evocation of inductance............

[Guest guest]

The following is transcribed from the tape of a talk given at the

Briggs residence in Phoenix, Arizona on Saturday 24 January 1970.

 

Franklin Wolff spoke very slowly and with long pauses, so you may want

to read it that way, particularly pausing after each paragraph.

 

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Tonight, something I have never attempted before, nor do I know of a

precedent. But I assume it must have been done, or I wouldn't have

thought of it. What we seek to do is deliberately produce, if

possible, inductions. In the past thirty-three years [the period since

his enlightenment experience, which occurred in 1937, and which is

described in his Pathways Through to Space] we have known of many

inductions. But always they came spontaneously, as something that

happened when it would. Now I shall have to tell you what we are

talking about. We do not know whether we will be successful -- but

there's a good chance. There is That which is called Realization. It

is the Awakening to another way of Consciousness. It is on the order

of a ladder. At the lowest level one may know an entering wedge of

this Consciousness and may advance, usually through several lifetimes,

step by step until, at the close, he attains Enlightenment and is a

Buddha. A glimpse will tell the Sadhaka, that is the Aspirant, more

than a million words. For he'll step from mere knowledge about, to

some glimpse, at least, of acquaintance with. Now it is fundamental

that no one should ever be forced to take a step this way against his

will. I'm going to ask you to answer this question before we proceed.

And if your answer is negative, we'll ask you to step into the front

room. I want no coercion of any person whatsoever. The question will

be: Do you WISH to attain Enlightenment? I'm not asking a question

that's only for this life alone. I'm asking a question that may

involve the But this I can say, that the consciousness in which we

commonly live here, the consciousness of sangsara [the bondage of

life, death and rebirth] is a consciousness preeminently of suffering,

a consciousness in which problems arise for which we are unable to

find solutions, such as the difficulties you can see in the world

around us now. And furthermore, there is for all men in bodies the

problem of Death. Is it an end? Or is it but a phase -- a movement in

the whole of Life? Enlightenment among other things answers such a

question. And in addition I want you to answer this question: Are you

willing to cooperate, to participate in an effort that will be a sort

of very brief résumé of the steps in actual Yoga? Now, we'll start

with Bob, who is next to me, and I put the question: Do you wish

Enlightenment and are you willing to participate in our effort

tonight? [Answers follow: Most definitely, Yes. Yes, I do, etc. around

the circle of perhaps thirty people.] The Purification All right, now

it may hurt. One of the first steps is a step of purification. This is

kindergarten stuff, by the way. You may not think so, but it's very

true. You cannot go through this in any comprehensive way; only on one

point will we deal with it. But I'll say that ultimately it involves

the excision of the five lusts [the five senses], of the recognition

and the confession of all guilts, of all traumas, self-examination

that is severe. And I know that when one has loosened these things out

of his nature and offers them to the Guru, hardly a man or a woman can

do it without being reduced to tears. Now this is Yoga, serious. It's

no drug matter, no shortcuts, no hocus-pocus. No psychological device

to hide from one's self something that may involve guilt and so on.

But there's one point we're going to deal with tonight, the point of

hostility. In the Sangha and for tonight, at least in part, and at

least continuingly, this is a Sangha, that is the The Induction- page

2 community of the Sadhakas, a Brotherhood. Remove from yourself (this

takes an act of real will, it's an operation if you do it really, like

removing a kind of cancer) any hostility you feel, first for anybody

whatsoever. Second, most important, remove any hostility you feel for

anyone here present. Look into yourself. Don't veil it from yourself.

I'm not asking anyone to speak out. I do not believe in public

confessionals a single bit, they are pretty muddy and sordid. Just

look within yourself. Now, there's something very curious about these

persistent qualities that one has to struggle with, like a hostility,

like a lust, lust for food and so on. Like a guilt, like a habit that

you feel as a guilt that goes on just the same. They are not

obstructions. Strangely, it can be like a concrete substance, and I'm

talking from experience. I've received offerings of this sort, and I

have been once outside of the fire, and I experienced what it was. A

strange, utterly alien, psychical mass, that was in me, foreign --

alien to my own psychical processes. It took me an hour to clear it

up. I was grateful for the experience, for I learned something there:

if the fire is burning, and this is a mystic term, it [that which is

alien] vanishes. Now if you have drawn out of yourself any such

feeling of hostility, and now here's the point, I only ask what you

can do. It may cling and so forth, you can't grab it and so forth,

leave that to the Higher Power, but do your part. I've gone through

this in the last couple days, in the preparation for this meeting. It

was a hostility I found not for anybody here, not for anybody so far

as I know in the world today, but for something very far back in an

ancient day. Drawing it out called for a gut pain, which means in the

vicinity of the solar plexus, or manapura, or in the vital nature.

This is a sample of purification of the vital, not now of the mental.

We'll take that up later. Cast it, in your mind, at my feet. And don't

be concerned about me. And if you have doubts, here is something that

most of you never heard, a few of you have. There is power here. On

December 27th, 1937, there spoke through Sherifa [his wife] a great

Master, the one that repeats every phrase three times. There is still

living in the world one witness of that event. The witness is here

tonight. Turning to the four present and indicating Yogi (that's the

way they addressed me), he said: " I would that ye make the Sun to

shine within the hearts of men. I would that ye make the true Moon to

arise within their minds. I would that ye make the star of Initiation

to shine within their Soul. I will direct the fire that consumes the

dross, this dross you throw at my feet. I will cause the Light from

those flames to descend again as a rain of a Spiritual Fire falling

like pearls within the mind and as upon the parched hearts of men. "

The power here is not only what you see. That is merely a bit of the

vital purification. Beyond that is the mental purification. And this

may be even more difficult. For tonight, remove from your mind, as far

as may be, all predilections, all preconceptions, all orientations to

preferred philosophies. When you leave the door you may take them

back. It's emptying the mind. Retain all your mental powers, at the

keenest edge you can maintain, but cast aside all collection that has

been garnered, as of ideas in your life so far, until you are outside

the door. Empty that mind of preconceptions, of preferences, any

predilection, of preferred philosophies. For some this goes deeper

than the earlier one of which I spoke. If you have succeeded in this

then you have become, in the true sense, as little children. Not the

ignorance of children, for you retain every capacity of the mind. All

of its powers of self-analysis, all of its capacity for judgment,

discernment, discrimination, are to be kept at as acute a level as

possible. Only the empty mind can be filled. There's no room in an

overfilled mind. So this is the attitude, the real meaning, of

becoming as little children -- and the openness. All of this that is

covered so far is very brief, and is only the kindergarten stage of

Yoga. Oh yes, you may feel grief, you may The Induction- page 3 weep,

in going through this. (Or of going through the whole thing, of which

I've given you a little sample.) You may feel that everything is going

away from you, all of your beloved values, and so on. This may make a

demand of faith. ever does completely. But I'm formulating as clearly

as I can and as I see it, the Law. There is indeed adjustment to human

relativity. This absolute perfection of attitude may not be reached,

but it should always be the ideal held before one. He should be

satisfied with nothing less than THAT, and at the same time be content

with that which he has. That is satisfied contentment, if you please.

The office of the Redeemer and the Guru is the bridge that makes the

crossing to the other side humanly possible. But while we cannot

attain in general this absolute perfection of attitude, we should

never content ourselves, or satisfy ourselves, with anything less.

Keep at it always. But be not discouraged because you do not succeed

in attaining it now. And as I say, this is the kindergarten part. It

may seem a little rough even so. That's all it is, compared to what

follows. The Dedication Next we'll come to the question of dedication.

What we've considered so far is what the Greeks call the " catharsis, "

the Purification, and this, in its ideal form, is very thoroughgoing.

I'll quote to you a verse from St. Luke that people have great

difficulty in understanding, due to the unfortunate use of a word,

that doesn't have the meaning it had at the time of translation,

namely the word hate: " He who does not hate his father and his mother

and his brothers and sisters and his wife and children cannot be my

disciple. " The key to the difficulty is that the word had a different

meaning then: it meant " does not value more or value less than

something else. " This is the real meaning of it: that all personal

relationships take subordination to the Search. Now the goal may be

named differently by different ones, and I'm not a stickler for what

you call it. You may call it God Realization, Self Realization, the

event of Parabrahm, the attainment of Tao, the reaching to the Ground,

spelled with a capital " G. " That means the Support upon which all

rests. Or the Transcendental Modulus, which is quite impersonal,

Alayavijnana, and so on. The term that counts in your nature, like the

attainment of Buddhahood, does not matter to me. But in any case is

the supreme value -- THAT, without which nothing else could be. The

dedication to this, to be effective, I believe is single-pointed,

subordinating every other interest, every other orientation or every

other possession, to this prime dedication -- a dedication that will

go so far that one would be willing to lose all, even life itself, if

that were necessary. Now most human beings don't reach these

perfections of attitude, perhaps; maybe no one The Ways of Union There

are different ways of Yoga, primarily three: the Yoga of Devotion, the

Yoga of Action, or of the Will, and the Yoga of Knowledge. There are

technical forms of Yoga, such as Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga, Mantra Yoga,

Laya Yoga, Kundalini Yoga and so on. These are not really so much

different forms as technical additives. The three forms are Devotion,

corresponding to feeling; Karma, corresponding to the activistic

element in consciousness (the technical term for it is conation); and

Jnana Yoga, which is oriented to the cognitive faculties, the

cognitive side. We'll not go into the relative valuation of these

different forms of Yoga. Each will find his own way, ultimately.

Aurobindo recommends a synthetic Yoga which involves going through all

three forms, successively, or simultaneously. It's not necessary, but

he may have a good idea there. The valuation of them, as to which

leads the furthest and so forth, is different with different writers.

There's a tendency in human nature to regard the form which I take as

therefore being The Induction- page 4 the highest. Any " I am. " I'm

speaking to the I in you. In other words, there is a bit of egoism in

that. Shankara places Jnana Yoga as the highest. Aurobindo rates

Bhakti Yoga as the highest. It affords two different ways of

interpreting the Bhagavad Gita, which deals with these three different

forms of Yoga, the Trimarga. Shankara would say the first, which is

treated in the second chapter of the Gita, the Yoga of Knowledge, is

the highest. But if you're unable to meet that attitude, then there is

provided for you at a somewhat simpler and easier level, the Yoga of

Action. And if that too is a little too much for you, there is the

final form of the Yoga of Devotion, an orientation to the Person of

the Divine, if you please, rather than to the Power or the Wisdom of

the Divine, to use the religious form of language. But what we'll

sketch tonight will belong to Jnana Yoga, the Yoga of Knowledge, the

Yoga I know. I sympathize with all who choose the other paths. There

is no rejection whatever. But this I know. Now I'll outline a

philosophic position, to orient an attitude favorable to Jnana Yoga.

It's for you to place, for the time being, in your emptied minds, not

something you are forced to agree with. I ask you to take a journey

with me and see how you like the scenery. If it is not to your taste,

then you may turn otherwhere; it is perfectly all right. Just a

journey, to see the scenery, if you can. dark form of materialism.

Antibehavioristic because this [i.e., behaviorism] is a view developed

in the study of animal behavior and extended to human beings in an

important part of sociality, in which, essentially, you treat the

animals or the humans as nonconscious beings. You treat them as though

they were no more than computers, something that receives stimuli and

responds to it. And, while most men would not go so far as to say

there is no such thing as consciousness in a human being, the

behaviorists and materialists would say it doesn't count -- it's a

byproduct. As one man said, " It is only a bump on the log of evolution

and is totally irrelevant. " Now our position is radically

anti-Tantric. Some of you no doubt know what we're referring to. It is

a large subject. The thesis of the proponents of Tantra is that it is

the form of Yoga available in Kali Yuga [the Dark Age], that the other

forms of Yoga belong to the other Yugas [ages]. Man in his density

needs the aid of something he can grasp with his ordinary capacities

[the senses]. So the stunt of sitting in certain difficult postures

and breathing in a certain way and performing the most difficult acts

involving the body and certain specific concentrations within his

understanding, will enable him to attain, through an external

approach, to an effect. What they say is Bhakti, of the Divine Mother,

leads you to Shiva. Not a direct approach through the powers of

Consciousness itself, which is the way of Jnana Yoga. If you read any

of the Mahatma Letters you'll find some pretty strong criticisms of

Tantra. Tantra lends itself to misuse because, like drugs, it can

force a confusion for which the Sadhaka is not yet prepared morally,

mentally or spiritually. I'm strongly anti-Tantric. A Philosophic

Position The position is radically antimaterialistic, radically

antibehavioristic, and radically antiTantric. I'll explain. I do not

mean a materialistic orientation attains no truth. In fact,

practically all our Western orientation is materialistic, in the broad

sense of the word, since it's extroverted. It's oriented to the

object, the thing, mechanism, wealth, externalities. And these are the

sources of value. In the broad sense, that's materialism. And

materialism is not simply that which is so known, technically, in

Philosophy, or by the Marxists, which is a particular heavy, dense,

The Power of Introverted Mind Now another point, dealing with

Psychology. I want to read you something from Carl Jung. This is very

pertinent. It's about two pages. The Induction- page 5 Speaking of the

Oriental position, the Psyche is therefore all important. It is the

all pervading Breath, the Buddha Essence, it is the Buddha Mind, the

One, the Dharmakaya. All Existence emanates from It and all separate

forms dissolve back into It. This is the basic Psychological prejudice

that permeates Eastern man in every fiber of his being, seeping into

all his thoughts, feelings and deeds, no matter what creed he

professes. In the same way Western man is Christian, no matter to what

denomination his Christianity belongs. For him man is small inside, he

is next to nothing. Moreover, as Kierkegaard says, " Before God, man is

always wrong. " By fear, repentance, promises of submission, self

abasement, good deeds and praise he propitiates the Great Power, which

is not himself, but totally alien, the wholly other, altogether

perfect and outside the only reality. If you shift the formula a bit

and substitute for God some other power, for instance the World, or

money, you get a complete picture of Western man: assiduous, fearful,

devout, self abasing, enterprising, greedy and violent in his pursuit

of the goods of this world, possessions, health, knowledge, technical

mastery, public welfare, political power, conquest and so on. What are

the great popular movements of our time? Attempts to grab the money,

or property, of others and to protect our own. The mind is quietly

employed in devising suitable " isms " to hide the real motives, or to

get more loot. I refrain from describing what would happen to Eastern

man should he forget his Ideal of Buddhahood, for I do not want to

give such an unfair advantage to my Western prejudices. But I cannot

help raising the question of whether it is possible, or indeed

advisable, for either to imitate the other's standpoint. You cannot

mix fire and water. The Eastern attitude stultifies the Western, and

vice versa. You cannot be a good Christian and redeem yourself nor can

you be a Buddha and worship God. It is much better to accept the

conflict, for it admits only of an irrational solution, if any. far

more to the point to find out whether there exists in the Unconscious

an introverted tendency similar to that which has become the guiding

spiritual principle of the East. We should then be in a position to

build on our own ground, with our own methods. Now he [i.e. Jung] goes

on and modifies that a bit: By an inevitable decree of fate, the West

is becoming acquainted with the facts of Eastern spirituality. It is

useless either to belittle these facts or to build false and

treacherous bridges over yawning gaps. Instead of learning the

spiritual techniques of the East by heart and imitating them in a

thoroughly Christian way, imitatio Christi, with a correspondingly

forced attitude, it would be far more -- and this is an important part

of it -- it would be And right there is the point we're dealing with

here: using the despised stone discarded by the builders, as the

foundation of our temple -- the power of the introverted Western mind.

And to this, I believe, I've contributed something. The power and the

prospect opened by the introverted Western mind.... [several words

were inaudible here, ending with the phrase " open by the Eastern

introverted mind.] It's the neglected door. We are all one in the last

analysis. But we are different facets of an ultimate Reality. The

right method used by the wrong man leads to wrong results. And merely

imparting that which is valid to one with the Eastern psychology into

and for Western man is not enough. It amounts to his taking upon

himself a false facade. But our door to the Eternal has been

neglected. It has been overgrown with vines and debris collected

around it. But that door exists and it is not now closed as it once

was. But he who goes this way may be despised by his Western brothers.

For it is the way of deep introversion, a positive power. There is

weak introversion, just as there is weak extroversion. There is the

introversion that is only a narcissistic interest in one's own ego,

that is to be sure. But I'm talking of the power of the introverted

mind to unlock doors that are hopelessly closed to the extroverted

mind. This is not now a matter of technology, not now a matter of the

collection of worldly goods, but it is a matter of penetrating into

the depths of consciousness. The Void Now let's start a little

analysis. This calls for philosophic action, the kind of thing that

goes on in philosophy. Do you know any mountain, any house, any The

Induction- page 6 tree, as it is in itself? If you're really good at

analysis you'll have to admit that all you know is a psychic imago [an

idealized image in our minds], which you call mountain, tree, house,

human being, animal or what not. This is all we ever contact. Now it

is our custom to suppose that corresponding to these imagoes there is

a nonconscious thing out there, a mountain, house, tree and so on. But

actually that is blind belief, just as blind as belief in an

extra-cosmic God. I never, nor did you nor anyone else, ever

experience anything but an imago in his psyche which he calls

mountain, house, tree and so forth. You may say you believe there is

something out there. Dr. Jung says, " Yes, I believe there's something

out there. " He doesn't know it. And I maintain there is no good reason

for that belief. At least we can dispense with it. Let us build upon

that which we know and not upon this belief in a nonconscious

existence out there. This is rigorous now. Most everybody, as a matter

of course, acts as though that was out there, and he pretends to be

rigorous and isn't really rigorous. He never has contacted that out

there, he's contacted only the imagoes in his psyche. And one will

raise this doubt: but I have to come to terms with these objects; I

can't act as though the mountain were not, as though the house were

not, or the tree was not, as therefore it must be. Ah, yes, in some

sense it is. But you do not need to use the hypothesis of an external

nonconscious existence. There is, and we can know this from our

analysis of consciousness if it goes deeply, that which Jung called

the " collective unconscious. " And we will see presently that it is

only apparently unconscious. Actually it is an inversion of

consciousness and can be experienced as consciousness. Nonetheless it

is objective to us as individuals. And the basis of that objectivity,

to which we must adjust, can be seen as presentment out of this

collective unconscious. And that is why we have to come to terms with

it. And then, here's a thought. Suppose you had so far penetrated into

the myriad resources of Yoga and moved within this collective

unconscious, realized as another way of consciousness -- and then you

might say to that mountain, " Disappear, " and it would disappear. Not

consciousness moving a nonconscious mass, but consciousness molding

the stuff of Consciousness Itself. If you can get this orientation,

Jnana Yoga becomes a lot easier, it's rational, much simpler -- and

the ultimate meaning of Enlightenment is clarified. And we'll see the

reason where the Buddhists, in their Sutras, speak of the Voidness of

all things. They are void because they are not self existences in

themselves, but formations in Consciousness, and that alone.

Self-Analysis So we come to the first stage of self analysis. It runs

generally this way: I ask, " What am I? " And first it occurs to me that

the idea that I am this body is a delusion, because this body is an

object before my consciousness. I speak as though it were my body, I

speak as though I possess it. It is therefore external to me. I am not

the body. And then we come to dealing with our vital nature, our

feelings. We get into a roaring rage, we fall in love, we are

delighted with the beauties of a symphony and strongly reach out

toward it. Are those feelings of I? No, for I experience them. I but

experience them. They are different from me. I can identify them, and

that itself is enough proof that they are not I. Now, are you ready? I

am very deliberately violating the rules of grammar, for the I of

which I speak is never an object, never a me. You can't write these

things and be grammatically correct. Am I this body of thoughts in my

mind? No. One gets a little closer to his thoughts than to anything

else, and it's a little harder to untangle this. But if he watches and

studies closely enough, the thoughts come to me. I accept or reject

them. That which accepts or rejects them is different from the

thought. And then I finally reach this point where I find that I must

be this something, in some sense, different from other people. I'm not

the mind, The Induction- page 7 I'm not the feelings, I'm not the body

-- that I see. But I surely am, I surely am an individual, apart from

others. And I had them, the students, give me a report on their

experiences. Almost every student had an induction that night. The

experiences were of a sort that compared well with those reported in

Dr. Bucke's Cosmic Consciousness. That is what I mean by induction.

Now a little bit more of this analysis. We're getting a little more

subtle. You break a leg, you have an attack of colic, or somebody

shoots you and you say, " I suffer. " There is certainly something in

you that is involved in a state of suffering. There's no question

about that. Or again, you may be having a delightful experience,

eating something you enjoy, or dancing, or looking at a moving picture

that is very attractive, or scenery in the wild, and so forth. You

say, " I am delighted. " Something does participate in the modification

of consciousness, no doubt about that. But if you are subtle enough in

your analysis, the sense of I suffering, or I enjoying, has standing

above it a sense of I that only witnesses suffering and enjoyment and

all these states, and is not in the least affected by it. That I that

suffers and enjoys goes through all conditions and will say, " I am in

these states, " which is our ordinary way of language, is less than

that I. Probably you should properly call it ego. The Ego Now what

you've gotten a hold of is a very difficult fellow -- it's your ego.

He can sneak around and confuse you like the dickens. You can spend

years trying to get behind him. And what you do, you can get into an

infinite regression. You look at your ego. All right, here am I and

all of a sudden it dawns upon you that which is looking at the ego is

really the I. So you stick that one out in front. You look at it

again, but then your realize it couldn't be, because here is a

something that is observable. At last it finally dawns that I AM THAT

which is ever an object before Consciousness. And mayhap, at that

moment, in your analysis -- the Heavens will open. One time I went

through this analysis in 1937 and as I finished it, somehow or other,

there was induced in me a state that was later identified as waking

Samadhi. It seemed like a great pillar of force surrounding [me] with

its center apparently coalescing with the spine. And I would have

estimated, as it felt to be, about six feet in diameter, and within

that, energies were rising and descending. The body began to get

stiff. It was difficult to walk over to the podium. I had been at the

blackboard and I rested on the podium. Speech became lower in

register. Maintaining function objectively was difficult without

breaking the state. I say that the whole audience was involved. You

could see it in their faces and so on. I described the state to them

for a short time. And when I felt there had been enough of it, because

this would be rather strong for one that was green to it, I turned it

off. Now that was an easy thing to do. There's just a little valve

somewhere in one's total psyche -- I call it the butterfly valve. You

flip it as easy as you would move a finger. It shifts your

consciousness to another way and all of this began running down, like

an engine with a flywheel on which the power is turned off.

Transcendence Now if your analysis has been subtle enough to isolate

this that witnesses, that stands aloof and untouched, the most

intimate part of all your being, then you can Transcend -- then and

there -- all conditioning; witnessing all, but conditioned by nothing.

Witnessing time, among other things, but unconditioned by time. And

then, you may know -- not believe, not have faith in, but know -- your

own indestructibility. Not because the Scriptures say so, not because

anyone else says so, but because for yourself you have discovered your

identity in That which merely witnesses time and is not conditioned by

it. That which is unconditioned by time is birthless and deathless and

eternal. And you have solved with knowledge, once for all, one of the

greatest The Induction- page 8 uncertainties that badgers man. Oh, it

doesn't mean that you are proven an immortal organism. You have proven

your own deathlessness, not the immutability of equipment -- that is

another matter. Equipment may be made to last longer than it does with

us ordinarily. But that which is born inevitably passes away, and

sometimes that is quite fortunate, for that which is born may be

suffering, and it will pass away. But this which you have discovered

as I never was born and transcends time; witnesses, as I discovered

it, witnesses time and even space. Thus beyond time and space and law,

know that I AM. And when I say that, I speak for the I in each and

every one of you. For this I is One and Alone. It is apparently many,

just as the Sun shining appears again in the dew drops as a little

sun, but yet the Sun is One Alone. So it is that the I in me and the I

in thee is the One and Only I. Atman is identical with Paramatman. Not

because the book says so, but because you have been there and found it

so. And this at last is knowledge, not information about, but the

saving and redeeming knowledge. You are liberated. You are liberated

by the power of the introverted mind. The extroverted mind is a weak

sissy in this field. The very power that is despised by the Western

builder is the power by which we can gain redemption. I'm a little

belligerent on this point because of the general attitude of the West.

I'm a heretic here. I have said some things that already were

heretical from a Buddhist, or the Vedantist, or the Christian point of

view. But also -- this is the worst heresy of all -- the heresy

against the great Western prejudice and the great Western religion:

the worshipping of the extroverted mind. Christianity is only

something added on. And that is why we are in such a mess. The

helpless extroverted mind can make a mess that it can't clean up.

unbelievable delight and unbearable sweetness that is all

encompassing, the peace that is ever enduring beyond the greatest

imagination, and you may well say though I suffered through a hundred

lives as the price, yet that price would be as naught compared with

this. Yes, now the real steps come, the hard ones -- yes, the really

hard ones. It is possible to accept this wonder, to enter and have the

door closed behind you and to be separated, for what you might call

forever -- it isn't actually so, but for all practical purposes it is

-- from your suffering mankind out there in the world beyond. Are you

satisfied with that? Could you be fully happy knowing that though all

problems for you are resolved, the suffering out there has not ceased?

You may choose, then, and this I urge, that you will not enter into a

selfish Bliss, but you will take of the resources that you have

garnered and become one of the redeemers among men. The picture in the

literature stops at this point. The Picture Beyond the Literature And

what I'll say now goes beyond the literature. Whether this is the door

open to all who take this step, whether this of which I am about to

speak is the door open to all, I know that it came to me and there

walked into my consciousness THAT which transcended the nirvanic as

the nirvanic transcended the sangsaric. It's quality was totally

different. Not one of this delight, but a Principle of Equilibrium

that united all pairs of opposites including Sangsara and Nirvana. In

some ways a kind of neutral Consciousness that knew that it could

enter the nirvanic state and leave it at will, enter the sangsaric

state and leave it at will. Nowhere in literature did I find any

reference to anything of this sort. And then, at its peak, the sense

of I vanished and the object of consciousness, which now had appeared

as the Robe of the Divine, also vanished, and only Consciousness

remained. Not the consciousness of some entity, but Consciousness

Self-existent, and the Source of all selves and The Threshold of

Nirvana Now you've gone far enough to be at the threshold of Nirvana.

You may sample, oh, the The Induction- page 9 all worlds. This is

Enlightenment. This is the KEY to the Buddhist scriptures, the

Doctrine of the Voidness -- and so forth. Now one knows that the

appearance, which is so familiar with us upon Earth, of consciousness

seeming to be the weak sister and that depends upon things without, is

an inversion of the Reality. And that Consciousness in the end is the

Root Source, the Support and the Substance of all things. Not

consciousness merely in the sense of cognition, but Consciousness in a

substantive sense, eternal, deathless, the Source of all phenomena,

permitting him who is there to evolve worlds and systems and so forth,

if he so chooses, out of the Substance of that Consciousness. At last,

Enlightenment! And no longer is there any renunciation anywhere.

Sangsara and Nirvana below, free entry to both, functioning between

them and, mayhap, by opening the door of Nirvana so that its saving

Substance may flow through the stygian hall of Sangsara. Mankind may

be so transformed that he'll find the way to solve his unsolvable

problems. He will find a way where war will be no more, and clashing

and conflict of interest will be no more. The sangsaric world will

remain a purified, cleansed zone in which Consciousness plays its

games in happiness and delight, and from this height you now may

descend, and among men you may carry That which is Real. Now I don't

expect that everyone here climbed all the way. I am giving you a

glimpse of the journey, a journey the [key?] to which is that one

dedicates the whole of what he is and his whole life. And I can assure

you that it is well worth all that it may cost. Now I think this is

enough. It didn't take two hours. I'll close with a certain mantram

that comes from the Prajnaparamita [sutra] and then I will leave. But

before that I wish that all of you who are driving cars would see [X]

first and get her okay. If she doesn't give you an okay and tells you

to wait a while, do so by all means. You may not be experienced with a

state of light trance. And I know from my experience it is very

dangerous to try to drive a car in light trance. I have studied it a

good deal and decided you have got to definitely extrovert there. You

may be more or less in trance this evening. So, I wish you would go to

X and ask her if it's all right for you to drive. If it isn't all

right for you, it might be for some other one in your party. I know

what I'm talking about. Don't think this is nonsense. There may be

those of you who are experienced in this matter and can take care of

yourselves, but if you are not, you may think you are in your

perfectly normal consciousness and yet there may be an overlapping of

a trance consciousness. There has been some here tonight. So take that

check. And now I wish some of you, if you have had any experiences, I

wish you would write them down and send them to me. We may meet again

when we come back from Douglas about Monday. Now let us close with

this Mantra: Tadyatha -- Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhi

Svaha. Gone, gone, gone to the other shore; safely passed to that

other shore. Prajnaparamita! [Wisdom beyond all understanding.] So may

it be.

 

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..b b.b.