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[Music]

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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.

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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.

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This program is made possible through the support of appreciative listeners and viewers, so

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if you appreciate it and would like to help support it, there are PayPal buttons on every

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page of the site and a page which explains alternatives to PayPal.

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And another thing that we've got going, I don't know how Edi feels about this, today's

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guest, but we have a spiritual chatbot that has been created over the past year or so

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into which over 100,000 relevant documents have been loaded, including 1,700 of the world's

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sacred texts. And I think it gives better results on any kind of spiritual or philosophical question

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than you're likely to get from any of the commercial chatbots. And it's free, of course,

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so there's a menu for that on batgap.com. I just referred to Edi. You're wondering,

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Who's Edi? My guest today is Dr. Edi Billimoria. He was born in India and educated at the universities

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of London, Sussex and Oxford. He presents an unusual blend of experience in the fields of

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science, arts and philosophy. Professionally, Edi is an award-winning engineer and consultant to the

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petrochemical, oil and gas transport and construction industries. In other words,

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he's a true Buddha at the gas pump. He has been project manager.

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- I'm Rick, I don't know about the Buddha.

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- All right, I think you are.

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I mean, you don't have the pot belly, I'm sure,

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but you have the consciousness.

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- Sorry to interrupt. - That's okay.

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He's been project manager and head of design

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for major innovative projects,

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such as the Channel Tunnel,

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London Underground Systems,

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petrochemical plants, and offshore installations.

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Incidentally, have you heard the thing

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about slime molds being really good

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at designing subway and train networks?

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- Yes, yes.

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Fascinating. That is absolutely fascinating, yeah.

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Yeah. A new invention or new discovery. Yeah, maybe we'll talk about slime molds later.

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He also worked in safety and environmental engineering for several Royal Navy projects,

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including the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier and the fleet of offshore patrol vessels.

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Now, the main reason we're talking to him is that Edi has been a student of the perennial

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philosophy for over half a century. He has given courses and lectured extensively in the UK

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and internationally. He has organized and chaired conferences with the object of encouraging

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discourse on the different but overlapping roles of science, religion, and practical philosophy.

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And if you've been listening to my show, you know that I'm really fascinated about that

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relationship between, you know, science and spirituality and have given talks on it myself.

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Edi has published extensively in the fields of science, engineering, and the esoteric philosophy.

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Unfolding Consciousness, his book, has received recognition with the 2022 Grand Prize Award

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from the Scientific and Medical Network, and his earlier work, The Snake and the Rope,

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is also an award winner. So, Edi is very well prepared, and he or his assistant sent me

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a list of discussion points for podcasts, and I don't usually do this, but I was thinking of

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actually using that list and reading the points verbatim or perhaps with a little bit of modification

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and embellishment.

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So it'll sound like I'm reading a prepared point, but I think that doing it this way will

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enable us to cover a lot more ground than if we just go by the seat of our pants, you

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know, speaking about whatever comes to mind, although we can do that too.

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So the questions proceed kind of sequentially through the three major parts of his book,

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is what, about a thousand, twelve hundred pages or something, altogether, giant book. And

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there's also a condensed version, which is coming out or will be coming out?

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>> It will be coming out. >> Will be coming out. I'm going to do that.

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But before I do that, give us the elevator pitch. What would it be?

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>> It would be, Rick, that we owe science a huge debt of gratitude for our physical well-being,

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for our comfort, for everything in our physical lives and medicine. But the excessive emphasis

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on physical science has created a sort of hole in our hearts, if I can put it that way. And

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it's created a spiritual vacuum where people seem to think that only physical materialistic

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science has and will have the answer to all of life's problems and issues. And my purpose is

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never, of course, to castigate science, but to raise science to a higher metaphysics,

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to align science with spirituality, to show how spirituality and science are entirely compatible,

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And one is not a substitute for the other, but they dance together.

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Good. That's excellent.

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Good elevator pitch.

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That's good elevator pitch. It was a short ride on the elevator.

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Now, I certainly don't have your level of education, but, you know, I've been an amateur

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student of this stuff for a long time, and my understanding was that science was a valuable

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corrective to a more primitive age in which people were burned at the stake for suggesting that the

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the stars might be other suns like our own, and they might even have planets around them

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that might even have beings on them, and all kinds of nutty ideas were forced upon the

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public, which was very poorly educated by and large.

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And science came along, and I heard a quote from Aldous Huxley recently in which he said

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that he felt that the development of the working hypothesis was the greatest contribution of

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the scientific revolution, because it enabled us to think in a more empirical way about

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things and weigh them on the basis of the evidence or lack of it, rather than accepting some

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kind of dogma. But obviously, science isn't the final step. It was a valuable corrective

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to the dogmatic precedent, but we're not there yet in terms of a real balanced, integrated

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approach to knowledge which incorporates both objective and subjective means of gaining

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knowledge.

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Corrective is a very good word to use because science acts, when used wisely, like an acid

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that strips away the crud and the rubbish and exposes the pure metal. But when the acid attacks

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the metal, that's when the danger starts. So what I mean is, it's very important to understand science,

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if I may launch on this, because we use this word science, it's used every day dozens of times,

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and words that are used so often tend to lose their inner meaning. So science, the etymology is

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scary to learn, to find out, from scientia. So it is to learn and to explore everything.

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So let's look at science in the traditional three ways. Science with a small s,

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science with a capital S, and science in blazing capitals. Now, science with a small s, and that's

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not meant to sound demeaning at all. That refers to our physical well-being, our physical laws of

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nature and the ontology is a materialist ontology. So, if I'm designing a bridge, my ontology

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is the physical laws of matter as a civil engineer. I'm not thinking of the spiritual world or the

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bridge will fall down, but then let's move on. We move beyond just quantity into quality,

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and science with a capital S is still within the realms of materialism, but it's a more refined

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materialism where it brings in the qualitative aspect. And that's the great work of scientists

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like Brian Goodwin of Schumacher College. But then there is science in blazing capitals,

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which really is to do with a mystical intuition into the deep inner nature of things.

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So we have to look at science on these three levels and not confuse one level with another

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level. If we're dealing with the physical world, we use physical laws, but if we're talking of

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consciousness and mind, to reduce that just to the physical is to make what the philosophers

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call "complete category errors." So science in its true sense, there is nothing but science in

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the sense that there is science of yoga, there is science of love, most certainly. There's a science

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of everything, because we explore, we find out, we test, we experiment. But what you're referring to,

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Rick, the mainstream science, has indeed been a corrective to strip away superstition. But in

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stripping away the superstition, it's gone a bit too far, in my opinion. It's stripped away a lot

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of people's understanding or relationship with the divine by saying, "Oh, that's all rubbish,

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that's all a science, it's all a God delusion," to quote one book.

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>>Rick: Yeah, Richard Dawkins, was that?

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>>John: Yeah, of course it is, yeah.

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>>Rick: Yeah. And one way I've thought about it is if you think of knowledge as a territory,

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there was a time when, at least in the West and perhaps also in the East, the Church kind of

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of dominated the whole territory. And the territory included astronomy, it included evolution,

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it included geography, all kinds of subjects like that. And science came along and it began

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usurping aspects of the territory and really treating them much more intelligently and

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realistically than the Church had been doing. But then there was hubris among scientists

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that they really had the ability to own the entire territory, and that religious people

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or mystics were a bunch of goofballs, indulging in imagination.

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>> RICHARD: Very well put, Rick. Very well put. Hubris and arrogance and hubris are casualties

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of the intellect. And so, here, if I may, we have to talk about the modus operandi,

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mindset that science uses, which is intellect. And now we have to be very clear what the intellect

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can do and what it can't do. The trouble with words like God and consciousness is, if we try

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to define them, what we find is all our logical deductions and definitions are one-sided and

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impartial. Why? Because they are bound down to the starting point, which is the judging

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intellect and the one single point of view. So, what people regard as a fact is nothing

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more than a particular point of view. So, just taking that further, when scientists try to

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address questions outside the purview of mainstream science, talking of God and consciousness and

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all of that, they need to realize that the intellect cannot prove that which lies outside

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its boundaries, neither can the intellect disprove, because the intellect deals with

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finite things, and consciousness writ large, and God, and love, and all of these things

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are in the realm of the infinite. But if we have to speak in words and use intellect,

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the very least we can do is adopt what I would call an intellectual perambulation right around.

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So, we're not just dealing with one particular point of view. We're dealing with each point of

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view as a fractal torn off from the whole. So, in consciousness studies, you've got panpsychism

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and monism and theism and all of that, each claiming to know the whole truth rather than

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regarding these as fractals that deal with the whole. And just around this point of, Rick,

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all the great sages, and I cannot be more forceful about this, the mystics, the great sages, and the

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The great scientists like Schrödinger, like Einstein, like Newton, have all pointed to

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the limitations of intellect. They never said discard intellect, obviously, but they said

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that reality, the truth, is beyond intellect, the horizontal dimension, and it's above intellect,

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the vertical dimension. And no one could have put this better than Einstein in his 1943 speech

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during the darkest days of World War II to a Jewish seminary, when he said that

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our age is justly proud of its intellectual achievements, but we must be

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very careful never to make the intellect the master. He referred to the

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intellectuals as the priests, the priests, the intellectuals, and he said the

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intellectuals have the intellect has powerful muscles but no personality. The intellect can only

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serve, it can never lead, and therefore it's not surprising that this fatal blindness is

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transmitted from one generation to another. So here is the great Einstein, Schrodinger,

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they've all pointed out that the method of science that uses predominantly intellect is

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limited. It's not wrong, but it will only go so far. The intellect, I'll deal with this map,

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so to speak, the conceptual maps of the real. The map is not the territory, it points to the

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territory. So, I think I've made the point, I hope. >>Rick: No, you have. One way that I

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understand it in simple terms is that whether East or West, there are two components to knowledge.

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there's understanding and experience. And a scientist might come up with a certain understanding,

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which we know, again, in Huxley's terms, a working hypothesis, but that doesn't do him much good. He

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has to go about collecting, gathering empirical evidence to either support or refute his

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hypothesis. And then really, when he has the evidence, then it's much more complete than just

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an intellectual concept. And same in the

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East, at least traditions like Vedanta and

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so on. There are all kinds of books you

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can read, but no teacher worth his salt

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would tell you to just read the books. He

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wants you to do something to get the

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experience that is talked about in the

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books, and that's really the most

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important part of it.

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Absolutely. So, what you're saying,

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Rick, is theory and practice have got to

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go hand in hand. If you have practice

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with unsound theory, you will go off on the wrong direction. The theory with our practice is empty

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talk. So it's the same with music, which has been an absolute love of my life. I still practice the

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piano every day for at least one hour, used to be three hours. And there is only one way,

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you have to understand the theory, but then you have to practice. So the two do dance together.

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But experience is the ultimate court. Now, I have an ongoing debate with a good friend who is

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an atheist, really, but a very nice fellow and good friend, and we have lovely talks.

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One of his arguments is, how do you know that through subjective means of gaining knowledge,

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such as meditation or even psychedelics, which he occasionally does, you're actually tuning in

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to some kind of ontological truth or deeper reality, or that your brain is just fabricating it.

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Let's say you experience unbounded awareness. You feel like, "Oh, I am just as vast as the universe."

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But how do you know that's not just your brain creating that subjective experience for you?

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So, what he's arguing, essentially, is that purely subjective means of gaining knowledge,

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such as meditation or other such methods, are not reliable because you can just be fooling yourself.

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My overriding question to your very good atheist friend is, "What do you mean by brain? This is

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not meant to be facetious. What do you mean by brain?" Even in the 19th century, the great William

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James, the father of American psychology, said the dogma, almost, in psychology was thought is a

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productive function of the brain. But then in his wonderful Ingersoll lectures, William James,

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on him, human immortality, he asked, "What

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kind of productive function? What do we

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mean by productive function?" Well, there are three

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kinds. One is pure production. Steam is

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produced by a kettle. Electricity is

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produced by the generating station, yes.

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But there's another kind of productive

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function which is permissive, releasing. The

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crossbow releases the arrow, it doesn't

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produce the error. So it's like a reducing valve that opens and closes and paradoxically

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and counterintuitively to most, when the brain is in its state of high activation, the reducing

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valve is closing. So there is very little creativity. It's only in meditation and relaxation

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when the reducing valve opens to enable the permissive function, but the most important

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is transmissive. So the brain is not producing, it's permitting and it's transmitting.

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And here the great psychologist, as every great psychologist and scientist should do,

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he studied mystical poetry and literature because the great poets have really said it all.

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And here William James quotes from Shelley, the great English romantic poet, that life,

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like a dome of stained colored glass, stains the white radiance of eternity. In other words,

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the brain acts rather like colored glass that refracts the light. So, life is the white radiance

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of eternity. And the more we fill our minds with concepts and prejudices, we, so to speak,

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enable the white light to refract through all the coloured images and break up that image,

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that white light, into the various images. So, the brain transduces and transmits. So

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So we think through the brain, not with the brain. And the great Blavatsky, one of the

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principal founders of the Theosophical Society, put it so eloquently in her imperious way

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that if we regard the human being body as a mansion, then the brain is the door that

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looks out into the outside world. So, the brain is the means whereby thought and rational

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intelligence are brought together, but in that mansion there are private doors, and through

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those private doors pass our feelings, our intuitions, and all of those depend on the

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soundness of the internal organic

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apparatus. So, to say it's in

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meditation, "Oh, it's just produced by the

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brain," the brain is part of it, but it's

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not producing it. Okay, so I understand the

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point and the metaphor, and another good

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one is that the brain is like a radio

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transmitter/receiver, and it doesn't

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create Beethoven or The Beatles or

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whatever, but it transmits a signal from a much broader field, you know, the ubiquitous

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field. Yeah, and the more you examine the grooves on your gramophone record or the pixels

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on your CD, the more you examine those, you're not going to see the music or the composer.

00:21:53.020 --> 00:21:58.540
Right. So, I say to neuroscientists, the more you look at the brain, the more you will understand

00:21:58.540 --> 00:22:03.540
the brain as the recording instrument.

00:22:03.540 --> 00:22:09.680
But if we want to play with the scientists on their playing field, what can we say to

00:22:09.680 --> 00:22:16.140
them that would provide some kind of convincing evidence that the point you're making has

00:22:16.140 --> 00:22:17.140
merit?

00:22:17.140 --> 00:22:21.980
That the brain is not just creating things, but is more of a transmitter-receiver?

00:22:21.980 --> 00:22:27.180
Like near-death experiences are a possibility, or psychic abilities are a possibility, or

00:22:27.180 --> 00:22:30.060
various things where the brain is

00:22:30.060 --> 00:22:31.260
picking up things, or we're

00:22:31.260 --> 00:22:32.460
experiencing things we shouldn't be able

00:22:32.460 --> 00:22:34.300
to experience,

00:22:34.300 --> 00:22:36.380
but then they always either refuse to

00:22:36.380 --> 00:22:38.620
look at that evidence, or they have

00:22:38.620 --> 00:22:40.060
some way of dismissing it, because it

00:22:40.060 --> 00:22:42.940
threatens their paradigm.

00:22:42.940 --> 00:22:44.140
- Well, Rick, you can only do so much with someone who's

00:22:44.140 --> 00:22:47.340
prepared to listen.

00:22:47.340 --> 00:22:51.420
- True. - So, the first point

00:22:51.420 --> 00:22:54.380
is the sensitivity of the individual.

00:22:54.380 --> 00:22:56.540
Scientists are creating

00:22:54.380 --> 00:23:01.260
increasingly sophisticated machines, telescopes, to look at the outer regions of the universe.

00:23:01.260 --> 00:23:06.780
And the latest one being talked about is the Einstein telescope. That's fine, no problem.

00:23:06.780 --> 00:23:14.780
But what you get from those instruments is only as good as your sensitivity to see into it. So,

00:23:14.780 --> 00:23:21.340
if Newton were looking through the telescope and I were looking through the same telescope,

00:23:21.340 --> 00:23:26.700
I think you can be pretty sure Newton would see further than I would, not because his physical

00:23:26.700 --> 00:23:35.020
eyes were better than mine. No, his inner eyes. So, your answer, what can we do? We talk about

00:23:35.020 --> 00:23:43.740
sensitivity, but scientists are impregnated in the materialist ontology, and you can only deal with

00:23:43.740 --> 00:23:51.340
those who are undecided, is point out what the greatest of scientists, let alone others,

00:23:51.340 --> 00:23:59.580
have said about these higher realms. Schrödinger, in his book What Is Life, just there, when he said

00:23:59.580 --> 00:24:07.500
that the deepest truth from the Vedanta is Atman equals Raman, the personal self equals the

00:24:08.060 --> 00:24:16.460
omnipresent, all-abiding self, the deepest truth of Indian philosophy is echoed by the mystics of

00:24:16.460 --> 00:24:25.500
all ages who have said with one voice, "I have become God." Deus actus sum. "Become God" doesn't

00:24:25.500 --> 00:24:33.660
mean "I am a god." It means "I have united my personal self with the all-encompassing,

00:24:34.220 --> 00:24:43.660
comprehending omnipotent omniscient self. So I've removed the barriers that have separated me from

00:24:43.660 --> 00:24:49.340
the rest of the world. That's the great heresy, the great heresy to think that I'm separate from you.

00:24:49.340 --> 00:24:56.780
But if that doesn't convince the scientists, how about the great Isaac Newton? One of the saddest

00:24:56.780 --> 00:25:03.420
things in my opinion, Rick, it really pains me to dwell on how Newton has been misunderstood

00:25:03.420 --> 00:25:11.020
or misquoted. He was not the architect of the clockwork universe; far from it. His works glow

00:25:11.020 --> 00:25:23.500
with reverence for divinity, so his Principia is a mathematical description, and Newton clearly said

00:25:23.500 --> 00:25:31.100
it had nothing to do with real and physical causes, and he warns the reader and he asks the reader to

00:25:31.100 --> 00:25:39.580
beware that by using words like "force" and "impulse", I mean those words only in the mathematical sense.

00:25:39.580 --> 00:25:47.980
So if these great scientists, the words of these great scientists, Newton, Einstein, Schrodinger,

00:25:47.980 --> 00:25:55.260
will not convince your scientists, well, you're wasting your time. Yeah, I mean, what else can I

00:25:55.260 --> 00:26:01.900
say. If someone comes to me for music lessons and says, "Well, I'm not deaf, am I interested?"

00:26:01.900 --> 00:26:05.500
Well, I'm wasting my time. But why are we doing this?

00:26:05.500 --> 00:26:09.180
>>Rick: Yeah, who was it that said science progresses one funeral at a time?

00:26:09.180 --> 00:26:12.380
>>Johnny: One major funeral at a time, and no weddings either.

00:26:12.380 --> 00:26:15.740
>>Rick: Yeah, so it's an interesting topic, I mean, the whole thing of...

00:26:15.740 --> 00:26:18.060
>>Johnny: Seriously, Rick, sorry to interrupt on this point.

00:26:18.060 --> 00:26:18.540
>>Rick: That's okay.

00:26:18.540 --> 00:26:23.420
>>Johnny: Many scientists are waking up to this, and it is very - I mean,

00:26:23.420 --> 00:26:29.420
I mean, I sounded a depressing note, but I'm now going to sound a very bright note, that

00:26:29.420 --> 00:26:36.780
through the wonderful work of the Galileo Commission and David Lorimer and Marjorie Willicott, who

00:26:36.780 --> 00:26:43.260
are wonderful leaders, increasing numbers of scientists are now coming out of the closet.

00:26:43.260 --> 00:26:49.980
They were mainstream during the working week in the lab, so as not to make fools of themselves

00:26:49.980 --> 00:26:55.780
and funder colleagues, but over the weekend they've come out of the closet. Now they're

00:26:55.780 --> 00:27:01.100
rather more out of the closet and questioning the basis of mainstream science.

00:27:01.100 --> 00:27:02.100
>> Sean That's good.

00:27:02.100 --> 00:27:11.180
>> Rupert But yet people like Steven Weinberg, who has the audacity to say the more the universe

00:27:11.180 --> 00:27:18.340
seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless. So here, just to close this one out, what is

00:27:18.340 --> 00:27:25.780
life. What does he mean by pointless? He means lifeless, of course. So, according to the NASA

00:27:25.780 --> 00:27:32.940
definition of life, life is a chemical system amenable to Darwinian evolution and the only

00:27:32.940 --> 00:27:39.300
thing we know on Earth. Now, the occultists, the esotericists, will say that just because

00:27:39.300 --> 00:27:47.540
you don't see life in stones and other planets, you've got no right to say, therefore, that

00:27:47.540 --> 00:27:54.020
life doesn't exist anymore than if I shut my curtains here, which I have done, I've got no

00:27:54.020 --> 00:27:59.780
right to say there's nothing outside. Because for the esotericists and the occultists,

00:27:59.780 --> 00:28:09.700
universal principles are far more significant than their appearance on the physical level,

00:28:09.700 --> 00:28:17.460
because universals deal with the noumena, the causes, the invisible causes, noumena,

00:28:17.460 --> 00:28:24.420
and then the phenomena to breathe out are the physical effects on the physical plane.

00:28:24.420 --> 00:28:35.300
So, scientists need to get together with mystics and esotericists and get out of just the left brain.

00:28:36.340 --> 00:28:40.980
I think it depends on how you define life. Was it David Lorimer or was it Rupert Sheldrake

00:28:40.980 --> 00:28:44.820
who wrote a book like "Is the Sun Conscious" or "Is the Sun Alive" or something?

00:28:44.820 --> 00:28:45.380
Of course it is.

00:28:45.380 --> 00:28:48.420
Yeah, that sounds absurd to the average person.

00:28:48.420 --> 00:28:53.780
There was a comedian here in the US that goes out on the street and sticks a mic in people's

00:28:53.780 --> 00:28:58.740
faces and asks them questions such as "Who was the first man to walk on the sun?" and they think,

00:28:58.740 --> 00:29:03.940
"Gee, was it...?" I don't know, they actually come up with some name overlooking the absurdity of

00:29:03.940 --> 00:29:08.320
of the question, but obviously most scientists would say it's absurd to consider that there

00:29:08.320 --> 00:29:13.020
could be life in the sun, but it really depends on how we define life.

00:29:13.020 --> 00:29:18.620
And the way I would define it is that if you look at anything closely, the sun, a pebble,

00:29:18.620 --> 00:29:25.180
any inanimate object, you look at it closely enough and you see that it's just brimming

00:29:25.180 --> 00:29:28.100
with intelligence.

00:29:28.100 --> 00:29:33.860
The way a molecule functions is an expression of laws of nature which we don't fully comprehend,

00:29:33.860 --> 00:29:37.860
and that is happening in every cubic centimeter of the universe.

00:29:37.860 --> 00:29:40.860
So, it's all life. It's all God.

00:29:40.860 --> 00:29:44.860
Yes. And what, as you say, it's how you understand life.

00:29:44.860 --> 00:29:51.860
How can that which has illumined our planet and given us light,

00:29:51.860 --> 00:29:54.860
how can that not have life?

00:29:54.860 --> 00:29:57.860
How can we have life for something that is lifeless?

00:29:57.860 --> 00:30:00.860
Well, the scientist is going to say it's a fusion reaction.

00:30:00.860 --> 00:30:05.780
no life there in any kind of biological sense, and he would be right about that. But again,

00:30:05.780 --> 00:30:07.260
you have to define life more deeply.

00:30:07.260 --> 00:30:10.700
Dr. Andrews He would, but he would be right only at that

00:30:10.700 --> 00:30:19.820
level. As Weinberg said, gone are the days when we celebrate the heavens with David,

00:30:19.820 --> 00:30:27.300
because now we know, look at the arrogance, now we know that the stars and the celestial

00:30:27.300 --> 00:30:37.340
bodies are nothing but glowing spheres of gas where the gravitational collapse of particles

00:30:37.340 --> 00:30:46.580
is supported by the upthrust from heat generated from thermonuclear fusion in the body of the

00:30:46.580 --> 00:30:53.240
star. So that's all it is. So, a celestial object has no more divinity than the stones

00:30:53.240 --> 00:30:54.740
on the ground in front of you.

00:30:54.740 --> 00:30:56.740
That's true, but they both have divinities.

00:30:56.740 --> 00:31:02.780
Exactly, and I would say using that analogy, the human body, if you squeeze it through

00:31:02.780 --> 00:31:06.260
a whatever, it's mainly salt water.

00:31:06.260 --> 00:31:11.960
Does that mean that a human being of flesh and blood and spirit is nothing but a bucket

00:31:11.960 --> 00:31:12.960
of seawater?

00:31:12.960 --> 00:31:16.020
Yeah, there's a phrase for this that's actually called "nothing but-ism."

00:31:16.020 --> 00:31:17.020
You've probably heard that.

00:31:17.020 --> 00:31:18.020
Yeah, nothing but-ism.

00:31:18.020 --> 00:31:24.160
If some of the listeners have questions about this, feel free to send them in, because unless

00:31:24.160 --> 00:31:30.200
you define your terms and your concepts carefully, this can sound like an absurd argument. You

00:31:30.200 --> 00:31:35.880
have to remember that we're not defining life in the ordinary sense of just biological life,

00:31:35.880 --> 00:31:42.480
but rather in terms of the fact that intelligence is all-pervading, and it pervades a stone

00:31:42.480 --> 00:31:46.640
as much as it pervades our body. These are just physical expressions that have different

00:31:46.640 --> 00:31:49.040
degrees of complexity and different functions.

00:31:49.040 --> 00:31:54.080
>> Exactly. And you mentioned the physical body, Rick, let alone the subtle bodies.

00:31:54.080 --> 00:31:58.320
>> Right. >> Our physical body, as Ovid Laszlo, one of

00:31:58.320 --> 00:32:05.840
the greatest scientists, has pointed out, we have over a million billion cells in the human

00:32:05.840 --> 00:32:14.640
body alone, more than the stars in the Milky Way. Of that cell population, 600 billion cells are

00:32:14.640 --> 00:32:21.520
dying every day and the same number are being regenerated, which makes around 10 million

00:32:21.520 --> 00:32:29.440
per second. Now, let's just take that on board. 10 million cells per second are being

00:32:29.440 --> 00:32:38.640
as waste products, so to speak, and the same number rejuvenating. Yet, there is a master principle

00:32:38.640 --> 00:32:45.520
that holds the whole body together. What is that master principle? It's important to ask the right

00:32:45.520 --> 00:32:51.360
question before trying to grab at an answer with the left brain. There is that master principle

00:32:51.360 --> 00:32:58.320
in terms of the occult philosophy, which is universal. There is the model body, the etheric

00:32:58.320 --> 00:33:06.800
double, the linga sharira, but that is subservient to a much higher principle. So, each cell is like

00:33:06.800 --> 00:33:14.240
instruments of the orchestra playing the same music under the one conductor playing the same music

00:33:14.240 --> 00:33:22.640
composed by the one great composer who did not compose it just out of his head. He transmitted it

00:33:22.640 --> 00:33:29.520
through his being. So even the human body is a mystery. Incidentally, there's some great videos

00:33:29.520 --> 00:33:34.160
you can find on YouTube that animate the mechanics, the inner workings of a cell,

00:33:34.800 --> 00:33:39.840
and they're just totally fascinating, and your jaw drops as you watch them to imagine that that

00:33:39.840 --> 00:33:45.120
degree of complexity. Someone said that a typical cell is more complex than the city of Tokyo,

00:33:45.120 --> 00:33:49.360
and you just said we have a gazillion of them in our bodies, and millions of them are

00:33:49.360 --> 00:33:55.680
regenerating every second. >> Ian McGilchrist, and few would argue with him, said it has not been

00:33:55.680 --> 00:34:02.880
possible, if I quote correctly, "to model even a single cell so complex as it." >> And to think

00:34:02.880 --> 00:34:09.960
that people believe that the whole thing is just some kind of random mechanism, that we're

00:34:09.960 --> 00:34:14.720
biological robots in a meaningless universe. I've had that argument with people, and they

00:34:14.720 --> 00:34:19.680
say, "Well, there are laws of nature to explain all this stuff, even if we don't fully understand

00:34:19.680 --> 00:34:24.880
it, and if you would just grant us one miracle, which is that the laws of nature came into

00:34:24.880 --> 00:34:28.040
existence in the first place." We don't know how that happened, but if you grant us that,

00:34:28.040 --> 00:34:30.560
we can explain everything in terms of these laws of nature.

00:34:30.560 --> 00:34:39.640
Yes, that's the Rupert Sheldrake, very amusingly slips that into his talks occasionally, quoting

00:34:39.640 --> 00:34:43.760
McKenna I think, where he talks about the one free miracle.

00:34:43.760 --> 00:34:48.520
"Give us that one free miracle, the laws of nature, and we'll explain everything else."

00:34:48.520 --> 00:34:51.800
Well, it's one hell of a free miracle, isn't it?

00:34:51.800 --> 00:35:02.200
Rick, these are all the grapplings of the left brain of the, if I may put it, the pygmy mind,

00:35:02.200 --> 00:35:09.880
trying to access things that are way beyond its reach. You know, this infinite monkey syndrome,

00:35:09.880 --> 00:35:15.240
which is the most stupid thing, if that infinite number of monkeys are a typewriter. But just

00:35:15.240 --> 00:35:21.040
think of this, Rick. Even if an infinite number of monkeys would type the complete works of

00:35:21.040 --> 00:35:27.040
Shakespeare, assume that. They would not be typing the complete works of Shakespeare;

00:35:27.040 --> 00:35:35.040
they would only be typing the words. The works of Shakespeare are the thought of the great man

00:35:35.040 --> 00:35:42.000
in words. Just putting a load of words down, if you put down the words "to be" or "not to be"

00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:48.240
blindly, it doesn't mean you understand it. So even that idiotic, infinite monkey syndrome

00:35:48.240 --> 00:35:52.580
argument one hears, "Chance, chance," doesn't stack up.

00:35:52.580 --> 00:35:56.360
Like you said, it's improving, people are coming out of the closet, but why do you think

00:35:56.360 --> 00:36:03.280
that many scientists, and perhaps the field in general still, predominantly, has been so

00:36:03.280 --> 00:36:06.040
closed-minded? What are they afraid of?

00:36:06.040 --> 00:36:12.680
Fear is a big thing. Fear stands at the back and the front of a lot of problems. A lot

00:36:12.680 --> 00:36:17.880
of people, and I include myself of course, I mean it wouldn't be so arrogant as to say not,

00:36:17.880 --> 00:36:25.800
in a Plato's cave, that wonderful allegory of the cave, Plato's cave, where the prisoners mistook

00:36:25.800 --> 00:36:32.040
the shadows on the wall for reality and only when they stepped outside they realized it was the

00:36:32.040 --> 00:36:39.800
shadow cast by the sun. So people like to be comfortable sitting in their armchair of conceptual

00:36:39.800 --> 00:36:47.640
thought. So to be knocked out of your armchair of security is uncomfortable. So that's one reason

00:36:47.640 --> 00:36:56.600
they want security, mental closure, causal closure, that's one reason. But there is another reason,

00:36:56.600 --> 00:37:04.360
Rick, and this is really to do with science and technology. The 19th century was a time of

00:37:04.360 --> 00:37:14.440
material exploration and research, and researching matter spilled into material development,

00:37:14.440 --> 00:37:21.880
which spilled over into a materialistic philosophy that everything could be explained on the basis of

00:37:21.880 --> 00:37:30.520
matter, given the spectacular advances and achievements in science. So, because so much

00:37:30.520 --> 00:37:37.400
can be explained on a materialist ontology, anything else is regarded as superfluous.

00:37:37.400 --> 00:37:45.640
With this materialist ontology, there is the overemphasis on primary qualities,

00:37:45.640 --> 00:37:52.280
that which you can measure, touch, see, and feel, as opposed to or in contrast with secondary

00:37:52.280 --> 00:38:01.720
qualities and qualia. So the two reasons are really the subjective need for security of the individual

00:38:01.720 --> 00:38:10.120
and the explosion in science and technology. Personally, speaking quite frankly, I'm very

00:38:10.120 --> 00:38:17.080
uncomfortable if I think I know it. If you think you know what? Anything? If I think I know the

00:38:17.080 --> 00:38:22.360
full thing about anything, it makes me very uncomfortable. I want to know more. I want

00:38:22.360 --> 00:38:29.400
to be made uncomfortable because you won't explore and research if you think you know it all. And if

00:38:29.400 --> 00:38:35.480
you're sitting in your materialistic armchair thinking you know it all, well, you don't want

00:38:35.480 --> 00:38:41.800
someone to rock the boat. But I again emphasize, Rick, that I'm not knocking materialism in its

00:38:41.800 --> 00:38:50.600
proper place. Our houses, our cars, our utilitarian devices, our medical technology depends on it.

00:38:50.600 --> 00:38:56.520
It's a different level. Yeah. And if you think you know everything, or if you're one of these

00:38:56.520 --> 00:39:00.760
people who say, "Well, this couldn't be because we've already got that figured out," you're not

00:39:00.760 --> 00:39:09.320
a scientist. You know, you're what I call "scientism." Scientism, exactly so. How well that

00:39:09.800 --> 00:39:17.640
Bob John, who was at Princeton running the Pear-Princeton Anomalies Research Laboratories,

00:39:17.640 --> 00:39:22.120
or unit, which is now being taken over wonderfully by Brenda Dunn's son,

00:39:22.120 --> 00:39:29.640
he mentions that he invited Philip Anderson, who was only a few corridors away from his room

00:39:29.640 --> 00:39:37.240
at Princeton, to see the results of his experiments on psychokinesis, how

00:39:38.200 --> 00:39:44.920
individuals can affect the readings of the various instruments. So, if you have a beam of electrons,

00:39:44.920 --> 00:39:52.200
how individuals could bias it one way or another, for example. And Anderson said, "I don't need to

00:39:52.200 --> 00:39:55.480
see it. I know it's rubbish. I know it's wrong."

00:39:55.480 --> 00:39:56.680
>> Yeah. >> Period.

00:39:56.680 --> 00:40:01.880
>> Which is how the Galileo Commission got its name. The church authorities wouldn't look through

00:40:01.880 --> 00:40:06.680
Galileo's telescope because Jupiter couldn't have moons, you know? It conflicts with church dogma.

00:40:06.680 --> 00:40:15.320
>> Exactly so. But when Monteverdi was invited, I believe, by Galileo to look through the telescope,

00:40:15.320 --> 00:40:21.960
Monteverdi obviously saw physical stars, but he saw more. And he wrote his beautiful

00:40:21.960 --> 00:40:26.120
music, "The Vespers," where he saw the divinity in the stars.

00:40:26.120 --> 00:40:28.600
>> Nice. >> So, sensitivity.

00:40:28.600 --> 00:40:35.080
>> Now, I guess we could say, you would probably agree, if we look around the world at the condition

00:40:35.080 --> 00:40:40.800
of society and all the different factors, the economies, the ecology, the technologies, everything

00:40:40.800 --> 00:40:41.800
else.

00:40:41.800 --> 00:40:45.040
It's all an expression of human consciousness.

00:40:45.040 --> 00:40:51.280
It's a reflection of the collective consciousness of humanity through its various influential

00:40:51.280 --> 00:40:53.800
means, the greatest of which is science.

00:40:53.800 --> 00:40:57.380
So all the bridges, the airplanes, most of the environmental pollution, all that are

00:40:57.380 --> 00:41:02.040
the spin-offs or symptoms of various technologies that we've been applying.

00:41:02.040 --> 00:41:07.840
I just watched a documentary with Bill Gates and he was talking about geoengineering and

00:41:07.840 --> 00:41:12.080
ways of combating climate change by sucking the CO2 out of the atmosphere.

00:41:12.080 --> 00:41:16.680
So people are coming up with ideas for using more science to correct things and some of

00:41:16.680 --> 00:41:19.960
that might be very good, might be necessary.

00:41:19.960 --> 00:41:27.800
But could you imagine for us what you think the world might look like if science and spirituality

00:41:27.800 --> 00:41:34.120
were working hand-in-hand and had fully blossomed to a high level of their potential.

00:41:34.120 --> 00:41:35.100
>> R.F.

00:41:35.100 --> 00:41:36.920
Bachelet That would be heaven on earth, Rick.

00:41:36.920 --> 00:41:41.880
>> Rick How would it come about? Like all the nitty-gritty problems, the diseases, everything

00:41:41.880 --> 00:41:47.080
else that we rely on science to deal with, how would the infusion of spirituality enable us to

00:41:47.080 --> 00:41:49.000
actually solve these problems? >> R.F. Bachelet

00:41:49.000 --> 00:41:56.840
Spirituality, in the broadest sense, is the recognition of divinity in each person. So,

00:41:57.560 --> 00:42:03.560
it would for a start result in intense cooperation rather than ruthless competition.

00:42:03.560 --> 00:42:12.440
I think the best thing I can do is to give you an example of the great Florence Nightingale.

00:42:12.440 --> 00:42:21.880
Now, I think not many people know that she was a tremendous statistician, besides being a phenomenal

00:42:21.880 --> 00:42:30.280
healer and a nurse, of course, and she was able to see patterns in statistics that others couldn't,

00:42:30.280 --> 00:42:37.640
but from her life experience, and you couldn't have someone more involved with human suffering

00:42:37.640 --> 00:42:45.560
than a nurse during the Crimean War, and she came to three fundamental conclusions,

00:42:45.560 --> 00:42:52.440
is the wrong word, "insights", she said that our physical laws of science are really

00:42:52.440 --> 00:43:00.800
the expression of a higher intelligence. Secondly, that each person has that seed or spark of

00:43:00.800 --> 00:43:09.200
divinity in them, and thirdly, through evolution, each person will come to realise their innate

00:43:09.200 --> 00:43:16.480
divinity. But then going on, she said that praying for miracles is not the answer. If

00:43:16.480 --> 00:43:24.200
you're pouring sewage into the River Thames, you don't pray to God to take cholera away.

00:43:24.200 --> 00:43:32.360
You clean up the sewage. So here you have the most practical example of a spiritual beacon

00:43:32.360 --> 00:43:38.640
and a scientific mind. So if science and spirituality worked together, we would have literally,

00:43:38.640 --> 00:43:47.680
Utopia or no. But for that to happen, there has to be a radical shift in our sense of values.

00:43:47.680 --> 00:43:53.520
We have now what Dr. Joan Walton, another wonderful lady in the

00:43:53.520 --> 00:43:58.480
scientific medical, the acting chairman no less, and a great educationalist,

00:43:58.480 --> 00:44:05.120
she refers to as an ontological crisis where everything ultimately is to do with matter,

00:44:05.120 --> 00:44:14.520
physical matter. But I say not only that, we have a crisis of values. Look at the people whom we look

00:44:14.520 --> 00:44:25.160
up to. If a man is a billionaire, he automatically commands respect and adulation. You only have to

00:44:25.160 --> 00:44:31.960
look at the billionaires around. Now I'm saying there's a big difference between the cultured

00:44:31.960 --> 00:44:39.640
philanthropist and the ruffian billionaire. So our sense of values is entirely driven by

00:44:39.640 --> 00:44:47.400
he who has the most money, the most power, and the greatest position and control. And I'm saying

00:44:47.400 --> 00:44:54.360
that someone who misuses his power is a weak person. So from the spiritual point of view,

00:44:55.000 --> 00:45:00.200
All the tyrants of this world, we needn't name them, there are enough of them,

00:45:00.200 --> 00:45:07.480
they are weak people because they have no power over themselves and the only person worth having

00:45:07.480 --> 00:45:16.040
power over is yourself. And when you can handle power wisely, then you can deal with the world

00:45:16.040 --> 00:45:25.400
around. So, these are all facets that interlock. Just because a man is a billionaire, why is he

00:45:25.400 --> 00:45:32.920
allowed to tell lies? Why is it okay to tell lies if you're a billionaire? If I told lies at work,

00:45:32.920 --> 00:45:41.400
I'd be out of my job. Why is it okay to tell lies if I'm a powerful billionaire? That's a distorted

00:45:41.400 --> 00:45:49.080
sense of values. So if science and spirituality danced together, our value system would go

00:45:49.080 --> 00:45:57.320
up a grade and our moral compass, the needle, would be where it's meant to be. But as Scheitzer

00:45:57.320 --> 00:46:03.640
said so beautifully, there are three things necessary for progress. Progress in science

00:46:03.640 --> 00:46:12.680
technology, of course, progress in socialization, social interaction. The most important is progress

00:46:12.680 --> 00:46:19.760
in spirituality. And here the great Schweitzer was doing nothing more than emphasizing the three

00:46:19.760 --> 00:46:27.280
levels of our being - body, soul, and spirit. On Earth, we live in three bodies. Depending on our

00:46:27.280 --> 00:46:33.280
inclination, one or other predominates, but those three have to be held in balance. And when science

00:46:33.280 --> 00:46:40.320
and spirituality come together, science will look on the world from a higher standpoint.

00:46:40.320 --> 00:46:44.560
>> Great points there, many of which we could discuss at greater length, and perhaps we'll

00:46:44.560 --> 00:46:50.000
have time to. I'll get back to the Florence Nightingale quote about the laws of nature.

00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:51.600
Repeat it for me.

00:46:51.600 --> 00:46:58.800
>> The physical laws of nature which science has discovered and which underpin our physical

00:46:58.800 --> 00:47:04.560
universe are the expression and creation, if you like, of a higher intelligence.

00:47:04.560 --> 00:47:10.080
>>Rick: And the reason that really caught my interest is that, obviously, the people who

00:47:10.080 --> 00:47:15.600
have discovered these laws of nature and who have wielded them through various technologies

00:47:15.600 --> 00:47:20.640
have not reached their full potential as human beings or unfolded the full possibility of

00:47:20.640 --> 00:47:26.800
consciousness within themselves, and therefore, they can't help but misapply the laws of nature

00:47:26.800 --> 00:47:29.600
or apply them in ways that are a mixed blessing.

00:47:29.600 --> 00:47:30.960
Pete: Mixed blessing.

00:47:30.960 --> 00:47:38.480
Pete: Yeah. This might help us understand how if the custodians of science and technology

00:47:38.480 --> 00:47:46.720
were highly enlightened individuals, then divine intelligence that flowed through them and enabled

00:47:46.720 --> 00:47:52.320
them to have their understanding of the laws of nature and devise technologies that apply those

00:47:52.320 --> 00:48:00.000
laws of nature would be much more full and holistic, and therefore the technologies would

00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:05.920
be much less of a mixed blessing, perhaps 99% blessing. So, we can understand through that

00:48:05.920 --> 00:48:11.280
how development of spirituality alongside consciousness might transform the world.

00:48:11.280 --> 00:48:18.560
>> Richard: Yes, and this might rub a few noses the wrong way, or whatever the expression is,

00:48:18.560 --> 00:48:26.320
among scientists, but science in a true sense doesn't explain. And this was said very forcefully

00:48:26.320 --> 00:48:31.760
by Arthur Thompson, who is none other than a fellow of the Royal Society. Science describes

00:48:31.760 --> 00:48:41.520
to wonderful effect. So take, for example, a human eye. Why does the cornea have no blood supply?

00:48:41.520 --> 00:48:46.400
Because if it did have a blood supply, the light wouldn't get through. Blood cells are red.

00:48:47.280 --> 00:48:54.640
Now science has discovered that to tremendous effect and I speak with someone with corneal

00:48:54.640 --> 00:49:01.920
trouble, hence my contact lenses, but that does not explain it. It's a discovery. Science has

00:49:01.920 --> 00:49:09.280
discovered, still talking of the human eye, why the cells at the back of the eye have this pumping

00:49:09.280 --> 00:49:17.760
action to expel water molecules, because if water ingested the back of the cornea, it'd

00:49:17.760 --> 00:49:24.560
be like driving your car with a misty windscreen. So there is this pumping action. That's a

00:49:24.560 --> 00:49:26.640
discovery. Who designed it?

00:49:26.640 --> 00:49:33.560
Now, if we think of the laws of physics, Bernoulli's law, the fact that you and I go in airplanes

00:49:33.560 --> 00:49:41.720
is thanks to the discovery by Bernoulli and Newton that aerofoil lift. No scientist sat

00:49:41.720 --> 00:49:48.880
down in his laboratory and designed the human eye or designed or invented Bernoulli's law.

00:49:48.880 --> 00:49:54.320
They discovered it. So, a bit of humility, please, Mr. Scientist.

00:49:54.320 --> 00:50:00.000
>> Now, probably a scientist would say, "Well, the reason Bernoulli's law was discovered is

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:05.360
that we observe the way bird wings, or the reason the eye works the way you just described,

00:50:05.360 --> 00:50:12.440
is Darwinian evolution. Through countless generations, eyes developed because certain models of the

00:50:12.440 --> 00:50:18.360
eye worked better than other models, and so those beings were able to reproduce and survive,

00:50:18.360 --> 00:50:22.840
and so that's why we ended up with the eyes we have, and it has nothing to do with intelligence.

00:50:22.840 --> 00:50:33.160
>> All right, Darwinian evolution, in very simple terms, the two pillars of the Neo-Darwinian,

00:50:33.160 --> 00:50:41.320
a spontaneous mutation, and natural selection chooses from that pool of genes that which is

00:50:41.320 --> 00:50:49.000
most favorable to the survival of the species. Who is doing the selection in the natural selection?

00:50:49.000 --> 00:50:55.480
Can they not see that the eye has a purpose? There is teleology. Scientists hate the word

00:50:55.480 --> 00:51:02.440
teleology, of course, which is goal-orientated purpose. Natural selection, but why just the

00:51:02.440 --> 00:51:11.240
eye to be transparent? Who decided that the human being needs a transparent cornea in order to see?

00:51:11.240 --> 00:51:17.320
That lovely saying, "If the eye were not of the nature of light, it could not perceive light."

00:51:17.320 --> 00:51:21.400
Well, I'm not going to play devil's advocate too much because I'm on the same page with you.

00:51:21.400 --> 00:51:22.840
That's important.

00:51:22.840 --> 00:51:27.160
I think a scientist might say there didn't need to be anybody to decide,

00:51:27.160 --> 00:51:31.880
it's just worked out that certain eyeball designs were more favorable to life,

00:51:31.880 --> 00:51:36.400
and therefore those designs survived and others went extinct.

00:51:36.400 --> 00:51:44.640
What kind of life? Why human life? A fruit fly has eyes of a very different shape.

00:51:44.640 --> 00:51:49.040
>>Rick: Sure, which works well for a fruit fly. We wouldn't want those eyes, nor would he want ours.

00:51:49.040 --> 00:51:57.840
>>John: But "works well for a fruit fly" means what? It means that the fruit fly has a certain

00:51:57.840 --> 00:52:05.200
direction for its life. It's going in a certain direction, and so it needs those kind of eyes.

00:52:05.200 --> 00:52:10.240
>>Rick: Yeah. And so what you and I are agreeing on here, and probably most of our audience,

00:52:10.240 --> 00:52:15.040
is that there's some kind of intelligent design going on, not necessarily in the way that

00:52:15.040 --> 00:52:20.000
fundamentalist Christian design is defined. Definitely not that. But that there is some

00:52:20.000 --> 00:52:25.680
intelligence guiding all this. This random mutation is not ultimately random, there's a

00:52:25.680 --> 00:52:34.160
kind of evolutionary force that guides the universe that has taken us from hydrogen to Mozart, and that

00:52:34.720 --> 00:52:41.200
the possibility of it all happening by chance is nil. I mean, you've probably heard of, what is it,

00:52:41.200 --> 00:52:47.440
biocentrism or the notion of all those constants that if any of them were ever so slightly different

00:52:47.440 --> 00:52:50.080
we wouldn't have a universe or there couldn't be life in it.

00:52:50.080 --> 00:52:50.800
>> R.F. Skinner, Ph.D., Ph.D., Professor of Biocentrism, University of Michigan

00:52:50.800 --> 00:52:55.520
If any of the fundamental constants were out by even a fraction of a percent,

00:52:56.080 --> 00:53:05.840
we would either have a soup or a non-existing universe. And the multiverse is the only thing

00:53:05.840 --> 00:53:15.200
that comes as close as it can to the occult doctrine of cyclic evolution. The multiverse

00:53:15.200 --> 00:53:22.080
where the constants in the other universes could be very different from that which

00:53:24.400 --> 00:53:30.640
was responsible for our universe. And of course, we can never measure that or look through a

00:53:30.640 --> 00:53:38.000
telescope because it's outside the physical. However, Stephen Hawking, in his last paper,

00:53:38.000 --> 00:53:45.360
which I have, he provided mathematical evidence for the multiverse, and that is a tremendous

00:53:45.360 --> 00:53:51.200
contribution. But of course, the multiverse concept is used as a cop-out by materialists who

00:53:51.200 --> 00:53:55.920
say, "Okay, well, there's countless universes and we just happen to be in the one that lucked

00:53:55.920 --> 00:54:00.280
out, you know, with all the constants in perfect attunement, and the other ones that were all

00:54:00.280 --> 00:54:01.680
probably duds."

00:54:01.680 --> 00:54:06.720
So, that kind of excuses them from having to admit that there's some kind of intelligence

00:54:06.720 --> 00:54:07.720
guiding our universe.

00:54:07.720 --> 00:54:09.200
>>John: Yeah, of course.

00:54:09.200 --> 00:54:14.760
People are always looking for an excuse to justify their own particular point of view.

00:54:14.760 --> 00:54:19.360
>>Rick: Okay, so I ended up doing what I said I wasn't going to do, which was just wing

00:54:19.360 --> 00:54:25.560
But I want to get down to your notes here and make sure we're covering all the bases.

00:54:25.560 --> 00:54:31.720
We've talked about the limitations of science, and we've talked about the societal implications

00:54:31.720 --> 00:54:37.800
of its limitations, and the necessity for spiritual awakening.

00:54:37.800 --> 00:54:43.260
We've talked a bit about the brain generating consciousness versus being a transmitter-receiver

00:54:43.260 --> 00:54:45.520
of consciousness.

00:54:45.520 --> 00:54:50.680
We've talked about the sort of rigidity and closed-mindedness of mainstream science in

00:54:50.680 --> 00:54:55.920
accepting these perspectives that you and I are agreeing on.

00:54:55.920 --> 00:55:00.200
We talked a little bit about Darwin just now, and maybe we could talk a bit about him, in

00:55:00.200 --> 00:55:06.200
that Darwinian theory is considered unquestionable doctrine.

00:55:06.200 --> 00:55:10.560
It's as well established as the law of gravity or the shape of the earth, which of course

00:55:10.560 --> 00:55:14.120
some people do question, not only.

00:55:14.120 --> 00:55:18.360
Is there anything more we want to say about the theory of evolution?

00:55:18.360 --> 00:55:24.440
Let's just say this, that however far you want to take it up, life is always the interplay

00:55:24.440 --> 00:55:26.280
of spirit and matter.

00:55:26.280 --> 00:55:33.200
By that I mean the animating impulse and the medium through which it acts.

00:55:33.200 --> 00:55:40.760
So in the most simplistic way, if we think of current along an electrical wire, the current

00:55:40.760 --> 00:55:47.320
would be the spirit aspect, but it would be an abstraction because it needs matter, the

00:55:47.320 --> 00:55:54.320
conductor, to actuate it. If you just have the bare conductor, it's impotent. So, you

00:55:54.320 --> 00:56:04.120
always have the animating impulse and the vehicle through which it acts. Science only looks

00:56:04.120 --> 00:56:12.040
to the vehicle, to the matter, to the forms. So forms will always change. Science does not

00:56:12.040 --> 00:56:20.240
look at the animating impulse, the life, the vitality behind the forms. So science regards

00:56:20.240 --> 00:56:28.760
evolution as the changing of form, but it does not see the changing of form as the result

00:56:28.760 --> 00:56:36.360
of something that's making that change. So, there is not only evolution, there is involution,

00:56:36.360 --> 00:56:46.040
and there is devolution as well. So, evolution, "e volvere," means the unfolding of the innate

00:56:46.040 --> 00:56:54.440
potential that has been trapped. So, evolution in philosophical terms is the releasing of spirit

00:56:55.000 --> 00:57:02.760
congealed in matter. Involution is the privation of spirit in matter, and spirit and matter are

00:57:02.760 --> 00:57:09.400
relative terms, of course. So, science needs to think of involution as well as evolution,

00:57:09.400 --> 00:57:14.120
and not just see evolution as the changing of outer form.

00:57:14.120 --> 00:57:17.720
>> Clarify a little bit more what you mean by involution.

00:57:17.720 --> 00:57:24.160
>> Krishnamurti Involution involves a spirit which naturally

00:57:24.160 --> 00:57:33.960
wishes to expand when it is held back, when it is concealed. If you think of E=mc², m

00:57:33.960 --> 00:57:41.920
matter is the involution of light. Light has been imprisoned and no one put it better than

00:57:41.920 --> 00:57:52.960
the great Sir James Jeans when he spoke of matter as crystallized light. So, light has been imprisoned,

00:57:52.960 --> 00:57:58.320
involved. Evolution would be the releasing from that privation.

00:57:58.320 --> 00:58:03.680
>>Rick: And it seems to me that involution happens through evolution. In other words,

00:58:03.680 --> 00:58:10.400
the vehicle evolves in order to more fully express the spirit.

00:58:10.400 --> 00:58:15.760
>> Yeah, the two always go together. >> I interrupted you for that definition,

00:58:15.760 --> 00:58:18.640
but I don't know if you finished the point you were trying to make about Darwin.

00:58:18.640 --> 00:58:25.280
>> We don't, we meaning the occultists, the esotericists, do not deny Darwin,

00:58:25.280 --> 00:58:31.440
but Darwin is only a small part of the overall picture. For start, the origin of the species

00:58:31.440 --> 00:58:39.840
is not the origin, it's a certain point in time. And there is also the evolution, not just of matter,

00:58:39.840 --> 00:58:47.520
but there is the evolution of the psyche as well and the spiritual nature, not just the physical.

00:58:47.520 --> 00:58:57.280
But bear in mind that Darwin got a first degree in theology, excuse me, not science at Cambridge,

00:58:57.280 --> 00:59:02.720
first degree in theology. And his wonderful, well, collaborator for a while, Wallace,

00:59:03.280 --> 00:59:10.960
openly said that the explosion in mathematical ability that we see in his time could not

00:59:10.960 --> 00:59:17.120
possibly be explained purely on the basis of natural selection, and that was someone who

00:59:17.120 --> 00:59:22.400
co-authored a paper with Darwin. So, we're not saying Darwin's right or wrong; these are silly

00:59:22.400 --> 00:59:29.360
words. It is limited. And what we find, Rick, just to take this further because this is a really

00:59:29.360 --> 00:59:38.400
important point. We see that nature always evinces a march towards a higher order of existence.

00:59:38.400 --> 00:59:44.240
For example, the mineral wants to become the vegetable, wants to become the animal,

00:59:44.240 --> 00:59:49.600
wants to become the human, who wants to become something much more than human. Now,

00:59:49.600 --> 00:59:57.360
no one put it more beautifully than the great Iranian Sufi master, Sauravadi. Let's give Iran

00:59:57.360 --> 01:00:02.800
some credit. I mean, it's really going through a hell of a time now. The great Iranian masters,

01:00:02.800 --> 01:00:11.760
13th century, he put it really beautifully that we're talking of sunlight. There's external light

01:00:11.760 --> 01:00:18.320
and internal light. The external light illumines everything, without which, obviously, there'd be

01:00:18.320 --> 01:00:28.400
no life. The internal light is the impulse in every being to realize its true origins,

01:00:28.400 --> 01:00:35.520
to, as Sarovardi put it so beautifully, "unite with the Beloved." So, the mineral can't become

01:00:35.520 --> 01:00:43.120
a human in one jump. The mineral kingdom, in order to unite with the Beloved, has to go

01:00:43.120 --> 01:00:50.560
through the vegetable kingdom. It's important to think of kingdoms of nature, and the vegetable

01:00:50.560 --> 01:00:58.400
kingdom becomes the animal, and the human humanity is a kingdom of nature. So, what we find in

01:00:58.400 --> 01:01:08.640
evolution is downward links of love and sacrifice from the higher kingdom and upward links of

01:01:08.640 --> 01:01:16.240
reverence and obedience, where the higher kingdom, so to speak, enables the lower to ascend higher.

01:01:16.240 --> 01:01:24.320
The purpose being to unite with the source in full consciousness. We've given Iran credit,

01:01:24.320 --> 01:01:29.520
for goodness sake, let's give Lebanon some credit, the great Khayel Gibran, that life

01:01:29.520 --> 01:01:38.240
goes in search of life in bodies that fear the grave. So the bodies, the material principle,

01:01:38.240 --> 01:01:45.840
the form will change. Anything that is to do with form and matter, by definition almost,

01:01:45.840 --> 01:01:53.040
is impermanent. That will change and decay so that life may inhabit a newer form,

01:01:53.040 --> 01:02:00.000
a more complex form that will better express its innate potential.

01:02:01.280 --> 01:02:08.880
Let's just now end with Rumi, who said the whole of evolution in life shows the principle of dying

01:02:08.880 --> 01:02:17.680
for the sake of life, the changing in form for the sake of the indwelling life. But science only looks

01:02:17.680 --> 01:02:23.520
at the change in form and calls that evolution. >> You probably know the author of this,

01:02:23.520 --> 01:02:29.280
God Sleeps in the Rock, Dreams in the Plant, Stirs in the Animal, and Awakes in the Human

01:02:29.280 --> 01:02:35.920
being. Who said that? I think Rumi. It's credited to Rumi, but there are slight variations on that.

01:02:35.920 --> 01:02:36.160
Pete: Right.

01:02:36.160 --> 01:02:38.480
Rupert: But the great Rumi as well.

01:02:38.480 --> 01:02:45.120
Pete: You know, if we just repeat that one more time, we're talking about God being the

01:02:45.120 --> 01:02:51.600
indweller in all these life forms and just taking on bodies which enable fuller and fuller expression

01:02:51.600 --> 01:02:53.360
of that divine intelligence.

01:02:53.360 --> 01:03:00.960
>> More technically, the monad, one of the fundamental precepts of occultism and theosophy

01:03:00.960 --> 01:03:08.480
is the journey of the eternal pilgrim, which is the monad, that spiritual impulse that

01:03:08.480 --> 01:03:16.200
goes through that cyclic journey in order to understand its own divinity in full consciousness,

01:03:16.200 --> 01:03:17.200
yes.

01:03:17.200 --> 01:03:21.020
>> One of the things I've heard you talk about, and I'm sure it's in your book too, is these

01:03:21.020 --> 01:03:28.060
wealthy people who want to achieve immortality by having their bodies frozen, or having chips

01:03:28.060 --> 01:03:33.580
implanted, or having their mind uploaded to the cloud, or, you know, these various things,

01:03:33.580 --> 01:03:38.760
which always seemed absurd to me. It seemed to me that they just really didn't have any

01:03:38.760 --> 01:03:43.780
idea of the thing you were just alluding to, of evolution through upgrading the vehicle

01:03:43.780 --> 01:03:44.780
periodically.

01:03:44.780 --> 01:03:52.380
And here one needs to point out one of the warnings of the great philosopher Paul Brunton,

01:03:52.380 --> 01:04:00.100
and my gosh was he a tremendous human being, and he said that science, meaning modern science,

01:04:00.100 --> 01:04:04.060
used wisely will result in the physical release of man.

01:04:04.060 --> 01:04:10.180
Well of course we've seen hygiene and electricity and cars and medical science.

01:04:10.180 --> 01:04:19.220
used unwisely will result in his downfall, which is exactly what you've mentioned. It

01:04:19.220 --> 01:04:26.780
is a total philosophical nonsense to think that you can freeze the body and then recover

01:04:26.780 --> 01:04:33.600
the consciousness by downloading your previous brainwaves into a computer. But all of this

01:04:33.600 --> 01:04:41.840
is taken very seriously, which is very sad, by academia. There is, at Oxford University,

01:04:41.840 --> 01:04:47.640
the James Martin Fellow, Anders Sonberg, who is a committed transhumanist, I heard him on

01:04:47.640 --> 01:04:55.100
the radio, and they're really promulgating all of this. It's a complete identification

01:04:55.100 --> 01:05:01.320
of life with the physical body. And of course, if life is nothing but the physical body, the

01:05:01.320 --> 01:05:09.040
billionaire wants to wake up after being frozen and reunite with his yacht and his mansion

01:05:09.040 --> 01:05:18.560
and his peacock throne. We who know better might refer to that wonderful letter that

01:05:18.560 --> 01:05:25.040
the 31-year-old Mozart wrote to his father, that "Every day when I'm, I'm paraphrasing,

01:05:25.040 --> 01:05:32.560
I wake up, I realize that death, far from being something to fear, is now my best friend.

01:05:32.560 --> 01:05:36.960
A couple of reincarnation jokes here. I saw one where there's this cartoon, the guy's

01:05:36.960 --> 01:05:42.040
standing in front of a bank and it said, "First reincarnation bank. You can't take it with

01:05:42.040 --> 01:05:47.880
you, so leave it with us until you return." And then the other one was a tombstone. It

01:05:47.880 --> 01:05:53.040
said, "I'll be back. Don't touch my stuff." But anyway, I mean, what you're talking about,

01:05:53.040 --> 01:05:58.800
chirogenesis or whatever they call themselves. Cryonics. Cryonics. And some of

01:05:58.800 --> 01:06:03.880
them have frozen their pets. Some have just frozen the head and the nervous

01:06:03.880 --> 01:06:08.040
system, whatever that means. But talking of the bank, rather than taking your

01:06:08.040 --> 01:06:13.960
money, you do take your spiritual treasures. You do. Sure. You take your

01:06:13.960 --> 01:06:19.760
spiritual treasures and the other thing you mentioned with the the bank and... The

01:06:19.760 --> 01:06:22.800
tombstone. Don't touch my stuff, I'll be back.

01:06:22.800 --> 01:06:29.680
Your body can be a tombstone, which is one of the tarot symbols, or your body can

01:06:29.680 --> 01:06:32.080
be a temple. I mean, this freezing your body thing,

01:06:32.080 --> 01:06:34.880
it's almost as absurd as freezing your car, you know,

01:06:34.880 --> 01:06:38.880
hoping that you can thaw it out in 50 years when they have better

01:06:38.880 --> 01:06:43.280
car mechanics or something like that. It obviously denies

01:06:43.280 --> 01:06:49.280
and an understanding of reincarnation, which to me is like a basic assumption.

01:06:49.280 --> 01:06:52.000
A couple of questions came in from somebody.

01:06:52.000 --> 01:06:55.120
Let's take a look at those.

01:06:55.120 --> 01:07:02.760
They both seem to be from someone named Ramanama who, so he's a bit of a jokester, in the UK.

01:07:02.760 --> 01:07:07.680
The first question, "There are three teachings, religion, science, and spirituality.

01:07:07.680 --> 01:07:12.540
If your understanding can concur with all three, would this not be a greater understanding

01:07:12.540 --> 01:07:16.780
than just one or two. Yeah, I think we've been discussing that for an hour, right?

01:07:16.780 --> 01:07:23.660
>> I mentioned Albert Schweitzer's quotation, which is exactly on that theme. That's an

01:07:23.660 --> 01:07:30.740
important point. Let me just deal with this. Science enables us to live efficiently, religion

01:07:30.740 --> 01:07:37.300
to live morally, and spirituality and philosophy to live ethically. So we need all of these

01:07:37.300 --> 01:07:44.020
three things. So putting it in a journey terms, in terms of a journey, philosophy shows us the great

01:07:44.020 --> 01:07:50.420
overall plan. Well, that's all very well. How do you go up the mountain? Religion will point a path

01:07:50.420 --> 01:07:58.180
up that mountain, whichever your religion is, they all come to the top. But how do I do the walking?

01:07:58.180 --> 01:08:02.900
Science provides the means and the productive assistance.

01:08:02.900 --> 01:08:10.020
>> How do you distinguish between morals and ethics? >> I've thought of that a lot. If you

01:08:10.020 --> 01:08:16.500
think of your car, if I drive my car when I'm drunk, I've never been drunk even as a student,

01:08:16.500 --> 01:08:21.700
I'm proud to say it's the only thing I boast about. That's a pretty immoral thing to do.

01:08:21.700 --> 01:08:25.700
>> Sure. >> It's not unethical. But if I'm in full consciousness

01:08:26.260 --> 01:08:32.980
And my exhaust is belching out smoke into the atmosphere. That's unethical. It's polluting.

01:08:32.980 --> 01:08:38.500
But also, if I'm driving my car in first gear, screaming along at 50 miles an hour,

01:08:38.500 --> 01:08:43.700
that's not very efficient. So you have the efficient, the moral, and the ethical.

01:08:43.700 --> 01:08:51.380
The two, they do coalesce. Being unfaithful to someone is not unethical, it's immoral.

01:08:51.380 --> 01:08:56.500
I'll have to study this because I'm not completely clear on the distinction and the degree of

01:08:56.500 --> 01:08:57.500
overlap.

01:08:57.500 --> 01:09:01.940
>>Rick: There's a lot of overlap, and words are in borderless touch.

01:09:01.940 --> 01:09:08.180
>>Rick: I helped to establish an organization called the Association for Spiritual Integrity,

01:09:08.180 --> 01:09:09.900
which you might be interested in.

01:09:09.900 --> 01:09:14.720
We have over 700 members now and over 50 member organizations.

01:09:14.720 --> 01:09:19.660
And the reason we established it was there has been so much misbehavior among spiritual

01:09:19.660 --> 01:09:26.300
teachers, which considering how much emphasis we've put today on the importance of spirituality

01:09:26.300 --> 01:09:31.780
in the world is a rather serious form of sabotage, in my opinion.

01:09:31.780 --> 01:09:35.420
But I really should better understand the distinction between those two terms.

01:09:35.420 --> 01:09:41.940
I've heard of a certain presidential candidate being described as ethically and morally bankrupt,

01:09:41.940 --> 01:09:44.420
and I was thinking, is that not redundant?

01:09:44.420 --> 01:09:47.220
I really need to look into those two words.

01:09:47.220 --> 01:09:56.080
>> [Unintelligible] if we don't recycle our rubbish and plastics and just dump it, it's

01:09:56.080 --> 01:09:59.300
also immoral, it's an unethical thing to do.

01:09:59.300 --> 01:10:02.060
It's a disservice to the planet.

01:10:02.060 --> 01:10:04.340
So I mean, it is a bit of a fine distinction, yeah.

01:10:04.340 --> 01:10:06.340
>> Yeah, anyway, something to think about.

01:10:06.340 --> 01:10:08.500
>> And a lot of overlap, as you said.

01:10:08.500 --> 01:10:15.700
>> Okay, so we have a second question here by that Ramanamama guy, which is, "Can we

01:10:15.700 --> 01:10:21.300
agree that a world without God, intelligence, would not work. The following statement is

01:10:21.300 --> 01:10:27.700
my mantra, "God is all that exists. God is existence. Nothing exists that is not God."

01:10:27.700 --> 01:10:35.540
>> Yes, fully agree. As long as, please, we do not limit God to an anthropomorphic concept.

01:10:35.540 --> 01:10:39.140
>> Right. >> We regard God, deity,

01:10:39.140 --> 01:10:44.580
as the universal intelligence and power. >> We're not talking about big guy in the sky

01:10:44.580 --> 01:10:51.460
with a beer. No, of course not. Which the great Newton wrote about so eloquently in the General

01:10:51.460 --> 01:11:01.780
Scholium of Principia, when he describes God as duration, space, eternity, as a blind man cannot

01:11:01.780 --> 01:11:10.260
see colours, says Newton, so also we have no idea about the shape and form of God. But he is without

01:11:10.260 --> 01:11:16.420
shape and form. The three pages of Newton's General Sholem will say it all.

01:11:16.420 --> 01:11:20.900
>> I would also say that he has all shapes and forms, and we shouldn't be saying "he" here.

01:11:20.900 --> 01:11:24.660
>> He's no particular shape and form. Yeah, we just say "he."

01:11:24.660 --> 01:11:30.740
>> I know, I've gotten flack for using the male pronoun. My camera is God, the wall is God,

01:11:30.740 --> 01:11:36.020
my thumb is God, in the sense that if God is omnipresent, which I think most religions

01:11:36.580 --> 01:11:42.820
consider it to be, then we're looking at it, you know, it's staring us in the face.

01:11:42.820 --> 01:11:44.740
>> Yeah. >> Hiding in plain sight.

01:11:44.740 --> 01:11:49.380
>> Putting it another way, every particle, every quark, every microparticle,

01:11:49.380 --> 01:11:55.540
the innermost center of it is spirit. >> And even possibly the outer crust. I mean,

01:11:55.540 --> 01:12:01.940
if you think about, let's say, my thumb, on a certain level, it's flesh, and then it's carbon,

01:12:01.940 --> 01:12:07.020
and then it's atoms, and then it's quarks, and so on, but that's just because we're getting

01:12:07.020 --> 01:12:08.020
more microscopic.

01:12:08.020 --> 01:12:14.020
I mean, if it's ultimately, it would get down to pure intelligence or consciousness, isn't

01:12:14.020 --> 01:12:19.380
it that from top to bottom, and it just appears to be something other than that if we look

01:12:19.380 --> 01:12:20.380
at it superficially?

01:12:20.380 --> 01:12:24.460
>>John: Superficially, it is an appearance, and of course it is.

01:12:24.460 --> 01:12:25.460
>>Rick: Yeah.

01:12:25.460 --> 01:12:30.220
>>John: But ultimately, it is the appearance of an intelligence.

01:12:30.220 --> 01:12:38.500
So in terms of spirit and matter and consciousness and matter, consciousness expresses not in

01:12:38.500 --> 01:12:42.060
matter, it expresses as matter.

01:12:42.060 --> 01:12:43.300
>> Mm-hmm, nice.

01:12:43.300 --> 01:12:50.300
>> As matter, so as the great Max Planck put it, your great founder of quantum mechanics,

01:12:50.300 --> 01:12:54.660
he said, "As a man who's devoted his whole life to the most clear-headed science, I can

01:12:54.660 --> 01:12:58.020
tell you there's no such thing as matter.

01:12:58.020 --> 01:13:04.740
is only force, and matter is the outer skin of force, the appearance of force, so to speak.

01:13:04.740 --> 01:13:11.700
>> Yeah, like we might say, "There's not water in clouds. Clouds are water, appearing as clouds."

01:13:11.700 --> 01:13:18.900
>> Exactly. The rainbow is not in the sky. It is the water droplets.

01:13:18.900 --> 01:13:24.420
>> Right, or light refracting through them. >> But you mentioned clouds, Rick. This is

01:13:24.420 --> 01:13:30.660
An important point that just comes to me, one of the reasons why there's this confusion, we confuse

01:13:30.660 --> 01:13:37.620
the objective with the phenomena. Now, here is a glass, I mean, it's an objective thing,

01:13:37.620 --> 01:13:43.940
you can pour water into it. A rainbow is not an object. You can't put a rainbow in a box.

01:13:43.940 --> 01:13:51.060
A rainbow is a phenomena, which is the result of the optical apparatus of the eyes,

01:13:51.620 --> 01:14:01.220
the nervous system of the brain, the mind that sees the pictures, and the water droplets in the clouds.

01:14:01.220 --> 01:14:06.340
So if you go up in a hot air balloon where you wouldn't even melt the droplets, but if you went

01:14:06.340 --> 01:14:13.860
up, you wouldn't touch a rainbow, you'd be touching water droplets. So rainbows are phenomena. And one

01:14:13.860 --> 01:14:20.260
of the reasons for the confusion we see around us is mistaking an object with a phenomena.

01:14:20.900 --> 01:14:27.300
Good. So, we talked a little bit about reincarnation. There's also the concept of karma, which

01:14:27.300 --> 01:14:32.340
I think it's part of the puzzle. It's like a necessary cog in the machine. If you leave

01:14:32.340 --> 01:14:37.060
that cog out, the machine doesn't work. It's the most important cog, Rick.

01:14:37.060 --> 01:14:42.500
Let's discuss that a little bit and the implications of it and how it would actually

01:14:42.500 --> 01:14:48.820
work if there is karma that helps to organize the universe and that could carry over from life to

01:14:48.820 --> 01:14:54.420
life and how complex must that be in order for all those little all the details to be worked out?

01:14:54.420 --> 01:14:58.900
The etymology of karma is kri, which is to do, to act, to make action.

01:14:58.900 --> 01:15:06.900
If science would take one thing on board philosophically, it should be to understand

01:15:06.900 --> 01:15:15.300
karma, the implication of what they're doing. Action and reaction, these are all simplistic

01:15:15.300 --> 01:15:23.700
terms, but science provides good similes, good analogies. So, Newton's second law is the most

01:15:23.700 --> 01:15:33.220
simple action and reaction. A more useful analogy is Le Chatelier's principle in chemistry, whereby

01:15:33.220 --> 01:15:42.180
any system in equilibrium, in dynamic equilibrium, if it is disturbed, the system will take up a new

01:15:42.180 --> 01:15:48.900
equilibrium position to try and counteract the disturbing force, and in so doing it would give

01:15:48.900 --> 01:15:57.700
out heat or take in heat. So, if we regard the whole of the universe, the whole of humanity,

01:15:57.700 --> 01:16:06.180
as a tremendous dynamic system, any disturbance will result in a new position of equilibrium.

01:16:06.180 --> 01:16:12.740
Now, karma, there are basically four aspects to it in terms of the human being.

01:16:12.740 --> 01:16:17.320
One is Sanchita Karma, that's the totality of all your karmas.

01:16:17.320 --> 01:16:18.320
The other one is…

01:16:18.320 --> 01:16:19.320
From all your lives.

01:16:19.320 --> 01:16:20.320
Exactly so.

01:16:20.320 --> 01:16:21.320
Yeah.

01:16:21.320 --> 01:16:22.320
Right.

01:16:22.320 --> 01:16:24.780
The other is Prarabdha Karma, the karma for this life.

01:16:24.780 --> 01:16:29.020
Excuse me, meaning the karma you have brought into this particular life?

01:16:29.020 --> 01:16:30.020
Yes.

01:16:30.020 --> 01:16:31.020
Okay.

01:16:31.020 --> 01:16:32.740
The karma that is allocated to your life.

01:16:32.740 --> 01:16:34.940
Like a bucket out of the mountain, okay.

01:16:34.940 --> 01:16:36.500
Well said, yes.

01:16:36.500 --> 01:16:41.460
And well said because if all your karmas were dumped into the one bucket, you just would

01:16:41.460 --> 01:16:42.460
explode.

01:16:42.460 --> 01:16:45.260
So, you can only handle so much.

01:16:45.260 --> 01:16:51.660
The third one is kriyamana, which is the karma of immediate actions, and the fourth one is

01:16:51.660 --> 01:16:52.980
called agami, which is…

01:16:52.980 --> 01:16:56.220
>>Rick: So, kriyamana means the karma you're creating as you go along?

01:16:56.220 --> 01:16:57.220
>>John: Yes.

01:16:57.220 --> 01:17:00.220
>>Rick: Like if I do something this afternoon, I'm creating a fresh karma?

01:17:00.220 --> 01:17:01.220
>>John: Yes, precisely.

01:17:01.220 --> 01:17:02.220
>>Rick: Okay, good.

01:17:02.220 --> 01:17:07.220
and Agami is the karma that's sent along to another life.

01:17:07.220 --> 01:17:08.220
>> Okay.

01:17:08.220 --> 01:17:15.220
>> Now, dealing with karma, which is a phenomenal subject, the issue of time comes in.

01:17:15.220 --> 01:17:24.220
When one gets the karmic download depends on your stage on the spiritual ladder of evolution.

01:17:24.220 --> 01:17:32.540
So, what I mean is the more one takes spirituality seriously, the more there will be the karmic

01:17:32.540 --> 01:17:40.180
download because one can't advance without cleansing what has to be cleaned out of the

01:17:40.180 --> 01:17:41.180
way.

01:17:41.180 --> 01:17:42.740
>>Rick Yeah, as a teacher of mine once said, "When

01:17:42.740 --> 01:17:45.860
the postman knows you're going to move, he tries to deliver all your mail."

01:17:45.860 --> 01:17:48.300
>>David Yeah, I like that.

01:17:48.300 --> 01:17:49.940
That's brilliant.

01:17:49.940 --> 01:17:58.260
So if one takes spirituality seriously, one has invoked the Divine Light as witness to

01:17:58.260 --> 01:18:06.340
search out all your dark areas and corners, which in ordinary life, well, they're there.

01:18:06.340 --> 01:18:11.540
But if you've invoked that light, it will search out every dark corner, which is why

01:18:11.540 --> 01:18:18.660
it is said even a little attention to spirituality in occult science will create a huge karmic

01:18:18.660 --> 01:18:27.460
download. That does not mean karma is punishment. Far from it. It is a law of love, seriously,

01:18:27.460 --> 01:18:35.300
because without that offloading of impediments that are no longer serving you, you can't move

01:18:35.300 --> 01:18:43.020
on. In terms of reincarnation, there is that glorious phrase in Light on the Path by Sir

01:18:43.020 --> 01:18:51.600
Sir Edward Arnold, that who toiled a slave may yet be born a prince, for worthy deeds

01:18:51.600 --> 01:18:54.320
done and merits won.

01:18:54.320 --> 01:19:02.400
Who ruled a king might wander the earth in rags, for deeds done and undone.

01:19:02.400 --> 01:19:09.520
I would like to say this to some people in some parts of the world who are aspiring to

01:19:09.520 --> 01:19:17.520
the top job. Yeah. In America as well. I know what you're implying. It's a scary time.

01:19:17.520 --> 01:19:25.020
It's an enormous subject. Yeah. But the more scientists are sensitive to the

01:19:25.020 --> 01:19:30.160
results of their behavior, then as you said earlier, science and spirituality

01:19:30.160 --> 01:19:34.700
will come together. Yeah. Now what you're saying here about karmic download, are

01:19:34.700 --> 01:19:41.100
saying that if a person embarks on the spiritual path, that they're going to face a shitload

01:19:41.100 --> 01:19:45.460
of karma, to use a crude term, that things are just going to start coming at them, and

01:19:45.460 --> 01:19:49.340
life in a way is going to get more difficult because of all the stuff they have to clear

01:19:49.340 --> 01:19:50.340
out?

01:19:50.340 --> 01:19:52.700
>> Bruce: In many ways, yes.

01:19:52.700 --> 01:20:00.260
So what is happening is it's accentuating all the negative traits, but also all the positive

01:20:00.260 --> 01:20:01.260
traits.

01:20:01.260 --> 01:20:09.040
So that searchlight, in fact what Yogananda said is initially we have a 60 watt light

01:20:09.040 --> 01:20:16.300
bulb in us so to speak, but by embarking on Kriyamana Yoga and other practices, you're

01:20:16.300 --> 01:20:19.940
putting in a 6 billion watt light bulb in you.

01:20:19.940 --> 01:20:27.480
So that will certainly, if your body and your personality can't handle it, it'll create

01:20:27.480 --> 01:20:28.480
no end of havoc.

01:20:28.480 --> 01:20:31.560
Rick Right, but I think that's why the spiritual

01:20:31.560 --> 01:20:35.120
traditions advocate various practices to purify the vehicle.

01:20:35.120 --> 01:20:36.120
David Precisely.

01:20:36.120 --> 01:20:37.600
Rick You know, so you're not trying to put too

01:20:37.600 --> 01:20:39.520
much voltage through an inadequate…

01:20:39.520 --> 01:20:41.520
David Precisely, sir. Precisely. Exactly.

01:20:41.520 --> 01:20:44.800
Rick Right. And if you handle that correctly,

01:20:44.800 --> 01:20:48.920
it can be a pretty smooth ride. I mean, in my experience, my life was very difficult before

01:20:48.920 --> 01:20:53.680
I got onto spirituality at the age of 18, and I had dropped out of school and was doing

01:20:53.680 --> 01:20:58.560
drugs and all kinds of things, but then, you know, it got better and better once I had

01:20:58.560 --> 01:20:59.920
learned to meditate.

01:20:59.920 --> 01:21:03.920
And obviously, there have been all kinds of ups and downs and all sorts of challenges

01:21:03.920 --> 01:21:09.400
and things, you know, that I had to undergo, but I wouldn't have traded that at any point

01:21:09.400 --> 01:21:11.480
for what my life had been like earlier.

01:21:11.480 --> 01:21:12.480
Yeah.

01:21:12.480 --> 01:21:14.960
So, you're developing your spiritual muscles.

01:21:14.960 --> 01:21:15.960
Yeah.

01:21:15.960 --> 01:21:19.160
Sensibly, rather than trying to jump too far.

01:21:19.160 --> 01:21:20.160
Yeah.

01:21:20.160 --> 01:21:23.560
expect to accomplish it all in a weekend or something.

01:21:23.560 --> 01:21:29.120
Yeah, it's a lifelong journey in my opinion, or a lives-long journey.

01:21:29.120 --> 01:21:35.000
So still on the subject of karma, people ask questions like, "All right, let's say there's

01:21:35.000 --> 01:21:39.920
a big plane crash, or let's say that the whole city is bombed, or everybody on the Titanic

01:21:39.920 --> 01:21:45.840
goes down, and how do you explain that all those diverse different people had the confluence

01:21:45.840 --> 01:21:52.080
of karma to undergo the same disaster, or the Holocaust in Nazi Germany or something like

01:21:52.080 --> 01:21:53.680
that, or what's happening in Gaza today?

01:21:53.680 --> 01:21:56.560
I mean, is that the fault of the kids that are being bombed?

01:21:56.560 --> 01:21:58.800
There's all kinds of tricky questions.

01:21:58.800 --> 01:22:05.360
>> There are enormous issues, and the first thing I would say is to admit how little one

01:22:05.360 --> 01:22:06.760
knows.

01:22:06.760 --> 01:22:14.840
So to say, for example, that all those young children and babies in the Hiroshima bombing,

01:22:14.840 --> 01:22:21.240
was their karma is the most brutal, callous, stupid thing to say. There is a lot we don't

01:22:21.240 --> 01:22:29.640
know. And it always strikes me that it is innocent people, innocent citizens, who bear the brunt

01:22:29.640 --> 01:22:34.920
of the brutality of the dictators. It's not good enough to say it's their karma, that's

01:22:34.920 --> 01:22:41.160
just using words. It's much better to say, "I don't know, and I will try and find out."

01:22:41.160 --> 01:22:49.080
But if I understand karma at least on the lower level, at my own personal level, it might provide

01:22:49.080 --> 01:22:56.440
some insight into the greater picture. But ultimately, Rick, there is only collective karma.

01:22:56.440 --> 01:23:04.200
If I throw the rubbish out of my house, it's not just my garden that gets polluted, the whole street

01:23:04.200 --> 01:23:10.620
is affected. So, there is collective karma, and that is part of our national karma, which

01:23:10.620 --> 01:23:18.640
is part of our individual karma. So, before trying to understand why all these unfortunate

01:23:18.640 --> 01:23:26.440
incidents occur in other people's lives, if one focuses dispassionately on one's own actions

01:23:26.440 --> 01:23:31.520
and life, that might provide the insight into the wider picture.

01:23:31.520 --> 01:23:36.720
>> It's worth mentioning that in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that the mechanics of karma

01:23:36.720 --> 01:23:39.080
are unfathomable by human intellect.

01:23:39.080 --> 01:23:41.680
It's just too vastly complex.

01:23:41.680 --> 01:23:47.880
>> And it is also said that in order really to understand karma, you've got to be above

01:23:47.880 --> 01:23:49.760
the laws of karma.

01:23:49.760 --> 01:23:56.640
And this means that one has reached the stage of the bodhisattva or the nirmanakaya, those

01:23:56.640 --> 01:24:00.000
who have gone beyond the human state.

01:24:00.000 --> 01:24:05.280
I once asked a guru about omniscience and he said it's not possible for human nervous systems,

01:24:05.280 --> 01:24:09.780
they're too crude, you need a celestial nervous system to have omniscience.

01:24:09.780 --> 01:24:11.900
Another question came in, let's see what that is.

01:24:11.900 --> 01:24:17.460
This is from Rita Sponenberg from somewhere in the US.

01:24:17.460 --> 01:24:21.700
Science and spirituality need to work together, but scientists believe they're incompatible.

01:24:21.700 --> 01:24:27.420
However, militant religious spirituality also thinks they're incompatible and chooses dogmatic

01:24:27.420 --> 01:24:32.540
beliefs instead of progressing beyond them. They're equally problematic in achieving that

01:24:32.540 --> 01:24:34.060
world you described.

01:24:34.060 --> 01:24:40.320
>> Well, if people want to take fixed positions, there's nothing one can do to dissolve those

01:24:40.320 --> 01:24:43.980
boundaries other than let time be the great healer.

01:24:43.980 --> 01:24:52.060
>> Yeah. I think that quote from Aldous Huxley about the working hypothesis, I think if everyone

01:24:52.060 --> 01:24:59.660
could take everything as a working hypothesis and not as an absolute that they had to defend

01:24:59.660 --> 01:25:04.460
with their lives or other people's lives, we'd all get along a lot better.

01:25:04.460 --> 01:25:10.900
>> A working hypothesis that you take on board, you test it, you experiment with it, and then

01:25:10.900 --> 01:25:12.460
you see what's happening.

01:25:12.460 --> 01:25:13.460
>> Yeah.

01:25:13.460 --> 01:25:15.860
>> That's how science works and should work.

01:25:15.860 --> 01:25:16.860
>> Should work.

01:25:16.860 --> 01:25:20.780
And that's how religion could work, and that's how I think some of the more evolved religions

01:25:20.780 --> 01:25:21.780
have worked.

01:25:21.780 --> 01:25:28.540
Yeah, exactly. Also, let's make the point, the strong point, that the religious precepts

01:25:28.540 --> 01:25:35.820
are not just said by way of a belief system, they were said out of experience. The Buddha

01:25:35.820 --> 01:25:42.660
didn't have a PhD in religion and philosophy, he spoke from experience. The Christ didn't

01:25:42.660 --> 01:25:49.580
go to a theological college, he spoke from experience. So, religion has nothing to do

01:25:49.580 --> 01:25:58.480
with belief, really. Nothing to do with belief. It is experience, which then gets dogmatized

01:25:58.480 --> 01:25:59.820
into a belief.

01:25:59.820 --> 01:26:06.100
>>Brian: Oprah Winfrey once asked Eckhart Tolle to complete the sentence, "I believe," and

01:26:06.100 --> 01:26:08.060
he said, "Nothing in particular."

01:26:08.060 --> 01:26:10.100
>>John: Or everything.

01:26:10.100 --> 01:26:15.980
>>Brian: Yeah, I mean, the whole notion of belief. There's all kinds of things you and

01:26:15.980 --> 01:26:20.780
I both believe, but we certainly wouldn't kill anybody over them or anything, because we

01:26:20.780 --> 01:26:25.420
might be wrong. Or, you know, maybe their beliefs, if different, are as valid as ours.

01:26:25.420 --> 01:26:27.580
Again, their beliefs are working hypotheses.

01:26:27.580 --> 01:26:30.580
>>Belief and conviction are different.

01:26:30.580 --> 01:26:31.580
>>Yes.

01:26:31.580 --> 01:26:38.940
>>We have convictions, but beliefs are not to be entertained, other than as a working

01:26:38.940 --> 01:26:40.540
hypothesis, as you said.

01:26:40.540 --> 01:26:43.340
>>Right. And even convictions, I think, should be held lightly.

01:26:43.340 --> 01:26:45.580
>>Yes, yes, most certainly.

01:26:45.580 --> 01:26:52.100
Okay, what are some of the major themes of your book which we haven't touched upon, which

01:26:52.100 --> 01:26:54.380
you feel would be important to mention?

01:26:54.380 --> 01:27:01.180
Oh my goodness, one I would say is the mystery teachings, what I call the mystery teachings.

01:27:01.180 --> 01:27:05.380
Now quickly let me just explain, define.

01:27:05.380 --> 01:27:12.380
They're not mysteries as such, but they're given out to worthy candidates, so to speak.

01:27:12.380 --> 01:27:18.860
So you have mysticism, you have esoteric science, and you have occult science.

01:27:18.860 --> 01:27:26.860
So the mystic would be very much in tune with the whole world and whole universe, and he

01:27:26.860 --> 01:27:32.140
would see the boundaries between himself and the other person dissolving, so to speak.

01:27:32.140 --> 01:27:38.980
But then when the mystic becomes dissatisfied and hungry for more, he wants more knowledge,

01:27:38.980 --> 01:27:46.540
Then in comes esoteric science, where he wants to learn about the inner workings of nature.

01:27:46.540 --> 01:27:53.220
But then he knows about the inner workings of nature, but how do I use those hidden laws?

01:27:53.220 --> 01:27:55.580
Then he becomes the occultist.

01:27:55.580 --> 01:28:02.620
So to use a musical analogy, if I'm very musical and I love music, I'm like the mystic, but

01:28:02.620 --> 01:28:08.860
then I want to learn about the composers and learn music theory, then I'm the esotericist,

01:28:08.860 --> 01:28:14.200
And then when I want to function as a performer, I become an occultist.

01:28:14.200 --> 01:28:20.900
So occult science is to do with function; esoteric science is to do with meaning and system.

01:28:20.900 --> 01:28:24.140
>>Rick: Okay, so if I could repeat that to make sure I understood what you said.

01:28:24.140 --> 01:28:28.860
So the mystic might have some profound inner experiences, but they don't necessarily reveal

01:28:28.860 --> 01:28:31.340
to him the mechanics of nature.

01:28:31.340 --> 01:28:36.680
So he could then study, and on the basis of his experience or supplemented by it or enriched

01:28:36.680 --> 01:28:42.040
by it, he could come to understand the mechanics of nature, but that doesn't necessarily enable

01:28:42.040 --> 01:28:44.120
him to do anything with that understanding.

01:28:44.120 --> 01:28:45.120
>> R.C.

01:28:45.120 --> 01:28:46.120
Bradley: Absolutely.

01:28:46.120 --> 01:28:48.880
>> Rick: And then the next stage would be to actually apply it and have an impact on

01:28:48.880 --> 01:28:49.880
the world.

01:28:49.880 --> 01:28:50.880
>> R.C.

01:28:50.880 --> 01:28:51.880
Bradley: Exactly.

01:28:51.880 --> 01:28:52.880
>> Rick: Okay.

01:28:52.880 --> 01:28:53.880
>> R.C.

01:28:53.880 --> 01:28:55.540
Bradley: So that's why the mystery teachings were always in three grades, the lesser mysteries,

01:28:55.540 --> 01:29:00.880
the middle ones, and the greater mysteries in the Greek, the Eleusinian mysteries, the

01:29:00.880 --> 01:29:03.020
Orphic, and the Dionysian.

01:29:03.020 --> 01:29:07.820
So what we haven't touched on in terms of the Mystery Teachings is the incredible power

01:29:07.820 --> 01:29:15.340
of symbolism. People wonder why is there so much evil? Well, the story of the god Bacchus

01:29:15.340 --> 01:29:23.220
(otherwise Dionysus), the god Bacchus was torn to pieces by the Titans, who then scattered

01:29:23.220 --> 01:29:29.780
the body of the god far and wide, and Jupiter, the father Bacchus, beholding the crime, hurled

01:29:29.780 --> 01:29:38.140
this thunderbolt at the Titans and reduced their bodies to ashes. But from the ashes,

01:29:38.140 --> 01:29:45.220
which contained a portion of the Bacchic body that the Titans had devoured, the human race

01:29:45.220 --> 01:29:54.420
was created, which is why the human being is part God and part Titan/Devil. So each human

01:29:54.420 --> 01:29:59.540
being, if he wants proof of God and Devil, I'd say just look at yourself in a mirror.

01:29:59.540 --> 01:30:04.580
>> [Chuckles] Yeah. >> The proportions vary, but unless you are a

01:30:04.580 --> 01:30:12.580
total monster or a sage, you will see both God and Devil. So the ashes contained a part

01:30:12.580 --> 01:30:20.260
of the godly body that the Titans had devoured, and the human being was created from those ashes.

01:30:20.820 --> 01:30:26.980
So, we are part Bacchus, the Bacchic god, and we are part Titan. And the other point is,

01:30:26.980 --> 01:30:37.380
how did the Titans ensnare Bacchus, the god, by getting him to be enamoured with his own image

01:30:37.380 --> 01:30:45.620
in the mirror, which signifies getting engrossed in the sea of Maya. Maya, things are not what they

01:30:45.620 --> 01:30:52.660
appear to be. So we are so engrossed with ourselves. Go on a holiday and you see how people love their

01:30:52.660 --> 01:30:57.060
selfies. We are so engrossed with themselves. >> Take pictures of their lunch.

01:30:57.060 --> 01:31:02.580
>> Yeah, on a more serious note, this is why the Greeks and all traditions, all traditions

01:31:02.580 --> 01:31:09.460
forbade suicide, because suicide is an act of violence against the God within. Now, I know

01:31:09.460 --> 01:31:16.180
there are all sorts of reasons behind suicide and the after-death states depend on the motive behind

01:31:16.180 --> 01:31:23.460
it, but in general it's not to be recommended. It's an act of violence against the God within.

01:31:23.460 --> 01:31:28.900
>>Rick: And it's also a missed opportunity because human life is precious and the opportunity for

01:31:28.900 --> 01:31:33.380
spiritual evolution in a human life is perhaps rare and certainly great.

01:31:33.380 --> 01:31:37.300
>>John: Sure, but of course there are circumstances.

01:31:37.300 --> 01:31:43.060
>>Rick: Sure. Here's a question from Kanta Dadleni in, I believe she's in Mumbai.

01:31:43.060 --> 01:31:49.620
"Why would supreme consciousness as we understand it manifest in its manifold forms

01:31:49.620 --> 01:31:54.020
for them to undergo experiences?" >>John: Did I hear from Mumbai?

01:31:54.020 --> 01:31:58.020
>>Rick: I think she's from Mumbai. >>John: That's where I was born.

01:31:58.020 --> 01:32:04.900
>>Rick: Oh, cool. Nice. I can read it again. "Why would supreme consciousness as we understand it

01:32:04.900 --> 01:32:10.820
manifest in its manifold forms for them, meaning the forms, to undergo experiences.

01:32:10.820 --> 01:32:13.300
What's in it for God, I guess she's saying?

01:32:13.300 --> 01:32:22.660
>> R.F. Love, let me try and explain this. The great Schiller, who Beethoven immortalized in

01:32:22.660 --> 01:32:29.940
his Ode to Joy, Schiller actually said that the universe is a thought of deity,

01:32:30.580 --> 01:32:39.700
supreme consciousness. And since this ideal thought form has over spilled into what we call reality,

01:32:39.700 --> 01:32:44.340
it is the calling of all thinking beings to try and discover the original design.

01:32:44.340 --> 01:32:53.620
So, the supreme consciousness, out of its sheer love, wants to radiate and emanate. So, if we

01:32:54.500 --> 01:33:00.340
see love as a principle of light and radiation, which is inherent within the nature of the

01:33:00.340 --> 01:33:09.860
Supreme Consciousness, it must unfold and create expressions of its own self on different levels.

01:33:09.860 --> 01:33:18.180
So, for example, in the Kabbalah, we have the unmanifest world, Ayn, which is pure darkness,

01:33:18.180 --> 01:33:25.380
Then the next step is Ein Sof, the awakening, and then Ein Sof Ur, the boundless light,

01:33:25.380 --> 01:33:32.020
the unmanifest worlds, like when we sleep. We sleep, we awaken, and then we act.

01:33:32.020 --> 01:33:39.620
It's very important always to draw on the Hermetic axiom "as above so below". In order to understand

01:33:39.620 --> 01:33:45.380
the greater picture, just look at your own life when you wake up in the morning. Darkness,

01:33:46.020 --> 01:33:53.220
awakening activity. And then when you create anything in the Kabbalah, there are the archetypal

01:33:53.220 --> 01:34:01.060
worlds, the Atsiloth, but you can't have an archetype without a plan. The template is the

01:34:01.060 --> 01:34:08.660
Beria, but then you have to have a form, Yetzirah, and then you have the physical material, Asya.

01:34:08.660 --> 01:34:15.860
So, in order to create anything on earth, we need a vision, we need a plan, we need tools to do the

01:34:15.860 --> 01:34:21.140
the job and we need the material. So, the Supreme Consciousness does just that.

01:34:21.140 --> 01:34:26.140
>>Rick: St. Teresa of Avila said, "It appears that God Himself is on the journey." What

01:34:26.140 --> 01:34:27.140
do you think about that?

01:34:27.140 --> 01:34:28.140
>>John: Yes, He is.

01:34:28.140 --> 01:34:32.340
>>Rick: He or she or it is an evolving being of some sort.

01:34:32.340 --> 01:34:38.620
>>John: God's not a static thing out there. It is part of the journey that we call consciousness,

01:34:38.620 --> 01:34:44.580
and we are journeying the consciousness as well, yes. These are all words, and words

01:34:44.580 --> 01:34:50.900
are very imperfect. Therefore, we need words and expressions from different cultures and

01:34:50.900 --> 01:34:56.300
different religions and interlock them to get the fuller picture.

01:34:56.300 --> 01:35:03.820
>> Yeah. I just recently learned in the past year or so that even within the field of Vedanta,

01:35:03.820 --> 01:35:08.940
which is sort of a small niche of the entire realm of religion and spirituality, there

01:35:08.940 --> 01:35:14.140
are at least half a dozen different schools that pretty much totally disagree with each other.

01:35:14.140 --> 01:35:14.860
>> [Laughter]

01:35:14.860 --> 01:35:20.300
>> Well, yes, they've had some friendly disagreements. Samkhya is the other one.

01:35:20.300 --> 01:35:29.740
It really is asking the question, the Advaita Vedanta, which the non-dual, and the Samkhya,

01:35:29.740 --> 01:35:37.660
which is supposedly dual. There is no dichotomy if we see that we have two legs, but there is one

01:35:37.660 --> 01:35:46.780
body. So, if we are asking questions of the legs, we adopt a dual approach. If we're looking to the

01:35:46.780 --> 01:35:54.300
body, we are asking questions of a non-dual type. >> That's good, yeah, and both are relevant to

01:35:54.300 --> 01:35:58.540
different levels of experience or different dimensions of reality.

01:35:58.540 --> 01:36:08.300
>> Yeah, levels and categories are vital questions to be aware of before one asks any question.

01:36:08.300 --> 01:36:14.140
>> Sri Ramakrishna did a nice job of harmonizing all these different fields by using the blind

01:36:14.140 --> 01:36:19.580
man and the elephant analogy, that blind men are all correct, there's a bigger picture that is more

01:36:19.580 --> 01:36:25.100
than the collection of their individual perspectives. >> Most certainly, and David Bohm in

01:36:25.100 --> 01:36:32.540
the scientific realm said science too long starts with the individual jigsaw pieces and tries to

01:36:32.540 --> 01:36:36.700
put them together rather than starting with the whole elephant. You didn't say elephant,

01:36:36.700 --> 01:36:43.980
but the whole picture, and then see how the various limbs and the trunk and the tusks come out of it.

01:36:43.980 --> 01:36:49.420
Yeah, okay. So at the beginning of this interview I asked you for the elevator pitch.

01:36:49.420 --> 01:36:52.300
You want the closing elevator pitch?

01:36:52.300 --> 01:36:55.340
>> Yeah, let's say now it's the end of the workday and you run into the same guy on the

01:36:55.340 --> 01:37:01.980
elevator and you want a closing elevator pitch that subsumes and summarizes and perhaps gives

01:37:01.980 --> 01:37:04.460
food for thought based upon what we've discussed.

01:37:04.460 --> 01:37:11.420
>> Well, the wonderful saying in "Light on the Path" that the soul of man is a thing

01:37:11.420 --> 01:37:20.060
whose splendor and beauty is without limits. I'm slightly paraphrasing it. Each man is

01:37:20.060 --> 01:37:27.580
his own lawgiver, the giver of glory or doom to himself. Now I fully agree with all those

01:37:27.580 --> 01:37:33.260
poor civilians being bombed. You can say, "Oh, what have they done?" Well, yes, but in terms of

01:37:33.260 --> 01:37:40.300
very, very high-level aphorisms, very high-level, each man meaning each person. And man means the

01:37:40.300 --> 01:37:47.020
thinking principle, by the way. It's nothing to do with gender. Each man is his own lawgiver,

01:37:47.020 --> 01:37:55.100
ultimately the giver of gloom or glory to himself. But the soul of man, as Florence Nightingale

01:37:55.100 --> 01:37:59.820
pointed out, is a thing whose splendor and growth has absolutely no limits.

01:37:59.820 --> 01:38:07.020
>>Rick: Nice, thank you. So, you have a website, and the website has links to your books,

01:38:07.020 --> 01:38:14.700
so I'll be linking to that and to those. Is there anything else that people can do to stay in touch

01:38:14.700 --> 01:38:19.420
with you? Do you have a mailing list? Do you ever do Zoom calls or anything like that?

01:38:19.420 --> 01:38:25.740
>> My contact details are on the website, Rick. It's a very easy get-in-touch form.

01:38:25.740 --> 01:38:29.580
>> Okay, good. >> I'd be very happy to hear from anyone.

01:38:29.580 --> 01:38:35.740
And can I say, Rick, how wonderful it is to meet you, and I really mean that. And

01:38:35.740 --> 01:38:42.540
what you are doing is you are spreading light. I don't mean this other than very sincerely.

01:38:43.180 --> 01:38:51.820
you are spreading knowledge and wisdom and trying to undertake a healing, a healing of what's going

01:38:51.820 --> 01:38:57.660
on around us, and my goodness, do we need it. >> Rick We certainly do. Yeah, that's my motivation,

01:38:57.660 --> 01:39:02.220
has been since I became a meditation teacher at the age of 21.

01:39:02.220 --> 01:39:03.340
>> Edi Wonderful.

01:39:03.340 --> 01:39:05.900
>> Rick And as the Beatles sang, "We're all doing what we can."

01:39:05.900 --> 01:39:08.300
>> Edi And a little more.

01:39:08.300 --> 01:39:12.060
>> Rick Yeah. All right, so thanks so much, Edi.

01:39:12.060 --> 01:39:13.060
>> Thank you very much, Rick.

01:39:13.060 --> 01:39:16.980
>> Yeah, thanks to those who have been listening or watching.

01:39:16.980 --> 01:39:21.260
My next interview will be with a woman named Georgette Starr, and I think she's going to

01:39:21.260 --> 01:39:26.260
talk about the wisdom of aging and, you know, elders and what they have to contribute to

01:39:26.260 --> 01:39:27.260
us all.

01:39:27.260 --> 01:39:28.260
>> Oh, a lot, yes.

01:39:28.260 --> 01:39:29.260
Wonderful.

01:39:29.260 --> 01:39:34.620
So, all of these are interlocking and creating a wonderful body of wisdom.

01:39:34.620 --> 01:39:35.620
>> Yeah.

01:39:35.620 --> 01:39:36.620
>> Thank you, Rick.

01:39:36.620 --> 01:39:37.620
>> Sure, thank you, Edi.

01:39:37.620 --> 01:39:38.620
>> Thank you so much.

01:39:38.620 --> 01:39:40.940
>> And I hope to meet you in person someday, as I always say.

01:39:40.940 --> 01:39:43.940
I meet so many wonderful people that I've never met in person.

01:39:43.940 --> 01:39:44.940
Definitely.

01:39:44.940 --> 01:39:45.940
Thank you everybody.

01:39:45.940 --> 01:39:45.940
Bye.

01:39:45.940 --> 01:39:47.940
everybody. Bye.

01:39:47.940 --> 01:40:11.740
Thank you.