Man's state of Unpeace is not so much caused by his two natures alone; but rather by their interaction with the world in which he lives. In the last chapter we looked in a very general way at man himself, and before we go on to look at his relationship with the world in Part Two, we will spend the rest of Part One examining the world itself of which we are part.

Now the world as we see it can best be summarised as a world of difference; for all around us at all levels we see difference. Of course in one sense this is very obvious. If we saw no difference between, say, a door and a wall, we could never enter a house or leave a room except by luck. We see objects in this physical world as different from one another; on my desk, the telephone, the typewriter, the pen, the calendar and the lamp are all different, and it is only by recognising this difference that I can telephone someone or write this book. If I saw no difference, then there would be nothing to stop me trying to ring someone up with the pen or trying to write this book with the calendar.

But the difference in this world can be pursued on a much deeper level than that, and in this chapter we begin by considering spatial difference, or differentiation in space - ie separateness. Again, the physical separateness of everyday objects is obvious; if they were not separate, or able to be separate, then nothing could be done. I could not open the drawer of my desk, turn on the light, cut the piece of bread or even get out of my chair if the objects mentioned were not separable from one another. In fact, all movement depends on separateness, since motion implies that one object is moving relative to the other, and thus that the two objects are separate.

Let us consider first man's separateness from his environment.

From seeing what separateness from the environment leads to, let us now look at our separateness from other human beings. This undoubtedly causes the most suffering and Unpeace in this world, for if we feel separate from others in a non-physical sense, then we have no alternative but to act selfishly. However much I realise that it is my duty to feel brotherly love and compassion for my neighbour, if I always look at him in terms of separateness then my love will be very shallow.

Separateness of man from man is surely the basis of aggression, competitiveness, war, and much violence and delinquency in this world, leading to all the suffering of man caused by man. An obvious example is that of racial conflict, where one man distrusts and even hates another due to the most superficial differences, such as the pigmentation of the skin. It surely is no coincidence that in many languages the word for 'stranger' and the word for 'enemy' are identical.

The scientist dealing with the nature of matter considers the atom to be the fundamental building-block of the universe. This is in some ways analogous to the position of the social scientist, who regards society as also id being constructed of building-blocks, called individuals. Both 'a-tomic' and 'in-dividual' mean 'unsplittable', the one from Greek and the other from Latin; and both types of scientist have to reckon with the fact that their 'unsplittable' building-blocks are in fact very splittable. The atom has long since dissolved into a complex arrangement of esoteric sub-nuclear particles; and of course the individual (ie you and me) can be divided up into categories in a number of ways.

One is the way in which we instinctively separate conceptually the various faculties of man, just as we separate the sciences and the professions. A man is a singer or an engineer; physics is a science in its own right; this peace of verse is a lyric. We tend to classify all phenomena we meet, so creating the separateness born of different categories. Often 'knowledge' is merely our capacity to read the labels efficiently. For instance, if I say of some one, "He is a Communist," I have put that person in a separate category which implies a naive simplicity about him, and which can cause much misunderstanding, as we see all too often. It implies that there is a neat, sharp definition of 'Communist' which can be equally implied to all; it implies that he will act the way we think communists act, in all situations and at all times.

"There is nothing that stands fast, nothing fixed, nothing free from change among the things which come into being" [1] These words were written many thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt, and though they say that everything is changing, there is one thing that has not changed in all that time - the fact of change itself. This leads us on to consider another basic aspect of difference - difference in time, ie change.

Change is, like separateness, inseparable from the world; nothing stays the same for ever. This book, for instance, appeared in the form you now see it at a particular time in the past. It is now slowly undergoing change, getting dirtier and more used, and there will come a time when it will no longer exist as a book. Either it will be burnt, torn up or maybe it will just decompose; you cannot say how it will be destroyed, but it is nevertheless certain that it will be destroyed at some point in the future.

This is true of everything. The Alps are transient. They came into existence at a certain point in time, and they will vanish at a certain point in time. There is one physical object the transience and changing of which we are only too well aware - our body. Our body is born, grows, matures, decays and finally dies. Whose body is not subject to this cycle? The best we can hope for is that this chain proceeds smoothly and evenly, but such is the impermanence and transience of the body that very often it does not. Most people experience at least one major illness or injury to their body in their life, and the vast majority of us have intermittent minor ailments and bodily upsets. In fact, it is only through recognition that the body is perishable do we survive at all. If we did not recognise our transience, and thought the body to be indestructible, then we would have no survival instincts and we would walk cheerfully over cliffs and under buses.

Not only is the body as an entity changeable, but of course also the constituents of the body. As Walter De La Mere says: "It's a very odd thing - As odd as can be - That whatever Miss T eats Turns into Miss T." [2]

The final aspect of this world of difference we will consider is difference of quality - what we can term 'duality'.

A little reflection will probably convince most people that however much satisfaction or pleasure they obtain from any particular experience, that satisfaction was not total. There was room for more still. For instance, however peaceful you were at some past time, you will probably admit that there was, in theory at least, the possibility of more peace. When we are experiencing great peace or satisfaction, we often speak as if it were total or complete ("I couldn't wish for anything better."), but this is surely just 'hyperbole', a natural tendency to exaggerate or overstate. The same is true of dissatisfaction: although we often say of something unpleasant or dissatisfying, "it couldn't be worse," if we examine the situation dispassionately then we will always find that it could, in some manner, be worse.

Every experience we have in this world gives us a mixture of content and discontent. This is an example of what philosophers call the duality of the world, or the difference of quality; the fact that everything we experience has an opposite. Sometimes we feel hot, sometimes we feel cold. Every quality seems to come in pairs. Black and white, big and small, love and hate, up and down, night and day, male and female, light and darkness, in and out, life and death; these are just a few examples of the duality we find in this world.

To end this chapter and Part One, we will consider in some detail a very fundamental duality - the so-called 'mind/matter' or 'mind/body' problem. Whereas the duality of our animal/human nature is rather a hypothetical model, the mind/matter duality is very real and has led to many bitter battles in philosophical and psychological fields.

Basically the situation is this: in normal waking consciousness we are aware of two worlds - one is a 'public' or outer world which we share with our fellow beings, and the other is a 'private' or inner world which is different for each person and can only be experienced by the person concerned.

The public world consists of material objects, physical events and anything which is objective and can be experienced by more than one person; it is the 'matter' part of the duality. The private world consists of mental objects and events, eg thinking, feeling or imagining, and anything which is subjective and can only be experienced at most by one person; it is commonly called 'mind'.

First we will look at the view that everything can be explained in terms of matter or the public world only - generally called 'materialism'. (Note that we are using 'materialism' in its philosophical sense, and not in its everyday meaning of someone greedy after material objects, though obviously the two meanings are connected.) Now common sense obviously supports the materialist view that matter exists; if you think a block of concrete Is an illusion then bang your head on it and see if you still think so! But the materialist usually goes further and holds that mind does not exist as distinct from matter, or rather that the private world (mind) can be explained totally in terms of matter, a view known as 'epiphenomenalism'.

The first thorough-going materialist philosophy in the West was put forward in about 430 BC by two Greeks, Leucippus and Democritus, in a theory called 'Atomism'. They held a totally mechanistic and materialist view of the world, thinking everything was composed of passive and intrinsically lifeless 'atoms' (though their atoms were very different from the atoms of modern science). The next important era of materialism (note that we are still using the term in its philosophical sense) was not until 2,000 years later, in the 17th century; for in that century was the rise of science, when events in the physical world could be explained by materialist laws, largely due to the work of Newton. This initiated a steadily increasing flow of materialist philosophy, through Hobbes, Marx and into modern times; for the stunning successes of the materialist sciences seemed to place matter on top once and for all.

The opposite to the materialist philosophies is idealism, which basically holds, in some form, that the basic element in the nature of reality is mind or consciousness. Common sense obviously supports this to some extent also; after all, in spite of what the materialist tells me, I am aware of many private 'objects' such as thoughts or feelings, and I give them considerably more importance than if they were merely a series of physical occurrences in the brain. If there is really no such thing as mind, then why does a materialist want an anaesthetic before an operation?

Having dealt with difference in space, of feeling and in time in the last two chapters, this chapter looks at difference of quality - ie duality. Duality ensures that every quality is to some degree mixed up with its opposite, and is one way of expressing the principle that we are continually in a state of Unpeace. Two important examples of duality are i) the duality of 'is' or 'is not' and ii) the duality of mind and matter. We outlined how we can look at this last duality from three viewpoints of the materialists, the idealists and a compromise of the two.

Part Two - The Wrong Approach: Looking To The Di-Verse

5 - Where To Look?

To illustrate this point, we can look at a short story from the Chinese work 'The Gateless Gate' written in 1228.

Once, two Zen Buddhist monks were arguing about a flag blowing in the wind. The first monk said, "The flag is moving." The second monk said, "The wind is moving." Just then a third monk happened to be passing by. He told them, "Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving."[2]

(though not, of course, if he were a 13th century Chinese monk). It is also unlikely that he would know about the United Nations charter which says, amongst other things, "War begins in the mind of men, and it is in the mind of man that the defences of peace must be constructed." (Though there is no doubt that he would agree with it were he to have known of it.)

We began the chapter by summarising Part One - that we act because of the Unpeace we find ourselves in, and which is essentially due to the world being one of difference. Given this situation, our behaviour can be broadly divided into two categories, as that which results from laying emphasis on either the public world, or the private world. The former behaviour we call 'externalism'. While we may see the advantage of the latter category of behaviour, the difficulties involved in carrying it out means that most of us are externalists in practice.

6 - Externalism

The most obvious example of this for us is the rise of science in Europe over the past four hundred years, and the resulting technological and world-wide materialistic developments it has engendered.

That the growth of science is essentially externalistic is strikingly illustrated by a remark by one of the founders of modern science, Galileo: "The conclusions of natural science are true and necessary, and the judgement of man has nothing to do with them."[2] The second monk could not have put it better himself. Since the direct externalist believes that what happens 'out there' in the external world is important, and is not influenced by 'the judgement of man', then it becomes necessary to understand and to obtain knowledge of the external world and thus hopefully to control or master it. Modern science has achieved this mastery to an astonishing degree, its success being celebrated in such phrases as "the conquest of Space" with regard to the space projects; in fact, the aim of science as a whole is frequently expressed as the "conquest of Nature". This of course explains why science is the ultimate authority for dedicated direct-externalists, because they believe it is in the 'conquest' of their surroundings that they will find true happiness, total satisfaction and that Peace which we are all looking for.

Science is now the new religion; Genesis is not in it with a school text-book on chemistry, and we even rely on scientific text-books for such personal crafts as rearing children or achieving a happily married life.

The universe became lifeless and inert, moving mechanically and inexorably by its own laws. Maybe God was needed to give the whole thing an initial kick to get it going, but after that he was an unneeded hypothesis. In fact, since it was not clear whether the world had a beginning in time, God's existence was altogether doubtful.

In this chapter we distinguished between indirect-externalism and direct-externalism, and dealt primarily with the latter in its modern-day guise of 'science'. We dealt with the rise of science in the 17th century and its effect in the 18th century, and with the basic effects of modern science today, showing on a practical basis that this aspect of direct-externalism has done little, if anything, to lessen Unpeace as a whole.

7 - Discursive Thought

Reasoning is that type of thinking which produces reasons for coming to a certain conclusion. Take an example: suppose I want to move my desk out of the room, and I don't know whether it will fit through the doorway. Now there are several ways I can think about the problem. I can learn from someone that it will not, in fact, go through the doorway. I can remember from a previous occasion that it did not fit, or maybe on intuition or in day-dreaming I just accept the fact that it will not fit. Fourthly, I can suppose as a matter of hypothesis that it will not fit. Now all these ways of thinking (learning, remembering, intuition, day-dreaming, supposing etc) have in common the fact that I do not produce reasons as evidence for my conclusion. But if my thinking about the problem takes the form of reasoning, then my thoughts will be something like this: "the desk will not fit through the doorway. The reasons are i) the desk is four foot wide, ii) the doorway is three and a half foot wide." In other words, my conclusion rests upon reasons.

We can observe to start with that reasoning, being discursive thought, is concerned totally with difference. In the process of reasoned thinking the mind works from point to point; it jumps through a series of different stages. Furthermore, the situations and problems to which reasoning is most often applied are those of difference, where something has to be related in some way to something else. So in a world where the most basic quality is difference, reasoning is obviously very useful. And because we all see difference everywhere, everybody uses reasoning to some extent.

The study of logic has become incredibly complex and mind-twisting, such that any simple statement about it is invariably misleading. Nevertheless, we will continue undaunted and pick our way through one of the densest jungles man's intellect has grown.

A working definition of 'logic' for the layman is 'the science of good reasons', or that discipline which attempts to distinguish bad reasoning from good reasoning. It attempts to formulate rules which can tell us whether the reasons we have given are 'good' reasons for inferring the conclusion we wish to establish. It is important for the intellectual, as we have pointed out, to make his reasoning correct and effective, and so logic is a very necessary study for him.

The abstruseness of logic is to some extent due to the fact that it crosses back on itself, being reasoning about reasoning (note that then the study of logic is reasoning about reasoning about reasoning).

We now turn from logic to the 'scientific method'.

In this chapter we maintained at the beginning that the activity of the intellect, discursive thought, is inherently and in theory unable to extricate us from Unpeace. This was backed up by the following conclusions concerning three main intellectual disciplines:

1) In the realm of reason or logic we showed that i) the basic principle of reason did not apply to some external objects (eg sub-atomic particles, and also art, love etc), ii) deduction is not very useful in practical matters, iii) that no complex system is completely deductive anyway (Godel's proof) and iv) that induction can never give absolutely certain conclusions

2) As for the scientific method, we showed that i) nothing is ever certain (both traditionally or according to Popper), ii) that no completely new result can be assimilated, and iii) that insight, which is completely outside the scientific method, is often used.

3) In the realm of metaphysics we saw how it is impossible to understand the world as it is through the intellect, either from Hume's or Kant's arguments.

8 - Intellectual Unity

Although we have been at pains to show that science deals in difference, as it were, and in fact tends to enhance difference through classifications and analysing, there are nevertheless some strong impulses in science to find unity.

The concept of superspace is a very important concept in modern physics, thus in science as a whole. For modern physics is that branch of science which deals with the most fundamental 'things' in this universe, and which other sciences (eg chemistry and biology) are based upon.

In order to talk about superspace intelligibly, we first have to consider what we mean by 'dimension'. We say, for instance that the surface of this page has two dimensions. It is a "2-dimensional space". We say this because it needs two measurements to locate a point on it. For to locate point B, starting from A, I have to give two measurements: - I can say, for example, "B is one inch to the right of A, and 1.7 inches down."

Now Fred is similar to us in many ways, except he is a 2-dimensional being, and the 'space' he lives in is thus also 2-d such as the surface of this page. (From now on we will write 'dimensional' or 'dimensions' as just 'd'). But whereas we can see Fred, he can in no way see us or conceive of our existence. For to do so he would have to look up and out of the page, the surface of which is his 'world', and this he cannot do. He cannot conceive even, let alone perceive, the third dimension just as we have no possible conception of a fourth dimension in our 3-d space. 'Up' and 'down' have no possible meaning whatsoever to him. So Fred's viewpoint is entirely limited to the particular surface which is his 'space' ie this page.

If the page is now curved in any way, so it is not a flat surface, it would not make a scrap of difference to Fred. For to curve this page, part of it would have to be bent up (or down), that is, use made of the third dimension, of which Fred is utterly and completely unaware.

So whether the '2-d space' (this page) is to us flat or curved, it is always the same to Fred. It would be nonsense to him to think of it as being curved or flat, in the same way as it appears nonsense to us to think of our 3-d space as being 'curved' or 'flat'.

But let us is now imagine Fred to be living on the surface of a sphere. Of course, to Fred there would be absolutely no change, since, as we have seen, for a surface to be curved all three dimensions must be used, and Fred is limited to only two dimensions.

Another reason for accepting the existence of superspace is concerned with black holes, which can be thought of as vanished stars.

This long word means the study of dynamic geometry, or the power of space. That 'space' can have power or be dynamic is a strange concept. At the beginning of this chapter we rather thought of space as a 'nothingness' or an 'emptiness'; but we have seen how the work of Einstein and others has led us to view 'space' in a completely new way.

During the last twenty years there has been a new theory evolved, largely by a scientist called Wheeler, which goes under this name 'Geometrodynamics.'[8] This theory does not contradict the General Theory of Relativity, but attempts rather to go beyond it. For while Relativity neatly ties up space, time and gravity, into unimaginable 'superspace', it leaves out many things such as the existence of energy and matter. But geometrodynamics attempts to include even these into the structure of space itself. That is to say, that there is nothing other than superspace. Everything is a manifestation of this.

vi) Conclusion

To conclude this section on superspace, it should he pointed out that all of the theories mentioned here (General Relativity, Geometrodynamics, Bootstrap etc) could be disproved in the future. However, it seems certain that any alternative theories will have to use the concept of superspace; so it is immaterial whether the details we have gone into here are proved to be valid or not - what is important is that science is forced to describe so many phenomena in this world of difference in terms of non-differentiated superspace.

Indeed, some physicists have not seen any need to limit superspace to only four dimensions. Why four? Why not five dimensions? Six, seven...infinite. Why not have a superspace consisting of an infinite number of dimensions? The point is that with our 3-d viewing mechanism superspace is completely and utterly unintelligible to us whether we say that it has four dimensions or an infinite number of dimensions. So for our purpose there is no need to specify the number of dimensions it has.

Of course, many scientists object to speaking about superspace as a thing, an entity; they insist it is only a mathematical description. That science has not 'proved' the physical existence of superspace is true; and from what we have said earlier, it is impossible for science ever to do so, for we have shown that discursive thought can only rearrange difference or the 'diverse' and never go beyond it. What is so revealing is that science, in using tools of difference to understand difference has to explain some observed phenomena by talking as if there is something completely transcending difference. Apart from giving this 'something' a name (superspace), we can never understand it or even conceive of it with the tools of difference and diversity, such as the intellect.

Arguments For The Existence Of God

This argument rests on the cause-and-effect duality. If everything finite (ie in the world of difference) has a cause, then the causes must themselves have had causes, and so on. To start this off, there must have been a First or Causeless Cause, ie God. This was argued by Aristotle, Anselm, St. Thomas and put into its most tight form by Liebniz. Hume held that this was no reason for a First Cause, since the chain of cause-and-effect could go back indefinitely; this has been made plausible by the recent advances in theoretical physics, showing that maybe the universe never had a beginning.[13]

Kant refuted the cosmological argument twice over; first he showed that it involved in one of its steps the ontological argument, which as we have seen is invalid. Secondly, he held that God belonged to the noumenal world, about which we cannot know anything, even whether He, She or it exists or not. In our terminology, this is saying that in a world of non-difference, there is no duality and thus no cause-and-effects; so we cannot reason to God or non-difference by cause-end-effect arguments.

iii) The Argument from Eternal Truths

This was first put forward by Plato, and later by Leibniz.

Whereas the other three arguments rest on deduction, the argument from design rests on induction and is empirical. It is sometimes called the "argument from pre-established harmony" (Leibniz) or the "physico-theological proof" (Kant).

Basically, the idea is that if we look around us at this world, although we see a world of difference, there is nevertheless such obvious design and interconnection that blind natural forces cannot be the cause, but there must be some conscious purpose (ie God) for it all. As science advances and discovers greater and greater evidence of interrelation and purpose in the cosmos, then obviously the argument from design becomes stronger; this has been forcefully argued from the recent findings in biochemistry and biology.[15] (See Sherrington's quote previously.

The greatest critic of the argument from design was Hume, who spent 25 years (on and off) writing a critique of it. The basis of his criticism is that it is an unsound analogy, in the sense that the argument says because human consciousness is seen to produce order and design, then a far greater design must come from a consciousness greater than human. This is not logically watertight. However, Hume does admit that while the argument is not valid, it is to some extent convincing.

Kant, while not invalidating the argument, holds that it does not argue for God, but only for a conscious agency that is wiser and more powerful than we are, but which could still belong completely to the world of difference (and thus not be God, by definition).

Darwin's theory of Evolution has refuted this argument, showing clearly that blind natural forces certainly can, and probably do, cause what we humans see as 'design'. In other words, Hume was right. Except that the Argument from Design is no longer even convincing, as Hume thought.

v) - The Argument from Morality

Whereas the last chapter showed that the intellect is only capable of dealing with difference, this chapter has shown that nevertheless it is often the case that we find it very useful to postulate that there is a world of non-difference, or unity (named variously 'energy', 'superspace', 'God', 'noumenal world', etc). However, this does not prove that non-difference exists. In this chapter we gave some examples both of attempts to prove intellectually that non-difference exists, and of attempts to intellectually deal with a postulated world of non-difference. Neither attempt was successful.

9 - The Third Monk

Summary Of Argument So Far

Since this is the case, we have no alternative but to leave the externalist second monk involved in the public world, and to investigate the position of the third monk, who places more importance on the private world. These two monks act in dissimilar ways, as was described in Chapter 5, even though they experience the same things - the desire to be free from Unpeace and a world based on difference. Their contrasting behaviour is due to one (the second monk) looking basically to the public world for the answer, and the other (the third monk) to the private world.

We can describe the 'private world' loosely as 'mind' or the mental world; it consists of all 'objects' or events which are not public, ie which cannot be experienced by anyone else other than the person concerned. Furthermore, we can divide the mind, or private world, into two parts - the conscious and the non-conscious.

For instance, in this picture, do you see two faces or do you see a vase? Whichever we see is due entirely to what part of the picture we accept as background, and what part as object. Sometimes we will tend to see a vase, at other times the two faces. We cannot view the picture at one level throughout, but automatically split it up into the object, upon which our attention is focused, and the background, which we barely notice. So strong is this tendency, that some people who see in the picture only one object (either the vase or the two faces) take quite some time to see in it the other possible object, even when told it exists. This is because the background is so ignored that it takes quite a mental jump to focus attention onto it and away from the object, but as soon as this is done, then what was background becomes object and vice versa; and this switch in background gives the picture a whole new meaning.

A similar example is the "wife and mother-in-law ambiguity". Do you see in the picture above "the wife" (below left) or the "mother-in-law" (below right)?

ii) Non-visual Background

Let us now consider a field of view where the background is not entirely visual, but has a conceptual component as well. Below we have a chessboard with a bishop on it. In this case, the object is the bishop, and the background against which we are viewing it is the chessboard and the rules of chess. Now against such a background the bishop can only move diagonally. But if the background is changed and we now use the bishop as a paperweight on our desk, say, then it would be absurd to insist that it only be moved diagonally across the desk. Its pattern of behaviour depends upon its background.

In fact, 'backgrounds' formed entirely by our concepts and mental processes (usually non-conscious) condition what we perceive as much as the visual backgrounds we have just been considering. This idea was first developed and shown systematically by the Gestalt school of psychology, and their general conclusion that what we actually perceive is not due to public objects alone, but to their being projected onto a 'gestalt' or background set up in our minds, is still held valid today.[3]

In other words, the warrior was approaching heaven or hell according to the way he was viewing the situation, ie according to the backgrounds in his private world or mind.

Externalism Again

10 - An Act Of Faith

Knowers of the One always maintain that the world of non-difference, the Uni-verse, exists in a way that the diverse does not exist. For since any external object is in the world of difference, they must at one time have been created, and will at some time in the future be destroyed; thus its existence is limited. But in the One, because it is in non-difference, there can be no change, so the One exists forever:

This brings us on to our second Knower, the great and somewhat controversial Master Eckhart (1260-1328).[10] Eckhart was a Dominican friar, whose life was spent in studying and teaching. He got his degree of Master of Sacred Theology from the University of Paris in 1302, and five years later he was appointed Vicar-General of Bohemia, which was an important post and demanded much travelling. He was a very popular preacher throughout Germany though his later years were darkened by his trial for heresy and his harassment by the church authorities. This was partly due to his original and forceful way of expressing himself, which although making him easily understandable to the modern reader, must have sounded terrible to many pious and orthodox Christians. For instance, he expresses the non-duality of God very effectively with:

For God, being in non-difference, must be beyond the dualities belonging to the world of difference, such as good and bad, or true and false.

Eckhart commonly calls the One the "Godhead", and usually keeps the term "God" for another meaning, which we will deal with in Chapter 13. Unfortunately, he sometimes uses the word "God" for both meanings, and in the above quotation it is obvious that by "God" he means "Godhead" or the non-differentiated One.

These two, Augustine and Eckhart, will be our primary European witnesses, along with John Ruysbroeck and William Law.

In using William Law (1686-1761) we have the great advantage that he was English, so we can read his testimony as he wrote it, and do not have to read him through a translator. He studied at Cambridge and led the life of a high churchman, after which in 1727 he became a spiritual director to a family at Putney. For the last twenty years of his life he lived as a recluse near his birthplace at Stamford, where he wrote his so-called mystical writings. He did much charity work, and was loved by all. Like the others we have mentioned, he Knew that non-difference exists:

So much for the European Knowers. However, apart from them we will look at the evidence of three non-European Knowers, each from a very different culture. While it would be perfectly possible to list the testimonies of hundreds, if not thousands, of such people, in the limited space available this is obviously impracticable. These particular three are chosen because of their fame and the fact that they are representative of their class.

To represent the Knowers of China and Japan, both Buddhist and Taoist, we will choose the Dhyana or Zen master Huang Po (known as Obaku in Japan). He lived in the 9th century, and was a very influential master, a sect being named after him. He gives many names to the One, often 'Tao' or "The Void", but he is a witness that it definitely exists:

Peace

What is striking in any investigation of the testimonies of Knowers of the One, is that while the cultures and times might be varied, the testimonies themselves are remarkably similar. Just in our small selection we have 5th century Christian and 14th century Muslim, 9th century Chinaman and 18th century Englishman all speaking of the same thing in the same terms - the One, the absolutely and completely non-differentiate which does not admit of any of the difference or diversities mentioned in Part One.

So it follows that if we are living in the world of non-difference, in the One or the Godhead, we will be in complete Peace, and be subject to no suffering, pain or misery in any form, for all change will have ended. We will have no desires to drag us into the world of the diverse, for the One, in that it contains everything, will satisfy all our desires. This may sound somewhat cold and repugnant, and may appear to offer a vegetable-like existence and to be utterly selfish. Knowing the One is none of these, which we hope to make clear later; in this section we merely want to show that Knowing the One is a very blissful thing to do, giving complete and utter Peace at all levels. The Knowers of God are in a Peace and bliss which totally transcends all duality and difference, and of which only the faintest echo can be detected by those still conditioned by the diverse.

Love

And because the One contains no separateness, then it must be everywhere, as we have seen the Knowers claim previously. Since if the One were not at any place, ie were finite, then it would have an 'inside' and an 'outside' which would make it limited and in the world of difference and duality. Then since the One is everywhere, it must follow that its aspect of non-separateness or Love must also be seen to be everywhere by the Knowers of the One.

It follows from this that the true Knower of the One must have infinite compassion and Love for everybody. Rather than be immersed like a vegetable in his own private bliss and finding peace, he sees that all creatures are in the One and thus he cannot but help Loving them in the true sense of the word. For just as we have to act in accordance with separateness when in the diverse, so we have to act in accordance with unity and Love when in the One.

Of course, the Knower has to act in his body as if there were separateness, at least on a physical level, otherwise he could not move or act at all, since as we have seen all motion depends on separateness (Chapter 2). But he knows that the unity is more basic and fundamental than the separateness whereas the person conditioned by the diverse sees it the other way round.

Thus the Knower of the One lives a life concerned with helping others and eradicating the sense of separateness in them as much as he can. In other words, he manifests actively that Love which he has fund in the One, living an active life rather than one of selfish self-satisfaction and self-effacement.

Toward The One

We can regard our inherent and fundamental desire for the One as being generated either from the wish to end the Unpeace born of difference, or from the lure and attraction of being in Peace as described earlier in this chapter. Whether we choose to think of ourselves as being prodded on towards the goal, or as being enticed on, is immaterial. The result is the same - that we are continually in a process of evolving, of being born into union with the One, the source of all Peace. We are caught up in the whole striving of the diverse to transcend this diversity and attain the One.

If this whole process of 'being born' to fulfil our destiny of finding the One is the most basic and fundamental process underlying our Life, then we have solved in principle the problem of ethics or morality. For a 'good' action then becomes an action which is done to further or assist the process of Knowing the One, and a 'bad' action is one which attempts to hinder or fight against the current of God-realisation which is carrying all creation towards the One. This will be dealt with in Chapter 13; now we will finish this chapter by simply pointing out that the Knowers of the One hold that not only do we in practice seek the One and its attendant Peace, but that this is what we should do; this is what is good and right - evil and sin, on the contrary consist in living in the world of difference and obstructing all attempts to find and follow the way to the One.

Summary

We cannot say or think anything about the One, because in the One there is no difference and no duality, and words and thoughts are discursive and can thus only hope to describe the diverse or world of duality. Nevertheless, it is possible to understand intellectually what the One is not. This is reminiscent of Chapter 7, where we found that although no hypothesis could be proved with 100% certainty, we could hold that a wrong hypothesis could be negated with a 100% certainty.

The reader will notice that we have only talked about the One, in effect, in terms of what it is not. We first described the world of difference in terms of separateness, change, duality etc, with which we are all familiar, and then we described the One as negations of these terms - non-difference, non-separateness, unchange etc. The fact that we gave these negative terms positive sounding names (eg One, Love, Peace etc) does not invalidate the fact that to think or say anything about the world of non-difference we have to do so in negative terms.

The reader will remember that we approached the concept of the non-external One by considering that while we could think about and hence externalise all public and private 'objects', we could not think about the 'I' that was doing the thinking.

(The 'I' is) the knower of the activities of the mind and of the individual man. It is the witness of all the actions of the body and the sense-organs. (Shankara) [12]

Now the One, by virtue of its possessing no separateness, must be everywhere and have no limits, as we saw our Knowers testify in the last Chapter. In fact, we can go further and say that if non-difference is everywhere and in all places, then the difference and diversity which we experience cannot exist. If the diverse did exist, then some part of the One (which is everywhere) would contain diversity and difference, which cannot be the case since we defined the One as being entirely non-differentiated. However the diverse obviously does exist - we have been examining its effects in Parts One the and Two, and took the Unpeace which it generates as a starting point of the whole book. We will deal with the paradox in the next chapter, but for now we notice that although the One is by definition everywhere, it is only as the 'I' that its nature of non-difference is evident. Thus while the One manifests in some way as the diverse, for practical purposes, ie for us to Know the One, we must look to the 'I', for that is identical with the completely non-differentiated One, the Godhead, as we have seen.

So we can see from all this that in order to Know rather than just to know, we have to look to the 'I' - that which is non-differentiated and non-diverse. The 'I', by virtue of being non-external is inside us - in fact is us, our heart and essence, and it is to this point 'within' us that we have to look.

The finding of the One or the Godhead 'within' is what we have termed 'Knowing'. But note that this Knowing is not discursive, nor depends on any difference, for the 'I' which looks inside for the One, is the One itself. So there is no duality. And for this reason, Knowing is not experiencing - it is union. For experience can only operate in the world of difference and duality, since any experience has at least two parts - the experiencer and the thing experienced. But when the experiencer (the 'I') and that which is experienced are the same thing, the One, then we are in a realm beyond experience - there is complete merging or union.

Rival Interpretations

As a post-script to this chapter, we must briefly consider what William James called 'medical materialism'. He says:

In this chapter we looked briefly at what we mean by 'Knowing', that process by which we find the One. The Knowers fully substantiate our earlier conclusions that Knowing is not intellectual and discursive knowing, which can only tell us what the One is not. From Chapter 10 we see that the 'I' and the non-differentiated One are the same, from which it follows that to know the One as One, we must look within. In Knowing the One, we recognise 'I' to be 'I' and so Knowing is really a merging or 'being' the One or God-head. This union does not mean we are then conscious of nothing, but rather become conscious of everything, leading to see 'I' as all, and so Loving all. We concluded by pointing out that, by definition of 'Knowing', all attempts to explain its cause physiologically, psychologically or from any external technique or discipline were fruitless.

13 - One Into Two

Yet we see diversity, difference and change all around us, and all our actions are based, as we have seen, on the fact that we observe the diverse to exist.

Illusion

The key to resolving the paradox lies in recognising that while we have assumed the One to exist, we have not, anywhere in this book, assumed that the diverse exists. Parts One and Two were based on the fact that we experience diversity and difference - that is, that we see difference to exist - but it has never been claimed that the diverse actually does exist.

The fact that the diverse appears real and yet that common sense logic tells us it cannot exist if we accept the existence of the One, has led to what has been called the 'doctrine of illusion'. This holds that basically the diverse does not exist, and hence its seeming to exist is like a dream, mirage or illusion. In Hindu terminology it is called 'maya' ie magic.

But while we can explain away the diverse by saying blandly that it does not exist, this is not very helpful. After all, its simply seeming to exist is enough to cause all the various forms of Unpeace. As we have seen. In other words, for us the diverse is real, it does exist, and no amount of philosophising will make it go away.

How?

Although the paradox as stated at the beginning of this chapter is partially resolved by accepting the diverse to be 'illusion' (as we have defined it), there is still a profound problem. For given that the diverse is illusion, it is nevertheless an illusion which is real.

i) Delusion

Given that the question "how can the diverse exist?" is unanswerable by the intellect, we can nevertheless attempt to answer the slightly amended question "how does the diverse exist?" (In case the reader thinks that all this is mere theory, we must reaffirm that this book is practical, and to deal with the raw facts of suffering, pain and Unpeace. Having shown that Unpeace is caused by our perceiving difference everywhere, we are now investigating how it is that we do perceive difference, with a view to thus finding the solution - Peace.)

How the diverse actually does exist (for us) is easier to grasp with the intellect than the question how can the diverse exist, though we will find that in the end we are still faced with the latter question. Nevertheless, we will continue undaunted.

Undoubtedly the most coherent and consistent answer to the former question was given by the Indian philosopher Shankara; but before we consider his philosophy we will first look at the two most famous of the European philosophers - Plato and Kant.

ii) God

Before we finish with the 'how' questions, there are two loose ends to tie up. The first is concerned with the concept of God.

In chapter 11 we pointed out that Eckhart and Ruysbroek use the term 'Godhead' as being synonymous with the One, and the word 'God' they use slightly differently. It is unfortunate that often they (particularly Eckhart) used the word 'God' both to mean the Godhead and this slightly different meeting. The reader can take it that the word 'God' used anywhere before this subsection means Godhead or the non-differentiated One; in this subsection and at all times afterwards we will use it exclusively for the meaning we will now describe.

The fact is that whatever we say or however cleverly we philosophise, there is always as we have shown this insurmountable problem: how can the One or the Godhead, being completely beyond separateness and change and thus action, cause any form of non-difference (such as self) to exist? Thus in deference to the human intellect, the Knowers of the One often use another word to describe the creative principle that is, 'God'. (Plato used the term 'demiurge').

But of course in essence, God and Godhead are not, can not, be separated, any more than fire and its power to burn can be separated. The Godhead only appears as God when viewed from the point of view of the diverse, in other words God (as God) has the same degree of reality as the diverse has, and is in fact caused by our limited and diversified intellect. Thus we can get the astonishing declaration:

As long as we are bound by the world of difference and the diverse we can do no better than look to the 'ruler' of the diverse, which is God. God is the highest the human mind can grasp and the human heart can love, and so while we still identify with the ego or self, then:

iii) Good and Bad

The second 'loose end' concerns the good/bad duality. That we are conditioned to and bound by the diverse and think ourselves distinct from the One can be described as illusion (Vedanta), ignorance (Buddhism), a state of fall (Judeo-Christianity), disequilibrium (Taoism) or rebellion (Islam). All these descriptions carry the sense that distinction from the One is bad; indeed, we came to this conclusion in Chapter 11, where we pointed out than an action or thought which accentuated this distinction was 'bad' and one which went towards loving it was 'good'. This is because having 'fallen' into or become deluded by the diverse, we are continually struggling to find again the One. The whole pattern and arrangement of the cosmos is geared to us being continually born until we merge back into the Godhead, where both dying and being born no longer exist, and there is Peace. So from this point of view 'sin' or 'evil' is the attempting to hinder this process, which from our earlier discussion on the cause of the diverse is paramount to strengthening our identification with the self or ego.

Why?

From having considered the 'how?' of the One and the diverse, it is now natural to consider the 'Why'? But it should be obvious that if it is impossible to answer the question "How can the diverse exist?" then what hope have we of intellectually finding why it was originated at all? As to why the diverse exists, we have seen that the ultimate purpose of it is to lead us (or push us) away from self-identification towards union with our 'True' nature, the 'I' or Godhead. Every happening in the diverse has this end in view. This is picturesquely described by the Knowers of the One as God (or even Godhead) 'wanting' to Know himself, which he can only do by means of the 'I'.

Of course to understand why God or Godhead 'wants' this is impossible. For to understand why the One created the diverse we have to go beyond the diverse, and of course when we do that all difference vanishes, including the duality of cause-and-effect. In other words, there is no cause for the diverse, since the non-diverse or 'uni-verse' is causeless.

To try and imagine the non-differentiated One as being deficient in some respects so that it has a 'wish' or a 'desire' to 'do' something (like Know itself) goes against all our definitions. All the Knowers of the One can finally say is, like Shakespeare, that it is all a play or a game (Sanskrit 'lila'), in that the One 'play' with itself.

Summary

So how can we, then, Know the One? This is the form that our central question of human life has now taken. In Chapter 1 the question was put as "How to find Peace?" or "How to escape Unpeace?" and the argument so far has shown that Peace cannot be found anywhere in the diverse, and that the we must try and find a non-diversified One, which many witnesses claim exists but which cannot be known discursively - it must be known unitively.

While the Knower of the One lives in this world, and acts in it out of Love for others still bound by difference, his 'I' - identification rather than self-identification means he is unaffected by the difference - ie he is detached. But he is not detached in a callous way, as we pointed out in Chapter 11 - on the contrary, he works very hard for the happiness and Peace of others still attached to the suffering and Unpeace. What he is detached from is Unpeace itself; and obviously if one is detached from Unpeace, then one is 'in' Peace.

But of course while it is an excellent thing to try and cultivate detachment from Unpeace (which is what everyone is doing, consciously or unconsciously), nevertheless to use it as the means of Knowing the One is putting the cart before the horse. For we have found that by dealing in the diverse one can not transcend it. In other words, we have to first Know the One, then it will, follow automatically that we will be detached from Unpeace.

And how do we 'wake up'? Well, the source of our dream and delusion lies in the self. By being attached to and identifying with self, that is, in thinking "I am my-self" then the 'I' must be projected, as it were, through self. And thus the super-backgrounds and ordinary backgrounds which exist in the self must be superimposed onto the changeless and formless One, thereby making it appear to possess change and form - i.e, become diversified.

The 'projection' of the 'I' is possibly best described as 'Pure Consciousness', that by which we are able to be aware. Note though, that since we cannot think of or externalise Pure Consciousness (as we can our states of consciousness) it is non-external, and thus belongs to the non-differentiated One and so is identical with the 'I'. In fact, it is a term which we use as a crutch to think about the unthinkable; that which is aware (the 'I') and that by which the 'I' is aware (Pure Consciousness) are both identical, being but different intellectual concepts of the One or Godhead. The Knower of the One recognises that not only are the 'I' and Pure Consciousness both the non-differentiated One, but also that which he is aware of - ie the object of his awareness. Of course to those bound by the diverse, the object of awareness (whether public or private) is external and so in difference, since the Pure Consciousness shining, as it were, through the self is filtered through the backgrounds contained in the self and so illuminates the One as diverse. (The undesirability of this is aptly illustrated by the quotes in chapter 13.) Thus in order to wake up from the delusion and to stop seeing the apparent world of difference as diverse, then we must be free from the tyranny of self.

This getting rid of self can be very painful, since we so usually identify/completely with it, thinking "I am myself" rather than "I am 'I'". Thus losing self is often compared to death - the 'dying to self' of the last quote, or the 'ego-death'. For in order to be born into a new life, into union with the One or Pure Consciousness, we have to 'die' to our old life of self-identification.

The death spoken about is clearly not the death of the body, for that leaves the self free to take another body; it is the death of self which is meant.

The dead who have died in the Godhead are beyond our ken, like the dead are who die here to the body. That (ie the former) death is the soul's eternal quest. (Eckhart) [17]

While we can think of love for God as an intense desire to realise our essential unity with the One, the power which transforms that desire into fact can be termed the Grace of God. To put it crudely, Grace is the One in its non-differentiated aspect sort of percolating into the diverse. It is the actual means by which Pure Consciousness is diverted from filtering through self and so directed to the 'I'. To understand Grace is not possible with the intellect, since it is the One as One or Godhead, so of course it cannot be thought about. We can just naively describe it as a bit of Godhead seeping through into the world of difference.

Grace is a gift to be grateful for. (Both 'grace' and 'grateful' come from Latin, the same as 'gratuitous' = gift.) It is a gift since it has no human cause; it comes unsolicited from God. We are neither deserving nor undeserving of it - it just is and we can make use of it or not as we please. It is rather like a moving staircase which is continuously revolving and will continue to do so whether we use it to take us higher up the building or not.

We can understand the necessity for Grace even if we cannot understand Grace itself. For without Grace we would have to rely on our own actions and thoughts to Know the One, and since they are always external, diverse and discursive they can never on their own transcend the world of difference, as we have pointed out before.

But while Grace is the power which "conveys into Godhead", the question still remains how we can harness that power. While the elevator is moving all the time, it will only take us up if we step on it.

Summary

This chapter was concerned with how we can transcend the diverse and Know the One. We discounted knowing or any discursive procedure, as we had in Chapters 10 and 12. Detachment from the diverse, while theoretically possible, is in practice impossible - it is going the wrong way round, as is also dying to self. We must first consider how to Know the 'I'. To want to know the 'I' earnestly we called 'loving God', and the power which actualises that want we call the Grace of God. To harness the power of Grace we need 'Knowledge', which we define as knowing how to Know.

15 - Perfect Masters

The reason, of course, is not hard to find. For while we are all being shoved and jostled towards wanting Peace by the karmic feedback system built into the cosmos, it is not all that often that we human beings consciously develop a distaste for the world of difference, and, recognising its only gift to be continual Unpeace, strive willingly to Know the One. But even with such recognition, the path to the One is nevertheless not easy. It is:

In fact not only is walking the path hard work and difficult, it is in effect impossible without having that Knowledge of how to harness Grace, as we have seen. So the question now becomes "How to obtain Knowledge?"

Now as we look back over history, we see a curious phenomenon emerging. And this is that by and large Knowers of the One have appeared to come in clusters; and that furthermore the clusters have always centred round one of their number whom they obviously thought to be rather special. These 'special' Knowers have been given various names, such as: Saviour, Messiah, Avatar, Son of God, Satguru, Prophet, Spiritual Master, etc and they are held to be special in that they can impart to people that Knowledge of how to pick up on Grace and become Knowers of the One. Because the One is Perfect in that it is complete, whole and faultless, we shall call these special Knowers 'Perfect Masters', in the sense that they were held to be Masters of Perfection and could somehow impart to people the Knowledge of how to Know that Perfection (ie the One).

Many Perfect Masters came from India, such as Krishna, Rama, Gotama Buddha and Guru Nanak (the founder of the Sikhs), but by no means all of them. Examples of others include: Moses and Jesus Christ (Eastern Mediterranean), Mohammed (Arabia, 570-632), Lao Tzu (China, c 604-531 BC), Zoroaster (Persia, c 1,000 BC or c 550 BC), Shamsi Tabriz (Persia, 13th century AD), Quetzlcoatl (Mexico, 9th century), Maui (Maoris), Deganawida (Iroquois Indians) and the 'Ancient One' (Zulus). While it is clear that their outer appearance, speech and behaviour were all different, it nevertheless seems that they were all centre points for a group of Knowers. In fact, we hardly ever find a collection of Knowers of the One without there being a Perfect Master as the nucleus.

With the Taoist scripture the "Tao Te Ching" the position is just the opposite from the Buddhist scriptures. Here we have a very short and concise scripture of 81 verses, coherent and consistent, but no established Perfect Master. The author is traditionally held to be Lao Tzu, but no one knows for certain who he was, when exactly he lived or even if he lived at all. A biographer who tried in 100 BC to write his story, could find only two facts about him and he then threw his hands up in despair. Traditionally, however, Lao Tzu is considered a Perfect Master, one who could reveal the 'Tao' or 'Way'. He is supposed to have written the Tao Te Ching at the age of a 160 when leaving the Middle Kingdom of China for the mountains.

Not only is modern scholarship divided over Lao Tzu's existence, but also about the date of composition of the Tao Te Ching, various dates between the 6th century BC and the 3rd century BC being held by various scholars. Furthermore, the work is so concise and compressed that many different translations are possible of the cryptic and archaic Chinese. As the Tao Te Ching itself says, "Straight words seem crooked."[15] Although it is clear that the work can be interpreted as being written by a Perfect Master, it would be too technical and lengthy to establish this here.[16]

To begin with, since Perfect Masters are Knowers of the One, we should expect that their scriptures fully corroborate the arguments put forward in the last four chapters. We find this to be so, but rather than tediously duplicate the entire past four chapters and illustrate how quotes from the Perfect Masters' scriptures reinforce them, we will here just briefly sum up the three main tenets which all Knowers of the One (Perfect Masters end others) have without exception held.

Firstly: the infinite, the eternal and non-differentiated One does exist, though not apparent to our discursive faculties (eg senses and intellect), and it is the basis of the diverse.

Secondly; Unpeace consists in being attached to and being conditioned by the diverse, and in not Knowing the One.

Now we will move on from considering the Perfect Masters as Knowers of the One, and will investigate what exactly distinguishes the One from the other. Of course, in essence nothing distinguishes any Knower of the One, since they are, by definition, in union with the One in which there is no difference or distinguishing. But difference and diversity are always seen when our viewpoint is rooted in the diverse, and so we do in fact see a definite difference between those Knowers of the One we call Perfect Masters and the others.

But although Grace is essential for Knowing the One as we have seen earlier, the difficulty is to know how to make use of it and even though a Perfect Master may pep up the available Grace, this difficulty still remains. Thus in addition to his Grace, or as part of it, the Perfect Master also reveals the Knowledge of how to harness that power of Grace so that the One can be Known.

The verbal explanations of the discursive side of the Knowledge seem to involve an actual and specific teaching which was by and large kept secret, and given with discretion. In this respect it is interesting to note that in 1958 a letter from a famous leader of the early Christian church (Clement of Alexandria) was found in a Greek monastery near Jerusalem. In this letter are quoted two biblical passages from a "secret and expanded version' of St. Mark's gospel, written by Mark when in Alexandria. In these passages (which should appear after verses 34 and 46 in Chapter X of the gospels as we have it) it talks of Jesus initiating people into the Kingdom of Heaven by a secret baptismal rite; in particular, a young man was raised from the dead and Jesus initiated him into "the mystery of the Kingdom of God", and it also suggests that Jesus was passing on the Knowledge in the Garden of Gesthemane when he was arrested.[79]

It also seemed that the methods or techniques revealed in the Knowledge 'session' were such as could be practised secretly, the aspirant being told to delve somehow within himself.

The fact that the discursive part of Knowledge involves actual techniques or methods will become clear in Chapter 18; here we want to emphasise the dual aspect of Knowledge - the fact that it must have two 'sides', one facing the world of difference for the benefit of our discursive mental faculties, and the other facing the world of non-difference or the One so that Grace can be caught. If this second side to Knowledge is missing, then we only have the techniques and methods, which by themselves cannot enable the One to be Known.

Because of the Knowing of the One which the Perfect Master makes possible through the Knowledge, it is not surprising that his disciples build up an intense love for him. Indeed, this can be said to be part of the Knowledge, for in the last chapter we pointed out how love for God is a desire to be united with the One, which is a prerequisite for Grace coming to make that desire be realised. In other words, if we do not want to Know the One, then we won't. To make use of the Knowledge, we must want it and its fruits in the first place. Since the Perfect Master can perform some of the functions of God, then the love for God that is necessary for Knowing the One can legitimately be transferred to the Perfect Master. Thus a snowball effect builds up, with the would-be Knower wanting to Know the One, which is equivalent to loving the Perfect Master (and thus God), which in turn enables him to use the Knowledge efficiently which of course in turn causes more love for the Perfect Master, which in turn develops his hold on the Knowledge, which in turn...etc.

Thus it is that all scriptures maintain that love for and devotion to the Perfect Master is of the utmost importance.

Summary

It seems that the vast majority of Knowers of the One in history became so an account of their receiving Knowledge from one of their number who was special in that he could give Knowledge. These special Knowers we call Perfect Masters.

The accepted writings of (or about) the Perfect Masters are called scriptures, and they support not only that the Perfect Masters were Knowers, but that they could also give Grace and the Knowledge, the Knowledge being the two-sided link between our discursive faculties and Grace.

Love for the Perfect Master is also important, and enables the discursive side of Knowledge to be grasped much more readily.

16 - Alive Or Dead?

It seems that the key to understanding much of the scriptures is to understand how the Perfect Master talks of himself. Sometimes he talks of himself in his diverse and human aspect, and at other times in his unitive and non-differentiated aspect, and the failure to distinguish the two modes of speech can lead to much confusion.

For instance, in the last chapter we spoke of Krishna as living possibly about 1500 BC in the town of Vrindavan, and then talking to Arjuna on a battlefield etc. Now if we keep in mind only this human aspect of Krishna, we will make little sense of these statements of his:

Here it is obvious that Krishna is identifying himself with God, ie with the One in its aspect of being responsible for this world of difference. This can be done because, as we have seen while ordinary Knowers of the One legitimately say that they have become united with the One, a Perfect Master, in order to give Knowledge, has to assume some of God's functions. And because of this, he will often speak as if he were God or the One, as distinct from speaking as if he were merely united to God or the One. Also, it should be noted that because the One as Godhead exists in a Perfect Master (as indeed it is in all of us, only we do not realise it) as well as some aspects of the One as God, then the distinction between God and Godhead will tend to become a bit blurred on occasions.

The following two quotes bring out clearly the two-fold manner of speaking which a Perfect Master employs, and how we should always distinguish the two if we want to make sense of the scriptures:

In the New Testament St. John brings out very clearly this dual way of speaking of Jesus Christ. He starts his gospel talking of the Word, and saying it is that we have defined as 'God' ("the Word was God") and since God is the actionless One in action, then it follows that:

So here we have the One as God or the Word creating everything and being the principle of life in everyone; yet it is this Word which is made flesh to become Jesus. And note that not part of the Word was made flesh, but the Word. And since Jesus was the Word or God made flesh, we should not be surprised if sometimes Jesus talks of himself not as the fleshly physical body named 'Jesus', but as his true nature, the Word or God, as in "I and my Father are one." [9]

Since of course God is One by definition, we can see how in these next quotes it is that aspect of the One we have called God which is speaking, and not the physical forms in which the One was embodied at that time.

Of course, for most of us it is quite difficult to accept this, because we were brought up to think of 'our' Perfect Master, Jesus or Krishna or whatever, as being essentially the body and the personality. Now it must be stressed that the physical and personal aspect of the Perfect Master is important, and of course in this respect all Perfect Masters were different. But to the extent that they all did the same essential job, and that they were Knowers who assumed God's function of being able to give Grace, then it must be clear that we can speak of the Perfect Master - that is, the Word or the Christ-principle which incarnates in a body from time to time as a Perfect Master to give Knowledge to whoever wants it. Thus while the body of a Perfect Master - the 'Jesus' part - is born and dies like all other bodies, the things that makes the body a Perfect Master - the Word or the 'Christ' part - is never born and never dies, since it is the One as One, and there is nothing to stop it taking a fleshly body as often as it wants.

Now although Jesus was very explicit about his 'Christ' aspect, or the Word, which was "in the beginning" and which was the "true Light which lighteth every man", he was nevertheless equally explicit that only when the Word was in the flesh could this "true Light" be realised. In other word to Know the One a living Perfect Master is needed.

In these quotes it is obvious that it is the physical Jesus which is talking, and not the everlasting Christ or Word, which happened to inhabit the body called 'Jesus' for thirty three years nearly twenty centuries ago. Jesus makes it quite clear that when he (Jesus) goes, then there would be darkness, even though he (as Christ or the Word) would still exist as "the true Light which lighteth every man", And of course Jesus did go - at least, if he did not die normally, he was nevertheless "parted from them, and carried up into heaven," [24] and was thus no longer of the earth physically.

Now it is true that after the departing of Jesus from this planet, the disciples had the 'Comforter, the Holy Spirit, what we have termed 'Grace'. But we always have Grace anyway, as we saw in Chapter 14 - what is needed is the living Perfect Master to give the Knowledge of how to use that Grace; and Jesus, like all Perfect Masters, recognised this and so promised that he (as the Word or Christ) would incarnate again in a physical body.

If this is the case, and the Perfect Master or the Christ is with us in a physical body, then the obvious problem is how do we recognise him? Will he call himself 'Jesus' or 'Gotama' or the personal name he used for a particular body in the past? Jesus said it would be hard to recognise the Perfect Master:

Although Jesus also said that he will come openly, "All the peoples...will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven" etc[32], he said just afterwards "the present generation will live to see it all" [33] so it is quite obvious that he was not referring to this generation, which was almost two thousand years in the future at the time he spoke.

But although it will not be clear to everybody that the Perfect Master is again in the world, Jesus said that the Knowledge will be spread everywhere:

This gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed , throughout the earth (Jesus) [34]

And Jesus made it quite clear that by 'gospel' he did not mean the scriptures, for they, being diverse, do not lead to the One or 'eternal life':

Of course, Jesus did not say all prophets after him would be false or imposters, but merely that many will be so and that we should be on our guard. He also said that if people tell us "Here is the Perfect Master" we should not believe it; so if we must not believe, then we have to have certainty. After all, belief is very wishy-washy and emotional; if someone tells us the Perfect Master is here, then this is much too important a piece of information to merely believe or disbelieve. We must check it out thoroughly and be certain one way or the other.

The way of checking out Perfect-Master-claims which Jesus suggested was to look at what they actually did, and not just at what they said:

So the picture that has evolved so far is that in order to Know the One and find Peace we have to get Knowledge from a living Perfect Master; for otherwise we will only get a discursive knowledge which will by definition be unable to harness that Grace we need for Knowing. We hold that the Perfect Master Jesus Christ unquestionably taught this, in so far as the New Testament records his sayings. Of course, if we go to other writings about Jesus which are excluded from the New Testament, then this position is made even clearer (which is probably why they were excluded).[40]

Not only Jesus, but to the extent that we have records of their pertinent sayings, all Perfect Masters include this in their teaching. Whenever a Perfect Master announces that he will be around after he leaves his physical body, then we can be sure that he is talking of the Word or God-part, and not of the human personality which he assumed for that particular sojourn on the Earth.

Having shown that scriptures (we use the New Testament a lot merely on account of the western reader being more familiar with it) tend to suggest strongly that Knowledge can only be given by a living Perfect Master, we now go on to give some further reasons (and summarise those already given) for why we must look to a living Perfect Master. Each of the seven subsections below cover topics that could be (and have been) the subjects for whole books, so the few pages we have allotted to each necessitates a gross condensation.

i) Grace

Apart from the necessity of there being a living Perfect Master to dispense Grace and Knowledge, there is also the fact that a living Master is necessary for personal instruction and for explaining the proper conduct for his disciples to follow, apart from and in addition to the instructions imparted at the time of giving Knowledge. After all, as a person the Perfect Master is commonly very inspiring and it is a great grace to be in his physical company, or that of his close disciples who have truly Known the One.

Jesus described the protection he could give to his disciples by just being with them physically when, in 'talking' to the Father (for the benefit of the disciples who overheard), he said:

For while the Perfect Master is alive, he is the organising power behind his followers, and he can personally sort out all the problems and confusions which are bound to arise. But when he and his close disciples have died, then that inspiring instruction and discourse which can only come from One who Knows is finished; and the solutions to the problems which are bound to arise are then looked for in trying to think what the Perfect Master would have said, or in looking through his recorded discourses to try and find a parallel case. Thus orthodoxy and dogma arise, and one is left merely with the shell and no kernel.

That intense love that wells up in a disciple for his Perfect Master s called devotion. It is born out of two things, as we saw at the end of the last chapter - one is it represents the strong desire to merge with the One, of which the Perfect Master is the embodiment, and the second is that as the disciple begins to use the Knowledge then the feeling of Grace starting to take him towards his destination brings about a deep and profound gratitude. These two causes are interdependent, so that there is feedback effect whereby each cause of the devotee's love reinforces the other, so that in a very short time he feels a love for his Perfect Master which is greater than all other loves.

The necessity of this bond of love or devotion between devotee and Perfect Master is amply illustrated in the quotes later in this chapter, and we will not enlarge on them here. We will just note that again we made no mention at that point of the necessity for the Perfect Master to be living, but in view of what has been said since, it will be obvious that the positive feedback mechanism between the cause and effect of a devotee's love can only operate with a living Perfect Master.

Shankara says "The seeker must approach the Perfect Master with reverent devotion," [50] and it is clear that he means the living Perfect Master, for he also says many times in his writings "I prostrate myself before Govinda, the Perfect Master",[51] his Perfect Master being called Govinda (8th century AD, and not to be confused with Krishna, one of whose names is also Govinda).

When the Pharisee remonstrated against Jesus letting a prostitute touch him, Jesus said:

Thus it is commonly the most wicked and depraved, who, upon receiving Knowledge from the living Perfect Master, become the greatest devotees.

v) Play

At the end of Chapter 13, we decided that the final expression we could give the inexpressible reason why the Godhead should cause the diverse to appear, is to consider it as a 'play'. Of course, to us, bound by the diverse and involved in our sufferings and joys, pains and pleasures, the 'play' often appears to be very unplayful. But however deadly serious the 'play' becomes, it is nevertheless still a play, and here we have the many different meanings of the word 'play' coming into play.

We can consider the appearance of this diverse as a play in the sense of a game or sport; or we can think of it as a play in the sense of a pageant or drama and thus as being illusory - ie we are just 'playing' at being diverse and different. Alternatively, we can think of the One as playing on itself like a light-beam 'playing on' whatever it illuminates; or else we can think of the One as just having free-play to do anything it 'likes' - to bring any of its power into play. Or we can just think of the One as just being playful.

And that great saint of the last century, Shri Ramakrishna said: "God has created the world in play" [55] which echoes an earlier Eckhart quote.

Now in the same way that the One can be said to manifest this world in play, so we can also say that the living Perfect Master 'plays' with his devotees - not so much as in playing games with them (though he may well do this) but in the much wider range of meanings indicated above. For in assuming some of God's functions, the Perfect Master also assumes the ability to play cosmically with his devotees, such as for instance, Krishna's playing with the milk-maids at Vrindavan, or Jesus playing at the marriage feast in Canaan and turning the water into wine.

Complete obedience to the Perfect Master is essential for the devotee's success, and is another facet of the road to Knowing the One which can only be utilised in the case of following a Perfect Master who is alive in the body.

We can note by way of beginning that a master is, by definition, one who is to be obeyed; so a Perfect Master is one who is to be obeyed perfectly or completely. For complete obedience is really a total surrendering of self or ego, and is thus equivalent with total Knowing of the 'I' or One. It is an utter acceptance of everything that happens, since the true devotee knows that everything is the play, and happens by the Grace, of the Perfect Master anyway.

Whether by 'prelate' Eckhart means his Perfect Master is not clear. In fact Eckhart never makes mention of his own living Perfect Master, and since if we look at Europe at the end of the 13th century there is no obvious candidate for that post, then maybe Eckhart did not have a living Perfect Master. After all, Shankara reckons the odds of Knowing the One without a living Perfect Master as being a billion to one so maybe Eckhart was the one in a billion.[57] Alternatively, he may have got Knowledge from a living Perfect Master who was from Islamic culture, as the Jesuits suggest.[58] We do not know.

To refer to the subject of obedience, it is of course commonly held that complete obedience or having no will of one's own is paramount to being a slave, having 'no guts' and just being a vegetable. And of course this is true if we obey utterly anyone other than the living Perfect Master. But total submission of will to that of the Master is nothing else than a recognition of what he is, and is an opening up of oneself to Grace. Indeed, the keynote of Mohammed's teaching was this complete surrendering of self-will and his following was called 'Islam' which means 'submission':

And after all, as mentioned above, why call our Perfect Master 'Perfect Master' if he is not to be obeyed perfectly?

vii) Service

It is commonly held that a life dedicated to finding God must be quiet and contemplative. But the fact is that no Perfect Master has ever sanctioned this viewpoint, and they all stress the need for action.

After all, as Krishna said, when it comes down to it, we cannot avoid action, as was pointed out in the first chapter of this book.

But the secret is not to work for self, but to work for realisation of the One; and for the follower of the living Perfect Master, that means to work and do service for the Master. For working for self or ego increases the sense of reality of the diverse, and binds us tighter to it and its Unpeace; but in working for the Perfect Master, then the devotee is working for the benefit of all humanity, including himself. Of course, the Master does not need work to be done for him, but he lets the devotee serve him for his (the devotee's) sake.

For through action, the devotee is manifesting on a physical level his devotion for the Master, and it is another example of how external objects and activities are used by the Perfect Master to supplement the Knowledge in levering the devotee out of attachment to the external and diverse and into Knowing the One. Of course, as we have seen, no external or discursive activity can ever lead to Knowing; what discursive activity in the service of the Perfect aster does is to lessen the bondage of the self, so that it is easier for the devotee to practise the Knowledge. But without the living Perfect Master, service is merely external and can never lead out of Unpeace into Peace. Thus it is considered a very valuable opportunity to serve a living Perfect Master:

Indeed, when a devotee is near to Knowing the One in completeness, then every action he does will be for his Master, so great is his devotion, and so he will continually be doing service.

Service is really inseparable from obedience, for often a devotee will not understand why he has to perform a task that the Master sets Him. But if he understands just a little bit what a living Perfect Master is, then he will obey him implicitly and willingly do his allotted task whatever it may be.

An excellent example of this concerns fighting. We normally think that a devotee or Knower of the One should not do violence, which of course he should not do, unless he is told to by his Perfect Master. The Master Knows what is best to do, and to judge his actions or what he asks his followers to do, is the height of folly and pride. Many people do not think highly of Islam because of the fighting that Mohammed did, but it was a great service that he gave his followers, since they did not want to go to war, and it called for great obedience on their part.

And the point is that by doing their tasks for the living Perfect Master, and not for themselves, it must be good, however bad it may appear in the world's eyes. For in obeying the Perfect Master, it is he who takes full responsibility - it is all his play.

And there are many sayings of Jesus which strike strangely on the ear if we have only the gentle Jesus-meek-and-mild attitude.

And the disciples had swords, for when Jesus was arrested, Peter drew his sword and cut off someone's ear; and although Jesus told Peter to sheath his sword, he did not tell him off for being violent, but merely rebuked him for trying to stop the soldiers doing what had to be done.[80]

The reader must understand that we are not condoning war or violence; on the contrary, we hold it to be the most barbaric and inhuman activity that man has devised. The point being made here, is that however bad we think something is, if (and only if) the living Perfect Master tells us to do it, it becomes good, for the Perfect Master can only teach perfection. The utter pomposity and conceit of us judging a Perfect Master by his behaviour, or by any means other than the knowledge he gives, is aptly summed up by Swami Vivekananda speaking of Mohammed:

The central theme of this chapter has been that to Know the One we must come in contact with a living Perfect Master (or one of is apostles), for otherwise we cannot get Knowledge (we can only get knowledge).

First we looked at the scriptures again, and showed that when we distinguish between the Perfect Masters speaking of themselves as i) the human being and ii) as the everlasting One, then it is clear that they state that we need a Perfect Master who is alive and in a human body (or who died very recently). Secondly, we summarised seven distinct functions which can only be successfully performed by a living Perfect Master, and which are in practise necessary for a devotee's liberation from Unpeace and into Peace.

Part Four - The Solution: Guru Maharaj Ji

17 - The Present Perfect Master

Of course, he was 'recognised' not in any physical sense, but simply by the objective fact that he could reveal to people how to Know the One. He continued to spread the Knowledge in India, and in 1969 sent an apostle to London, to give Knowledge to whoever wanted it. In 1971 Guru Maharaj Ji left India for the first time, and went to London himself and then to the U.S.A. Since then he has visited many western countries and has sent his apostles (or 'mahatmas', as we shall call them) all over the world.

'Gu' is a Sanskrit word meaning darkness, and 'ru' means light, so a 'guru' is one who leads from darkness to light, ie a teacher or master. 'Maha' means great, and 'raj' is a ruler or king, while 'ji' is just a suffix denoting respect. Thus 'Guru Maharaj Ji' means supreme teacher or Perfect Master. Guru Maharaj Ji explains the term thus:

And Guru Maharaj Ji makes no bones that he is the living Perfect Master:

At the time of writing (March 1974) Guru Maharaj Ji has coming on for ten million devotees, most of them in India. In the West at the moment there are about 150 thousand. Obviously Guru Maharaj Ji cannot physically give all these people Knowledge, so it is the 'mahatmas' or apostles who actually conduct the Knowledge sessions or initiations, where the techniques of Knowledge are imparted. But as we stressed in the last chapter, mahatmas are not Perfect Masters; although they explain the discursive aspect of Knowledge, it is Guru Maharaj Ji's Grace flowing through them which imparts the non-discursive aspect we have already discussed, thus turning knowledge into Knowledge.

The essence of this short chapter is the statement that Guru Maharaj Ji is the present Perfect Master.

18 - The Knowledge

Anyway, having decided that one wants to receive Knowledge and having taken the appropriate steps, at some point a would-be devotee finds himself in a Knowledge session.

The Knowledge session is really a birth; it is one of the decisive steps that a human being takes in the continuous process of being born which we began Chapter 1 by describing. Thus Jesus can say, "unless a man has been born over again, he cannot see the kingdom of God...Flesh can only give birth to flesh; it is spirit that gives birth to spirit."[4] It is at the Knowledge session that the "birth to spirit" is given.

In the remainder of this chapter we will look briefly at what the discursive side of Knowledge actually is, beginning with the 'session' at which Knowledge is given. We will deal later with how the Knowledge is actually practised.

Basically, to receive Knowledge is to go through a simple initiation which consists of the following:

1) A dedication of oneself and one's life to Guru Maharaj Ji;

2) A symbolic offering - eg fruit, flowers or some material possessions, depending entirely on the feelings of the would-be devotee. (No money or fee is ever charged for receiving Knowledge - the nature of the offering is solely the initiate's concern);

3) The explanation of four simple instructions, namely i) that the mahatma is not the Perfect Master, ii) that the devotee should henceforth obey Guru Maharaj Ji, iii) that the devotee should not reveal the techniques of the Knowledge unless with Guru Maharaj Ji's personal permission, and iv) that he should involve himself in the three activities described in the next section;

The techniques revealed at the Knowledge session are those whereby one is taught to concentrate on four particular private 'objects', or phenomena in the private world; namely Light, Music, Nectar, and an inner vibration or rhythm - the Word or Holy Name. These phenomena are not public, and in fact are always present inside us, but being very subtle they are seldom perceived. Even if they sometimes are experienced before receiving Knowledge, it is not recognised what they in fact are.

The phenomenon enabling the non-differentiated Godhead to be perceived discursively as Light is widely documented by all Knowers and in all scriptures. It is often held that 'light' is just a symbol for truth or the One, and is just a way of speaking, as in the phrase "I have seen the light" meaning "I have understood". But those who have Knowledge will testify that on the contrary one sees, as one of the discursive facets of Knowledge, actual light - a light which is so pure and bright that it can hardly be described.

This light is actually perceived but not with the physical eye; blind people can see it when shown how to look. In other words, we need to have opened a 'third eye', which the mahatma does in the Knowledge session. Thereafter, this light can be seen any time one cares to practise the technique.

At the Knowledge session, some initiates see just faint patterns, while others see a brilliant sun or experience their whole head being flooded with light, whilst still others have a vision of Guru Maharaj Ji or a past Perfect Master they particularly loved (eg Jesus or Krishna). The Light is always with us, for it "lighteth every man that cometh into the world"[19] as St. John says; in fact, according to John, the Light is our life[20] - the Knowledge merely reveals it.

To experience the Light when it is bright and steady is to be purified of self or mind, and this is obviously the origin of the alchemical idea of purifying by fire:

ii) The Music

The Music is analogous to the Light in that it is an interior sound which is not perceived through the ears; deaf people can hear this music on being shown the technique. When shown the technique in a Knowledge session, many people often hear a murmuring sound which can be likened to the sea, a waterfall, a roll of drums, crickets or even thunder; as St. John said:

The Nectar is a subtle liquid which can actually be detected and drunk with the appropriate technique, and in tasting it one feels particularly healthy and satisfied. The devotee who regularly drinks the Nectar will rarely get ill. In addition to fending off illness, drinking the Nectar sustains the body, and it is said that Knowers of the One can exist for many years if need be on Nectar alone (ie not eating food).

The Name or Word is God; it is the primordial energy of creation. The reader will remember in Chapter 8 we saw that only the forms of energy belong to the diverse; the actual energy itself is uncreated and undestroyed - it is the power which sustains everything, and we can call it the Name or Word of God.

And in this, the fourth technique, the initiate is shown how he can feel this fundamental rhythm of life. It is of course not a mantra of any sort, or a syllable or a sound which is speakable or imaginable.

It is revealed in the Knowledge session as a comparatively gross vibration existing in the human body, but even concentrating on this brings about incredible peace and stillness. After a short time of practice the devotee perceives the vibration as becoming much subtler and finer, and as he progresses it becomes so fine as not really to be thought of as a vibration any more.

Since the Word or Holy Name is within us constantly, it can be remembered constantly. The mind can and should be focused on the Word during any and every activity.

Summary

We started off this chapter by pointing out that to use the Knowledge to full advantage, the would-be devotee must fulfil those conditions which ensure he will put some effort into practising it. We then briefly described what happens at a Knowledge session, and then dealt with the four phenomena perceived in the private world as a result of practising the four discursive techniques of Knowledge.

19 - The Three Activities

Meditation is the practising of the four techniques as revealed in the Knowledge session, and concentrating upon any one of the four private phenomena produced by practising these techniques and discussed in the last chapter.

But Krishna answers that the mind or ego can be mastered, only we have to practice our meditation. This of course, is the answer of all Perfect Masters.

(Thus although of the four private phenomena, one is specifically called the "Word", we can also think of each of the four as being a manifestation of that Pure Energy or Word.)

Concentration upon the word is alive and vital, since the Word is itself the essence of life. By its own nature, the Word aids the mind in concentration, and slows down all the mind's ceaseless chatter and whirr of mental activity which is extraneous to the task in hand. The Word is very powerful; in fact it is the power-house of the Cosmos and of our own life. By just touching it in one's meditation, even if only for a few moments, one feels completely refreshed and invigorated, as if being washed over by a great wave of peace and joy.

The organisations are two in number, and we will first deal briefly with the Divine Light Mission - henceforth called DLM.

This is the organisation of the followers of Guru Maharaj Ji, and was originally founded by Guru Maharaj Ji's father, Shri Hans Ji Maharaj, in India in 1961. Taking Guru Maharaj Ji's Knowledge means that one is automatically a member of DLM, though by no means all devotees play an active role in it. Guru Maharaj Ji's mother, Mata Ji, is the patron of DLM, but being an organisation of Guru Maharaj Ji's followers, Guru Maharaj Ji has no official role in it. Needless to say though, each of the officials in DLM, by virtue of their being devotees intent on Knowing the One, obey Guru Maharaj Ji implicitly and so in practise DLM is run by Guru Maharaj Ji, both by means of his external instructions and of course by his non-external Grace.

Divine Light Mission is one organisation functioning internationally, and at the time of writing is well-established in at least forty different countries. This represents an incredible expansion, bearing in mind that before 1969 it was only established in one country - India. It functions slightly differently in each country, depending upon that nation's laws and social customs.

In Britain, DLM is officially run by a board of trustees who are all devotees of Guru Maharaj Ji, although the day to day running is supervised by officials such as the General Manager, General Secretary or Treasurer.

ii) Divine United Organisation

The second of Guru Maharaj Ji's organisations is the Divine United Organisation (DUO). The ultimate aim of DUO is explained by Guru Maharaj Ji:

So the purpose of DUO is to solve man's physical problems, but of course as we have seen Peace cannot be achieved by such external methods alone. So Guru Maharaj Ji stresses that along with material benefits humanity must be given Knowledge:

DUO has only been recently formed, and it again is an international organisation. In Britain it is a limited company, the shares being owned by the trustees of DLM, and it is composed of several subsidiary companies, which include such activities such as printing, clothes manufacturing, a travel agency, a garage, health service, taxi service, electronics and many more. The idea is that devotees will work for DUO just as for an ordinary company, and they will get a wage, which they will be free to keep or donate (in part or in toto) to DLM, as they wish. The point is that since DUO is working for world Peace under the guidance of Guru Maharaj Ji, then the devotees' work will benefit humanity as well as being service to the Perfect Master.

So these two functions of DUO complement each other, and in fact merge into each other. For while devotees of all sorts are given the opportunity to do service, then they are being assisted towards realising Peace on account of service to the Perfect Master being an activity which helps in the practice of Knowledge. But also the actual work they do will help others in a physical aspect as we have seen, and so lessen the tremendous material poverty and suffering that exists in the world. The reason that DUO hopes to succeed in this when most other organisations, including governments, are failing is because the employees of DUO are working not for money or selfish power, but out of love. And the more they work, then the more of Guru Maharaj Ji's Grace they pick up, and so the more their love is increased.

Thus it is that the DUO proclamation reads:

The relationship between DUO and DLM is that while DLM will tend to look after all direct propagation of Guru Maharaj Ji's message and the Knowledge, DUO will be more concerned with improving the world physically, and with financing both organisations.

Summary

We dealt in this chapter with the three activities in the diverse which Guru Maharaj Ji recommends all devotees to engage in for Knowing the Godhead to be reached in the shortest time.

Meditation is the private activity which consists in concentrating upon the four private phenomena discussed in the last chapter. It is that activity by which, by Guru Maharaj Ji's Grace, we can be freed from attachment to the diverse and can find total Peace in the unitive Knowing of the Godhead. Since, however, Knowing cannot be written about or explained discursively, in this chapter we looked at two effects of meditation which occur as a by-product of the fact that meditation leads us out of the diverse.

It was a working hypothesis diametrically opposed to that of academic philosophers, of which we can take Bertrand Russell's as typical:

Huxley's hypothesis is, in effect, that no philosophy which accepts these things can hope to stand, and it was this which I took, as I said, as my working hypothesis.

There then followed some abortive attempts to find the Godhead - many painful hours spent performing some meditational technique outlined in some appendix of some 'spiritual' book. The result was nil. It was then that I saw the need to emend slightly my working hypothesis, by including the condition that the "Law or Dharma which must be obeyed, the Tao or Way which must be followed" could not be obeyed or followed from books - I needed a teacher, someone who could practically show me where I was going wrong, and what I had to do.

This led to a two-year period of my trying to find such a teacher. It included a short stay in a Christian monastery, and a year's being attached to a Buddhist monastery. One thing that impressed me greatly during this period was that all the teachers I met, Christian and Buddhist, Yogi and Zen, Spiritualist or Occultist, were all saying essentially the same thing, though in different terminologies. And what they were saying was in essence the hypothesis outlined by Huxley above. But although everybody agreed about the hypothesis or theory, the practical was a different matter.

Although it was generally agreed that the laboratory in which the hypothesis had to be tested was 'inside' us, I found no-one able to tell me exactly what experiment to perform, and how to perform it, which led to a satisfactory testing of the hypothesis.

Then early in 1970 I met a devotee of Guru Maharaj Ji.