Frank.H. HUMPHREYS - by Arthur Osborne #3

[Guest guest]

 

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Although Humphreys never stayed with Sri Bhagavan and

only visited him a few times, he imbibed his teaching and received

his Grace. A synopsis that he sent to a friend in English was

published later in the International Psychic Gazette and remains

an excellent presentation of the teaching.

“A Master is one who has meditated solely on God, has

flung his whole personality into the sea of God, and drowned

and forgotten it there, till he becomes only the instrument

of God, and when his mouth opens it speaks God’s words

without effort or forethought; and when he raises a hand,

God flows again through that, to work a miracle.

“Do not think too much of psychical phenomena and

such things. Their number is legion; and once faith in the

psychical thing is established in the heart of a seeker, such

phenomena have done their work. Clairvoyance,

clairaudience, and such things are not worth having, when

so much far greater illumination and peace are possible

without them than with them. The Master takes on these

powers as a form of self-sacrifice!

“The idea that a Master is simply one who has attained

power over the various occult senses by long practice and

prayer or anything of the kind, is absolutely false. No Master

ever cared a rap for occult powers, for he has no need for

them in his daily life.

“The phenomena we see are curious and surprising —

but the most marvellous of all we do not realize, and that is

that one, and only one illimitable force is responsible for:

(a) All the phenomena we see; and

(b) The act of seeing them.

“Do not fix your attention on all these changing things

of life, death and phenomena. Do not think of even the

actual act of seeing or perceiving them, but only of that which

sees all these things — that which is responsible for it all.

This will seem nearly impossible at first, but by degrees the

result will be felt. It takes years of steady, daily practice, and

that is how a Master is made. Give a quarter of an hour a day

for this practice. Try to keep the mind unshakenly fixed on

That which sees. It is inside yourself. Do not expect to find

that ‘That’ is something definite on which the mind can be

fixed easily; it will not be so. Though it takes years to find

that ‘That’, the result of this concentration will be seen in

four or five months’ time — in all sorts of unconscious

clairvoyance, in peace of mind, in power to deal with troubles,

in power all round, yet always unconscious power.

“I have given you this teaching in the same words as

the Master gives to intimate chelas. From now onwards,

let your whole thought in meditation be not on the act of

seeing, nor on what you see, but immovably on That

which Sees.

“One gets no reward for Attainment. Then one

understands that one does not want a reward. As Krishna

says, ‘Ye have the right to work, but not to the fruits thereof.’

Perfect attainment is simply worship, and worship is

attainment.

“If you sit down and realize that you think only by

virtue of the one Life, and that the mind, animated by the

one Life into the act of thinking, is a part of the whole

which is God, then you argue your mind out of existence

physically (so to speak) disappear; and the only thing that

remains is Be-ing, which is at once existence and nonexistence

and not explainable in words or ideas.

“A Master cannot help being perpetually in this state

with only this difference, that in some, to us

incomprehensible, way he can use the mind, body and

intellect too, without falling back into the delusion of

having separate consciousness.

“It is useless to speculate, useless to try and take a

mental or intellectual grasp and work from that. That is

only religion, a code for children and for social life, a guide

to help us to avoid shocks, so that the inside fire may burn

up the nonsense in us, and teach us, a little sooner, common

sense, i.e. a knowledge of the delusion of separateness.

“Religion, whether it be Christianity, Buddhism,

Hinduism, Theosophy, or any other kind of ‘ism’ or ‘sophy’

or system, can only take us to the one point where all

religions meet and no further.

“That one point where all religions meet is the

realization — in no mystical sense, but in the most worldly

and everyday sense, and the more worldly and everyday

and practical the better — of the fact that God is everything,

and everything is God.

“From this point begins the work of the practice of

this mental comprehension, and all it amounts to is the

breaking of a habit. One has to cease calling things ‘things’,

and must call them God; and instead of thinking them to

be things, must know them to be God; instead of imagining

‘existence’ to be the only thing possible, one must realize

that this (phenomenal) existence is only the creation of the

mind, that ‘non-existence’ is a necessary sequence if you

are going to postulate ‘existence’.

as a separate entity; and the result is that mind and body,

physically (so to speak) disappear; and the only thing that

remains is Be-ing, which is at once existence and nonexistence

and not explainable in words or ideas.

“A Master cannot help being perpetually in this state

with only this difference, that in some, to us

incomprehensible, way he can use the mind, body and

intellect too, without falling back into the delusion of

having separate consciousness.

“It is useless to speculate, useless to try and take a

mental or intellectual grasp and work from that. That is

only religion, a code for children and for social life, a guide

to help us to avoid shocks, so that the inside fire may burn

up the nonsense in us, and teach us, a little sooner, common

sense, i.e. a knowledge of the delusion of separateness.

“Religion, whether it be Christianity, Buddhism,

Hinduism, Theosophy, or any other kind of ‘ism’ or ‘sophy’

or system, can only take us to the one point where all

religions meet and no further.

“That one point where all religions meet is the

realization — in no mystical sense, but in the most worldly

and everyday sense, and the more worldly and everyday

and practical the better — of the fact that God is everything,

and everything is God.

“From this point begins the work of the practice of

this mental comprehension, and all it amounts to is the

breaking of a habit. One has to cease calling things ‘things’,

and must call them God; and instead of thinking them to

be things, must know them to be God; instead of imagining

‘existence’ to be the only thing possible, one must realize

that this (phenomenal) existence is only the creation of the

mind, that ‘non-existence’ is a necessary sequence if you

are going to postulate ‘existence’.

“The knowledge of things only shows the existence

of an organ to cognize. There are no sounds to the deaf, no

sights for the blind, and the mind is merely an organ of

conception or of appreciation of certain sides of God.

“God is infinite, and therefore existence and nonexistence

are merely His counterparts. Not that I wish to

say that God is made up of definite component parts. It is

hard to be comprehensive when talking of God. True

knowledge comes from within and not from without. And

true knowledge is not ‘knowing’ but ‘seeing’.

“Realization is nothing but seeing God literally. Our

greatest mistake is that we think of God as acting symbolically

and allegorically, instead of practically and literally.

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