AN INTERPRETATION OF CRUCIFIXION AND RESURRECTION I am crucified every moment of the day and resurrected every moment, too. Between every heartbeat, there is a rest. If your heart beats a hundred thousand times daily, all those gaps in between represent death; every time it beats again, it means life. So, man can say that he is crucified a hundred thousand times a day and resurrected a hundred thousand times a day. Crucifixion can be taken very literally. Literally in the sense that the man Jesus was nailed on the cross and put to death. That is the literal interpretation of it. There could be another interpretation, that the horizontal bar of the cross represents the worldly existence, the relative existence, and the vertical bar could represent the world of the absolute. So here in man’s existence, in the existence of this man called Jesus, he has represented the combination of the relative and the absolute. We are not trying to find Jesus, but Christ is where the two points meet the horizontal and vertical bars. That is what man must try to achieve. THAT IS WHY CHRIST COULD SAY, “I AND MY FATHER IS ONE” If we look at the man just being nailed on the cross, we will only see the man Jesus. But if we can see where the relative meets with the absolute, we will know Christ. God exists because man exists, and man exists because God exists. The absolute cannot exist without the relative, and the relative cannot exist without the absolute. They are interpenetrating all the time. As the absolute is eternal, so is the relative eternal too. We do not find eternity in relativeness because we look at tiny, little sections in this vast continuum. We only look at the changes. But behind the shift lies the changeless absolute. If we can combine the two at the point where the cross meets, we will find Christ’s consciousness, and Christ’s consciousness is a combination of man and God, and that is why Christ could say, “I and my father are one.” Because of the combination, the togetherness took place. LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF In this technological age, we have reached significant advances in materiality. Let us now turn inward and find the centre of the cross. Let us turn inward, dive inside, and realize experience, which is absolute. These techniques are so simple, and the process is so simple that one can discover or experience that absolute. One can experience the upward-pointing vertical bar of the cross. Otherwise, man, living only on the horizontal bar of the relative, is suspended. He has no foundation. He is suspended like a castle built in the air without foundation, and only the realization of the vertical bar plants him firmly and gives him substance. The vertical bar is there. The conjunction point is there. It is inherent in man. When the Lord said that I give my life to save humankind, this is what is meant: to bring to you the realization that I do not exist on that horizontal bar alone, but cognize, realize, and experience the vertical bar, and when you reach the meeting point, then this world, God, all existence becomes one to you. When you reach the meeting point of the cross, you are living and resurrected. You are now dead. Become alive. Become alive. And life can only come when we reach the relative and absolute meeting point. It is there. It is there. But only to be brought to our conscious and practical level. That is accurate recognition. That is self-realization. That is self-integration, where you are integrating the Divine and the mundane aspects of yourself, within yourself, to yourself. When we reach the meeting point of the horizontal and vertical bar, the relative and the absolute, we become permeated with that Divine consciousness. And when that divine consciousness permeates us, everything our eyes can see, or our hearts can feel becomes divine. And when Divinity is seen and perceived in everything around us, we can indeed follow the Ten Commandments when it says, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” Love thy neighbour as thyself because, in reality, thy neighbour is thyself. There is no separation. THERE IS NO SEPARATION; DUALITY IS AN ASSUMPTION You are sitting there; I am sitting here. Do you think there is space between us? Something empty, emptiness? There is no emptiness. There are so many atoms and molecules joining you to me that, of course, our limited eyes cannot see or perceive. This whole universe is a continuous whole. There is not an empty fraction. Every square inch, every fraction of an inch, is filled with this energy; therefore, we call Divinity omnipresent. Perhaps that is why I am placed in the country I am put in. It is some finger that pushed me to that country. When man realizes the equality of all men, when man realizes the oneness that exists and stops his mind from thinking of separations, when man stops thinking of me and mine and you and yours and comes to the level of thinking we and ours, that is when the sense of oneness is cultivated. And when oneness is cultivated, then how can there be hatred? You cannot hate yourself. When we say, “I am my brother’s keeper,” do we understand that? We can only be our brother’s keeper if we love the neighbour as we love ourselves. Then, we are, in reality, keeping ourselves filled with this love because there is no separation or duality. Duality is an assumption. Duality, the sense of duality, is unreal. Reality is only one. If Divinity is omnipresent and present everywhere, where is there a place for anything else? There is only a place for one, and we all exist in the one, and the one exists in us. That is the meaning of the crucifixion, which is my interpretation: crucifixion and resurrection. But man must die and be born again.
How Far has Man evolved?
Christ, Compassion, Effort, Ego, Evolution, Evolve, Harmony, Heart, Joy, Kindness, Meditation, Mind, Purity, Spirit, Spiritual Practices, Unfoldment
REAL EVOLUTION OCCURS FROM THE UNFOLDMENT OF THE HEART People talk of evolution; they say that man has evolved, but I do not see any evolution. Can we say that the man existing today is better than the man who lived during the time of Christ? No. Technological processes and progress have not improved the quality of man. During the time of Christ, there were thieves and robbers, Philistines and what have you, and we have them today, too. We have the same human mind and mentality. Perhaps we think we are advanced because of the invention of motor cars, aeroplanes, and atom bombs. We are not advanced. The evolution of man is not dependent on technology because technology is dependent on the mind. The evolution of man occurs from the heart, from the unfoldment of the heart. Not development of the heart, but unfoldment. We call our Foundation the International Foundation for Spiritual Unfoldment. The spirit within man is forever unfolded and pure; we must remove the veils and let it shine forth in its expansion. So technologically, we have progressed to a certain extent, but in many instances, we have progressed to our detriment. It required a lot of thinking and high-powered brains to invent the hydrogen bomb, but what have we done with it? We missed it, where millions of people were killed. So, what is the use of this technological progress? I would rather live in Christ’s time and do things by hand instead of machines. Technological progress would have influenced human values if it had been so significant. But we see so much strife and turmoil because humans have become more mind-orientated. He has concentrated more on developing the mind and has forgotten how to create the heart. MAN AND HIS MIND IS THE TROUBLEMAKER You take a mad scientist. With his powerful brain, he can invent some instruments, and being a mad scientist, he will use the instrument to destroy the world. But, with that high brain development, if the heart too were unfolded, then the combination of mind and heart would have prevented him from destroying the world. It would stop him. He would use all his laser beams and hydrogen bombs to help the world, to help humanity, to make the life of humankind easier, more smooth, and more joyful. The world’s present condition is dependent upon us and our minds. The mind tries to find comfort through outward search and by outward glorification itself and builds up its ego more and more. It does everything in its power to see individuality and develop individuality, forgetting universality, with the development of the ego and forgetting that which is within. These things happen. Therefore, we cannot say that the world today is better than it was, and most of its troubles are caused by man. Man and his mind. There is a lovely saying: “God plus mind makes man; man minus mind makes God.” So the troublemaker is the mind, and the basis of the mind, the power giver of the mind, is the ego. That gives the impetus and the stimulus to the mind. You have a motor car, so my motor car must be better although I might not need it. And it is this always striving to improve, not betterment of ourselves but to seem better. That is what we are doing. We want to appear better to the world. So, if Mrs Jones can do that, Mrs Thomas must do better. She has a little Austin motor car; the other one should have a little Hillman motor car. THROUGH MEDITATION, MAN EVOLVES So, all troubles are created by the human mind, and if we can bring greater calmness to the human mind through meditation practices, it will have a better power of thinking. It will think in terms of more excellent equilibrium. Through meditation, the heart’s quality will empower and stimulate it. When the mind and the heart can work simultaneously, man evolves, develops, and finds beauty in living. Then, man finds beauty in existence. People today exist because they have to exist because they are born, and many of them feel, “Oh, this terrible life”. Many of them pray when it will end. They do that every day; they struggle every day. I went to work this morning, and the boss was terrible; I came home, and the children and the wife were nagging. And the wife says, “Oh, my husband is so inconsiderate; he does not care’ “All these troubles. Why? Because of our essential instability. The unstable person is the person who always blames the other; he blames his wife, his children, his boss, and his motor car. And when he cannot get the golf ball in the hole, he blames the club—always blaming others. Therefore, please do whatever form of meditation you want to follow. It brings beautiful, excellent, peaceful stability within us. From that stability angle, all our actions become more dynamic and vital, and that is how we can reduce the tensions in the world. Tensions in the world can only be reduced by individual effort. There will be less tension when individuals become less tense and less nervous. You cannot reduce the tensions of the world collectively. They have to be decreased individually, and we must make our start. We make our start, even if we are not those do-gooders for others, forget that. Do not worry about that. Let us do good for ourselves; automatically, it will reflect in the environment, and we will be helping humanity. TECHNOLOGY CAN BE HARMFUL, AND IT CAN BE USEFUL TOO So, this world has not evolved since then; it has yet to become. Evolution depends on heart quality, and we cannot say that people today are kinder, loving, charitable, or compassionate than those who lived a couple of thousand years ago. Technology is a beautiful thing if it is used correctly. Hydrogen power can be used as fuel to provide electricity and light,
Can we Cure Ourselves?
THE WORKINGS OF THE BRAIN Doctors say that eighty per cent of all illnesses are of psychosomatic origin. This means that our thought processes cause illnesses. There are specific organic illnesses, but our thought processes cause most diseases. I have quoted this before where Émile Coué, a French psychologist, pharmacist, and hypnotist who introduced a popular method of psychotherapy and self-improvement based on optimistic autosuggestion, experimented with this and started clinics in many places. He worked on one formula: on waking up and before going to bed, you repeat to yourself repeatedly that day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better. “I am getting better and better.” When this thought, because of repetition, because of adding emotion to this thought, by adding power to it so that it is deeply felt, that thought will be believed by the mind. When the mind or the brain mechanism believes something or is convinced of something, it acts upon it. For example, if a person wants to go on a diet to lose some weight, they are usually told to eat slowly and chew thoroughly. The psychological reason for this is in the fact that we have been used to eating in a certain way: that a morsel of food we chew for, say, thirty times, and it sends a signal to the brain that after eating twenty morsels and multiplying those thirty times twenty, six hundred, the brain registers that you have chewed six hundred times. Then, the brain, in turn, sends a signal to tell you that your stomach is full. When you eat fast and chew less, you consume more food because the brain has not yet received the signal of the number six hundred. When you eat slowly and chew more of the same morsel of food, you have been chewing it thirty times before swallowing it; now, you chew that same morsel sixty times and swallow. The brain, the calculator there, calculates how many times you chew. So, when it reaches six hundred, it sends off the signal to say you are full, yet you have only consumed half the amount of food. That is how the brain works in every way. THE MEDICATION IS ONLY HALF THE CURE; THE BODY IS EQUIPPED TO CURE ITSELF In the thought process of good health or ill health, man can control illnesses and alleviate a lot of the suffering that he suffers. By thinking negatively, having the mind feel that the body is sick, and repeating that thought, “Oh, I am sick, I am sick, I am sick, I am sick, I am sick,” you will become sicker. That is true. If a person comes to me and says, “Oh, you do not look too well today; you have exhausted yourself,” I sometimes feel like slapping him, although I will not do it. If I see a person not looking too well, there will always be something in that person that I will talk about that will be well and set his mind off. Any nurse or doctor here in the audience will bear me out. Ask a nurse. She will tell you that when you visit the patient in the morning, you put on a lovely big smile, a sincere one, of course, and you say to the patient, “Ah, you are looking fine today.” And you smile, and the patient smiles. That is half the cure. Not only the medication. When a person is ill, we go to a doctor. The medicines a doctor gives only help in the curing process. No doctor can cure you with the chemicals he gives you. The body is equipped to heal itself. The body is equipped with the mechanism that rights the imbalance within it if given a chance by a positive thought. ON THE SPIRITUAL PATH, ALWAYS SEEK GOOD AND HOLY COMPANY The same thing applies to religion, and the same thing applies to a person on the spiritual path. Ancient sages have said that a person on the spiritual path must always try to keep holy company, where things of a higher nature are discussed. Have friends. Have a friendly circle where things of a spiritual nature are discussed. Therefore, I encourage the groups to meet every week. We have this in South Africa, Rhodesia, Spain, and England, where they chant and meditate and listen to a tape. I have made over one hundred twenty tapes, and I was very surprised to hear that very few of them, just the earlier ones, were released here. Of course, those were just very elementary because I had to start people off at a certain level and progressively go deeper and deeper into various subjects. All the tapes should be distributed so that you can have the theoretical background of our teachings. When these groups gather in England and other places, they chant and meditate together. Group meditation is always beneficial and good because many minds are tuned to the same purpose here. A togetherness, a family feeling develops. So, you can call it a beautiful social evening if you want to. Then they listen to a tape, they could listen to a long one or a short one, whichever they like. After that, there is always coffee, biscuits, and refreshments; it is a well-spent evening. That, too, can be regarded to be holy company. Did Christ not say, “When two people are gathered in my name, I am there”? This is what is meant. So, on the spiritual path, too, let us always be in such company where things of a higher level are discussed and thought about. But if we drive every night down the wharf area in San Francisco and places like that, the mind could never be tuned to higher things. A PERSONAL ANGLE ON HEALTH Likewise, the principle is the same, not only on the spiritual path but also as far as health goes: if we train our minds to health, we