[Music]
Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people.
We've done over 700 of them now, and if this is new to you and you'd like to check out previous ones, please go to batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, and look under the interviews menu, where you'll see them arranged in several different ways.
This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers, so
if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons on every
page of the site and a page which explains alternatives to PayPal.
And another thing that we've got going, I don't know how Edi feels about this, today's
guest, but we have a spiritual chatbot that has been created over the past year or so
into which over 100,000 relevant documents have been loaded, including 1,700 of the world's
sacred texts. And I think it gives better results on any kind of spiritual or philosophical question
than you're likely to get from any of the commercial chatbots. And it's free, of course,
so there's a menu for that on batgap.com. I just referred to Edi. You're wondering,
Who's Edi? My guest today is Dr. Edi Billimoria. He was born in India and educated at the universities
of London, Sussex and Oxford. He presents an unusual blend of experience in the fields of
science, arts and philosophy. Professionally, Edi is an award-winning engineer and consultant to the
petrochemical, oil and gas transport and construction industries. In other words,
he's a true Buddha at the gas pump. He has been project manager.
- I'm Rick, I don't know about the Buddha.
- All right, I think you are.
I mean, you don't have the pot belly, I'm sure,
but you have the consciousness.
- Sorry to interrupt. - That's okay.
He's been project manager and head of design
for major innovative projects,
such as the Channel Tunnel,
London Underground Systems,
petrochemical plants, and offshore installations.
Incidentally, have you heard the thing
about slime molds being really good
at designing subway and train networks?
- Yes, yes.
Fascinating. That is absolutely fascinating, yeah.
Yeah. A new invention or new discovery. Yeah, maybe we'll talk about slime molds later.
He also worked in safety and environmental engineering for several Royal Navy projects,
including the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier and the fleet of offshore patrol vessels.
Now, the main reason we're talking to him is that Edi has been a student of the perennial
philosophy for over half a century. He has given courses and lectured extensively in the UK
and internationally. He has organized and chaired conferences with the object of encouraging
discourse on the different but overlapping roles of science, religion, and practical philosophy.
And if you've been listening to my show, you know that I'm really fascinated about that
relationship between, you know, science and spirituality and have given talks on it myself.
Edi has published extensively in the fields of science, engineering, and the esoteric philosophy.
Unfolding Consciousness, his book, has received recognition with the 2022 Grand Prize Award
from the Scientific and Medical Network, and his earlier work, The Snake and the Rope,
is also an award winner. So, Edi is very well prepared, and he or his assistant sent me
a list of discussion points for podcasts, and I don't usually do this, but I was thinking of
actually using that list and reading the points verbatim or perhaps with a little bit of modification
and embellishment.
So it'll sound like I'm reading a prepared point, but I think that doing it this way will
enable us to cover a lot more ground than if we just go by the seat of our pants, you
know, speaking about whatever comes to mind, although we can do that too.
So the questions proceed kind of sequentially through the three major parts of his book,
is what, about a thousand, twelve hundred pages or something, altogether, giant book. And
there's also a condensed version, which is coming out or will be coming out?
>> It will be coming out. >> Will be coming out. I'm going to do that.
But before I do that, give us the elevator pitch. What would it be?
>> It would be, Rick, that we owe science a huge debt of gratitude for our physical well-being,
for our comfort, for everything in our physical lives and medicine. But the excessive emphasis
on physical science has created a sort of hole in our hearts, if I can put it that way. And
it's created a spiritual vacuum where people seem to think that only physical materialistic
science has and will have the answer to all of life's problems and issues. And my purpose is
never, of course, to castigate science, but to raise science to a higher metaphysics,
to align science with spirituality, to show how spirituality and science are entirely compatible,
And one is not a substitute for the other, but they dance together.
Good. That's excellent.
Good elevator pitch.
That's good elevator pitch. It was a short ride on the elevator.
Now, I certainly don't have your level of education, but, you know, I've been an amateur
student of this stuff for a long time, and my understanding was that science was a valuable
corrective to a more primitive age in which people were burned at the stake for suggesting that the
the stars might be other suns like our own, and they might even have planets around them
that might even have beings on them, and all kinds of nutty ideas were forced upon the
public, which was very poorly educated by and large.
And science came along, and I heard a quote from Aldous Huxley recently in which he said
that he felt that the development of the working hypothesis was the greatest contribution of
the scientific revolution, because it enabled us to think in a more empirical way about
things and weigh them on the basis of the evidence or lack of it, rather than accepting some
kind of dogma. But obviously, science isn't the final step. It was a valuable corrective
to the dogmatic precedent, but we're not there yet in terms of a real balanced, integrated
approach to knowledge which incorporates both objective and subjective means of gaining
knowledge.
Corrective is a very good word to use because science acts, when used wisely, like an acid
that strips away the crud and the rubbish and exposes the pure metal. But when the acid attacks
the metal, that's when the danger starts. So what I mean is, it's very important to understand science,
if I may launch on this, because we use this word science, it's used every day dozens of times,
and words that are used so often tend to lose their inner meaning. So science, the etymology is
scary to learn, to find out, from scientia. So it is to learn and to explore everything.
So let's look at science in the traditional three ways. Science with a small s,
science with a capital S, and science in blazing capitals. Now, science with a small s, and that's
not meant to sound demeaning at all. That refers to our physical well-being, our physical laws of
nature and the ontology is a materialist ontology. So, if I'm designing a bridge, my ontology
is the physical laws of matter as a civil engineer. I'm not thinking of the spiritual world or the
bridge will fall down, but then let's move on. We move beyond just quantity into quality,
and science with a capital S is still within the realms of materialism, but it's a more refined
materialism where it brings in the qualitative aspect. And that's the great work of scientists
like Brian Goodwin of Schumacher College. But then there is science in blazing capitals,
which really is to do with a mystical intuition into the deep inner nature of things.
So we have to look at science on these three levels and not confuse one level with another
level. If we're dealing with the physical world, we use physical laws, but if we're talking of
consciousness and mind, to reduce that just to the physical is to make what the philosophers
call "complete category errors." So science in its true sense, there is nothing but science in
the sense that there is science of yoga, there is science of love, most certainly. There's a science
of everything, because we explore, we find out, we test, we experiment. But what you're referring to,
Rick, the mainstream science, has indeed been a corrective to strip away superstition. But in
stripping away the superstition, it's gone a bit too far, in my opinion. It's stripped away a lot
of people's understanding or relationship with the divine by saying, "Oh, that's all rubbish,
that's all a science, it's all a God delusion," to quote one book.
>>Rick: Yeah, Richard Dawkins, was that?
>>John: Yeah, of course it is, yeah.
>>Rick: Yeah. And one way I've thought about it is if you think of knowledge as a territory,
there was a time when, at least in the West and perhaps also in the East, the Church kind of
of dominated the whole territory. And the territory included astronomy, it included evolution,
it included geography, all kinds of subjects like that. And science came along and it began
usurping aspects of the territory and really treating them much more intelligently and
realistically than the Church had been doing. But then there was hubris among scientists
that they really had the ability to own the entire territory, and that religious people
or mystics were a bunch of goofballs, indulging in imagination.
>> RICHARD: Very well put, Rick. Very well put. Hubris and arrogance and hubris are casualties
of the intellect. And so, here, if I may, we have to talk about the modus operandi,
mindset that science uses, which is intellect. And now we have to be very clear what the intellect
can do and what it can't do. The trouble with words like God and consciousness is, if we try
to define them, what we find is all our logical deductions and definitions are one-sided and
impartial. Why? Because they are bound down to the starting point, which is the judging
intellect and the one single point of view. So, what people regard as a fact is nothing
more than a particular point of view. So, just taking that further, when scientists try to
address questions outside the purview of mainstream science, talking of God and consciousness and
all of that, they need to realize that the intellect cannot prove that which lies outside
its boundaries, neither can the intellect disprove, because the intellect deals with
finite things, and consciousness writ large, and God, and love, and all of these things
are in the realm of the infinite. But if we have to speak in words and use intellect,
the very least we can do is adopt what I would call an intellectual perambulation right around.
So, we're not just dealing with one particular point of view. We're dealing with each point of
view as a fractal torn off from the whole. So, in consciousness studies, you've got panpsychism
and monism and theism and all of that, each claiming to know the whole truth rather than
regarding these as fractals that deal with the whole. And just around this point of, Rick,
all the great sages, and I cannot be more forceful about this, the mystics, the great sages, and the
The great scientists like Schrödinger, like Einstein, like Newton, have all pointed to
the limitations of intellect. They never said discard intellect, obviously, but they said
that reality, the truth, is beyond intellect, the horizontal dimension, and it's above intellect,
the vertical dimension. And no one could have put this better than Einstein in his 1943 speech
during the darkest days of World War II to a Jewish seminary, when he said that
our age is justly proud of its intellectual achievements, but we must be
very careful never to make the intellect the master. He referred to the
intellectuals as the priests, the priests, the intellectuals, and he said the
intellectuals have the intellect has powerful muscles but no personality. The intellect can only
serve, it can never lead, and therefore it's not surprising that this fatal blindness is
transmitted from one generation to another. So here is the great Einstein, Schrodinger,
they've all pointed out that the method of science that uses predominantly intellect is
limited. It's not wrong, but it will only go so far. The intellect, I'll deal with this map,
so to speak, the conceptual maps of the real. The map is not the territory, it points to the
territory. So, I think I've made the point, I hope. >>Rick: No, you have. One way that I
understand it in simple terms is that whether East or West, there are two components to knowledge.
there's understanding and experience. And a scientist might come up with a certain understanding,
which we know, again, in Huxley's terms, a working hypothesis, but that doesn't do him much good. He
has to go about collecting, gathering empirical evidence to either support or refute his
hypothesis. And then really, when he has the evidence, then it's much more complete than just
an intellectual concept. And same in the
East, at least traditions like Vedanta and
so on. There are all kinds of books you
can read, but no teacher worth his salt
would tell you to just read the books. He
wants you to do something to get the
experience that is talked about in the
books, and that's really the most
important part of it.
Absolutely. So, what you're saying,
Rick, is theory and practice have got to
go hand in hand. If you have practice
with unsound theory, you will go off on the wrong direction. The theory with our practice is empty
talk. So it's the same with music, which has been an absolute love of my life. I still practice the
piano every day for at least one hour, used to be three hours. And there is only one way,
you have to understand the theory, but then you have to practice. So the two do dance together.
But experience is the ultimate court. Now, I have an ongoing debate with a good friend who is
an atheist, really, but a very nice fellow and good friend, and we have lovely talks.
One of his arguments is, how do you know that through subjective means of gaining knowledge,
such as meditation or even psychedelics, which he occasionally does, you're actually tuning in
to some kind of ontological truth or deeper reality, or that your brain is just fabricating it.
Let's say you experience unbounded awareness. You feel like, "Oh, I am just as vast as the universe."
But how do you know that's not just your brain creating that subjective experience for you?
So, what he's arguing, essentially, is that purely subjective means of gaining knowledge,
such as meditation or other such methods, are not reliable because you can just be fooling yourself.
My overriding question to your very good atheist friend is, "What do you mean by brain? This is
not meant to be facetious. What do you mean by brain?" Even in the 19th century, the great William
James, the father of American psychology, said the dogma, almost, in psychology was thought is a
productive function of the brain. But then in his wonderful Ingersoll lectures, William James,
on him, human immortality, he asked, "What
kind of productive function? What do we
mean by productive function?" Well, there are three
kinds. One is pure production. Steam is
produced by a kettle. Electricity is
produced by the generating station, yes.
But there's another kind of productive
function which is permissive, releasing. The
crossbow releases the arrow, it doesn't
produce the error. So it's like a reducing valve that opens and closes and paradoxically
and counterintuitively to most, when the brain is in its state of high activation, the reducing
valve is closing. So there is very little creativity. It's only in meditation and relaxation
when the reducing valve opens to enable the permissive function, but the most important
is transmissive. So the brain is not producing, it's permitting and it's transmitting.
And here the great psychologist, as every great psychologist and scientist should do,
he studied mystical poetry and literature because the great poets have really said it all.
And here William James quotes from Shelley, the great English romantic poet, that life,
like a dome of stained colored glass, stains the white radiance of eternity. In other words,
the brain acts rather like colored glass that refracts the light. So, life is the white radiance
of eternity. And the more we fill our minds with concepts and prejudices, we, so to speak,
enable the white light to refract through all the coloured images and break up that image,
that white light, into the various images. So, the brain transduces and transmits. So
So we think through the brain, not with the brain. And the great Blavatsky, one of the
principal founders of the Theosophical Society, put it so eloquently in her imperious way
that if we regard the human being body as a mansion, then the brain is the door that
looks out into the outside world. So, the brain is the means whereby thought and rational
intelligence are brought together, but in that mansion there are private doors, and through
those private doors pass our feelings, our intuitions, and all of those depend on the
soundness of the internal organic
apparatus. So, to say it's in
meditation, "Oh, it's just produced by the
brain," the brain is part of it, but it's
not producing it. Okay, so I understand the
point and the metaphor, and another good
one is that the brain is like a radio
transmitter/receiver, and it doesn't
create Beethoven or The Beatles or
whatever, but it transmits a signal from a much broader field, you know, the ubiquitous
field. Yeah, and the more you examine the grooves on your gramophone record or the pixels
on your CD, the more you examine those, you're not going to see the music or the composer.
Right. So, I say to neuroscientists, the more you look at the brain, the more you will understand
the brain as the recording instrument.
But if we want to play with the scientists on their playing field, what can we say to
them that would provide some kind of convincing evidence that the point you're making has
merit?
That the brain is not just creating things, but is more of a transmitter-receiver?
Like near-death experiences are a possibility, or psychic abilities are a possibility, or
various things where the brain is
picking up things, or we're
experiencing things we shouldn't be able
to experience,
but then they always either refuse to
look at that evidence, or they have
some way of dismissing it, because it
threatens their paradigm.
- Well, Rick, you can only do so much with someone who's
prepared to listen.
- True. - So, the first point
is the sensitivity of the individual.
Scientists are creating
increasingly sophisticated machines, telescopes, to look at the outer regions of the universe.
And the latest one being talked about is the Einstein telescope. That's fine, no problem.
But what you get from those instruments is only as good as your sensitivity to see into it. So,
if Newton were looking through the telescope and I were looking through the same telescope,
I think you can be pretty sure Newton would see further than I would, not because his physical
eyes were better than mine. No, his inner eyes. So, your answer, what can we do? We talk about
sensitivity, but scientists are impregnated in the materialist ontology, and you can only deal with
those who are undecided, is point out what the greatest of scientists, let alone others,
have said about these higher realms. Schrödinger, in his book What Is Life, just there, when he said
that the deepest truth from the Vedanta is Atman equals Raman, the personal self equals the
omnipresent, all-abiding self, the deepest truth of Indian philosophy is echoed by the mystics of
all ages who have said with one voice, "I have become God." Deus actus sum. "Become God" doesn't
mean "I am a god." It means "I have united my personal self with the all-encompassing,
comprehending omnipotent omniscient self. So I've removed the barriers that have separated me from
the rest of the world. That's the great heresy, the great heresy to think that I'm separate from you.
But if that doesn't convince the scientists, how about the great Isaac Newton? One of the saddest
things in my opinion, Rick, it really pains me to dwell on how Newton has been misunderstood
or misquoted. He was not the architect of the clockwork universe; far from it. His works glow
with reverence for divinity, so his Principia is a mathematical description, and Newton clearly said
it had nothing to do with real and physical causes, and he warns the reader and he asks the reader to
beware that by using words like "force" and "impulse", I mean those words only in the mathematical sense.
So if these great scientists, the words of these great scientists, Newton, Einstein, Schrodinger,
will not convince your scientists, well, you're wasting your time. Yeah, I mean, what else can I
say. If someone comes to me for music lessons and says, "Well, I'm not deaf, am I interested?"
Well, I'm wasting my time. But why are we doing this?
>>Rick: Yeah, who was it that said science progresses one funeral at a time?
>>Johnny: One major funeral at a time, and no weddings either.
>>Rick: Yeah, so it's an interesting topic, I mean, the whole thing of...
>>Johnny: Seriously, Rick, sorry to interrupt on this point.
>>Rick: That's okay.
>>Johnny: Many scientists are waking up to this, and it is very - I mean,
I mean, I sounded a depressing note, but I'm now going to sound a very bright note, that
through the wonderful work of the Galileo Commission and David Lorimer and Marjorie Willicott, who
are wonderful leaders, increasing numbers of scientists are now coming out of the closet.
They were mainstream during the working week in the lab, so as not to make fools of themselves
and funder colleagues, but over the weekend they've come out of the closet. Now they're
rather more out of the closet and questioning the basis of mainstream science.
>> Sean That's good.
>> Rupert But yet people like Steven Weinberg, who has the audacity to say the more the universe
seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless. So here, just to close this one out, what is
life. What does he mean by pointless? He means lifeless, of course. So, according to the NASA
definition of life, life is a chemical system amenable to Darwinian evolution and the only
thing we know on Earth. Now, the occultists, the esotericists, will say that just because
you don't see life in stones and other planets, you've got no right to say, therefore, that
life doesn't exist anymore than if I shut my curtains here, which I have done, I've got no
right to say there's nothing outside. Because for the esotericists and the occultists,
universal principles are far more significant than their appearance on the physical level,
because universals deal with the noumena, the causes, the invisible causes, noumena,
and then the phenomena to breathe out are the physical effects on the physical plane.
So, scientists need to get together with mystics and esotericists and get out of just the left brain.
I think it depends on how you define life. Was it David Lorimer or was it Rupert Sheldrake
who wrote a book like "Is the Sun Conscious" or "Is the Sun Alive" or something?
Of course it is.
Yeah, that sounds absurd to the average person.
There was a comedian here in the US that goes out on the street and sticks a mic in people's
faces and asks them questions such as "Who was the first man to walk on the sun?" and they think,
"Gee, was it...?" I don't know, they actually come up with some name overlooking the absurdity of
of the question, but obviously most scientists would say it's absurd to consider that there
could be life in the sun, but it really depends on how we define life.
And the way I would define it is that if you look at anything closely, the sun, a pebble,
any inanimate object, you look at it closely enough and you see that it's just brimming
with intelligence.
The way a molecule functions is an expression of laws of nature which we don't fully comprehend,
and that is happening in every cubic centimeter of the universe.
So, it's all life. It's all God.
Yes. And what, as you say, it's how you understand life.
How can that which has illumined our planet and given us light,
how can that not have life?
How can we have life for something that is lifeless?
Well, the scientist is going to say it's a fusion reaction.
no life there in any kind of biological sense, and he would be right about that. But again,
you have to define life more deeply.
Dr. Andrews He would, but he would be right only at that
level. As Weinberg said, gone are the days when we celebrate the heavens with David,
because now we know, look at the arrogance, now we know that the stars and the celestial
bodies are nothing but glowing spheres of gas where the gravitational collapse of particles
is supported by the upthrust from heat generated from thermonuclear fusion in the body of the
star. So that's all it is. So, a celestial object has no more divinity than the stones
on the ground in front of you.
That's true, but they both have divinities.
Exactly, and I would say using that analogy, the human body, if you squeeze it through
a whatever, it's mainly salt water.
Does that mean that a human being of flesh and blood and spirit is nothing but a bucket
of seawater?
Yeah, there's a phrase for this that's actually called "nothing but-ism."
You've probably heard that.
Yeah, nothing but-ism.
If some of the listeners have questions about this, feel free to send them in, because unless
you define your terms and your concepts carefully, this can sound like an absurd argument. You
have to remember that we're not defining life in the ordinary sense of just biological life,
but rather in terms of the fact that intelligence is all-pervading, and it pervades a stone
as much as it pervades our body. These are just physical expressions that have different
degrees of complexity and different functions.
>> Exactly. And you mentioned the physical body, Rick, let alone the subtle bodies.
>> Right. >> Our physical body, as Ovid Laszlo, one of
the greatest scientists, has pointed out, we have over a million billion cells in the human
body alone, more than the stars in the Milky Way. Of that cell population, 600 billion cells are
dying every day and the same number are being regenerated, which makes around 10 million
per second. Now, let's just take that on board. 10 million cells per second are being
as waste products, so to speak, and the same number rejuvenating. Yet, there is a master principle
that holds the whole body together. What is that master principle? It's important to ask the right
question before trying to grab at an answer with the left brain. There is that master principle
in terms of the occult philosophy, which is universal. There is the model body, the etheric
double, the linga sharira, but that is subservient to a much higher principle. So, each cell is like
instruments of the orchestra playing the same music under the one conductor playing the same music
composed by the one great composer who did not compose it just out of his head. He transmitted it
through his being. So even the human body is a mystery. Incidentally, there's some great videos
you can find on YouTube that animate the mechanics, the inner workings of a cell,
and they're just totally fascinating, and your jaw drops as you watch them to imagine that that
degree of complexity. Someone said that a typical cell is more complex than the city of Tokyo,
and you just said we have a gazillion of them in our bodies, and millions of them are
regenerating every second. >> Ian McGilchrist, and few would argue with him, said it has not been
possible, if I quote correctly, "to model even a single cell so complex as it." >> And to think
that people believe that the whole thing is just some kind of random mechanism, that we're
biological robots in a meaningless universe. I've had that argument with people, and they
say, "Well, there are laws of nature to explain all this stuff, even if we don't fully understand
it, and if you would just grant us one miracle, which is that the laws of nature came into
existence in the first place." We don't know how that happened, but if you grant us that,
we can explain everything in terms of these laws of nature.
Yes, that's the Rupert Sheldrake, very amusingly slips that into his talks occasionally, quoting
McKenna I think, where he talks about the one free miracle.
"Give us that one free miracle, the laws of nature, and we'll explain everything else."
Well, it's one hell of a free miracle, isn't it?
Rick, these are all the grapplings of the left brain of the, if I may put it, the pygmy mind,
trying to access things that are way beyond its reach. You know, this infinite monkey syndrome,
which is the most stupid thing, if that infinite number of monkeys are a typewriter. But just
think of this, Rick. Even if an infinite number of monkeys would type the complete works of
Shakespeare, assume that. They would not be typing the complete works of Shakespeare;
they would only be typing the words. The works of Shakespeare are the thought of the great man
in words. Just putting a load of words down, if you put down the words "to be" or "not to be"
blindly, it doesn't mean you understand it. So even that idiotic, infinite monkey syndrome
argument one hears, "Chance, chance," doesn't stack up.
Like you said, it's improving, people are coming out of the closet, but why do you think
that many scientists, and perhaps the field in general still, predominantly, has been so
closed-minded? What are they afraid of?
Fear is a big thing. Fear stands at the back and the front of a lot of problems. A lot
of people, and I include myself of course, I mean it wouldn't be so arrogant as to say not,
in a Plato's cave, that wonderful allegory of the cave, Plato's cave, where the prisoners mistook
the shadows on the wall for reality and only when they stepped outside they realized it was the
shadow cast by the sun. So people like to be comfortable sitting in their armchair of conceptual
thought. So to be knocked out of your armchair of security is uncomfortable. So that's one reason
they want security, mental closure, causal closure, that's one reason. But there is another reason,
Rick, and this is really to do with science and technology. The 19th century was a time of
material exploration and research, and researching matter spilled into material development,
which spilled over into a materialistic philosophy that everything could be explained on the basis of
matter, given the spectacular advances and achievements in science. So, because so much
can be explained on a materialist ontology, anything else is regarded as superfluous.
With this materialist ontology, there is the overemphasis on primary qualities,
that which you can measure, touch, see, and feel, as opposed to or in contrast with secondary
qualities and qualia. So the two reasons are really the subjective need for security of the individual
and the explosion in science and technology. Personally, speaking quite frankly, I'm very
uncomfortable if I think I know it. If you think you know what? Anything? If I think I know the
full thing about anything, it makes me very uncomfortable. I want to know more. I want
to be made uncomfortable because you won't explore and research if you think you know it all. And if
you're sitting in your materialistic armchair thinking you know it all, well, you don't want
someone to rock the boat. But I again emphasize, Rick, that I'm not knocking materialism in its
proper place. Our houses, our cars, our utilitarian devices, our medical technology depends on it.
It's a different level. Yeah. And if you think you know everything, or if you're one of these
people who say, "Well, this couldn't be because we've already got that figured out," you're not
a scientist. You know, you're what I call "scientism." Scientism, exactly so. How well that
Bob John, who was at Princeton running the Pear-Princeton Anomalies Research Laboratories,
or unit, which is now being taken over wonderfully by Brenda Dunn's son,
he mentions that he invited Philip Anderson, who was only a few corridors away from his room
at Princeton, to see the results of his experiments on psychokinesis, how
individuals can affect the readings of the various instruments. So, if you have a beam of electrons,
how individuals could bias it one way or another, for example. And Anderson said, "I don't need to
see it. I know it's rubbish. I know it's wrong."
>> Yeah. >> Period.
>> Which is how the Galileo Commission got its name. The church authorities wouldn't look through
Galileo's telescope because Jupiter couldn't have moons, you know? It conflicts with church dogma.
>> Exactly so. But when Monteverdi was invited, I believe, by Galileo to look through the telescope,
Monteverdi obviously saw physical stars, but he saw more. And he wrote his beautiful
music, "The Vespers," where he saw the divinity in the stars.
>> Nice. >> So, sensitivity.
>> Now, I guess we could say, you would probably agree, if we look around the world at the condition
of society and all the different factors, the economies, the ecology, the technologies, everything
else.
It's all an expression of human consciousness.
It's a reflection of the collective consciousness of humanity through its various influential
means, the greatest of which is science.
So all the bridges, the airplanes, most of the environmental pollution, all that are
the spin-offs or symptoms of various technologies that we've been applying.
I just watched a documentary with Bill Gates and he was talking about geoengineering and
ways of combating climate change by sucking the CO2 out of the atmosphere.
So people are coming up with ideas for using more science to correct things and some of
that might be very good, might be necessary.
But could you imagine for us what you think the world might look like if science and spirituality
were working hand-in-hand and had fully blossomed to a high level of their potential.
>> R.F.
Bachelet That would be heaven on earth, Rick.
>> Rick How would it come about? Like all the nitty-gritty problems, the diseases, everything
else that we rely on science to deal with, how would the infusion of spirituality enable us to
actually solve these problems? >> R.F. Bachelet
Spirituality, in the broadest sense, is the recognition of divinity in each person. So,
it would for a start result in intense cooperation rather than ruthless competition.
I think the best thing I can do is to give you an example of the great Florence Nightingale.
Now, I think not many people know that she was a tremendous statistician, besides being a phenomenal
healer and a nurse, of course, and she was able to see patterns in statistics that others couldn't,
but from her life experience, and you couldn't have someone more involved with human suffering
than a nurse during the Crimean War, and she came to three fundamental conclusions,
is the wrong word, "insights", she said that our physical laws of science are really
the expression of a higher intelligence. Secondly, that each person has that seed or spark of
divinity in them, and thirdly, through evolution, each person will come to realise their innate
divinity. But then going on, she said that praying for miracles is not the answer. If
you're pouring sewage into the River Thames, you don't pray to God to take cholera away.
You clean up the sewage. So here you have the most practical example of a spiritual beacon
and a scientific mind. So if science and spirituality worked together, we would have literally,
Utopia or no. But for that to happen, there has to be a radical shift in our sense of values.
We have now what Dr. Joan Walton, another wonderful lady in the
scientific medical, the acting chairman no less, and a great educationalist,
she refers to as an ontological crisis where everything ultimately is to do with matter,
physical matter. But I say not only that, we have a crisis of values. Look at the people whom we look
up to. If a man is a billionaire, he automatically commands respect and adulation. You only have to
look at the billionaires around. Now I'm saying there's a big difference between the cultured
philanthropist and the ruffian billionaire. So our sense of values is entirely driven by
he who has the most money, the most power, and the greatest position and control. And I'm saying
that someone who misuses his power is a weak person. So from the spiritual point of view,
All the tyrants of this world, we needn't name them, there are enough of them,
they are weak people because they have no power over themselves and the only person worth having
power over is yourself. And when you can handle power wisely, then you can deal with the world
around. So, these are all facets that interlock. Just because a man is a billionaire, why is he
allowed to tell lies? Why is it okay to tell lies if you're a billionaire? If I told lies at work,
I'd be out of my job. Why is it okay to tell lies if I'm a powerful billionaire? That's a distorted
sense of values. So if science and spirituality danced together, our value system would go
up a grade and our moral compass, the needle, would be where it's meant to be. But as Scheitzer
said so beautifully, there are three things necessary for progress. Progress in science
technology, of course, progress in socialization, social interaction. The most important is progress
in spirituality. And here the great Schweitzer was doing nothing more than emphasizing the three
levels of our being - body, soul, and spirit. On Earth, we live in three bodies. Depending on our
inclination, one or other predominates, but those three have to be held in balance. And when science
and spirituality come together, science will look on the world from a higher standpoint.
>> Great points there, many of which we could discuss at greater length, and perhaps we'll
have time to. I'll get back to the Florence Nightingale quote about the laws of nature.
Repeat it for me.
>> The physical laws of nature which science has discovered and which underpin our physical
universe are the expression and creation, if you like, of a higher intelligence.
>>Rick: And the reason that really caught my interest is that, obviously, the people who
have discovered these laws of nature and who have wielded them through various technologies
have not reached their full potential as human beings or unfolded the full possibility of
consciousness within themselves, and therefore, they can't help but misapply the laws of nature
or apply them in ways that are a mixed blessing.
Pete: Mixed blessing.
Pete: Yeah. This might help us understand how if the custodians of science and technology
were highly enlightened individuals, then divine intelligence that flowed through them and enabled
them to have their understanding of the laws of nature and devise technologies that apply those
laws of nature would be much more full and holistic, and therefore the technologies would
be much less of a mixed blessing, perhaps 99% blessing. So, we can understand through that
how development of spirituality alongside consciousness might transform the world.
>> Richard: Yes, and this might rub a few noses the wrong way, or whatever the expression is,
among scientists, but science in a true sense doesn't explain. And this was said very forcefully
by Arthur Thompson, who is none other than a fellow of the Royal Society. Science describes
to wonderful effect. So take, for example, a human eye. Why does the cornea have no blood supply?
Because if it did have a blood supply, the light wouldn't get through. Blood cells are red.
Now science has discovered that to tremendous effect and I speak with someone with corneal
trouble, hence my contact lenses, but that does not explain it. It's a discovery. Science has
discovered, still talking of the human eye, why the cells at the back of the eye have this pumping
action to expel water molecules, because if water ingested the back of the cornea, it'd
be like driving your car with a misty windscreen. So there is this pumping action. That's a
discovery. Who designed it?
Now, if we think of the laws of physics, Bernoulli's law, the fact that you and I go in airplanes
is thanks to the discovery by Bernoulli and Newton that aerofoil lift. No scientist sat
down in his laboratory and designed the human eye or designed or invented Bernoulli's law.
They discovered it. So, a bit of humility, please, Mr. Scientist.
>> Now, probably a scientist would say, "Well, the reason Bernoulli's law was discovered is
that we observe the way bird wings, or the reason the eye works the way you just described,
is Darwinian evolution. Through countless generations, eyes developed because certain models of the
eye worked better than other models, and so those beings were able to reproduce and survive,
and so that's why we ended up with the eyes we have, and it has nothing to do with intelligence.
>> All right, Darwinian evolution, in very simple terms, the two pillars of the Neo-Darwinian,
a spontaneous mutation, and natural selection chooses from that pool of genes that which is
most favorable to the survival of the species. Who is doing the selection in the natural selection?
Can they not see that the eye has a purpose? There is teleology. Scientists hate the word
teleology, of course, which is goal-orientated purpose. Natural selection, but why just the
eye to be transparent? Who decided that the human being needs a transparent cornea in order to see?
That lovely saying, "If the eye were not of the nature of light, it could not perceive light."
Well, I'm not going to play devil's advocate too much because I'm on the same page with you.
That's important.
I think a scientist might say there didn't need to be anybody to decide,
it's just worked out that certain eyeball designs were more favorable to life,
and therefore those designs survived and others went extinct.
What kind of life? Why human life? A fruit fly has eyes of a very different shape.
>>Rick: Sure, which works well for a fruit fly. We wouldn't want those eyes, nor would he want ours.
>>John: But "works well for a fruit fly" means what? It means that the fruit fly has a certain
direction for its life. It's going in a certain direction, and so it needs those kind of eyes.
>>Rick: Yeah. And so what you and I are agreeing on here, and probably most of our audience,
is that there's some kind of intelligent design going on, not necessarily in the way that
fundamentalist Christian design is defined. Definitely not that. But that there is some
intelligence guiding all this. This random mutation is not ultimately random, there's a
kind of evolutionary force that guides the universe that has taken us from hydrogen to Mozart, and that
the possibility of it all happening by chance is nil. I mean, you've probably heard of, what is it,
biocentrism or the notion of all those constants that if any of them were ever so slightly different
we wouldn't have a universe or there couldn't be life in it.
>> R.F. Skinner, Ph.D., Ph.D., Professor of Biocentrism, University of Michigan
If any of the fundamental constants were out by even a fraction of a percent,
we would either have a soup or a non-existing universe. And the multiverse is the only thing
that comes as close as it can to the occult doctrine of cyclic evolution. The multiverse
where the constants in the other universes could be very different from that which
was responsible for our universe. And of course, we can never measure that or look through a
telescope because it's outside the physical. However, Stephen Hawking, in his last paper,
which I have, he provided mathematical evidence for the multiverse, and that is a tremendous
contribution. But of course, the multiverse concept is used as a cop-out by materialists who
say, "Okay, well, there's countless universes and we just happen to be in the one that lucked
out, you know, with all the constants in perfect attunement, and the other ones that were all
probably duds."
So, that kind of excuses them from having to admit that there's some kind of intelligence
guiding our universe.
>>John: Yeah, of course.
People are always looking for an excuse to justify their own particular point of view.
>>Rick: Okay, so I ended up doing what I said I wasn't going to do, which was just wing
But I want to get down to your notes here and make sure we're covering all the bases.
We've talked about the limitations of science, and we've talked about the societal implications
of its limitations, and the necessity for spiritual awakening.
We've talked a bit about the brain generating consciousness versus being a transmitter-receiver
of consciousness.
We've talked about the sort of rigidity and closed-mindedness of mainstream science in
accepting these perspectives that you and I are agreeing on.
We talked a little bit about Darwin just now, and maybe we could talk a bit about him, in
that Darwinian theory is considered unquestionable doctrine.
It's as well established as the law of gravity or the shape of the earth, which of course
some people do question, not only.
Is there anything more we want to say about the theory of evolution?
Let's just say this, that however far you want to take it up, life is always the interplay
of spirit and matter.
By that I mean the animating impulse and the medium through which it acts.
So in the most simplistic way, if we think of current along an electrical wire, the current
would be the spirit aspect, but it would be an abstraction because it needs matter, the
conductor, to actuate it. If you just have the bare conductor, it's impotent. So, you
always have the animating impulse and the vehicle through which it acts. Science only looks
to the vehicle, to the matter, to the forms. So forms will always change. Science does not
look at the animating impulse, the life, the vitality behind the forms. So science regards
evolution as the changing of form, but it does not see the changing of form as the result
of something that's making that change. So, there is not only evolution, there is involution,
and there is devolution as well. So, evolution, "e volvere," means the unfolding of the innate
potential that has been trapped. So, evolution in philosophical terms is the releasing of spirit
congealed in matter. Involution is the privation of spirit in matter, and spirit and matter are
relative terms, of course. So, science needs to think of involution as well as evolution,
and not just see evolution as the changing of outer form.
>> Clarify a little bit more what you mean by involution.
>> Krishnamurti Involution involves a spirit which naturally
wishes to expand when it is held back, when it is concealed. If you think of E=mc², m
matter is the involution of light. Light has been imprisoned and no one put it better than
the great Sir James Jeans when he spoke of matter as crystallized light. So, light has been imprisoned,
involved. Evolution would be the releasing from that privation.
>>Rick: And it seems to me that involution happens through evolution. In other words,
the vehicle evolves in order to more fully express the spirit.
>> Yeah, the two always go together. >> I interrupted you for that definition,
but I don't know if you finished the point you were trying to make about Darwin.
>> We don't, we meaning the occultists, the esotericists, do not deny Darwin,
but Darwin is only a small part of the overall picture. For start, the origin of the species
is not the origin, it's a certain point in time. And there is also the evolution, not just of matter,
but there is the evolution of the psyche as well and the spiritual nature, not just the physical.
But bear in mind that Darwin got a first degree in theology, excuse me, not science at Cambridge,
first degree in theology. And his wonderful, well, collaborator for a while, Wallace,
openly said that the explosion in mathematical ability that we see in his time could not
possibly be explained purely on the basis of natural selection, and that was someone who
co-authored a paper with Darwin. So, we're not saying Darwin's right or wrong; these are silly
words. It is limited. And what we find, Rick, just to take this further because this is a really
important point. We see that nature always evinces a march towards a higher order of existence.
For example, the mineral wants to become the vegetable, wants to become the animal,
wants to become the human, who wants to become something much more than human. Now,
no one put it more beautifully than the great Iranian Sufi master, Sauravadi. Let's give Iran
some credit. I mean, it's really going through a hell of a time now. The great Iranian masters,
13th century, he put it really beautifully that we're talking of sunlight. There's external light
and internal light. The external light illumines everything, without which, obviously, there'd be
no life. The internal light is the impulse in every being to realize its true origins,
to, as Sarovardi put it so beautifully, "unite with the Beloved." So, the mineral can't become
a human in one jump. The mineral kingdom, in order to unite with the Beloved, has to go
through the vegetable kingdom. It's important to think of kingdoms of nature, and the vegetable
kingdom becomes the animal, and the human humanity is a kingdom of nature. So, what we find in
evolution is downward links of love and sacrifice from the higher kingdom and upward links of
reverence and obedience, where the higher kingdom, so to speak, enables the lower to ascend higher.
The purpose being to unite with the source in full consciousness. We've given Iran credit,
for goodness sake, let's give Lebanon some credit, the great Khayel Gibran, that life
goes in search of life in bodies that fear the grave. So the bodies, the material principle,
the form will change. Anything that is to do with form and matter, by definition almost,
is impermanent. That will change and decay so that life may inhabit a newer form,
a more complex form that will better express its innate potential.
Let's just now end with Rumi, who said the whole of evolution in life shows the principle of dying
for the sake of life, the changing in form for the sake of the indwelling life. But science only looks
at the change in form and calls that evolution. >> You probably know the author of this,
God Sleeps in the Rock, Dreams in the Plant, Stirs in the Animal, and Awakes in the Human
being. Who said that? I think Rumi. It's credited to Rumi, but there are slight variations on that.
Pete: Right.
Rupert: But the great Rumi as well.
Pete: You know, if we just repeat that one more time, we're talking about God being the
indweller in all these life forms and just taking on bodies which enable fuller and fuller expression
of that divine intelligence.
>> More technically, the monad, one of the fundamental precepts of occultism and theosophy
is the journey of the eternal pilgrim, which is the monad, that spiritual impulse that
goes through that cyclic journey in order to understand its own divinity in full consciousness,
yes.
>> One of the things I've heard you talk about, and I'm sure it's in your book too, is these
wealthy people who want to achieve immortality by having their bodies frozen, or having chips
implanted, or having their mind uploaded to the cloud, or, you know, these various things,
which always seemed absurd to me. It seemed to me that they just really didn't have any
idea of the thing you were just alluding to, of evolution through upgrading the vehicle
periodically.
And here one needs to point out one of the warnings of the great philosopher Paul Brunton,
and my gosh was he a tremendous human being, and he said that science, meaning modern science,
used wisely will result in the physical release of man.
Well of course we've seen hygiene and electricity and cars and medical science.
used unwisely will result in his downfall, which is exactly what you've mentioned. It
is a total philosophical nonsense to think that you can freeze the body and then recover
the consciousness by downloading your previous brainwaves into a computer. But all of this
is taken very seriously, which is very sad, by academia. There is, at Oxford University,
the James Martin Fellow, Anders Sonberg, who is a committed transhumanist, I heard him on
the radio, and they're really promulgating all of this. It's a complete identification
of life with the physical body. And of course, if life is nothing but the physical body, the
billionaire wants to wake up after being frozen and reunite with his yacht and his mansion
and his peacock throne. We who know better might refer to that wonderful letter that
the 31-year-old Mozart wrote to his father, that "Every day when I'm, I'm paraphrasing,
I wake up, I realize that death, far from being something to fear, is now my best friend.
A couple of reincarnation jokes here. I saw one where there's this cartoon, the guy's
standing in front of a bank and it said, "First reincarnation bank. You can't take it with
you, so leave it with us until you return." And then the other one was a tombstone. It
said, "I'll be back. Don't touch my stuff." But anyway, I mean, what you're talking about,
chirogenesis or whatever they call themselves. Cryonics. Cryonics. And some of
them have frozen their pets. Some have just frozen the head and the nervous
system, whatever that means. But talking of the bank, rather than taking your
money, you do take your spiritual treasures. You do. Sure. You take your
spiritual treasures and the other thing you mentioned with the the bank and... The
tombstone. Don't touch my stuff, I'll be back.
Your body can be a tombstone, which is one of the tarot symbols, or your body can
be a temple. I mean, this freezing your body thing,
it's almost as absurd as freezing your car, you know,
hoping that you can thaw it out in 50 years when they have better
car mechanics or something like that. It obviously denies
and an understanding of reincarnation, which to me is like a basic assumption.
A couple of questions came in from somebody.
Let's take a look at those.
They both seem to be from someone named Ramanama who, so he's a bit of a jokester, in the UK.
The first question, "There are three teachings, religion, science, and spirituality.
If your understanding can concur with all three, would this not be a greater understanding
than just one or two. Yeah, I think we've been discussing that for an hour, right?
>> I mentioned Albert Schweitzer's quotation, which is exactly on that theme. That's an
important point. Let me just deal with this. Science enables us to live efficiently, religion
to live morally, and spirituality and philosophy to live ethically. So we need all of these
three things. So putting it in a journey terms, in terms of a journey, philosophy shows us the great
overall plan. Well, that's all very well. How do you go up the mountain? Religion will point a path
up that mountain, whichever your religion is, they all come to the top. But how do I do the walking?
Science provides the means and the productive assistance.
>> How do you distinguish between morals and ethics? >> I've thought of that a lot. If you
think of your car, if I drive my car when I'm drunk, I've never been drunk even as a student,
I'm proud to say it's the only thing I boast about. That's a pretty immoral thing to do.
>> Sure. >> It's not unethical. But if I'm in full consciousness
And my exhaust is belching out smoke into the atmosphere. That's unethical. It's polluting.
But also, if I'm driving my car in first gear, screaming along at 50 miles an hour,
that's not very efficient. So you have the efficient, the moral, and the ethical.
The two, they do coalesce. Being unfaithful to someone is not unethical, it's immoral.
I'll have to study this because I'm not completely clear on the distinction and the degree of
overlap.
>>Rick: There's a lot of overlap, and words are in borderless touch.
>>Rick: I helped to establish an organization called the Association for Spiritual Integrity,
which you might be interested in.
We have over 700 members now and over 50 member organizations.
And the reason we established it was there has been so much misbehavior among spiritual
teachers, which considering how much emphasis we've put today on the importance of spirituality
in the world is a rather serious form of sabotage, in my opinion.
But I really should better understand the distinction between those two terms.
I've heard of a certain presidential candidate being described as ethically and morally bankrupt,
and I was thinking, is that not redundant?
I really need to look into those two words.
>> [Unintelligible] if we don't recycle our rubbish and plastics and just dump it, it's
also immoral, it's an unethical thing to do.
It's a disservice to the planet.
So I mean, it is a bit of a fine distinction, yeah.
>> Yeah, anyway, something to think about.
>> And a lot of overlap, as you said.
>> Okay, so we have a second question here by that Ramanamama guy, which is, "Can we
agree that a world without God, intelligence, would not work. The following statement is
my mantra, "God is all that exists. God is existence. Nothing exists that is not God."
>> Yes, fully agree. As long as, please, we do not limit God to an anthropomorphic concept.
>> Right. >> We regard God, deity,
as the universal intelligence and power. >> We're not talking about big guy in the sky
with a beer. No, of course not. Which the great Newton wrote about so eloquently in the General
Scholium of Principia, when he describes God as duration, space, eternity, as a blind man cannot
see colours, says Newton, so also we have no idea about the shape and form of God. But he is without
shape and form. The three pages of Newton's General Sholem will say it all.
>> I would also say that he has all shapes and forms, and we shouldn't be saying "he" here.
>> He's no particular shape and form. Yeah, we just say "he."
>> I know, I've gotten flack for using the male pronoun. My camera is God, the wall is God,
my thumb is God, in the sense that if God is omnipresent, which I think most religions
consider it to be, then we're looking at it, you know, it's staring us in the face.
>> Yeah. >> Hiding in plain sight.
>> Putting it another way, every particle, every quark, every microparticle,
the innermost center of it is spirit. >> And even possibly the outer crust. I mean,
if you think about, let's say, my thumb, on a certain level, it's flesh, and then it's carbon,
and then it's atoms, and then it's quarks, and so on, but that's just because we're getting
more microscopic.
I mean, if it's ultimately, it would get down to pure intelligence or consciousness, isn't
it that from top to bottom, and it just appears to be something other than that if we look
at it superficially?
>>John: Superficially, it is an appearance, and of course it is.
>>Rick: Yeah.
>>John: But ultimately, it is the appearance of an intelligence.
So in terms of spirit and matter and consciousness and matter, consciousness expresses not in
matter, it expresses as matter.
>> Mm-hmm, nice.
>> As matter, so as the great Max Planck put it, your great founder of quantum mechanics,
he said, "As a man who's devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, I can
tell you there's no such thing as matter.
is only force, and matter is the outer skin of force, the appearance of force, so to speak.
>> Yeah, like we might say, "There's not water in clouds. Clouds are water, appearing as clouds."
>> Exactly. The rainbow is not in the sky. It is the water droplets.
>> Right, or light refracting through them. >> But you mentioned clouds, Rick. This is
An important point that just comes to me, one of the reasons why there's this confusion, we confuse
the objective with the phenomena. Now, here is a glass, I mean, it's an objective thing,
you can pour water into it. A rainbow is not an object. You can't put a rainbow in a box.
A rainbow is a phenomena, which is the result of the optical apparatus of the eyes,
the nervous system of the brain, the mind that sees the pictures, and the water droplets in the clouds.
So if you go up in a hot air balloon where you wouldn't even melt the droplets, but if you went
up, you wouldn't touch a rainbow, you'd be touching water droplets. So rainbows are phenomena. And one
of the reasons for the confusion we see around us is mistaking an object with a phenomena.
Good. So, we talked a little bit about reincarnation. There's also the concept of karma, which
I think it's part of the puzzle. It's like a necessary cog in the machine. If you leave
that cog out, the machine doesn't work. It's the most important cog, Rick.
Let's discuss that a little bit and the implications of it and how it would actually
work if there is karma that helps to organize the universe and that could carry over from life to
life and how complex must that be in order for all those little all the details to be worked out?
The etymology of karma is kri, which is to do, to act, to make action.
If science would take one thing on board philosophically, it should be to understand
karma, the implication of what they're doing. Action and reaction, these are all simplistic
terms, but science provides good similes, good analogies. So, Newton's second law is the most
simple action and reaction. A more useful analogy is Le Chatelier's principle in chemistry, whereby
any system in equilibrium, in dynamic equilibrium, if it is disturbed, the system will take up a new
equilibrium position to try and counteract the disturbing force, and in so doing it would give
out heat or take in heat. So, if we regard the whole of the universe, the whole of humanity,
as a tremendous dynamic system, any disturbance will result in a new position of equilibrium.
Now, karma, there are basically four aspects to it in terms of the human being.
One is Sanchita Karma, that's the totality of all your karmas.
The other one is…
From all your lives.
Exactly so.
Yeah.
Right.
The other is Prarabdha Karma, the karma for this life.
Excuse me, meaning the karma you have brought into this particular life?
Yes.
Okay.
The karma that is allocated to your life.
Like a bucket out of the mountain, okay.
Well said, yes.
And well said because if all your karmas were dumped into the one bucket, you just would
explode.
So, you can only handle so much.
The third one is kriyamana, which is the karma of immediate actions, and the fourth one is
called agami, which is…
>>Rick: So, kriyamana means the karma you're creating as you go along?
>>John: Yes.
>>Rick: Like if I do something this afternoon, I'm creating a fresh karma?
>>John: Yes, precisely.
>>Rick: Okay, good.
and Agami is the karma that's sent along to another life.
>> Okay.
>> Now, dealing with karma, which is a phenomenal subject, the issue of time comes in.
When one gets the karmic download depends on your stage on the spiritual ladder of evolution.
So, what I mean is the more one takes spirituality seriously, the more there will be the karmic
download because one can't advance without cleansing what has to be cleaned out of the
way.
>>Rick Yeah, as a teacher of mine once said, "When
the postman knows you're going to move, he tries to deliver all your mail."
>>David Yeah, I like that.
That's brilliant.
So if one takes spirituality seriously, one has invoked the Divine Light as witness to
search out all your dark areas and corners, which in ordinary life, well, they're there.
But if you've invoked that light, it will search out every dark corner, which is why
it is said even a little attention to spirituality in occult science will create a huge karmic
download. That does not mean karma is punishment. Far from it. It is a law of love, seriously,
because without that offloading of impediments that are no longer serving you, you can't move
on. In terms of reincarnation, there is that glorious phrase in Light on the Path by Sir
Sir Edward Arnold, that who toiled a slave may yet be born a prince, for worthy deeds
done and merits won.
Who ruled a king might wander the earth in rags, for deeds done and undone.
I would like to say this to some people in some parts of the world who are aspiring to
the top job. Yeah. In America as well. I know what you're implying. It's a scary time.
It's an enormous subject. Yeah. But the more scientists are sensitive to the
results of their behavior, then as you said earlier, science and spirituality
will come together. Yeah. Now what you're saying here about karmic download, are
saying that if a person embarks on the spiritual path, that they're going to face a shitload
of karma, to use a crude term, that things are just going to start coming at them, and
life in a way is going to get more difficult because of all the stuff they have to clear
out?
>> Bruce: In many ways, yes.
So what is happening is it's accentuating all the negative traits, but also all the positive
traits.
So that searchlight, in fact what Yogananda said is initially we have a 60 watt light
bulb in us so to speak, but by embarking on Kriyamana Yoga and other practices, you're
putting in a 6 billion watt light bulb in you.
So that will certainly, if your body and your personality can't handle it, it'll create
no end of havoc.
Rick Right, but I think that's why the spiritual
traditions advocate various practices to purify the vehicle.
David Precisely.
Rick You know, so you're not trying to put too
much voltage through an inadequate…
David Precisely, sir. Precisely. Exactly.
Rick Right. And if you handle that correctly,
it can be a pretty smooth ride. I mean, in my experience, my life was very difficult before
I got onto spirituality at the age of 18, and I had dropped out of school and was doing
drugs and all kinds of things, but then, you know, it got better and better once I had
learned to meditate.
And obviously, there have been all kinds of ups and downs and all sorts of challenges
and things, you know, that I had to undergo, but I wouldn't have traded that at any point
for what my life had been like earlier.
Yeah.
So, you're developing your spiritual muscles.
Yeah.
Sensibly, rather than trying to jump too far.
Yeah.
expect to accomplish it all in a weekend or something.
Yeah, it's a lifelong journey in my opinion, or a lives-long journey.
So still on the subject of karma, people ask questions like, "All right, let's say there's
a big plane crash, or let's say that the whole city is bombed, or everybody on the Titanic
goes down, and how do you explain that all those diverse different people had the confluence
of karma to undergo the same disaster, or the Holocaust in Nazi Germany or something like
that, or what's happening in Gaza today?
I mean, is that the fault of the kids that are being bombed?
There's all kinds of tricky questions.
>> There are enormous issues, and the first thing I would say is to admit how little one
knows.
So to say, for example, that all those young children and babies in the Hiroshima bombing,
was their karma is the most brutal, callous, stupid thing to say. There is a lot we don't
know. And it always strikes me that it is innocent people, innocent citizens, who bear the brunt
of the brutality of the dictators. It's not good enough to say it's their karma, that's
just using words. It's much better to say, "I don't know, and I will try and find out."
But if I understand karma at least on the lower level, at my own personal level, it might provide
some insight into the greater picture. But ultimately, Rick, there is only collective karma.
If I throw the rubbish out of my house, it's not just my garden that gets polluted, the whole street
is affected. So, there is collective karma, and that is part of our national karma, which
is part of our individual karma. So, before trying to understand why all these unfortunate
incidents occur in other people's lives, if one focuses dispassionately on one's own actions
and life, that might provide the insight into the wider picture.
>> It's worth mentioning that in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that the mechanics of karma
are unfathomable by human intellect.
It's just too vastly complex.
>> And it is also said that in order really to understand karma, you've got to be above
the laws of karma.
And this means that one has reached the stage of the bodhisattva or the nirmanakaya, those
who have gone beyond the human state.
I once asked a guru about omniscience and he said it's not possible for human nervous systems,
they're too crude, you need a celestial nervous system to have omniscience.
Another question came in, let's see what that is.
This is from Rita Sponenberg from somewhere in the US.
Science and spirituality need to work together, but scientists believe they're incompatible.
However, militant religious spirituality also thinks they're incompatible and chooses dogmatic
beliefs instead of progressing beyond them. They're equally problematic in achieving that
world you described.
>> Well, if people want to take fixed positions, there's nothing one can do to dissolve those
boundaries other than let time be the great healer.
>> Yeah. I think that quote from Aldous Huxley about the working hypothesis, I think if everyone
could take everything as a working hypothesis and not as an absolute that they had to defend
with their lives or other people's lives, we'd all get along a lot better.
>> A working hypothesis that you take on board, you test it, you experiment with it, and then
you see what's happening.
>> Yeah.
>> That's how science works and should work.
>> Should work.
And that's how religion could work, and that's how I think some of the more evolved religions
have worked.
Yeah, exactly. Also, let's make the point, the strong point, that the religious precepts
are not just said by way of a belief system, they were said out of experience. The Buddha
didn't have a PhD in religion and philosophy, he spoke from experience. The Christ didn't
go to a theological college, he spoke from experience. So, religion has nothing to do
with belief, really. Nothing to do with belief. It is experience, which then gets dogmatized
into a belief.
>>Brian: Oprah Winfrey once asked Eckhart Tolle to complete the sentence, "I believe," and
he said, "Nothing in particular."
>>John: Or everything.
>>Brian: Yeah, I mean, the whole notion of belief. There's all kinds of things you and
I both believe, but we certainly wouldn't kill anybody over them or anything, because we
might be wrong. Or, you know, maybe their beliefs, if different, are as valid as ours.
Again, their beliefs are working hypotheses.
>>Belief and conviction are different.
>>Yes.
>>We have convictions, but beliefs are not to be entertained, other than as a working
hypothesis, as you said.
>>Right. And even convictions, I think, should be held lightly.
>>Yes, yes, most certainly.
Okay, what are some of the major themes of your book which we haven't touched upon, which
you feel would be important to mention?
Oh my goodness, one I would say is the mystery teachings, what I call the mystery teachings.
Now quickly let me just explain, define.
They're not mysteries as such, but they're given out to worthy candidates, so to speak.
So you have mysticism, you have esoteric science, and you have occult science.
So the mystic would be very much in tune with the whole world and whole universe, and he
would see the boundaries between himself and the other person dissolving, so to speak.
But then when the mystic becomes dissatisfied and hungry for more, he wants more knowledge,
Then in comes esoteric science, where he wants to learn about the inner workings of nature.
But then he knows about the inner workings of nature, but how do I use those hidden laws?
Then he becomes the occultist.
So to use a musical analogy, if I'm very musical and I love music, I'm like the mystic, but
then I want to learn about the composers and learn music theory, then I'm the esotericist,
And then when I want to function as a performer, I become an occultist.
So occult science is to do with function; esoteric science is to do with meaning and system.
>>Rick: Okay, so if I could repeat that to make sure I understood what you said.
So the mystic might have some profound inner experiences, but they don't necessarily reveal
to him the mechanics of nature.
So he could then study, and on the basis of his experience or supplemented by it or enriched
by it, he could come to understand the mechanics of nature, but that doesn't necessarily enable
him to do anything with that understanding.
>> R.C.
Bradley: Absolutely.
>> Rick: And then the next stage would be to actually apply it and have an impact on
the world.
>> R.C.
Bradley: Exactly.
>> Rick: Okay.
>> R.C.
Bradley: So that's why the mystery teachings were always in three grades, the lesser mysteries,
the middle ones, and the greater mysteries in the Greek, the Eleusinian mysteries, the
Orphic, and the Dionysian.
So what we haven't touched on in terms of the Mystery Teachings is the incredible power
of symbolism. People wonder why is there so much evil? Well, the story of the god Bacchus
(otherwise Dionysus), the god Bacchus was torn to pieces by the Titans, who then scattered
the body of the god far and wide, and Jupiter, the father Bacchus, beholding the crime, hurled
this thunderbolt at the Titans and reduced their bodies to ashes. But from the ashes,
which contained a portion of the Bacchic body that the Titans had devoured, the human race
was created, which is why the human being is part God and part Titan/Devil. So each human
being, if he wants proof of God and Devil, I'd say just look at yourself in a mirror.
>> [Chuckles] Yeah. >> The proportions vary, but unless you are a
total monster or a sage, you will see both God and Devil. So the ashes contained a part
of the godly body that the Titans had devoured, and the human being was created from those ashes.
So, we are part Bacchus, the Bacchic god, and we are part Titan. And the other point is,
how did the Titans ensnare Bacchus, the god, by getting him to be enamoured with his own image
in the mirror, which signifies getting engrossed in the sea of Maya. Maya, things are not what they
appear to be. So we are so engrossed with ourselves. Go on a holiday and you see how people love their
selfies. We are so engrossed with themselves. >> Take pictures of their lunch.
>> Yeah, on a more serious note, this is why the Greeks and all traditions, all traditions
forbade suicide, because suicide is an act of violence against the God within. Now, I know
there are all sorts of reasons behind suicide and the after-death states depend on the motive behind
it, but in general it's not to be recommended. It's an act of violence against the God within.
>>Rick: And it's also a missed opportunity because human life is precious and the opportunity for
spiritual evolution in a human life is perhaps rare and certainly great.
>>John: Sure, but of course there are circumstances.
>>Rick: Sure. Here's a question from Kanta Dadleni in, I believe she's in Mumbai.
"Why would supreme consciousness as we understand it manifest in its manifold forms
for them to undergo experiences?" >>John: Did I hear from Mumbai?
>>Rick: I think she's from Mumbai. >>John: That's where I was born.
>>Rick: Oh, cool. Nice. I can read it again. "Why would supreme consciousness as we understand it
manifest in its manifold forms for them, meaning the forms, to undergo experiences.
What's in it for God, I guess she's saying?
>> R.F. Love, let me try and explain this. The great Schiller, who Beethoven immortalized in
his Ode to Joy, Schiller actually said that the universe is a thought of deity,
supreme consciousness. And since this ideal thought form has over spilled into what we call reality,
it is the calling of all thinking beings to try and discover the original design.
So, the supreme consciousness, out of its sheer love, wants to radiate and emanate. So, if we
see love as a principle of light and radiation, which is inherent within the nature of the
Supreme Consciousness, it must unfold and create expressions of its own self on different levels.
So, for example, in the Kabbalah, we have the unmanifest world, Ayn, which is pure darkness,
Then the next step is Ein Sof, the awakening, and then Ein Sof Ur, the boundless light,
the unmanifest worlds, like when we sleep. We sleep, we awaken, and then we act.
It's very important always to draw on the Hermetic axiom "as above so below". In order to understand
the greater picture, just look at your own life when you wake up in the morning. Darkness,
awakening activity. And then when you create anything in the Kabbalah, there are the archetypal
worlds, the Atsiloth, but you can't have an archetype without a plan. The template is the
Beria, but then you have to have a form, Yetzirah, and then you have the physical material, Asya.
So, in order to create anything on earth, we need a vision, we need a plan, we need tools to do the
the job and we need the material. So, the Supreme Consciousness does just that.
>>Rick: St. Teresa of Avila said, "It appears that God Himself is on the journey." What
do you think about that?
>>John: Yes, He is.
>>Rick: He or she or it is an evolving being of some sort.
>>John: God's not a static thing out there. It is part of the journey that we call consciousness,
and we are journeying the consciousness as well, yes. These are all words, and words
are very imperfect. Therefore, we need words and expressions from different cultures and
different religions and interlock them to get the fuller picture.
>> Yeah. I just recently learned in the past year or so that even within the field of Vedanta,
which is sort of a small niche of the entire realm of religion and spirituality, there
are at least half a dozen different schools that pretty much totally disagree with each other.
>> [Laughter]
>> Well, yes, they've had some friendly disagreements. Samkhya is the other one.
It really is asking the question, the Advaita Vedanta, which the non-dual, and the Samkhya,
which is supposedly dual. There is no dichotomy if we see that we have two legs, but there is one
body. So, if we are asking questions of the legs, we adopt a dual approach. If we're looking to the
body, we are asking questions of a non-dual type. >> That's good, yeah, and both are relevant to
different levels of experience or different dimensions of reality.
>> Yeah, levels and categories are vital questions to be aware of before one asks any question.
>> Sri Ramakrishna did a nice job of harmonizing all these different fields by using the blind
man and the elephant analogy, that blind men are all correct, there's a bigger picture that is more
than the collection of their individual perspectives. >> Most certainly, and David Bohm in
the scientific realm said science too long starts with the individual jigsaw pieces and tries to
put them together rather than starting with the whole elephant. You didn't say elephant,
but the whole picture, and then see how the various limbs and the trunk and the tusks come out of it.
Yeah, okay. So at the beginning of this interview I asked you for the elevator pitch.
You want the closing elevator pitch?
>> Yeah, let's say now it's the end of the workday and you run into the same guy on the
elevator and you want a closing elevator pitch that subsumes and summarizes and perhaps gives
food for thought based upon what we've discussed.
>> Well, the wonderful saying in "Light on the Path" that the soul of man is a thing
whose splendor and beauty is without limits. I'm slightly paraphrasing it. Each man is
his own lawgiver, the giver of glory or doom to himself. Now I fully agree with all those
poor civilians being bombed. You can say, "Oh, what have they done?" Well, yes, but in terms of
very, very high-level aphorisms, very high-level, each man meaning each person. And man means the
thinking principle, by the way. It's nothing to do with gender. Each man is his own lawgiver,
ultimately the giver of gloom or glory to himself. But the soul of man, as Florence Nightingale
pointed out, is a thing whose splendor and growth has absolutely no limits.
>>Rick: Nice, thank you. So, you have a website, and the website has links to your books,
so I'll be linking to that and to those. Is there anything else that people can do to stay in touch
with you? Do you have a mailing list? Do you ever do Zoom calls or anything like that?
>> My contact details are on the website, Rick. It's a very easy get-in-touch form.
>> Okay, good. >> I'd be very happy to hear from anyone.
And can I say, Rick, how wonderful it is to meet you, and I really mean that. And
what you are doing is you are spreading light. I don't mean this other than very sincerely.
you are spreading knowledge and wisdom and trying to undertake a healing, a healing of what's going
on around us, and my goodness, do we need it. >> Rick We certainly do. Yeah, that's my motivation,
has been since I became a meditation teacher at the age of 21.
>> Edi Wonderful.
>> Rick And as the Beatles sang, "We're all doing what we can."
>> Edi And a little more.
>> Rick Yeah. All right, so thanks so much, Edi.
>> Thank you very much, Rick.
>> Yeah, thanks to those who have been listening or watching.
My next interview will be with a woman named Georgette Starr, and I think she's going to
talk about the wisdom of aging and, you know, elders and what they have to contribute to
us all.
>> Oh, a lot, yes.
Wonderful.
So, all of these are interlocking and creating a wonderful body of wisdom.
>> Yeah.
>> Thank you, Rick.
>> Sure, thank you, Edi.
>> Thank you so much.
>> And I hope to meet you in person someday, as I always say.
I meet so many wonderful people that I've never met in person.
Definitely.
Thank you everybody.
Bye.
everybody. Bye.
Thank you.