Being Truly Human March 2008 Newsletter

From the Editor

This year we shall have a new location for our Summer School. It will be at a retreat in Kent, a beautiful, peaceful place with a lovely large garden, spacious rooms for meetings and for meditation, and attractive bedrooms. We shall be having vegetarian food.

We shall arrive on Saturday 5th July and leave on Thursday 10th July. The minimum cost, which will be considered as a donation, will be £40–45 per person per day for full board. If anyone can give a little more than the minimum donation, our hosts would be very grateful.

A few places are still available, so would anyone wishing to come please send their cheque for £30 (made out to Rosemary Monk) as a non-refundable deposit, to me at 47 Lillian Road, London SW13 9JF.

We have a small fund available for those who may have problems about meeting the full cost of the Summer School. Please contact me in strict confidence if you would like to hear more about this.

Our theme this year will be “Awake Now!”, following on from last year’s theme of “Mindfulness”.

If you would like any more information about the Summer School please contact the Editor.

A talk given by Phiroz Mehta at the Convent of the Cenacle, Grayshott, Hampshire on 30^th May 1983

You may recollect that on Saturday evening I mentioned joy, and that creative renewal has been associated with that joy — that joy emerges out of creative renewal. But this joy has nothing to do with sensational delight or pleasure-seeking, because whatsoever belongs to the transcendent context can never be sought, for the very simple reason that it is something which is beyond our ordinary ken. And we function here and live here in terms of what comes within our ordinary ken. We may form ideas about it, we may talk about it, think about it, but those are mere ideas and talk and thoughts. They are not the reality although they might suggest that reality, suggest it, not to our brains, but by touching our inner consciousness, and this inner consciousness is a mystery. The innermost depth of consciousness in us is that which directly touches transcendence itself. And because of that touch, what belongs to the transcendent realm (in terms of joy, bliss and the peaceful state) can percolate down to us here in our ordinary everyday state. This spells a creative renewal, not a renewal of that which we already are and the way in which we already carry on, but a renewal which is of the nature of a complete and sudden transformation — a total transformation of the inner being altogether.

What we know, we know in terms of the activity of our senses and our brains. We form ideas, we have conceptions and we spin cobwebs of beliefs and thoughts, but they really obstruct that transcendence. They tend to prevent the direct touch (as we say in religious teaching, this direct seeing of the truth, of the reality) because that which is manifest in the world of things and affairs is something which is a constriction. It is a limitation of that which is the ultimately real and the source of being, the source of things, the source of the whole universe. Do you remember how Warren Kenton yesterday spoke about God making existence the mirror in which to see himself? That is a very neat way of putting it. But in making the mirror to see himself, the image which is formed is not the reality. What you see in the mirror is not the actuality, the actuality is something different. And it is this, which is something different, which cannot be sought. Consider the analogy again of the mirror and the image. The image cannot seek the person who is looking in the mirror. The person who is looking in the mirror can come closer and closer to that mirror until he bumps his nose into it, and image and everything disappear in consequence. So you see, this, the existential being, is like the image. The analogy must not be carried too far because the existential being, the psycho-physical organism and all its functioning, is actually transcendence embodied. It is transcendence which has become constricted. If you consider the scientific fact that the entire universe is the concretized expression of the ultimate energy, what that ultimate energy is, science itself does not know. It still asks the question, and the most modern scientists are beginning to see that, whilst they can ask the question, there is no answer possible to it in such terms as we (constituted as we are and with our particular faculties) could ever understand. It will always be a mystery. The more science has tried to penetrate into the origin of things of the manifested universe, the deeper the mystery becomes. Quantum mechanics, for example, has completely overthrown all the old concepts of classical physics. And this new world is something which is a tremendous mystery. The fact remains that the universal things of manifestation are the concretization of primordial energy. There is no escaping that fact. It is energy, pure energy itself (of which we know the secondary forms, or tertiary forms — electricity, magnetism, heat, light, mechanical energy, chemical energy). All these different energies are the secondary forms of ultimate energy which in itself is nondescript, which cannot be put to the test and which we cannot examine under a microscope or telescope or any instruments which we have made. Similarly, transcendence concretizes, and in that concretization there emerge all the grades of being and manifestation, so many grades which are quite outside the ken of mortals, and will remain outside the ken of all mortals until that change has taken place, through the evolutionary process, by which creatures will come into being, more marvellous than the human species, which will be able to sense those profounder and profounder grades.

We can talk like this, but what I am saying may be complete nonsense, or there may be, perhaps, just some chink of light hidden in it. It is possible through the dissolution of our selfness (particularly in this clinging to the idea of oneself as the subject who is the onlooker) that there comes into being an inner silence, a tremendous inner silence which produces a peculiar effect. That effect upon the psycho-physical organism may, sometimes, as it has done through the millennia (in exceptional cases) work itself out in terms of concept and word, as we understand concept and word.

And so our concepts and words can be just suggestive of that transcendent reality. But we must never try to give shape to it, give form to it. It is very easy to produce wonderful clear-cut systems like that but all those systems, whilst they are stimulating and intellectually exciting, we must not mistake for this ultimate reality. This source which became us and which is the power, not impels so much as attracts us back to itself. And in that is the fulfilment and liberation of man. So these things must not be sought, cannot be sought. There is no harm in trying to seek it because the time will come (because all our seeking is in space and time, and in terms of the material, the objective), when we will get tired of the seeking and then we will say, “Oh well, give it up, just let it be, let be what is”, and the What Is will then smile upon us and say, “All right, this is What Is”. And there in that single moment comes the sort of flash of revelation. Revelation can never be put into words. Transcendence speaks with the tongue of revelation and that is something which is completely beyond all thinking, feeling, speaking or representing (remember the word representing is re-presenting) in terms of pictures or statues or art or science or philosophy or anything. And yet, all these things which we do in our sphere could have that something in them through their purification which enables this curious touch with our innermost consciousness, with the ultimate reality.

So you see, the whole thing boils down again to what the great teachers have always taught as something specific that we human beings can do, and that is to carry out the task of purification. The purification, again, is something which must not be formulated too much, which must be formulated to the least possible extent, because every formulation is a fossilization when it goes too far. You have to be elastic, very elastic. You know, the healthy body has plenty of elasticity to it, but the psychological elasticity that is required of us is something immensely greater and profounder than the physical elasticity of the organism. We must be completely open and attentive with a total openness to everything. With that total openness we do not obstruct that which comes to us as a stimulus by our particular ideas, our thoughts and conceptions. This is utter freedom from all psychological restraint and all psychological control, and yet there is this element of control brought into existence by the fact that there are certain simple essentials that we have to observe, or shall we say try to observe. They are the simple moralities.

If you look at all the great religions what, essentially, do they tell us to do? As we might say, “What am I to do about it?” Everybody asks, “How do I get along?” Be harmless. It sounds simple “Oh well, that’s easy. I don’t want to hit anybody or squash the next fly”. That is not all of it. That may be just a tenth part of the letter ‘A’ of the whole alphabet of harmlessness. If you watch carefully the inner process that goes on, its terrible subtlety and the way we get deceived all the time with what is happening inside our own brains, we will discover that we are far from harmless. All these simple virtues are the most difficult to fulfil. This is why psychologically it is very wise to start with what is called the negative way. The positive way is to say, “Oh, love your neighbour as yourself”. How on earth are you going to love your neighbour as yourself? It implies for one thing to love yourself. Do I love myself? Can I love myself? No, ordinarily I cannot, I do not know myself. I dislike things in myself, I would like to smash up things in myself, get rid of things in myself. But are all those acts of harmlessness? Can I accept the whole of myself as I am psycho-physically? Can I accept the whole of myself and the whole of my living process and, like the lord who is the dominus, the lord of the house, protect, nurture. sustain and heal all that happens inside this house which is the psycho-physical organism, myself? Can I do that? I get impatient with myself, angry with myself. I criticize myself, I praise myself, get conceited and so forth. But all these acts, all these processes are not exactly harmless processes. So, how do I love myself? Consider again, “I demand so much from myself, oh, I’ve got to observe such and such a standard and behave and act in such and such a way. It’s not done to think or speak or do thus and thus”. All right, but how should I think and speak and do? I do not quite know. So I repress, suppress, beat down that which I say I should not do or speak or think. But that is not harmlessness, is it? That is not loving yourself. You cannot directly, positively, love because love in its reality, like truth or beauty or goodness or purity, is something which is essentially of a transcendent nature. And unless and until this sense of transcendence begins to stir inside me, to wake inside me, I cannot do anything about it. I cannot become virtuous. It sounds as if the whole business is so unhopeful. “Let’s pack up our traps and go home and enjoy life,” one might be inclined to say. But no, wait a minute, supposing I let myself just be, be quiet. Let the psychological turmoil calm down. See what a wonderful teacher we have in the English weather — days and days of rain and storms, what happens to them all? They cease. I cannot do anything about them, nor can you, can you? You cannot control the movement of the clouds and the deep depressions which come over the Atlantic from the continent. You cannot do anything about it, you just have to let be. Let be and observe, it will change in course of time. And in letting be and observing quietly there is liberated a strange sort of energy which in the ordinary way we know nothing about. It is an energy which pacifies the whole situation. And it brings peace and quiet, an inner silence which is full of song, not of cacophony. This is the extraordinary part of it.

Now, so much from the side of virtue and its activity. But there is another aspect which is essential if virtue is to function, and here we will come across an extraordinary thing. We can let be if we truly respect the organism, if we truly respect that which belongs to the finite, the temporal, the perishable and the mortal, if we truly respect it to start with. And in that regard, through respect for the finite and the mortal, there will gradually emerge a sense of the marvel, the awe of the transcendent, what in some religions has been called the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord has nothing to do with fear as we know it in terms of fear of daddy giving me a thorough good spanking for misbehaving, or the schoolmaster or the judge in the court sentencing me, it is not that kind of fear at all. This fear is a peculiar, happy sort of apprehensiveness, an apprehensiveness of “My goodness, what’s going to happen?” You are in a sense tremulous but you do not turn tail and fly away, you do not flee from this. This lion, this elephant, this tremendous monster is none other than transcendence itself, first making you afraid, and then you suddenly discover that it actually is the everlasting arms underneath, sustaining, nurturing, protecting you. And then there springs up, in its own extraordinary way, the love of the transcendent.

Respect the organism, and it brings forth the love of transcendence. When that love of the transcendent is there then the love of the self (oneself) also becomes true love of oneself. And harmlessness will inevitably and invariably attend that love. So you see, love of the transcendent implies an unreserved, an unconditional, total giving of one’s entire being to transcendence. That becomes easy. That love enables virtue to function rightly and strongly. You know the lovely statement we have, “Love maketh wise”. We all know that in the ordinary way in the world, especially this modern world, what people call love does not make them wise, it makes them extraordinarily foolish and stupid and wicked, self-seeking, self-indulging, inconsiderate and so on, and that is nothing to do with love. These are tremendous illusions and delusions.

But when this love of the transcendent just naturally springs up, it will come naturally and spontaneously, you do not have to seek it, it is there. It is omnipresent because transcendence is omnipresent. And it is omnipotent, not by any compulsion whatsoever, but by the fact that it can wait, in terms of eternity, until we have expended all that has to perish away in time. So this love makes active virtue possible, then virtue functions actively, quite naturally, spontaneously. It needs no formulating, it just happens, it gets done. There is no wastage of words, ideas, plans, thoughts or activities which are, in the long run, all self-indulgences and self-expressions, that is to say expressions which limit oneself and cut oneself off from this union with the totality. In this union with the totality one is not lost, but all the separateness, the isolativeness of one is completely out of the picture. It is that wonderful consumative, transmutative death, which takes the place of the selfness, the power which divides you from totality. When that goes, then you can love your neighbour as yourself. In fact you cannot avoid loving your neighbour as yourself. It is there because that has become the natural state.

So, virtue makes the possibility of this love of the transcendence emerging, and the love of transcendence makes the possibility for virtue to be active in our life. When that is the case then creative renewal can take place. All our renewals are procreative, they are according to pattern, they are related to the past, what has gone before. Although where geniuses are at work they point to the future also, they are only pointers to the future. In creative renewal, in the real sense, there is no relationship with a past. The past is suddenly transformed. This is magic, if you like, in the truest and the grandest sense of the word magic. It is miraculous. You do not have to search for the miraculous, you can if you like but you will never find it, it happens. We can stop it happening, we can let it happen, that is our particular responsibility. But this creative renewal means a total newness because there has been a complete transformation in one’s inner consciousness, a complete changing, and this is something which comes as a climax, as a fruition of human development and human endeavour (right endeavour, not the wrong sort of endeavour).

So, this complete newness of life, here and now whilst alive, takes place. In actual fact the entire universal process from split second to split second pulsates with this newness of creative renewal because that is how transcendence functions. The primordial creative energy functions in that way, that energy, which we do not know, which remains the unknowable, because it is beyond all that can be realized in terms of us human beings. What can be realized in terms of us human creatures, constituted as we are, is just one octave, one small octave of the total song of life.

There are many, many octaves of being like that. And the change is in the change of consciousness itself, that introduces a completely different thing that cannot be talked about. What can be talked about are our limits which end up with the sort of things that the great teachers and the great mystics have produced. It ends up there. But we must not think that that is the end, the transcendent itself, it is not.

Be satisfied with the shadows, with the shade so to say, because otherwise we would be completely burnt up if transcendence were suddenly to manifest in and through us. The human organism cannot stand that voltage, it is too tremendous.

There have been instances where genius has sometimes penetrated through sheer brilliance of perception into such realms, but in such cases those geniuses have suffered from insanity. So, do not tempt the Lord. That is important. Love, and love not “I” — the person wanting to love or getting at the loved one. Be quiet, let the Lord come to you. Let the beloved, the supreme beloved come to you. You just make a sign that you are willing. That is all and all the rest will happen by itself.

A talk given by Phiroz Mehta at the Convent of the Cenacle, Grayshott, Hampshire on 19^th June 1982

PM: The question is: “If, as you say, elderly people have degenerated into vegetables, would you advise supporting euthanasia?”

It is a very important question which is exercising the minds of many people quite seriously, and there are of course arguments for and against it. One of the difficulties could arise this way. If euthanasia is going to be allowed in society, it is perhaps possible for a man or a woman who murders somebody to bring evidence that that person took to euthanasia. But of course you know the good old saying, “Murder will out.” Somehow or other he is found out. Of course in this era of so much violence, callous, cold-blooded, premeditated murder, of which we have many examples, some of them not so very far from here (and we know of examples in many of the continents of the world), sometimes the murderer cannot be found out. But if somebody uses that as an argument and actually he has committed a murder and it was not a case of the sufferer himself or herself taking his or her own life, then that is one of the difficulties, if society allows euthanasia. But it seems to me that if people have become very old, they have lost their faculties, their minds are just cabbages, so to say, it would be merciful to allow them recourse to euthanasia. We are responsible for our own lives after we are born — not immediately after, of course! But in due time, when we grow to adulthood, we are responsible for our own lives, and, if one takes one’s own life as a retreat from society, a retreat from the difficulties of life, then it is surely a mistake. That sort of suicide is a mistake. There are occasions when, even when one is in one’s younger years, one suffers so much illness or whatever it is, that life becomes utterly impossible, and if it is a case of unbearable pain physically, certainly, and possibly also psychically, perhaps euthanasia might be regarded as allowable. But in the case of people who are in their late seventies, eighties, nineties, who are quite, as the question says, degenerated into vegetables, who have really lost their faculties and wish that they were dead altogether, (it is too much for them to bear), it seems to me that euthanasia should be permitted. Perhaps they can have safeguards by having some sort of medical consent in the matter, maybe a panel of doctors, or something like that. I don’t know what you feel about it, don’t think that I have got to do all the talking! What do you feel about it? Anybody?

Student A: I think it is generally accepted within the medical profession that, when children are sadly lacking in their proper faculties and so on, it is believed that it is not worthwhile their living any more, and treatment is withdrawn. I think this is a very accepted thing. When this was talked about on the television recently, no one had the courage to say so, when one man came under attack over it and everyone argued around the point. They were spastic children they were talking about.

PM: There was a case recently when the child was allowed to die, you remember? It came out on TV too.

Student B: Wasn’t the doctor had up for murder?

PM: He was acquitted. It is a very difficult question.

Student C: The medical profession have two methods of dealing with this. One is “N.R.” by the side of the bed in the hospital, “No Resuscitation”, in other words, let that person peacefully pass on. In the case of acute advanced cancer, when pain is rising constantly, then morphine is given to catch up, then pain, then morphine, and the morphine gets greater than the pain, and I understand there is something applied which is the finish.

PM: Perhaps one might institute something like this, that if the patient himself really requests that he or she be allowed to die, then doctors should be allowed to do the needful, if in their judgement also for this person to continue living would be something too terrible to endure. Of course if a person himself has a different view of life and feels that, whatever happens in terms of pain and sorrow, he should continue to live and try to understand, if there is that sort of spiritual urge from within himself, then, even though he suffers so much, let him live, because any person’s effort to understand the whole problem of sorrow and pain has an influence upon his surroundings, there is a physical influence always. The act of thinking, or speaking, influences the physical atmosphere, and it may be that, if he is capable of seeing things in a profound way, then he is doing good to his fellow human beings without his knowing it, so to say. But I dare say that that sort of situation is extremely rare, there are very few people who are willing to have that attitude towards sheer physical pain and grief. So much depends on how we are brought up, right from the beginning. That I think is one of our great troubles in life. From the very beginning the little child grows up in the atmosphere of enjoyment, “Let us enjoy life, let us be happy, let us have fun, let us have pleasure,” and so on and so forth. And so the whole outlook on life is a warped outlook right from childhood. People don’t realise that there is a purpose in our individual human existence, and it is only insofar as that purpose is understood, even in a limited degree, and thereafter the attempt is made to live by standards and behaviour in harmony with that purpose, that life is worth living. Then only do we really grow towards our true humanity. Sometimes that purpose of existence is presented to some children. The parents do their best along that line. Maybe the priest, the schoolteacher could help, and, if it is not a presentation which conditions the child too powerfully, makes him a fanatic or something like that, then it is helpful. But we haven’t got that.

We have this wonderful song about “Britons never, never shall be slaves,” but not only Britons but the whole world is in abject slavery to its animal drives, there is no getting away from that fact. We are the slaves of our pleasure-drive and the drive to be somebody, which always means at the expense of the other body. Hence competition arises. If it just stops at ordinary playful competition, football matches and the like, no serious harm is done, although even that nowadays produces a great deal of trouble! But when this competition becomes a national affair between nations and all sorts of international difficulties arise, then we get wars and so forth. Wars may be a useful way, occasionally, of keeping world population down and preventing the population explosion up to a point, but it is a most horrible way really, and especially modern war. You have all I am sure seen the TV pictures of the British soldiers who have come back from the Falkland Islands, when their ship was hit by those Exocet missiles. It is a terrible thing that man can do that, and will do that. And we are the people who claim to be the advanced nations of the world. Advanced in what? In stupidity, cruelty, wickedness, lust for possessions, power and all the rest of it? And we claim to be the educated people of the world, and we make it our mission sometimes to go abroad and convert the heathen and give him some sort of education and so forth. There were very noble-sounding ideals, particularly in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. Just to take one example out of many, in 1828, I believe, when Lord William Bentinck was Governor-General in India, he got the authorities to vote for £10,000 to be devoted to the education of the Indian people — in what? In English history, English political ideals, Christianity, and so on and so on. It is to the credit of the British people that years later George Nathaniel Curzon, “that very superior person”, criticised this educational system which was introduced into India. And he also foresaw that people in India brought up on this very same educational system, on the English language, English literature and everything English, and were conditioned to believe that whatever England stood for was the supreme thing in the world, were the very people who ultimately founded the Indian National Congress, and in 1947 the British Raj departed*. You see, we have to be very careful about our ideals. We think this is a good thing, the right thing, but we do not have sufficient vision to see the possible, perhaps probable, consequences in the future.

In so many respects great good was done by the whole series of Governors-General and the Viceroys who followed them after 1857, great good was done, and India reaps the benefit of that to this day. Slowly India is acknowledging those things. When I was sent round by the Ministry of Information and later on by the Central Office of Information to lecture all over this country on India, Indian culture and so forth and the British connection with India, I think I was one of the first to point out all the essential good that Britain did in India and which India is now enjoying the benefits of, particularly for instance the administration of justice. The British system of administration of justice is probably the most advanced in the modern world, and fair. Also materially there was the connecting up of all India by roads and railways and so forth, and doing so many things to counter the ravages of famine and disease. Those were the good things. So I am not suggesting that, in those cases where one nation does good, according to its own views, to another nation, it is always to the benefit of the ruling power. It is altruistic on the one hand and it is also lacking in vision in some respects on the other hand. In the early years, when the first Governors-General were there, particularly Lord Cornwallis in the 1790’s, laws were passed in England through his initiative which prevented anyone from England going to India and setting up machinery. That absolutely destroyed the textile trade of India, and all the wonderful textiles that they manufactured went by the board. In several other respects like that there were mistakes made, but then we are all human! Even I make mistakes, you know!! So, going back to euthanasia…

Student D: There’s a great difference between withdrawing life support and treatment that keeps life going, and actually administering euthanasia, isn’t there?

PM: Yes, there is, well, it brings the same result.

Student D: Yes, but I think it’s very difficult. I’ve worked quite a lot with geriatric patients and with mentally handicapped children and I think it’s a very difficult question, because I’ve seen some geriatric patients, not vegetables, of whom one might have thought, “My goodness, they wish to die”, when you see them in a hospital ward with nothing much being done for them. But, in my case, if you sort of give them a paintbrush, you’d be amazed at what they do. A lot depends on the attitude of the people around them and what they think possible sometimes, and the same with mentally handicapped children. I think it’s often very individual and really it’s something that can’t be legislated about. It must depend on the moment, both with handicapped children and euthanasia. If you legislate it, it might legalise a lot of…

PM: Undesirable things.

Student D: Yes, attitudes, enclosed attitudes.

Student E: May I draw attention here to something? There are two things. There will always be misuse of something irrespective of what it is, because of the nature of the majority of human beings. Euthanasia is something which should be gone into when the person concerned (and I agree whole-heartedly that it is an absolutely individual thing, it can never be a mass thing) is in full command of their faculties, and that that becomes something for consideration. I feel this links up very closely with Phiroz’s talk on death. It’s useless obviously when someone is in the state of senility, in extremis, so that they couldn’t possibly consider anything at all. There are circumstances where it is possible to draw attention to your wishes when you are still, as I say, in full command of your faculties. Your medical doctor, if he is in sympathy with you, in rapport with you, will certainly be of great assistance.

PM: Another question?

Student F: If two or more people come together and they talk about realities, seriously and with attention, nearly always at the end all the people, or the two people, find they have more energy. Where does that energy come from?

PM: There are so many layers of the mind. Don’t think of the layers as though they were a pile of books one on top of the other. Shall I put it this way? There are so many intensities of attentiveness by the mind. When one deals with something which is of real importance from the life point of view, then it calls out hidden latent energies from the whole being, the psycho-physical being. As the participants proceed with their investigation, so to say, by exchanging views, ideas and so forth, there is this energy which they draw upon, which normally they cannot draw upon just by themselves. That is why that is a great help. Does that answer your question?

Student F: Yes, I think so. Only it seems to me so mysterious.

PM: Yes, it is extraordinary what depths there are within the psyche, tremendous depths, and they are sources of great energy and great power, psychical energy, so that if one touches that in the deeps of consciousness, then it energizes the whole psycho-physical organism. That is how it happens. Mind you, age has something to do with it also. When one passes a certain age, which is probably special to that individual, this phenomenon doesn’t take place, because the organism is too much on the ‘departing platform’ rather than the ‘arriving platform’! Therefore no benefit results, but as long as one is healthy in the full sense of the word, one is always energized if the discussion or whatever it is takes place along the right lines, there is always energy which is drawn upon.

Student G: There has been a programme on the television about the human brain, and, it’s too complicated, I can’t possibly explain exactly what I’m thinking of, but the fact of discussion causes adrenaline, doesn’t it?

PM: It brings about the flow of adrenaline.

Student G: It then gives you energy from that source.

PM: Anger also will do it. The question is whether it is the sort of adrenaline which polishes you off or polishes you up!

Student H: That was adrenaline they talked about so much, and where fear comes from. In what part of the brain is fear engendered, and where did it come from?

Student I: Would you say that the majority of people are satisfied with what might be called the mundane state of life, have no wish whatsoever to come to the higher realms which you speak of and to which you know people have arrived? Do you think that the majority of people would not be at all interested?

PM: That is quite true.

Student I: I wonder why that is.

PM: They are constituted that way. Take for instance the fact that the world produces just a few geniuses, an occasional genius here, there or wherever it is. But the bulk of us are what we call ordinary folk, and some are extraordinary the wrong way! So that is how the world is at its present stage of development. After all, we’ve been only three or four million years on the globe. During that period considerable changes have taken place, structurally, physically and with the brain too, and so forth, and here we are at present, as we are. If we don’t misbehave to the extent of destroying ourselves altogether, it will take a few million years before we are really adult humans. You know, the meaning of the word human consists of hu–, which is the prefix which is equivalent to su–, and –man, which is the Sanskrit root of the word mind. Su– or hu– means ‘happy’, and mind in this context is not just a person’s brain capacity, it’s something much deeper and much greater than that. It is the creative, formative agency throughout the universal process, mind in its profundity. So the human being really means the happy creator. That’s just what we say of God, don’t we?

Student I: We don’t always allude to God as being particularly happy. If there is such a thing, I should think that he’d be pretty miserable sometimes with the awful things that go on amongst his people!

PM: Shall I put it this way? God is very happy when we do right. When we do wrong and suffer for our stupidity, God is equally happy! He enjoys himself saying, “Serve those people right, why don’t they live as they ought to live?”!

Student J: Each person seems to have his own constitution, a sort of blueprint, which he can either fulfil or he can’t. But he can’t go beyond that. A person is born with, let’s say, very bad faults, and you can’t blame the person — I mean, one does — but you can’t in fact blame him for having these things which could be considered faults.

PM: There is no question of blame involved in it. That is how it is, and that person behaves like that and enjoys or suffers life in his particular way, and spreads either happiness or suffering to others, because no one is entirely alone. Even a hermit who lives in a cave and is not visited by anybody at all, even he is affecting society all the time by his very existence and presence, because there is the effect of our feelings and thoughts which spread out all the time. Each feeling or thought perhaps may be compared to a stone dropped in a pond, and the ripples go out to the edge of the pond. So you see, even if a person lives entirely by himself, he is affecting life all the time by the very fact of his existence.

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Its progress is only apparent, like the workers of a treadmill. It undergoes continual changes: it is barbarous, it is civilised, it is christianised, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken.