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My whole opposition to traditional religion has been the introduction by devotees of the first person pronoun "I," which was used in the Old Testament only to refer to God, and appears because some Roman soldier, who was a heathen, said, "What must I do to be saved?" So that Roman soldier became more important than the Saints, who became more important than Christ. And until the Christian religion changes, it's finished. We're coming to realize all kinds of shortcomings. Why should a Roman soldier be placed above God and His saints?

Now we're able to see a different picture. I'm assuming St. Paul is a Saint. I realize that this is an assumption on my part and I don't know how I can prove it or disprove it. I am, however, assuming that he is a Saint, I'm taking opportunities to support this by first bringing forth what he said, and then by trying to present it as part of our actual life.

We can no longer follow the ignorant tradition of man having only one body. Too many people have had experiences now in other bodies. This was a norm at one time. You couldn't become a King of Ireland unless you had experiences in faerie. A few centuries later, if you had any experiences in faerie, you were guilty of witchcraft, period. Now a number of people, particularly young ones, have had experiences of another world, which is described in all scriptures. But you skip it when you talk 'religion;' you only select those portions of the scripture which please you.

If you switch from religion to philosophy you can read a book like this: this is a universal philosophy and I can prove it. Then you read quoted page 116 from Bacon, and then page 203 from Descartes, and page 426 from Darwin, and page 88 from Cardinal Newman, and so on and so on. Things are selected from all kinds of people, just quoting from each of them those phrases which support the theme. And this is accepted and acceptable. So what do you get? When we have to face real problems, we're not able to do it because we haven't learned how to think.

Bacon did nothing to the world. Scientists have known this for some time. The non-scientists call Bacon the founder of science, amen. He wasn't. Everybody believes this nonsense.

The first verse of Chapter 12 of First Corinthians begins:

"And concerning spiritual persons, brethren, I wish you not to be ignorant."

We've been concerned with sinners, psychic people, believers and non-believers, but not necessarily with spiritual persons. He's introduced this term, and theoretically (or maybe actually) spiritual people are those who have complete control over their breath. But we have such crazy non-ideas about breath and we're stuck with them. I'm not going into what this means too much, except in the one phrase in the Beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," meaning blessed are the refined in breath. When you get refined in breath, certain things happen to you.

"You know that you were Gentiles, being hurried away after those speechless images, even as you happened to be led."

"Therefore I assure you that no one speaking by God's Spirit says, 'A curse on Jesus!' and no one is able to say 'Lord Jesus!' except by the Holy Spirit."


The other day I was over at the University of California and there was a group of very emotional people yelling "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna." That has nothing more to do with Lord Krishna than what I have to say has to do with Mao Tse Tung. But they say it. Because that wasn't the way Krishna lived or acted at all. He didn't dress the way they do, he didn't go around yelling the way they do. He didn't do anything the way they do. In fact, he did a lot of things of which they thoroughly disapprove.

So the policemen came along and stopped them, but they didn't stop a Christian. And I started to listen to the Christian. He was yelling better than they were. But in his yells he said "Jesus Christ went around healing people. Do any of these other people go around healing?" That's rude to the "Hare Krishna" people. But it's very interesting, he doesn't do it either. This is the way the evangelists, the emotionalists, act: They can find out somebody else's faults, but they can't demonstrate the great things. This is what St. Paul was trying to teach you, these great things.

There are different ways of spiritual functioning, and it's very good to learn them. Someday, when we get to real spiritual civilization, I think these chapters of St. Paul will be highly regarded.

I saw a book in a bookstore yesterday which was written by a friend of mine, now long since dead, Kenneth Saunders. He was one of the greatest authorities of those Asians who have always been regarded as the founders of Buddhism. I won't say 'Buddhism,' because if you go to a Buddhist church, you won't hear any of these names, and you won't read any of the scriptures, or anything. The Buddhists have this difference from the Christians: The Christians select passages from scriptures of which they approve; the Buddhists throw out the whole scripture.

Kenneth Saunders wrote what he called the scripture for Asia, which he decided was St. John. That was very nice; he could decide on St. John but even God didn't tell him that. In the last few years, I've come upon books which say that if you want to be a Roman Catholic, follow Peter; if you want to be a Protestant, follow Paul, and if you want to be a Greek Catholic, follow St. John. Well, I don't accept that, but at least that's going around in literature and there's a little matter of truth to it. Just because I'm quoting St. Paul, I'm not trying to make you Protestants because you're my type of Christian (if you want to call it that), as found in the Gospel of St. Thomas. And I have no right to push that over on you either.

There are a lot of people that have tried to make a distinction between Christ and Jesus. And there is truth in it from a certain point of view. When Christ becomes the Greek for the Hebrew masheeach or messiah, there is a truth, because there are several messiahs that are mentioned in the Old Testament. Quite a few. One of them wasn't even a Jew. They were supposed to be those who delivered the Holy Land.

Of course, now you've got to deliver the Holy Land for the atheists (that's all right). I understand there are more atheists among the people who now occupy the Holy Land than there are those who belong to all the religions added together. In the name of what? Amen, or not Amen. I don't know. But there is a certain truth, and I don't think it matters at all. Because I think what will become important to us is not the Christ thing or the messiah, but Jesus himself--this tremendous character about whom we are supposed to be studying and devoted to, who is so great that the mind cannot grasp Him.

The Roman Catholic Church is based on the theory that the mind of man is not strong or great enough to grasp Jesus, so you have to become a devotee rather than a philosopher. This may or may not be true. But if you are a pure devotee, you can also become a philosopher if you find this in your own awakening. What will happen to you when you have your awakening? You won't all be the same, but you'll have a spiritual gift. Not a self-selected gift, but a spiritual gift.

For I take the stand (and it's my ego that takes the stand), "Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord Thy God in vain." Even if you don't accept Jesus as God, I don't think you should take his name in vain either. I think you should have utmost respect and try to find out what he was trying to do both in the literary form and in the form of experience, and the experiences which are referred to in the Bible, the experiences of a multitude of the Saints and the experiences of your won brothers and sisters.

"Now there are varieties of gracious gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services and the same Lord."

In the work I'm doing in my spiritual life, I'm judged in heaven not by my gifts, but by my services. I know that is my own case. You can read all kinds of people like Alice Bailey and they can tell you all about service--"I am the servant of everyone," and then "Get out of here" or "Who are you?"

A very popular thing is for a person to call himself a 'servant.' You know these women that want equal rights? You know what they want equal rights for? They want equal rights to be bosses and slavedrivers. And God, for some reason, has appointed far more men saints than women saints. You can change your religion, but that will be the case anyhow. Still, the greatest soul I know on earth is a woman. I'm not going to take statistics on the subject, I don't think they're important. If you draw any conclusion, you're putting your mind to work in a field where the mind doesn't belong, because it should be a field of feeling.

There are gifts and services. If you go to the Christian Science Church, services don't mean anything at all. Gifts mean something, especially healing. Services don't mean anything. Too bad if you're a servant.

You have in the New Testament what is called karma yoga by the Hindus. It means just that, karma yoga. There are two kinds of karma yoga. First, the popular kind, which consists of a great man giving you lectures on the subject-there's a lot of that. You can go from one of these new Hindu groups to another and they give you wonderful lectures. The second kind of karma yoga is doing things, actually doing.

There are two marks of greatness: a clean heart and dirty fingernails.

"And to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the benefit of all."

"I am the vine and ye are the branches thereof."
For the benefit of all. When you have a spiritual gift, it means for the benefit of humankind. That is what a Bodhisattva means.
He takes that oath, and he's working for all. The more you get that attitude of working for all, the more the accommodation of the Holy Spirit comes to you, although you might not think you're doing it for all.

We had a little boy disappear from our house recently. And it came to me that I must keep absolutely calm, not thinking about it at all. If you think about it, you make a reality out of fear and anxiety. If you keep absolute calmness, and feel, it'll straighten itself out. What happened was, he invited himself into a neighbor's home. That's all that happened, and everything was straightened out.

"For to one is given by the Spirit a word of wisdom; and to another a word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit."

Wisdom, sophia, in general, is that which comes from within, from feeling, from intuition. Knowledge, gnosis, comes out of experience or study. It can be inner or outer. Sophia comes from feeling. In one sense they are like the masculine and feminine situation. But I don't like to carry this too far into analysis, because that is not the experience.

If you've prayed and God comes and grants you an answer to the prayer, it may come by a word, it can come by a vision, it may come in a change of attitude, or it may come by exterior granting.

It is undoubtedly a fact that when you pray to God, you're taking your life in your hands. You pray to God: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and God doesn't answer you. You get skeptical. And then, "In the hour you think least, the Son of Man cometh." It may all be answered at one time and what are you going to do?

You go out and plant. I find some plants sometimes don't come up for two or three years after you put the seeds in the ground. Then they all come up at the same time and the harvest comes and what are you going to do? You have two things you can do: get dizzy, or go to work and do what you can and never mind the other things. God has told me, "Harvest what you can and leave the rest to Me."

"And to another, operations of mighty works; and to another prophecy; and to another discrimination of spirits."
This is what happens to you when you have spiritual experience. You don't get up and get highly emotional and go out and condemn the world for not having the same experiences you had. Nothing in that way at all, nothing. God gives to each what he was made for. We're all made for a purpose in His image. There comes a time when we come to a realization and fulfillment of this.

If you were to put all the spiritual gifts of all the people in the world together, and all those that have been had at all times, you'd find that all of them are categorized by St. Paul. Not by the Christian church, not by the non-Christians, but by St. Paul. No matter what it is, they are listed here by him.

Q.-What makes someone a Saint? You said you didn't know if Paul was one or not....

A.-There's two or three ways of making a Saint. One of them is, a traditional church makes them one. That's one. I'm not going to challenge any of them. Second is a type of spiritual realization which affects humanity so that they have high regard for a person. I'm not saying there are non-religious Saints, but sometimes there are Saints who belong to one religion but are called Saints by the followers of another religion.

There is some question as to whether there are some nonreligious Saints. What are non-religious persons? In the end they're probably non-orthodox. The question may come up as to whether Einstein was a Saint, for example. I don't believe he was a Saint. I believe he was a highly evolved man, but wouldn't say he was a Saint. He certainly didn't have any of the faculties that St. Paul puts down, no matter how beautiful he was. I'm not so sure about Martin Luther King. I can't answer that yet. He may or may not be regarded as a Saint in the future. I came back from the Orient regarding Martin Luther King as the greatest American. This was long before any idea of martyrdom was coming up. But again that was purely ego attitude. I didn't know what he was going to do or what he was doing. It was just sort of an atmospheric effect.

I tell people I'm the old Tibetan Marpa who was...well, to say he was an s.o.b, is kind. He whipped and yelled and everything else, and yet Milarepa, his chief disciple, became a great Saint who is recognized outside Buddhism, too, but Marpa wasn't. Sometimes I do things or say things which are not saintly at all. But the thing is, can the people affected become saints? I am absolutely marvelously appalled by the spiritual development of some of my disciples. Do you realize they're going out to try and make peace in Palestine when the politicians are failing? They're getting Arabs and Jews and Christians (5) to mingle. I don't believe the Holy Land is for any one religion, but for all. And I am opposed to any one religion dominating in Palestine, and I'm still more opposed to the irreligious getting their hands on it.

There are Saints who affect you by their atmosphere. There are Saints who affect you by their personality, or by the fact that they shed light that you can see in two different forms, by magnetism and by the actual vision of light. Or they can do it by the phenomena, some of which are referred to in St. Paul.

Q.-You mentioned that there were messiahs before the Christ that were mentioned in the Old Testament, and one of them was even a Gentile.

A.-Yes, Cyrus.

Q.-Who was Cyrus?

A.-He belonged to religion, recognized as one of the great religions, which we today call Zarathustrianism.

Q.-Would you consider Moses as being one of the messiahs?

A.-No. He didn't go into Palestine. And no Jew would say he was. He was regarded as a Prophet. They regard him as the greatest Prophet, but there's a question or what you mean by "greatest Prophet."

"But all these things performs the one and the same Spirit, distributing to each in particular as it will."

Suppose we forget the Bible for a while and look at the world that God made. If we look at this world, we see it's made up of a lot of different chemical elements, some of which God made a lot of (which we don't discuss), and some of which God made a very little bit of, which we discuss greatly. For it is out of Bethlehem-Ephrata that the great (5) things come, just as it is out of Bethlehem-Ephrata (supposedly the most insignificant village), that the Light of the world was to manifest. So it is in the lesser quantitative elements that we've gotten the key to all the physical constitution as we now know it.

The most prominent element quantitatively is silicon, and I doubt whether hardly anybody reading this knows anything about it. I doubt if it would mean very much if they did, because it doesn't have a key. But there's one thing. After we discovered radioactivity, which came from an examination of quantitatively insignificant elements, we found that there's a universal essence out of which all the elements come. It's one spirit.

Now in Hinduism we would call one thing prakrit and the other purusha. There's this same universal spirit of which we are all, in a sense, a part. Or maybe we are the whole, but we don't know we are the whole, so we act as if we were parts of it. I don't think it matters, as long as we get the essence of the Spirit.

"For, just as the body is one, and has many members, but all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also the Anointed."

We become part of the one. The purpose of the anointing here is baptism. The root is from baptiso. The significance is that we're part of the ocean. When we're baptised, we belong to the ocean, the one ocean. You get another aspect of course in the higher, or the other, communions. All are members of one body. This is something which we verbalize but don't realize.

It says later on the second being was Adam. When Adam is resurrected, we're all parts of Adam, the resurrected.

It's very difficult, apparently, to recognize that we are all parts of each other. But we could stop and look at it from the standpoint of a materialistic philosopher, Bertrand Russell. "How do we know that when we see a person, that person isn't part of ourself?" As soon as we see them and recognize them, that person is part of ourself, regardless of whether we emotionalize or philosophize, or even are consciously affected by it.

When we get into the ocean, we're all part of that ocean. We're all parts of each other. When the Bible says, "Love thy neighbor as thy self," it means just that-as thyself. This is something that should need much more consideration except for one thing. I'm finding out that more and more young people have this attitude naturally, whether they're religious or not. They see themselves reflected in others: They see all humanity as themselves. This is the New Age.

Is the New Age to be anarchical or is it to be orderly? Without the spirit it will be anarchical. It will destroy the present society, which will go anyway, but the question is, to what purpose? If we have the feeling of one in the spirit, we will build up a New Age, even a New Jerusalem, because I believe God works through man, not through chance. He works through man. He created man in His image.

"For the body also is not one member, but many. If the foot should say 'Because I am not a hand, I am no part of the body,' is it for this not of the body? And if the ear should say, 'Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body,' is it for this not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where is the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where is the smell? But now, God has placed the members, each one of them in the body as He would. And if the whole were one member, where is the body? But now, indeed, there are many members, but one body."

One of the first teachings we learn in Sufism is "This is not my body, this is the Temple of God." When we begin to realize this vehicle as something essentially spiritual, our attitude changes. I tell those people of mine when they want sex relations, before they do it, every man regard every woman as a divinity and every woman regard every man as a divinity. Sometimes, this is effective. Regard your partner in that way. In other words, love without respect is useless.

God made all these bodies. They have certain essential differences, not chemical differences, certain essence differences from animals. For example, we have memory, and with it what Korzybsky calls time-binding, and social intercourse that builds up a kind of unity. We can go further into what the body is and can do, because when the lower animals speak, they communicate on a certain level, but our speech can be such that it can touch the inner part of the being. I do a lot of yelling and I do a lot of speaking, but if I wanted to speak spiritually, it would be something that must touch you, or it has no value. Sometimes you have to speak loud to touch. More often you speak very softly, but not for the sake of speaking softly, because you can speak softly without essence.

For example, all our advertisers on the air speak in the front of the mouth, and it seems very delightful, but you see there's no magnetism there. Or you can speak from the back of the mouth or get the essence from way down in the heart and still not have to speak loud. It isn't necessary to speak loudly. And then you begin to touch.

There are three types of persons with whom I had communication without words: Tibetans, Indians from Taos, and Japanese Zen Buddhists. Words weren't necessary for communication. But let's say we have to speak with words. We can do this even better when the spirit comes to us, for that spirit will use us to bring out the need and the benefit to the other person. And we will become even unconscious of self, especially when sophia is active. We become instruments, we help others, and by helping others we help ourselves.

"But much more necessary are those members of the body which are thought to be more feeble; and those parts of the body which we esteem to be less honorable, around them we throw more abundant honor, and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness; and our comely parts have no need. God, however, put together the body, having given somewhat more abundantly to that part which was lacking."

We can look at the body in different ways. We can say there is the head, the chest, the abdomen. And down in the abdomen there are portions of the body which deal with not so clean functions-with what we consider animal functions, or low functions. But at the same time, even physiologically, if we study them, we find there are forces operating which can help transmute man. In other words, if we were to go into the subject of sex, we would find we have sex through action, we have sex through repression, and we have sex through transmutation, which is something quite different. When we have the latter, we begin to see what the body is. But the transmutation doesn't come by behaving differently from tradition, or suppressing anything.

When the Holy Spirit acts through us, something happens. I haven't done so, but I urge you to watch carefully those infants who have been born to your own members, and you'll learn something. They will have characteristics and they will have vibrations and magnetisms which you will not see in others. Just do it. You understand what I mean. Look at those infants. They are the result of following what St. Paul is teaching.

So nothing in the body is to be looked down upon as harmful or evil. After all, I must differ from Freud as a materialist, not as a spiritual man. Only the front of the brain is sex. And what's all the rest of it? From the back part of it there's possibilities that when the spirit is active it will produce the flow of art, music, poetry, creative abilities--all the wonderful things we may have in us. The ability to reach others, the ability to help other people, will come when the other part of the mind is awakened, and utilized, and along with it the Heart.

We have a body which has the physical structure, the nervous structure, and the circulatory structure. When these all get together, you go into an age of transmutation even from the physical and physiological points of view. You begin to learn that the body is the Temple of God, and not just a slightly more advanced animal. I'm not speaking against evolution, I'm speaking for it, far more for it than the Darwinians and the materialists are. And so we can come to that and learn, and the keys are right here in the Bible.

Q.-I want to ask about that word knowledge that came after wisdom. I know we've gone a little bit further already. What was your word for knowledge?

A.-Gnosis.

Q.-Is that an intellectual knowledge?

A.-It includes intellectual knowledge and it includes knowledge which might not necessarily be rightly intellectual, knowledge from experience or life of any kind. But not inner knowledge, which is sophia.

"Now you are a body of Christ, and members in part. And those whom God placed in the congregation, are first Apostles; second Prophets; third, Teachers; next, Powers; then, Gifts of Cures; Assistants; Directors; different languages."

This is the absolute teaching of all mysticism. Absolute. When you study Sufism, you are taught that in our highest rank are the Apostles. They are called the Rassouls. They are in the scriptures. Mohammed was the last, Jesus was one before him, and Solomon was one, and so on. Abraham was regarded as essentially the first Apostle, in a certain direction. And then come Prophets, of whom Adam is said to have been the first and Moses is in that line. And Jeremiah and the Prophets of the Beni Israel, and so on. And then Teachers, of which I will dare to make the statement, I am one in that rank.

Then you have the powers and gifts or cures. That is, powers of people who are able to be effective in the world. Then gifts of cures and healing are below that. That's a mistake on the part of the Christian Scientists, who put healing first.

It's more of a mistake on the part of the Apostolic groups when they put different languages first, because that's put at the bottom of the lists. Surely, it's a spiritual gift, but not the highest.

Q.-You mean tongues, when you say different languages?

A.-Yes, tongues.

Q.-How is the gift of cures different from healing?

A.-Healing, gift of cures is the same thing, but it has its place, which is below certain things and above certain things.

Q.-What are Powers? I don't understand.

A.-Well, you'd have to develop them. You start calling on God, and you know how to. This is something we learn in Sufism very much. When you take an attribute of God and concentrate on it, you develop that power or faculty. The first one we're taught is compassion, then mercy. We're taught devotionalism and we're taught thanks to God. We're taught power itself. That God is all power--we can become His instrument.

The difference between myself and the Jewish religion is that they've taken a single thing, Adonoi, and substituted Adonoi for Jehovah. And Adonoi is a power. It is sometimes said to mean the disc of the sun and the solar powers. It is not the universal but is an attribute. A Divine attribute, but still an attribute and not the essence. Jah is the essence.

But don't overlook any of the gifts Paul names. Because healing is a part of spirituality, interpreting tongues is a part, speaking tongues is a part.

"But you should earnestly desire the more eminent gifts; and yet a much more excellent way I point out to you."

And then Paul says, going into Chapter 13:

"If I should speak in the language of Men and of Angels, but have not Love, I have become sounding Brass or a noisy cymbal. If I have Prophecy and know all secrets and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not Love, I am nothing."

This is the key to everything. This is the sense of spirituality. At the psychic level you can have many powers and faculties, but if you have not love, which comes from the heart, you are still nothing, you are still subject to karma. When you have love, you function spiritually, because that is of the heart.

Spirituality is not only a breath development, it is a heart development. And I have to refer again to the Beatitudes. Those seven Beatitudes are (and really mean) essences, not words. They can't be repeated too much, but you should get beyond verbalizing them, and meditate on them.

"Blessed are the peace-makers; Blessed are the pure in heart." When we start to take these as realities, we begin to find the world. St. Paul is presenting them again to those people who were not around Jesus Christ, to people who were perhaps more intellectual than the Jews, or devotional in a different way. I've heard St. Paul criticized by all kinds of people, but what do those criticisms mean when you're missing the essential thing that he brings out?

I will give you one or two things here which I can't prove and someday somebody may write a paper on it. The Greek word agape does not seem to have a correlative in the other Indo-Germanic languages. I think it was the hellenizing of a word found in Aramaic which in Aramaic is ahaba. The root is 'hab,' or 'hub,' which is the root of the Semitic words for love. Ahaba is found in Daniel and some of the later books of the Old Testament where they use Aramaic instead of Hebrew. But you have the ahab, like the name of a king in the Hebrew in the Old Testament. So, this idea of love, I think, came to the Greeks from the Semitic peoples. But whether it did or not, what does it mean? It's a heart operation, a spiritual operation. The more it grows in you, the more you'll be able to see and do. I think that's enough to bring to you, because I've been jawing for some time. I want peace. I don't want peace and or peace with. What we have to do is concede. I concede. Christ is represented as absolute self-sacrifice when he was on the cross. I concede. And until we have "I concede," we're not going to have peace. When you say "I concede" you're on the way to peace, and that will come from the heart. I will stop giving now and will listen to any more questions you may have.

Q.-Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Inherit the earth? What does Jesus mean by that?

A.-I 'd have to check on the words very carefully. There are two completely different words in Hebrew for earth. They might be translated into the same Greek or the same English words. They are adamah and oretz. Oretz means the physical earth. Adamah is the same as the Sanskrit prakrit. Adamah is the feminine of Adam. And that means that you would be in control of the whole of karma. The meek will control karmic action; for they have risen above it. They're no longer subject to the law of sin and death in Pauline Language. The meek have removed their egos so they control the wheel of birth and death. They control the samsara. That's my interpretation.

Q.-When you were speaking of the semitic word of love, and speaking of the heart operation-this goes through all three bodies, right? Does this love necessarily need an object for it to manifest?

A.-Even God, in the sense that God is love, is said to have emanated Himself in a form so He could love Himself. Otherwise there wouldn't be love. Unless there is a lover in a certain way, there isn't love. In Sufism we teach that love, lover, and beloved are all one. But there has to be something to love or there isn't love.

Q.-Is it the same way with Peace? There has to be something to be peaceful?

A.-No. Peace is the removal of all things that disturb at all. As you see the whole Oneness, you don't have any ill feeling about another because you see essentially the other also as from God.

Q.-Is the ego born from the love of self?

A.-No, the ego is born so that formation could have a form. If there was no ego, there wouldn't be any forms. Something has to hold itself together to make a form.

Q.-Can you define self, the self?

A.-Yes, it is consciousness of being separate from something else.

Q.-What's 'selfish' then?

A.-'Selfish' is when you're not only conscious of separateness, but you draw things to you. A certain amount may be necessary in this world, but when you start building up power, possessions, ideas of overcoming others rather than overcoming yourself, all such things, this is all considered normal. Our culture is all based on grabbing. I just want to say to our friends of the right: socializing thievery, socializing cruelty, socializing exploitation, doesn't make them virtues.

Q.-When you were talking before you mentioned something like that, that's an ego. Well, I don't understand what you meant.

A.-The ego is a conscious attitude of separation from others. When you have a conscious attitude of separation, that's ego. I'm not going to put this necessarily as evil, because it can be overcome, but that's what is so. There are different grades of ego for different purposes, which I would be glad to go into. There's the ego which is conscious only of your own being. Then there's the ego which gets a moral consciousness and could see whether it's done right or wrong. There's the ego which reaches a state where loving your neighbor as thyself becomes the norm. And then there's that ego which can help others regardless. It's still ego, because Christ had an ego that kept his body together, but not very well, because after the crucifixion it slopped all over. See?

Q.-So when somebody comes to self-realization, he realizes that he is separated from the rest of us?

A.-No, he realizes that we are all part of one being. The more you are self-realized, the more you are a part of one being. Whitman said, "In all men I see myself."

Q.-So essentially it would be realization of the everything?

A.-You realize, yes. You find the Universe and yourself are one. Or you might say, Adam and Eve are one, though Eve was created out of Adam. We don't realize that, though. We verbalize it, but don't realize it.

Q.-If we're one with the Universe, that means that we're one with all its forces. So where is the necessity of building up a magnetism?

A.-To do certain functions, because by doing that God has made a variety. And to purify. The variety is made out of hardness. He had to be hard. To spiritualize it and help it find itself, some human instrument has to be used. Otherwise God made the world in this one sense and that's what the Hindus call the prakrit or what we call nature. But that's at our service when we begin to realize our function.

Otherwise, we're at its service, which keeps us in darkness. When we overcome nature, nature is at our service and then we can do things. You'd be surprised what you can do. Then when you start praying, you'll find the prayers work because there's nothing to stop them.

Q.-The prakrit is the same as maya?

A.-The same as nature.

Q.-What's maya?

A.-That word has been used by so many people for so many things. It means several things. It's been translated as illusion, but it doesn't mean illusion at all; it means that which is measurable. The ma is the same as the Indo-Germanic root which means to measure. People who become metaphysicians say that is an illusion. If you talk about the reality of illusions, you're crazy, and lots of people are. I'd rather skip the whole subject.

You know the whole difficulty in India, and with Indian Philosophy, is that love has not been given a proper place. They all learn thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might, and they beat us Christians all over the place at doing this. But when it comes to the second part, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," it's utterly incomprehensible. That's why India at the same time has tremendous spirituality and is tremendously stuck-right to this day.

When efforts are made to socialize the land it sounds like this, "Oh, we must socialize the land, we must divide it--the rich to the poor. Well, we'll start right here. No, you can't start right here! Why not? That belongs to my grand-uncle! Well, let's start over here. No, No, No, you can't start here, that's my grandfather's land. Start here, then. No! that's my land."

So, you see this terrible thing. It has a beautiful philosophy and it has a great many people who understand it and they express it much better than I. And we gain a great deal from listening. India has produced, in modern times, more saints than the rest of the world, despite the above. But at the common level, boy, it just ain't. I know when I got to Madras, the Christians and Hindus had a big fight, and the fight was over who was going to rob me. Yes! Yes!

Q.-I guess with the whole spiritual thing (comparing the Western and the Eastern) they negate or seem to neglect the body or seem to be looking for the next lifetime, and this sort of thing. And in the West, it's totally opposite, they're only concerned with the material, and yet, they seem to be having such a hard time.

A.-Well, when you look at it from God's point of view, there would be quite an adventure to do it. You don't know whether to get very angry or laugh so hard and get so caught up in your humor that you can't consider it at all. It takes on a totally different attitude. Then you will have a compassion that looks upon these.

After all there are different grades of evolution and people are at different levels, one has to understand this. I was living in one of the 'New World Saviour's' places. You know, India has got lots of 'world saviours.' They're all over the place. And I went out to a fishing village, and when I went out to the fishing village, some of the people came up to me and started speaking to me in French and suddenly my French came back to me and I had a wonderful time. When I came back to report to the great 'spiritual' leaders of the new age that I had visited an Indian fishing village, they took it in exactly the same degree as if I had been to a whore house. Yes! You'd hardly consider that. You could hardly realize that. Isn't this difficult to realize? I mingled with the wrong class of people. You never mingle with outcasts. I didn't even know they were outcasts. How did I know?

Q.-These are the Saints you're talking about?

A.-No, the self-styled saints. You've got lots of them. I don't want to name any of the great Saints of contemporary India, self-styled, because I could start to tell you who their rivals are, also Saints of course, who are competing with them like merchants. I'm not fooling. I can tell you about I the competition of Saints right here in California.

Q.-It gets to be a game.

A.-Yes, it gets to be a game. And if you can only find the right river, your sins are gone; just guess the right river or the right spring. I can slap your face or punch you in the face and then go and wash in the right river and my sins are forgiven. No wonder a country is stuck. Yet it's had the most beautiful scriptures, the most beautiful philosophy, and some of the most beautiful people. So when the beautiful philosopher comes out and speaks to the masses, they clap, clap, clap, and then go home. We had a wonderful time

Q.-It's like a so other-worldiness that there's no....

A.-We've got to be compassionate here, which is difficult. Look at the people at their own level. In our culture we're taking in a lot of Indian things. For example, cutting down on eating meat. We're showing much more respect to each other, which they are not. We've raised, and we're judged on the basis of externals, but I think our externals, which are getting better, are more real today than just traditions or customs. There's a universal philosophy growing, which I'm trying to show you is also found in the Bible.

That's why I'm talking to you about the three-body constitution of man, which has been believed in India, but not in the West, although it is in our scriptures-the physical, the psychic, and the spiritual. When we begin to realize this, everybody belongs, everybody. Everybody belongs, but they're not all at one level. We want to understand them first, and later we'll find the place. That's the real love.

5
. Ibid.

 



Chapter Seven