Being Truly Human June 2012 Newsletter

From the Editor

Some places are still available for our Summer School to be held in Kent, from Friday 20th to Wednesday 25th July.

We listen to recorded talks by Phiroz Mehta, give short talks ourselves if we wish, enjoy discussions and walks together and meet friends old and new. There are periods set aside for meditation, and we usually have Chi Kung classes. (All activities are of course optional).

Our venue is quiet and peaceful, with a chapel, library and labyrinth, and the gardens are lovely. Accommodation is in comfortable single rooms and the food is vegetarian, but meat dishes can be provided if advance notice is given.

For anyone who would like to come for one day only, Monday 23rd July will be set aside for day visitors.

The cost will be £50 to £55 per person per day, and those wishing to book should contact the Trust. The deposit of £50 is non-returnable.

There is a small fund available for anyone who is having difficulty meeting the cost of the Summer School — please contact the Trust in strict confidence for details. We are also very happy to receive donations to this fund.

Please do contact us if you would like to hear more about the Summer School.

By Carl Sagan

We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy, which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe, which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering.

By Jacqueline Grice

My interests in the techniques and mysticism of iconography have spanned many years, probably due to my training as an illustrator, and later my work as restorer of antique clock dials.

But it was moving to Canterbury some four years ago that I was — at last — able to indulge myself in the subject that had fascinated me for so long. There I found a master who taught iconography, and it wasn’t long before I became one of her pupils.

Technically speaking one does not ‘paint’ an icon, you ‘write’ an icon. The word ‘Icon’ comes from the Greek ‘Eikon’, meaning ‘image’, ‘representation’, or ‘portrait’. It has come to mean a very particular type of religious painting on a wooden panel, in the Byzantine tradition, either Greek or Russian. These days the word seems to be generally misapplied to diverse subjects.

First stage of writing an icon

Rather than entering into a detailed history of Icons, which is readily available from books or the internet, suffice to say that during the first centuries an early type of Christian art form evolved in the Byzantine Empire. Reaching its peak in the third and fourth centuries, it later spread to Russia. This was a time of great spiritual energy, and the art form developed a language of symbols using existing pagan images and reinterpreting them with a Christian aspect.

The Byzantine influence continued despite the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, and from the early 16th century Crete became the centre of Greek Icon painting.  Byzantine art had a considerable influence on sacred art in Europe for many centuries, and was the basis from which early Italian painting was to develop. That this artistry had great influence on the art of the modern century — after the visit of Matisse and Picasso to Moscow — must be acknowledged.

Second stage of writing an icon

An icon was a window into the invisible world. It did not show things in a familiar way, recognisable to everyday life. It revealed the new heaven, the Kingdom to come, Christ’s victory of good over evil, of life over death.

Icons are painted on a specially prepared wooden panel on which a ‘gesso’ surface has been applied. This brilliant white surface is rubbed down many times until it has a silk-like quality. The sides of the wooden block are painted with ‘bole’, red clay representing earth and man. The brilliant white of the gesso represents the material world infused with the Holy Spirit. The light comes to the viewer from within the image and is not just reflecting off its surface.

The prepared image is traced on to the gessoed board and the gold leaf is applied and burnished to a brilliance. The more gold there was on an icon the better, because gold represented the Divine Light. The textured background to the image represented chaos.

Colours used are important to the image as they are to help the observer to enter into a spiritual other-worldly dimension. For example yellow/gold represents Divine/Spirit, orange = soul, red = man, (Christ is often depicted in a reddish brown robe which signifies his humanity), green = Holy Spirit, blue = divine light, black = mystical depth, and so on.

Third stage of writing an icon

The number of pigments used in icons is quite limited. Most common pigments are earthen, such as ochres, umbers, and siennas. Stones are ground for the brighter colours like lapis lazuli — blue. Burnt bones, wood, and lamp soot are common derivations for black. The making of artificial pigments is an ancient practice such as for verdigris — green and vermilion — brilliant red.  Generally the darker shades are laid down first in thin transparent washes, wash upon wash, increasingly lighter with each layer. Allowing each colour to show through adds intensity and richness to the finished image.

The iconographer does not paint with shadow as in naturalistic painting but with light. Beginning with darkness and death, the ending is with light and resurrection. Icons do not depict things as they appear to the eye. There is no attempt to create a great sense of depth in three-dimensional space. Flatness gives a much greater freedom to the composition for things to be arranged in their relative spiritual importance — not from our human viewpoint, which is limited in time and space. The icon draws us in to live in divine time — Kairos in the Greek, rather that Chronos, clock time. There is no night, only eternal day. The figures do not cast shadows; the brilliant light of God shines from within the person depicted, and the icons show the saints in their present state of glory in heaven.

Fourth stage of writing an icon

Saints are depicted from the viewpoint of eternity. They are free from all blemishes, physical and emotional. The Icons depict the saints in new transfigured flesh, which like the Temple bears a precious content. The Saints’ bodies are weightless; they barely touch the ground.

The face is of a dweller in paradise, never portraying emotions or passions, not of an earthly person. Transfigured remote from earthly passions, they belong to a different world, and look down to us from there. Hands are unnaturally large, ‘the hand that blesses’, depicting the importance of the Gospels they often hold. Forehead is wide and high, denoting theory and contemplation. Body is sketched lightly, so does not bring attention to anatomy. ‘The eyes are the window of the soul’, and are depicted wide open. The accent on the eyes creates the impression that, rather than you looking at the icon, the icon is looking at you.

Icons are not meant to be mysterious objects, understandable by scholars alone. They help explain the narratives in the Scriptures which are so rich in theology and spiritual insight. This is the story of the icon, which is as valid today as it ever was. The Spirit of the Eternal Light shines through now as clearly as it must have in its Beginnings.

I hope this account from an aspiring iconographer will encourage the reader to perhaps view icons with as much enthusiasm as she does.

Come little person, turn aside for a while from the tumult of your thoughts.

St Anselm of Canterbury

The completed icon, in this case a replica of an original, ‘Christ Enthroned’ by Emmanuel Tzanes, a painter from Rethymnon, Crete. The words in the book read: ‘Come to me all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.’

By Phiroz Mehta

Continued from part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4

If it is asked, “Is Brahman the same as God who is a Personal Being?”, the answer is that Brahman is the origin of God who is a Personal Being. If it is asked, “Is Brahman an Impersonal It, a creative force, a supra-Personal Being, Pure Consciousness, etc. ?”, the answer is that Brahman is the origin of all these. In other words, God as the Ultimate Reality is beyond logical understanding, beyond our power to express in words. Whatever we say about God, even if what we say is true, can express only a tiny fragment of God. The Hindus understood this very well, and so they taught that reverent silence is true worship of Brahman.

We may well ask, “How, then, did the Hindus arrive at the mystery, or even have a distant vision, of this supreme reality called Brahman?” This takes us to the inmost heart of Hinduism. The Hindus first asked, thousands of years ago, “What am I?” How easily and how constantly we use the word ‘I’ all through our speaking and thinking, and even in our sleep, in dreams! And how terribly and overwhelmingly does this ‘I’ absolutely dominate our lives! What is this ‘I’? Have you ever seriously tried to find out ? Is it the body? Feelings? Thoughts? Mind? Soul? Consciousness? Or some of these taken together, or all of these in combination? Attack the question another way: Is the ‘I’ mortal or immortal? Has it form, shape, substance, or is it formless and immaterial? Is it spirit or matter? What is it?

Now the Hindus discovered that you cannot arrive at an answer satisfactory to yourself if you try to answer “What is the ‘I’?” in your ordinary state of mind and with your present mental faculties. You must first develop an unusual faculty, namely, that of being able to hold the mind completely still, while you are fully awake. Try it. What is happening in your mind now? Is there not a continuous stream of impressions, feelings, pictures, and thoughts? A continuous stream of words? You say, “But that is quite natural, for I am awake and conscious, not unconscious”. Perfectly right. But now suppose you can really stop that continuous stream of words and tunes and pictures in your mind, make the mind perfectly still, and also remain wide awake and not fall asleep like the disciples of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. In what manner, then, will you be conscious?

Superconsciousness

Far from becoming vague or blank or unconscious, you will become superconscious. Then you will ‘know’ in quite a different way from the way in which you know with your ordinary consciousness in everyday life. Everything appears to be transformed. You become ‘transfigured’, as the great religions say of their great teachers. Thereupon the ‘I’, or ‘the Self’, is experienced in an utterly different way from the way in which you ordinarily think, or rather try to think, of the ‘I’. Now many of the great Hindu teachers, on becoming ordinarily conscious again after experiencing superconsciousness, taught their disciples that the ‘Real Self’ cannot be described in words. We cannot say it is good or bad, matter or spirit, formed or formless, living or lifeless, because whatever words we use would misrepresent it, or at best give an incomplete or blurred glimpse of the reality. Therefore, these teachers said: “Let us give this Real Self a name — Ātman — purely to enable us to talk about it when necessary, and let us say that the Ātman is ‘not this, not that’; in short, that no descriptive word can be applied to it. The best thing we may say about the Ātman is ‘It is’.”

The Ātman is known by being experienced superconsciously. It is quite a mistake to say it can be known by introspection, which, in its usual meaning, is carried out in ordinary consciousness. Now those Hindu teachers, by entering the superconscious state and realizing the Ātman, made the wonderful awe-inspiring discovery that in realizing the Ātman they had also realized Brahman. In other words, Brahman was not only Brahman, but was also man’s very essence, namely, the Ātman. Thus, the Ātman is the absolute foundation of man’s eternal hope. Our most real nature is God, a divine potential hidden within us. Remove the outer obstructions, and that hidden potential will blossom out as the visible, active Son of God. We must make the effort and aspire to the holy life, and the grace of God crowns the effort and aspiration by enabling us to cross over all sin and sorrow. This is resurrection and ascension after we have died to all sin. This is Nirvana. And such is the teaching of the Vedas and the Upaniṣads, the oldest and most sacred of the Hindu scriptures.

Immortality

When you enter the superconscious state, you are conscious in an immortal manner. In the ordinary state, you are conscious of an event or a mood or a thought as something which begins and then comes to an end, as if it were a birth and a death. Then you are conscious of the next thought or thing — the next birth and death. We may describe this as being conscious in the manner, or mode, of mortality. But to become superconscious, you have to succeed in stopping this succession of births and deaths, while still remaining wide awake, in full control of yourself. You now become conscious in a different mode, the mode of immortality, of not-mortality. Immortality thus really means experiencing existence superconsciously, here and now.

In the superconscious state, you are united with God. The great Hindu teachers said of their own experience of such union: “Pratyagātman (my Self, or I) and Paramātman (the Supreme Self, or God) are one.” Centuries later, Jesus said: “I and my Father are one.” As long as you stay in the superconscious state, you experience ‘eternal life’, ‘divine bliss’, and ‘the peace that passeth understanding’. The superconscious state is what we really mean by being in the presence of God, in heaven; it is also the real meaning of conquering death.

Rebirth and Karma

Just a little earlier, we talked of a succession of births and deaths in our own daily, mental life. This is a real, and probably the most sensible, meaning of the doctrine of rebirth, sometimes called reincarnation. Some scholars use other terms also — metampsychosis, transmigration, palingenesis, metensomatosis — in connection with that doctrine that you are born again and again in this world. Now, when we talk of the succession of births and deaths, most people do not mean the succession in our own minds, as taught in the Maitri and the Śaṇḍilya Upaniṣads. They mean that some time after your body is dead, your soul, or ego, or whatever it is that is supposed to survive as the real ‘you’, will reappear in this world in another body. After ‘you’ have lived that life, ‘you’ will be born again in a new body, and so on. This is the popular belief.

Why must this happen? The Hindus taught that God is perfectly just, besides being loving and merciful. Therefore justice must ultimately prevail throughout His creation. Perfect law governs universal process. The action of such and such a force brings such and such a result. Several forces will produce a net result. Again, if such and such be sown, that and that alone will be duly reaped. This law — that whatever happens is the correct result of all the forces, both material and spiritual, at work — is called the law of karma. The literal meaning of karma is action. Thought is mental action, speech is verbal action, and a deed is physical action. What we call the mercy or grace of God, or anything which we attribute to God, is spiritual or divine action. It is quite wrong to say that the law of karma is merely a law of retribution.

Continued in part 6

By Phiroz Mehta

Craving and aversion — those are the two great lieutenants of the Devil who hold us in bondage.

This lecture, given by Phiroz Mehta c. 1955, was not recorded

It would be difficult to find more inhuman persecutions or more savage wars in history than those in the name of religion or in the name of any ideology which fires its adherents with what amounts to a religious fervour. It would be equally difficult to find a stranger expression of aggressive egoism and spiritual rapacity than that found in militant missionarism, or in the exaltation of a particular faith by scholar or theologian at the expense of other faiths.

If we consider carefully the history of Islamic people, of Christian people, of Hindu people, of Nazi, Fascist or Communist people, or of any other people, we shall find that in the name of Love, of submission to the Will of God, of Duty and Truth, of Welfare and Happiness, of Honour, Justice and Freedom, human beings have behaved with a ferocity and stupidity which may almost condemn them to be the despised laughing stock of the universe.

Again, if we study the different theologies and other writings of the various religions, we shall notice what pains have been taken by great protagonists to demonstrate the correctness and superiority of their own presentation as against all others.

But let us note carefully that in all these instances it is always people who are against people, it is persons, men and women, who do not cooperate with other men and women. It is never the truth which is the Christ’s teaching which is at variance with the truth which is the Buddha’s teaching. It is always persons professing to be, let us say, Christians, and persons professing to be, let us say, Zarathustrians, who do not cooperate with each other.

Now this has not always been the case in the past. Cyrus the Great of Persia, the contemporary of Daniel and Ezra, of Parmenides, Pythagoras and Heracleitus, of Confucius and the Buddha — this Cyrus decreed and practised tolerance for faiths other than his own. India of the 3rd Century B.C. saw Aśoka, unique in all history as the successful philosopher-king, set one of the most memorable examples of religious tolerance, and even further, of actual cooperation with other faiths. Eighteen centuries later, the greatest Muslim Emperor of India, Akbar the Great Mughal, displayed the most illumined tolerance for all the great religions.

But these great instances of the past are noble examples of right action by isolated individuals. Today, we see the Emergence of something better, something which in fact is fraught with the promise of the fulfilment of the divine pledge to man, that the time shall be when man shall enter the kingdom of which he is the destined heir.

But for this, man must endeavour unremittingly. It is not that God obstructs him — nay, the gift of God was made even before there was man. It is not that Nature will defeat him, for Nature, the Bride of God, exercises man through the problems which she presents, so that he grows stronger and healthier as he solemnly, conceitedly, absurdly struggles with his divine mother. And everlastingly this gracious mother dances before man her dance of the Veils, enticing her erring child to burst home, naked and full-grown into the bosom of his Father-God.

How then shall man strive? Two ways there are today, and both have to be operative simultaneously, for they are complementary, interdependent and Indispensable to each other. One way concerns each man’s own life as a private individual. The other is his life as a member of the human race, of which he is integral part and parcel, inextricably interwoven into the fabric of the single whole. And one of the keynotes of this second way which is our concern tonight, a keynote of the highest importance, is cooperativeness.

Can the religions cooperate? The question means in practice, can the followers of the various faiths, can you and I cooperate? I mentioned earlier some of those lone stars of the past — Cyrus and Aśoka and Akbar, representatives of different faiths. Salutations to those exemplary souls, the pioneers who unconsciously laid the unseen foundations of what has emerged in recent centuries through the greatest good which you did when you went out East, lured by one of the Veils of your dancing mother†. That greatest good was born of the interest evinced by your great scholars in the languages of the Orient. Thus you came to know the Vedas and the Upaniṣads, the Zend Avesta and the Pitakas. Together with the study of comparative religion, there arose a new wave of good feeling in many people — not restricted to professional scholars — a wave which has borne forward several movements which aim at harmonization — not a devitalized, ill-nourishing and characterless syncretism — but a true harmonization of the great religions.

The World Congress of Faiths is one such movement for world harmony by means of the active cooperation of Individuals of different faiths. What is the ground of their unity? What is the spring of Inspiration of this cooperative action? Is it an allegiance to a common body or doctrine universally confessed by all our members? No. Remember that for all the similarities in doctrine, worship and daily ethical practice which you will find in the great religions, you will also find as many divergences. No, it is not in the garb which Religion is clothed that you will find the root of unity but in the nature of that supreme personal experience which you may call by any name you please — God-realization, union with the Divine, Salvation, Liberation, Brahman-becoming, Nirvana. It is that experience which is the source of unity. For there you stand on the single peak of the spiritual Everest, in which the whole world with all its wonderful diversity of ways of life and philosophies, its cultures and its great faiths, has culminated in a Supreme Realization. In that spaceless and timeless depth of Eternity which you can experience here-now, you have not destroyed or merely explained away, but you have truly transcended both similarities and divergences, and made real the very ground of unity.

Not for a moment do I suggest that it is a preliminary requisite that we should attain a transcendental consciousness ere we can cooperate. We can cooperate from the very beginning if, in addition to goodwill and intelligence, we have a certain commonsense ability to manifest this goodness of heart and clarity of head in daily practice.

I know the complexity and intensity of the problem which often faces the devotee of one faith who tries to cooperate with the devotee of another faith propounding unacceptable doctrines. But that precisely is the individual problem. And the solving of that problem will cost heavily in sweat and tears. Give grateful thanks and praise to our mother Nature for the sweat and tears. And when there is success in our cooperation, let the Glory be to the Highest alone, or else what we have created will be destroyed by the poisoned barb of our spiritual pride.

I am certain that the religions can cooperate. What is there to prevent us cooperating, if you and I each have a faithful heart and will be clearsighted? Therefore, lovingly and intelligently, from here and now onwards, from this hallowed spot and sacred moment, we can profoundly realize the spirit of actual cooperation. There is Peace for men with Goodwill. Each person is free to make his own choice. According to that choice he will be remembered by posterity. By which middle name would any person like to be remembered — Dogberry or Socrates?

† Phiroz was addressing a mainly British audience.

By Tom Dolan

As a student of world traditions and the wonderful teachings of Phiroz Mehta, the idea of time has always been close to my thoughts. Recently I have returned to the study of another great teacher, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, an Indian seer who became well-known through the efforts of a few of his followers beginning in the 1980s.

He gave talks and held discussions in his loft in Bombay for many years before his death in 1981. He always said that his talks concerned consciousness and only that. As Phiroz Mehta did, he used key phrases and words to shock the listener into what he called “direct apperception” of the Truth. Conceptual thought has no place in this apperception he said, save to lead the listener to the cliff, and then, with a final heave ho!

Time he said, is simply a result of our birth. We are time. Our birth is the vehicle in which the whole conceptual universe, including our experience of passing-time, is born. Past, present and future make their appearance in us, the psycho-physical organism. But he would go on to ask, “Is that who or what you are, this psycho-physical organism?” For him, who we are, or better said, what we are, is simply this, the shining ever-present consciousness. The One without a second. Total subjectivity without the least trace of objectivity. To think of it, is to objectify it, and in this way, put horns on a hare!

His teaching reflects many, if not all of the pointers of Phiroz Mehta. The Transcendental Vision or the One Total Reality, as Phiroz spoke about so many times, is the very same pointer that Nisargadatta continuedly hammered home.

So what can be done by us, the psycho-physical organisms that struggle with this conundrum we find in all these great teachings and writings? I don’t know. And for Nisargadatta, that is exactly the answer! For in this, “I don’t know”, we find attention and the quiet Mind. For it is wisdom that is searching for wisdom, and we are that…

As for me… I continue to search!