By Ron Martin

If zero is added to zero we do not get one, we still have only zero. If an electron has no physical existence and a proton has no physical existence, bringing them together does not create matter. How is it, then, that we get a hydrogen atom?

It is the Essence of Mind (what Phiroz Mehta probably meant by Transcendence) that creates matter, just as it is the Essence of Mind that creates colour (greenness of grass) and sound (ticking of a clock).

The Essence of Mind is the cause of all creation but was not, itself, created, nor is it subject to Anicca (impermanence). It transcends all duality and so is indescribable, but it can be experienced, and that is what meditation is all about.

Transcripts of a week-long series of nightly television interviews with Phiroz Mehta (PM) by Tony Cashman (TC), broadcast in July 1979

Monday

TC: Now a few weeks ago a lady came to me and she said, “How do you see it - God coming to us, or we going to God?” You know the idea that God came to us in Jesus Christ and the incarnation; or we go towards God going to heaven and so on. Now obviously, of course, I would look at it from a Christian point of view as a priest and probably even from the point of view of the Western world, and I thought that this week it would be interesting to look at it from the point of view of those in the East, and so I’ve brought along a man from India, Phiroz Mehta, who not only has asked himself these questions, but who has made a life study of it as well. Phiroz, perhaps we could begin by looking at this word ‘meditation’ which is bandied about a lot really. What’s your understanding of this word?

PM: ‘Samādhi’, the word used in India by Hindus and Buddhists alike, is usually translated as ‘meditation’ or ‘concentration’. It is more accurate, however, and more helpful to regard Samādhi as Perfect Communion.

TC: Now when you speak of Perfect Communion, what are you talking about, because we tend to think of it in terms of Holy Communion, you know, as a unity, as a bond. What do you say?

PM: Well, we do not look upon it from the ritualistic point of view only, although that plays its part in India, but if we go deeper into the matter and we want to get at the reality, underlying reality, then we have to think of it in terms of living the religious life in thought and word and deed.

TC: Now how does one begin to do this?

PM: Well, the indispensable basis is living the moral life to start with, the Commandments or, as they say in India, the Advices. That is the basis. The next point is the use of all our senses in the right way. For example, if we are looking at a tree, let us look with sole attention, an attentiveness, however, which does not exclude other impressions from reaching us, such as, say, falling rain-drops touching us, or the sound of the traffic passing by. Now, when we give our full attention in this manner, we are giving ourselves to that to which we are attending, and this giving of ourselves is an acknowledgement of the validity of what we are looking at; we do not dismiss it at all. This purifies the psyche, it enables us gradually to know our own selves, because whilst we are looking or listening, we are also fully aware of the reactions from our own brain - our thoughts and feelings and the silent chatter. Now, as this purification of the psyche proceeds, the senses become calmed, pacified, and what is more important, with examination they become the cords of communion between ourself and all around us. Now this is the real beginning of meditation, we have begun to enter the meditative state wherein, with this giving of ourselves with full attention and mindful observation, there is a link of compassion as well as wisdom between what we call ourself and the outside world.

TC: Yes, of course, this is only something that can come gradually, and perhaps we will look tomorrow night at the stages at which it grows, okay. Thank you very much, Phiroz.

Tuesday

TC: Phiroz, last night you said to me that meditation arrives at a point of Perfect Communion, you said this was a stage at which one arrives at where there is a complete laying aside of the here-and-now, of the conscious self, of the various needs of the person, and so on. Now, how would you develop that, you know, for a normal person who was looking in and was interested in meditation, how would you say that they should begin and proceed?

PM: With the purification of the psyche and the pacification of the sense functions, the mind becomes calmer and steadier, it becomes poised within and, what is most important, in culmination it becomes a unified whole. We are so accustomed to think of mind in terms of ‘the conscious mind’ and ‘the unconscious mind’ and so forth; all that undergoes a remarkable transformation. The mind becomes a whole organism, a healthy mature organism, and that means that it is in the state to apprehend holiness in its full sense.

TC: But does this mean that a person just needs to be quiet?

PM: Not it doesn’t mean just that, there is a lot more. The constant observation of one’s self has to go on, this watchfulness. As the watchfulness goes on, a very important change takes place in this way — we are conscious usually in terms of ourselves as separate persons conscious of other persons. Now, when the attentiveness and the giving of one’s whole self reaches its climax, then this separate-ness disappears and we give ourselves wholly; and it is a fusion between, not only one’s self and the outer world, but between one’s self and the Transcendent World, the Divine World.

TC: Yes, but you see the difficulty that I have with that is that when I begin to be conscious of myself, inner self, I get a whole lot of guilt feeling, unworthiness, you know, which is very much basic to the Christian tradition as a means of salvation and so on. Now what would you say overcomes our lack in this Perfect Communion you were talking about?

PM: By observation, the observation which does not utilise any limited criteria, does not pass judgement for or against the guilt feelings, or the feelings of elation that one is on the right lines, etc. All that undergoes a tremendous transformation. It’s very difficult to describe it, but this whole consciousness, this unitary wholeness supervenes and in that state the psyche and the mind are utterly purified, utterly clean, and therefore there is peace, peace in the sense of ‘the peace of God which passes understanding’, and that is real Samādhi, the Perfect Communion.

TC: Yes, and I can understand that very very well and of course that is very much part of the Christian tradition as you say. I remember in France, there was a French peasant priest and he once went into his church and there was a man in there just sitting quietly looking at the blessed sacrament, just looking at the altar, and he said: ‘What are you doing?’ And he said: ‘He watches me and I watch Him’. And I can understand that. Thank you for that, Phiroz, tonight, tomorrow night we look at God in Transcendence.

Wednesday

TC: Good evening. Well, have you ever asked yourself the question: “If only I could see God and then perhaps I’d be all right, you know, I’d be okay, I’d know where I was headed then, and I’d know if He liked me too really.” They asked that of Jesus, you see, they said, “Show us the Father and it will be enough for us”. And do you know what his answer was? — “He who sees Me, sees the Father”. Now I wonder, what does an Indian think of that; you know, when he sort of thinks of God, does he think of It as a person? So I want to ask Phiroz this. Phiroz, what would you say about that?

PM: Now in India the Hindus have the term, and/or they use the term Brahman, and/or Atma, to represent the One Total Reality. They also use words to express the God idea as a person — Iśvara, Nārāyaṇa, and of course they have a Trinity - Brahmā, Viśnu, Śiva and so forth. Now the Buddhists have a different phraseology. For the Absolute, the One Total Reality, they say it is the unborn, the unmade, the unbecome, and the Buddha also said that if there were not the unborn, the unbecome, the unmade, there would be no release from bondage here, which is the born, the become, the made.

TC: Of course when I began to study philosophy, we were given the five ways of Thomas Aquinas, you see, the Prime Mover and the First Cause, and so on. The difficulty with that was that God was not a person, and I wanted a person. Now, what is your own personal understanding and experience and awareness of what I would call God?

PM: I like to use the word ‘Transcendence’, a word which is not commonly used, for the simple reason that it is less loaded than the words which have been known for centuries like God, in the West, Nārāyaṇa in India, and so forth. So I use the word Transcendence to include everything, exclude nothing whatsoever.

TC: When I hear the word Transcendence I immediately think of One, the Other, the Beyond, but you don’t mean it like that?

PM: I appreciate that the word ‘the transcendent’ is used complementing the immanent, but I use Transcendence in order to include the immanent as well as the transcendent, so that every single concept which we can form, and they’re all limited, gets included in this overall sound (after all it is only a sound) ‘Transcendence’. That is how I like to use the word Transcendence.

TC: What would you say to a chap who came to me recently and he said: ‘What would you say, would you say good morning, God, or would you say good God morning?’

PM: Well, that situation has never struck me, but in that connection I was very interested when I visited Germany and walked in the mountains some years back to hear all those who passed by, the strangers, saying ‘Grüsse Gott’, and when I enquired what the meaning was, they said that ‘God is with you’. And of course in the Christian tradition we use that an awful lot, we say: ‘The Lord be with you and also with you’. Thank you, Phiroz, we will take it up again tomorrow night.

Thursday

TC: Now, Phiroz, first when you speak of Transcendence and I speak of God, we are not really talking about the same thing, the same sort of reality are we? We tend as Christians to focus it on God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but you are looking at an overall embracing sort of reality, isn’t that right? Would you agree that ‘in Him we live and move and have our being’ is the closest that Christianity would get to your understanding of it?

PM: Yes, we would agree completely with that.

TC: And what about man then, I mean we say, ‘What is man that you should be mindful of him, O God, that he is insignificant and so on, but yet he is a creature you have made; he is made in your image and likeness’, to quote the scripture from Genesis. Now how would you react to that?

PM: Well, take this word man, its root, the Sanskrit root, is man. Ordinarily in the dictionary you will find that man means to think, but it is not thinking in our sense of the term, which is just a string of words, and words are limited, finite, and they belong to the mortal realm as such. This thinking of God, or the thought in the mind of God, is actually a creative power and, rather than saying, ‘And God said let there be and there was’, if we said, ‘God minded’, then it refers to this creative power which produces everything. Now man created in the likeness of this power is really potentially like God. You know Eckhart said, ‘Man verily is God and God verily is man’. Now we completely agree with that outlook, therefore man really is a creative power, it is potential within him. As and when he comes to complete fruition, he can be creative. In association with this, there is the significance of the word ‘person’. In the Upaniṣads you will find a very useful hint showing that the word ‘person’ means: ‘He in whom all evil mindedness is burnt out’ and in that state he is one with the Divine.

TC: All right, but now man is, as we say, human and mortal, and finite, he’s got free will and he makes mistakes and so on, right? Man today has achieved an awful lot in technology and in science, and lots of people today say that man is reducing God to his image and likeness and not the other way around. I know we haven’t much time but what would your reaction be to that?

PM: That is true in the limited sense, with regards to man as he is at the moment, but he is growing and through the ages to come as he grows and develops, this potentiality within him will come to fruition because his sensitivity to the Divine, which is embodied in him, will gradually increase and he will awaken in full consciousness to the knowledge and love and worship of the Total Reality, God.

TC: Which of course is outside of himself and yet somehow is within him as well; it is in Him we live and move and have our being. Perhaps we will leave it there tonight.

Friday

TC: Phiroz, we say that God is the source of all goodness and life and so on, and that man finds his meaning and so on in that understanding. Yet we meet a lot of people who may begin to look at themselves and, you know, try to answer the question: ‘What is man?’, being conscious only of inadequacies — depravation, hardship, physical pain, and worries, and so on. Can you say something to me about the whole question of suffering?

PM: Well now, suffering is of various forms. There is physical suffering with illness, bodily illness, and both the Buddhists and the Hindus say that the first practical sensible thing to do is to call in the doctor. In addition to that, let the patient examine himself and take this as an opportunity for learning deep lessons about the nature of existence, his own nature, and what he is looking forward to in life, and so on, and through that to treat the suffering as a very valuable opportunity, a heaven-sent opportunity if you like, for growing into his true humanhood and realising the state of communion ultimately.

TC: Now, of course in my work as a priest I will frequently get what I will call a sick call, say a person who is ill or sick will ask for me to call and see them. Now what they are looking for, it seems to me, is that I bring God to them, bring to them God-life, and God’s grace and blessing, as won for us by Jesus Christ who overcame suffering. I have not got the complete answer to it, but I am helping them to come to terms with it, to be healed perhaps physically, but at least to have all the fear removed and so on. Now if you came to them, what would you bring?

PM: I would bring the same thing, the same sort of thing, as you try to do, that’s what I would try to do myself.

TC: Yes, so what would you be bringing to them in the sense, you know, what would you say to the person in the bed?

PM: Well, that depends upon the person in the first instance, upon what he is suffering from, what his actual condition and stage is, and what he can receive profitably. It’s difficult to say that I would say precisely this, that, or the other.

TC: I can think in my own case personally at the moment of something that’s affected our family a lot. My mother was suffering from cancer and had six weeks to live in Easter last year, and the biggest thing that was worrying her was fear, just fear, uncertainty, Now we all prayed and tremendous people came and helped and so on. Now once the fear had been removed the healing began and, thank God, she is quite well now, you know. I can see that as being divine intervention, God sort of, you know, helping us, not because we are special or anything but just because we turned to Him and put Him in. Now with you, I was just wondering, it’s being aware of reality, is that all?

PM: Well, isn’t that everything in a sense, because the reality, the profound truth is an all-inclusive truth and that all-inclusive truth is sure to remove the fear if the patient has the ability to respond to it there and then. Sometimes he hasn’t, he’s too far gone beyond the point of no return, then it’s very difficult.

TC: And in a word would you say that a person can achieve that by himself, or do they need the help of another?

PM: Oh, there is constant help from others and that must be clearly understood, we cannot live unto ourselves as separate creatures, we are completely interrelated.

TC: Very good, and of course in the other comes the compassion and love of God as in Christ. Thank you very much, Phiroz.

Saturday

TC: Good evening. Do you pray? That was a question asked of me by some person who knocked on the door the other night, (surely as people have probably called to your door and asked you the same question), and I said ‘yes’, but it made me think afterwards you know about how; how do I pray? A lot of my life really in the church is in the formalised prayer, you see, with ritual, with mass and sacraments and with prayer in words, as in the office, but it seemed to me that prayer is something much deeper, prayer is a whole relationship, a communion with God and that I should allow God to express Himself through me. A lot of people of course make the long pilgrimage to the East you know, not just to Outer Mongolia and so on, but to various temples in Tibet and other places. I have an Indian here, Phiroz Mehta, and I want to ask Phiroz this evening, well, how do you pray, Phiroz, and what would you say to people, you know, what sort of methods, and developments, and how they should pray?

PM: Now, prayer can be a really effective instrument of producing full relationship with the Transcendent, it depends on how we pray. Let me take an example with a Christian prayer, the paternoster - ‘Our Father which art in heaven’. Now in the ordinary way we repeat the words pretty quickly and go through the prayer, but supposing we let our body and mind become quiet and composed first, and then direct our full attention upon the words as such, avoiding our meanings of the words and letting the words tell us what they mean. We say ‘Our Father’, of course that means to start with ‘my Father’, and if I pay full attention to that and pour all my energy into realising that power of Fatherhood in the word itself, I will get quite a different impression of Father. And then ‘Our Father, my Father, your Father, the Father of other people, of the whole world’ and so on, and this intensity of devotion, this intensity of concentrated attention upon the significance of that, produces a completely different result from merely going through the words with our minds wandering.

TC: What would you say is the first prayer of a person? The sort of first prayer I am just thinking of is, how should they express themselves first of all?

PM: I don’t quite understand the question.

TC: I am thinking that the first prayer for me as a Christian would be, ‘I thank you, Lord, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth’. What would you say?

PM: Well, there are different prayers for different stages and different people. This prayer of thanksgiving has its particular place. One is naturally grateful, one pours out one’s adoration and happiness, an inward quiet happiness in the act of adoration, and therefore it’s a thanksgiving as such. Yes, that is one aspect of prayer and then one goes deeper and deeper with prayer into the real contemplative prayer where the union between the Transcendent and one’s self comes into being, the Unio Mystica as the Christians would call it, you see, just like our Samādhi.

TC: So we come back to the Perfect Communion with God and allowing Him to express Himself in our lives.

PM: Exactly, and what we must always remember is that it is not I who achieve anything, what happens with me is that the self is completely un-selfed and it is God or Transcendence which comes to fruition as man, as perfect man, through this person who is the unresisting medium, the holy grail through which the divine benediction falls.

TC: Yes, very good, thank you very much, Phiroz, thank you.

Sunday

TC: Phiroz, one day a young man came to Jesus and said to Him, ‘Lord what must I do to inherit the Kingdom?’. I might put it saying, ‘Lord what must I do to become holy?’ Well, when asked that I suppose most Christians would say that they should pray and go to church and observe the rules of their religion and love God and love their neighbour and look forward to the Lord saying, ‘Well done my good and faithful servant’, you know. What would your reaction to that be?

PM: Now, those are the ordinary religious observances. We have just the same sort of thing in Hindu teachings as well as in Buddhist teachings, but in addition to those which are the external instruments of grace, there is this great emphasis upon living the pure moral life as the indispensable basis to start with, and the training of the mind in such a manner that one easily, and naturally and spontaneously thinks and turns attention to the Total Reality. The presence of the Divine is taken for granted. I am using the word Divine, but you may have a different word.

TC: Yes, can I ask you this then, is this presence of the Divine, this Perfect Communion that you spoke of, is it something that we can achieve?

PM: We cannot achieve it. What we can do is to free ourselves from all the obstructions to the Divine, to grace. Who prevents grace? I myself, and it is my business to clear the obstructions out of my being which are mainly, of course, psychological.

TC: So my response then consists basically in making myself available to the influence of God?

PM: Of the infinite.

TC: Of the infinite.

PM: Yes.

TC: So, today is Sunday, and lots of people go to church today, and lots of them I am sure have been to church today in order to get to heaven, and that’s not quite right, is it, as something that they can achieve? They should go rather in order to allow God to express Himself more and more in their lives?

PM: The fact is one cannot buy and sell the spirit. One cannot reserve seats in heaven for oneself.

TC: No.

PM: And if anybody lives the good life for the sake of obtaining a reward, that completely defeats the attempt to live the good life. It has to be done out of complete compassion, complete love, and complete wisdom, then the light of goodness comes through.

TC: Okay, well then, finally what is the difference between holiness and quietism?

PM: A very great difference because the Holy One, the truly Holy One is the active one, who spreads goodness, who conveys truth by his very presence and by the mode of his actual daily life to those around him, inspires them.

TC: Phiroz, thank you very much for this week, and I have received an awful lot from listening to you, and there is so much more that I can learn, and I am sure those who have been with us throughout the week will feel it. If you feel like that at home, sharing with us this week, Phiroz has written this book in which you have put everything in here, your whole life’s work and study and so on. It’s called The Heart of Religion by Phiroz Mehta and it’s published by Compton Russell and it’s a big, big book. I have read most of it, and it links together both the Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian approaches as indeed you have done in your life. Thank you very much, Phiroz, and may God bless you all.