One Sufi teaching is that it's the mureeds (disciples) that make the Murshid. The disciples make the teacher. The disciples may be greater than the teacher, but the teacher's job is to see that they are great. When they become great, they have no time to psychoanalyze the teacher. I have been offered more free psychoanalysis by everybody: poetry reviewers, newspaper people, literary agents. My God, their psychoanalysis of me in no way resembles the psychoanalysts' analysis of me. For one thing, all of these analyses are negative. When I was at the Psychedelic Conference in 1965, I came away scratching my head, because seven psychiatrists in a row all separately told me that they thought I was the sanest man there.

I'm going to start this chapter with verse 21 of First Corinthian, Chapter 15:

"But since through a man, there is death, through a man, also there is a resurrection of the dead."

We have many chapters in St. Paul in which he talks about bodies of animals, bodies of other beings, and lights of different types. Elsewhere it is said, "The spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death."

There's only one truth. Of course, the Hindus get the advantage because they say we are subject to karma and reincarnation. And so, subject to samsara. They've got nice words. The Christians ignore this. If you study Hinduism and then go back to St. Paul, you say that it's a cinch, it's as clear as clear can be. Then you say, "Why did I go and study that?" "Why don't Christians teach that?"

There is death. Of course there is death. There's all kinds of death. We sow death when we do anything thinking of ourselves. We sow life when we do anything thinking of God. It's as simple as that. One reaches a stage when one feels the presence of God, it is when "we have the mind of Christ."

If we have the mind of Christ there will be no death. After a while, we get tired of these clothes and put on new ones. But it won't be death. In death we fall asleep and have to be shocked to get out of it because it's a false state. But when you stay awake and have the mind of Christ, you'll change your clothes after a while, that's all.

"For as by Adam all die, so by the Anointed also, will all be restored to life."

The word 'Adam' itself means the earthizing of a human being. 'Adam' means the ground, the earth. All the philosophies of India tell us that we have to get away from this. They tell us this: They don't show us how it's done. They just tell us this. When you have the mind of Christ you are going through an operation which makes it possible. This is a wonderful thing, because it keeps you alive every minute. India and America are the two countries which have the most 'holy men,' the most 'God-Conscious,' no, the most 'God-Incarnate' (you don't have to be 'God-Conscious' to be 'God-Incarnate'). In general, they have the most super-super-supers, more than any of the countries in the world. And more riots, more race troubles, more disturbances, more campus breakouts than any other countries. Isn't that beautiful? And none of these holy, holy, holy men ever stops them. They seem quite incapable. It's said, "Oh, that's their karma or something." Isn't that beautiful?

"But each one is his own rank; Christ a first-fruit; afterwards, those who are Christ's at his appearing. For he must reign till he has placed all enemies under his feet."

I point this out in my poem "What Christ? What Peace?"

One enemy of Christ is those who say they are fighting for Christ against some other human beings, forgetting all about the 99 looking out for the one which is lost. They go out and fight. Here the Christians and the Muslims unite--they're always fighting for God against somebody. It's always supposed to be fighting for God. There's a war! Allah is on our side! Of course, they often lose.

If God is on your side, that isn't God. All people were created by God. All people. If you want to make Christ divine, you should see him in all people--your side and the other side, or those who aren't on any sides, all of them.

As I've told in my poem "Christ is the purified blood in our body, and Adam is the unpurified blood in our body. "By one we live and by one we die with every breath, every pulsation in our whole life. When you begin to find this out, you begin to have awakening, either by giving up your ego or by Grace. I can't tell you who can have Grace. You begin to realize that there is something more in this world, certainly more than you find in books, even in the scriptures. Those can only be indications.

"Even death, the last enemy, will be rendered powerless; for he has subjected all things under his feet. But when he says that all things are subjected, it is manifest that he is excepted who has subjected all things to him."

In India, you have the same thing. They call it nishkama karma. There can be holy men who can do things, manifest, have bodies, eat like everybody else, drink like everybody does, and act like everybody does, but are not subject to the laws. So when a holy man was through, he could dissolve his body. There was no more destruction in him, only life. You're liable to see this happening, too, in your own selves.

This week I had to teach a girl's dancing class. (Here I am speaking with my big heavy voice.) This was the second time; the first time I was timid. You know what happened the second time? Transformation. Whatever you have to do for the sake of God, you must be as he wants you to be at that time, not as you want to be.

I'm not trying to say that I'm going to come here and give one series of lectures to the men and another series of lectures to the women. But you don't need me to lecture to you young women here, because you have a Mother that can do it. So, to take on some of those attributes and some of those functions is a marvelous challenge. It worked out very beautifully, with a kind of almost ironic beauty after it. I slept very little. When I go to sleep, I see women's dances.

I spoke to someone a while ago and I asked, "Do you know what's going to happen next?" She said, "Sure. You'll be seeing men's dances." That's exactly what happened, because the dance I have coming up, the Jewish dance and the Christian dance, are both based on straight lines and straight angles, which is masculine.

The Temple of Solomon had two pillars: Joachim and Boas, strength and beauty. This is absolute principle. I don't know how much you learn about this in studying Tarot, but it is absolute. In order to instruct, you have to be transformed. As Jesus Christ said in the logia found in the Gospel according to Thomas, "When the without is as the within and the within is as the without, the above is as the below and the below is as the above, and the male and the female, neither male nor female." Then you have the mind of Christ. Other wise you have some kind of human view.

"And when he shall have subdued all things to him then the son himself will be subject to Him who subdued all things to him, that God may be all in all."

"That God may be all in all." Religion doesn't accept it and science does. Isn't that funny? Religion doesn't accept that God is all in all. Religion teaches there is evil and the devil and so on. But science, with the ultramicroscope, finds that everything is made out of Light, and Light vibrations, and is beautiful. From the atomic number on, you find this wonderful monistic universe-- "that God may be all in all."

So, people go and say that the war is between religion and science. There is a war between theology and science, but I think both are religion. In the end we're going to find this out. Scriptures all teach that God made the world through light or by light. Science is finding this out, but not theology. Something has got to give way somewhere, and it will.

I'm going to put you to a test. I'm going to ask you to ask yourselves, "How many of you have seen the Light, and how many haven't?" How many of those who have seen the Light know it's transforming and a change in their own selves?

"Otherwise, what will those do who are being immersed on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised as all, why are they immersed on their behalf?"

In other words, when you make a baptism, or anything else, a mere ceremony, you're either on the lower stratus to Kabala, or at the best at the highest symbolic. But when it becomes a real thing.... Even Jesus himself submitted to baptism, why should we not, and begin to realize what it can really mean.

"I solemnly declare, by the boasting concerning you, brethren, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, that I am dying daily."

How many people have even tried this? Boy, I will face all these Billy Grahams and everybody else and ask them if they dare die daily. If I got a group of my disciples here, and asked them what common characteristic I have every day in the week, they would say nothing. They can't say I work hard or don't work hard, that I yell or am very soft, that I sing or I don't sing. If you're limited you don't have the mind of Christ.

"It (the resurrection) is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power."

That is to say, when you have dishonor, you're on the dead side; when you have power, you're on the living side. For the young ladies, the most powerful woman I've ever met in San Francisco is a nun who is directing traffic in front of the Mission Dolores. If anybody ever had the mind of Christ, it was that girl. Every one of the children she was leading across was Christ the infant.

I remember one time when I went to this conference on religion and a beautiful nun sat next to me and in 10 minutes we were cooing at each other like this: ba, ba, ba, ba. The Mother Superior leaned over to hear what we were talking about. When I told her she sat back in horror. You know what we were discussing? This chapter, this passage. We both said it was real. Not theology, but absolute reality. We were chattering away. I never met her again, but you should have seen the Mother Superior jump back.

I don't know whether discussing the scriptures is more interesting than some other things, but I'm getting so bored with news, with television, whether it's drama, the non-fiction which is called fiction, or the fiction which is called non-fiction. My secretary and I have agreed that if we get a television, it will be for the sole purpose of watching football games.

"It is sown a psychic body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a psychic body, there is also a spiritual body."

Psychic is translated here as animal. The Greek word is psyche. See what happens next:

"And so it has been written, the first Adam became a living soul; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit."

What is translated here as "living soul" is psyche-zogsan. That same word psyche is translated here as "soul." And in the very next sentence they once again translate it as "animal."

"The spiritual, however, was not the first, but the animal (sic); afterwards the spiritual."

The word was psychikos. The same word is translated as soul in one sentence and as animal in the next sentence. How are you going to have scriptures that do that? It doesn't say anything of the kind. It says "The spiritual was not the first, but the psychic was, and afterwards the spiritual." This is part of our development. We have to go through the psychic development in some form or other. Many people run upon it in darkness. They take drugs. I don't believe in the word 'drugs'--young people don't do that. They don't take drugs at all. It's the older people who take drugs. They take biological excitements, that's all. They find out when they get excited that there's a psychic body. They don't know what to do about it. They haven't been told about it in school or anything of the kind. But they find that it's there, and they find that it's real, and they want to know more about it.

But the trouble is that when they do that, they don't know there's something more real, which is the spiritual. If you only develop the psychic, you may not develop the spiritual at all. This is in my poem called "The Rejected Avatar ," which is about Krishna.(7)

I had to tell Dr. Huston Smith, who is the greatest academic authority in this country on oriental religions, that the Christian religion teaches the same three bodies as the Hindu. He'd never even thought of it, because we've got these wrong translations. Not wrong explanations, but wrong translations.

The word psychic means psychic, forever and ever, amen. No matter what anyone says, it means psychic. It doesn't mean something else. When it's called at one time spiritual, another time soulful, another time animal, and another time natural, what are you going to do? The same word in the New Testament. This is what we're up against. Even the translators want to be sure that when they translate this, they don't hurt their own ideas.

I once proposed to a theologian to do something on the Sermon on the Mount, the first part of it to show by the language that it must have come out from an actual living person, because there were puns and twits and a loose use of terms, very similar to what you find in Hebrew literature. Especially, for example, the sentence "You are the salt of the earth. " It could easily mean something quite different: You are angels on earth, or you are kings on earth.

Sometimes we should study as if Jesus was and spoke Aramaic, or Hebrew, and neither Greek nor Latin. We'll find unities there that no commentary or critic has ever found. Of course, if you're a commentator or critic you don't have to have the mind of Christ at all.

A soul you can't measure, who will yet come down and use the usual customs of speaking to people and twit. Someday the words of Jesus will be put into Hebrew and studied like the literature of contemporary Jewish people. After all, God for reasons of His own put Himself into a body which was Jewish, and not something else, to accomplish a purpose. He didn't try to speak in such a way that the Chinese could understand Him, or the 20th century literary people could understand Him. He tried to speak in such a way that the contemporary Jews could understand Him. Pretty difficult thing, but don't laugh. I told you that when I went to this Jewish mystical dinner, I saw more crosses in the audience than I see when I go into any church. How come? What's happened? I don't know, but there it is. That isn't news, by no means.

"The first man was from the ground, earthy."

If this were Hebrew and not Greek, it would say the first man Adam was from the adamah. Understand? Adam was from the adamah. That means the first man was from the ground. Adam came from the adamah. And adamah is the feminine of Adam. Ground corresponds to the female aspect of creation, which in Hindu philosophy is called prakrit.

This is nothing but the Hindu prakriti and purusha. So we study oriental philosophy and make it different. There's only one truth, and it's right here. right here. This has to be gone into very carefully. Now, I don't know enough. I have at home a Hebrew New Testament, but that's not good enough. I would like to see the Aramaic. And I can read Aramaic if it's in Hebrew letters, but I can't if it's in Syriac letters. I have seen only one Aramaic scripture in Hebrew. I think we've got a lot to find out about what the scripture teaches.

"Of what kind the earthy one, such also the earthy ones; and of what kind the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones. And even as we bore the likeness of the earthy one, we shall also bear the likeness of the heavenly one."

That is, we have both sides in us. Let me check what the word is here in Greek that is translated 'heavenly,' because I've been reading the English. It's from ouranus, it's epiranus. Hah! I think that's marvelous. Ouranus corresponds to the spiritual, epiranus, corresponds to God, beyond the spiritual.

The Kabala teaches there are four worlds, the physical, the psychic, the spiritual, and the divine. Epiranus means that which is beyond the spiritual, or the divine. We have this because God made man in His own image. When you get to this and appreciate the mind of Christ, the whole Bible becomes clear in front of you.

I hope to take this up with a few theologians who don't want to see religion destroyed, who will then be very careful on how they use the word. They translate epiranus as "heavenly." But I will say it means the Divine. Ouranus would mean heaven, and epiranus would mean that which is beyond that, or the meta-heaven.

"And I say this brethren, because flesh and blood can not inherit the Kingdom of God; nor shall corruption inherit incorruption. Behold a secret I disclose to you we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed."

This is possible with the Divine Grace, always. I'm not sleeping much. There was one other time I couldn't sleep in life, and I went 40 nights without sleep, but that time I didn't have beautiful dances shown me. I was in meditation. There was a war going on, and it was good to be in meditation then. And I learned a few things about the war. Some day people are going to see that this world has Guidance always, that God reveals Himself to whom He will reveal, as He will reveal, and not to satisfy some idiot in a pulpit or the press. This is true. It can happen and has happened. It probably always happens even though we don't know it.

"For this corruptible must be clothed with incorruptibility; and this mortal must be clothed with immortality. And when this corruptible shall be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal, shall be clothed with immorality, then will that word be accomplished which has been written, 'Death was swallowed up in victory'!"

This, of course, is an Easter theme. But we've got to see it at all times. When we realize this mind of Christ, we find the immortal even though we live in the body a long time, or a short time-it has little to do with it.

Q.-You made a distinction earlier when you were talking between God-consciousness and God-incarnate?

A.-I was being facetious at the time, but God-consciousness comes back to two Indian words purusha and prakrit. Prakrit would represent the incarnate manifesting here, which you make restricted. You know the story about Jupiter. When he manifested and the woman wanted to see him, he burned her up. And when Jesus manifested, nobody could see him.

Q.-Then the incarnation is the feminine and the consciousness is the masculine?

A.-Only in a very broad sense. From God, not from our point of view. "Male and Female created He them." We're all male and female.

Q.-When you were talking about ouranus, is that the same as Uranus?

A.-Yes, that's the English, but now it's come to mean a certain planet. Originally it meant the heavens.

Q.-You mentioned something before about the actual and the literal, can you tell us what the difference is?

A.-Certainly. There is an interpretation of Moses taking the Children of Israel from Egypt toward the Holy Land. He did not come to the Red Sea. It doesn't say anything in the scripture about the Red Sea. The Bible doesn't mention the Red Sea--only religion. He came to "the sea of reeds." There's an actual spit. On the Egyptian-Sinai coast as certain times the water flow comes over it when there are storms, and you can't cross. At other times, dry times, you can take a group of people across.

In a book by a man named Jarvis, who was a geologist, there are pictures of that place. It also means this: that the soul has to go through trials. It has to go through trials, and that's the sea of reeds, in another respect. The same as the Hindus call samsara. They have to go through those trials. You have to go through tests in order to be. They were rescued there by the Messenger of God, who happened to be Moses, who led them across. They couldn't by their own wills.

The Egyptians, who represent people subject to fate and to the laws of sin and death, came, without a Messenger, and were drowned. So there are always different levels of interpretation. But we can accept the physical one first. It probably did happen. It could have happened. The physical thing could have happened, but they didn't go through the Red Sea. That's not mentioned.

Q.-You went through the literal and symbolic; what would the actual in the situation mean?

A.-It depends on what you meant by actual. A group of people probably did cross, but the Bible is also the story of every soul which has to go through the same training.

Q.-What would the highest interpretation be?

A.-When you become that; when you actually become every thing. For example, there is a philosophy of real spiritual monism that, if I see you, you're part of me. What is real and what is not real? See? "I am the vine and ye are the branches there of."

Q.-What enabled Judas to see Christ?

A.-He knew where he was: He'd been with him and he knew where he was, just like he was his secretary.

Q.-So he didn't have any special powers to see Light?

A.-I don't know whether he had or not. It's not important.

Q.-In my translation it said, "The first Adam was made a quickening soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit," but you didn't say that. You said something else.

A.-Well, I don't remember. It means that man is subject to karma and then he's released from it, and gets above it. That's what it really means. The one is subject to the wheel of sin and death, and the other to a super-wheel, when Christ comes to you.

7. The Rejected Avatar, Samuel L. Lewis, Prophecy Pressworks, Novato, California, 1972.