I looked up the number of times the word 'soul' appears in the New Testament. I think Paul uses it some forty times. Many other words are used a lot more often think I told you that I was going to defend Paul not because I wished to defend him, but because I feel in spirit something has to be done here.

When Ingersol's book, The Mistakes of Moses, came out, George Bernard Shaw was asked what he thought of the book. He said, "I will not review this book until I see the companionate book: Moses on The Mistakes of Ingersol."

There are so many people who get up and condemn Paul for all kinds of things, and some of them may even be right. But, you know, we are so drowned, absolutely drowned and drunk with these words, 'liberty,' 'democracy,' 'humanity,' everything else, that we've lost all sight of them and we've become overwhelmed in the words. And so, these persons who criticize Paul, why are they criticizing Paul?

Now, I know that a certain class of people who criticize Paul are under, let's say, Freudian influences. So, they begin to look at everything Paul wrote from the standpoint of sex, and they find all kinds of things about him. And Paul would probably be shocked and say, "That wasn't my point of view at all! And if that was implied or impressed then I didn't make myself clear." But I'll tell you why Paul isn't clear. Suppose I get up and say, "snakf boogh, kian push," and each of you write an interpretation of it. It might not mean anything at all of what I said. And people who read Paul and have not had the deep experiences are mistranslating that same way; they're interpreting words that are based on experiences he had and they didn't have. How many people who have dared to interpret Paul at all have had the experience he had on the road to Damascus, or anything like it? If they had such an experience, they would be able to do this. Well, I, my dears, have had such an experience. And, of course, I am crazy or sane according to which group. So I have to stand along with Paul in several respects, and I have to assume here that he wrote some of his things in Greek, possibly all of them; although he might also have written some of them in Aramaic, but I'm not so sure. We have to assume here that he wrote in Greek. And, now there's a great thing in translating Greek, you know. You get up and say, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din." Then somebody looks at it and says, "Well, a woman wrote that so it doesn't mean anything." You know, something like that. This is what's happened to interpretation of Paul. People who haven't had his experiences have put their own ideas in and make words stand for what they couldn't possibly really mean.

And if you go and study, let's say Plato in Greek (which I have studied once but have forgotten) you come to the New Testament, and find words translated totally differently. I'm confounded enough to believe that Paul was a little bit more sure of what he was experiencing than Plato. Plato was a great man, no question about it, but he worked in the world of imagination much more than direct experience. Paul, I believe, worked in the realm of experiences, or as I wrote in one of my confounded letters this week, I'm always writing-to KQED (3)--everybody's allowed to talk on mysticism but the mystics. The mystics, being off their noodles, can't be allowed to speak on the air. So this is what happens. They allowed a man on the air this week, and he gave a concert of Indian spiritual music, and he was asked about his teacher, and he said his teacher was a great Sufi. What is a great Sufi? What does that mean, 'great Sufi' 'great hobogoblin', great anything? Because they never allowed a Sufi to speak; they allow other people to speak on Sufism, but never a Sufi.

"Now, I come to you, brethren, I come not with excellency of speech or wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God. "

Do you realize what that means? He says he's giving you the testimony of God. And actually, this is the most difficult thing to express any way at all, because when you get into that field, you get high, and when you get high, you're not necessarily a perfect rhetorician. Paul got high because he had the experience which permitted him to say, "the testimony of God."

I think the time will come when people will speak who have the testimony of God. If you belong to the Friends Church, you're not supposed to speak at all unless you have the testimony of God. You may all have theology, you may all have knowledge, but you're supposed to keep quiet. Well, I'm a noisemaker and I have to assume that I'm either way wrong or I may have the testimony of God. And from what's been told me lately, which I cannot repeat, maybe the latter is true, because the effect on other persons has been glorious and grand.

"For I have determined to make known among you nothing by Jesus Christ and him crucified. "

Now, what does this mean? It means the testimony of the Divine in the human, and the Divine comes out in human when the ego is smashed. I'm going to come to this again. Whether it means the physical crucifixion or the nonphysical crucifixion--this is a good thing to consider--was Jesus God, or did he become God? I'm not going into that. This must be determined by your own experiences and not by our theologies.

I think the worst acts performed upon me in this life, and I've some that are pretty nasty, were performed in the name of avatar. Boy! Stealing your property, hitting your name, preventing you from getting a job, in the name of avatar. And a lot of people go around saying, "Avatar will save you from this, and avatar will save you from that." Well, I have one thing which hits more people than 'avatars' and that is that I cannot reconcile myself to any of these societies for the abolition of the Sermon on the Mount.

I'm not demanding from you because I don't accept all the Sermon on the Mount, but much must be considered before we go and break it. And, you know Mohammed, who wasn't a very good Muslim, said, "The words of Allah abrogate the words of Allah." Of course, in practice, nothing like that happens. Jesus may have said everything. Mohammed would say, "Yes, Jesus was the voice of God, but when a lawyer comes along, if you want to be a good Muslim, you must always pick up your food first with this hand and then with this hand, and if you don't do it..., or, if you're going to use a toothpick, put it this way, and that's religion."

It's forgotten that Mohammed came, like Jesus, "not to destroy but to fulfill." And we are, of course, to keep this under consideration. I think one thing that the Church of Man is doing is making an effort to fulfill the teachings of Jesus Christ, not to destroy, them in the name of some institution, which is so often done. You have some great excuses for it, tremendous excuses. But religion flops because that kind of thing which gives you excuses to break what your teacher told you can never persist; it will always disappear.

Saint Paul was trying to speak from the highest state of consciousness. We're going to learn something about this. If you study the Kabala, which is behind the Tarot, four states of consciousness are offered, which may be called physical, subtle, spiritual, and divine. The knowledge of these four things was called 'pardees' by the Kabalists, which means paradise: you were in paradise if you knew life from these four points of view.

Here Paul starts out by offering the divine, but before he gets through this, he will also go into the subtle and the spiritual and perhaps the physical. When we don't observe his words, and when we translate them any way we wish to, it can mean anything we want. But that's not what he was trying to get at. Again I call your attention to the fact that when he spoke to the Corinthians he was not speaking to the Romans. The Corinthians were far more developed spiritually, intellectually, and commercially than the Romans were. Of course, Corinth was destroyed before this scripture was translated into Latin, and the Corinthians disappeared. But, when he was speaking to them, they were alive; it was a great city, a tremendous one, and very wealthy. So as I said, when he spoke to one group of people, he was speaking to them, and all were different people under different circumstances. He was trying to reach them with their knowledge.

"And I, In weakness and fear and in much trembling, was with you and my discourse and my proclamation were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but with the demonstration of spirit and of power."

I'll go into those words later. How would this thing go over with the present way of attempting to restore Christianity with persuasive words of wisdom instead of a demonstration of the Spirit and power? I want to tell you something about power. Power isn't loud. Remember, in the Old Testament it says that when they wanted to hear the voice of God, it wasn't in the thunder, it wasn't in the earthquake, it wasn't in the lightning, but in the still, small voice. Well, I'm not asking the clergymen to resign just because they won't speak in still, small voices, or the evangelists to give up in thunder and lightning, but you can be sure that they don't have divinity behind them. Power isn't loudness; it isn't that. Yes, that's a certain amount of it, but that will all go away. It will go away.

The power which comes out of eternity will stay on. What kind of powers come out of eternity? Oh, you all know them, and when I start saying them you'll say, "Of course." For example, love. And then, along with it, certain other things: compassion, consideration-and these things are much more powerful than all the power you have. I think today the generals, in the Holy Land on both sides are beginning to recognize that; that what they exert isn't real power; it will wear away. They've got to look at things from another point of view. And one of the highest teachings ever taught is that "Peace is power." Peace is power; it never wears away. Once you have it, it will go on and on, and you can rely on it.

Somebody told me recently that I look younger than a while back. Well, I don't look at myself. I'm even a little ashamed that I don't wash my face as thoroughly as I did when I didn't have a beard. And when I do, I don't look in the mirror so much, so I have no idea. But, I will tell you, it's practising the presence of God that makes possible the continuance of energy in this personality. So that the energy seems to go on and on, and it might dismay people who are looking for some kind of secret yoga or some kind of formula. And what is the fact? What thing in my life is there that I can't control? It's a word which is very important in religion. "Grace." Yes! Grace! Grace! And we'll all have it; when we get that Grace it's going to be that way, like a miracle, and yet not. It's something our will can't control and that we can't avoid; if we've got it, we've got it. And that's why, when I hear you're going to start a new center, if the Grace is there, the biggest dummy around is going to be successful, I tell you, going to be successful. All the plans and thoughts and everything else will flop, and when you get that Grace, you'll succeed under circumstances you don't think about at all.

"So that your faith might not be by the Wisdom of Men, but by the Power of God. Wisdom, however, we speak among the PERFECT...."

I want to explain that word. The word here in Greek is teleus. "That which is perfect?" It really means "the initiated." The initiated: those who have had the transcendent experience; not "perfect." God, I don't make a perfect cook. I find the higher up I'm getting the poorer dishwasher I'm becoming. I'm not a Saint Lawrence. I become more and more careless of little things around the house and I become less careless about the pains of people who come to see me. That's what the word means. What is perfect? If we think subjectively, nobody's perfect. The streetcar conductor is not necessarily the man who can operate the airplane.

Our air pilots run to liquor every now and then because they can't control their emotions. A farmer isn't necessarily a good lawyer, and so on. "Perfect" has to do with the awakening of the spirit in man and not some subjective measuring stick of people by other people. When you have this, by the blooming of the light in your own being, then you are among the elect, the teleus. And that's what Paul was trying to do: make people see something deep in themselves.

"...which no one of the RULERS of this AGE knew..."

I think that applies as much today, although I don't know. You know, I don't like to attack the President (although got no compunction about it) but that gives comfort to other people who are no better off than he is. I know some of the commentators have a good deal more heart than the President has, but they're experts on absolutely every subject whatever. Once they get up, you are ignorant and they know, and that's all there is to it. Recently it was shown that proteins never come from grains, a fact which only commentators and Americans and advertisers believe. But this has gotten into our national consciousness. I always tell the little children they're going to get better toys from the toy store than by getting Wheaties and Cheerios packages. We're going into an age of health breads, among other things-honest food which will help us in other aspects of honesty. So, I don't claim that one group is better than another in misleading humanity, all for ego, power. And that's exactly what Paul was against, which we're going to find before we come to the end of this chapter.

"...but, as it has been written, 'Things which Eye has not seen, and Ear has not heard, and to which the Heart of Man has not aspired--things which God has prepared for THOSE who LOVE him...."

This is the goal toward which we are going and toward which Paul was trying to get people. And now in this New Age people are doing this more and more, but it's not necessarily organized. They've got all kinds of ideas. They accept it, but they don't know how to do it.

"God has reveled even to us through the SPIRIT."

Now, this is very important: he's revealed to us through the Spirit, the pneuma. And this is what we have to learn, because the false Christianity has given us doctrines about soul, and there is no basis for this whatsoever! "Spirit!" There is no basis whatsoever for translating it as 'soul'! It was misconstrued when ignorant people got control of religion, misinterpreted scriptures, and placed us where we are today. Then what do we do? A man comes from another religion and straightens us out and we convert to another religion. And we go further, and the other religion doesn't do anything either, because it uses the words but doesn't demonstrate what these words mean. We're going to learn what the pneuma means, what the spirit is and how it acts. Where there is love, there is compassion, intelligence, modesty, virtue, and humanity.

"For Who of Men knows that THOUGHTS of the MAN, except THAT SPIRIT of the MAN which Is In him? so also, the THOUGHTS of God no one knows except the SPIRIT of God" (the pneuma).

What is this pneuma? We're going to keep this in front of you and in front of you and in front of you until we learn it. And this may mean the complete revolution in Western religion, without anything happening at all, really, because the scriptures are clear and the clergymen aren't.

I went to a concert last night where there were some older people. I looked at them, and what did they want? They just wanted pleasure, just pleasure, that's all. A woman I knew very well, big background and all, gave them a lot of pleasure. And then their words: "Oh, this is spiritual, this is divine, oh, it's perfect." I could only see the ego, only the ego. And they applaud and they go away and they're no different. But when you really begin to work with the spirit, then the spirit comes and works with you, and you have it happen. When the spirit begins operating through you, it's going to operate through you more. You become children in the spirit. That's what Jesus said: you must be born in the spirit. He didn't say you must be born in the soul; he said you must be born in the spirit. I think that's what's happening, and I think it will happen more and more.

"Now we have received, not the SPIRIT of this WORLD, but THAT SPIRIT which is from God, that we may know the THINGS GRACIOUSLY GIVEN to us by God...."

How do we know things? We practice meditation. We practice silence. We go to communion, and we begin building up treasures. We don't begin building up treasures in heaven, we don't do anything of the kind. Heaven builds up treasures in us. Never thought of that? No, maybe you have. Heaven builds up treasures in us. So we grow.

"Now, an Animal Man does not receive the THINGS of the SPIRIT of God..."

It doesn't say anything of the kind! It doesn't say anything of the kind! It says, "psychicos de anthropos." 'Psychicos," (from which we get our word psychic) doesn't mean 'animal.' It comes from the same root as the word 'psyche,' which is translated as 'soul'. 'Psychicos' is the adjective of 'soul,' and it means "soulful man," and nothing but "soulful man." It doesn't mean 'animal man,' because if you call psyche 'animal,' another place you call psyche 'soul,' and another place you call psyche 'spiritual,' how can you understand the scriptures? You can't. The psyche refers to the subtle body.

Now we come to the most important thing. I'm going to ask, and I'm not qualifying you at all, how many of you have, as a result of taking any form of psychedelics, had some kind of experience beyond the physical. So, the vast majority have. Those of you who haven't had this experience with psychedelics, don't worry about that. You see, they've had experiences and, as I said at the psychedelic conference, "an hallucination is an experience you've had and I haven't had." And nobody was able to dispute me on that. The top psychologist and the doctors and the lawyers and the Indian chiefs, policemen couldn't dispute me on this point. How do I know that what you've had is false, unless I've gone through it and found it out? I haven't. Yes, I did have psychic experiences at one time, when I was under the influence of certain occult organizations. Marie Corelli, who was a great occultist, in her books, particularly, "The Romance of Two Worlds," makes use of psychedelics to help raise people's consciousness. And I know there are psychedelics which do this, though not the chemical ones. But, at least you have some kind of experience showing you knew there was another world, and that's the subtle world. And in the subtle world we have our dreams, we have our visions, we have our imaginations. Sometimes we carry them, sometimes they carry us. But whether we carry it or it carries us, it's real. And we can abolish it by an attack on it. We can abolish it by an understanding of it.

And that's what Paul was trying to do, to get us beyond the psyche into the pneuma (and it doesn't mean 'animal'). To call the psychios at one time 'animal,' is to call it that which it never meant. "Physicos" might mean that (but not psychicos) from which we get our word 'physical.' The scriptures don't explain Paul's teachings. So the people go to the swamis or the gurus. Of course! What are they teaching? Exactly what Paul is teaching: three--bodies-the physical, the subtle, and the spiritual. And we all have these three bodies. We'd better learn about them. No, scripture doesn't them. You go to the good rabbi, and (if you can find a good rabbi) he'll mention nefesh, ruach and nashoma. They mean the same things, but he won't be able to explain them. "Oh, we knew all about them, we knew all about them thousands of years ago," he'll say, but then they never explain them.

So, we have these experiences because they're in the universe itself: a physical, a psychic, and a spiritual world, a world of human beings, a world of djinns and fairies, and a world of angelic creatures. We re going to go into this more deeply when we come to Chapter 15. But he mentions these words now, and he doesn't mention them much in the rest of the scriptures. I found out these words are seldom used. But it doesn't mean 'unspiritual,' not psychicos.

And I challenge all these mistranslators of the Bible who never had the Biblical experience. And even if you have, you don't care whether it's mistranslated one way or another, because your feeling is much more important, your devotion is much more important. The intellectual thing is a secondary thing. If you have the Grace of God and you go up above it, what does it matter if it's this way or this way? When I read these different translations of the Bible, some of them are much better than others--but they do not have love, devotion, and beauty of words. The Bible is not a book of hard philosophy. I have read a translation of the Indian Ramayana, and it's put into beautiful words. That's all you want, beautiful words, and it carries the weight. Don't think I could go to the experts and tell them that. It would be years before anyone would believe me. When I found out the truth, then I found the same truth in the Bible.

So he did not say that the animal man does not receive the spirit of God, nor 'unspiritual,' as it's called someplace else. Psychicos means psychicos, and it means "that which pertains to the psyche," which we translate as 'soul.'

As long as we're kept in darkness by mistranslations, Christianity will appear to be a very confused religion. Whereas it's not the religion that's confused; it's the translators who have given us the scriptures. Then you have an experience which goes according to the scriptures in one place and doesn't in another. You don't know what it is, and then you're told the scriptures contradict each other. The scriptures don't contradict each other. Translators make this possible, or mistranslators. I want to bring this out, because when we begin to realize we have the physical body, the psychic body, and the spiritual body, and get the spiritual body operating, we will then have psychic experiences. We will then even take LSD, I hope you won't take, or marijuana or what the American Indians use, and you will understand those experiences. They will be helpful to you, not harmful, once your deep inner experience is awakened. I won't go into the question of whether it is beneficial or not to have dreams. Some people have dreams and benefit from them; some people have dreams and don't. But, when the Bible teaches you that young men will have visions and old will have dreams, or whatever, this will become real and valuable. But we have to get all these bodies into juxtaposition and understand them, which will come out more also when we go over Chapter 15.

"But the SPIRITUAL man examines, indeed, all things, yet he is examined by no one. For who has known the Mind of the Lord? who will teach it? But we possess the Mind of Christ."

And this makes me at times totally furious with all these phonies who come along and call themselves avatars. If they possessed the mind of Christ, you know what it would mean? It would mean they would illuminate people who come into their presence without saying anything at all. Do you realize that? Do you know what it means to possess the mind of Christ? It means to know everything, to feel everything, and to love everything. Nothing more and nothing less.

We possess the mind of Christ. The Greek word is nous, which is more. It means we possess the intelligence, not just the mind. We have the divine intelligence. I think Saint Paul had that and that was what he was trying to awaken in other people.

I hope something is conveyed to you in this. That Saint Paul was trying to teach exactly the same things that the swamis and the great Orientalists do, and that you can learn in the most profound Buddhist Church--not in the ordinary one, that's bunk! But there's something more than just ritual in forming or building a church. Saint Paul said, "God is not built or found alone in temples built by human hands." When we begin to do that, we begin to find out a certain truth which is very deep and right here in our scriptures. I'm not telling you to read the other scriptures, because I do, but you'll find in reading them that you'll not be necessarily learning anything new. But, when you are given a wrong translation and a wrong interpretation, you certainly will learn something new.

Q.-When you spoke about the four grades of consciousness and the three bodies in terms of the Divine Consciousness, is this something that is brought into us, or is it something we attempt to draw into ourselves?

A.-There's always something attempting to grow, but it comes more likely through Grace than through effort. Yet, we act as if it came through effort. It may never come that way, but we act as if it did come.

Q.-I looked up spirit and soul in the dictionary, and they make a distinction, and I'm rather confused.

A.-Of course they do, because the people who wrote the dictionary were not spiritual people.

Q.-Well, which one of these two is the breath?

A.-The spirit. The spirit is the Divine breath that goes through everything. I'm very glad you got it, because the more we refine our breath, the more we can feel. The depths of the Upanishads is that the greatness of spirit is found in the heart. We give all kinds of excuses. I know we have these people running around opening up seven chakras. A very legitimate practice, but I haven't found any that had the mind of' Christ when they get through with it. If I find one, I will apologize and kneel at his feet. As we begin this, as you begin to feel and your heart expands, your breath will become lighter. You can do it with the breath, but also your heart will lighten the breath more than the breath can by itself. When we begin to feel... you know, the highest teaching of Islam is that the Throne of God is found in the human heart. It doesn't mean you can't practice other centers. I'm not saying that. I believe these are very good, but in the end it will come that way. When our love expands, that's as far as we can go, but also, unconsciously, when we try to love, we're opening up the door for Grace.

But what does Grace have that love doesn't have? This is a nonsense question. We will have reached that stage when we can accept the crucifixion equally with the benefit. This is not easy. And then you'll find that the crucifixion is not the crucifixion. Do you know anything about the Rose Cross?

Well, when you have the crucifixion really, instead of ending in pain, you'll have the rose of beauty coming out of your own heart. We now do what I call the rose dance. It's done by reciting Names of God and making movements like a rose. One night at a meeting we went into other movements and the joy that came out of the people was tremendous, and yet all we were doing was reciting Names of God. That's all, and it worked; it worked tremendously. This is something that the people who have been dominating all the noise-making have got to understand. I hope I have made it clear that Saint Paul was trying to show that the psychic is not the spiritual. He didn't say that the psychic is wrong; it's wrong to translate it as 'animal' and wrong to translate it as 'antispiritual.' Nothing is antispiritual. I disagree entirely with Mary Baker Eddy when she said there is no spirit in matter. Anything that exists has spirit in it. It wouldn't exist otherwise. But, how important it is is another thing. Sometimes it's very unimportant. So there's more spirit without either the subtle or the material. When you get there, then the great virtues will come out in us, which will also come out in the later parts of this epistle. I hope I've proven to all of you that you're sane. If I haven't, I have failed.

Q.-This is sort of hard to phrase. If you have Christ consciousness, then you have the drama of the crucifixion. In other words, you will be crucified, but it doesn't mean that you have to have the Grace to be visibly crucified.

A.-Well, physical crucifixion is not necessarily a Grace.

Q.-Well, that's the question I meant to ask.

A.-I'm afraid it's happened to very few people. Some have done it to themselves and haven't had Christ. Some have had Christ and haven't gone through a physical crucifixion. They go through pain and torment, and suffering by society, exile, all kinds of things, put in prison. In India, Sri Aurobindo and Mahatma Ganhdi spent a good deal of time in prison, but Sri Aurobindo says, thank God, now I can write. And Sri Aurobindo said Sri Krishna dictated to him. Well, the good followers of Sri Aurobindo are satisfied with that, but it's no value unless Sir Krishna can dictate to them, too. What good is it if somebody else has it? You're not spiritual because you picked out the right person that's had some kind of Grace at some time in the past. You're not more spiritual because you believe that Joan of Arc was a saint. Maybe she was, but that doesn't help you to believe that. It doesn't help you one bit. It's only of value when you reach that state or a state and feel it and know it. I'm not trying to abolish the psychic body nor much less trying to abolish the physical body. People come to my house, they eat well. They say they do, I don't know. And why not? I'm not trying to abolish anything.

Q.-In Sufi stories I've read they refer to the experience of ecstasy. And it's often said that a person shouldn't strive to be caught up in ecstasy because there's something beyond it. To what state of consciousness does this ecstasy belong? To which body?

A.-Ecstasy can be in all bodies. You can have physical ecstasy and psychic ecstasy. When you go into the drugs you have psychic ecstasy, but then it ebbs and disappears. But when--you have spiritual ecstasy, it doesn't disappear, it stays with you. It can dominate you day and night. But there is a state of sobriety above that, because ecstasy dominates you, you don't dominate it. When you get to a stage when you can dominate it and lay it aside or pick it up, then you'll really reach somewhere. It's not easy. It's very difficult, because when you get sober, you think that God isn't there then, and when you get ecstatic, you say that God is there.

Q.-Is it something you can achieve not through Grace through... you can achieve it through yourself?

A.-It's not easy, but you can achieve it. When God comes and gives people Grace, it doesn't make them go high or low or anything. He gets them so they can accomplish what they have to do. Suppose you were a scientist working toward some discovery, and you got a Grace. It wouldn't necessarily send you high. It might keep you very sober.

Q.-So you have to try and transcend your country's karma?

A.-Well, whatever it is. I was doing some work in scientific research and I came upon a couple of laws which aren't generally known and then suddenly the voice of heaven said, "Stop! You're too far ahead of the age." After that I did no more scientific research. I know what they are, but if can't go out and tell people how to stop pollution, I certainly can't go a stage ahead into something else and give them what would appear to be miraculous, which it is not. I didn't get this by effort. I got it by always keeping the heart open and listening, listening more than most people listen.

Q.-Listening through the heart, you mean the psychic body hears?

A.-Yes, it hears, but beyond that is the Divine Spirit, which is always talking. It's called "the still, small voice" in the Old Testament, and the Sufis call it "the voice that comes from within." It's the same thing that's always talking; but we don't listen. We don't know how. When we start listening we'll hear there's a voice talking to us all the time, constantly. And we won't get into serious trouble. But when we get high, then we can miss footsteps and we can make mistakes, because we've still got a physical body. So getting high is good in one direction, but it's not good in another direction. I've had fellows go out and repeat mantrams while they are driving a car and get two or three miles beyond their destination before they realize what they were doing. This isn't necessarily good. Another one did a wrong mantra in the kitchen, and cut himself. Oh, yes, there's a right thing for each thing. It isn't necessary to go high. There are spiritual phrases that build sobriety.

Q.-If I was repeating a mantra and I cut my finger because I wasn't aware that I was cutting my finger, would that be a samadhi or would that be an unconsciousness?

A.-Yes, it might be a samadhi of kind. This has happened. I can tell you stories of saints where it did happen. But this has a limited value because we get over into the miraculous side, and that isn't always good. Oh, the miracles are real, but they don't always benefit us. If I start to pull up my pants and show you I've got cuts on my feet again, that's what happens. I get high and I injure myself and I don't know it. I don't feel any pain. Sometime later I'll look, and I've injured myself and I don't know it. If you want to call it a miracle, it's a sort of miracle. Give us this day our daily bread, give us this minute what we need for this minute, and think not of the morrow. Then we get high, we thing of the morrow and then all kinds of things happen. Beautiful, yes, but that's not our real balance. Any other questions?

Q.-What's samadhi?

A.-That's that state when you are no longer aware of yourself as a separate being. You feel unity with the universe. It's the mind of Christ, only it's an ecstatic mind of Christ. Paul wanted, I think, to give a sober mind of Christ, so you could think. Believe me, in trying to bring peace now, which I'm trying to do, you've got to have a sober mind, a real sober mind.

Q.-But, you speak of the sober mind in some way as being higher but not "high."

A.-Here's the point, the time for you to get high, is, for example, when you go to Communion. That's beautiful, when you get high then. You're not interfering with anything, you're helping the Communion. But if you're answering the telephone and you get high, you're going to have trouble. You understand that?

Q.-You're saying that there's a controllable thing?

A.-Yes, it can be controlled. At other times it shouldn't be controlled. When you go to Communion, don't try to control it. Let go.

I hope you can begin to see there is such a thing as the mind of Christ. And with God's help we're going to have the mind of Christ control a few of the events of the world today. I said today that the two problems I was working on are peace in Palestine and the psychedelic complex. I think both of these things will come, among others, by being in accord with what Saint Paul said in his message to the Corinthians. This is going to get out and some people are going to look at it and look soberly. But also there's another side to this: Christ also gave us the image of Bliss, of blessing. I don't want to go into that now because we're reading from Paul. We're not reading from Jesus. We're not reading from John.


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