Wednesday, July 20th, 1983

CLASS at Wisdom's Goldenrod, Hector NY

with Anthony Damiani (AD)

July 20, 1983

PB PARAS; PHILOSOPHY; FALLACY OF DIVINE IDENTITY

TOPIC: PB Paras

SUBJECT: Philosophy

SUBSUBJECTS: Fallacy of Divine Identity, Overself, Reproductive Soul, Mystical Death, Insight

CONTENTS:

PB PARAS ON THE FALLACY OF DIVINE IDENTITY

INSIGHT FUNCTIONS SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH SENSES AND INTELLECT; REASONING IS NECESSARY TO UNDERSTAND THAT ALL APPEARANCES ARISE FROM MIND

MISTAKING UNION WITH ONE'S SOUL FOR UNION WITH GOD; MISTAKING UNION WITH A THOUGHT FOR GENUINE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE; THE IMPORTANCE OF MORALS

THE MYSTIC FINDS HIS SOUL WHEN HE THINKS HE HAS FOUND GOD; SOLIPSISM IS RESTRICTED TO PSYCHIC FUNCTIONING, SOUL IS A PRINCIPLE OF TRUE BEING

OVERSELF AND WORLD-MIND ARE INCOMMENSURABLE; THE PHILOSOPHER GRASPS REVELATIONS FROM THE ONE, ETC., THROUGH CONTENTS OF HIS OWN SOUL

PHILOSOPHY IS UNRESTRICTED TO ANY ONE SCHOOL; DISAGREEMENTS ARE NECESSARY TO COME TO TRUTH

THE EGO IS SUBORDINATED TO THE SOUL, NOT TO GOD

THE REPRODUCTIVE PHASE OF SOUL CANNOT BE DESTROYED; MYSTICAL DEATH; THE SAGE HAS A CHOICE WHETHER TO BE OF SERVICE OR TO REMAIN AS THE UNIVERSAL SELF

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PHILOSOPHIC DOCTRINE – PB AND PLOTINUS

THE COSMOS HINTS AT THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE INFINITE MIND, THE SOUL HINTS AT ITS BENEFICENCE; INTUITION AND INSIGHT

BOOKS READ FROM OR REFERENCED:

• Paul Brunton, Notebooks. 16 vols; Vol. 1 entitled Perspectives [Persp.].

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

NOTES:

• RETYPED PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT (V13.1). From 1983 Pat Campbell transcript and AB class notes for 7/20/83. THERE ARE NO AUDIO CASSETTE TAPES EXTANT (though copies of the tapes did exist at WG in 1985 or 1986).

• This is a reformatting of the 1993 transcript that was used for Living Wisdom. Minor typos corrected, PB paras proofed and ID'd. Reformatted from V10 version by JRM & JF 2019-2020, with Subheads and Table of Contents added by JRM 2020.

• In 2024, IT adds material from AB class notes to help round out the class, updates prefatory matter and footer, expands Subsubjects, alters most Subheads to make more accurate, completes Book List, fixes errors/typos, reformats to accord with new conventions.

1983 07/20 at Wisdom's Goldenrod

PB Paras; Philosophy; Fallacy of Divine Identity

PB PARAS ON THE FALLACY OF DIVINE IDENTITY

[Note: The first four PB paras below are from AB class notes and not part of PC transcript.]

PB: "There is metaphysically no such thing as a human appearance of God, as the Infinite Mind brought down into finite flesh. This error is taught as a sacred truth by the Bahais in their Manifestation doctrine, by the Christians in the Incarnation doctrine, and by the Hindus in their Avatar doctrine. God cannot be born in the flesh, cannot take a human incarnation. If He could so confine Himself, He would cease to be God. For how could the Perfect, the Incomprehensible, and the Inconceivable become the imperfect, the comprehensible, and the conceivable?

"Yet there is some fire behind this smoke. From time to time, someone is born predestined to give a spiritual impulse to a particular people, area, or age. He is charged with a special mission of teaching and redemption and is imbued with special power from the universal intelligence to enable him to carry it out. He must plant seeds which grow slowly into trees to carry fruit that will feed millions of unborn people. In this sense he is different from and, if you like, superior to anyone else who is also inspired by the Overself. But this difference or superiority does not alter his human status, does not make him more than a man still, however divinely used and power-charged he may be. Such a man will claim no essential superiority over other men; on the contrary, he will plainly admit that they, too, may attain the same state of inspiration which he possesses. Hence Muhammed confessed, repeatedly:"I am only a human being like unto yourselves. But revelations are made to me." And the tenth Sikh guru declared, "Those who call me the Supreme Lord, will go to hell." No human temple can receive the Infinite Essence within its confining walls. No mortal man has ever been or could ever be the Incarnation of the all-transcending Godhead. No earthly flesh or human intelligence has the right to identify itself with the unknowable principle. Only minds untrained in the metaphysics of truth could accept the contrary belief. The widespread character of this belief evidences how few have ever had such a training, and the widespread character of the corruptions and troubles which have always followed in the train of such man-worship, evidences it as a fallacy." (25.1.184 & Persp. p. 344)

PB: "Modern man looks in all sorts of impossible places for an invisible God and will not worship the visible God which confronts him. Yet little thinking is needed to show that we are all suckled at the everlasting breast of Nature. It is easy to see that the source of all life is the sun and that its creative, protective, and destructive powers are responsible for the entire physical process of the universe. However it is not merely to the physical sun alone that the aspirant addresses himself but to the World-Mind behind it. He must look upon the sun as a veritable self-expression and self-showing of the World-Mind to all its creatures." (27.1.76 & Persp. p. 377)

PB: "An error of mysticism which must make the penetrative seeker turn to philosophy was the deification of man implicit in its claim that the mystic can attain to union with God. There was some truth in this claim but there was also some falsehood and certainly much confusion. (25.1.95)

PB: "We exist always in utter dependence on the Universal Mind. Man and God may meet and mingle in his periods of supreme exaltation, he may feel the sacred presence within himself to the utmost degree, but he does not thereby abolish all the distinctions between them absolutely. For he arrives at the knowledge of the timeless spaceless divine infinitude after a process of graded personal effort, whereas the World-Mind's knowledge of itself has forever been what it was is and shall be, above all processes and beyond all efforts." (25.1.73 & Persp. 342)

INSIGHT FUNCTIONS SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH SENSES AND INTELLECT; REASONING IS NECESSARY TO UNDERSTAND THAT ALL APPEARANCES ARISE FROM MIND

[PC Transcript Begins]

PB: "The Real is wholly nothing to the five senses and wholly unthinkable to the human intellect. Therefore and to this extent only it is also called the Unknowable. But there is a faculty latent in man which is subtler than the senses, more penetrative than the intellect. If he succeeds in evoking it, the Real, the unknowable, will then come within the range of his perception, knowledge, and experience." (25.1.114)

S: The essence of Mind is now in its manifestation; there is no distinction.

AD: I wouldn't push it that far. I think that what you've already said is true, except that you would recognize that when you have a case of insight it doesn't stop the senses from functioning or the mind from thinking, the intellect having thoughts. But you would very clearly see that the substratum of both of these is the Real. But it isn't a manifestation in the sense that it's an efflux of the Real: you wouldn't see that. But you can see very clearly that the intellect cannot think this Reality; the senses cannot perceive this Reality, even while your insight perceives it. Perception here is misleading, because it's not a triple relationship; the Mind perceiving Itself as the substratum of Reality is not a triple relationship. But that doesn't stop the other two from operating.

S: In what sense would you say that it's NOT a manifestation or an efflux?

AD: That you don't SEE. That you're going to have to work out through a very difficult process of dialectic and reasoning.

Insight is, like we said, an intrinsic self-awareness. You don't see the appearance ARISING out of consciousness. You're going to have to work that out through hard dialectic and reasoning and understanding. It's not a perceptible fact, (even?) when you have insight going on. In insight--when the faculty of insight is developed or functioning--you recognize that consciousness is the Reality, the substratum. In that act, there isn't the realization or the perception of the appearance arising out of consciousness. They're both simultaneous. I mean, you see the apparent world--with the senses, with the intellect--and with the faculty of insight, you see that consciousness is the substratum. But you don't see it ARISE out of that. The literature leads you to think that that's what happens. Like you have the ocean and a mist arising out of it, and the mist is the apparent world. That's not the way insight operates.

S: Even the way PB talks about it--that every thought that arises is none other than Mind, none other than Reality.

AD: Very clearly. I remember that, and that's what I'm referring to. In other words, he says that you have to understand that thoughts arise from the Mind; you have to bring the intellect and the intuition to operate on that, that all this arises from the Mind, comes from the Mind. You're not going to SEE it.

S: Even if you don't see the arisal of the thought as consciousness, do you see the produced image as none other than the mental substratum? So you have this real split, this real duality. Then I don't understand how the philosopher's insight is different from the mystics.

AD: Well, the philosopher has brought to bear, like we said, all his understanding and all the reasoning and his intuition on the fact that the world appearance arise from consciousness. I keep saying, it's a process that you come to, reason out, and understand.

S: Doesn't that reasoning transform his experience?

AD: Yes, that too. Isn't something similar happening here, or with us--that through our reasoning we recognize that the process of manifestation involves all these steps and that the ultimate thing is consciousness from which all this is manifesting? You don't SEE the process. It's not supposed to (end in just reasoning about it), but it has a transformative value if it's insistently concentrated on. But remember, when all is said and done, you've got to apply it. I'm trying to stop you from evoking fairies: "It's going to happen." You're going to MAKE it happen.

S: If there had been no philosophic preparation, you would see consciousness as the substratum of everything, but you would not understand how the appearance was connected with it?

AD: If you're unprepared, of course. What do you think, you were born with a golden spoon in your mouth? What do you think we've gone through all this work for? Got nothing better to do? If with that experience complete understanding came, then why all these schools, why all these teachers, why this use of breath? All I need is the enlightening experience, and all the understanding is there too!

S: The difference between the mystic and the philosopher.

AD: The philosopher has prepared himself for this, and to understand it; the mystic hasn't, so he'll go around saying everything is consciousness. Everything is not consciousness, because the tiger will still bite you.

S: Just because he bites you doesn't mean he's not consciousness.

AD: You'll feel pain. It's a sure enough negation of consciousness, or--let me be more accurate--it's a sure negation of Self. But the point we want to get here is that with that experience does not come the understanding. You don't get a certificate saying, "Now you understand the doctrine of mentalism." Do you think they went to all this trouble to develop the brain so that you could put it aside.

So we could reword this sentence a little bit differently. We could say that when insight is operative, the person recognizes that consciousness is the substratum of the world. He also will recognize that he cannot SEE that, and he cannot think it. There's insight, there's consciousness. That's all there is there in front of you, alright? But your eyes go on seeing the table, and you see that your thoughts can't THINK that Reality.

[Add-in from AB class notes: Example -- difference between various Sages -- PB developed the understanding also -- others didn't.]

MISTAKING UNION WITH ONE'S SOUL FOR UNION WITH GOD; MISTAKING UNION WITH A THOUGHT FOR GENUINE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE; THE IMPORTANCE OF MORALS

PB: "When they assert that they have united with God, they have, if truly attained, united with God's deputy, their higher self, their own divine soul--which is not the same. And if they have deceived themselves then they have united only with their conception of God. That is, they have never gone outside the enclosing circle of their own thought." (25.1.131)

AD: Don't think that that doesn't happen. Any exuberant state of imagination when it's overheated will think that you're uniting with God, and it's only a thought in your own mind.

Unification with the Soul is equivalent for most all of us--anyone that you read or study--unification with their higher Soul is equivalent to uniting with God, as far as we're concerned. Only a philosophically prepared mystic knows that what he is uniting with is his Soul. Now, because most mystics are not philosophically trained, they will think of this as God. And it certainly feels like God. But the other one. There's always traces of mental activity. When you're united with a conception of God, there will always be traces of mental activity, even if it's the penultimate stage of the imagination. But there'll be traces of thought; there'll be images, pictures. And one should be wary whenever those things exist.

S: One is with thought; the other is without thought.

AD: You understood correctly. And the former (latter?) is authentic; it is very real. The other one is delusive. We haven't been saying that (both are the experience of the Soul). I've been saying that one is the experience of being united with the Soul; the other is the experience of being united with a thought in your mind. The mind that you're talking to me now with: That.

If you have certain thoughts in the mind, and the mind gets very, very excitable--and it can be, like those of you who have had some experience with that, like for instance with drugs. You are experiencing your own thought. And you're within that charmed magic circle of thought, regardless of what you're going to say. It's only after you're out of that, or much later on, that you can see that you never had an experience of God, or of your Soul--only an experience of what you're thinking in your own mind.

You take for instance certain very inspirational ____ (Q: blank in PC transcript) of an artist. The imagination is extremely overheated; they're still in the imagination, still functioning in the imagination.

PB: "The danger of misunderstanding this subtle teaching is not only the likelihood of going wrong metaphysically and psychologically, but also of going wrong morally." (20.2.241)

AD: A very common misconception in these instances is that those who achieve this state can act amorally. A very common error for instance is that those who have achieved the state of unity with their Soul can act amorally. That would show that you misunderstood these teachings.

S: The percipient feels that morals don't bind him.

AD: Yes, he feels that morals don't bind him, but that would show that the conscious ego has intruded and penetrated into the experience and permeated it, and now he's acting out a kind of self-deception.

THE MYSTIC FINDS HIS SOUL WHEN HE THINKS HE HAS FOUND GOD; SOLIPSISM IS RESTRICTED TO PSYCHIC FUNCTIONING, SOUL IS A PRINCIPLE OF TRUE BEING

PB: "No mortal may penetrate the mystery of the ultimate mind in its own nature--which means in its static inactive being. The Godhead is not only beyond human conception but also beyond mystic perception. But Mind in its active dynamic state, that is, the World-Mind, and rather its ray in us called the Overself, is within range of human perception, communion, and even union. It is this that the mystic really finds when he believes that he has found God." (25.1.71 & Persp. p. 343)

AD: Generally solipsism means that you're caught up in your own psychic processes and you can't get out of them. But when you speak about the Soul assimilating the World-Idea which it is perceiving--and the Soul here, the Overself, is an authentic existent, which makes it a true and real Being--to speak about solipsism here is in a certain way true, solipsism for this individual Soul because each individual Soul must manifest the World-Idea in his own right. But that whole process of how it's done and what's involved: Solipsism here would be equivalent to saying your Soul takes in the World-Idea; this is the entirety of the world for you. Well, it's no longer solipsism.

If you get into trying to understand what is the nature of your own consciousness, you come with veritable being. Now if you still want to insist on calling that solipsism . . . you come up with true being, which is more than the laws (that are regulating your experience).

The point here that I'm trying to get across and I'm trying to express is this notion of what the Soul IS. And that it's going to take us a long time to recognize that THIS IS ultimate for us. We're constantly hammering at the profundity, the eternality, the ultimacy of this principle. As far as you're concerned, it's something that no amount of solipsism can possibly grasp. As a matter of fact, even to understand that concept you have to practically step outside the solipsistic framework that the psychic images supply you with.

All I'm trying to say is that when you say "solipsism," whether it's you, or Bertrand Russell, or anyone else that criticizes mentalism, there's a certain legitimacy in it. But solipsism must be restricted to the functioning of the psyche and to anything within that psyche. Now the Soul is not only the psyche. The Soul is an intellectual Reality and ultimate principle of true Being in its own right. It goes way beyond the functioning of the psyche. So you would be right saying, "Within the psyche, there you have solipsism." But when the conception of what the Soul is, and how it is real Being--when you see that conception utterly transcends the psyche and all the limitations the psychic functioning impose on you, then you see that it would be illegitimate to extend the use of the word 'solipsism' beyond those boundaries.

The next point that you have to go into is, "What is the nature of this Being?" And if you grasp its universality, its eternality, then to speak about solipsism is besides the point. You have problems like: How DOES the Soul assimilate the World-Idea, bring it into Itself? Or how does the World-Idea or the World-Mind arise within the Soul? Because the Soul must portray the cosmos in its entirety and not a piece of it. So it's a very complex question.

I'm not talking about the way the World-Idea is being assimilated at the psychic level. I'm talking about the ontological real of the individual Soul, which makes it possible for the World-Idea for the individual consciousness which is going to be suspended from that Soul. Solipsism always means being caught within the boundaries of the psychical framework. Now if you're outside the psychical framework, I don't know what you're talking about when you say someone's a solipsist.

OVERSELF AND WORLD-MIND ARE INCOMMENSURABLE; THE PHILOSOPHER GRASPS REVELATIONS FROM THE ONE, ETC., THROUGH CONTENTS OF HIS OWN SOUL

S: Overself and World-Mind--

AD: They're incommensurable. There's an absolutely asymmetrical relationship between the Overself and the World-Mind.

S: What establishes that asymmetry?

AD: The incomprehensible nature of the World-Mind itself. Like he points out, it's ALL knowledge, whereas the most that the individual Soul has, even at its height, is very fragmentary. There is no way that these two could ever become identical. He actually in one quote says that that's unbridgeable. Now the other thing to remember is that, assuming that a person has identified with the Soul, reached that status of unity with the Soul, then he experiences the World-Mind--or, really, the Soul in the Absolute. He experiences it in this way, more like an emanation, more like a fervor, an aura, emanating from that principle; then whatever knowledge he comes up with, he's going to have to find within himself to correspond with the aura which emanated something or revealed something to him. But in the principle of Overself, the Overself itself, there IS a possibility of evoking within ourselves the knowledge which the higher principle is trying to communicate. They're unbridgeable. Keep in mind: absolutely asymmetrical.

What he (the mystic) grasps is within his own Soul. He intuits the meaning of what's going on in the Absolute Soul through the contents of his own Soul. Let's say a mystic is contemplating the Void, and a revelation takes place. The ability to articulate--announce--what that revelation is about, rests on the fact that within the contents of his own Soul he can find what he's looking for. It's not coming from the Intellectual-Principle. That is always impenetrable, inscrutable; it always remains what it is. So if some emanation is given forth to the contemplating philosopher, and he receives it, in order to understand it he must find the contents within his own Soul. He always remains in Soul.

S: Forms within his own Soul that would correspond to that.

AD: That doesn't infer what you want to infer: that there is some specificity in the Intellectual-Principle. And it doesn't infer the other. Either positive or negative, you cannot infer here. You already forgot what we spoke about, that within the Soul is the totality of all the Ideas. But (forms) that's what his intuition will work with.

(Reread of the quote on "The Real is wholly nothing to the five senses.")

AD: In that quote, the mystic cannot get to the Absolute. The most any could know about it is that It is. And if in the case of somebody like Plotinus, when he tells us about the nature of the One, it is in the sense that it was revealed to him, given to him. But this doesn't mean that his mystical perception could penetrate into the Absolute Godhead. Otherwise, why call it Absolute? When he gives a description or some knowledge about the nature of the One, one would say, "Well, didn't he have mystic perception of the Absolute?" I would point out that he would have to find within the contents of his own Soul an understanding of the revelation that's given to that Soul. But it isn't that he penetrated with mystic perception into the Absolute.

PHILOSOPHY IS UNRESTRICTED TO ANY ONE SCHOOL; DISAGREEMENTS ARE NECESSARY TO COME TO TRUTH

PB: "There has not been so far any school whose outlook was broad enough to take in the philosophical one, nor whose inspiration was deep enough. The time will come when to provide for this deficiency will be laid as a duty on someone's mind, nor can it be far off." (20.2.62)

S: Do you think he was referring to someone specific here?

AD: You bet your life. He wasn't referring. Those were orders.

PB: "A school should exist not only to teach but also to investigate, not to formulate prematurely a finalized system but to remain creative, to go on testing theories by applying them and validating ideas by experience." (1.4.111 & Persp. p. 12)

AD: Discussion (of these quotes) isn't necessary, but a recognition would be enough, if you recognize what he's saying there, and what we've been trying to do here; the way I've been working for twelve years, that I'm not going to restrict myself to any one school. In fact I consider it not only, of course, unphilosophic, I hate to tell you what else I consider it. If you recognize that, then you got the major point.

If anyone thinks he can come down with a final chapter on answering a question, it just shows his limitations. Because when you understand philosophy, you understand that that can't be done.

Very often people are of the understanding that I'm being Libran when I say that all these disagreements are necessary to come to the Truth; they think I'm being polite and I'm being mannered. I keep trying to point out: that's in my bones, that's the way it is.

THE EGO IS SUBORDINATED TO THE SOUL, NOT TO GOD

PB: "It is a fallacy to think that this displacement of the lower self brings about its complete substitution by the infinite and absolute Deity. This fallacy is an ancient and common one in mystical circles and leads to fantastic declarations of self-deification. If the lower self is displaced, it is not destroyed. It lives on but in strict subordination to the higher one, the Overself, the divine soul of man; and it is this latter, not the divine world-principle, which is the true displacing element." (25.2.198 & Persp. p. 344)

AD: God hasn't taken over. When the ego is subordinated, it's not--in other words, someone says to you, "It's no longer I that lives, but God within me." PB would correct it and say, "No. Your SOUL within you." God isn't going to take over.

When we speak about the displacement of the ego, which amounts to the death of the ego, the experience of the ego as utter emptiness, we pointed out that that was the first stage in the Sufi stations. The second stage was the training that this ego would be put on for an indeterminable amount of time. And the third stage would be when the Overself permanently was established and the ego was only a tool for its manifestation or its activity in the world. But I don't think this quote was primarily concerned with that.

PB: "Philosophy rejects decisively all those Vedantic pantheistic notions and Western mystical naïveties which would deify man and identify him with God. It asserts that the phrases in which these beliefs are embodied, such as the Indian"That thou art," the Persian "I am God," and the medieval European "union with God," are exaggerations of the truth, which is that God is immanent in us, that through realization of our higher self we become more like God, but that God never ceases to be the Unattainable, the Incomprehensible." (25.1.150 & Persp. p. 342)

AD: This is very noticeable in Western literature, if you read the Western early church fathers, and even if you go back as recent as Ruysbroeck, "The Admirable," and Saint John. They too kept pointing out the same thing. Don't get inflated and start thinking you're God. It's the Western tradition to emphasize that distinction, whereas the Eastern tradition has been to slur over that distinction.

PB: "In time his relation to the higher self becomes more intimate than any earthly friendship, closer than any human union could ever be. Yet it always remains a relation, never becomes an absorption; always a nearness, never a merger." (25.1.143 & Persp. p. 345)

AD: There's another quote on the next page that seems to contradict that. Here he's saying that there is no merger, no absorption, in what you might call your Absolute Self, your Higher Self, the Overself.

THE REPRODUCTIVE PHASE OF SOUL CANNOT BE DESTROYED; MYSTICAL DEATH; THE SAGE HAS A CHOICE WHETHER TO BE OF SERVICE OR TO REMAIN AS THE UNIVERSAL SELF

PB: "The difference between the individual and the universal self persists throughout the incarnations . . ." (25.2.213)

AD: Is he saying there that the difference between this empirical subjective consciousness and the substratum or the Reality that underlies this individual is a universal Self?

S: Would have to ask what you mean that this difference persists throughout the incarnations.

AD: Exactly just what I said: that which makes me an empirical subject, that consciousness which is divisible about this psycho-somatic organism which makes me to be individual. And we're saying that between that and its background--he's calling that the universal Self. I call it the absolute Self, the absolute individual, the I AM, the Overself--all one and the same. This is universal.

S: Is that Mind in Itself?

AD: As far as you're concerned, yes. As far as you're concerned, that's Mind in Itself, and when you get to know that, and you get to know it as intrinsically self-cognitive awareness, you'll be receptive to something higher. But for now that's as far as we're going to go.

He's saying here that there's this principle that makes us the individual, inside this greater Self that we are, and this principle he refers to as our individual consciousness. And he says you can't remove that; there's no way you can get around that. It's there, it's always there. If we think for instance that this universal Self that you are has sent forth from Itself a part of Itself--we could call that the germ--which has evolved through eons of time until it reaches this level where now it can understand something about its origin, he says now that individual consciousness cannot become that greater Self. It can't transform Itself into that greater Self. Try to recollect the way we've spoken about It. Soul is a unity, a whole of parts; it has different parts within itself but is a unity. One of these parts is the part that we refer to as going forth and getting embellished in various bodies. If it reaches a certain level of understanding, it recognizes that it could merge or give up that individuality. That's what we refer to in another quote as the mystical death: the willingness to give this up. Now it doesn't MERGE into it; it's always been part of it to begin with. So what we have to try to understand here in a more precise way is that by giving up this individuality, or this DESIRE to become an individual, IS what we might refer to as a kind of merger, or a return to one's Source. And he says this doesn't have to be. But the sage is in a position where he can do that. But whether he does it or not is another thing. The true philosophic sage doesn't do that, because he wants to go on being of service. But there are some who can merge back into it and then remain as universal Self.

S: And then the individuality really is gone.

AD: Not gone so much as, let's say, not functioning.

S: There could be a merger and then a re-emergence.

AD: Yes, over and over again.

That greater Consciousness is that universal Self that you are. Now notice--that universal Self that you are is not the Nous. It is your Soul. He's making it very clear that if there is a merger on the part of the sage, it's with his own higher principle. It's not a merger with the Absolute, although one could interpret it that way. Because that would mean that you remain as Authentic Being, and what's to distinguish Authentic Being from Nous? There are many ways of looking at it so that the variety will provide you with more comprehension, and not with right or wrong.

(Quote reread: "In time his relationship to the higher self . . .")

PB: "There is some kind of a distinction between his higher individuality and the Universal Infinite out of which it is rayed, whatever the Vedantins may say. And this distinction remains in his highest mystical state, which is not one of total absorption and utter destruction of this individuality but the mergence of its own will in the universal will, the closest intimacy of its own being with the universal being." (25.2.200 & Persp. p. 342)

AD: The Soul insofar as it is identified with an individual psycho-somatic organism, we can refer to this as an individual within the greater whole, the greater Being. And we're going on and we're saying further that this individual consciousness can merge into that greater whole that he is, permanently. And then I can go a little bit further and say that now that there's only this greater Being, this Mind per se that he is, this could always be in association with, or alongside of, Being per se. The distinction remains.

S: Mystical death--

AD: To give up a desire to become and be divisible about bodies. And that is experienced very concretely in the mystical trance state. It's something that you must experience IN the body.

There's no going or coming or anything like that (of the pure I AM into the Void). It can be receptive to something that will be given to it. That's what you probably mean: that some sort of revelation will take place within the faculty of insight, which was so in the case of Plotinus.

(Tape flipped: small section missing re: the mystic comes out of the mystical death alive, but the desire for individual embodiment has died.)

If we take belief now in the sense that we've used it, that it has this intrinsic overwhelming compulsiveness to go on reasserting itself: if that's what you mean by belief, I would agree with that. Most people think of belief as something they can take in and out of their pocket like their wallet. You can come out (of the mystical death) alive, but the desire (for embodiment) won't be there. It'll surprise people to know that there are some who believe that it might be a relief to die.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PHILOSOPHIC DOCTRINE – PB AND PLOTINUS

PB: "Although the mystic's claim to become one with God is, in the full sense of the term, an unquestionable exaggeration, a splendid illusion, he can certainly claim to have entered into a conscious relationship with God." (25.1.166)

AD: That's why we look to these sages for advice and understanding. You read Plotinus, if you read down, you're off on the wrong hook, right away. And all you have to do is read many commentators, whether on Plotinus or Plato or these men. They talk down as though they have this assurance of the experience, but they've got no idea what they're talking about. That's why it's so important that we have PB. The philosophic doctrine is so accurate, in the simplest language that's available. That's not going to make the ideas less difficult, but at least the language is available and will have an accurate description of what these things are about. So we're really quite fortunate.

THE COSMOS HINTS AT THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE INFINITE MIND, THE SOUL HINTS AT ITS BENEFICENCE; INTUITION AND INSIGHT

PB: "Neither the senses nor the intellect can tell us anything about the intrinsic nature of this Infinite Mind. Nevertheless we are not left in total ignorance about it. From its manifestation, the cosmos, we may catch a hint of its Intelligence. From its emanation, the soul, we may catch more than a hint of its Beneficence."More than," I say, because the emanation may be felt within us as our very being whereas the manifestation is outside us and is apart." (28.2.97 & Persp. p. 383)

S: Hints about the World-Mind in manifestation--

AD: In all probability you would say that the scientists are giving us an idea of the scope and the depth, the immeasurable aspects of this intelligence. We haven't even scratched the surface. But it's enough to show that there's this immense wisdom that's overwhelming that human intelligence is incapable (of grasping). But still the universe is a manifestation of that Intelligence, even if it's only a partial manifestation.

You need (both intuition and insight). You know the way we spoke of the intuition as being basically the three modes of absolute Willing, Feeling, and Knowing. We can call all three of them intuition, because they all operate silently. When you have a real intuition, when you have a real knowing about something, or a real aesthetic appreciation about something, it'll be silent; it'll be absolute calm. And even when the utmost exertion of will is going to take place, the first apprehension of it is going to be an absolute calmness. And all three can be referred to as intuition. So they're going to be needed as well as insight.

One of the feelings that arises when insight occurs is the--'beneficence' is the word he uses--but another word that could be used is like an utmost friendliness, it's like all of a sudden you're in your mother's arms. Here all the time you thought it was something out there.

If there is an act of insight, even if it's momentary, there's a radiation from it of absolute beneficence, that you've always been in the care of this; you've never left. Whereas the other thing, the development of the feeling function, is quite different. It doesn't necessarily have to bring you the feeling of kindness; it could bring a lot of other kinds of feelings. But this is always there. You're at home. In fact, they call it home.

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