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Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yes. You begin to wonder why we use such a funny sound to represent an affirmative attitude. Yes.
So, in the same way, in India and Tibet and Buddhist countries in general you will find that they use the syllables “om,” “ah,” “hung” for purposes of meditating on sound. And it’s especially useful if you don’t happen to have a gong. Actually, the word “om” is spelled out in Sanskrit a-u-m, and thus comprises the whole range of sound from the back of the throat to the lips.
It is therefore called the praṇava, meaning the sound which represents the total energy of the universe, the which than which there is no whicher. But it isn’t its meaning, it’s its sound that is here important. Now, you can very easily pick this up and do it with me, floating these sounds on your easy-falling out-breath.
And it’s like this: [ Gong ] Aaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. [ Gong ] Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuummmmm. [ Gong ] [ Gong ] Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
[ Gong ] Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauum. [ Gong ] [ Gong ] Aaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. [ Gong ] Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaum.
[ Gong ] Haauuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. It’s important to let the sound sing itself and not have the feeling that you are making it happen. It’s as if you were a flute and the breath is making a note through you.
And you will find that the more you have that feeling, the greater will be the energy of the sound. The use of mantra is not always on slow, prolonged sound. It also uses a kind of repeated melody.
Most of you may be, or many of you may be, familiar with this one—which you can pick up, again, very quickly. It goes like this: Hare krishna, hare krishna, krishna krishna, hare hare. Hare rama, hare rama, rama rama, hare hare.
Hare krishna, hare krishna, krishna krishna, hare hare. Hare rama, hare rama, rama rama, hare hare. Hare krishna, hare krishna, krishna krishna, hare hare.
Hare rama, hare rama, rama rama, hare hare. Hare krishna, hare krishna, krishna krishna, hare hare. Hare rama, hare rama, rama rama, hare hare.
Hare krishna, hare krishna, krishna krishna, hare hare. Hare rama, hare rama, rama rama, hare hare. Hare krishna, hare krishna, krishna krishna, hare hare.
Hare rama, hare rama, rama rama, hare hare. Hare krishna, hare krishna, krishna krishna, hare hare. Hare rama, hare rama, rama rama, hare hare.
Hare krishna, hare krishna, krishna krishna, hare hare. Hare rama, hare rama, rama rama, hare hareeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. And now see how you feel.
Don’t put words on it. Just feel. But again, if you can’t help words running in your head, don’t interfere with it.
[ Meditation ] The form of mantram is also used in the West, or at least in the more traditional form of Jewish, Islamic, and Christian practice, as it’s found in eastern Europe and the Levant. There’s a school of Muslim mystics called Sufi, and they are a sort of Muslim equivalent of Indian Vedanta, practicing the realization of union with God. Of course, their Arabic word for God is Allah.
And they do a rather surprising mantram which is like this—which you can very easily do—and it has the function of all these mantra. To quote Keats: “They tease us out of thought as doth eternity.” And it’s like this: Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allah! Allah!
Allah! Allaaaaaah! And again: listen.
Without idea, without comment. Just be. [ Meditation ] Well, since we live in a more or less Christian tradition, there’s also Christian mantra.
Could equally be Jewish. But it is in the form of what is called the Byzantine tradition of chanting. This, in common with Hindu music, preserves the notion of what is called the drone.
That is to say, a constant sound, as of the tampura in the Hindu orchestra, over which the melody floats. So in the Byzantine chant, where the Eastern churches, they don’t use musical instruments. So the tonic is a hum.
Over that the melody is laid. And what I suggest we do is this: first of all, we’ll do a certain variation on it which is rather interesting. I want everybody silently to imagine a sound, a note, which seems to be convenient and comfortable to you.
Then, after a while, when we feel we’ve got it, we’ll hum it out loud. I will then drop the melody of the chant over that. Some of you will find it possible to harmonize a melodic theme that fits the basic melody.
Others of you will prefer to stay on the drone, the tonic. But the important thing, I repeat, about this kind of chant is that it’s quite different from the ordinary religious exercise that, say, we have in our churches, where we are interminably talking and thinking, and we never get to contemplation. We’re always advising God what to do as if he didn’t know, or listening to exaltations, or singing hymns.
And so all that discursiveness prevents us from getting into the heart of the vibration which is sound, and which is, of course, the real meaning. The opening of the Gospel of St. John: “In the beginning was the Word.” It doesn’t mean in the beginning was chatter. So feel your sound first, quite silently.
Just let it flow. Don’t push it. [ Meditation ] Now hum it out loud.
[ Humming ] Louder! Let it fall out. [ Humming ] Alleluia.
Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.
Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.
Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.
Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.
Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.
Alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia.
Alleluia. Aaaaaaaaah. [ Meditation ] May peace be with you!
Some years ago I had just given a talk on television in Canada, when one of the announcers came up to me and said, “You know, if one can believe that this universe is in [the] charge of an intelligent and beneficent god, don’t you think he would naturally have provided us with an infallible guide to behavior and to the truth about the universe?” And of course I knew he meant the Bible. I said, “No. I think nothing of the kind.
Because I think a loving god would not do something to his children that would rot their brains. Because if we had an infallible guide we would never think for ourselves, and therefore our minds would become atrophied. It is as if my grandfather had left me a million dollars.
I’m glad he didn’t.” And we have therefore to begin any discussion of the meaning of the life and teaching of Jesus with a look at this thorny question of authority, and especially the authority of holy scripture. Because (in this country in particular) there are an enormous number of people who seem to believe that the Bible descended from heaven with an angel in the year 1611, which was when the so-called King James (or, more correctly, authorized) version of the Bible was translated into English. I had a crazy uncle who believed that every word of the Bible was literally true, including the marginal notes.
And so, whatever date it said—it said in the marginal notes that the world was created in 4004 B.C.—and he believed as the word of god. Until one day he was reading, I think, a passage in the Book of Proverbs and found a naughty word in the Bible. And from that time on he was through with it.
You know, how Protestant can you get? Now, the question of authority needs to be understood, because I am not going to claim any authority in what I say to you—except the authority, such as it is, of history. And that’s a pretty uncertain authority.
But from my point of view, the four Gospels are, I think, to be regarded, on the whole, as historical documents. I’ll even grant the miracles. Because speaking as one heavily influenced by Buddhism, we’re not very impressed by miracles.
The traditions of Asia—Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, and so forth—are full of miraculous stories, and we take them in our stride. We don’t think they’re sign of anything in particular except psychic power. And we in the West have, by scientific technology, accomplished things of a very startling nature.
We could blow up the whole planet. And Tibetan magicians have never promised to do anything like that. And I’m really a little scared of the growing interest in psychic power, because that’s what I call psychotechnics.
And we’ve made such a mess of things with ordinary technics that heaven only knows what we might do if we got hold of psychotechnics, and started raising people from the dead and prolonging life insufferably and doing everything we wished. I mean, the whole answer to the story of miracles is simply: imagine that you’re God and that you can have anything you want. Well, you’d have it for a quite long time.
And then, after a while, you say, “This is getting pretty dull because I know in advance everything that’s going to happen.” And so you would wish for a surprise, and you would find yourself this evening in this church as a human being. So, I mean, that is the miracle thing. I think miracles are probably possible.
That doesn’t bother me. And, as a matter of fact, when you read the writings of the early fathers of the church—the great theologians like Saint Clement, Gregory of Nyssa, Saint John of Damascus, even Thomas Aquinas—they’re not interested in the historicity of the Bible. They take that sort of for granted, but forget it.
They’re interested in its deeper meaning. And therefore they always interpret all the tales (like Jonah and the whale), they don’t bother even to doubt whether Jonah was or was not swallowed by a whale or other big fish, but they see in the story of Jonah and the whale a prefiguration of the resurrection of Christ. And then, even when it comes to the resurrection of Christ, they’re not worrying about the chemistry or the physics of a risen body.
What they’re interested in is that the idea of the resurrection of the body has something to say about the meaning of the physical body in the eyes of god. That the physical body, in other words, is not something worthless and unspiritual, but something that is an object of the divine love. And so, therefore, I’m not going to be concerned with whether or not miraculous events happened.
It seems to me entirely beside the point. So I regard the four Gospels, on the whole, as good a historical document as anything else we have from that period—including the Gospel of Saint John, and that’s important. It used to be fashionable to regard the Gospel of Saint John as late.
In other words, at the turn of the century, the higher critics of the New Testament assigned the Gospel of Saint John to about 125 AD. And the reason was simple: those higher critics at that time just assumed that the simple teachings of Jesus could not possibly have included any such complicated mystical theology. And therefore they said, “Well, it must be later.” Now, as a matter of fact, in the text of the Gospel of Saint John, the local color, his knowledge of the topography of Jerusalem and his knowledge of the Jewish calendar, is more accurate than that of the other three writers, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
And it seems to me perfectly simple to assume that John recorded the inner teaching which he gave to his disciples, and that Matthew, Mark, and Luke record the more exoteric teaching, which he gave to people at large. Now, what about, then, the authority of these scriptures? We could take this problem in two steps.
A lot of people don’t know how we got the Bible at all. We Westerners got the Bible thanks to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church and members of the church wrote the books of the New Testament.
And they took over the books of the Old Testament—which, even by the time of Christ, had not been finally decided upon by the Jews. The Jews did not close the canon of the Old Testament until the year 100 AD or thereabouts, at the synod of Jamnia, and then they finally decided which were the canonical books of the Hebrew scriptures and embodied them Masoretic Text, the earliest copy of which dates from early in the 10th century AD. The books to be included in the New Testament were not finally decided upon until the year 382 AD at the synod of Rome under Pope Damasus.
So it was the Catholic Church that promulgated the Bible and said, “We are giving you these scriptures on our authority, and by the authority of the informal tradition that has existed among us from the beginning, inspired by the holy spirit.” So you receive, historically, the Bible on the church’s say-so. And the Catholic Church insists, therefore, that the church collectively, speaking under the presumed guidance of the holy spirit, has the authority to interpret the Bible, and you can take that or leave it. Because obviously the authority of the Bible is not, first of all, based on the Bible itself.
I can write a bible and state within that book that it is indeed the word of god which I have received. And you are at liberty to believe me or not. Hindus believe that the Vedas are divinely revealed and inspired with just as much fervor as any Christian or any Jew.
Muslims believe that the Quran is divinely inspired. And some Buddhists believe that their sūtras are also of divine, or rather Buddhic, origin. The Japanese believe that the ancient texts of Shinto are likewise of divine origin.
And who is to be judge? If we are going to argue about this as to which version of the truth is the correct one, we will always end up in an argument in which the judge and the advocate are the same person. And you wouldn’t want that if you were brought into a court of law, would you?
Because if I say that, well, thinking it all over, I find that Jesus Christ is the greatest being who ever came onto this Earth, by what standards do I judge? Why, obviously, I judge by the sort of moral standards that have been given to me as somebody brought up in a Christian culture. There is nobody impartial who can decide between all the religions because, more or less, everybody has been, in one way or another, influenced by one of them.
So if the church says the Bible is true, it finally comes down to you. Are you going to believe the church or aren’t you? If nobody believes the church, it will be perfectly plain—won’t it?—that the church has no authority.
Because the people are always the source of authority. That is why de Tocqueville said that a people gets what government it deserves. And so you may say, “Well, god himself is the authority.” Well, how are we to show that?
That’s your opinion. Well, you say, “You wait and see! The day of judgment is coming, and then you’ll find out who is the authority.” Yes, but at the moment there is no evidence for the day of judgment.
And it remains, until there is evidence, simply your opinion that the day of judgment is coming, and there is nothing else to go on—except the opinion of other people who hold the same view and whose opinions you bought. So, really, I won’t deny anybody’s right to hold these opinions. You may indeed believe that the Bible is literally true and that it was actually dictated by god to Moses and the prophets and the apostles.
That may be your opinion and you are at liberty to hold it. I don’t agree with you. I do believe, on the other hand, that there is a sense in which the Bible is divinely inspired.
But I mean by inspiration something utterly different from dictation; receiving a dictated message from an omniscient authority. I think inspiration comes very seldom in words. In fact, almost all the words written down by automatic writing from psychic input that I have ever read strike me as a bit thin.
When a psychic begins to write of deep mysteries—instead of telling you what your sickness is or who your grandmother was—he begins to get superficial. And psychically communicated philosophy is never as interesting as philosophy carefully thought out. But divine inspiration isn’t that kind of communication.
Divine inspiration is, for example, to feel, for reasons that you cannot really understand, that you love people. Divine inspiration is a wisdom which is very difficult to put into words. Like mystical experience: that’s divine inspiration.
And a person who writes out of that experience could be said to be divinely inspired. Or it might come through dreams, through archetypal messages from the collective unconscious through which the holy spirit could be said to work. But since inspiration always comes through a human vehicle, it is liable to be distorted by that vehicle.
In other words, I’m talking to you through a sound system, and it’s the only one now available. Now, if there’s something wrong with this sound system, whatever truths I might utter to you will be distorted. My voice will be distorted.
And you might mistake the meaning of what I said. So therefore, everybody who receives divine inspiration—and I’m using that in a very loose way; you can mean anything you like by divine, that’s your option—but anybody who receives it will express it within the limits of what language he knows. And by “language,” here, I don’t only mean in English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, or Sanskrit, I mean language in the sense of what sort of terms are available to you, what kind of religion were you brought up with.
Now, you see, if you were brought up in the Bible Belt, you came out of Arkansas somewhere, and that’s all the religion you knew, and you had a mystical experience of the type where you suddenly discovered that you are one with god, then you’re liable to get up and say, “I am Jesus Christ.” And lots of people do. Well, the culture that we live in just can’t allow that. There’s only one Jesus Christ, and sort of you don’t look like you were Jesus Christ coming back again, because it said in the scriptures that when he comes back, there’ll be no doubt about it.
He’ll appear in the heavens with legions of angels. And you’re not doing that. You’re just old Joe Dokes that we knew years ago, and now you say you’re Jesus Christ.
“Well,” he says, “when Jesus Christ said he was god, nobody believed him. And you don’t believe again.” You know, you can’t answer that argument. But, you see, he says it that way because he is trying to express what happened to him in terms of a religious language that is circumscribed by the Holy Bible.