Wednesday, November 17th, 1982

CLASS at Wisdom's Goldenrod, Hector, NY

with Anthony Damiani (AD)

November 17, 1982

PB PARAS; PHILOSOPHY; SAGE

TOPIC: PB Paras

SUBJECT: Philosophy

SUBSUBJECTS: Sage, Enlightenment

CONTENTS:

PB PARAS ON ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE SAGE; PB ANECDOTES

CAN THE IRRATIONAL BE UNDERSTOOD?

THE SAGE IS CONTINUOUSLY SELF-AWARE; THE SENSE OF MATERIALITY IS COMPLETELY GONE; THE PRESENTATION DOESN'T DISTURB THE STILLNESS

THE SAGE'S THOUGHT PROCESS AS CREATIVE ACTIVITY; EMANATION AND ILLUSORY MODIFICATION

THE SPECIAL METHOD USED BY A SAGE TO WORK ON A STUDENT

BOOKS READ FROM OR REFERENCED:

• Paul Brunton, Notebooks. 16 vols; Vol. 1 entitled Perspectives [Persp.], published 1984-1988. Some Paul Brunton Notebook paras are, as of 2018, unpublished, and are noted as such.

• Plato, Parmenides

• Plotinus, The Enneads (MacKenna translation, 4th ed.)

• Mandukya Upanishad

PLOTINUS QUOTES READ OR REFERENCED: IV.3.30, V.3.3

NOTES:

• Most of the PB paras were read from the Ideas, Orange Volume 12g.

• Earlier transcript versions exist.

TRANSCRIBED from Audio Cassette Tapes by HP, JF, et al. in 1992 as part of the set for Living Wisdom. V11 version 2018. Reformatted from V11 version by JRM & JF 2019-2020, with Subheads and Table of Contents added by JRM. In 2024, IT updates prefatory matter and footer, replaces tape markers with audio file markers, expands Subsubjects, alters Subheads to make more accurate, completes Book List, adds Plotinus quotes section, corrects typos/errors, adds new note within transcript, reformats to accord with new conventions. Readable edited transcript – V14.1r.

AUDIO FILES: 1982 1117a. [Note 1: "Tape" and "Side" refer to original audio cassette tapes that were later digitized into .MP3 Audio Files. Note 2: We are missing the second audio file for this class.]

1982 11/17 at Wisdom's Goldenrod

PB Paras; Philosophy; Sage

Readable Edited Transcript

PB PARAS ON ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE SAGE; PB ANECDOTES

[Audio File 1982 1117a Begins]

RC: . . . and what we're reading is from the category--"The World-Mind in Individual Mind"--and the second and third subcategories are quotes about enlightenment that stays as opposed to temporary glimpses that pass, and quotes about Saints and Sages. And quotes about Saints and Sages.

PB: "He must be redeemed from the world's corruption, not by a perishable glimpse but by a permanent union." (unpublished, 12g/26/112)

PB: "If the glimpse is intermittent, let him not mourn the fact but remember that he was fortunate enough to get it. If the glimpse becomes a continuous thing, he will accept it humbly because of its very mysteriousness to himself." (22.8.47)

RC: I think that's especially important because the one thing that Ed and all of us who spent any time with PB saw was that: on the one hand you saw his very unusual power which operated quite frequently, and on the other he was probably the humblest that any of us ever met, a strange mixture of very great power and complete humility.

PB: "If the glimpse is intermittent . . ." (repeat)

RC: I guess a common phrase that's used is "the peace that passeth understanding." I guess that's one common way of talking about it remaining mysterious.

PB: "The realization of truth is one thing; the inspiration to seek truth is another. The first is being, the second is experience. The first abides for life; the second is only a glimpse, hence passes and returns intermittently." (25.2.31)

RC: PB was writing a letter one time to a woman who he'd known in India in the 1930's. And she'd written him a letter in the 1930's that he at the time didn't reply to. But while I was there she wrote him back to say that she'd received a message psychically at the time and that she'd never thanked him for answering his letter. It was like 40 some years later. And he thought that it was very interesting that she had been completely satisfied, and asked her more about how it happened. Apparently she was in a movie and the sentences were just emblazoned out in the darkness in front of her, with very explicit replies to the questions that she had asked PB.

So she wanted to know--she realized he was reasonably advanced at that point and she was sort of curious to know what the years had brought him in between. Because she had just published a book that she had sent him a copy of, and that was the occasion of her letter. She said he had been one of the people who had inspired her. And his reply to her was something to the effect that he had obtained a certain measure of peace of mind that had remained with him.

So I just asked him if I should capitalize the M in mind, and he was quizzical for a moment and then he said, "Do you think that she would understand?" I said, "Well, she said she's read all your books." He said, "Well, I suppose if you did capitalize it, it would be more accurate."

LR: (inaudible)

RC: He'd spoken about the Dalai Lama having a certain measure of force a number of times. And he always said, "I won't say how much but it's a certain MEASURE of force that he's accumulated through his constant practice."

So when he was preparing that letter he said, "a certain MEASURE of peace of mind--like with the Dalai Lama's force, I won't say how much, (laughter) but it does remain with me." And he did speak of it as remaining with him as if it were a awareness that (inaudible). It was a very precious thing, not to be taken for granted. That at least at the level of the personality there was a constant flow of gratitude from the personality to the fact that this peace did remain with him.

PB: "There is in him now a translucency of mind which gives all things, all persons, all events, a deeper diviner significance. Life henceforth has a wonderful and beautiful meaning." (25.2.11)

PB: "It is with him vividly in every place and at every minute, not in the special periods of retreat alone." (unpublished, 12g/21/47)

PB: "At long last, when the union of self with Overself is total and complete, some part of his consciousness will remain unmoving in infinity, unending in eternity. There, in that sacred glory, he will be preoccupied with his divine identity, held to it by irresistible magnetism, gladly, lovingly." (25.2.299 & Persp. p. 348)

RC: One of the ways he used to bring attention to things was that he would leave a scrap of paper on the bed in the morning so that I would see it when I made the bed. And this particular quote reminded me of one that I don't have tonight, but it was basically that the simplest way to--this is the simplest way to the Overself--love it--don't get involved in breathings, forcing yourself through all these various techniques and studies and disciplines, but first of all love it, and then let the love inspire the breathings.

LG: Do you want me to read it, Randy?

RC: Do you have it?

LG: Yes.

PB: "The way to be admitted to the Overself's presence can be summed up in a single phrase: love it. Not by breathing in very hard nor by blowing out very slow, not by standing on the head nor by contorting like a frog can admission be gained. Not even by long study of things divine nor by acute analysis of them. But let the love come first, let it inspire the breathing, blowing, standing, or contorting, let it draw to the study and drive to the thinking, and then these methods will become really fruitful." (18.1.78 & Persp. p. 224)

PB: "Is there anyone among those you know today, as well as all those you have known in the past to whom you can point as a fully enlightened man, as one conscious of his Overself? Your answer will reveal how rare this attainment is." (25.3.34)

PB: "In the world you will find only two kinds of people--the unconscious and the conscious. The first kind know only their own little egos and their own large desires. The second kind know continually that they are in the presence of the Overself, and enjoy its great peace." (25.2.152)

(MB/RC comments on above)

PB: "It is the glorious moment when Adam re-enters Eden, even though he is only a visiting guest and not a permanent dweller therein." (22.6.226)

PB: "A man who is in this state automatically repels negative thoughts and effortlessly wards off destructive ones. They cannot live in his atmosphere." (25.3.190)

PB: "Even if a negative reaction to some untoward event were to enter his mind he would efface it instantly." (25.3.301) (reread)

PB: "All that he knows will be intensely lived, for he knows it with his whole being." (25.2.279)

PB: "In this high state his own mind is consciously connected with the divine Mind. The result can scarcely be understood by the uninitiated." (25.2.119)

PB: "There is a peace around his personality which other men do not possess." (unpublished, 12/16/39)

PB: "It is the fortunate lot of a very very few to preserve uninterruptedly the insight obtained during a glimpse." (unpublished, 12g/15/11)

RC: It's interesting because he did speak once about Sadat as being one of those people. He said that Sadat wasn't all that unusual in that he had received a glimpse in extremely important circumstances but what made him unusual was that he never let go of it and he never left it.

PB: "He is no more capable of reviling other men, let alone hating them. Such evil thinking cannot even begin to enter his mind but must die stillborn." (25.3.311.)

PB: "An illumination may be permanent but at the same time it may be only partial. Not until it is complete and lasting is it really philosophic." (25.2.94)

PB: "The illuminate practises a wiser philanthropy than those who are presented as models of this virtue." (25.4.142)

TS: PB once wrote a letter. Someone asked him why he wasn't helping the world and he wrote a very terse reply: he was too busy doing so to bother looking like he was.

PB: "The illumined man identifies himself with the Overself at all times, awake or asleep. But he does not deny the body and its activities. They too come within the sphere of his consciousness but only at their proper valuation and in their secondary place." (unpublished, 12g/12/65)

PB: "Although quite aware of his body and using it, just like all other men, he feels that it is not himself and that he, as pure Spirit, is apart from it." (unpublished, 12g/12/72)

RC: I got the impression from watching his relationship to the body, if some of you've read the notes and see how far back they go, in terms of the way that he was always ANALYTICALLY looking at the body, and to see what its needs were, and sort them out from what its desires were. Somewhere in the middle of the third month, it just hit me like with a two-by-four that he had NEVER been identified with his body. The question of dis-identifying with it didn't seem to me like it was ever a real question. I don't know if that's true, but I really had that impression. I think Anthony told the story one time about: they were on the street, walking on the street and PB stopped--remind me if I get it wrong--PB stopped and remarked that he had just realized why women wore lipstick.

JG: . . .

RC: Am I remembering it right?

(JG/RC/JG/)

AD: That's right, yes.

RC: Well, he said, as if it were a new discovery, that's to excite (you/men) sexually.

PB: "There is no democratic equality here. If such a man speaks, others are entitled only to whisper!" (25.3.43)

PB: ""I, the Homeless, have My home in each person's heart." This is what the Great Silence told me." (24.4.159)

PB: "Union with the Overself is not the ultimate end but a penultimate one. What we look up to as the Overself looks up in its own turn to another and higher entity." (25.1.160 & Persp. p. 341)

PB: "The real truth is that fire flashed from heaven only for beginners, emotionally intoxicated by this utterly new experience. For the old hands, it is a perfectly calm unsensational affair." (unpublished, 12g/10/47)

PB: "The master is free, totally free, from the greeds and lusts of ordinary men. In this he is a forerunner of the men who are to appear later." (25.3.216)

PB: Although the higher consciousness may vary in vividness, before settling down to a fixed evenness of quality, it remains permanent at this stage." (25.2.12)

PB: "What will happen to his environment after illumination? Nothing. It will not be miraculously transformed so that he sees auras, ghosts, and atoms mixed up with its ordinary appearance. It will still look as it did before. The grass will have the same shapes and colour." (25.2.227)

RC: The thing that I mentioned to you before about how we'd been going through the Parmenides, and then he decided we'd done that enough, and said, "Let's do something less mundane." And brought out some jackets to sew. While I sewed the jackets, he went into the other room, and then a little while later he called me in, and he was laying back on the bed and he said, "Do you know that Zen story about how first there's mountains and rivers, and then everything gets confused, and then everything is back and there's mountains and rivers again?" I said, "Yes, I know the story." And he just looked at me--very clearly--for a moment, and said, "It's true!" (laughter)

PB: "According to our traditions the history of the world does not contain any period where there were not men who had realized their higher nature. But they were very very few." (25.3.33)

PB: "There are varying degrees of spiritual illumination, which accounts both for the varying outlooks to be found among mystics and for the different kinds of Glimpse among aspirants. All illuminations and all Glimpses free the man from his negative qualities and base nature, but in the latter case only temporarily. He is able, as a result, to see into his higher nature. In the first degree, it is as if a window covered with dirt were cleaned enough to reveal a beautiful garden outside it. He is still subject to the activity of thinking, the emotion of joy, and the discrimination between X and Y. In the next and higher degree, it is as if the window were still more cleaned so that still more beauty is revealed beyond it. Here there are no thoughts to intervene between the seer and the seen. In the third degree, the discrimination is no longer present. In the fourth degree, it is as if the window were thoroughly cleaned. Here there is no longer even a rapturous emotion but only a balanced happiness, a steady tranquillity which, being beyond the intellect, cannot properly be described by the intellect.

"Again, mental peace is a fruit of the first and lowest degree of illumination, although thoughts will continue to arise although gently, and thinking in the discursive manner will continue to be active although slowly. But concentration will be sufficiently strong to detach him from the world and, as a consequence, to yield the happiness which accompanies such detachment. Only those who have attained to this degree can correctly be regarded as"saved" as only they alone are unable to fall back into illusion, error, sin, greed, or sensuality.

"In the second degree, there will be more inward absorption and cerebral processes will entirely fade out.

"Freedom from all possibility of anger is a fruit of the third and higher degree. (25.2.97 & Persp. p. 347)

PB: "Just as Jesus was in reality greater than the rabbis whose unquestioned authority dominated the people of Israel, so any man today who reflects in all its purity the Overself's light, unshadowed by his personal opinions, is in reality greater than the impressively robed dignitaries of Church and State." (25.3.533)

PB: "Once he lives in this final and full awareness of the Overself, he will never again be able to live in awareness of the base, the impure or the mean. He will be in complete control of the animal nature. At no moment will an ugly or unworthy thought be able to cross his mind." (unpublished, 12g/7/14)

CAN THE IRRATIONAL BE UNDERSTOOD?

RC: Tim probably knows better than me, but I think Lausanne in Switzerland is probably one of the more progressive communities. Progressive enough that they're beginning to have some of the similar tensions between the established order and young people that we started to have here in the 60's--a certain amount of confrontations, like putting Nazi stickers on pictures of the police, hippies hanging out in the square, leather jackets and chains and dyed hair and different variations of punk. There's a fountain in the middle of the town, where everybody's hanging around, a couple hundred people, guitars, and we walked into this square and PB said, "Are those hippies?" And I said I really didn't think so in a strict sense (laughter) and so he said "Why not?" I said, well, I thought they were probably college kids and that hippies at least had enough integrity that they didn't ask somebody else to pay their bills for them and then flaunted them. And he was wondering about what their motives were, because they were pretty obnoxious--he was asking what their motives were. I was trying to explain as much as I could remember how I used to rationalize that, and I realized PB wasn't following, wasn't understanding, he couldn't make any sense of it. And I realized that, at least I thought, he won't be able to understand, it's not rational, he won't be able to explain it. So I said that. I said, well, now that I think about it, I don't think it's rational, and I don't think if it's not rational, you won't find any meaning in it. And he said, "Oh, fine." (laughter)

PB: "Once he lives. . ." (reread)

(RG/LR/RG/LR/=1 minute)

RC: In that specific instance there didn't seem to be any way to justify the behavior at a rational level.

RG: It's very different to say that he doesn't have the awareness of irrational behavior, than to say that he can't understand the behavior of the irrational. That's almost like saying he couldn't understand the nature of psychology, where psychology is the understanding of the irrational . . .

RC: Do you think it CAN be understood?

RG: Insofar that it can be understood, it could be understood--yes, I think it could be understood.

BS: As irrational?

RG: As irrational.

AD: I think you can DESCRIBE it, I don't know that you can understand it.

RG: You can describe it, but you don't know if you can understand it?

JG: Why would you say that, Anthony?

AD: How could you understand the unmeasured, the unlimited?

JG: I thought we were speaking about those hippies.

AD: Yes, we are.

RG: We're them.

AD: You WERE them.

RG: I think we're still irrational.

RC: I think the pink hair was one of the harder things to explain. (laughter)

AD: Can you understand that, Dickie?

RG: Pink hair I can't understand. (laughter)

AD: (inaudible)

RC: But the DESIRE for pink hair. (laughter--class is roaring)

EM: It would be like wearing lipstick.

AD: That's what I meant, Johanna.

JG: I don't understand. Could you explain?

AD: Desire is unlimited, it's unmeasured, and you cannot rationally understand things like that. You cannot RATIONALLY understand what has no form, no shape.

RG: But that seems like a very good understanding of it, though.

AD: It's a negative understanding.

RG: Whatever it is, it seems--

RC: I think partly what this quote is saying is that the light within would not animate those forms in such a way that would appear to make sense, because you're identified with them. It seems to make sense because I'm doing it, because my life is invested in it. But if my life simply won't go into those forms, it becomes very difficult to understand from the perspective of rationality.

JB: I can understand rising above the thing, but not--being unable to see it because you're above it, and that's kind of a problem I have with it. Even an alleged master wants to say, "I understand all kinds of infirmities and neurotic tendencies and errors and so on," and being not a part to them, or not feeling them, or attaching to them, he's not seeing them, or not being able to. Even just to remember what it was like to have had boundless emotion, or greed or lust--that might be enough to connect with the pink hair? I'm just surprised, it seems to limit the ability, rather than to indicate there's a higher ability or--

AD: What do you mean when you say, "I understand"?

Don't you mean that the reason-principle is available to you, and that that same reason-principle is within you, and that that could bring you some sort of correspondence or adequation. How would you understand that which is irrational, that has no reason-principles?

JG: Only through affinity.

AD: That wouldn't be understanding. You're speaking about sympathy. That's not understanding. What Randy said was that he wouldn't be able to understand because he has no such affinity any more--there's no such possible sympathy available--so you cannot understand the irrational, because you cannot assimilate reason-principles in the irrational, because there AREN'T any--you mean precisely that when you say "irrational"--Appetite is irrational. There's no limit to it: you're hungry now, you'll be hungry an hour from now, you'll be hungry tomorrow morning, the day after. It has no form; it has no reason-principles. It's unlimited, unmeasurable. So how do you understand that with the reason-principle?

JB: So that way even the victim doesn't have any understanding of it.

AD: You're right on the point, exactly right. Even though he likes to amuse himself, and says that he understands himself.

MB: Now you're using it in a very strict sense. I don't think that PB--

AD: Is there another way to use it?

MB: I'm trying to imagine whether PB would ever say, "I don't understand why you're eating." . . . You just described the idea of having to eat, and all that, as irrational, but I don't imagine him saying that. I think he would say, "I understand why you eat. It's because of the body" and so forth. There is a different degree of irrationality involved with dyeing your hair pink than eating dinner. Maybe it's just a difference in degree, and not in kind, but there does seem to be a difference to me.

DD: Well, the desire might have a rational application. Certainly appetite has a rational application. It still is a desire, it's--

AD: YOU have to impose reason on desire for food. You're superimposing reason-principles when you live the rational life.

RC: He might say "I don't understand why you're eating THAT."

MB: But the instincts have somewhat more of an orderliness--

(Side 1 of original cassette tape digitized as 1982 1117a Ends; Side 2 Begins)

RG: . . . We're still not even allowing that, that would mean to understand them, but we're not yet to that.

AD: All I'm pointing out is that you're including under the term 'understanding' that which is not rational. Now we do use the term, in a sense. We say we UNDERSTAND the irrational behavior of the psychotic, but if you were exact in the terminology, you'd know that that doesn't mean anything, you couldn't possibly understand it.

RG: . . . But what DOES it mean when you say that, what is the proper way to--

AD: You're giving a description of what's going on. And very often the description might include your reactions and things like that. But it's not a RATIONAL understanding. It isn't like you understand the sum of four angles is 360 degrees. There's no way that you could understand DESIRE, or a lust or a violence.

RG: I'm sorry.

AD: I am, too.

RG: That you're saying that what we call psychological understanding, or understanding of the psychic, is not understanding at all, but just description. The best you can do is just describe the behavior.

AD: I wouldn't agree with that, because there is the possibility of understanding the psychic, if you're coming from a rational point of view. And that means that you're presiding over it or overseeing it, but you cannot understand the irrational if you're in the irrational, in that sense.

RG: That was never my question, but it does seem to--

AD: Look, what do you mean by desire--I mean what do you mean by understanding? When you say you understand something, what do you mean? That there is, let's say, a concept which is adequate to and comprehensive of the phenomena that you're trying to grasp?

RG: Well, I--

AD: Now ask yourself, if you try to understand the behavior of an irrational act or a psychotic, can you come up with an adequate concept? A concept that's adequate in the sense that the phenomena is taken into consideration can be assimilated?

RG: I believe you can in some instances--

RC: It seems in some instances you can find a motive that makes sense for an action that's irrational, but to justify the action itself in many cases, apart from a motive that's superimposed on it opens into a realm that is very difficult to understand. I might be able to understand why one man murders his wife or a wife's lover, but why anyone should murder anyone becomes much more difficult to understand.

TS: There was for me, a sort of uncanny experience with PB. I'm thinking that in terms of this understanding of the irrational, that occasionally something would arise where I'd try to begin to explain to PB that I didn't feel able or capable of handling the task which I had been asked to do, and he would not understand the motive. A couple of times, I'd try to explain, "I just don't feel like I'm able to do this"--and I couldn't make sense out of communicating that to him, so I gave up, and did it, you know. (laughter) . . . I finally realized that as far as the subjective motives were concerned, as far as the psychological resistances or frictions, there was really an intrinsic meaninglessness in them. Either I could do it or I couldn't. And even if I said, "I can't do it" that would be acceptable and understandable. But the interpretation or my subjective rationalizations or fairy tales were intrinsically nonsensical from a rational point of view.

(Student comments, including:)

RC: He put the pressure on the rational part so that it eventually over-ruled the irrational.

TS: You really experience an ABSENCE of an irrational attention.

AD: Someday just sit down and ask yourself if you can understand this (inaudible) (instincts).

Well, wait till they come up. (Q: probably answering whispered student question)

AH: Anthony, is that to say that to understand something is to have knowledge defined, knowledge of something that has real Being?

AD: No, no. The understanding won't go that high. But there is a realm within which human knowledge does operate, and within that realm we can say that we understand. If you go below that realm, you don't understand. And if you go above that realm, you can't say that it's human understanding. So that middle realm is where human beings can function. Go below it, you can't say you understand.

RG: But if you sat in the rational, could you then understand the irrational? Or not?

AD: Well, you can understand some of the factors that go into making it. Just like when I point out that it has no reason-principle, and because of its unlimited and unmeasured nature it cannot be grasped. That way you can say that you have some understanding within the realm that you operate with. But the basic adequation between the concept and the phenomena is not available. Otherwise you'd be able to understand behavior which is totally out of reach, that's subhuman, and below the threshold. You're talking basically about things that are happening below the threshold of what we call human consciousness. I know psychologists claim they understand all that. I'm aware of that, Dickie. I'm aware that biologists think that they understand all that. You know it's just like when they tell me that--it's the same kind of contradiction that I find when someone tells me that--a scientist is explaining something to me and he says twenty billion light years from here to there, or the origin of the universe, and I'm wondering what they're talking about. A 'light year,' a 'year,' what does 'year' mean? Twenty billion light years already took it out of our realm completely. There ARE no years without the Sun around. What would twenty billion light years mean?

RC: I think that--

AD: I mean that's what biologists do, the scientists do. (inaudible) And I'm supposed to come and say, "Yes, sir."

RG: One more question.

VM: Twenty megatons of TNT.

AD: Yes, go ahead, Dickie. (inaudible)

MB: What?

AD: Twenty megatons of TNT, I don't understand.

VM: I don't either, but--but just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it couldn't make the planet uninhabitable.

AD: 22 makes it a planet on its own.

RG: Then what are we doing differently when we look at a chart, and we say, "These are the irrational structures that go to compose the psychosomatic organism"? It seems we can't understand it. Either we're using the wrong word to say it, or we're kidding ourselves.

RC: Well, he's talking here about perversions, maybe not about the irrational per se, so much as about perversions, in the sense of saying it's able to live in the (inaudible).

RG: Anthony's making another point along with it, that there's no meaning to say "We understand the irrational." So if there's no meaning to it, then I don't know what it means to try to understand the psychic components of a personality, if they are irrational.

(inaudible comments and pause)

AD: I don't know.

THE SAGE IS CONTINUOUSLY SELF-AWARE; THE SENSE OF MATERIALITY IS COMPLETELY GONE; THE PRESENTATION DOESN'T DISTURB THE STILLNESS

(pause/shuffling sounds)

PB: "The simple fact that such a man exists is inspiring to know and good to remember." (unpublished, 12g/7/26)

PB: "That illumination can be quite instantaneous in some cases, only gradual in others, and entirely absent in most, need not be an enigma. The workings of the law of recompense are still the same even when they are beneath the surface." (25.2.62)

AH/RC/= 1 minute.

PB: "His serenity is alive and buoyant, not lethargic and dull." (25.3.147)

PB: "Quite a number of men have experienced a Glimpse like an eruption that begins and soon ends, but few are the men who have experienced a settled enlightenment of their being like a plateau that continues at a great height for a great distance." (25.2.30)

PB: "He lives in inwardly silent thought-free awareness of whatever is presented to him, whether it be the body in which he must live or the environments in which he finds himself. He enjoys a supernal calm, being indeed"free while living," as the ancient Indian phrase describes the state." (25.2.154) (para reread)

DB: So that means that if his awareness of the body and the environment is thought-free, there is immediate contact with all of that without having to reflect on it at all. I never really understood the quote that Ed brought back. Ed was trying to apologize for something that he hadn't done right or whatever, and he said "I don't want you to think such and such." And PB said, "You must understand, I DON'T THINK." But from that quote-- Can that be elaborated a little bit more?

RC: We have that quote up there: "The mind of a perfect man is like a mirror." The thing that this quote is bringing in, that is implicit in that but not stressed, is that this mind receives the body also as if it were something dropped from (heaven). That seems to be the remarkable thing about it. (Q: calligraphy quote from Chuang-Tzu, which continues: "It does not move with things, nor does it anticipate them. It responds to things, but does not retain them. When the mind is in repose, it becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.")

AH: The body is presented in the same way that the trees and stones are.

RC: Exactly.

DB: There's also that, but isn't it also implied there--like something is presented to us, and our immediate response is "What is that, and oh, it's this because I remember it's like that from before," and we talk about it to ourselves and then we say "Oh, yes, OK."

AD: But your identity isn't with pure awareness.

DB: Yes.

AD: So nothing is presented to you.

DB: I'm trying to understand the distinction between--

AD: Well, if the sage is continuously self-aware, (has/as) pure consciousness, then anything that occurs is a presentation to that pure consciousness, but he thinks of himself, that is, he KNOWS himself to be this pure awareness. So there's only presentation and the dissolution of what's presented, but that inner stillness is not disturbed in any way. Because that is always the way it is .

DB: So that what would be given, and then would then pass away or whatever, that would be seen within the context of that stillness, that pure awareness, would be seen as--

AD: Yes. He's always identified with that stillness or awareness, and that's why the happiness of the sage is not dependent upon the turning of the wheel.

DB: Would his knowledge of that which is given, whether it be the body or the environment, be seen as a modification of that?

AD: A modification of what?

DB: Of that stillness?

AD: No. No, the sense of materiality is completely gone in the sage.

DB: Whatever is presented to the sage, that's what I'm trying to understand. Not that's it's material, but it IS a presentation--

AD: Listen to what I said. The sense of materiality is completely gone in the sage. So when something is presented, what is it that's presented? It has to be a thought. But since he's not identified with any thought, such as we are with our ego-structure, and always identified with the stillness, thoughts arise and thoughts settle. But they don't disturb that stillness that he's identified with, or let's say, he's identical with. And there could be good thoughts, there could be bad thoughts, there could be a thought of a disaster in the family, or there could be the thought of inheriting a million dollars, but it's not going to disturb that stillness.

RC: At one time he said, "The whole trick is simply don't let yourself be hypnotized by any thought." We're always looking for something to be fascinated with.

AD: Let's say that the EGO is always looking for something to be fascinated with in its preoccupation with its own glamour. But that stillness isn't.

AH: There's a distinction between thoughts being presented and the fact that he is not thinking, in the case of a sage. Properly speaking, according to the quote, PB didn't think. He didn't think, but he described thoughts as occurring or being presented. Is that to describe the absence of the ego?

AD: Well, I don't know if you should say 'absence' as the subdual. I don't think we should use the word 'absent' as much to say as it's been subdued. He still has an ego. The body's still there, but not the absence of the ego.

AH: But that body is just another thought.

RG: But it's also the vehicle for the presentation of other thoughts, that aren't his ego, like the World-Mind's presentation.

AH: That's really the question I was trying to get to, like that body is presented in the same way that other objects are presented, as thought. Is it necessary to speak of thoughts occurring within the sensory apparatus of that body that provides an individual experience? But in neither case is it necessary to speak about him thinking.

THE SAGE'S THOUGHT PROCESS AS CREATIVE ACTIVITY; EMANATION AND ILLUSORY MODIFICATION

RC: In one state. But in another state, though, he spoke about trying to find the right words, when he was actually TRYING to produce a thought. I was thinking of that [Plotinus] IV.3.30 quote, how unless the intelligence is evoked from the depths by the Soul, the Soul is always desiring a rational thought and so on. He was saying that he was at times having difficulty forming thoughts--then he said, "No, 'forming' isn't the right word--'receiving' isn't the right word either. 'CREATING!' I'm having difficulty CREATING the thought." So, it's not that he's not capable of it, but that the introduction of a thought from within his own center seemed to be recognized as a creative activity to which he was responsible. Some of that gets talked about in that 25A one, (Q: subcategory), which talks about their meeting and interchange, more than in these quotes. And he does talk about the creative thought activity of the sage and the illuminate and so on and so forth.

AD: Wasn't that in reference to his illness?

RC: Yes. But it was specifically in the way that he was trying to describe the process of--what was the word he was going to use when he would try to formulate--and 'formulate' wasn't the word that he wanted, and 'receive' wasn't the word that he wanted. He really settled on 'create'--that 'CREATE' was the one, the appropriate word to use to talk about his thought processes.

AD: But, we would have to add to that, Randy, that even in the process of creating the thought or the word, that he was seeking for, he was still identifying with the stillness.

RC: Yes, definitely.

AD: I wanted to add that.

RC: That was what I was going to say, was that all of this stuff is prefaced by saying that the entry into the thought-free state is the ground, and then from there this creative activity of thinking could begin.

LG: Why wouldn't 'formulate' be the right word?

RC: He didn't want it. I didn't question him, but that wasn't the word he wanted.

AD: Because 'CREATE' is the right word. You're doing it.

LG: Formulating?

AD: "Reasoning is our own," Plotinus says. WE are the ones who reason. Remember the passage from Plotinus? [Note: See Plotinus, V.3.3, second to last paragraph.]

RC: It was very meaningful for me in terms of the way he would talk about actually THINKING things into existence for ourselves, that it's a creative activity, not a passive activity.

AD: Richard remembers that. He thought hardness into existence. That's what he means by creating, we create that.

AH: Is that creation a cognitive process?

AD: And non-cognitive.

AH: It's both?

AD: Yes, it's both.

AH: It's both because--

AD: It's cognitive, and it's the non-cognitive. It's the willing and the feeling, too, besides the knowing.

AH: It's non-cognitive because there's identity with the stillness?

AD: No, it's all three ways of knowing that we create and we employ: willing, feeling, knowing. In this case here he was speaking about the knowing function, but he could just as well have spoken about it as willing and feeling.

It's an interesting problem, David, because I think the problem you posed will be one that you'd have to ask yourself if you read the Mandukya. In the Mandukya, you have the First, you know, Second, Third and Fourth, Fifth. He goes up to the third level of consciousness--Prajna--you know, and then they stop. And then they speak about the Fourth State of consciousness which never lapses, always is what it is. It's like the One, you know, perfect, or sheer perfection itself. So then you ask yourself, "Well, and how does the WORLD come into being if that consciousness, the Turiya, is perfect motionless activity? Then where does the world come from?" Now they don't answer that. The commentators give you their answer, which usually is that it's an illusory modification. The one that Plotinus gives is, no, that always remains what it is, and the others are separate from that. Ultimately they can be conceived of as emanations and within the emanations there's change and alteration and all that. So then the point would be something like this: the Turiya consciousness or the thought-free state is always what it is, but then you have the other three states, wakeful, dreaming, and Prajna. Now your question was--are these a modification of Turiya?

DB: Oh, that.

AD: Yes. Which is one of the questions I asked, too. Which interpretation is right? Is it an illusory modification?

DB: The thing it--

AD: Does consciousness Turiya change itself so that it can become objects?

DB: The way he was speaking of it there--it didn't seem as if this presentation was experienced as superimposition.

AD: Or a projection.

DB: Or a projection. But--

AD: That's quite a philosophic problem, isn't it?

DB: Yes.

AD: Yes. And of course I take my stand and disagree with all the Vedantists on that. It cannot mean that.

DB: It can't mean modification.

AD: It can't mean that Turiya cannot modify itself in any way whatsoever.

DB: But--

AD: If it's illusory, then you've just denied everything that we have been saying. Everything that we've spoken about is utterly meaningless. There is no sense in having classes. We can all go home, and have our fill, gorge ourselves. Because there's no one there who's gorging himself. Let's not go through that.

AH: Would you allow that Turiya has perceptual use?

AD: I won't disagree. It's obvious from the remark he made that the Nirvikalpa state is what perceives--that's the sage. And he sees what's going on, sure he does. He even knows what's going on.

AH: But Turiya can never be spoken of as an object? . . .

AD: No, it cannot be spoken of as an object at all. No. But that's not the problem. I think they know what the problem is now.

Alright, let's go on a little more. You remember the one that I asked you to look up last week? Could you find it maybe? In the meantime, you could read a few more. Dickie, can I make a remark to you--in public?

RG: No. (laughter) The tables . . .

AD: The tables are not (inaudible).

RG: You're going to make it anyway.

AD: You want me to make it, alright.

RG: No, I don't. (laughter)

AD: I cannot believe that the Supreme, the Perfect, the Almighty, cannot grant the gift of being. That's why I don't accept illusory modification. Anything less wouldn't be God.

LDm: Can I ask a question? In relation to the one where he speaks about the "I" or ego existing even in Prajna . . . Can that be taken to mean that manifestation only IS, insofar as there IS an ego?

AD: No.

LDm: Can you relate Prajna to the Intellectual realm?

AD: No, we try to point that out in our work that the manifested universe is not the work, the creative work, except ultimately, of the causeless cause, but IS the work of lesser principles, and to describe these lesser principles as unreal or illusory modification, is really a case of severe inflation.

LDm: But is the ego real?

AD: If you mean by 'real' permanent or things like that? Obviously no, he says it isn't. Ego is ceaseless flux of thoughts, a summation of all prior existence.

LDm: So taken as a permanent entity it is illusory.

AD: It isn't real--to say it is illusory, would you tell me what you mean?

LDm: It isn't real.

AD: OK, I'll accept that. But they very often mean it doesn't exist.

LDm: That it doesn't exist?

AD: It exists for a second, for a split second you exist.

LDM: So does the ego exist other than moment to moment, second to second?

AD: That's enough to say that it exists, isn't it? And you can't turn existence into non-being. You can't say it ISN'T. You no sooner say it is, and it isn't. But you can't say it isn't. Let's get to the point, you can't say it isn't.

LDm: But can you say it is?

AD: I just told you, you can say it in this way, that it has some kind of existence. It exists from moment to moment. But you can't say it doesn't exist. Here's where language has to be precise. The thing I was trying to say to Vic was I was just trying to show that the scientists weren't precise --that's all. I wasn't saying that what they said was untrue, but the language they use is unprecise. If you say something is going to happen in ten billion light-years or happened ten billion light-years ago, there was no universe then--our universe--to speak of 'light-years' doesn't mean anything. So they have to develop another terminology. Otherwise anyone who examines it closely doesn't know what's going on.

It doesn't exist--but we have perennially the problem of what to do and how to do it with it. It's a stone around OUR neck, but it doesn't exist. You follow me, Tim? Let's read it then. It's an extraordinary passage. Go ahead, read it.

Just in case a sage should happen to look at you.

THE SPECIAL METHOD USED BY A SAGE TO WORK ON A STUDENT

PB (TS reading:): "We are asked why, if thought-transference be a fact, the hibernating hermit should not still represent the loftiest achievement, should not in fact be as antisocial as he superficially seems. He may be hidden away in a mountain cave, but is not his mind free to roam where it likes and has not its power been raised to a supreme degree by his mystical practices? We reply that if he is merely concerned with resting in his inner tranquillity undisturbed by the thought of others, then his achievement is only a self-centered one.

"There is much confusion amongst students about these yogis who are supposed to sit in solitude and help humanity telepathically. It is not only yogis who sit in solitude who are doing so. Nor is it needful to be a solitary to be able to do so. The truth is that most yogis who live in solitude are still in the student stage, still trying to develop themselves. And even in the rarer cases where a yogi has perfected himself in meditation, he may be using the latter simply to bask egotistically in inner peace for his own benefit and without a thought for others. It is only when a man is a philosophic yogi that he will be deliberately using his meditational self-absorptions to uplift individuals and help humanity for their good. If the mystic is using his mental powers for altruistic ends, if he is engaged in telepathically helping others at a distance, then he has gone beyond the ordinary mystical level and we salute him for it.

"The Adept will not try to influence any other man, much less try to control him. Therefore, his notion of serving another by enlightening him does not include the activity of proselytizing, but rather the office of teaching. Such service means helping a man to understand for himself and to see for himself what he could not see and understand before. The Adept does this not only by using the ordinary methods of speech, writing, and example, but much more by an extraordinary method which only an Adept can employ. In this he puts himself in a passive attitude towards the other person's ego and thus registers the character, thought, and feeling in one swift general impression, which manifests itself within his own consciousness like a photograph upon a sensitized film. He recognizes this as a picture of the evolutionary degree to which the other person has attained, but he recognizes it also as a picture of the false self with which the other person identifies himself. No matter how much sympathy he feels for the other man, no matter how negative are the emotions or the thoughts he finds reproducing themselves within his own being, it is without effect upon himself. This is because he has outgrown both the desires and the illusions which still reign over the other man's mind. With the next step in his technique he challenges that self as being fearful for its own unworthy and ultimately doomed existence, and finally dismisses the picture of it in favour of the person's true self, the divine Overself. Then he throws out of his mind every thought of the other person's imperfect egoistic condition and replaces it by the affirmation of his true spiritual self-hood.

"Thus, if the Adept begins his service to another who attracted by his wisdom seeks counselling or by his godliness seeks his inspiration, by noting the defects in the character of the person, he ends it by ignoring them. He then images the seeker as standing serenely in the light, free from the ego and its desires, strong and wise and pure because living in the truth. The Adept closes his eyes to the present state of the seeker, to all the evidences of distress and weakness and darkness which he earlier noted, and opens them to the real, innermost state of the seeker, where he sees him united with the Overself. He persists in silently holding this thought and this picture, and he holds it with the dynamic intensity of which he only is capable. The effect of this inner working sometimes appears immediately in the seeker's consciousness, but more likely it will take some time to rise up from the subconscious mind. Even if it takes years to manifest itself, it will certainly do so in the end.

"We know that one mind can influence another through the medium of speech or writing: we know also that it may even influence another directly and without any medium through the silent power of telepathy. All this work takes place on the level of thought and emotion. But the Adept may not only work on this level: it is possible for him to work on a still deeper level. He can go into the innermost core of his own being and there touch the innermost core of the other man's being. In this way, Spirit speaks to Spirit, but without words or even thoughts. Within his innermost being there is a mysterious emptiness to which the Adept alone gains access during meditation or trance. All thoughts die at its threshold as he enters it. But when eventually he returns to the ordinary state and the thinking activity starts again, then those first series of thoughts are endowed with a peculiar power, are impregnated with a magical potency. Their echoes reverberate telepathically across space in the minds of others to whom they may be directed deliberately by the Adept. Their influence upon sympathetic and responsive persons is at first too subtle and too deep to be recognized, but eventually they reach the surface of consciousness.

"This indeed is the scientific fact behind the popular medieval European and contemporary Oriental belief in the virtue of an Adept's blessing and the value of an Adept's initiation. The Adept's true perception of him is somewhere registered like a seed in the subconscious mind of the receptive person, and will in the course of time work its way up through the earth of the unconscious like a plant until it appears above ground in the conscious mind. If it is much slower in showing its effects, it is also much more effectual, much more lasting than the ordinary way of communicating thought or transmitting influence. In this way, by his own inner growth he will begin to perceive, little by little, for himself the truth about his own inner being and outer life in the same way that the Adept perceives it. This is nothing less than a passage from the ego's point of view to the higher one. (25.5.242 & Persp. pp. 354-6)

AD: (very quietly) I couldn't believe that when I read it. I didn't think he'd ever expose that to public view.

CdA: Is it in one of the volumes?

AD: Yes, it's in one of the volumes.

CdA: Which volume?

AD: Don't tell her.

CdA: We can read it all ourselves.

TS: Red.

AD: And take the volume out of the library now, huh?

TS: It's Red 25? No, Red 12, page 117.

(Student comments and request to re-read quote.)

[Audio File 1982 1117a ends. We are missing the second audio file for this class.]