1. UK 79- 11 Questioner. Guruji, we don't know something until we can experience it. How do we make the jump from intellectua l understanding to experience? Gururaj. Wow. Intellectual understanding is an experience in itself. There are various levels of under-standing. There are various levels of intellect and therefore there are various levels of experience. Now the intellect itself is an experience although the intellect is empowered by a force beyond it. It still is an experience because the intellect has the power to analyse and the process of analysis can only be brought about a conflict between beliefs and doubts. So, the experience of the conflict, experience of the intellect is the conflict. Good. Now, the constituents of the conflict is belief and doubt. Now belief itself is an experience too, and the doubt is also an experience but both of these put together brings a third experience called conflict. Because when the mind starts analysing, it is always forever creating a conflict and this is proven by the fact that every analysis requires further analysis. And that makes the fourth experience. So, that is why , that is why many of our Scientists cannot come to conclusions. They jump to conclusions but they do not come to conclusions. That's a fifth experience. So contained within all the mechanisms of the intellect there is nothing else but experience. Now when it comes to understanding, understanding itself too is an experience and the level of that under-standing is dependent upon what the intellect churns up. Now when it comes to analysis, some lesser intellects stop at a certain analysis. Higher intellects, more developed intellects will go further, analysing that which has already been analysed and it would form a higher level of understanding according to the mind of that particular person. So understanding too is an experience. Breathing, walking, talking, using all the senses that we have, is an experience as well. There is nothing in life which is not an experience. Good. Now to bring the experiences or the intellect that provides the understanding, to the level of the heart is a different procedure altogether and that very procedure is also an experience. Your very exist-ence is an experience within various categories of experience. A child goes to school, goes into Stand-ard two - it’s an experience, Standard two experience, Standard three experience, Standard four experi-ence. When you are very close to your beloved, it is an experience. On what level are you experiencing that experience? Are you experiencing the closeness with your beloved just on a physical level, or on a mental level or on a deeper spiritual level? So these are all experiences having various gradations which under one general term is called experience. Fine. Now we can ask the question, we have seen what experience is and experience means everything that we partake of or that which we are involved in, is an experience. The experiences of yesterday can be re-experienced today but not in the reality of yesterday because reality was a moment of that particu-lar experience and by the recollection of that

2. UK 79- 11 particular experience of yesterday which we are having to-day, is a recollection of the experience. So it is a recollective experience and that too is an experience. Any memory created in our minds of anything that had happened the very recollection, too is an experi-ence. So here we have come to the conclusion that everything in life, whatever happens, is an experience and experience is nothing but a happening. Now this happening can be a conditional happening. We can create circumstances around us or create circumstances within us which will give us an experience but what has to be judged here is how valid the experience is because there could be false experiences and there could be real experiences. Now when I say false experiences, there is even reality in the falsity, for at that moment that person who is having the experience, believes himself that this experience is real and perhaps in retrospection which is also an experience, he will find that the experience I had, had no basis to it. Let us take pain. You prick a pin through your finger and you feel the pain. Now a person can be put under hypnosis where the same pin can be pricked in the finger and yet the pain will not be felt. The entire action is the same. It is the same pin. It is the same finger and yet the pain is not felt. What has happened to the experience? So on the mental level of existence people can have experiences which are not true experiences or experiences could be just an interpretation or a conditioning. And we know the value of autosuggestion and how that works. A person could think to himself 'I'm feeling bad, I'm feeling bad, I'm feeling bad' and he will have the experience of feeling bad. A person in a depressed state could push it aside and say ‘What is this depression really? Why am I pressing myself? Let me lift that pres-sure because I know it is of changing value. It is here now and gone just now. It is just some chemical reaction within me or it is just some thoughts flying around in my mind, swirling around that are conflicting to each other that is causing this depression in me’. And when that attitude is developed, the depression vanishes and it is replaced with joy. For example I have said this to a few people that have talked to me about it. ‘What is the finest thing to do when I feel depressed, when I'm having the experience of depression?’ I say to them ‘Why don't you chant? Get into that higher vibrational state.’ Because what actually happens in depression is this, that you are clouding your own vibrational state by the experience of the cloud itself and in this case it is the cloud of thought which is an experience in itself. So you are taking a denser experience, an ex-perience of a slower vibratory level and superimposing it upon your true vibrational level and therefore you feel low. So raise it. And you can raise it by doing the chant because the syllables are so well timed, they are taken from levels beyond our kin and brought to a grosser level beyond our kin - what does it sound like - good - I'm learning - and they are brought from such a level that as we chant - now it takes at least about three rounds to really get into the chant thereafter only things do happen in a certain way - and by using the heightened vibrations of the

3. UK 79- 11 chanting, you are coming back to your original vibra-tion and not only that but heightening that, so that you're replacing joyousness, you're replacing depres-sion with joyousness and that too is an experience. Now when we talked of the mind and when a person is put in a hypnotic state, he does not feel the pain. A person can by constant repetition to himself, a certain affirmation, be it negative or positive, can create a certain belief in his mind th at will make him experience a certain thing. And any of the people that work with the mind or guide the mind will tell you that. If you see a friend feeling low and if you love him very much and if you want to see him feeling well, say to him ‘Hey , but you look quite well today.’ That little suggestion, that little germination will flower and as a few hours pass, that person will start feel-ing well. You see it is all mental conditioning, depression, repression, compression all kinds of pres-sions, impression, its all mind, mind, mind. Now here we come to the crux of the matter. Who is the experiencer? Who experiences? Now, if the inner spirit within man permeates and pervades every level of our existence and we do exist on differ-ent levels, on various levels we exist and these three are just by general categories. To simplify it, we say body, spirit, mind general categories but withi n those general categories, there are so many intercon-necting links which lead from the grosser to the subtler levels which make up this whole. And because all of these various categories is but a continuum, the power to give the experience comes from the subtle level of the superconscious mind. And we have discussed what the superconscious mind is and we have said that the superconscious mind is at the finest level of relativity. Good. So, the finest level of relativi-ty being so refined represents in our, in words and words are never adequate, it represents the quality of light. So as much as this light filtrates through these various layers of experiences or various layers of existences, that is the power that conditions our experience so that in a particular circumstance a certain thing might be very pleasant and in another circumstance, the same thing might be unpleasant. You go and see a play or go to the cinema after having a quarrel at home. The play might be a good play but you are not going to enjoy it because you have come there with an upset mind. You go there with a pleasant mind and even if the play is not so good, you are still, you will still enjoy it more than what you would have really enjoyed it. So there, conditioning comes in again and the conditioning is dependent entirely of how much the light of the superconscious mind can filter through. The clearer the passage for that light, the more genuine the experience. The clearer the passage of that light, the more genuine the experience, because in the power of that light conditionings disappear or conditionings are overpowered by that power and the purity of the experience is felt.

4. UK 79- 11 So to really gain through experience one has to clarify the mind. You have heard of what is called Ghee, clarified butter. Ordinary butter is taken and it is boiled so that all the impurities rise to the top and it is strained off and you have pure butter which is Ghee. Likewise, by meditational and spiritual practic-es, if the mind becomes more clear then so much more valid and true the experience could be. And that is what we want. We want true experience of ourselves and that is what the Scriptures say, ‘Man Know Thyself.’ They have left out one word, ‘Man Know Thy True Self’. That is what we want, the knowledge of our true self. Good. But that is not where the story ends. We are still on the surface level. Good. Now as the mind through our practices become clearer and clearer, so truer and truer would our experi- ences be on our daily living level. We might feel angry but because that light filters through across and over the anger, being human, being placed in an environment that is conducive to anger, we will immedi-ately realise that I am angry. You will know that you are angry and at the same time you will realise that the anger lies within myself and not in the object. So if I want to be angry, let me be angry with anger. Then you will have the true experience of anger which is very valid. For if you have the true experience of anger, you will automatically be able to experience the opposite of anger. If you have the true experience of hate, by hating hate, you will know the true value of loving love. Otherwise, we have conditioned love. Otherwise, we have conditioned hatred and all our hatreds are prejudiced. They are not pure hatreds. If your hatreds are pure, I will worship you. Because then you are being genuine to yourself. You are really experiencing what it should be. For within the scheme of things, within the mind of man, all the million of samskaras that we spoke about are existing there. Experience those samskaras in its true form, what they really should be and that does not come from analysis. That does not come from mental probing. As soon as you ask I am hat-ing, then you are adding a false value to hate. You are observing the hate and not becoming the hate itself. So mental probing does not help. What helps is this, is that inner light that has to shine through the filter of hate, making hate conscious of itself, so that hate knows that I am hate. Love knows that I am love. The highest level a person can reach is this when he can truly say that "I don't love you, for I am love itself." And being love itself, all the other 'you's' just disappear and merge within you and become one with that love which is the true experience of love. And this does not come through all kinds of pro-cesses. You see. And these are all valid experiences taken from different levels. But if we have at our command, if we have at our command the key to open the door - we have a bunch of keys and we know that this is the right key to open the door, then why try out all the other keys when you know this is the right one to open the door. And that expedites true experience within us. So we are gradually led through the process of meditation into experiencing ourself more genuine-ly, experiencing ourselves as experience should be and not influenced. In other words it means un-influenced experience. Experience

5. UK 79- 11 something for its own sake, experiencing all the emotions for its own sake, without any outside influence, for outside influence can only prejudice. Now, the thing is that most of our experiences are not necessarily subjective. They are also influenced by the environment. You are in a hurry driving your car and some poor fellow in front of you stalls and you get angry. What are you getting angry about? Now, if you ask yourself at that moment, look that could have been my car that has stalled, then what about the chap behind me. So you are applying analysis. Right. And some forms of analysis are valid that makes you see that my anger is unfounded, but people are not in the habit of rea-soning in that manner. Very few people are. So, in that case what do we do? We experience that anger but having the basis of meditation and that s tability within ourselves, we will take the anger for its own sake and regard that anger to be an experience in itself withou t projecting it on that poor fellow in front of us. So we don't need anyone else to probe our minds, to teach us that. It is just common sense. And this common sense, this knowledge comes about, this knowingness comes about on its own if we allow that inner light to filter through us. Then the anger loses its sting and it leaves no samskara whatsoever. It does not leave a lasting impression that you will have to work out in some form or the other. So, life is nothing else but experience after experience, after experience. When you are sleeping, you are also going through experiences but you don't know them because you are not conscious of them. That little ten percent of the conscious mind is gone to rest for the moment. Even in the dream state you are going through various experiences. Did I talk of dreams here on this Course? Was that in Spain? We talked about these various experiences in the dream state and I told them that all those dreams you had are real within their own dimension. They are just as real as the experiences of your wak-ing state of life. Fine. There, certain associations occur. You might have had something happening dur-ing the day or the day before and that triggers off a certain memory in your memory box which contains the memory of the entire universe of this present cycle. Something triggers off a certain memory and by triggering off a certain memory, you attract to the central point various experiences of this lifetime or oth-er lifetimes and it forms itself into a story with a beginning, middle and end. And sometimes the bad writer of the story does not end the story too well. It mi ght end at a very pleasant moment and you wish the next morning why did it not carry on, or it might end at a terrifying moment and you keep on wonder-ing the next day, I wonder what happened next. Well, next week part two of the serial. Fine. So those experiences even in dream are real within their own dimension. Good. So, there are so many different kinds of dream experiences. Right. Some are formulated by association of ideas. You might dream of Grandmother, but it is not actually Grandmother that you are dreaming of. Grandmother is only the picture that you have conjured up in your mind, who is the representative of the impressions that you have had and you use Grandmother as the expression of

6. UK 79- 11 those impressions. Fine. Like that association of ideas could trigger that off. Then you have various forms of other dreams which would be a subject on its own. Then you might have prophetic dreams. Why a prophetic dream? Why? How does that happen that you dream you are going to meet someone three weeks later and three weeks later you surely meet that person in flesh and blood. How did that come about? Because you have met that person already before and it is a re-hashing of an old memory, for nothing in life is ever new. As the say-ing goes, ‘Nothing new under the sun’. Everything has happened before. I know for sure that I have been with you before sitting right here, perhaps not in this building, sitting with you and talking to you. It is just a re-occurrence of something that has occurred before in some form or the other, not necessarily the same form, not necessarily that Norman had sat in this particular chair. Hah. See, like that, it works. But the very basis of it has happened before and that is what all eternity is about. So, by certain associations, by certain chemical combinations perhaps if you wish to use those words, one can have prophetic dreams. One can order certain dreams. Yes. By using certain techniques, by using the com-binations of certain experiences and having a strong enough clear enough conscious mind, you can sug-gest that dream and you allow that dream to work itself out. In other words you incubate a dream. This is very possible and a very simple experiment which everyone does perhaps, I do it very often. If I want to wake up at two o'clock this morning, before I go to bed I just say to myself once or twice, ‘I'm waking up at two o'clock’. My watch would be wrong but my waking up will not be wrong. Do you see how the mind can become a servant? Now what makes the mind a servant, the mind itself. Here again is the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere working, by being forceful enough with powerful thoughts through the left hemisphere, you transmit the message to the intuitive level, the right hemisphere, which in turn sends messages back to the left hemisphere to wake you up at two o'clock. So these are all experiences, nightmares. I told some people, do you have nightmares - many hands went up - we have nightmares. I said ‘Good, have more nightmares. Have more nightmares, for the ex-perience of dreams is something very, very valuable’. It performs for you - if your lifespan is three score years and ten, those very dreams give you the experiences of a lifetime of say five hundred years where normally in the physical experience, it might take you five hundred years. So when we have these dreams, regard it to be one thing that it is a release of samskaras formed in the mind. So every dream is good and valid, it is a valid experience. Now, nightmares when we wake up we say, ‘Oh, thank God, it was a nightmare’. But the same thing could have been a reality in daily physical life - then you are surely to be sent away to an asylum. And the scientists have proven that

7. UK 79- 11 deprive a man of his dreams and he will lose his mind. Yes. It has been proven. So the dream experience, the waking experience is valid and just as much the dream expe-rience is also valid. Those skeletons that are hanging around in the closet of the mind are released in those nightmares. So whenever you have a nightmare do not be afraid of it. It is an experience you have worked out in the sleeping state which would have been so much more difficult for you had that experi-ence occurred in the waking state. So in the dream, a tiger attacks you and if that same tiger had to at-tack you in the waking state, how terrifying it would be. You might not be alive. So all these experiences are valid and the dream experiences are even more valid than the experiences of the waking state, be-cause in the waking state we go through certain prejudices, we condition our experiences. We condition them by thought processes, while in the dream state, because we don't have the power to order them, they come up by its own need, to express themselves, to find release. And one of the truest things, one of the very few true things Freud has said, is that a dream is an expression of a suppressed desire. That is one of the very few true things Freud has said, that a dream is an expression of a suppressed desire but he has not said when was this desire suppressed. It might have been suppressed in other lifetimes. It might have been suppressed in other lifetimes and now only this chemistry is just conducive enough to bring about the release of that experience in the expression of a dream. So, all the waking things in the waking state are experiences. All the things happening in the dream state are experiences and the more we clarify the mind, the truer will be the experience for us. Then we will know the truth behind the experience. A man experiences intense jealousy or a woman, with-in his or her heart. It is a real experience. It is a burning agony within oneself. And yet it could have no foundation whatsoever. The husband or wife could be totally, totally faithful and true, so much so that the husband or the wife would be prepared to give his or her entire life for the beloved. Yet because of this mental madness and we are all mad, yeah, because of this mental madness, we throw upon, inflict an innocent person with an unfounded jealousy. We'll be adding on karma, we're going to pay for that even- tually because all that jealousy is going to be re-inflicted upon in one way or the other. So that's besides the point. But do you see here how false the experience can be, how false the experience can be that here is a pure person of whom the other person feels totally jealous. He thinks she is being unfaithful to him and every action of hers, he watches so, so carefully and interprets his mind into the action. She might just smile at someone and he says, ‘Oh she smiled at him - there must be something going on’. This we find, this we find in daily life and any Psychologist or Psychiatrist will tell you that cases like these by the dozens is pathological. It becomes pathology and even if you study the experience within the confines of the mental status of that person. Now here in the case of jealousy what do we do? I am not going to analyse the man's jealousy. I

8. UK 79- 11 know I could see it was unfounded. I am not going to analyse and pick his brain to pieces and see what is gone wrong in the mental chemistry and explaining him, ‘Look you should not think this way. It is no good’. How can you be so sure about this or that or that or probing, questioning that man and tell him, trying to pull out things from him which are totall y un -warranted and which could be harm-producing to the person and which could drive that jealousy even more deeper into the person and then you call it an experience. It is the negation of experience. What I'm trying to say is that you are making that negative experience more negative by giving it greater value. I use the opposite method of creating love in that person and once that person finds the ability to allow that inner light to shine through, these jealousies will disappear. For he is bringing to his mind a Divine force which only will make him see the Divinity in his beloved and say, ‘No, this can never be possible. She could never be unfaithful to me. I could see by all her actions how good she is. How she cares for me how she does this and that’. Here we are using a example, there might be other cases where this is really so but we always like to use that which is ideal and within even ideal cases, there is so much tragedy, pathology involved, where it becomes pathetic, but pathetic not in its true sense, but pa-thetic within its own confines of mental turmoil. So we supplant, where there's darkness, we pour light, where there is hatred we sow love, where is unkindness, we put kindness and that does not require any intellect, any analysis. No it does not; it's an experience that overwhelms one. So, in all experiences the three sectors of the mind are involved, the conscious, the sub-conscious and the super- conscious. The more we are delving in the conscious mind, the more analysis will take place. So here where the man is jealous, he will analyse every situation. ‘Oh she was going around the corner to the shop. Now that should take two minutes walking down and two minutes back and two minutes in the shop, six minutes. But she's come back after fifteen minutes, what happened to the other nine?’ Pathetic, pathetic, sick. Yeah. Now that is how that mind will work on and on and on. You see. That is the conscious mind work-ing through analysis. The sub-conscious mind of course gives impetus to the conscious mind because of its tendencies that it has, the samskaras that it has and when those samskaras cannot be expressed through the conscious level of the mind, it expresses itself in dreams. Everyone dreams. Everyone dreams. You might not recollect the dream in the morning but be sure to know that you have been dreaming during the night because the sub-conscious mind is forever in turbulence. The ripples are there all the time in turbulence. The only person that does not dream is the man who has achieved that equilib-rium of the conscious, sub-conscious and the super-conscious into a super imposed oneness and total equilibrium

9. UK 79- 11 exists. Such a man never dreams. He's got no samskaras to re-hash or to dream about, or to express or to release. Fine. Good. So experience lies within the realm of the conscious mind, the sub-conscious mind and the super-conscious mind. Now if we ask the question that who is the experiencer, what can we answer? Because of the changing quality of the conscious, sub-conscious and the super-conscious, because of it warring attitude, trying to create that equilibrium, is it a vehicle of experience or is it an experience in itself? Both. There is the paradox where these three levels are experiences in itself and yet at the same time they are the vehicles of the experience. And then when one goes beyond the super- conscious level which are still all in the framework of the ego, so the ego creates the experiences but there is a force, there is an energy required for that ego self, that mind self to have experiences. But what about this force, this energy? What does the energy experience? Ah that is the question. That energy, that impersonal self within man does not experience anything. It is beyond experience. It is entirely beyond experience and yet it experi-ences also, the second paradox, because it permeates the three layers of the mind. So we subject that experienceless being to experience us and that is why we say that God is a concept of the human mind. For they know not who He is. We are forever creating God. We are forever dragging down that pure energy, that pure experience which experiences itself. We are dragging that pure energy through the various dirty layers of our minds and we try and interpret that purity through our dirt. So that is why some philosophers say that man creates God according to his own conceptions. And that is very true when we study the various theologies and philosophies of the world. That is why so many different conceptions of God occurs. Some say he is sitting up there on some cloud, on some throne and watching all and he has his clerks around him. He says, ‘Ah there's Jean, John, Jack write down - he did this and he did that’. All kinds of conceptions. All kinds of conceptions. And so when we knock up against any conflicts, we create Satan, because that is the conflict. But we do not realise, we do not realise that we are dragging down this Divine force through these various dirty layers of our mind and we create the conflicts which in other words is called Satan. So where do you draw the line? Where does one end and where does the other begin? See. So it is all one existence. What we need is the purification of the layers of the mind from the su- per -conscious which is closest to reality, the ‘Big I’ we call it. There the super-conscious being closest is the receptor of the greatest amount, the purest amount of light through the clean window of the super-conscious. So what we are doing in our practices or what any spiritual practices are supposed to do, is allow that light to come through the various layers of the sub-conscious, through the various dreams, through the various imaginations, through the various experiences, to come

10. UK 79- 11 to the conscious level of the mind and even beyond that to the physical body and still beyond that to the environment, and thereby realise the oneness the wholeness of the all. So experience is real. All experiences are real. All imagina-tions has its own dimension of reality. Like the jealous man, he's imagining. It also has its dimension of reality but all those realities are relative realities and all the various divisions of the mind are nothing but relative realities, the ‘small i’, the ego self. And we have to go beyond that ego, we have to go beyond that ego until the ‘real I’ is reached, who is experience- less. Some of the Hindu philosophers, Vedantic philosophy for example, they describe Divinity as abso-lute knowledge, absolute experience, absolute bliss. I disagree, for those are qualities you are adding to that which is quality-less. That is a stage of the personal God. Fine. Okay. But there is still something far beyond that energy level, that ‘real I’ that exists within itself that requires no outside force, no outside light while all relative, all the various sections of the mind and experience require supporting, requires that electricity to go through it for it to function, that are not self effulgent. It requires an external agency and to become one with that external agency, who is really internal and external - these are words because he is indescribable. That is where we are trying to reach, to reach the source and be sourced by the source. Yes. And then what have we got left? All experiences good and bad, they are all gone. They're all gone. We'll have them in life but we observe them as we would observe the scenery while we're driving the car. The mountains are there. The trees are there. Everything is there and we're on our way. Now even if we do not notice the trees and the mountains, it does not mean that they are non-existent. Relativity is real. It is existent. All the snow that falls and the wind that blows and the lovely cold weather of England is there. We can't deny it. How can we deny it? It is there. But our windows are closed and the heat is put on in the car and we're basking in the warmth of that Divinity. So let the cold and snow and the ice be there, let it be there, so who cares. See. And then when we reach that level and experience that level, then all experience ceases for the relative self, but the Real I, the Real Self, efful-gent Self, experiences experience as itself. The Real Self experiences experience as its self. That's where we are, Joy, bliss, indefinable, ineffable, unspeakable, I dare not even try. I think that's enough to think about tonight. That was an hour, really. Yeah. Shall we go on for more? We have to some recording tonight. Do we? END