Talk
Saturday, January 5th, 1980
Verbatim, unedited transcriptEVENT at Wisdom's Goldenrod, Hector, NY
with Anthony Damiani (AD)
January 5, 1980
PB VISIT TALK; BOB GEYER
TOPIC: PB Visit
SUBJECT: Bob Geyer
SUBSUBJECT: The Quest
CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION TO BOB GEYER'S VISIT TO PB
ABOUT THE ITHACA GROUP
ON SAGES AND KARMA
ON GRADES OF ENLIGHTENMENT
ON MAHESH YOGI AND CHARGING FOR INSTRUCTION
COMMENT ON THE DALAI LAMA
ON SOLITUDE
ON THE DALAI LAMA AND RETREAT CENTERS (INCLUDING WG)
ON THEOSOPHY
ON TIBET
ON MEDITATION
ON SUMMING UP, SOMERSET MAUGHAM
ON ORIGEN AND CHRISTIANITY
ON THE LOGOS
ON ANTHONY LEAVING NEW YORK CITY
ON AGNOSTIC MYSTICISM
ABOUT REPORTS FROM INTERVIEWS
ON EXPERIENCE OF HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE BHAGAVAD GITA
ABOUT ANTHONY'S UNIVERSAL APPROACH
ON STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS OF A SAGE
ON THE CRY OF DESOLATION, NEW TESTAMENT
ON THE JESUIT OUTLOOK AND MEDITATION IN EUROPE
ON HOW ANTHONY SET UP WG
ON DECISION MAKING AND PEER PRESSURE
ON SIDDHESHWARANANDA
ON MILK
COMMENT ON PEOPLE WHO WAIT FOR THE MESSIAH
ON FREE WILL
ON HEALING
ON STEINER
ON NEW ZEALAND
TWO ANECDOTAL STORIES
ON HOW PEOPLE LEARN OF PB'S BOOKS
ON THE PHYSICAL BODY
ON MILK
ON HEALING
ON STEINER'S EXPERIENCES; CHRISTIANITY AND THE TRINITY
ON TEMPER
ON SENTIMENTALITY AND WHITE SUGAR
ON ANGER
ON ALBERT CLIFFE AND MENTAL HEALING
ON ASTROLOGY READING
ON MARTINUS
ON GENETICS AND BIOLOGY
ON SPIRITUALISM
ON SAI BABA
ON RUSSIANS
ON PAIN
ON PARADOX AND SIRIUS
ON ERNEST HOLMES
ON MUSIC
ON INTEGRATIVE HEALTH
ON LIBRARIES AND THE OCCULT
ON TEA
ON CLAIRVOYANCE
ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE WORLD-MIND
ON ANTHONY AND WG
ON THE TAO TE CHING
ON AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI AND CURRENT AFFAIRS
ON TANG QUI; STEINER AND MAGICAL POWERS
ON SIVANANDA
ON PUNISHMENT AND CONSEQUENCES
ON SEEKING OCCULT POWERS
ON CURRENT EVENTS
ON ROCK MUSIC
ABOUT PEOPLE FROM CZECHOSLOVAKIA
ON MENTAL IMBALANCE
ON HUI HAI (BLOFELD)
ON SEMANTICS
CONTINUING ON WHY DIFFERENT SAGES ADOPT DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS
ON RESPECT
ON TIBETAN MUSIC
ON SPINACH
COMMENTING ON A SUIT THAT HE HAD HAD MADE, AND ON MARRIAGE (AS A SPIRITUAL LEADER)
ON THE BOOKSTORE
ON THE POPE AND CURRENT AFFAIRS
ON JUNG AND IYER
ON FASTING
ON ACCOUNTS OF CHRIST AND THE GOSPEL
ON PUNISHMENT AND CURRENT AFFAIRS
ON NATIVE TRIBES
ON MEDITATION POSTURES
ON HEALTH
ON INNER EXPERIENCE
ON RADIATION FROM ELECTRIC LIGHTS
ON INSANITY
ON DRUGS
ON THE DALAI LAMA AND ANTHONY'S TEACHINGS
ON MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES
BOOKS READ FROM OR REFERENCED:
W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up
Vyasa, Bhagavad Gita
Paul Brunton, A Search in Secret India
Paul Brunton, A Search in Secret Egypt
A.C. Harwood (ed.), The Faithful Thinker: Centenary Essays on The Work and Thought of Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner, The Threefold Commonwealth
Martinus, The Third Testament, The Book of Life (in seven volumes)
Paul Brunton, The Wisdom of the Overself
Paul Brunton, The Secret Path
John Blofeld (tr.), Zen Teaching of Instantaneous Awakening: being the teaching of the Zen Master Hui Hai, known as The Great Pearl
Paul Brunton, The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga
Paul Brunton, The Inner Reality (also published as Discover Yourself)
NOTES:
The original written notes from Robert (Bob) Geyer's visit with PB, which are read and commented on in this class, are available as "Conversations with PB as Recorded by Robert Geyer" (pp. 3-54 in the text-searchable PDF) in PB Visits 2 (More Interviews) at https://www.pbarchives.org/archive/document/writing/96. Because the transcript was created from audio without access to these notes, punctuation may differ from the original document; additionally, it was not always clear from the audio whether Geyer was reading or commenting. Readers should consult the written document for exact wording.
Dates are from 1979 when Bob Geyer was with PB, and are read by Bob from his notes.
Older partial transcripts may exist.
INITIALS CONVENTIONS: PB = Paul Brunton; G = Bob Geyer/himself in notes; BG = Bob (Robert Geyer) comments in this event on his visit or on what he's reading; AD = Anthony Damiani; other initials those of students.
TRANSCRIBED Verbatim by IT 2019; reformatted by JRM & JF 2019-2020, with TOC/Subheads by JRM. In 2023, IT updates prefatory matter, footer, and audio file name, fixes Book List, fixes errors/typos throughout. Archival verbatim transcript – V14.1a.
AUDIO FILES: 1980 0105a, 1980 0105b. [Note: "Tape" and "Side" refer to original audio cassette tapes that were later digitized into .MP3 Audio Files.]
1980 01/05 at Wisdom's Goldenrod
PB Visit Talk; Bob Geyer
Archival verbatim transcript
INTRODUCTION TO BOB GEYER'S VISIT TO PB
[Audio File 1980 0105a Begins]
BG: --plus I didn't-- I felt the support of people here while I was there and it made a-- a big difference. These notes--
AS (faint): I want to keep moving it (Karen). Robert, hold it. Carol, I think either maybe-- somebody keeps moving the connection. [student assents] [couple/three words inaudible] (December).
S (simultaneously): [one word inaudible]
S: Uh-hm.
AS (faint): Keeps cutting off.
CDA: Is that it?
AS: It's on now, it's on.
[16 second pause with background student talking, noises]
BG: These notes of course were compiled over the whole time that I was there. And, what I tried to do was reconstruct them as accurately as I could and completely in terms of the dialogue as it happened because things would come up in a conversation and it might sound like it would be coming from left field but I think the way this was presented just sort of see how they would-- they would come up, so it has my dialogue as well as his, not that I have anything particularly noteworthy to say but that it shows where his responses are coming from. So, I've used an abbreviation "PB" for PB and "G" for Geyer, so (bit of laughter) you know what-- who-- who it is. About a couple of weeks before, three weeks before I was leaving, I felt a little uncertain about how these would-- how accurate they were. Of course, we all have our own projections on what he says. And so I asked him if he would like to go over the notes with me. And he-- he said that he would, so, almost all of these have been gone over with PB and they've been verified as-- as accurate. [short pause] So I'll begin.
ABOUT THE ITHACA GROUP
BG Notes [BG reading]: "About the Ithaca group.
PB: More people are coming to it. It's growing. It will move more quickly now. There are families growing and it will grow at a faster rate. Meditation is getting better in most countries and will continue to do so. Astrologically we are moving into the higher planets in addition to the Chaldean. But when the light shines, the shadow also appears and begins to be active. It is the Aquarian age. Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. There is a realization that astrology has captured a great deal of faith. People have accepted astrology, even though many don't turn to philosophy. They want to know about themselves at first. This leads to the question of why and later the questions of karma, rebirth, and so forth.
ON SAGES AND KARMA
Another point.
G: Some say that gurus develop diseases from taking on karma of their devotees.
PB: I don't see it that way. How can they take on the karma of a hundred or a thousand devotees?
G: When a Sage or guru adjusts the karma of an individual, is he not acting in accord with the will of the World-Mind, in other words, the Sage's help is already contained in the person's karma?
PB: I don't know. You will have to ask a Sage." (laughter)
S (very faint): That's open.
BG: This happened a lot of times. (laughter, student words)
ON GRADES OF ENLIGHTENMENT
BG Notes [BG reading]: "On grades of enlightenment.
PB: The Overself is a general term used for a level above the ordinary. I have not dealt with the levels within or above the Overself in my books. You will have to ask a Sage about the grades of enlightenment.
ON MAHESH YOGI AND CHARGING FOR INSTRUCTION
On Mahesh Yogi.
PB: He charges high prices for his meditation instruction. There are the same prices for everybody. Some person [BG: I-- I don't-- he referred to.] had to quit because she couldn't afford it. That's one of the several reasons why I won't have anything to do with him."
BG: We were in a department store and it was overrun with people during a sale and PB said--
BG Notes [BG reading]: "It's a really bad combination of animalism and materialism. People will either be made nervous wrecks or very strong to withstand it."
COMMENT ON THE DALAI LAMA
BG: On July 15th, going up to Mont Pèlerin to see the Dalai Lama. After reading a pamphlet on him where he stated that we may have to burn temples to save real religion--
BG Notes [BG reading]: "PB: He's very courageous and outspoken to make statements like that.
ON SOLITUDE
On another subject.
PB: It is absolutely necessary to have some solitude to develop. Even Shankaracharya turned over the role to a younger man because of his age and so that he could be free from the administrative demands of being head of the religion. He is primarily a spiritual leader. A person must have some privacy.
ON THE DALAI LAMA AND RETREAT CENTERS (INCLUDING WG)
Another subject.
PB: Michael Van Walt said that Mont Pèlerin is the best monastery in Switzerland. He regarded Tony's place as the most earnest, sincere, with finest outlook, the broadest. The Dalai Lama is looking forward to the visit. He doesn't want to be labeled just a Buddhist. He is interested in Truth. He has the right attitude, not wanting to be labeled. It is good that the Dalai Lama has developed that point of view. [BG: This is obviously before he came.] He may stay three, four, or five days. He wants a rest. It will be the best place to rest. He gave me his darshan. He held my hand for two minutes. They must respect their privacy. They cannot exploit him."
[short pause]
BG: I mentioned Sidney's dream of both of them being together at the temple.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "PB: It is a dream come true in a certain way. Tony is there. It is a remarkable dream. You have two good friends for the Center--personal secretary and Van Walt.
ON THEOSOPHY
On another subject.
PB: The original idea behind theosophy is to be non-denominational. Blavatsky wanted the headquarters in Tibet because she met Masters there. Theosophy lost most of its influence in the end but was useful while it lasted, a good introduction. Turning Krishnamurti into an avatar largely ruined it. It spread ideas all over the world and it had a hundred thousand members at one time.
ON TIBET
On another subject.
PB: The Tibetan religious leaders hope that the Chinese may relax their control over Tibet and eventually permit the Dalai Lama to return if they give them the proper conditions. They have faith.
[short pause]
ON MEDITATION
August 6th
PB on meditation: [BG: And this may or may not apply to you.] He must do what attracts him.
G: It seems that all I can do is to keep trying to get the mind as quiet as possible and then wait until the Self chooses.
PB: Then you understand. You must keep on knowing that. [BG: I paused.] You can try to control your thoughts. You are continuously producing thoughts. It is you who is producing it and it is you who must find out how to bring them under control. You must be patient.
ON SUMMING UP, SOMERSET MAUGHAM
On another subject.
G: Have you a central theme for your summing up book?
PB: It is what the name suggests, a summing up. It's been nearly thirty years since my last book and some people learn more as they get older, based not on opinion but on knowledge. Some people as they get older write silly things and get sillier. (laughter) Somerset Maugham wrote a book called Summing Up [Note: The Summing Up by W. Somerset Maugham, 1938.] when he was about eighty and it summed up his views of his life's work. What a person must learn is discrimination between what is real and what is unreal, between the reality and the appearance.
[13¼ second pause]
ON ORIGEN AND CHRISTIANITY
July 23rd
PB: Origen tried to be philosophical and Christian at the same time. He tried to remain a Christian and make it philosophic. He was in between the two. There was a schism then. Bishop Cyril urged masses in the other direction. He incited them to murder Hypatia. Origen tried to lead the people in the direction of philosophy but the current was directed the other way. He still was able to maintain himself within the Christian Church hold. The others tried to stamp out the other school, but, well, I don't want to talk about it anymore.
ON THE LOGOS
On the Logos.
PB: It can be seen in different ways. There can be conceived Logoi or one Logos. For instance, it can been seen as a point of contact with a man's higher Self, not visible, formless, which manifests itself as intuition.
[short pause]
ON ANTHONY LEAVING NEW YORK CITY
On another subject.
PB: I encouraged Tony's idea to leave New York City to the country, for the better atmosphere away from the noise of the city where he could study in peace and quiet. He read voraciously, used my library among others. It is a remarkable thing, a man who was a longshoreman, with no help, is now teaching the teachers."
S (faint): Would you repeat that?
BG (faint): (What part of the sentence?)
BG Notes [BG reading]: "It is a remarkable thing, a man who was a longshoreman, with no help, is now teaching the teachers.
[short pause]
ON AGNOSTIC MYSTICISM
Another subject.
PB had written something the previous night about the Mystery of Mysteries, that it was unthinkable and unutterable. Commenting on it:
PB: At one point I use(d) the term 'agnostic mysticism'. Mysticism is puzzling enough. But using the term 'agnostic' makes it even more so. Shankara's teaching can be called enlightened agnosticism. Shankara criticized the Buddhists because they had nearly become agnostics. This was long after the Buddha. It wasn't his teaching. He was largely responsible for wiping Buddhism out of India. The Mohammedans did the rest. They were convinced that they were agnostics and they were determined to wipe out this heresy. Shankara did it with words. The Mohammedans did it with a sword.
G: The concept was staggering.
PB: You will have to accommodate yourself to the different atmosphere. (bit of laughter)
ABOUT REPORTS FROM INTERVIEWS
About reports of interviews.
PB: I requested when I went to Ithaca that people give me a record of what they had heard in their conversations with me. There were often mistaken reports given.
G: Usually after an interview, people give a talk before the group.
PB: I know, and I allow it. But there are often distortions in what was said. For instance, I had been invited by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi to visit with him, which I did. He asked me to stay for the whole day and come back the next, which I also did. There was a whole group of people being initiated and he asked me to join them to witness the ceremony even though it was supposed to be a secret, private affair, which I also did. Suddenly he surprised me by performing the initiation ceremony on me, even though I had never asked him to or had approached him to be my guru. The subject was never brought up. He went through the whole thing, which I allowed him to do. It didn't last very long and he gave me a mantra, which I can't remember. (laughter) I didn't care to. Over a year later, someone from America told me that he had heard that I had been initiated by a Mahesh Yogi (some laughter) and that I had become his disciple, which was not at all true. I had allowed him to perform the ceremony on me, which I never asked for, and I had never asked him to be my guru. I try to dispel these silly rumors about me whenever I can. But there are people who believed that I was his disciple and there are probably still some who believe that. I had never attempted to have any contact with him. He had reasons for saying that. That's why I ask people to send me a copy of their notes, so that these errors can be corrected.
G: It would support his movement if they thought you followed him.
PB: No, it isn't that alone. Atmananda claimed that I was his disciple. It's because I'm polite (bit of laughter) and show interest in their teaching. I want to know what they're saying, what their ideas are. They will reveal more to me if I come to them open and interested in their teaching. I am a researcher. I don't always agree with them but I never openly express my disagreement with them. I may ask more questions. But what I want to do is to understand what it is that their teaching is saying. People go to them for different reasons. X went to see the Dalai Lama because he is the ruler of a country. I have had an interest in all forms of Buddhism all my life, including Tibetan and Tantric Buddhism. He is the head of that group and presumably knows the most about it. X saw him for her reasons and I learned something else.
ON EXPERIENCE OF HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE BHAGAVAD GITA
On another subject.
PB had mentioned a statement in the Bhagavad Gita which mentions that to the knower the day is as night and the night is as day. I asked him to comment on it.
PB: Arjuna was having explained to him the meaning of the higher state of consciousness. So he says that people think that this waking state is the superior state. Otherwise they are in darkness in dream and sleep. It can be regarded symbolically or literally. In deep sleep the person is in Nirvikalpa samadhi, only he doesn't know it. The individual and the world disappear at that time. But there is something. Something is there and that is the mystery. You and the world are no longer there. You can say that nothing is there and something is there. Nothing in the sense that it is Void. Intelligence tells us afterward that something was there.
G: How would you describe your experience mentioned in Secret India [Note: A Search in Secret India by Paul Brunton, 1934.]?
PB: Just as I described it in the book. (student noise, students assent) My inner experience began at an early age and took different forms and stages. The discovery is that there is no discovery. It has always been there. But you didn't know it. Wei Wu Wei concluded that there is no training to go through. It is only necessary to discover. This puzzles people more than ever. They want to know why it doesn't happen to them. He said that they must learn to accept this as the Truth. Discussions have gone on for thousands of years. The Zen people debate over whether there was sudden or gradual enlightenment. Wei Wu Wei had a sudden enlightenment experience unexpectedly without any direct training. It just came. He described his experience as if a bomb had exploded.
G: Many of the accounts of the lesser satori experiences have been described as an explosion.
PB: These things can happen. A psychic experience can reflect what takes place on a much greater scale in these higher experiences. They can be sudden or gradual, explosive or extremely gentle.
ABOUT ANTHONY'S UNIVERSAL APPROACH
August 26th
About Tony's universal approach.
PB: Blavatsky had the same idea a hundred years ago and the Alexandrians before that. The great souls of the religions knew of the universality beyond their own religious background.
G: Ramakrishna meditated on the various avatars.
PB: Yes, he knew. He was a great soul.
G: And the Dalai Lama?
PB: Yes. That is his idea also.
G: May I ask, is that something you discussed with him?
PB: His personal secretary told me that this was his idea. I did mention that that was the idea behind the Center's approach and he liked it.
G: Is it true that they must, since they must reach their mass audience, keep it sectarian and narrowed for the masses because a universal approach might confuse them?
PB: Yes. He may have to. But most people aren't interested in Truth like you fellows. (bit of laughter) They are content to have their families and houses. Look at what that man in Iran is doing. He's a fanatic.
G: He's being very repressive and even killing dissenters. He said that if you disobey me you are disobeying God. Now there was civil war there. The Christian Kurds are rebelling. The newspapers are being shut down and the women are rising up because they are being repressed.
PB: Yes, that's what they all do, fanatics. The Maharshi said not to meddle in the affairs of others. The masses don't care about Truth. Leave them alone. Many people don't care about religion anymore.
[short pause]
ON STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS OF A SAGE
On what state of consciousness the Sage has in regard to thinking and pure intuition.
PB: If you ask twenty Sages, you would think you would get the same answer. But you don't. Each will give you his answer. Atmananda disagreed with the Maharshi. He disapproved of his condoning of yoga. Atmananda espoused pure jnana. He once told a disciple who wanted to see the Maharshi that if he went not to come back. I asked him myself about this, why he did this. Why do they differ if there is only one Truth? The answer must be that there are grades of receptivity to and purity of realization. Whether he is operating with thinking or intuition, his state of consciousness depends on him.
G: You once said to me that men are not Gods.
PB: Yes. Because in the highest state, Nirvikalpa, there are no men or Gods. They are absorbed and not there.
G: From what I have understood from Tony, the different teachings are different aspects or approaches to the Truth, more or less limited, but they are all of the same Truth. It seems that jnana and yoga should be seen as the same, should merge into the same path.
PB: Yes. You can see that they are different paths, like a mountain with the Truth at the top and all the paths below it coming from different sides. They are all paths with the same goal of the one Truth. Ramana said that if you know the "I" you will find the Truth. Atmananda said, what about the world? There are all of these questions. If you let the mind be quiet, as Lao-Tzu suggests, these questions disappear. You fall into the quietude of Truth. All questions disappear on the highest level. You must let the stillness overcome you. Dakshinamurti taught by silence. Never said anything or wrote anything because the Truth can be found in silence. The Buddha chose Kasyapa to follow him because he did not respond where the others gave their answers. When Jesus was questioned by Pontius Pilate on what the Truth is, Jesus went into that stillness completely, on all levels. And Socrates, he stood for 24 hours and never took part in any activity. He did what all the others mentioned did. He went into Wu Wei, inaction, on all levels of being, physical, mental, emotional. That is stillness. They are not in a dumb Void but in the living Void.
G: Also Plato, the reference in the Seventh Epistle, "I have said nothing about these matters in any of my writings."
PB: Yes. He taught the highest. They keep silent because that's where the Truth can be found. Some try to imitate them and say nothing so people think they must be realized. Meher Baba kept silent for 17 years. The Maharshi would sometimes answer questions, sometimes not. I learned that you must get help from the outside to find out what is inside. The Maharshi repeatedly said to me, and to others, that you have to go within and to go deeper within yourself. Many people think that if they have some inner experience through the practice of meditation that it is self-realization. But the fact is that they have to go still deeper and deeper to attain the pure and unadulterated Truth.
ON THE CRY OF DESOLATION, NEW TESTAMENT
On another subject.
I mentioned that I had finished work on notes on Lamsa's translation of the New Testament on Christ's so-called cry of desolation. I also brought up the fact that there had been allusion to Jacques Romano. PB began to talk about him. He said that he had met him quite a long time ago and that he used to dine with him regularly. It was he who first introduced him to the idea that the cry of desolation was in fact an inaccurate translation of the actual utterance. Taken from the original language, Aramaic, in which it had come from, the translation says, "My God, my God, how thou dost glorify me," which is slightly different from Lamsa's translation, "My God, my God, for this thou hast prepared me." Both translations reject the translation which now prevails in the West. Romano was a Spaniard, well-educated, and he worked for the Kodak company. Because of his abilities with languages, he knew about a half-dozen, he was able to travel around the world and through this was able to pursue his own private spiritual research. When Romano was younger, through a kind of clairvoyant experience, ascertained that he should set out to find his guru in some desert. He set out on his journey completely on the basis of this, went into the desert but at a certain point came to a point of complete exhaustion and had to give up his search. Some of the natives in the area picked him up and later he learned that had he continued only twenty minutes further, he would have reached the man he sought. The guru was of the Sufi tradition. Romano lived to be 97 years old and his wife died when he was about 90. She was about thirty years younger than he was but he was very saddened over her death. Apparently he had been with her all these years and never had a harsh word passed between them. And she was perfectly harmonized with his spiritual attitudes. He said that it had been an ideal marriage and that he didn't want to live anymore. He had nothing to live for because it had been such a wonderful marriage. Long before then there had been a degree of persecution of the Sufis by the rulers in that area which at that time was under Turkish control. The Caliph of Baghdad had beheaded the leader of the Sufi sect there because of the esoteric teaching of that group. In his spiritual ecstasy he repeatedly made the statement that "I am God" and the highly orthodox Mohammedans of that country are extremely strict. Even Mohammed said that he was a messenger and nothing more. Even now it would be very dangerous to say this.
[short pause]
ON THE JESUIT OUTLOOK AND MEDITATION IN EUROPE
Another subject.
PB had me research an article for him written by a Jesuit which had described the progressive ossification in which an original spiritual idea or revelation becomes crystallized and finally dogmatized by a religious body. It becomes categorized, formalized, and made inflexible as it passes down from the inspirational level. PB admired the man's courage for saying what he had, considering his position in the Church. He said that fifty years ago he could never have written such an article. It is in part due to the erosion of popular support of religion that is causing a certain amount of flexibility within the Church to liberalize its outlook and not to be so exclusive of other ideas, traditions, and to accept the possibility that inspiration could still come to any person who has the qualifications.
He said that there had been Jesuits who had tried to prevail upon him to write, instead of the secret books on the Orient, to write a book on A Search in Secret Europe. (laughter) Apparently they knew of scattered enclaves of monks in monasteries in Europe where they practiced meditation, not just of the elementary varieties of religious prayer and so forth but of the highest order. Some were able to attain Nirvikalpa samadhi, right in Europe he said. He said that there were monasteries where monks and nuns did nothing but meditate. The more exoteric members of the community were not involved in this yet it did exist in the higher echelons of these groups. There were two people that could be mentioned who got into trouble for recommending meditation in the high yogic sense. They were imprisoned. One was kept there for the rest of his life and the other had an escape arranged for him. The first was Miguel Molinos, a Spaniard, whose great friend was the Pope. The second was Saint John of the Cross, also a Spaniard, noted for his theological depth.
PB: What do you think Christ's counsel, "Be as gentle as a lamb and as wise as a serpent," means?
He said that the climate had changed enough in recent years that people like (Crow), whom I was researching, was able to not only think these things in private but to also speak them in public, and the fact that the ecclesiastics are losing their constituents is causing them to be more open and flexible to new ideas and ways, that they would not have exercised such a degree of tolerance if they were not in a position of weakness now. He said that if they were in a position of power they would be as intolerant as ever. He said that he knew of a person in the Catholic Church who was the head of an academy in Rome itself who was going to denounce the Catholic Church for their disapproval of meditation. He was very disgusted with their refusals to be able to give the higher teaching than that which prevailed then. He intended to do this but never did and died before anything was said in public.
I asked whether there was an esoteric tradition within the higher echelons of the established Catholic Church. He said that there were some that did understand and some that didn't. He said that there were some that the inspiration was powerful enough that they have to stand aside and let them come through. Their popular appeal is so great and the power that they have is so strong in their character that it propels them to the fore and the others can't really say anything. He cited Pope John the 23rd as a Pope who had great popular appeal and mentioned that a half a million people greeted him when he landed in Bombay during his visit to India and that it was a tremendous show of support. Through his connection with his Jesuit's friends PB was able to obtain a pass to the Vatican library. He said that there were all sorts of esoteric books which are banned and not allowed for public consumption. There's a blacklist that books can be put on and all his books, except Search in Secret Egypt [Note: A Search in Secret Egypt by Paul Brunton, 1936.], have been put on this blacklist. (some laughter) Some of these books go back to the third century. All of the books are present but they are not accessible. It was rather unusual that he was able to obtain access to these books, particularly in view of their regard for his work.
He talked about the power of the Jesuits in previous centuries. Back during the Inquisition their strength was such that they were able to withstand much of the persecution. He said that the best Catholic minds today are the Jesuits. He mentioned Molinos and Madame Guyon. Molinos had been in prison for the last twelve years of his life because of his ideas. They wanted to put him to death. But it was through the influence of the Pope whom he had a close personal relationship with that he was able to have a stay of execution. That was as much as the Pope could do. Madame Guyon, who had begun the Quietist movement, also fell under their persecution for their beliefs. She was put in the Bastille for teaching meditation to the lay people. PB's own notions of caution go back not merely to the recent past but even back as far as to the Romans whom he said he had trouble with too." (bit of laughter)
S (very faint): [few words inaudible]
S (very faint): Of course.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "PB said…"
S (simultaneously, faint): (Would you--)
BG: I'm sorry?
S: Would you repeat that?
S: What?
S: What you just--
S: What you just read.
BG: About his own notions of caution?
S (faint): Yeah.
S (faint): Yes.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "…go back not merely to the recent past but even back as far as to the Romans…"
S (very faint): Well that explains [one/two words inaudible]
S: (Could you/Did he) explain it? (bit of laughter)
S (very faint): [one word inaudible]
BG: Pardon?
S (faint): Could you explain that? Just go back and [one/two words inaudible] right here.
BG: How f-- how far back? To-- Alright, I'll read the whole paragraph.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "He talked about the power of the Jesuits in previous centuries. Back during the Inquisition their strength was such that they were able to withstand much of the persecution. He said that the best Catholic minds today are the Jesuits. He mentioned Molinos and Madame Guyon. Molinos had been in prison for the last twelve years of his life because of his ideas. They wanted to put him to death. But it was through the influence of the Pope whom he had a close personal relationship with that he was able to have a stay of execution. That was as much as the Pope could do. Madame Guyon, who had begun the Quietist movement, also fell under their persecution for her beliefs. She was put in the Bastille for teaching meditation to the lay people…
[short pause]
PB said that there was an Italian abbot who was so disturbed with the rigidity of the Catholic standpoint and was unable to operate within the freedom that his own ideas had carried him that he wanted to resign his post as head of a monastery which he was responsible for. But he was in a very high position, well-respected, and they didn't want him to resign his post. They felt it would be a slur on the Church and look bad upon them. So they wouldn't let him do it. Nevertheless he persisted but they still wouldn't let him go. He mentioned that he wanted to start a new life, get married, and live outside the present framework although he would still remain as a Catholic. However he was persistent enough that they finally let him go. PB didn't mention him by name but he knew him personally. He was a highly educated man. After he left his post, everywhere he went to get a job he would be on the verge of getting a position but the Catholic Church would intercede and it would deny him a job in the educational sphere. Apparently he was not able to get a job anywhere in Italy even though he was an intelligent capable man. The pattern of having the job taken away from him at the last minute followed him everywhere he went. He finally emigrated to a foreign country and got a post as a principle of some college, got married and raised a family and was very successful in his new life.
ON HOW ANTHONY SET UP WG
On another subject.
I mentioned that the Center had involved itself in the community's activities by sponsoring a booth at the fireman's fair in the area. (laughter) Members of the group…"
BG: Well, you know what happened. (some laughter)
S: Speak a little louder, would you? [few words inaudible] (laughter)
BG Notes [BG reading]: "PB said that it was a wonderful idea. (laughter, clapping, student words) He asked if it was Tony's idea and I said that I thought that it was. He said that Tony understands these things, (bit of laughter) that he was practical and understands the importance of maintaining the right posture and what people can do. I mentioned that Tony had established the Center in a completely independent way so that there would be no financial or legal connections with anything else and he went to great lengths to make it in this form. And he thought that that was a very good idea and sound judgment.
[short pause]
ON DECISION MAKING AND PEER PRESSURE
We talked a bit about how others can interfere in a person's quest and this grew out of a discussion of one of PB's students who had not converted to vegetarianism because of what he said was peer pressure by his colleagues. PB said that, "Well, of course that's a decision he's made on his own." He said that that was a choice he had made. You can adjust your life to accommodate your convictions or you can do the reverse and he has obviously made his choice. I mentioned that some people might disapprove but that they might not interfere. And he said that it was alright. Disapproval is one thing but when they interfere it's another. It depends on the individual's strength.
[short pause]
ON SIDDHESHWARANANDA
On another subject.
PB had become involved with Siddheshwarananda who was a Ramakrishna disciple who was founding an order in the vicinity of Paris. PB counseled him during a 17-day boat trip from India on what to and what not to say while he was in the area so that he was able to avoid some of the problems and resistance in terms of integrating his ideas with others while on this mission. He delivered some fourteen lectures at the Sorbonne which were very successful, so much so that some thirty or forty priests attended them and they were well-received. He was able to show the parallels between the ideas of Advaita Vedanta and the ideas of Saint John of the Cross, whom PB regards as having some of the highest ideas that can be found within the Christian tradition. He was able to avoid a lot of the problems and was able to have a very successful life there.
ON MILK
On milk.
PB said that his abstinence was due to both allergy and personal preference and that he doesn't like the taste. He said that when Moses had offered the people the land of milk and honey, had he been with him he would have turned back." (laughter, student words)
(Side 1 of original cassette tape digitized as 1980 0105a Ends; Side 2 Begins)
BG Notes [BG reading]: "…own people but also the Israelis by offering to come to speak before the Knesset. Why did he do this? It is an unknown fact that he is a mystic and this colored his outlook. He is one of the few politicians who can be looked up to as great. Secondly, he was a great soul because he once had an illumination and that has changed his outlook. That made him feel that the only way to come to a solution is by seeking a peaceful resolution.
COMMENT ON PEOPLE WHO WAIT FOR THE MESSIAH
Commenting about people who are waiting for the Messiah to come.
PB: What would they look for if a Messiah should come? They probably wouldn't recognize him if he did come. The idea of the avatar is intended for the masses. It has a mass appeal. It appeals to things like miracles, spectacular things that capture the imagination. That has nothing to do with philosophy. For philosophers, that is not really necessary.
G: The teachings were already available in the major traditions.
PB: Yes. The masses are those who benefit by the avatar.
ON FREE WILL
September 8th
We began talking about free will.
He asked me about genetic research and what they were doing and I tried to explain what I knew about it.
PB: The scientists have complete control over the organisms, their life and death then.
G: Yes. They have created forms that are entirely dependent upon their care and support for them to continue existence where they would otherwise die very rapidly. The strains that are created for advanced genetic research of recombinant DNA are such that they cannot survive outside the environment that man has created for them. It is a precaution so that the organisms cannot escape and spread into the research facility and become virulent diseases.
PB: Then in a sense these organisms have no free will.
G: That's true.
PB: Then if we transpose this to the human level, then we can see that there might be higher beings that are controlling human destiny.
G: Yes. The Gods are controlling humans.
PB: Then in that sense there's no free will.
G: Yes. From the point of view of the World-Idea, everything is an accomplished fact.
PB: Yes, from that point of view it is obvious everything seems fated and fixed. We talked about Wei Wu Wei before who had achieved enlightenment without any discipline or work in his life. And his teaching is that there is no need for meditation or study, etc, the Long Path, that they are unnecessary and in fact can be impediments.
G: He would say that there is no free will, that there was always enlightenment.
PB: Has the subject of free will been discussed in class?
G: It has. But I don't remember it being discussed in a long time in detail. It was my understanding from the ultimate point of view that there was no free will. From the point of view of the World-Idea everything is an accomplished fact. From a practical point of view it appears that we have free will, that there is an ability of the individual to identify with the higher Self. It is in the higher Self that the freedom exists, which is always free, and at this level there is no question of free will. It's a meaningless question.
PB: That's true. There are three schools of Advaita Vedanta. One of them states that one can only achieve enlightenment after death. Another states that this is possible while still alive. [BG: And I don't think we discussed the third.] Ramana and Shankara are the school of thought that there was no creation and there is only Mind.
G: That can be a problem, (bit of laughter) because it would seem that the statement "all is Mind" does not necessarily preclude the universe. You have often made statements that Sages walk around in the world, around objects, and they can function in the world. They can perceive a world, and yet they see it as not other than Mind.
PB: These statements, that there is nothing other than Mind, that there is no creation, can create confusion because the statement is not finished. It is an incomplete statement. It becomes a problem of semantics.
PB…"
AS: Oh.
BG: (Well--)
BG Notes [BG reading]: "PB: Well, I've learned some things since I wrote my last book. And if I write a new discussion of this, I will not speak about anything that cannot be discussed. You have to take into account the dual standpoint, the practical and the ultimate. From the practical standpoint, one can consider that there is a certain amount of free will, and from the ultimate there wouldn't be any. The whole discussion of fate and free will, which has gone on for so many years, when we try to relate it to the highest level which we who study Philosophy of Truth know, always end in the discovery that our freedom is nothing because God is everything. That understood, again from the highest, ultimate point of view, we have then to descend, to climb down to a lesser level and review the situation again.
From the non-ultimate but empirical level, it is then that we discover where the measure of freedom which we do possess, where it is. It is no longer in the body but in that which lives in the body, and that is the mind. Here we can do what we ourselves choose by the freedom of ours and what was done by Sadat when he did what he did by changing the mind's outlook from what it had been in earlier years to what he did when his body was taken to Israel and gave sincere utterance to true thoughts which offered his hearers a higher outlook on their lives. What he offered them was the opportunity, in other words, to change their ideas, their thoughts, and embrace peace just as sincerely and truthfully with them and him. Now what he was doing was trying to change their thoughts, minds, and express their own free will instead of remaining hemmed in as they were by a situation created by their past. In short, if only they would make the leap into the real present, the true Now, a new life based on peace would come to both, for all of them. Do you not see that this could have come true if they would have used their real freedom and leapt out of the prison of the past which their old thinking insisted upon staying. This is the freedom of will which not only they but we ourselves possess. And this is the freedom we do possess, this change of thinking. It is a very real thing but it requires faith. This is the answer to fate vs. free will question. With faith they have freedom. Without it, there can be no freedom.
People look around and see their limitations in the physical life. Sadat looked around and saw not only those limitations but also the possibilities. If he could arouse them to see those possibilities, as he had seen them in his own self, they would have changed and done what was needed to make a real peace within a day. But the weight upon them was so heavy that the bars which constitute this weight, which are their own thoughts collected out of the past, and all that happened in their past, still kept them down. Yet it is up to them to accept the Truth which Sadat offered to them, and the Truth which would make them free to use their higher freedom. They should be grateful that such a man as Sadat was used by the higher power to carry this message to the Israeli people, just as Mohammed was used to carry a different kind of message more than a thousand years ago to the Arabs. If all this were not possible, then I would echo the words which Ramana Maharshi once uttered in response to a question about a totally different matter, although it was a question bearing upon the right [one word inaudible] (life). "If this is not possible, then there is no hope for mankind."
[short pause]
ON HEALING
On another subject.
Later on that day we were having tea and I reverted to what the geneticists were doing. I was interested in how far a man can interfere with Nature before it becomes black magic, how much he can use medical help. PB did not respond directly to my question as far as I could see but he did say that he had been interested in healing all of his life and that certain people did have a gift which was given to them but it needed discovery and training.
[short pause]
He mentioned two people, Macmillan and Brother Mandus, who had done spiritual mentalistic healing. One of them, Macmillan, was not aware that he had this gift until it was pointed out to him by someone. He was told that he had the gift but that he (had to develop it/hadn't developed it).
G: There is a psychic in Ithaca who told me that after a session he was completely exhausted.
[BG: And this grew out of a comment that PB made that McMillan had died at a fairly early age.]
PB said that he thought that this practice had worn him out and that he had overdone it.
ON STEINER
September 9th
We began discussing Steiner, which grew out of work which I was doing today on notes from a book called The Faithful Thinker [Note: The Faithful Thinker: Centenary Essays on The Work and Thought of Rudolf Steiner, edited by A. C. Harwood, 1961.] which some of his followers had written.
PB: Steiner is a genius. Anything he applied his mind to he seemed to be able to make a contribution to--agriculture, politics, economics.
G: Did you ever meet him?
PB: Yes, many years ago when I was quite young. He was limited by his Western orientation and was biased against the Eastern teaching. He wasn't sufficiently interested to study them.
G: Were you able to discuss this with him during your meetings?
PB: Very little. I was too young to criticize Steiner for his attitudes. He wrote a book called The Threefold Commonwealth in 1919 [Note: The Threefold Commonwealth by Rudolf Steiner, 1922 (original English translation).] which was just after Germany had been crushed in the First World War.
G: Yes, people would buy a loaf of bread then with a bushelful of Germany money.
PB: Yes, that's true. His book was an attempt to propose a new way of setting up a new country, a new government, and a new system, to establish a state on a completely new foundation. The book sold a hundred thousand copies, which was quite a remarkable printing. It was widely read, mostly by the younger people, but also by some of the older, more established people as well. I respected Steiner not only for his mind but also for a strong sense of integrity which I respected and could sense. The three aspects of the book were economics, spirituality, and politics. His conception of spirituality was confined to his Christian background. A relative of mine had been a publisher of his books and who was also within the Steiner group, so I was getting a steady stream of information about Steiner from this channel. The Steiner movement broke up into two groups upon his death. His wife assumed the most important one with the greatest part of the following and the physical facilities as well. The other group more or less withered and didn't go very far. Her group remained strong and carried on Steiner's idea, which is the one which is familiar today.
[12¾ second pause]
ON NEW ZEALAND
The subject of PB's residence in New Zealand came up and the fact that he had lived in places all over the world. He stayed in Perth, Australia in 1959-61 first and then went to New Zealand in 1961-64. He attracted whatever small contingency of spiritual aspirants that was in the area. He said that they find him out.
G: I wasn't aware that there was any appreciable spiritual movement originating from that area, no literature or groups that I had heard of.
PB: Well, there's a small number in New Zealand.
He said that New Zealand was the southernmost inhabited part on the place of the globe. It is slightly north of Antarctica. He said that he thought, and did in fact find, that there was a slightly different atmosphere because of this.
I was curious as to why he chose to go there, whether it was for privacy or request by people and so forth. He says that he goes where he is told. (And) as he went to Ithaca because he was told to.
I was curious as to the condition where the Sage appears to have his will aligned with God's will and this in connection with his statements that he goes where he is told.
G: Is it a relief that the personal burden seems to be taken away since a person would tend to depend and rely on that inner guidance?
PB: It isn't always that easy. Sometimes I am asked to do something that I don't want to do.
[BG: And I was a little puzzled that there seemed to be an element of independent individual will operating according to that statement.]
PB said that there was an element of personal will that still remained, that he could be given instruction but the manner in which it was carried out was not necessarily determined and he could do it as he wished. He made a comment that this would sometimes bring him into contact with people that he would find undesirable, that he wouldn't want to but he would do it anyway.
G: Are the reasons for doing something always given to you?
PB: Not always. I may or may not know.
[short pause]
TWO ANECDOTAL STORIES
Two anecdotal stories.
During the time he was in New York City, PB experienced a strong need, a craving for sweet things with sugar. He counteracted this by stocking up on large quantities of baklava. (laughter, student words) He used to frequent a particular restaurant where they served it. He would buy six or seven rolls at a time, which would be a week's supply. But the restaurant owner appreciated his aesthetic sense of Greek cuisine so much that with every order he would give him a free roll." (laughter, student words)
BG: What-- and another one.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "While in Lausanne, after going to the library, PB made a comment that the students are not so stupid. Apparently they are reading his books all of the time. He was once checking some books out with one curator who stopped him and said:"Are you the Paul Brunton?" (bit of laughter) PB replied: "I don't know, is there another one?" (laughter, student words) Curator: "Are you the one who writes those books?" (laughter) PB: "Yes." Curator: "You mean that after all these years you are writing about the same things? (bit of laughter) I could tell that you were studying the same subjects from the books that you take out." PB said that he sort of shook his head as if to say, "Are you still carrying on with that sort of foolish stuff?" (bit of laughter) He said that the students in Lausanne (have/has) the books out constantly."
[short pause]
ON HOW PEOPLE LEARN OF PB'S BOOKS
BG: We talked a little about how people come on to his books.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "G: Are there any groups in Switzerland that are studying your books?
PB: Not that I know of."
BG: It seemed that people were finding out about his books by word of mouth and their professors were scribing-- prescribing one set of books and the students were reading another, sort of on their own. While I was there I had a wisdom tooth pulled, a lower wisdom tooth. And I was curious about the connection between the body and the psyche, and that it seemed that-- that tampering with something like that could produce corresponding psy-- psychic repercussions.
ON THE PHYSICAL BODY
BG Notes [BG reading]: "PB: Yes, there is obviously a connection between the physical body and the mind. That is well known."
BG: He did not go into the details in the teeth example but he did say that it was good that it had been a lower one. He said that-- he said however, commenting on someone he heard who had had a kidney removed, as he remembered it--
BG Notes [BG reading]: "…that after the operation had lost all desire or will to meditate. There was obviously some connection between the physical event and psychological attitude."
S: Excuse me for just [one/two words inaudible] it is a lower (one)?
S (faint, possibly same S as above): Oh, very good.
[15¼ second pause]
ON MILK
BG: PB brought up the topic of milk. And, I said--
BG Notes [BG reading]: "I realize you could find any teaching that you want to justify whatever diet you want. But it would be easier for me to let go of milk if I knew why it wasn't a desirable substance."
BG: And I asked if there were any psychic kinds of effects which arise from ingesting an animal product even though it isn't the flesh.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "PB: No. There aren't any spiritual reasons why you couldn't drink milk. The Chinese don't drink milk-- (laughter) The Chinese don't drink milk because they consider it baby food, and that after a certain time the adults had no need for it and so they wouldn't drink it."
He asked if many people in the group drank milk products and I said that I thought almost everyone did. He said that Tony needs it for his ulcer.
There was a man who suffered from ulcers. [BG: This is sort of aside.] He also suffered from a quick temper which he did not manifest to people so that they would think well of him, except to his wife, which she patiently bore. The pain eventually got so bad that he prayed to Sai Baba. He had not met him but had heard of him as being a holy man who was also a healer. This man prayed so intensely that he got a real healing and was cured. The intensity of his pain created the intensity of his prayer, because after that he changed his attitude toward his wife and treated her without anger. Years later he went to India and met Sai Baba but never became a disciple.
[9¾ second pause]
He said that most of the Indian gurus, including Ramana, whom he met took milk products and it was considered alright. [short pause] He asked me if there were any other animals that partook of milk other than man and cows and I said that all mammals did, that it was a biological definition. He said that that was an argument in favor of taking milk then because he thought it was peculiar to humans that they took milk."
[18¾ second pause]
ON HEALING
BG: PB mentioned to me that his leg had been bothering me-- been bothering him. (laughter)
S (amidst laughter): He didn't?
S (amidst laughter): (Yeah.) (laughter)
S (faint): So-- so I suppose. (more laughter)
BG: Yeah, he has a-- a condition called sciatica--
BG Notes [BG reading]: "…which had developed many years ago while in the Himalayas from taking baths in the cold mountain water. During one particular bath he felt a shock and he knew something had snapped. And from that time on he had a recurring problem. He went to a number of doctors but they were no help to him. He finally found a pair of them and in Chicago. And under the treatment of both of them it went away."
BG: And--
BG Notes [BG reading]: "He mentioned that there was a man whom he knew in India who had a very important position as director of all of the railroad systems in India. He was also a very devoted and highly advanced mystic. He had even commented to PB in a very humble way that he knew he could do a forty day fast if he wanted to but had decided against it. PB said that this was an example which showed that it was indeed possible to attain a high position of prominence and still be developed spiritually. Another individual had also had trouble with his leg and had searched everywhere using every available medical specialist but had had no success with them. Finally he went to someone who was not in the medical profession but had a gift for healing. He didn't have much training in homeopathic work, which was more in his line. But after one treatment the man was completely cured and never an-- ever had any recurrence afterward."
[short pause]
BG: PB recommended a herb called senna, which is well known as a mild but effective laxative, and it can be used as a tea.
S (faint): What herb is it?
S (faint): Senna.
BG: Senna, s-e-n-n-a.
ON STEINER'S EXPERIENCES; CHRISTIANITY AND THE TRINITY
BG Notes [BG reading]: "We were talking about Steiner's clairvoyant experiences of Golgatha and the crucifixion. And that he said that another person, Todd Ferrier, had also written accounts of the life of Christ. PB said that he knew him and that he was a very saintly man."
BG: And he commented on the Trinity.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "The Father is the ineffable Godhead, Mind. Son is the Soul of the Universe, World-Mind. The Holy Ghost is the soul of each individual, the Overself."
S (faint): Repeat it over again?
BG Notes [BG reading]: "The Father is the ineffable Godhead, Mind. The Son is the Soul of the Universe, World-Mind. The Holy Ghost is the soul of each individual, the Overself."
[short pause]
ON TEMPER
BG: We were talking about someone that PB knew who had a temper, a problem with the temper.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "PB said that Ramana once beat his brother. The brother had a temper and used to berate the servants in the ashram. He would rail against one particular girl and had beaten her twice. [BG: This is the brother.] When he began the third time, Ramana picked up a stick and beat him with very hard blows on his shoulders, saying,"How do you like being beaten?"
ON SENTIMENTALITY AND WHITE SUGAR
PB: Once Ramana was listening to a song with a sad sentimental quality and began to weep. There were visitors there who had come to see this great yogi and wondered why this was happening. Ramana replied: "What do you think I'm made out of, stone?" They have feelings.
PB commented that when he was with Mahesh Yogi that he ate only rice, milk, and sugar. It is light…"
S (simultaneously, faint): Sugar?
BG Notes [BG reading]: "…and sugar. It is light so he can continue to work. But PB said,"But white sugar?"" (laughter, student words)
ON ANGER
BG: Oh. Back on the point of anger.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "PB said that there were two schools of thought about how to deal with anger. One says to suppress it and the other express it. (bit of laughter) The best way is to cut it off in the first few seconds before it can take hold. He said to say"No!", even loud, to bring it down to the physical level. Then it can be nipped in the bud.
[short pause]
[S: (Go ahead.)]
ON ALBERT CLIFFE AND MENTAL HEALING
PB related a story about Albert Cliffe who was a mental healer. He was teaching a Bible class in Montreal which drew very large crowds. He thought that all negative thoughts affect the body. He had been very active all of his life in this area but suddenly developed leukemia and eventually died. He tried all his powers on himself to cure the disease but failed. He died in bewilderment because he couldn't understand why this had happened to him as he could not think of any negative thoughts that he had which could have provoked the illness. PB said that the teachings he gave were good but not complete. He had left out two ideas--reincarnation and karma. He believed in them but he couldn't reveal this because of his Christian background. PB said that many of the people in these groups overuse their treatments of mentalistic healing."
[short pause]
ON ASTROLOGY READING
BG: PB commented on his astrological reading that he had in Search in Secret India. He mentioned an astrologer who had done a--
BG Notes [BG reading]: "G: Your chart which you had read, was it accurate?
PB: In certain general things he was. About 80% correct. He said that I would become an interpreter of Mayavada, an (antardrashti) for the West, which is sort of true. He also predicted a shipwreck, which actually happened. Later he became famous. Some people came to me later and complained because he had given them false readings. The astrologer gradually grew worse and worse. He was probably being overused. You have to be very careful when you make predictions.
[short pause]
ON MARTINUS
October 12th
When PB was a young man he was invited to stay with Martinus to study and he stayed for three months. He was Danish and also lived in Ireland. He had never been sick a day in his life when he suddenly got cancer at 60. He had to have an operation but after it all of his strength was gone and he had to stop work. He eventually died two or three years later. He had a series of visions which were quite genuine. The first was a ball of light coming toward him which transformed into Christ. It was an initiation. He later studied other Oriental teachings. He wrote seven volumes based on the visions he had had, colored symbols which he had to interpret, each representing a quality of the Spirit. Each vision produced a volume, which together produced the work called The Book of Life. [Note: The Third Testament, The Book of Life, in seven volumes, by Martinus. Some volumes are not available in English yet.]
The next day.
Martinus was a very saintly man who was short and broad and very kindly. He was strictly vegetarian.
G: Was he of the highest order?
PB: No, not what I would call a philosopher. He was very saintly. He had an innocent, almost boy-like quality about him. When he was very young he tried to be as much like Christ as possible, to act in every way like him. He had no teacher except for someone who was an occultist. He relied on his inner intuition, a kind of higher intuition, to interpret these visions. He didn't have any interest in metaphysics. He made claims that he had never been sick a day in his life and said that it was impossible for him to get sick. I think that was a lesson of his illness.
G: You said that you must be very careful when you make any claims.
PB: Yes.
G: But from the way you describe him, the claim wouldn't have been made as a conceit.
PB: Yes. But it suggests a knowledge of the future, and one must be very careful there. It is very difficult to predict things with accuracy.
G: It is a real problem to know when your intuitions are valid, probably most often when you're just beginning.
PB: Yes. There are all sorts of things that can be misinterpreted or you can be misled.
G: Then how do you know?
PB: It comes with practice. You can see and study its results when acting upon it.
G: Then there is almost a process of trial and error that experience will provide.
PB: Yes. You have to be still. It must be tested in seeing its results when it is acted upon. Life is learning. There is danger in making claims in healing. You get the point, don't you?
G: I'm not sure that I do.
PB: Well, there is the danger of a swollen ego.
G: You said before that you had to make a choice at a certain point and gave up your powers.
PB: Well, the occult, which also included powers. It was either keep them, which I could have, or not. Keep them and you stop. That's the danger. They can be fascinating and attractive. You can get a swollen ego.
ON GENETICS AND BIOLOGY
October 14th
[short pause]
PB: You brought up the subject of genetics before. I have a question for you based on your knowledge of biology. Have the geneticists created new life?
G: Do you mean the life force or the physical forms?
PB: Created life.
G: No. They have just created forms through which the life force can express itself, a new vehicle.
PB: Then they haven't gotten that far yet. (bit of laughter)
G: No. If they create these life forms which have the capacity to receive the life's force, must Nature conform to this invocation if the form is adequate?
PB: I only know that they will be put to a stop if man goes too far.
G: In the same way the Atlanteans were?
PB: Something like that, only that was different.
[short pause]
ON SPIRITUALISM
September 26th
[short pause]
We began talking about spiritualism.
G: I saw a film that showed some people in Russia who could move metal objects by moving their hands over them. I think it was released by the government.
PB: The people who did it were in the government?
G: No. It was conducted by scientists there. They seem to have a lot of interest in that sort of thing.
PB: Yes. Sometimes they do and other times not. Being atheist, they don't want it coming out. They call it science. But we know it is black magic. I knew of a Czechoslovakian man who was hypnotized from a distance and they were using him. Uri Geller could bend metal objects and set clocks right at a distance. To use it for their own purposes they're interested in it, that is, for their selfish purposes.
[short pause]
ON SAI BABA
On Sai Baba.
PB: Do you know who he is?
G: He's an Indian guru.
PB: Not just a guru.
G: He's supposed to be a Messiah.
PB: He's got a very strange appearance: Short, stout, with a blue-hued skin and a dark lock of hair. And the blue collar?
G: Krishna.
PB: Yes. He does those sorts of things, materializations and so forth. I got a letter from someone who thought he was the Way. He said that he had to go to a little remote village by taking a two hour taxi ride there. When he got there he had to report to the police to register with them. While he was sitting he saw a picture of Sai Baba and a very strange thing happened. He saw a tear forming in his eye of the picture. And instead of falling to the ground it moved toward him and hit him right in the heart. It provoked a very emotional experience in the man. I always thought that he was an emotional person before anyway. (laughter) But he went into uncontrollable sobbing and even screaming. Later the police asked him what had happened to him and he told them.
G: Did they allow him to stay after that? (bit of laughter)
PB: Yes. They were mostly devotees around there. It used to be a little village but a whole community sprang up around him. One person said they have an auditorium which seats a hundred thousand people. Somebody else said fifty thousand.
G: The largest football stadiums seat eighty thousand people.
PB: And they are built in a rich country. What could the poor build? It's all in the imagination, let me tell you. Anyway, later he went into the hall to see him. Sai Baba can't interview everybody but he passes through the crowd and selects a few. He walked in the direction of the man, selecting a few as he came closer. The man was sure he was looking at him and that he would select him. He thought that he couldn't stand another experience like the one before. He was just about to get up to run out of the hall when Sai Baba stopped and turned around. The man was sure that he had read his thoughts and stopped because of what he had picked up. They say he's the Messiah. They become famous and then come and go. But he's been around a long time. I had an opportunity to see him years ago but didn't.
G: You said that magical and miraculous things have nothing to do with philosophy.
PB: Yes. But it's something.
G: Why didn't you go to see him though?
PB: Because I felt then, and still do, that he's mixed up with spiritualism, the higher spiritualism. There's nothing new in his teaching. Straight Hinduism, vegetarianism, so forth. But he's doing good.
[short pause]
ON RUSSIANS
Another subject.
G: The karmic repercussions of what the Russians have done must be very great.
PB: It's not necessarily the Russian people. There are a few who have seized power. The ordinary peasants aren't necessarily bad.
[short pause]
ON PAIN
October 16th
[9¾ second pause]
PB: I was talking on the phone to a man who told me of a waiter whom he had come to know over a period of time whom he noticed to always seem to be happy. Since he had gotten to be familiar with him, he asked him why. The waiter replied that he didn't know why, but he was always happy. If he was always happy, he would have to be self-realized. Otherwise karma or circumstances, whatever you want to call it, would create a situation where he would feel a lack at some point and he would become unhappy.
G: It would seem that the soul would create a need to urge him toward growth.
PB, smiling: The waiter will have to wait until he has a tooth pulled or something to feel unhappy. (laughter, student words) The Tibetan Rinpoche told X that when the Chinese tortured him he felt pain but that there was no ego there.
G: Y told me a long time ago about a recollection of a previous life where she was being tortured and someone lifted her out of her body and she exclaimed, "You fools, it doesn't hurt a bit."
[Transcriber note: The following bracketed sentence not on this version of the audio.]
PB: [Yes, those things happen.]
[Audio File 1980 0105a Ends]
[Audio File 1980 0105b Begins]
BG Notes [BG reading]: "G: Ramana was also supposed to have been operated upon and removed consciousness from the body.
PB: No, that was different. There are all kinds of stories and exaggerations made. A highly advanced person will tell you something different from an undeveloped one. One man named Bose, who had been with Aurobindo and for certain reasons left him and went to the Ramana ashram, was there at the time. He told me that while the operation was being performed Ramana kept quiet and didn't show any sensation. The devotees used to go to bed around nine o'clock but a very dim light was left on. Around ten o'clock, when everyone was supposed to be asleep, he began to hear the Maharshi groaning with pain. He heard this, but he was able to control it during the day.
Later.
PB: Do you think they don't feel pain?
G: In my understanding, if he functions through the physical body he will experience pain like anyone else. If he is withdrawn in Nirvikalpa samadhi he wouldn't. It would seem that he could withdraw consciousness from the body.
PB: Yes, if he is in Nirvikalpa samadhi he wouldn't feel anything. Even lesser yogis can do this.
G: Perhaps I shouldn't be asking such questions, but it would seem that even in the higher levels one could experience pain or unpleasant experiences since there is an experienced world, yin and yang.
PB: Well, there are different experiences at different levels.
G: It seems to me that I remember reading in Aurobindo that he was supposed to have made some indescribable sacrifice in his life to bring the Supermind down.
PB: Each person is different.
Later.
[PB:] He has a choice. He can either dissolve into the Absolute or come back. Then he is called a Bodhisattva. He forsakes Nirvana and comes back to this world of suffering. The Buddha, when he found a way out, realized that there would always be suffering in the world.
G: Is Ramana coming back?
PB: I don't know. It's something only he knows. The devotees asked Ramana if he was coming back after his death. It showed they wanted something. He had a clever answer.
G: Where could I go?
PB: Yes.
ON PARADOX AND SIRIUS
Another subject.
PB asked me to look up authors who discussed paradox for him at the library.
PB: The references I'm looking for are those like that of Lao-Tzu who deal with the highest, not logical paradoxes. His paradoxes take you to the highest level, that of the Void. How can it be emptiness and yet the source of everything? You can find the same paradoxes in the West in Plato. Also in the Gita, the paradox "the day is as night". It can actually be experienced. It becomes the reality. All else is just appearance. They can give other explanations to make them feel they are getting something when in fact there is only one truth, one reality. This no-thing is the reality. Consciousness is the same thing which presents itself on different levels. Jacob Boehme said that a Church building was mere blocks of stone. He said that he learned more in fifteen minutes than all the universities could ever give him. How could that be? It must be a different kind of experience. They ex-communicated him. A group of townspeople went out to where he was living about fifty miles away and brought him back and dared the Church to throw him out again. They couldn't. The people couldn't understand his ideas. They were simple people, but they knew the quality of the man. He didn't care that he had been ex-communicated.
[short pause]
PB: A man called on me and wanted me to sponsor his movement. I asked why he chose their name for the movement, whether it was symbolic. He never responded when I refused to sponsor him. There was a lot of ego. I wanted to see the quality, whether it was him or the work which would express itself in the movement. I can't become a member of any group. I have to follow an independent path. It's the only way I can feel close to God, not muddled with other ideas. It was my destined path.
G: You mentioned in one of your books that Sirius was your true home and that you couldn't worship the Moon, that it was cold and ghastly I think.
PB: Yes. What I meant was that Sirius is a source of (life/light) whereas the Moon is cold, reflected light.
[short pause]
G: I remember someone making a remark once that he thought there was a danger of being swallowed up at the point of enlightenment, that he could revert to a guna, a primal element. (bit of laughter)
PB, smiling and a slight laugh: No, there's no danger of that if he's developed. (bit of laughter) They draw back because of fear of being swallowed up. One should not fear it if he is working in the right way in meditation. On the contrary, it is amazing.
[short pause]
ON ERNEST HOLMES
October 23rd
Someone had sent PB a letter which contained a summary of Earnest Holmes' teaching written on two pages by Holmes himself. PB said that he had begun as a Theosophist and had incorporated some of their ideas, such as reincarnation, into his own thought. He traveled to the United States and assimilated some of the ideas of the New Thought movement into his own teaching of which Kenneth Hurst's group, The Church of Religious Science, is an offshoot. The letter mentioned that there had been a person who had been under the treatments of this school of thought of healing, of positive thought, for a period of ten years and had had no success. He remained in the depressed state that he had begun with. PB quickly referred to some of the concepts mentioned in Holmes' summary sheet--happiness, abundance, good health and so forth--which the person was supposed to reinforce strongly in his thinking. PB said that there must be a reason why the treatment doesn't work. He said that there is an individual will and an objective framework into which he is placed. I had mentioned that more than once Tony had used an example of a person wishing that there was $20 in his pocket and it didn't make it so. PB affirmed that that was true (laughter) (and decided) that a man who had used positive thought to envision himself as successful. He had attained a very successful career but ill health developed and he was unable to enjoy the fruits of his mental work. PB said that he forgot to ask for what these schools also prescribe to be coupled with these wishes of good health and so forth so that everything is covered. You can maintain this positive thought for a certain length of time. But eventually the opposite thought will arise that maybe it isn't so and doubt will begin to pop up. Is this really possible, is this really true?
G: In a way it seems to be similar to what you have written in your notes, that the difference between the religious belief and mystical experience or philosophic understanding, the belief will carry you only so far but that it is only when the actual experience descends that there is any certitude.
PB: Yes, religion is based on belief. Some of them act as though they are Gods. There is karma which is imposed upon them from birth. They act out of ignorance of the World-Idea.
[11¾ second pause]
ON MUSIC
On music.
PB said that there were different grades of instruments and that in Indian music the tabla, which is a drum, is the lowest and is kept in the background, and others like the sitar and flute are played in prominence and are considered the most spiritual. Krishna played the flute and that's why they identify it with the God.
G: The vina is continuously sounding in the background, is supposed to be symbolic of the Om which is always present.
PB: Yes, the vina is also a spiritual instrument.
[short pause]
ON INTEGRATIVE HEALTH
October 25th
PB remarked of a man about 60 years old that he saw in Lausanne who was obviously in poor health.
PB: They should make the study of the body and of health an integral part of all philosophy. The interaction between the body and the mind is known but not as extensively as it should be. The physical body is a reflection of the etheric. There was a team of doctors in England just before the Second World War who were conducting experiments. They were able to find with an apparatus that they had devised consisting of electrodes and an argon tube that they could place these electrodes near the body and could register the etheric condition of the person. They could see how far it extended and how strong it was. They were also able to localize maladies that were present. The work had continued until the war which broke the team up, and after the end of the war they weren't able to get back together again. Some had been killed in the wars and others were quite old, so they were never ever able to resume their work. The Kirlian effect, which was discovered by a Russian technician, is well known. It registers the aura on specially treated photographic paper.
G: Did you know these men?
PB: Yes. They were interested in the higher thought and I came to know them through this connection.
ON LIBRARIES AND THE OCCULT
PB began to talk about libraries.
PB: The astral libraries have a very broad selection of material. (laughter)
G: Someone told me a number of years ago that you used to go to these libraries and read all day long. (some laughter)
PB: I was taken there. This was in my earlier days. But with my renunciation of the occult this was ended.
G: When you were beginning many years ago, did you have anyone helping you? The spiritual ideas didn't seem to be as widely accepted then as they are now in the West so it must have been very difficult.
PB: What do you mean, visible or invisible-wise?
G: Either. (some laughter)
PB: I started without any help. I had an inner guide whom I could communicate with. At first I had one which was invisible but I could get the words easily and clearly. Later on there was another one who was visible and gave experience.
[short pause]
ON TEA
On Tea.
PB: In a place like Geneva, it's much easier to get what you want. It is a magnet for all sorts of nationalities and cultures. There are all sorts of Arabs there and other ethnic groups so they serve the finer teas. They are more civilized there. Here in Lausanne they are still barbarians. (laughter)
After a long wait for a bus.
PB: You know, it wasn't time wasted. I read somewhere that there is no time wasted. (laughter, student words) If you are waiting for something or are held up, it is an opportunity [one/two words inaudible] some form of higher thought, so that there is no such thing as time wasted."
[short pause]
BG: While reading-- while PB was reading the article-- press releases on the Dalai Lama's visit to the Center, he seemed amused by the statement that the Dalai Lama's strongest drink was tea but that he preferred hot water. He said that it was very good concerning the Dalai Lama's statement that he appreciated and admired the group's views and aims and the method of study. He said that in the end it all worked out. Before then he had said that it would be a momentous occasion. [short pause]
ON CLAIRVOYANCE
In Lausanne we brought up the subject of a clairvoyant's ability to, for example, walk through the streets of Cairo blindfolded. I wanted to know how this was done, whether they were perceiving a subtle double of the physical world or whether they were actually seeing the physical world. I wanted to know how the physical and the subtle interfaced. He seemed not to answer the question at first, and he said that there were a lot of tricksters and that general clair-- genuine clairvoyance was not common.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "G: Well, what does the genuine clairvoyant see? It's obvious that he can't be seeing the world with the physical eyes if they are covered. So how does the subtle vision interact with the physical? Is he really seeing the physical?"
BG: I was-- I was sort of asking how the-- the two, the vaishvanara and the taijasa would interact, whether you could see it as an encompassing one, the larger within-- the smaller within the larger and so forth, or whether (there was) exclusive.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "PB: Well, I used to have the ability to do this at a certain point. But as I told you before, I had renounced these powers. But in my experience I could see people in the spirit world who were dead and also I could see people in the physical plane lying in bed who were actually in the physical world. It's a gift that you are more or less born with and can develop.
G: X is developing his now.
PB: Oh yes, he's trying to learn to fly. Well, maybe it will enable him to save on some airfares. (some laughter, student words)
X told PB that he thought that he had succeeded in getting a half inch off the ground. (laughter, student words) He broke off all communication with PB and is now with the Mahesh Yogi movement and is trying to develop siddhis.
PB: It is not advisable to pursue siddhis.
ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE WORLD-MIND
October 27th
I brought up the topic in the Wisdom [Note: The Wisdom of the Overself by Paul Brunton, 1943.] which makes a statement that you can go high as the relationship with the World-Mind but that it can't be transcended. I have not understood why this can't be done since men have achieved states of the Void and talked about experiencing the reality of Mind Itself. The enlightened man is supposed to be continuously aware of Mind.
PB: Who made that statement?
G: I believe you did in the Wisdom. (some laughter)
PB: Yes. The relationship between the individual and the World-Mind or Mind cannot be transcended. In a meditational state the individual can become absorbed and the individual lapses. The individual can't persist in that state of pure Mind.
G: You couldn't speak of a relationship there. There is no such thing as a relationship, there is only Mind.
PB: Yes. When he is not in this contemplation, when functioning in the world, we can speak of an individual. When he has withdrawn in Nirvikalpa samadhi, one couldn't speak of an individual because he is merged. But it is a temporary experience. You have asked an intellectual question and I can only give you an intellectual answer.
G: I do feel funny when I ask such questions. (some laughter, student words) It isn't within my spirit. You had before told me that as you approach closer to these realities the concepts naturally become clearer to you.
PB: Yes. You ask these questions and you think about these things because you want to think about them.
G: Then what are we doing at the Center? We talk about these levels there.
PB: You talk about these things because you want to talk about them. You are trying to get an intellectual understanding first. You are also doing meditation there so you may get experiences.
G: It seems like it can help clarify the understanding and get rid of some misconceptions. Tony has said that if the understanding has been clarified, if an experience ever does come, you would be able to more fully understand it.
PB: Yes, that's true.
[short pause]
ON ANTHONY AND WG
PB: The fact that the Dalai Lama came to the Center was a kind of recognition for Tony. It was quite extraordinary that he was able to achieve this all by himself, starting as a toll collector and coming to the degree of understanding that he has. He has always read an enormous amount. There should be a lot of interesting new work coming out from the Tibetan Buddhism now. They will probably begin publishing more material now.
[short pause]
ON THE TAO TE CHING
On the Tao Te Ching.
[BG: Which I had been reading there.]
PB: There are some novel ideas that you don't find anywhere else in Hinduism. For example, there is the idea that the more laws you have, the worse it is.
G: I only read it through once quickly but I remember the passage where he discusses that the more restrictive and coercive the government is, the worst the kingdom will be, and that a small kingdom by its humbleness will conquer a large problem. It seems the book restates in many different ways the way a person should rely on the inner self rather than outer means, that that is the source of real strength.
PB: Basically that's right."
S (faint): What is it called?
BG (faint): Tao Te Ching, Lao-Tzu.
S (faint): Tao Te Ching.
S (faint): Tao Te Ching.
[short pause]
ON AYATOLLAH KHOMEINI AND CURRENT AFFAIRS
BG Notes [BG reading]: "About Ayatollah Khomeini.
PB: He was probably behind what happened. He is a megalomaniac, a fanatic. Did you see what he said? It sounds just like what Hitler said, that I don't know where I'm going but God knows, that he is leading us on. Hitler said the same thing, that he was being guided on, where he didn't know, only he called it Providence. He's being led, but it is by evil forces. It has struck me how much the world has shown its ingratitude toward the United Sates. They came to the rescue of the Western world during the First and Second World Wars and they have given aid to so many countries. People act like it's their right. It's not their right. It's a gift.
G: The Congress has overwhelmingly passed a resolution to boycott Iranian oil and there is widespread support for what Carter has done.
PB: Good. It shows that they have some backbone. Now the students are parading around and shouting "Death to Carter!" It is the highest ingratitude that they say something like that.
G: It seems like many countries of the world blame the United States for everything that goes wrong. It seems like the comment that you made about Ramana, where there is light the shadow also arises.
PB: Yes, it's the same sort of thing. Ramana used to say: don't meddle in the affairs of others. He was right. You ask why these things happen. It is like an anvil and it is upon this anvil that we are shaped and formed. The important thing is how we react to what happens. We can react either positively or negatively. It is through this process that we are forged and our character is tempered and made stronger.
Later.
G: My political views have grown more conservative and I now feel a greater need for maintaining a stronger national defense, that these opposing forces exist and we have to contend with them.
PB: Yes you do. The killer of one of the Kennedy brothers is now sitting comfortably in jail. They symbolized America. He didn't really have a criminal mind. He was an idealist. It was probably because of this that he was spared and wasn't executed.
We talked about how the laws were designed to protect people from these criminal elements.
G: Yes, but Lao-Tzu wouldn't agree that they would protect. He would say that the more laws there are, the more lawlessness there is.
PB: Yes. But it was different then.
G: It does seem to follow his pattern that the growing evidence of external law is a sign of general decay in the society. There is such a proliferation of laws now and lawlessness is rampant.
PB: Yes, it seems so now.
[short pause]
ON TANG QUI; STEINER AND MAGICAL POWERS
November 16th
Today we were discussing a philosopher named Tang Qi, who PB was doing research on. He said that he was able to reconcile the mystical experience with the reason, sort of like Steiner. He said that he would follow up on an idea even if there was only one keyword like 'mentalism'.
[short pause]
PB: It was similar to what Steiner was able to do. No doubt he was a genius and certainly he had a scientific ability which was remarkable. But Ananda Metteya interviewed him and he could see the depth of the man. He was an extremely developed clairvoyant and Steiner was quite developed in some areas but had not gone beyond a certain point. He was also colored by his Christian background which limited him. Ananda was able to gauge him and could see his limitations. As I mentioned before, when I interviewed him when I was younger, I could sense his humility. But I could also see certain limitations. These powers of clairvoyance are really side issues and they had become of more central concern for Steiner. Ananda had remarkable occult powers, although he had renounced them at a certain point through the refinement of his consciousness for him to continue to develop. But they would occur spontaneously anyway beyond his control. He didn't do anything to bring them about so it wasn't his fault. He had a rod which had power.
G: Did it have healing powers?
PB: No, it just had power.
G: Was it something like the Egyptian ankh?
PB: Similar to that. His father was the most famous magician in England. He became more developed in this area than his father. It was real magic, white magic. He founded an order called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and they drew on secrets that went back to Egyptian times.
[short pause]
G: I'm not interested in developing these things, but how do they do that? Do they render the physical less dense? Do they exert a force that pushes them upward? Do they neutralize gravity or what?
PB: Well, these are very mysterious things.
Silence.
G: Anthony once had made the remark to someone that we should avoid getting involved in this.
PB: Yes. They can be very tempting.
G: It would seem however that once a person has developed and purified himself to a very high stage that these powers could be used with the proper detachment and used for good purposes, that it would seem to be a natural stage of development in fulfilling the complete human potential, such as the power of reason was unfolded at a certain point. It would seem to be a natural outgrowth.
PB: Yes, that's true. But to be actually ready to use them, it is very rare.
G: It would seem that many people feel that they are ready and that they wouldn't abuse them, but in fact they are not ready, that a higher wisdom is operating that knows when you are ready and that's why they are being withheld until it is safe to take them on.
PB: Yes. They may or they may not come. It is better not to seek them.
[short pause]
ON SIVANANDA
G: I noticed in the Indian section of his library that there was a large number of books by Sivananda.
PB: Yes. It isn't because I have any special appreciation of his teaching though.
G: He gave them to you?
PB: Yes. He kept giving them (to/too). I never asked for them. He has written some 300 books and pamphlets. Someone brought to my attention that in one of his books there was a two page section that was a direct copy of a passage from The Secret Path [Note: The Secret Path by Paul Brunton, 1935.].
G: What was your impression of Sivananda?
PB: I didn't think he was of the highest. He reached a certain advanced stage. Kenneth was there and he didn't sense any enlightenment. There was something there. He started out as a physician.
[short pause]
ON PUNISHMENT AND CONSEQUENCES
From before when we were discussing Lao-Tzu and lawlessness.
G: Well, what about capital punishment?
PB: That's the most difficult question of all. You can't make a general statement about all cases. Every one is different. In some cases a person will reform and in others the person will not. Gandhi was once robbed and he caught the man. Instead of turning him over to the authorities he talked to him and found out that he was stealing to feed his family and he needed money for them. Then Gandhi said, "Well then I'll give you a job here." The man asked why he should do this for him and Gandhi replied that it was to give him a chance. So the man took the job and ended up working for Gandhi for fifteen years and became a devotee of his. He was spiritually converted. In that case it worked very well. In others it wouldn't. In each case it's different.
G: Ramana was robbed and beaten by thieves. Ramana didn't do anything.
PB: Yes. But later they were caught in conjunction with other crimes and they were tried along with Ramana's case. Eventually karma caught up with them.
[short pause]
ON SEEKING OCCULT POWERS
From before on seeking occult powers.
PB: If one falls from that height, the fall is even greater. It would be a shame, all those lifetimes of work to be lost.
[short pause]
ON CURRENT EVENTS
November 19th
On a bus with PB we brought up the Iranian situation.
G: Did you know that they are threatening to try the people who had been held hostage as spies?
PB: He was really shocked, he said "No. The man is insane. Carter is in a really terrible position because it seems that no matter what he does, there are going to be problems."
G: He seems to have handled the situation quite well so far. He has remained cool and has been very firm. He's been patient and hasn't acted rashly.
PB: Yes, it's good. There is religion in the family.
G: I think the greatest leader in the world today is Anwar Sadat for what he has done.
PB: Yes he has done wonderful things. All the Arab nations had to do was to follow his lead and they would have accomplished all of their ends without any trouble. But they haven't. Most people don't recognize the mystical side of him which has enabled him to do this."
BG: One day he was in my apartment and-- and I had the Pachelbel Canon playing on my tape recorder.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "PB: That's very beautiful. It's almost mystical. It is mystical. It is useful sometimes to use music played very quietly as a background so that it doesn't command the attention. I look forward to getting my tape recorder and tapes out and I can use them while I am doing my work. But it can't be played at all loud so that it is intrusive. Not for the deepest work but for the lesser work.
ON ROCK MUSIC
About rock music. (laughter)
PB: It's almost like an evil force because it beats on you. It can take you away from your meditation and your concentration unless you can sufficiently withdraw.
[short pause]
ABOUT PEOPLE FROM CZECHOSLOVAKIA
About people from Czechoslovakia.
PB: They are more intensely philosophic than other Western countries, more than Great Britain. It is a combination of two things, their racial heritage being Czech, which is the thinking, and also the Slovak, which is in their blood, which gives them their mystical side. These two together gives them an intense desire for the deepest philosophy. While I was there I had given several hundred interviews.
G: Personal interviews?
PB: Yes. That's the only kind that I give.
G: When I saw you several years ago, you mentioned that there were a few who wanted to see you and they needed two types of visas to get out.
PB: That must have been five years ago. It was a time when Dubček had taken power and he brought on a liberalization of the government there, even though it was under the heading of socialism. And he allowed the people to go out of the country. Many left the country at that time. Later on the Communist cracked down because it was more than they wanted. They shut down Dubček and imprisoned him. It is monstrous what they have done. Not the Russian people, their leaders. Now they are allowed to leave the country but the exchange rate for currency is five times its value and it's a kind of blackmail that they are using. They can leave the country but they have to pay the price. When they ceased control they banned all public meetings of more than five people. The first thing they did was to ban spiritual groups. Anyone who was suspected was warned to stop or they would be rounded up. They instituted a national religion which was supposed to take place of other religions.
[short pause]
ON MENTAL IMBALANCE
About a woman who was riding on the bus with us.
G: I remember her from a previous ride. She would break out into spontaneous fits of laughter and would start singing out loud in front of everyone. She was obviously disturbed. It was tragic to see her like that.
PB: I remember when I was with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and every once in a while he would break out into this kind of laughter (laughter) for no reason at all. It indicated to me that there was something unbalanced about him. (laughter, student words)
[short pause]
ON HUI HAI (BLOFELD)
November 20th
In Lausanne, commenting on a book (that) written by Hui Hai, translated by John Blofeld, on sudden enlightenment [Note: Zen Teaching of Instantaneous Awakening: being the teaching of the Zen Master Hui Hai, known as he Great Pearl, translated by John Blofeld, 1962.].
PB: There is some discrepancies here in Blofeld's introduction. He first states that everything, the thoughts and all, are mind. But in a later passage he says that even the mind was unreal. On the one hand he says that it is the only reality, and later he says that it is unreal.
[BG: Then PB handed it over to me to read.]
ON SEMANTICS
Later.
G: Perhaps he was talking about the empirical mind. He talked about the Buddha Mind, which was the ultimate mind, and then referred to mind, which could have been referring to the ordinary thinking mind.
PB: What is he talking about? What do they mean when they say everything is unreal, that the world is unreal?
G: Again we are talking about something that is beyond my scope. (bit of laughter) But in my understanding, the things are unreal in the sense that they are not eternal, immutable, permanent reality. In that sense they can be regarded as unreal.
PB: And so we are back to semantics. When you use the term like unreality, you have to make clear what you mean. For the Westerners, it means non-existent, no reality whatsoever. These things cause a lot of confusion.
G: Since this is a subject which you mention in your notes quite often, is it a topic which you will discuss in your new book? It seems to be a point about which there is widespread confusion.
PB: I have already dealt with the problem of semantics in The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga [Note: The Hidden Teaching Beyond Yoga by Paul Brunton, 1941.].
G: Yes, in chapter on "The Worship of Words". But this seems to be a problem which crops up all the time, that of what he calls the Advaitic point of view. And I don't think you have dealt specifically with that.
PB: It is something that is going to have to be made clear once and for all and made explicit. I knew someone when I was younger who went around saying that everything was unreal. Later he took on a post as president of the British Vedanta Society and would travel to India and so forth to give lectures.
CONTINUING ON WHY DIFFERENT SAGES ADOPT DIFFERENT VIEWPOINTS
Continuing on why the different Sages adopt different points of view.
PB: Why is there so much disagreement over this, what is real and what is unreal, if reality is One?
G: You had responded before to the same question that there must be grades of enlightenment, degrees of enlightenment.
PB: There is no disagreement about the ultimate reality, Brahman. Socrates would push a point for further explanation. He would ask what you meant by a certain term. The difference of opinion exists because there are different degrees of receptivity of enlightenment, to light. If they are on the same level of receptivity, they will give the same answer. [short pause] Their work is to redirect you from looking without to find what is within you, to direct you to look within yourself instead of looking outside for the truth. Socrates had had experience much higher than many mystics and thinkers who had experienced Nirvikalpa.
[short pause]
ON RESPECT
November 24th
PB: One thing that I discussed with Mrs. Ybor was the fact that she was shocked that everyone was calling Tony "Tony". She did not think it was proper that this should be done. We decided that he should be called Anthony. He is a teacher and should be given the honor of a proper name."
[short pause]
ON TIBETAN MUSIC
BG: I was with him and he sounded a pair of Tibetan symbols and they give a very clear and long, persistent sound. Afterwards--
BG Notes [BG reading]: "G: Are you supposed to follow the sound within into the silence?
[Transcriber note: The following bracketed part of the sentence not on this version of the audio.]
PB: That's what you're supposed to do if you're trying to [meditate. It is a help to get started. It is one end among others.]"
(Side 1 of original cassette tape digitized as 1980 0105b Ends; Side 2 Begins)
BG Notes [BG reading]: "PB talked about Tibetan chanting, which he said had a haunting quality about it. He said that some Indian temples had noise that was deafening and loud, sometimes from the beating of instruments. They said that it was to help crush the ego."
[11¼ second pause]
ON SPINACH
BG: One time we were having lunch and I-- I noticed he was smiling. I said, "You're smiling." (bit of laughter) And we-- so it happened we were having spinach with this meal.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "PB: Yes. While I was in India I met a man who had a garden which I passed every day. The man who owned it stopped me and kept offering spinach from his garden. He swore by its healthful properties. He even went to the length of compiling a pamphlet which he circulated to boost spinach's virtues. (bit of laughter)
PB eventually found out that the man had heard about the magical properties of spinach from reading another magazine about a man who became endowed with super human powers by eating spinach. (laughter, student words)
G: Oh, you mean Popeye. (laughter)
PB: Yes, that's it. (laughter)
G: Did you ever say anything to him about it? (more laughter)
PB: No. He was really convinced it had wonderful powers. But you know what the imagination can do. (laughter, student words)
COMMENTING ON A SUIT THAT HE HAD HAD MADE, AND ON MARRIAGE (AS A SPIRITUAL LEADER)
November 29th
Commenting on a suit that he had had made.
PB: The local head of the district police wanted to have a suit and I gave it to him.
G: It wasn't Atmananda was it?
PB: [BG: He was smiling, said] No. At the time I was visiting Atmananda and there were two Vedantic teachers in the area. One had a much smaller following. And the other, who had a large following, was Atmananda. When I went to the area, I visited the prime minister of the state and he asked me why I had come. I told him that I was interested in studying Advaita, which I had already done with Subramanya Iyer and other teachers. I told him that I was going to look up Atmananda. He told me I was making a big mistake. He said, "He's just a police inspector. He worked under me." (bit of laughter) He couldn't understand why I wanted to study with Atmananda. One of the things the prime minister objected to was the fact that he was married. The idea that you can't be self-realized if you are married is widespread in India. Of course Atmananda didn't feel that way. And when I told him what the prime minister had said he was amused. I brought up the point with Ramana at another time. He said to be married is to have distractions and it requires time and energy. It makes it more difficult but not impossible. He said that there was no reason why a person couldn't be married, that it wasn't necessarily an impediment. A person might not want to devote this energy to a marriage, to clear the way so that he could concentrate his energies elsewhere. That's where the statement that I made the other day about "if that is true, then there is no hope for mankind" came from, which Ramana made in reference to marriage, since most people are. The Buddhists had instituted this rule, not the Buddha himself. It wasn't part of his original teaching. Later they imposed this upon themselves. The idea of monasteries also grew up later. They asked him if they could establish retreats and the Buddha assented to it later on while he was teaching. Later it became an institution. There are torrential rains in that area at certain periods of the year and it gave them an opportunity to go into retreat. These things are later accretions to the original teaching. Ramana once rebuked the monks for thinking that they were superior because they wore the yellow robe. He said that celibacy is an inner attitude, not an outer one. A person can be married and be inwardly free from those attachments and also a person can be outwardly a renunciate and still be attached.
[13 second pause]
ON THE BOOKSTORE
PB: Is there still a bookstore?
G: No. It has become an art supply store now.
PB: You see? It served its purpose, a useful purpose in its time, but it gave way to something better. It got things started and led to a higher purpose, which is the Center.
[short pause]
ON THE POPE AND CURRENT AFFAIRS
G: The Pope has gone to Turkey to try to reconcile Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches.
PB: He is going to have some difficulty. They have a (legitimate) case. The Pope is what they say he is, just the Bishop of Rome.
[short pause]
ON JUNG AND IYER
G: I heard that you had had an interview with Jung.
PB: Yes. I went with Subramanya Iyer to interview him. It was Iyer who had been given the interview but he asked Jung if it would be alright if I came and he agreed.
G: Did you discuss the Eastern teachings?
PB: Not very much. He admitted something, which came out in his last book, that he was something of a mystic. Toward the end of his life he was intensely studying the Eastern doctrines and he was trying to make up for the time he had lost. He deliberately kept it back until after his death. He didn't want his reputation as a scientist ruined.
[short pause]
ON FASTING
On fasting.
G: Is it true what I have heard, that after a certain length of time of fasting the mind naturally slows down?
PB: It depends. The highest part of the mind becomes more active and the lower part slows down. You may become weaker but you become clearer.
G: I heard that the Comte de Saint Germain had never been seen eating.
PB: No, he ate. He was very careful about what he ate though and he would take food with him when he went out. All of his food was prepared in a special way. He had a private valet who prepared his food. He had a liquid concentrate which he kept secret and that he drank and it was very powerful. He was strictly vegetarian.
[short pause]
ON ACCOUNTS OF CHRIST AND THE GOSPEL
December 5th
G: I am curious about the (accounts/counts) in the Inner Reality [Note: The Inner Reality, also published as Discover Yourself, by Paul Brunton, 1939.] about Christ and the Gospel accounts during the period about which nothing is known.
PB: There is material in the Hemis monastery between Tibet and Kashmir which I don't regard as reliable. A man named Notovitch brought back news of it. The Mohammedans can point out what they consider to be the grave of Christ and I don't believe that is entirely reliable. There was one man that I knew in India who was a prince and the family had certain information which they kept within the family because they were in a Hindu country. There was another man who was also a prince. I alluded to him in the Search in Secret India. He was a very dark-skinned man, a Dravidian, and I met him in London. He had some information because he had traveled to the Far East and lived for nearly a year in a Christian monastery. [BG: Pause.] I have also had an opportunity to meet certain unusual men. [BG: Silence.] They have no written record of him for a period of eighteen years. It is obvious that he must have been doing something, a man who has left such a great legacy.
[short pause]
ON PUNISHMENT AND CURRENT AFFAIRS
December 12th
We discussed a maiming incident by some Italian terrorist(s) which they had perpetrated.
PB: You can't be sentimental about these things. You have to stand up to them. Shankaracharya told me that you have to stop them and they have to be punished although it can't be done in a revengeful way. It must be done impersonally and calmly without anger. It has to be done in the right way so that they are educated.
[short pause]
ON NATIVE TRIBES
December 14th
PB brought up an Indian tribe which he was familiar with that lived around the Great Lakes called the Ojibwa. There are not many of them left. PB said that he had encountered them astrally in the 1930's during his psychic days and had studied them with an individual of that tribe. He said that they had spiritual teaching although it wasn't of the highest and that he respected the teacher. He also mentioned a group called the Todas in India and Blavatsky had written about. And there also were very few of those left. He said that they lived in small strange-domed huts with only a small hole for an entrance in the windows. They lived almost exclusively on milk products, which they made themselves, and some rice. He said that they were very peaceful people. They believed that they were one of the twelve tribes of Israel and I asked if they looked Arabic and he said that they did.
[short pause]
ON MEDITATION POSTURES
On meditation postures.
PB: There is no special need for the postures that are prescribed.
G: You said one of the important things is to be comfortable in the books you (read/wrote). If you're in pain, it's difficult to concentrate on anything else.
PB: Yes. The Japanese postures are difficult and painful for Westerners.
G: You said in one of your books that you learned the lotus posture.
PB: Yes. I mastered it after a while. The lotus posture is specially designed to bring about certain results in conjunction with the six chakras. It certainly helps by keeping the man more wide awake and by awakening the chakras one by one for certain kinds of meditation experiences, those connected with kundalini, etc. This posture wasn't really necessary for me. I discovered meditation on my own, out of my own reflection or intuition or whatever you want to call it. I began lying down and meditated in that position. It is still my favorite posture.
[short pause]
ON HEALTH
December 14th
Talking about his health.
PB: I turn it over to the higher power. It is anyway. It's in its hands. I've been looking for another term for higher power. I thought about greater power. There is the greater and the lesser. It doesn't convey exactly what I want. It still has the association of magnitude with it. It is completely different, on a different level. Transcendental perhaps. But our friend the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi has made that word popular. The term 'higher power' is still evocative for me.
G: That is beautiful.
PB: Yes. For many years I have used that phrase. Someone else used it. X uses the term 'transparent'. She never explained what she meant.
G: Maybe she meant that the ego was transparent so that the light could shine through unobstructed or distorted.
PB: Yes. But the light example has been so overused. I want something better, an original term. It's always operating anyway. But when there is no ego it is different. It's like taking off a heavy overcoat. What could I call it? Weightlessness perhaps. This is one of the experiences when it happens.
[short pause]
ON INNER EXPERIENCE
On inner experience.
PB: Let it take over and form its own experience. Let it do its work. All that you have studied gives you an idea of what it is like. They are frames and hence limitations. It is best to leave it alone to form itself. Saint Bernard said that he never had a mystical experience and he was of high order. The Advaitins say that it is not necessary to have experience to be self-realized. Only they would say that. Do you think it is necessary to have experiences to know the truth?
G: It does seem that some people who have had mystical experiences are not developed in some ways and others who haven't could be regarded as being better persons. It would seem that the best would be to have both. It would seem to open up new potentials in a person on a totally different level. It would seem that the experience of Mind could not be confined to ordinary sense-experience.
PB: No. But you can't know the form it will take.
G: It doesn't seem to be an experience of anything. The Hindus say "Neti, neti."
PB: Yes. So it doesn't help to form an image of what it is. You don't have to have experience of it to know it. It is pure jnana.
G: Is it what you would call insight?
PB: Yes, you could call it that. Understanding it is knowing it. It is an experience and not an experience."
[short pause]
ON RADIATION FROM ELECTRIC LIGHTS
BG: I was sitting in the office and I had a light shining over my head. And he came in and he made this point two times.
BG Notes [BG reading]: "Don't you think that there could be come danger from the radiation that the person could get from having light shining close to him, right next to the head? There are so many electrical appliances now. They had to admit the dangers of radiation coming from TV. Either when there was too much of it or by constant exposure, little by little, it can be harmful."
BG: And these-- the remaining notes were scraps that were not reviewed by PB.
ON INSANITY
BG Notes [BG reading]: "On insanity.
G: There seems to be a lot of cross-over between the insane and the spiritual.
PB: Well, you find a lot of the insane people there, especially in India. Some people honor them because they are said to be mad for God. In a way they are spiritual because all they talk about and think about is God. But they are nevertheless mad. They used to come to the Ramanashrama. I told you once about a man who sat on Ramana's couch and wouldn't get off because he said he was self-realized and so he should sit with Ramana too. The people at the ashram finally took him away. Ramana used to laugh at them.
G: Some people justify it because the higher knowledge is non-rational even though it reflects itself in rational laws.
PB: The higher knowledge isn't rational. It can't be restricted or confined to the rational. There are two kinds of non-rational, the super-rational and insanity.
G: Meher Baba used to go around the countryside and collect all the madmen he could find.
PB: Yes. Being disturbed himself he liked to have their company. (laughter) They didn't like it when I made my views known.
G: He also used to beat his head with rocks because he said that the mere experience of existing in the physical world was excruciating and knocking himself senseless relieved the pain.
PB: Yes, he was unbalanced. (some laughter)
G: If a person goes insane, does he have to reincarnate in the next life as a person who can rebuild the ego with a simple life?
PB: No. Not if he has lived out the bad karma.
G: Of course. I never thought of it that way but it makes so much sense. Insanity is the resultant bad karma of previous actions which he must live out.
PB: Of course. Insanity can't be enjoyable to anyone.
[short pause]
ON DRUGS
On Drugs.
PB: Tony wouldn't allow it in the group now would he?
G: No. I think most of the people there experimented with drugs a long time ago but no one uses them now.
PB: It leaves a scar, even if it's unconscious.
G: I realize now that drugs aren't going to change a person.
PB: Yes. No more than those women who take birth control pills. They are supposed to be about 80% effective.
G [BG misreads: PB]: I think about 99% if properly taken.
PB: Yes. They may stop the child from being born but there are side effects.
G: They have shown that there are higher incidences of circulatory problems and certain cancers and they discourage certain women from taking them.
PB: Nature will bring about a reaction. They can't continue to have unrestrained sexual intercourse without producing some side effects, nervous disorders. The Church prescribes the interval method but how many children have been born that way? It isn't very reliable.
[short pause]
ON THE DALAI LAMA AND ANTHONY'S TEACHINGS
PB: The Dalai Lama will probably be returning to the United States within two or three years now that the ground has been broken. He will want to meet with the spiritual leaders and of course the political. It wouldn't surprise me if they invited Tony to visit him.
G: It seemed to me that because there were a number of invited guests besides the Dalai Lama that Tony's position as a spiritual leader will probably become more public.
PB: Yes. He will undoubtedly become more well-known.
G: He seems to have the most developed metaphysics, the most elaborate, that I have come across.
PB: Yes. There is probably no one in the West who has a higher teaching.
Later.
[PB:] I didn't say that there wasn't anyone who wasn't teaching as high as Tony but there are teachings which can't go any higher. No one can.
G: Then you would say that there was a level of the teachings which cannot be surpassed.
PB: Yes. What I meant was that Tony teaches Advaita, the non-dual. No teaching goes higher, although there are other teachings which lead to the same thing.
[short pause]
ON MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES
Finally.
[PB:] Mystical experiences usually come to people who have enlightenment and hence mystical experience becomes associated with enlightenment. The Long Path doesn't give enlightenment. It can happen suddenly, like a bomb experience, or in very gradual stages. They still argue about which is correct. One minute you don't know, and the next you do."
[short pause]
BG: Do you have any questions?
S (faint): Is there a-- these two might be (caught in--) Yes. He was talking about getting help outside or getting help inside, it says-- couldn't hear what you said. "I learned to get help…"
BG: No, you need-- "I learned that you need help from the outside [S simultaneously, faint: To go inside.] to find what is inside."
S (faint): Yeah.
[10 second pause]
AD: Well thank you very much Robert.
S (faint): Yeah, thank you (Robert).
S (faint): Thank you.
[9½ second pause with faint background student talking]
JL: Who is this person Jacques Romano?
S: Uh-hm.
BG: Jacques.
[shuffling about, faint background student talking until the end]
[Audio File 1980 0105b Ends]
1980 01/05 V14.1a: EVENT: PB Visit; Bob Geyer. Copyright 2023 Wisdom's Goldenrod p. vii