I'd like to introduce to you Father B. Griffiths, both personally and otherwise. We first connected, Stan and Father B. and I, in February of 1982 in Bombay, where Stan and I were organizing a large international conference for the International Transpersonal Association called East and West, Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science, all about the bridging of the wisdom of the East and the new discoveries in the science of the West, which has really been dovetailing, as many of you know. At that time, we invited Father B. to come to the conference and found in his talks and in our discussions a tremendous richness, not only of knowledge but of experience, and

[01:06]

we were just delighted that in this particular month he had chosen to come to the United States in a rare visit and to come out here to California just at the time when we were doing our month-long workshop called Journey to the East, which is all about our common interests. Father B. is originally from England, was a close friend of C.S. Lewis, and has been in what I understand, in the last 25 years in India, has been the head of an ashram near Madras, which is attempting to bring Christianity together with the Hindu atmosphere, the Hindu practices, to really bridge all religions through prayer, through meditation, and I

[02:06]

think that this is enough of my talking and I'd like to pass it on to Father B. His books, yes, stand to remind me, three of his books are in the back, which is there to sell them if you're interested. They're very difficult to get, as we found when we were trying to order them for the workshop. So, Father B., welcome. In India, we like to begin a religious discourse with a chants, so I'd like to begin with the Gayatri mantra, and you all know it's the most sacred mantra in the Vedas, and roughly it means, let us meditate on the glorious splendor of that divine light. May he illuminate our meditation. Om Om Om Om Om Om

[03:07]

Om Om Om Om Om Om Om Om [...] I think you all realize we're on the beginning of a new era. One doesn't want to exaggerate, but it's certainly a new cultural age, and the two great events, as I understand it, are this sudden opening of Western science, particularly physics, to a totally new vision of the universe, and at the same time, the discovery of Eastern mysticism as something relevant to our life in the West.

[04:09]

And these two movements are converging. Scientists, psychologists are opening themselves to Eastern wisdom, and of course, the East is coming here, Buddhist, Tibetan, Hindu, Sikh, and so on, and encountering the West. So this is a really very sacred, I would say, moment in human history, and I want to see how Christianity stands in relation to these two movements, because generally I find it's left out. People tend to simply leave it out, and I think that these movements have a very important place in Christian understanding, and I think Christian understanding can also give something to them. So, we begin with this change in modern science, and here I rely largely on Fitcharth Kapra, first of all, The Tower of Physics, and then his book The Turning Point. As we know, in The Tower of Physics, he showed how modern physics has completely changed

[05:10]

our conception of matter and of the material universe, and then in The Turning Point, he showed how this change is taking place not only in physics, but in biology, psychology, medicine, and economics, the whole way of human living. And the way he puts it is that the mechanistic model of the universe, which prevailed from the 17th century onwards, was the classical system of Newton, has dissolved in the light of relativity and quantum physics, and we're now opening to an organic vision of the universe. And he puts them in a sort of curve that the mechanistic view came to a head in the 19th century and is now on its decline, and this organic movement began at the beginning of this century, perhaps with Einstein, and is now moving towards its summit. So we're at this very, very interesting moment when a whole new paradigm, as he called it, a new way of conceiving the universe, is gradually spreading through scientists and through people

[06:15]

at every level now, and as I say, is meeting this movement of Eastern mysticism. Now, I'm no scientist, and my understanding of Capra is no doubt very defective, but the points which have come to me very clearly from reading him, and other books associated in the same way, is first of all that the Cartesian and Newtonian view of matter as a solid substance outside us, solid bodies moving in time and space, in absolute time and absolute space, that was Newtonian vision. And that is what we were all brought up in, and the way we still think of the universe, we still think of a world extended outside ourselves and the things moving in time and space like that. But when we, in that view of the universe, the atom was supposed to be the final substance, you could break everything down into atoms, the atom could not be divided, and so you

[07:17]

could build up the whole universe as a mechanism on the base of these atoms. And then, of course, they came to the splitting of the atom and the discovery that within the atom was something quite different, you're not going to get this extended substance anymore. And the fruit of that has been the realization that ultimately matter and energy are the same, matter is a form of energy, and that is transforming our view of life. And as we try to take it into our lives we realize that this floor on which we're seated with apparently solid substance is really a whirling matter of atoms and subatomic particles and we're living in this tremendously vibrating universe and our whole bodies are of the same character. So we gradually discover this new universe of energies, a field of energies. Now, the next thing which is fundamental is that this field of energies is, as Capra says,

[08:19]

a complicated web of interdependent relationships. Everything in the universe is interrelated and interdependent, it's one whole. That's why we speak of an organic universe. Everything is interrelated and the whole always transcends the parts. See, in the old universe you tried to break it down into parts and thought that when you could get the parts, the atoms, you could build up the universe. But now we realize that the parts cannot be explained, the subatomic particles cannot be explained except in relation to the whole. And nothing in nature can properly be explained except in relation to the whole cosmos. So we've now got the vision of a cosmic unity where everything is interdependent and we ourselves, our bodies, are part of this physical organism which is related with the stars, with the galaxies, we're all one universe, you see. And so that is the first point. Now that has been further advanced that the recognition that the whole is present in every

[09:23]

part. And here Karl Pribram, who was with us in this meeting at Bombay, has this idea of the hologram which, as you know, is a sort of photographic plate where by putting a laser beam through it or something you discover that the form which you're photographing is present in every part. If it's a human face, instead of the human face being spread over the photograph, every particle of it has the human face in it. And this, they think, is a model of the universe. The whole is present in every part. Every part reflects the whole. So every atom and every molecule and every human organism and we ourselves, each of us is a little universe, a microcosm, you see, reflecting the macrocosm of the great world. So this is the universe we're living in, this unified whole, independent energies, and where the whole is reflected in every part, you see. And so we're at the center of the universe, each one of us, you see, because the whole

[10:27]

is present in each one of us. Now, a further advance in that has been made by David Bohm with his idea of the implicate and explicate order. And he maintains, again from scientific method, that the whole reality is implicated in the whole universe and that what we see is what is explicated. It's an unfolding of something which was originally folded together. Now, one can take an image, if you like, of a seed of a tree or a plant or something where the whole is folded into that and then it's unfolded as a thing. So the whole universe was originally enfolded and is now being unfolded and it can return to its original implicate order, you see. So we're coming out of the implicate to the explicate and now we're returning to the implicate to the unfolding. So that adds a further dimension, you see, to this vision of the universe. And incidentally, David Bohm is a disciple of Krishnamurti, you see. It's an extremely interesting example of a pure physicist who's opened himself to the

[11:32]

mystical dimension of reality and is seeing his physics in relation to the total reality which is revealed in mystical consciousness, you see, in Krishnamurti. So that's one of the very interesting meeting points. So that, I would say, is my first point, how we see the truth of the universe. Now, the next one is from the point of view of biology to Rupert Shelby, who happens to be a personal friend and writes his book The New Science of Life in our ashram in South India, and he is doing the same thing in biology, though very few biologists are following that And he maintains that the attempt to explain life in terms of physics and chemistry is totally impossible, and the majority of biologists still, you know, try to explain all the phenomena of life in terms of physics and chemistry, and of course they've had extraordinary success

[12:34]

with molecular biology, extraordinary achievements, but there's no future in that way. And Sheldrake shows in this book that we have to enlarge our envision of life, and he has introduced what he calls morphogenetic fields, which is really formative causes. He distinguishes energetic and formative causes. Energy has no form, has no structure, and that energy has to be structured by a formal power, which he called these morphogenetic, that is, fields which bring to birth a morphia form, you see. And, you see, in the old biology it was almost ludicrous. They supposed that by accident the particles came together to form an atom, the atoms came together to form a molecule, the molecules came together to form a cell, the cells to form an organism, and the whole universe really was an accident. It had no reason behind it. And a famous French biologist, Monod, you know, wrote this book showing, as he believed,

[13:41]

that the whole universe could be explained in terms of chance and necessity. There's no other law in the universe. And so Sheldrake has shown that that is ludicrous, really, and that there must be formative causes. And now he is coming back, he doesn't like to mention it, to Aristotle. Actually, when he was writing the book, I said, you should say this, and he said, no, if I say that no scientist will listen to me. So he suppresses that. But actually, you see, Aristotle had four causes, material and efficient cause, which we allow for in ordinary science, and then formal and final. And the formal cause is that which organizes matter. Matter of itself, he said, is pure potentiality, that has no structure, no order, no organization at all, you see. It's pure flux of energy. And that energy has to be organized by form. And form, for him, is the organized power of matter.

[14:42]

And the matter we see is this flux of energy which has been organized by form, by this structural power, you see. So matter of itself is unformed, you see, and it's a source of chance, of indeterminacy, of unpredictability, of unintelligibility. And all that aspect of life, the absurd, you see, all comes from this matter, this chaos which is underneath everything. And form is a source of order, of structure, of intelligibility, you see. And the whole universe is really, as Aristotle saw it, a combination of form and matter. You see the two are uniting together. So that really, I think, is the implication of Sheldrake's view, that he's opened the world to biology, to the understanding that there are formative causes which are shaping the universe, you see, giving it a meaning and a purpose.

[15:43]

You see, Aristotle's form gives meaning to things and his final cause is its purpose. So the universe, which until recently, you know, was considered a sort of chaos without any meaning in it, now is perceived to have a meaning and a purpose. And we're living in a unified world, universe, which can be seen now to have meaning and purpose at every level. The subatomic and the original forces which emerged when the universe came into being, there's a meaning and a purpose in the whole structure of the universe. So that is our next thing from Sheldrake. Now, the next point is this, that until recently, from the time of Descartes and Newton, it was supposed that matter and consciousness were quite separate. There's a material universe outside us, our consciousness is completely separate from that. We observe matter outside ourselves and we are quite separate from it.

[16:44]

But this again is breaking down, first of all, with Einstein, who saw that your observations were affected by the observer, and then in quantum physics again they find that the instruments you use affect the observations you make. You're interfering all the time. We're not separate from the universe, we're part of the universe, you see, physically we're part of this whole physical organization of matter. And psychologically we are all interrelated. And so now they speak of matter and mind as being two aspects of one reality, you cannot separate them. And that we find in ourselves, you see, we are matter, this body with all its chaotic elements which have been organized in atoms, molecules, cells, organs, tissues, and so on to the present organism. But we're also conscious organisms. This body of mine becomes conscious and I become aware of it and I can affect it through my consciousness. So now you see the whole physical universe, which is this field of energies, is now seen

[17:48]

to be pervaded by consciousness. We cannot separate any longer matter from consciousness. So now you see how a new vision is emerging. Now the next person I want to mention is Ken Wilber, he's a psychologist, I understand he's a biologist or something. Biochemist. Biochemist. And he's launched out into psychology and I think he's become one of the greatest psychologists today in his own sphere. Many of you know his books, The Spectrum of Consciousness, The Atman Project, and one I've just been reading, Up from Eden, where he gives the whole evolution of man in terms of this evolution of consciousness. And so you see we now begin to see that matter is organized into stars, galaxies, planets, earth, and so on, and then that matter begins to organize itself in a more complex way into living cells, and you get the plants and all the plant life going, and then from that it

[18:51]

begins to organize itself into animal forms with their instincts, appetites, and this form of intelligence, and gradually this matter, this life, this animal intelligence emerges into consciousness, you see, in man. We are at that point where matter emerges into consciousness. And we become conscious of ourselves and of the world in which we're living. Now Wilbur maintains that there are various stages of consciousness which are found in primitive man and which are also found in children, and you can't make an exact parallel but there are very close analogies between the way the child develops from its earlier stage and the way the man does. And the idea is that originally man was totally immersed in the body and in the material world. He calls it the uroboric state, or the pleroma, you're simply identified with nature.

[19:52]

And that is what every child is in the womb, is totally identified with nature, you see, and there's no consciousness. Well, there is a latent consciousness, you see. Already the consciousness is latent, but it's undifferentiated consciousness, you're totally immersed in this matter and this body and its sensations and its feelings, and it's blatant consciousness, you see, and then the consciousness begins to emerge, to evolve, and the human being sees himself separate from others, like the child sees himself separate from his mother, his father, and so on, and then you get the stage of growth from this body consciousness to mental consciousness, and we're most of us in that stage, we're emerging out of body consciousness into mental consciousness, and that's when all the problems arise, because you get a division between your body and your mind, and as he shows, at all this stage of evolution, things go wrong.

[20:57]

It isn't a spontaneous and affirmative movement of growth of consciousness, on the contrary, there is a continual failure to emerge to the higher level. We always tend to cling to the lower one, and he describes it as a refusal to die. You've got to die to your... the baby has to die to the state when it was in the womb in order to come out and be separate from the mother, and then the child has to grow to become separate from its mother, and then the child has to become adolescent and form a mind of its own and so on, and the danger is at each step you cling to the past, the baby wants to cling to its father, and the child wants to cling to the family, and as your mind develops you still cling to your body and so on, so always there is this failure to evolve, a failure to grow, you see, but nevertheless all the time this urge in nature is there to go beyond the primitive state, to go beyond the body state, and now to go

[22:01]

beyond the mental state, and that is where we are, you see, we have emerged into mental consciousness or rational consciousness, the science, all these things belong to the rational scientific mental consciousness, and we are now emerging into the higher level of spiritual consciousness, you see, and that is the future, well, humanity is precisely, has been for a long time, let's leave that for a minute, has been emerging into this state of spiritual consciousness, where we go beyond the body, beyond the mind, and are open to the infinite, to the eternal, and that links up, you see, with this whole scheme of the universe, I said the whole is reflected in every part, and the part can only be explained in the light of the whole, and so this whole organisation of matter, the development of life, the development of consciousness in man, has to be related to the total consciousness, and the spiritual consciousness is total consciousness, every other is partial, the body consciousness is

[23:05]

very partial, obviously, but our mental consciousness is extremely partial and inadequate, and only when we get beyond mental consciousness do we enter into the transcendent consciousness, become aware of the whole, and what is the meaning and purpose of everything, and this is what is taking place today, you see, people are emerging from this mental consciousness into the super mental consciousness, or the transcendent consciousness. Now, this is our link now with the oriental mysticism, you see, because in the East, from at least one thousand B.C., there has been a constant effort to get beyond the mental consciousness to the super mental, you see, to the transcendent, and the movement, it's present, latent, if you like, in the Vedas, but it breaks out in the sixth century before Christ, with the Upanishads and the Buddha, and this is a key movement in the evolution of humanity, you see, took place in that first millennium, and there's a breakthrough beyond

[24:07]

the mental consciousness to the super mental, to the transcendent, and the Upanishads and the Buddha, as I say, those are the two key points in it, both at about the same time, both somewhat different, but basically of the same nature. Now, I'd just like to explain a little of this breakthrough in the Upanishads, it can be very well illustrated by what are called the Mahavakyas, the great sayings of the Upanishads. For the Hindu tradition, the essence of the Upanishads is contained in four Mahavakyas, great sayings, and the first is Prajnanam Brahman. Now, Brahman is the name for this transcendent reality, the reality behind the universe, and already in the earlier Upanishads, they had seen behind the phenomena, the appearance of the world, the hidden mystery of Brahman, you see, the reality behind, and now they say this Prajnanam Brahman, Brahman is consciousness, and that is the precise point when human being

[25:13]

reflecting on himself began to realize that his consciousness became self-conscious, his consciousness of his own inner being, and how it relates to the world outside. He says that Brahman is consciousness, the ultimate reality is consciousness, you see. A tremendous breakthrough. Before we saw Brahman in the world around you, in the earth, in the trees, the animals, the flowers, the sky, the sun, the moon, all these things are manifestations of Brahman, but now we realize that Brahman is hidden, you see, it is consciousness, and the next one is, I am Atman Brahman, this self is Brahman. My inner being, when I go beyond my physical consciousness, beyond my mental consciousness, I awake to a deeper center of consciousness, that is my Atman, myself, and I realize that at that deep center of my being, I am one with Brahman, which is universal consciousness. It is a tremendous breakthrough. I am Atman Brahman. I, in the depths of my being, am one with Brahman, the transcendent reality, which is

[26:16]

our universe. And then, if the Atman is similar, Aham Brahmasmi, I am Brahman. That is, I... Again, he's... That is very important, he's a mystical utterance, you see. If you take them literally, they can be very deceptive, but they are expressions of a mystical experience, you see, and it is... it's discovering at the depth of your own being, your I, your Aham, your I is one with the transcendent reality which you encounter in the universe divine, you see. I am... I am Brahman. And then the fourth one is Tat Tvam Asi, the very famous one, Thou Art Thou. And this comes in the Chandogya Upanishad, and it's a rather good illustration. The guru says to him, his son it is, you go and take a fruit from that tree, and he takes it, and he says, break it open, what do you see? He says, I see a lot of seeds. He says, break one again, what do you see? He says, I see nothing. And he says, now, in that nothing, that which you cannot see, in that seed, the whole power,

[27:22]

the essence of that tree must be found. The whole tree grows from that hidden power within the seed, you see. And so behind all the phenomena of nature, there is a hidden power which produces the whole creation, the whole universe, and Thou Art That, you see. Thou, you, in your innermost depth, your being, are one with that power which is organized in the universe, you see. So these are the great Mahabharatas, and that was the great breakthrough. And the other one was the Buddha, who took a negative view. Buddha's is a kind of negative theology, you see. It was analyzing the physical universe and the mental universe as totally, all is sorrow, all is passing, all is unreal. Those are the three great things of Buddha. All is unnity, not eternal, passing away. All is dukkha, which is sorrow, unsatisfied, you see.

[28:23]

And unuttered, without a soul, without a substance really. So the whole universe is passing away. And of course the Buddhist view is very changed, you see, from the modern physics. The whole universe is filled with energies which are always in flux, always in change. And that is what the Buddha saw. Everything is passing away, changing. But, he says, you can get beyond that, and then you reach Nirvana. When all this phenomenal appearance goes out, who's realized the transcendent reality, he doesn't name it. He wants the people to name it. And so if you name it, people begin to argue about it, and you miss the point. However, the point is that you are living for a noble cause, and you will experience that reality. And now that is the point I haven't made clear enough, perhaps. You see, all this breakthrough is not in the mental consciousness. And this is what we find so difficult. It's not ideas about Brahman or about the self. It's an experience of the self, an experience of Brahman, an experience of Nirvana, you see, which goes beyond the mind, beyond the mental consciousness.

[29:27]

Then the further stage, now in the early stage of Indian mysticism, it's very negative, you see. You're always trying to get beyond the material world, the body, beyond the mind and the thoughts and so on, and to reach this transcendent reality. And the dome brings that you tend to regard the world as unreal, and the ego, the self, as unreal, you see. And that tendency was collected a little later, particularly in what is called the Bhagavata movement, the devotion to a personal God. You see, the Brahman and the Atman are somewhat impersonal, that is a good word, I think that sounds personal, but in the little later, the early Upanishads, 600, 500 BC, in the Bhagavad Gita probably 300 or 200 BC, and then this devotion to a personal God being. And you can realize this Brahman, this Atman, this transcendent reality, is a personal being,

[30:31]

which means a being which has knowledge and love. And the climax of the Bhagavad Gita there is in the last chapter, which comes before it, summarized in the last, where Krishna says to Arjuna, give me thy heart, give me thy sacrifice, give me thy devotion, and you shall come to me because you are dear to me. See, there is love in this transcendent reality. That was a great revelation of the Bhagavad Gita, really. And so the human tradition, at this time, began to come round to the view that the transcendent reality had a personal character. And very interestingly, at about the same time in Buddhism, you see, you've got the beginning of the Mahayana. You know, the Hinayana, which is the earlier system, probably much simpler, simply seeking nirvana, and then, probably first century B.C., somewhere around there, it wound on them that instead of seeking your own salvation,

[31:34]

going to nirvana, the Bodhisattva, the one who is seeking enlightenment, and is reaching the goal, refused to open nirvana to all souls who should be saved. And so you get the idea of the compassionate Buddha and the Bodhisattva who is prepared for all human beings, and all the saints of beings, not only humans, but saints of beings. So, it was a beautiful figure, but the Bodhisattva comes, you get it in the Ajanta friscoes, you know, a marvellous, compassionate face to hold down. And the face of the Buddha, later on, this is beautiful, wisdom and compassion, this girl, a few marks of a girl. So now, we're converging, you see, in second century, first century B.C. And now, I want to bring this to the point of Christianity of man, you see, and of Christ. And now, the background of Christianity, of course, is not this Oriental tradition, it's a Semitic tradition, which is very different, but the most characteristic thing of the Semitic tradition

[32:34]

was precisely a person of God. And there are two names of God, you know, one is Elohim, the other is Yahweh. And Elohim, I think, quite clearly points to a time when the Godhead was conceived as many. It's a plural word, you see, it's very interesting, the Hebrew word for God is plural, Elohim. And originally, it was the divine word, you see, with all the divinity in it, and so on. And then, gradually, it evolved, I mean, Moses probably, and Luke before, that this Elohim, this supernatural, this divine power, you see, was a personal God, and had this name Yahweh, I am the absolute reality. And so, Israel grew up with this devotion to the personal God. And Jesus comes into the world from that Semitic tradition, from this belief in the personal God Yahweh, and he then reveals the, I would say,

[33:38]

the final stage of this process, you see, because we can look at it in two ways. One is, matter is evolving continually into life, life is evolving continually into consciousness. And in the Buddha, in the Bhagavad Gita, in that period there, we saw this human consciousness evolving into super-human consciousness, transcendent consciousness. But the tendency was to go beyond the matter, beyond the mind, and open to the transcendent. And what the Hebrew did, it seems to me, is to realize that the matter itself, and the human person, have not to be discouraged, as to go beyond, but have to be transformed. And the basic principle in the Old Testament, and comes ahead in the New, is that the material universe and the human being is to be transformed and to pass beyond into the divine.

[34:44]

I am always influenced here by Sri Aurobindo, most of you will know, many of you will know, no doubt, that he and the mother of Pondicherry had a very original view of the universe. One, it was evolutionary. We believe that God was Sati Ananda, meaning knowledge, bliss, the infinite reality, and that this was involved in matter. The divine became involved in matter, and as matter evolved through the power of the divine being, life emerged from mental consciousness, and now we, the present human race, is emerging into supernatural consciousness. And he believed that the super-mind would descend, which was a very original idea, meaning ascending, if you will, that's the idea. But here, ascending is meant by the descending movement of the super-mind, and that was so distinctive that the super-mind would transform not only the soul, but the body. And Aurobindo and the mother really tried to transform that body, the souls of the body.

[35:45]

They didn't succeed, but I think it was an ominous vision which they had. And it seems to me that how to understand the Christian mystery is precisely that, that in the Christian understanding, the matter of the universe was to be transformed, and the human person was to be transformed, and that took place in the person of Christ. He is the person in whom matter and soul are transformed and finally emerged into the fullness of the life of the spirit. Now, the stages of that can be seen, that what was happening in the creation is that matter is gradually being... or rather, consciousness is more and more taking possession of matter. Even in the plant, obviously, there's a sensitivity. Consciousness is emerging in the plant, you see. And even they say in metals and so on, there are vibrations which are attuning consciousness, you know, and then in this plant you get the sensitivity of many people's experience,

[36:49]

that you can talk to plants and that they have a different response. And then in the animal you get a further development of consciousness. And in man, of course, consciousness now begins to take over. But most of us are in a very imperfect state, we are conscious in some respects and we're largely governed by the unconscious in others. If you aim this at consciousness, you take total possession of the body. And this is what seems to me is illustrated in the New Testament. You see, first of all, the virgin birth, Jesus. Many dismiss that as a legend or something, but I think it's very important. It was a stage in evolution. You see, the normal way of sexuality came in with the plants, the development of the animals, and with our normal human method of reproduction. But we are emerging from the present level of humanity to the transcendent. And it seems to me the virgin birth is the point when this emergence takes place. As it was said, it was born not of blood, nor of the flesh,

[37:53]

nor of the will of man, but of God. It is a human being who opens herself to the divine and allows this transformation to take place, you see. So there you have a point where human consciousness, you see, is evolving towards the divine. And then the miracles of Jesus are the same thing, turning water into wine, multiplying bread, walking on the water, sealing the storm. All these are what in India we call siddhis. They are powers. And they mustn't be mistaken for spiritual powers. What are their psychic powers? Not all, but many, many of the saints had these powers. And Jesus certainly possessed these powers to a supreme degree. And to feel temptation, to feel no interest in that, he can misuse the psychic power, which is to turn the stone into bread, to jump from the temple and to support it, or to gain political power by standing on it. So he had these powers, which are a strange evolution of consciousness.

[38:56]

They are for getting control over matter. And of course among Hindu and Buddhist saints it's reached an extraordinary degree that you control over the body which can be reached by these siddhis. And Jesus certainly possessed, as I say, an eminent degree. But then, you see, you come to the climax of it all, which is the resurrection, where the matter of the body was finally transformed. And that is really the basis of the whole Christian message, that matter, the body, was transformed and became a spiritual body. Consciousness totally penetrated matter, the body, at that point, you see. And it's interesting that it was preceded by the death on the cross. And as Ken Wilber says, you see, at each stage the danger is we cling to the past and refuse to die. You've got to die to your past state if you're going to pass into a new one. You've got to die to your mental state if you're going to enter into a supermental. And Jesus had to die to this mode of existence, you see.

[39:57]

And he accepted voluntarily and totally death on the cross. And through that total acceptance of death he was open to the transformation of matter, you see. And in the way we have seen, the body was transformed. Now, I have a saying here, which I don't know whether it's orthodox or not, but I think it's quite sensible. And that is this, that he had a ghost body on the cross and that ghost body was put into the tomb. And then my suggestion is that ghost body was transformed into a subtle body. Because, you see, he appeared to the disciples when the doors were shut, he would appear in the middle of the road or they were walking and suddenly he appeared walking in the road to a mass, you see. And sometimes they couldn't recognize him, you see. So, it's got all the characteristics of a subtle body which again is well known in India, you see. Many yogis and others have this power of acting in the subtle body. So he passed into subtle body, but then at the ascension he passed beyond the subtle body to the spiritual body,

[41:02]

which is the final state. And here I would like to introduce what to me is fundamental in this understanding, the division which St. Paul makes of the human person into body, soul and spirit. That to me is a key, you see. You see, we have a body, a physical organism which is of course part of the whole physical organism, the universe, and we're all involved in that. Secondly, we have a psychological organism. All the faculties of sense, feeling, imagination, reason, will, all our faculties belong to the psychological organism. But the only human being beyond the body and beyond the soul there is a point of the spirit, the numerants of all the Atman in Sanskrit. And that is the point of our transcendence, self-transcendence, going beyond the self and opening to the transcendent One, you see, to the Supreme. And that is in every human being. But of course in most people it's not been awakened, they're still living in the psychic world. And St. Paul has a very interesting...

[42:03]

He compares the anthroposuchikos, the psychic man, the soul man living on the psychological level, to the anthroposlumaticos, the spiritual man who's awakened to the transcendent, you see. So, that is our basic understanding. Now, this, I would suggest, is a kind of Christian gnosis. And this is rather important, you see, because on the whole this Christian gnosis has rather been lost to sight, and many think it doesn't exist. And gnosis is the same word as jnana in Sanskrit, you know, J-N and G-N, it means to know, but it always refers to this transcendent knowledge. It's not rational, mental, scientific knowledge, it is a spiritual wisdom, which is participation in the Supreme, not simply looking at it, participating in it. And that is gnosis. And again and again St. Paul asks that you may draw on all wisdom and knowledge, gnosis and epipgnosis, he uses these words. And that continued in the Church for many centuries. The early fathers, St. Aaronius, Clement, Origen and so on,

[43:08]

always said that this gnosis belonged to the Christian, it's Christian wisdom, you see, and it's a transcendent knowledge which comes through the Holy Spirit when man is raised beyond himself and experiences the transcendent. So we have this tradition of Christian gnosis. Now, I would like now to try to see how this comes together, you see. I'll try to sketch the scientific background, the psychology of it, the Eastern mysticism, and how it comes to a head in the New Testament. What is the vision of reality which a Christian today can hold in the light of all this, you see? In the light of that scientific view, in the light of the mystic view of the East, how can we understand the Christian vision? Now, the first thing I think is this, that we would insist that the coming forth of the universe is a creation, it's not a fall. And Ken Wilber tends to say, as Aurobindo does,

[44:13]

that the material universe is a fall from the infinite one, you see, you fall into the unconscious, into the many, into the matter, you see. But in the Christian view, it's not a fall. And this is very important, because it means the whole of this world and everything is an accident in a sense, as a result of an accident, and we've got to get out of it. There is a creative energy in God. All the energies in matter, in the stars, in the atoms, in life and so on, have come forth from this original creative energy, the Shakti, the Shakti, the divine energy, the uncreated energy, as the Eastern scholars call it. That uncreated energy brings forth this creative energy in time, and God creates the matter, the chaos, the potentiality of being, and then organizes that matter, you see. It all comes forth from this creative energy, the source of all.

[45:15]

And that's very important. It's not a fall, it's a real overflow of power and ultimately of love that has a meaning and a purpose in it, you see. So, this creative energy brings into being this earth, this universe of matter, and organizes it. Now, there's a further point there which not everybody will agree with, but I find very important, and that is this, that we tend to think that the universe began with a material universe, with light and photons, maybe to begin with, and then hydrogen atoms and so on, and then evolved from that state towards life. But you know, the ancient tradition, both Hindu and Buddhist and Christian, and the ancient Christian, the whole, always insisted that the spiritual paths created a long-lived material universe. And these are the devas, the gods in Hinduism, and these are the angels in the Christian tradition, or the cosmic powers, as Paul calls them. So, there was never a time when there was simply an unconscious matter, you see.

[46:20]

That unconscious matter was always under the direction of these cosmic powers. And Aristotle, one of the great Indian philosophers, called them intelligences, you see, they're intelligences which are working in the whole cosmos. And now, an important aspect of that is that these cosmic powers are both good and evil. And that explains all the problems of life, you see, that the cosmos does not evolve simply spontaneously towards a higher state, but there are always contrary forces at work, what Aurobindo called the hostile powers. They're always present. The cosmic powers are both good, sustaining the universe and furthering evolution, and also hostile and conflicting and causing the violence and the disintegration, you see, in the creation, you see. So, we live in a universe which is created by God and has this marvellous power within it, but there are these evil forces or negative forces at work together with the other.

[47:23]

And now we come to the creation of man. And I would fully agree with Ken Wilber that the original man lived in that state of Uroboros, if you like, his unity with the whole creation. But I would say this, and he admits it also, that potentially and latent in him that all the future powers which he could develop, the body, soul and spirit, the spirit itself is already present in that early man, but it was undifferentiated. You see, the child's psychology is undifferentiated, it can't distinguish its body from its mind, its self from its surroundings and so on. It only gradually discovers that. So, it's an undifferentiated whole, but all those powers are present from the beginning. Just as all the powers of nature were present in the original matter of the universe, so all the powers of the psyche and the soul are present in the child and in the early man from the beginning. And here we have a very interesting view

[48:24]

of one of the early fathers, St. Adam Lewis. He was a second century father, extremely interesting, and he held the view that Adam, the first man, was a child man. You see, in the native theology, they thought Adam was a perfect person, and the first man fell from that. But Adam Lewis said, no, Adam was a child man, innocent, but he had to go. And the sin enters in when the failure to go is inferred. We have this body, we have this soul, and we have, right from the beginning, this presence of the spirit. And if man follows... When I say man, I mean man and woman, I can't always say both. If he follows the guidance of the spirit, then body and soul go together harmoniously and he emerges higher and higher into consciousness. But what actually happens is he does not follow the spirit, he falls back on himself. That's what we're always doing. The spirit is always taking us beyond,

[49:26]

demanding love, surrender, and we always tend to fall back on the ego, you see, the persona. And so we get closed in on ourselves. And that is a vigilancy, not following the guidance of the spirit, but falling back on the self. And once he falls back on the self like that, then he's exposed to all the evil forces in the universe, you see. He comes under these cosmic powers. And that is why, first of all, he's subject to disease and suffering and death. They're all the result of falling away from the spirit and being simply controlled by matter and soul, you see, and nothing beyond. And so he's exposed to suffering and to death. He's exposed to all the forces of... all the forces of the unconscious, you see, all these powers working through the unconscious. That's what we all experience to do. We're all slaves of these cosmic powers working through the unconscious. And at the same time, of course, subject to his own passions, desires,

[50:28]

and most of all, perhaps, that we suffer from, that the mental consciousness gradually begins to dominate all others, you see. And we get locked into this mental consciousness and we cannot get beyond. We can't open ourselves to the spirit. So that is our human state, fallen from this presence of the spirit and exposed now to all the forces, negative forces which we observe in the world. And that is our human condition, you see, in the physical experience of everyday life. So, perhaps... And as a result of that, man becomes separate from nature. He now becomes in conflict with nature. Man becomes in conflict with his fellow man, one unable to oppose the other. And man and nature become separated from God, from the supreme reality, you see. And that is the total fall. The whole universe falls from the supreme into the state in which we are experiencing it, of violence and conflict.

[51:29]

And that is the disintegration of mankind. We fall into the world of duality and of separation. And St. Augustine expressed it very graphically. He said, Adam fell and his universe was scattered over the universe. You see, Adam is man and man is one whole. You see, again and again, you see, just as all the parts of the universe are one whole, so every human being is a member of this humanity, this one being, you see, the mystical body, if you like, of humanity, you see, they are all members, one of another. And when sin came in, this body of humanity was disintegrated, like a cancer, you see, it disintegrated the body, and it was scattered over the world. And now, of course, begins the process of redemption, and that redemption is at wonder, bringing things back to one again. It's disintegrated, the body is disintegrated, the soul is disintegrated, we've lost touch with the spirit, and now the spirit begins to work to bring

[52:32]

the whole creation and the whole of humanity back to the unity. That is the redemption process, you see. And St. Paul expresses this marvellously when he says, God's plan in the fullness of time to bring all things to a head in Christ, brings things in heaven and things on earth. The whole creation, the whole of humanity has to be restored to that original unity, that's the whole plan of redemption. And now, in that plan, we must see that that redemptive energy of power is present from the beginning. And it's very beautiful, you know, that in the Christian tradition, Adam was saved, and there are many beautiful icons where you see Christ going down into the underworld and holds out his hand and Adam raises up Adam. And that is man, you see. So that this, the redemptive power is offered to every human being. It's at work through the whole creation, actually not only in the human being, but the whole creation. The creative power is there at work, and the evil force is there,

[53:33]

the negative force is disintegrated, and then this redemptive force, this new creative energy, opens it up and allows it to return. And so that power is at work in nature, that power is at work in every human being, and we're all being drawn now, you see, towards this experience of the spirit, so beyond the body, beyond the soul, and experience this level of the spirit. And this is, I think, where we are today, you see, that has been this wave of materialism, and we've been overwhelmed with all the scientific materialism and the scientific technology which crushes us to such a large extent, or which liberates us in other ways, and we're now realizing, you see, that we are imprisoned and that things are well open, that we can open ourselves to the unconscious. And so the path is open now to the spirit, for humanity to pass beyond the limitations

[54:34]

of the body and the mind, and to awaken to this spirit which is just everywhere. So that is how I would see the Christian revelation in the light of this present situation. And then I would say, you see, that pride is present in primitive man, and in all ancient people today, the more we examine it, the more we see there are many evil things, many abuses, and so on, which Goebbels makes very clear, but also the marvelous powers that we all know, whether the American Indians or the Australian Aborigines or any of the ancient people, this marvelous power of the spirit which is present. It's always present, leading people beyond. And the commoner, of course, is a great example, you see, of one who really reached a deep level of spirit at a very early stage. And was respected, seen as part of the home of human development.

[55:35]

And then we come, of course, as I said, to that great movement in the 6th century before Christ, when there was that breakthrough through the Bhagavad Gita and the whole of the Buddhist and the Hindu tradition, which are part of this movement of the spirit leading people beyond, you see. And then I would see the incarnation in Christ as the point where the spirit enters not only into the soul, but also into the body, and the transformation of the body takes place. Now, when that transformation of the body of Christ takes place, it affects the whole universe. And there again we recur to this point that we live in an interdependent universe. Everything in nature is interdependent. All the energies of matter are interdependent. And when a breakthrough took place at that point where matter was transformed, that affected the matter of the universe. And in the same way, as humanity is moving towards, in its evolution towards the spirit, the transformation of the soul of Christ,

[56:39]

by which it goes beyond the soul to the life of the spirit, that affects the whole of humanity. So we're all living in a world which is fallen and subject to every kind of violence and evil and destruction, and in a world which is revealed, a world which has this power present everywhere, in all matter, in all life, in all humanity, that part of the spirit is present, released by the resurrection. And this comes very interestingly in St. Paul, you know. He has this idea, a very interesting idea of St. Paul, in what he calls the new creation. You see, he says, the creation itself groans in tragedy. It's an extraordinary idea, that the creation of the eternal universe is groaning in trouble, waiting for the revelation of the sons of God, waiting for this renovation of humanity which will come through the redemption of the body. When the human body is transformed, then matter itself will be transformed. So, to me, the vision of the future, you see,

[57:40]

is the matter of the universe being transformed and the human body being transformed, and through that the human soul undergoing this transformation into the life of the spirit. So the total universe, the total human being is transformed by the power of the spirit and enters into this transcendent state, you see, beyond. So that is the hope of the future, you see, and we're all involved in that. The spirit is present in every human being and it can gradually take possession of the soul by means of meditation and all other techniques we can use, and the body also can be changed, as we know in many methods of Tantra and so on there is physical changes take place. And so this is all part of this evolutionary process, you see. And there is a very interesting tradition, you know, in India of this transformation of the body. Then you know about a very holy man, Ramalinga Swamigal, who came from our part of India, Tamil Nadu.

[58:42]

He was a contemporary of Ramakrishna and he was supposed to have had a golden body. They said he could never be photographed and he never uncovered his body. But the story is, believe it or not, that at the end of his life he was living in an ashram, a place called Madurai in Madras. He shut himself up in a room and asked the disciples to lock the door and not to come again for three days. And he said all this was casually observed and so on, and he opened the door three days and there was nobody there. The body was being transformed. It may be a story, but I think it's significant if it is a story, because it shows this desire for the transformation of the body which is very deep in humanity. And they call this sort of a diamond body. So that is what takes place. The body is transformed and the body and the soul... Now, this is the point I want to make here.

[59:44]

You see, when we talk of this transcendence going beyond the self into the supreme, we tend to think, and this is very strong in many Hindu and Buddhist traditions, but not in all, that we leave the body behind, we leave the soul and this level of consciousness behind and we simply pass into a transcendent state, transcendent consciousness. But the Christian understanding would be that the body and the soul, the physical and the psychological organism are both transformed by the spirit and are taken up into the life of the spirit. That is the meaning of resurrection of the soul. The total human person is transformed in the spirit. And I find this very important because it gives reality to this world. The danger of a good deal, I'm saying only a good deal, there are other tendencies in Hinduism, Buddhism, is to deny the reality of this world, the reality of the body, the reality of the ego, the self, the individual self, and the reality even of the person of God and to pass beyond into the ultimate,

[60:47]

you see, in Satchitananda. But that leaves all this out. Whereas, as I say, there are movements, the Tantra in Hinduism and Aurobindo's philosophy which emphasizes this very much, and also in Hinduism. I brought here Lama Govinda's book on creative meditation and multidimensional consciousness where he brings out very impressively how everything is destroyed in the ultimate, you see. So the total person, body and soul, is configured by the spirit and enters into that transcendent state. And here I want to make a final point, I don't know how long I've been taking, that in that ultimate state, you see, the Hindu calls it advaita, non-duality. And this is often understood in the sense that you pass beyond all differences, all multiplicity, and there is a pure identity of being,

[61:48]

Satchitananda, being, consciousness and bliss, without any difference at all. I think that's one aspect of it. I think you've got to get beyond the differences of this world, you see, bodily differences and mental differences and so on, but you've got to recover them at another level. And the interesting thing is, you see, that in the Christian doctrine of Trinity we uphold differentiation in the Godhead. The Godhead is not a pure identity, it is relationship. And you see, it's fascinating that Cather says the universe is a complicated web of interdependent relationships, even the material universe. We as a psychic universe are all interrelated, each one of us is related with all the others, we belong to a psychic whole, which is, as I say, it's a whole of humanity. And this physical universe, this psychic universe, is taken up into the transcendent, but it doesn't lose its differences. And, as I say, in the Godhead itself there is differentiation. The logos, the word, differentiates the Godhead.

[62:51]

The father knows himself in the son, the son knows himself in the father, and at the very moment of their differentiation they are united in the spirit, which is this principle of unification. So that ultimate reality, there is a principle of differentiation in ultimate reality. And that means that the differences in this world have reality and meaning. You see, the danger otherwise is all differences disappear, they don't matter, you and I and all this world really is an illusion, we've got to get beyond it. But this says that every detail of the structure of atoms and molecules and cells and plants and animals and flowers, every human being has its own significance, an eternal value, you see, and an infinite value. Each of us is a temple on a finite manifestation of the infinite and the eternal, and so we all belong to that. And we do not lose our differences, we lose our total mode of experience in space and time, our present dualistic consciousness, but we rediscover ourselves in a new mode

[63:53]

which is difficult to express, you see, that is the problem. When we get to that level, then our language is no longer adequate, you see, and all we can do is to point to it. But I do think it's important to point to the reality that there is differentiation in the ultimate reality. You see, the original universe, matter and the unconscious are undifferentiated, and it grows through differentiation, and when we reach the ultimate, we'll have supreme differentiation and supreme unity. That's the problem, you see, reconciling opposites, really, and we just have to leave ourselves open to that, I think. And this comes out very clearly in St. John's Gospel, you know, where Jesus says, I and the Father are one, and many take that in the sense that they are brighter, you see, there are no more differences between these gods. But that is a misunderstanding. I often quote, I had a correspondence once with Swami Ranganathananda,

[64:54]

the very well-known Brahmakrishna Swami, who wrote a book, The Christ We All Adore, and it is a perfect Hindu Christ, you see, Jesus simply realized God, realized Brahman, I am Brahman, I am God, and entered the transcendent reality, and he enabled his disciples to make the same realization. But I pointed out, you see, Jesus did not say, I am the Father, but I am the Father of one. It's not his identity, you see, it's unity and distinction. This is Perian's book. So that in the ultimate reality, you and I do not... we're no longer separate, but we're still distinct. And we all share in the one life, the one truth, the one reality. There's one or two illustrations, isn't it about Indra, there's a legend about the pearls, you know, that there's a necklace of pearls, and every pearl reflects every other, you see. But it's rather like that. Each one of us is a pure being, consciousness and bliss,

[65:57]

and each of us is reflecting the one divine light, and each is reflecting all the others. And the language which Jesus uses, I am in the Father, the Father in me. And we could say, I am in God, and God is in me. And I am in you, and you are in me, as I realize more and more this openness, you see, of the Spirit. The Spirit is totally open, it's total relationship, sharing in knowledge and in love. So, I think that really was as far as I wanted to go this evening. I hope it gives... Perhaps I could end with a beautiful chant, Purnamada, Purnamidam. That is full, the ultimate reality, the world, plenitude, plenitude. This world as we know it is full, but take the fullness of this world from the fullness of God and the fullness remains, you see. It's all one. That goes... Om Purnamada, Purnamidam

[67:04]

Purnat, Purnamudachate Purnasya, Purnamarya Purnamidam asisyate Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti Do you have some questions? Sure. When you talk about the fall, falling back into our persona and then becoming subject to those naked voices, could you say more about that process? How do you do that? Yes, well, as I understand it, you see, the body, we are body, soul and spirit. And the tendency in our nation now is that the body and the soul are not subject to the spirit, you see. That's the fall. It's the fall from the point of the spirit into your psyche. And that is dispersion, because the psyche is multiple, you see,

[68:06]

whereas the atma from the spirit is the point of unification. It's the point of integration of the personality that takes place at the atma, at the spirit, you see. And if we fall from that, we become disintegrated, we become dualistic, we become... And then we get more and more involved in matter and in the body, you see. So, to me, we all repeat the fall, you see, continually, falling from the spirit into the psyche. Father, does that apply to Western psychology in the way that you have so glorified the ego? The Russian? The Western psychology. Has it too much glorified the ego, do you think? Oh, yes, until recently, you see, whereas Ken Wilber is putting down the ego the whole time. But, you see, we really... I mean, the ordinary psychologist wants to build up your ego so that you can do good business and manage in the world, but he prevents you going above it, you see. That's the problem. And, of course, the reconciler is quite easy.

[69:08]

How to live in the spirit and yet be able to live on the practical level with the ordinary powers of the mind, that is a problem. You have a piece of advice on how to stabilize, how I stabilize myself in the spirit, in the potential for unity once I see it? I think meditation is the main way, you know, for most people. That's a little exaggerated. I think karma yoga is probably the best for many, you know, simply selfless service, that's what the Bhagavad Gita teaches. And for others, it's devotional prayer and so on. But for many people, probably for most people here, I don't know, meditation is the most direct way. Because, you see, in meditation we try precisely to harmonize the body, to bring it into equilibrium, you see, through yoga, if possible. Then we try to harmonize the mind, the whole mental being, you see, to bring that into harmony, to bring it calm. And when the body and the mind are calm and still,

[70:10]

then spontaneously the spirit awakes, we become aware of the transcendent, you see. And one must persevere day after day, I think, is the only way, because we've always been pulled back, you see, on the level of the body and the mind. I would like to go beyond the fact that the God is one and in fact within the religion and so on, and go into the hierarchy and responsibility of religion, of Catholic religion. How does the Catholic Church look upon you and how does it react to the Catholic Church? God is one in every religion and so on, yes, all right. How does the Catholic Church, how does the Pope react to your search and how do you respond? Well, honestly, I've published these books and no one has made any objection at present and they've all been translated into Italian, which is very good.

[71:11]

I think some theologians would pick holes, you know, here and there, but I think basically it's the same. Father, you make a distinction between the body, the soul and the spirit and when you were speaking, you often spoke of the sub-body as an imagined reflection of non-conceptuality. Now, when you think of the spirit, are you still speaking on a personal level or are you considering the spirit a oneness and a trans-personal spirit? That is very important, yes. You see, in a much Hindu, in Shankara really, in the basic Hindu doctrine, the art is simply one, and when you go beyond yourself, you enter this pure oneness, you see, of identity. But my view, which is a rather Hindu view, which was supposed to be some measure, is that at that point of the spirit,

[72:17]

each one of us, the spirit is differentiated at that point. One spirit is present in you and me and the whole creation, every person, but at that point of the spirit, the spirit is different in you and in me. He informs my body and my soul and my spirit is the point where I am open to the transcendent reality, but I do not lose my personal being. You see, as I say, the spirit is a point of personal integration, I become fully a person at that point, and I'm open to the spirit of God and I'm one with the spirit of God and yet I do not lose that personal being. I'll be going into this a little more tomorrow, probably, it's a little complex, but that's a very important point, you see, for many, once you get beyond the world of identity, for me, the individual person is a spiritual person, you see, interrelated with all the others, but never identical.

[73:18]

Yes. Questioner 2 Maybe a question about Christ returning again in your... Krishnamurti Yes, for me, you know, I mean, we must always remember that in the New Testament Jesus himself and the apostles used the language of Jewish apocalypse, you know, and he was speaking to the people of his time and that is the language in which these mysteries were understood, and remember, you can't express them properly, you have to use symbols of some kind, you see, and so this idea of a second coming appearing on the clouds, you see, is part of Jewish apocalypse, and I think he was using this symbolic language, but for me the second coming is simply the final state when matter and life and human being has been transformed

[74:24]

and finally enters into the divine reality and then the son is finally revealed in his fullness, you see, we all discover ourselves in that. I wouldn't like to suggest any phenomenon, you know, of an appearance on the clouds or anything like that. This is a... Yes? Questioner 2 Carl Gustav Jung was very concerned about the role of feminineness in Christianity and Ellen Pagel's brilliant interpretation of Nostradamus. I wonder what's more... Krishnamurti Well, that is very important, you know, and I feel it's a great defect, you see, we belong to a patriarchal tradition and God the father is masculine, God the son is masculine, and even the spirit, which was originally neuter, you know, neuter in Greek is neuter, and spiritus, unfortunately, in Latin is masculine, but in the Hebrew we are the feminine,

[75:25]

and in the Syriac church, you know, which I belonged to at one time in Kerala, they speak of the wuha, it's the same word, and they speak of our mother, the Holy Spirit, and I think it's essential now, really, that the Christian church should introduce a feminine aspect of God, because we all... God is not masculine, obviously, you see, but we've got... our tradition is we speak in masculine terms, but we need a feminine aspect of God, and the wuha of the Old Testament and the chokmah, the wisdom of the Old Testament, where it says she laid before him, she came forth from the mouth of the Most High, it's a beautiful figure, a feminine figure, Sophia in Greek and Sapiensia in Latin, all are feminine, you see. So that is a feminine aspect of God in the Hebrew tradition, really, and what has happened in the church, of course, is that the whole feminine aspect has concentrated on the Virgin Mary, you see, with such tremendous devotion to her,

[76:28]

because she manifests the feminine to us. But there is a feminine aspect in God, not only in Greek. So I'm hoping that... And it is growing, I think, the idea that God is both father and mother, you see. And Julia of Norwich, you know, the English mystic, has spoken of Jesus our mother. It's strange in a way, but she saw this feminine aspect in him. And don't forget, you see, that every human being is both male and female, and each of us has to find the inner harmony, which is probably very part of our nature. And consequently, we must admit in the supreme reality itself in which we all derive, that the masculine and the feminine must be present, of course, and seen, I think, in the first place. Q. Do you think that you are more prepared to play a role in the transformation of consciousness? K. Well, yes. Q. I'm curious about your sense of nuclear warfare

[77:31]

and that possibility. K. Yes. But in a sense, I do, you know, you see, because, you know, in the Chinese understanding of the yang and the yin, the masculine and the feminine, the understanding is that when the yang reaches its limit, the yin inevitably begins to take place, you see, and you win the return. And to me, nuclear weapons and nuclear power, actually, are the limit of the yang, you see. This masculine, scientific, mechanistic system has reached its absolute limit and is threatening destruction to the whole planet. And the other movement, that is why it's so important, you see, this movement is spreading everywhere where the yin is beginning to take... But whether we can... whether we should evade a catastrophe, no one can say what will happen, but that is the hope, at least, I think, you see, that we realize now we really have reached the limit and we must take another direction. Q. Krishnamurti, I'd like to ask again, or say something about psychology,

[78:32]

because for me, my practice of psychology is the spiritual practice in learning to love the personal God within myself and hopefully being helpful to other people that way. And part of my breaking away from traditional religion was that, that it was... that being spiritual was transcending being human instead of loving myself as being human. And I... so I want to speak in defense of psychology. And I feel that it's a very important part of our spiritual journey to love ourselves in this form, doing this work in this body. And I feel like it gets neglected in spiritual practice. K. Yes. I'm not sure that I got your point, but... the tendency is to go beyond the personal God, to something beyond it, to do something... Q. To keep loving ourselves... K. Yes, yes. Q. ...in this power. K. Yes, very good. Q. And in helping us do that. That's really the purpose of psychology.

[79:35]

K. Yes. Yes. And this is really important. You know, you see, so many people are finding that when they try... I always tell the story, there's a Jesuit spiritual counselor in India, Antonio de Mello, he's a very wonderful person, and he started an organization called Sadhana, which was intended for spiritual direction, especially for priests and nuns and people. And he found they all had so many psychological blocks that they couldn't reach the spiritual level, and he had to resolve those problems first. So it became a psychological institute. Q. Could you speak up? I had a problem when he said...

[80:37]

In a sense, I always saw it being either negative or positive, which is beyond both those categories. What do you mean by being negative theology? K. Yes, what I mean is that Buddha's original teaching was very negative, you see. Nirvana is simply the blowing out, you see. And even the word, you see, sannyātana, the void, he always uses negative terms. But I don't mean... You see, a negative theology is simply where you reject all limiting terms and then go to the ultimate beyond, and the sannyātana, the void, is the total fullness, you see. And I'm so moved by this passage from Lama Govinda, which fits it extremely well here, and I'm very impressed with it. He says... This really supports what I was trying to say. Yes, the world is not merely a featureless unity

[81:40]

but an organic whole in which differentiation is as much an expression of reality as oneness, and form is as important as emptiness. Both depend on each other and condition each other like light and shade. So this sannyātā is the fullness, you see, that is the point. It's void of all limitations, but it's the fullness of reality. So saying negative, I mean his approach is negative, but he reaches the fullness. In fact, I was very interested... Somebody showed me a quotation from Suzuki on sannyātā, in which he said, sannyātā is not static, it is dynamic, and there is a kind of impulse in the void, as it were, to differentiate itself. And the universe comes forth from this principle of differentiation, but at the very moment of differentiation, it returns on itself, you see, and those are the two movements. The universe comes forth from God and it's got to return always. And sin is stopping the return, you see.

[82:41]

We come forth from God and we've got to be moving back all the time. Every moment is a surrender of love, you see, to the reality, to truth, to God, to goodness. But sin is where we stop, you see, that movement, and then we block the whole... block ourselves and block the whole movement. And so the... In Hinduism, it's pravṛtti and nivṛtti. Pravṛtti is the coming forth of everything. Brahma-nivṛtti is the return. And that is turning the wheel of the law to let things come, to receive everything, and to return it when you're... And that is the general Buddhist view, I think, you see, that the whole differentiated universe comes forth from the void and is contained in the void, you see. As they say, nirvāṇa and samsāra, ultimately, are the same. So it comes round to something very positive, you know. Q. Could you say something about how you see the relationship between Christianity and reincarnation? That is an idea that has been there for centuries.

[83:44]

K. That's the most difficult question, reincarnation. Q. Sometimes you hear that for the first four centuries there were concepts very close to... K. Yes, I don't think... Yes, origin is the person, you see. I don't honestly think that reincarnation came to the Orthodox Jewish or the Orthodox Christian tradition at any time. Origin had a very interesting theory. He was very unorthodox in some ways, a wonderful person, but he held a view that as a result of the fall, souls were given a body, you know, which is not orthodox at all. And then he said that they had to work out their salvation in these bodies and would pass from life to life. But whether he meant in this world or in a transcendent world doesn't seem to be clear. And that doctrine was condemned at the Council of Constantinople or something,

[84:45]

and many people think that there was condemnation of reincarnation, but it was really a particular theory which was condemned. And the general theory of reincarnation, I don't honestly think that it's to be found in the Orthodox tradition. And how to reconcile the two, I think, is one of the main points of dialogue, really. I find it very difficult, but I'm sure there's something in it. I mean, people don't hold to something like that for thousands of years without having some meaning in it. But how to reconcile it is a problem. Do you think Sheldrake's hypothesis could be extended to suggest that the ascension of Christ created a new morphogenetic field? Yes, I do. Exactly. I think it's true of others. I think the enlightenment of the Buddha did, you know, too. But, you see, any spiritual event like that affects the universe,

[85:46]

and the ascension of Christ, I think, is always seen as something of this ranging... this spectre, you see, that plays. Do you think then that we've lost a lot by not following specific traditions all the way through? Yes. Yes, I think so very much, you see. I think in every tradition the tendency is it goes down, doesn't it? You get a tremendous enlightenment, and many people awake to it, and then it tends to get ossified, it gets stuck in structures, you see, and then it has to have a continual renewal. Every religion has to be continually renewed, you see. And that's what we're hoping today, that there's a renewal in every religion, it's not the case, you see. It's very hard. Thank you very much, Father, you do really create your... Thank you very much.

[86:51]

Thank you.

[87:00]

@Transcribed_v002
@Text_v005
@Score_89.04