GOD OR FIELD

The text of a talk given at Parklands by Eugene Halliday, Ishval Audio 70

Track 1

Most people believe in what we call the Field of intelligence and quite a number believe that that field is called by me God but that I don’t mean God I only mean the field. Now, how many people here would dare to subscribe to this statement that when I use the word God I don’t mean an intelligent, personal being but a universal power which governs the Universe which is not personal and is simply called God as a shorthand instead of using the rather longer term, Universal Creative Power. How many think I mean that, yes?

Not a lot, why do you omit personal?

Pardon.

Why do you omit personal?

Do I omit personal? I said a number of people believe that I use the word God for an impersonal, creative, universal power. I am going to say that I don’t exclude the word personal from it at all, but I know that a lot of people think that I do, and I want to discuss this in fairly small detail to show really what we are talking about.

Today, we are in a better position than we were in the days of Thomas Aquinas and various other theologians and thinkers who tried to prove the existence of God by various arguments, based on logic. Today we have another way of doing the same thing, and it arises because, through the growth of physical science we have become really aware of the fact that matter is energy.

Matter is energy. Let’s take an example from William Blake. William Blake said, really the purpose of life is delight, delight, enjoyment in the body. And, energy is of the body, he said, energy is of the body and you are to delight in the body, because from the body, comes energy. Locke was fined in his day because there was not the scientific proof, that matter, that is to say body, is itself, energy. So we can take what William Blake meant ‘Energy is of the body’ and turn it over and say ‘the body is of energy’. Let’s accept that our physical body is known to be, demonstrably, energy, and we are going to keep that concept in the mind, the body is energy. The Body is that through which we experience thoughts, feelings, impulses of wills, desires, wishes, wants, and all these are mysteriously, in for each of us, what we call the body, but the body, but the body is energy. Keep that in mind a moment and we will then start to consider the nature of a dualism.

Now, in philosophy there have been dualists and there have been monists and pluralists. That is to say there have been men who have believed that if we analysed reality, very, very carefully, we will come to the conclusion that the ultimate reality is one, we call those thinkers, monists, there is one fundamental cause. And then we have another group called the dualists and say no, if we say there is one, fundamental cause we have a difficulty, because , manifestly, in the world there are good things and evil things and if there is only one thing as basic, that one thing must be the cause of the evil as well as the good. And then, we would look in the Old Testament and they would find the God there described saying, “Am I not He who gives good and gives evil.” And, the same thing in Islam, God, Allah, is credited with sending evil as well as good. So the monist has to say good and evil are from the same source. And that is a bit of a puzzle to human beings on earth who say disease is an evil, and God is good, therefore how can that good God be the source of the evil, the disease, the killing thing, the painful thing. So they say let us not believe that the evil is from God and then we have to account for the presence of the evil and we will invent a philosophy called dualism and we will say, the fundamentals of the world are two, not one; one is a good principle and one is a bad principle an evil principle.

In so-called Persian dualism, we have a good principle and a bad principle. The Good principle is intelligence, is working for proper creative purposes, and the bad principle is disintegration, corruption and death and these two are not related together on a prior unific base.

Track 2

Let’s think about this very carefully. We know there is disease and we call it evil. We don’t think to our self how about our life possibly being lived in such a way, wrongly that disease is an automatic result of, an indicator of the fact that we are living in a wrong way, in which case then the disease would not be an evil it would be a very good warning, like a pain that you get if you bang a bone and it wants to rest while it recovers, and you don’t like the pain and you would say the pain is bad, but in fact if you had not got the pain you would carry on beating our bones until they fell to pieces. In which case the disease, the pain, would be a message to tell you, “Change your lifestyle.”

Now we have monist view which says the good and the evil come from the same source. We have a dualistic view which says that the principle of good is quite separate from the principle of evil; and we have a pluralistic one that says there are not just one or two ultimates but there are an infinite number of ultimates, each one a monad, each one in its own right and a sort of general scramble between them constitutes reality.

Let’s examine the nature of the dualism. If two principles existed and they were totally unlike each other, being totally unlike, they could not interact. Let’s be quite sure about this. Now, if any of you have any ideas to criticise this statement, will you please let us have them. If there were two ultimate principles, and these principles were mutually exclusive, that is they had nothing whatever in them of the other one, we would have A there and B there, in A there is no B, in B there is no A, if they are totally dissimilar they cannot interact. Can we first see the logic of that and then we will move forward. If they are totally dissimilar they cannot interact. Any dissenters? Are there any here who would say, “I can imagine a way in which two totally dissimilars could interact? Are there any such persons here? Are there any brave hands to show? Yes?

Is there a question of the energies being dissimilar?

Energy? Are they supposed to have energy, both of them? Wouldn’t that make it that they had something in common, namely energy? In which case energy would be the ultimate and not this dualism, yes? And what happens to your objection?

It is not a dualism.

It is not a dualism, you fall back into a monism of energy, and that is very, very much like the position of modern science, they are really energy monistic thinkers. They say all is energy and this energy appears on the one hand as good and health; and on the other hand as bad and disease. But, energy as basic is not a dualism is it? So first we have to be quite sure, that if there were an ultimate dualism, there could not be an interrelation of function between the two absolutely discrete aspects. Is that so?

We have had one objection, have we any more?

No, pardon?

Can we talk about energy because isn’t energy finite?

Not at this moment we can’t. At the moment we are busy demolishing dualism.

No I mean demolishing dualism, energy is usually finite.

We haven’t even defined energy yet, we have just that if it is that, whatever it means, the dualism collapses, right? So now we have a position in which we are forced to say either a monism is true or there is another solution. Another solution can be pluralism that’s the idea that whatever it is, each thing is itself, eternally, separate. That’s in for monadic theory, pluralistic monadism. Each being is himself eternally what he is and in no way is influenced by way other being. Liebnitz was the great exponent of this in his monadology and he would say all the entities in the Universe are separate from each other. He even went so far as to say they are windowless, there is no communication, and the apparent relations of beings in that view are not real at all. They are appearances, they are accidents., they are non-essential, they are a fabrication of a mind fooled into thinking there is a relation, because if the monadic pluralism is true then every being is itself, utterly isolated from every other being, there is no communication. If you speak and I listen or I speak and you listen, if we think there is any relation between the thing said and the thing heard that would be totally an illusion, there is none.

Now that doesn’t bear examination at all because if it did, we would all get up and walk away immediately and I would be first through the door.

Track 3

Now let’s think about the word one and the doctrine of monism. The doctrine of monism says there is only one ultimate power. Now when we write the word one in any of the languages we know, any of the words you can use to translate the word one, the implication is always that there is a circumscription around it. So if we say “Universe,” uni means one, Universe, one turn. There is a great big circle and you include all phenomena inside that big circle. Now if you can include it inside the big circle so that nothing is left out, you can talk about a monism, but when you draw a circle, don’t you, in the act of drawing it to exclude the Infinite, you have contained within the circle, within the sphere what there is, but you have excluded infinity. In the act of drawing that line you have made a funny kind of disguised dualism. The one sphere of the Uni- verse has excluded an infinity of other possibilities not mentioned. Now to avoid this difficulty, another term is coined, non-dualism. Now non-dualism says that dualism is untrue but it also says that monism is a false idea, because to make monism, you have to draw a line round total reality and that line excludes infinity beyond it. So lets rub out the dualism and rub out the monism and see what we have instead, and call this non-dualism, advaita, not two-ness.

What have we got then? We have an infinite field with no circumscribing line round it and this Infinite field has, internal to it, all the things that we can draw some circumscribing line round. This Infinite Field covers whatever we care to think about and yet transcends anything whatever that we can say about it. So if I say, “Well, the origin of the Universe gives evidence that there is a power that has made the Uni-verse, the great big ‘one turn’, but beyond this turn there is that which is not turning, that is, the Motionless Mover, the one that does not move itself but moves the Universe, the One Turn within itself, and that these are not really two because the big sphere of the Universe is nothing but a modal expression of the Infinite. Now is that a fairly simple concept? We have an Infinite Power and the Infinite Power posits the Universe and every being within it and everything we can draw a line round. It posits these but itself has not got a line round it.

Now the man who was burned at the stake for saying that very clearly was Bruno, in the year sixteen hundred, because he said the centre of Infinity is anywhere, like each person here is a centre of awareness, and the perimeter, the periphery is nowhere. There is no outer circle binding us all, it is Infinite, that each one of us is a centre within the Infinite, posited by the Infinite, and mysteriously, there is no dualism. It posits within itself, like a dot for each being, within a field; we can represent the Field by a piece of plain paper and we can get a pencil and put dots on the paper and say each dot represents an individual and each individual is not separate from the Power which is Infinite which posits the dot. We then have a non-dualistic, non-monistic, Infinite source power of all things. Now, let’s take another step. We have said that we can’t have an ultimate dualism because totally alien things cannot interact.

Track 4

Now let’s take two very alien things, according to science, namely, consciousness of the scientist and the object on the table in the laboratory.

We have consciousness and we have objects of consciousness and it would appear that these two, the object of consciousness like this chair, and the consciousness which is aware of the chair, are not of the same order. Don’t you treat your body, especially your bones as if they were objective realities in some way absolutely different from your consciousness of the bones? Don’t you feel, if you knock one bone on another, in that way, that somehow, the hardness of the bones is not like the subtlety of your will, the subtlety of your wishes, your wants, your desires. Somehow, wishes and wants and desires and wills but our impossibility of accepting a dualism says that we cannot have two utterly different ultimates, because they couldn’t interact. Now, it is a fact that in the human body, from our own personal experience and from the animals and the plants and so on, that there is a relationship between willing, desiring, wishing, wanting and movement of the body.

I wish to wave my hand at my friend over there, John Coop. Hello John, and he waves back. That is a sign of communication. He understood what I meant by wave, and when I went like this he didn’t think I had suddenly gone funny, he thought I was waving. Something inside him and in his consciousness he made an interpretation and then he demonstrated it by waving his hand back. Did I ask you to wave you hand back, John?

No.

Did we meet before this meeting and arrange that I would wave my hand and you would respond? No?

No.

No. Right, so we didn’t connive and yet we mysteriously interpreted each other. Now, there is therefore, a non-dualistic relationship between the will, the desire, the wish, the want and the movement of physical muscles and bones. The muscles and bones are moves by the intent of the will, or by the desire or by the wish or the want. There is a wish, a want, a desire and suddenly an arm waved, there is a manifest relation between them. Now we can’t allow a dualism so we have to say there must be a causative inter-relation between the waving of the hand and the will to wave it, and the moment we have allowed this we have stepped into very strange country which is purely creative. Because, if this is so and it is unavoidably, undeniably so, then the will, the desire, the wish, the want can influence the so-called material world.

Now let’s hold that in our mind a bit. We are now going to examine the concept of an infinite continuum. Infinite means ‘not bound,’ in-finite, ‘not limited, and, continuum’ Continuum is used to express the idea of that which is part-less, that which is not made of little bits like atoms. It is a field of power, a field of power with no gaps, no inter-spaces, no voidities. The whole of reality is an Infinite Field of Power. If it had parts there would be gaps between them, and if the gap were utterly dissimilar from the objective part within the space, there would be a dualism again, and we can’t allow a dualism, a dualism is false, its bad logic, so we have to say this that the object is a modality of the continuum. The part-less continuum, not made of atoms, a continuous field of power, by its self-modalisation, self-compressions and so forth, creates, what we call, the objective world.

Now in this way, the objective world is nothing other than the continuum behaving locally like an object and there is no dualism.

Track 5

Now let’s look at this very carefully. We said we cannot avoid the conclusion that a dualism is false; we cannot avoid that a desire, a wish, a want, can move a muscle, change the position of a bone, and in the process of admitting that, adding that to the continuum, we have to say, because this continuum has no parts, therefore the quality of the continuum is, throughout its whole infinity, everywhere identical. That means to say that if a finger can go like that there, a finger can go like that there, and a leg can go like that there. The continuum’s qualities are, throughout, identical. Now that is the equivalent of saying the Universe is entirely magical, because there is no fundamental difference between willing, desiring, wishing, wanting and matter, body. We have to see that so-called bodies are objectifications by self-activation, self-modalising of an infinite continuum. But, the qualities of the continuum are throughout themselves identical everywhere and we have already said that desire, and will and wishing and wanting, and physical bodies moved by desire, cannot, ultimately, be different. So that both desires and physical bodies, must be, both, modalities of that continuum.

Track 5

Now, let’s look at this very carefully. We cannot avoid the conclusion that a dualism is false, we cannot avoid that a desire, a wish, a want can move a muscle, Change the position of a bone, and in the process of admitting that, adding that to the continuum, we have to say, because a continuum has no parts, therefore the quality of a continuum is throughout its whole infinity, everywhere identical. That means to say that if a finger can go like that there, a finger can go like that there, and a leg can go like that there. A continuum’s qualities are, throughout identical. Now that is equivalent of saying, the Universe is entirely magical because there is no fundamental difference between willing, desiring, wishing, wanting and matter, body. We have to see that so-called bodies are objectifications by self-activation, self-modalising of an Infinite Continuum. But the qualities in the continuum are throughout themselves identical everywhere, and we have already said that desire and will and wishing and wanting and physical bodies moved by desire, cannot, ultimately be different so that both desires and physical bodies must be both, modalities of that continuum. Physical bodies moved by desire cannot ultimately be different, so that both desires and physical bodies must be, both, modalities of that continuum.

Now, let’s look at the idea of the continuum as possessed of all conceivable qualities because any quality that we have, can be discovered anywhere within the infinite space that we call the place of the Universe and beyond. You know in physics you say the chemistry of all parts of space is the same and if you were an atomist you might say it is all built of hydrogen because that hydrogen has one electron, one proton and you just keep adding these up and you get further elements until you get to uranium and some artificial ones beyond, but they are all simply the adding up of one and one and one and one and one and one and one. So that all numbers other that one are shorthand for a long expression like one and one equals two, one and one and one equals three, one and one and one and one equals four; it is quicker to say one, two, three, four, than to keep muttering one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one. And as Carroll would say, “I lost count.” The thing about counting and making special names for special groups of ones is that it is economic, it saves time.

Now we have a continuum which is Infinite and we have the qualities of that continuum everywhere identical and we have those qualities observable in two ways, as consciousness and as objective content of consciousness, so when we identify our conscious we discover that the consciousness itself is infinite. Because when you look at a person that you know,….. There is my friend Josie and I recognise her behind Pamela and Gordon and so on, when I look at them, at the very moment of focussing on Josie, I see a space round here, and occupying that space there Pamela and there is Gordon and so on, each of the times I look at an object I become aware of the space beyond it. My awareness is always beyond the object. The object is always internal to my field of awareness.

But we can’t have two infinites, can we? Infinites have no edges so if there were two they would be mutually interpenetrating and absolutely indistinguishable. So now we arrive at a peculiar thing, - an Infinite Field of Power with a capacity to project inside itself, introject, throw inside itself objective manifestations of itself as power and these objective manifestations are what we call bodies in the infinite field. But we also a quality, also of the same continuum of the awareness of these objectifications and we are not allowed a dualism, so we have to say a very peculiar thing, the Infinite Continuum has a dual aspect but not an ultimate dual reality. And the dual aspect is body impression, body introjection and awareness of body, producing, apparently, two worlds, a world of awareness and a world of objective contents of the field of awareness. And this gave rise, anciently, to the idea of souls and bodies, the soul being the field of awareness and the body being the introjected condition of manifestation of the soul. In modern parlance we call that psychosomatic correspondence. For every psychic condition there is a precipitate that becomes a so-called objective chemical representation of that psychological internal self- precipitation.

Track 6

Now, because it is conscious, because it is sentient, it is aware of its contents; because it is power, it can mobilise its objective contents and we cannot separate the consciousness and the power other than aspectually by an intellectual fiction. Therefore we have to say this continuum of Sentient Power must know absolutely all its contents as we know the contents of our world, only to an infinitely extended degree. We have to say that that continuum, that field of power, is a field of consciousness, a field of sentience with the totality of all conceivable objects within it, introjected by it and known by it, absolutely to the minutest detail. There is no object that is not known to the field that precipitates the object.

Now, let’s think about this continuum of Sentient Power and then say to ourselves, when we talk about personality in ourselves what do we mean? We always mean, well, I know I can think, I know I can feel, I know I can will and express myself and if we have these faculties we say that is a person, a person, per sona, through sounding, through this organism, sounds an intention. It uses some ragged vocal chords to express itself, but it is expressing an intention. My intention to think and then to express my thought are not ultimately separable, they are, all of them, modalities of the Field of Power, and this continuum, this Field of Sentient Power, in us has personality. But this personality that we are so fond of and so proud of when we think it is a good shiny one, this person, this personal expression, this personality of man which we all admit and proudly state that we have, is nothing but a modality of the Infinite Sentient Field Power, and this Infinite Sentient Field Power has all the personalities that we’ve got, whereas we generally, only have the little bit we have.

When we talk about reflexively getting hold of ourselves, that is, becoming aware that we think and feel and will, and that we will to feel and will to think, we are saying of ourselves, “We have a marvellous power, I will recite ‘Mary had a little lamb, and three, two, one, zero, deliberately,” and we can all do the same things can’t we? Yes we can. This modalising of the Infinite Power of the Universe in each of us is nothing but an act of that Infinite Continuum of that Field Power nothing but an act of that Field Power and that Field Power cannot not know what we are doing.

If I close my fist, like that, and I know it, do you know I closed my fist, do you know I’ve opened it, closed it, opened it? Well then, the continuum of Field Power must know that I am closing my fist when I close it. It cannot not know it, and what I call my personality, your personalities, our power to think and feel and will and express ourselves, that is a modality of that Field Power. Now, take all the things that all the beings that have ever lived in the past; all the things of all the beings living in the present and all the things of all the beings that ever can live in the future, which have this mysterious capacity of personal self- expression, put it all together in one, magnificent, marvellous view, there is nothing that it does not know, has not known, is knowing now, will know in what we, in our finite minds call the future, because the future, also, is a modality of that same Sentient Field Power.

So we are then been able to say, this Field Power somehow, mysteriously, must be not only all power, omnipotence, it must be omniscience also. It knows everything, down to our least breath, our minutest itch. This Field Power has all that we mean by personality plus lots of things we haven’t yet learned in physical science and the total wisdom that the human race will eventually arrive at will be no more that the introjected self-impression of the Infinite Field Power. So that all our personal expressions are really nothing but the personal expression of this Infinite Field Power. And then, instead of keep repeating that long term, Infinite, Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent, Intelligent, self-determinant Power for economy of it we will say God. But when we say God we will not mean a funny old man on a cloud, we will always mean the totality of all that we could possibly think of in every way, physically emotionally, mentationally, conceptionally, volitionally, episcopally, all of those plus many, many things that we haven’t evolved yet to be smart enough to conceive; and all of these together are God.

Track 7

Does it mean that God made sin as part of creation?

Now we have to define sin. Whenever we introduce a new word we must define it. Now the word ‘sin’ is the translation of a Greek word meaning to miss the mark. And the word ‘sin’, also, in the Anglo-Saxon- Germanic roots means to aim, to have a goal. If your goal is finite, you are a sinner. Why so? Because when you have a finite goal, you have elected to say, “I will do X, and I define it.” In the act of defining it, it becomes finite. How do I know that the Infinite will disallow it or allow it? Is it within the capacity of an individual, egotistic, human being to declare his aim and say I will fulfil it like I will do the highest pole vault that ever was at the next Olympic? And some comedian throws a bar of soap in the bath, unexpectedly I skid and hit the back of my skull on the bath and it cracks and I’ve, now got a dream of the Olympics, not the fact. Everything we do finitely and will to do finitely can be contradicted by the Infinite sentient Field Power the shorthand for which is God.

So we sin when we very foolishly say we have an aim which is finite, defined by us and at the same time believe, how we come to do it I don’t know, I’ve never been able to believe it but I’ve been assured by thousands of people that they believe it, that they can actually define a target and go for it and guarantee to get it, barring earthquakes, and what the insurance company would call, “Acts of God,” which the policy, doesn’t cover, yes?

Does that mean that covers all of us?

Covers all of us?

All the objects?

All objects?

All objects of existence?

Yes, object. Object is short for an orb thrown. Ob and orb is the same word and ‘ject’ means to throw, doesn’t it? I know you’ve done a bit of Latin. So the orb thrown, yes is the object. Who threw it? The Infinite Sentient Field Power threw the object and in being thrown it became THR-one didn’t it? It is not only thrown THROWN, thrown, that is to say, owed to the Absolute, it is also a throne upon which you can sit, it is an objective position. The Earth is a thrown object, it is God’s footstool. That is to say the Infinite has posited that Earth to stand on and to live on. There are no objects that are not modalities of that Infinite Sentient Power Field. All of them are introjections. In-throwings of that Field and we have no possibility of escape. Now we can then look at the human race and divide it historically into two kinds of beings, those that like the idea that there is an intelligent Sentient Field Power creating and maintaining the Universe and looking after its creation; and those who hate the idea because it is an interference with their private aim, the Herods of this world, the ones who would like to corner the market, the ones who would like to buy up all the shares of Amershams first day of sale, the ones who like to get a bigger and a better of whatever it is than anybody else and make it absolutely secure. Two kinds of people, those that are very pleased to think that the Universe is fundamentally intelligent, with a caring, considering, personalised power in charge and those who don’t want that personal power to be in charge because it could interfere with the Stock Exchange at the moment I am about to buy. So we divide those onto two kinds of people, and they are called, in occult terms, people of the right-hand path, those who like the idea of intelligence being in charge, people of the left-hand path, those who dislike it and wish to wriggle out of it.

Track 8

Now, any argument you care to present in anybody whatever for the freedom of the individual human being determining his own act, his own beliefs, his own desire, his own will, his own purpose, any argument you care to put forward to prove that and establish it as a truth, I will personally undertake, to take to pieces. Now will anybody care to advance any kind of justification whatever for this statement? Let someone say I believe that I, personally, finitely within this physical body, with my brains, my nervous system, my heart, my liver, my spleen, my kidneys, they are all my work and I can do with them as I will, and there is no interference from the Infinite Sentient Power, which according to Karl Marx is opium for the masses. But, even Karl Marx in the same passage said, not only opium but a cry of the human heart against the tyranny of this materialism. Now is anybody going to stick a neck out and undertake to defend?

So then the I, Absolute Self, is Cosmic Observer, that’s the ism is actually my faith?

You see yourself. Are you talking about Gordon Smith?

No.

No, who?

That which observes.

The Infinite,

The Infinite.

The Infinite Observer, but that is not Gordon Smith? Gordon Smith is a modality of it in that place. Can that particular modality which we call the empirical ego guarantee to fulfil any of its purposes whatever?

Definitely not.

Definitely not. Is there anybody that thinks that they could? Is there anybody here to whom I can bend the knee and say verily thou hast spoken true and as from now I don’t believe in that other Infinite Sentience I believe in you, yes? The Yiddisher half of my soul would revolt and say this sounds suspiciously like idolatry, yes? Krishnamurti has spent fifty years trying to convince people that he is not a divine messiah. He doesn’t understand why they persist in believing it. Well, it saves believing in the other one, doesn’t it? It is an economy.

Didn’t Krishnamurti say that the observer is the Observed?

Well, you see, he is talking like a non-dualist, isn’t he?

Yes.

Now, supposing we say well O.K., you have done very well in your life since 1928 as a messiah who denies he is a messiah and we are now going to jump on you and smash you to pieces physically, and we know that your consciousness will observe the smashing of the bones and the pouring out of the blood, are you ready to receive it? What he said to Bernard Levin was, “I have a fine sense of danger.”

You make that kind of remark if you look like the kind of fellow that would fulfil it, I think I am going to retire from the studio. Like Nureyev when the interview is over, he doesn’t wait to participate in the next interview does he? No, he vacates the chair, he is Top Cat. How could he sit next to Jimmy Tarbuck, yes?

Now, the empirical ego has been specially built in the time process by civilisation to keep civilisation going. Now we have a long line of men, prophets, sages, philosophers, thinkers who have occupied themselves to our written knowledge for about six thousand years. And for how long before that is open to speculation, and they all come up with the same conclusion which the individual, empirical egotistically centred people don’t like. There is Sentient Power, it does know that it is, and it is more personal than we are because it includes all our persons as we, individually include all the cells in our body.

In your blood, you have, swimming about, some little phagocytes. They go about swimming in the stream of your blood and when they see a bacterium that might upset you, they eat it. Sometimes they eat too many and die and they are heard to mutter, “Well, it is sacrifice for the good of the whole, as they die,” do they? Have we any electro-magnetic records of the phagocyte dying and shouting, “Oh, I have just died of a surfeit of horrible bacteria in order that Gordon Smith might live?” or are they ignorant of your existence? When they are swimming, chasing the bacteria in your blood, do they say, “I’m swimming for Gordon?” or do they say, “I’m swimming for dinner, yes?”

Track 9

Now, all living beings are modalities of the Infinite Sentient Field of Power, without any exception and they are all in the position of the little phagocyte in your blood. They don’t know any more about the existence of that super power, that Infinite Intelligence than a phagocyte knows about an individual human being in whose bloods system it is swimming about. Now what happens to the gains of egotism if that is so? You are about to do a naughty deed and you remember the prophets have said, “God has said, that is, that Infinite Sentient Power, of which you are a modality, “Certain things are permissible and certain not, and if you do one that is not allowed I don’t mind, but I have arranged for you to be met at the corner of the street with a nine foot high mugger, armed with a heavy bicycle chain studded with diamonds and razor blades, and I have arranged this, I don’t mind you acting freely but you must allow me also to be free to respond. And the way I turn the other cheek,” says this Absolute, is quite simply, I turn somebody else’s cheek. Another of my features is a mad Irishman wants to go for a fight and if he does I think I’ll go down to the Rembrandt tonight, there is an easy punch up there. The place is full of queers, they don’t fight very well. I’ll go down there and beat them up. And so he goes, and the Field, of which he is an objectification, says, “This is a marvellous opportunity of educating naughty Irishmen that beat up gentle, inter-sex people and he arranges, as on one occasion in my personal experience, what was it? Six feet six of negro homosexuality, with muscles, you see. Oh! You see, do you know that can happen? I had quite a number of homo friends during the war who were commandos. Did you know that? Can you imagine a gentle, homo commando, leaping out? Boing, crashing to the ground, ratttattattat, and he is full of muscles, Do you know you don’t have to be muscle-less to be queer, really not. You can be highly intelligent, very, very gentle and bear a bigger da muscle, like my brother Sylveste, with a bigger role of muscle on the chest, you see. And the Field is in charge and there is a lot of people that don’t like it, they really don’t. And the people that beat hell out of a horse to make it jump. Most of you that watch show-jumping will probably have somebody come to mind almost immediately. It is obvious I don’t mean David Broome do I? No, no, no, there is another one far worse than that. Or somebody takes a sentient piece of living material and thumps it like that, to make it do something it is not supposed to do. A horse, naturally is a plains animal, if I go to turn this plains animal into a stick-jumper-overer, if I have to kick the hell out of it mm? There are such people, it is funny isn’t it? We can account for them by saying “Well they were misunderstood as babies,” but we are pulling our own legs, because the essential is this. The Continuum of Sentient Power is throughout itself identical in all its qualities, and one of its qualities is free will. And that is a very weird thing. That means that every single individual introjection, every living being, every human being, has a capacity for freely doing wrong as well as right. Because one of the qualities of the Continuum, which is everywhere the same, is initiative. We have a power, which we know very well, the ability to ignore rationality, to ignore thought. We have a power, which we all got, and know we have, to ignore truth that is inconvenient, don’t we? And when we do ignore it, the Universal Power and the Infinite beyond the Universal says. “O.K., this is very interesting, you are going on a prodigal course. I won’t stop you, I’ll let you use your initiative. In Islam it says God gives you your will to use as if it is your own. Now, when you use it, the punch back that comes to you, is the natural logical result of your mis-conceived, private, empirical egotistic plan. There is no escape.

Track 10

And there are some people in the philosophical systems that have tried to wriggle out of that divine intelligence, so they invented another concept, for instance, Buddhism. Now, in Buddhism, there is no God. But the God that Buddha was saying there is not one of was the god of the Hindu pantheon that was defined in such a way, finitely that it couldn’t possibly be the Infinite. So, when Buddha said there is no god, he meant that the reality of those Hindu particular gods in the temple was not ultimate, it was only a modality of the Infinite and so, he said, there is no god but there is something else in the place of that god and that is a law of cause and affect, and this cause is the Ultimate Power, and this effect is this Universe of phenomena. And every phenomena is itself, pursuing a cause, karma, driven by desire, kama, stupidity, and having to pay the price of its own directive.

Now, having got rid of god, but the god it got rid was a pseudo god, not a true, Absolute, Infinite God, because Buddha believed in Infinity and believed it was a very good aim to attain to, but the particularised gods worshipped in the various temples were not ultimate and therefore not truly gods. Get rid of those and substitute for it the law of cause and effect.

Jesus a very astute Jewish thinker said, “Well what is it saying except this, as you sow, so you reap.” If you do a certain act there will be a comeback from that Field of Power which is Infinite. You cannot calculate the result. You behave in a polite way to so and so because he has connections, you behave in an impolite way to this man because he has no connections; and then you discover the man with no connections is actually the secret boyfriend of a married lady of terribly great influence with the man who has influence. Your calculation was wrong, and as a finite, empirically centred being, you cannot control the infinity of data that is available to the Infinite, so in fact it means we are, literally, at the mercy of an Infinite Field of Sentient Power which knows what we are because we are its modifications, we are its modalities, we are its impressions, and it is in charge of our behaviour, our thought, our feeling, our will, and it allows us to operate, in any way we care to and then responds to our mode of our expression with its own type of response, which we, as empirical, egoic beings cannot anticipate, and not control.

It fits, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” doesn’t it?

If you believe in the Lord,

His fear is ….

Then you are afraid of the law governing the Universe, the law of come-back. Law only means ‘principle of binding order, yes?

You can’t anticipate what happens, how do you decide?….

Easily. I mean how do you decide whether you will go to a concert or not a concert which you haven’t been to before? You see an ad in the underground, “World famous this that or the other, about to appear in the Albert Hall.” How do you decide to go or not when you haven’t seen him? Answer – curiosity. One of the qualities of the Infinite Sentient Power is curiosity. And it is a nice word, ‘curiosity,’ it is from curios, Lord. It means, if I go will I become a top-cat. If I don’t go will my friends say, “You didn’t go to the concert. It was brilliant and you missed it.” But if I go, I see a man playing with six fingers. I saw him first, I go up to my friends who haven’t been, and just drop a casual reference to the six fingered wonder and they say, “What’s that.” “Oh just a chap I met at the Albert Hall. Actually I went back-stage, in the dressing room I shook hands with his six fingers.” Now this is called curiosity, curios, the Lord. How to become a top-cat. How do you choose? The answer is always the same, I choose to be a top-cat, and in every situation I think , “Does this go to top-cattery of that one?” And the ultimate top-cat is that mysterious being called God, who we hope, doesn’t exist. But the Infinite Sentient Power does exist. He exists, that is stands out, in all His introjections, all the creatures that He has made are in Him self-existent, self- expressed. And that means, as Jesus said, “Is it not written, Ye are God’s.” You are creative impression expressions of the Infinite Sentient Power. There is nothing you can’t do except defeat that Infinite Sentient Power. You have full permission to do anything you wish and you have full certainty of receiving your reward.

Track 11

How do you choose Peter?

Like a woman.

In the past how have you chosen where to go tonight?

Curiosity.

Mmm?

Curiosity.

Curiosity, why? It is simple, we don’t know everything yet, and we would like to know everything, wouldn’t we? And that desire to know everything is a desire to usurp the position of the Infinite Sentient Power Field. If you read in Genesis Forty-nine you will find a description of the sons of Jacob, made by their father and he talks about Ruben, “My first-born.” He lusted after his father’s bed, wherefore he shall not excel. His very first-born son wishes to be bigger than his daddy.

Now there is a certain illogicality about that which Kirkegaard refers to when he says, “As against the father the son is always in the wrong, because the inheritance that the son has from the father is the means whereby the son can oppose the father. So he is even indebted to the father for his capacity to revolt He cannot get rid of his eternal debt. Like Satan says in Paradise Lost, “How terrible. I am faced with the infinite, horrible, eternal fact That I am a creature indebted to the Creator and I can’t get rid of my debt. I can pay it every day saying praise, singing hymns, trying to quieten it, but the fact is I am a creature and I cannot displace the creator, not ever.” So what is his solution? He says, “I have only to go up one step, I am the brightest of all the angels so I am only one step down from the Infinite Absolute. Just one step. How big is the step? I’ll have a go,” he says, “ I’ll take the step up,”- - Bang, Michael comes along. “Who is like unto God?” and Satan goes bang. Lucifer has now become Satan. He is down below, his empirical ego says, “Funny that, I was up there, only one step to go, and now I have got a lot of steps to go.”

Now he is very positive because he is eternal, because one of the qualities of the Infinite Sentient Power Continuum is that it is eternal. Therefore, all its modalities participate in eternality. So Satan says, “Well you can’t get rid of me I’m eternal, I’m part of Him. Now what I can do to get my own back, having thrown out and kicked and made lots of steps to the top, I have heard, by Cheshire bush telegraph, that God, who threw me out, has set up another creature called man mankind, Adam, in my place. Well he is a creature, so he must be weak. If I, the brightest, was very, very weak compared to the Infinite, think how much weaker a thing that was made mediately between The Absolute Infinite up there and the hellish locked up Satan down here, there is a fellow only there, he can’t be very smart, that’s mankind. I won’t have a direct tilt at God again, He is a bit powerful.” He says to Job, “Hast thou an arm like mine? And Job looks at it and says, “Not really sir,” and Satan says, “I will knock man. I’m not that stupid, I’ve had one good hiding I will now have a go at Man. So he disguises himself as a phallic symbol, that is to say, a serpent, and he goes, charmingly, not to the man, but to the woman, and he says to the woman, “I have a secret way of getting pleasures, and God has told you not to eat of a certain tree’s fruit and if you do, you will really enjoy yourself. And she is deceived because she is pleasure bound, and suddenly, the created creature, man, is thrown out of the garden of protective Eden into the world of time, into the world of empirical experience, into the world of egotism, into the world of suffering. Where there were previously fruit trees beautiful grasses with seeds to make corn, etcetera, now there are thistles and horrible, craggy stones. Man is in the time process because the thrown down Luciferan figure becomes satanic, has said to man, “You too can have a go at usurping God. I can’t persuade God to do it but I can persuade you because you are only a creature.

And so man is on his process of having been demoted from the Edenic, that is non-judgement state, thrown into the world of time, and he now has to go along making empirical judgements. Now he can’t see properly, he makes himself a skin, he hides. You know the word ‘hide’ is from hide. This stuff, that’s ‘hide’ (skin). We are hiding inside a skin, but we are really Infinite.

Dr Jekyll, Jekyll means God, affirmation of God; Hyde means the dark, unconscious, satanic, down-thrown, on its way to revenge itself. Everybody has a Hyde in him and everybody has a Jekyll in him, and the Jekyll says “I am a very good fellow healing people,” and the Hyde in you says, “What on earth for, what kudos do I get out of helping people, ungrateful lot of swine? I’m a G.P; do you know what I do? I look at all the drug brochures, one and a half hundredweights per annum, I read them all, I try to find out what is good for my patients and what does my patient do when I give him a handful of tablets I haven’t personally tried? Throws them down the loo, the ungrateful creature? Why bother? Don’t read the brochures, just say try these, and then look at a list called side effects, supplied by the same drug companies. Now, what did I give him last time, does it mix with this one?”

Well I’m thinking actually about waving a cheque when I come back from my holidays, yes, for having been away, not for having been at work. Because we have a welfare state, and in the welfare state everybody is taken care of by the government. And if the government does that, it stays in the position of government, and we don’t have a military coup and we don’t have an insurrection and we don’t have a revolution, and that’s marvellous, that’s comfortable. And then, the empirical ego, because its curiosity is infinite and its possessions are finite, wants to modify the system. As long as there is relative ignorance there will be a continuance of curiosity and the pursuit of further knowledge and further power. But, whether we get that power depends on the Infinite Continuum of Sentient Power of which, we are modalities only.

Track 12

This thing starts with the ego separated any way through the ring- pass- not.

The ring is the egotistic concept. If you think you are finite and you think you can pursue a finite course and by cunning and manipulations and wilfulness and misrepresentation and deceit, if you think you can get somewhere by that technique, you have got a ring round you, the ring of the egotistic definition, called the ring-pass-not. Until you break that egotism you cannot conceive yourself to be merely a modality of an ocean of Sentient power. Now, when you know that you are a modality, you say, instead of “I will,” you say, “Let there be that which is most appropriate.” So running through Islam you have is the statement about the wise man who has reached a level and he says, “Be,” and it is. But the empirical ego cannot do that. The empirical ego is time-bound, committed to investigate phenomena in the hope of accumulating sufficient knowledge to out-flank the Absolute and it is an illogical essay.

How do we feel about it if we accept for a moment, that our very body has been precipitated, and the bodies of our ancestors, from the Infinite, over millions of years, and brought to its present condition of human reflexive awareness. Not by its empirical, egotistic effort but by the all-over-ruling will to create reflexive beings who will know that they are not different, ultimately from God. How does it feel? And, as one fellow said to me last week, “I don’t like the idea, it is a bit too loaded with responsibilities. If that is true am I permitted to do dirty tricks, am I permitted to twist, to disorder, to misrepresent, to fool my friend to gain an advantage over, higher and higher and eventually crush you into the ground and then I am quite sure he is nearly dead and weighted down with chains round the ankles, out of pure mercy I give him a drink of water, and then hope to slip into acceptance by the Absolute as the last moment Like…...

And yet, mysteriously, their whole behaviour is permitted by the Infinite Sentient Power which is God.

Now why does God permit it? Do you know why? You are a good chooser Peter, why? Why does God allow fantastically terrible things manifestly, with the people in Somalia, with little babies with their tummies swollen with gas and no food? And there are people collecting monies and goods and clothes for those kiddies and for the starving. And it doesn’t get there. Much of the help that is given never arrives. Why is it permitted, because it could be stopped, why does that Infinite Sentient Power permit it? What is the key sentence that tells you why? “Thus is becomes to fulfil all righteousness.”

Now think very carefully if that Infinite Power, Sentient Power, all-knowing, source of this universe of ours and of us, if that power is Omniscient, it must know everything. Now is it possible to know anything thoroughly without actualising it? Not possible is it? So mustn’t there be, in order to fulfil all knowledge, an actualisation of every conceivable crime, and then we can see it. Do you know what William Blake thought about that? Thought it was very good, he thought the body was a very good invention for this simple reason. Before you had a body, when you were a pure spirit, you were translucent and so were all the other spirits and you couldn’t see anything to object to, to complain about. And then, by introjection, by condensation of power, bodies were made and they manifested in concrete, solid reality, every conceivable crime. “And then,” says William Blake, “Then you can choose what you don’t like.” It is objectified. If you say to a little boy who is banging about because he does not know any better, and only two years of age and he has not yet been thumped very hard, but he is busy hitting his mother and his father and visitors and so on, if you use a few words like, “You are aware of the harmonical doctrine of Karma are you?” What does the little boy say?

Bang, bang.

Totally meaningless words, so you get another bang on the nose. What does the bang on the nose mean? It means verbalise your position a bit more clearly. That’s what the little boy’s age is for. William Blake saw this with great clarity. The Objective world is there so that you can really choose because you can see demonstrably, before your eyes in three D concrete, what is useless and utter failure.

Track 13

Let’s take “Top-cattery,” top-cattery, top-doggery, girls and boys, cats are girls and dogs are boys. Now everybody knows, like Samuel Butler says, every human being has trouble because he wants to be three inches taller than every other human being and that’s impossible. Now every person with a top-cat, top-dog intention makes very sure they are not going to think about the impossibility of it, because if they did they won’t try it.

I’m going to try to deceive you Margaret, yes? I’m going to tell you a lie I’m going to try to persuade you to believe it. Have I got that power or are you already suspicious?

I’m already suspicious.

Already suspicious? I should have kept my mouth shut. Supposing I’ve learned the lesson, I’m not going to tell you I’m going to deceive you. I’m going to creep up on you surreptitiously, without a word, sh……, I’m going to start stroking your little toe. Do you remember the advice given to Ruth about how to seduce Boaz?

No.

What the mother says, mothers always know these things, start at the bottom of the bed, working on the big toe, mm? Do you know there is a nerve connection from the big toe through to a gland in your head and from there to there, yes? So if you creep to the bottom of somebody’s bed, and it has got a male in it, you put your hand under the blanket and feel for the big toe, like one of those blood sucking bats of South America, mm, you very quietly go, mmmmmm, and the toe goes mmmmm, and the message goes shtststsh. What happens? The toe withdraws. You follow it. The toe withdraws, you follow it. Suddenly you are in bed! And the king, the king, his crown is a bit awry, but the toe feels pleasantly interesting. Suddenly, you’ve got yourself a husband. Start with the big toe, mm.

I could have done, I’ve given the game away again, I can’t even start on your big toe now. Can I start somewhere else? I can. I can start in the Field. Can you feel the Field?

It’s impossible.

Supposing I posit my intention in the Field, I don’t tell t you what it is. I am not starting with your physical body, look. Physical body, emotions, mentations, conceptions, volitions, Episcopal overlookings, and the Infinite Field. I’ve got my intention in the Field and I’m not verbally defining it and I’m not formulating it, …yet,…but I’m closing in on you like this. And you know how you catch an ordinary fly? You know a fly can only feel when to get out of the way if you move your hand too quickly, it feels that buffeting of the air and flies away. So, if you move your hand very slowly like this, cup it, and move it very slowly giving your air in your hand time to flow gently throughout the hand, you can go like that and you can close your fingers round that fly like that. The fly, …by infinitely gentle, slow enclosing…how do you like that? Now has the empirical ego any defence against you?

No.

No.

Well we are in exactly that position in relation the Infinite Field Power which is God. He does this and there appears the sidereal system of stars, and He goes like that and there is the Solar system, and He goes like that and there is the planetary system; and he goes like that and there is the Earth; He goes like that there is plants, animals, men, and all surreptitiously, over millions of years., We don’t feel it and we are here. Isn’t that terrible we are so used to it we don’t feel it. Constant uniform stimulation is equivalent to no stimulation and we have been in the grip of that Infinite Sentient Field Power from before the foundation of the Universe, and it is going like that on us, and there is no escape. And we are so used to this continuously, gentle pressure, we can’t feel it.

Now I’m going to ask you something. When you sit still, very quietly, as still as you can, don’t you feel that you are buzzing a bit? Can you feel it? You know work is heat and heat is work, isn’t it? Thermo-dynamic Law, and you are alive and therefore at work, if you listen, you can hear zzzzzzzz, you can hear nervous impulses bashing about in your brain. If you focus on any part of your body you will feel it buzzing with life, but normally during the daytime do you feel it like that, or as you so busy extroverted on your objective, empirical egoic intent that you don’t feel it like that?

Normally you don’t.

Normally you don’t. No I would say averagely you don’t, normally you do.

You do.

If you are in it normally you do feel it. You sit down, “How am I doing, hey, hey, in relation to the Absolute, and. I feel the Absolute intent, holding me in being.

And, then one day, over my left shoulder, the warning voice, the Absolute has stopped pressing quite so hard here. Oh, oh, death stands at my left shoulder. Left shoulder because that is the ancestral memory side where all the memories of all the deaths of all ancestors have been recorded. Oh death’s coming the power that was doing that on me is now doing this on me, I’m going to fall apart, whether I like it or not, mm? Funny that they repeat that in Islamic religious literature, “Whether you like it or not,” mm, to that religious saying?

Just think, we are being held in being by an Infinite Sentient Power and when it decides to, instead of going like that, it goes like that, and we feel faint, and we have twinges, and we lose bone density and our organs fall apart and we rush off and we get Cortisone and we get this, that and the other, and pump it in. All we get for those is side effects. This is happening and yes you can say to this power hat is doing that, “Lord, can I do something for you a little bit longer please? I’ve been thinking, somehow of a useful thing that will keep in time a little bit longer, please Lord.” And you mean it, you know.

Are you serious?

“I’ve got a good idea of very great service to you evolutionary purpose.”

“And where does the idea come from?” says He.

“You Lord, of course.”

And so a man like a Minister Abbot, who taught all his Baptist pupils that life span of man is seventy years, three score years and ten, poetic form, it doesn’t say three score and ten, actually. And at eighty-one his disciples said to him, “Oh Mr abbot you said the Bible was full of truth and you said the Bible said three score years and ten, why are you eighty-one?” He said, without hesitation, “Extra time for good behaviour.”

Now let’s go away a little bit and think about it, and ask ourselves which side of the fence is on the right or on the left? Do we like the idea of a intelligent, directive, co-operative, Infinite Sentient Power God, personal, or do we dislike the idea of a personal overlooking power? And, if we dislike it we are on the left hand path, and if we like it we are on the right hand path. And Jesus says about that call these sheep and those goats, and then at the end you do that with them, the ones on the left are on the right and the ones on the right go on the left. Does he eliminate the ones that were on the left or does he put them on the right?

Now all the ones on the left are prodigal sons, all the ones on the right could have been believing to save trouble. Shall we now retire a little and think about it?