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Special Recording
The terminology of what they call meditation has gotten such a hold upon the mind that there is nothing much that can be said against it because it’s just like, if someone goes out preaching against Jesus, then they all think the fellow ’s nutty. They either think that he’s a heretic or he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s everything but the right thing. Every cult and every group and every organization who’ve gone off on other tacks have been smart enough to use the figure of Christ or Jesus in their teachings simply because that they know they’re not going to get very far unless they do this. Because it’s just ingrained in Westerners, whether Christian in their education, to accept Christ as their great savior as it is to walk and breathe.
So, the same thing comes in with this factor of meditation. But you see, meditation is an Eastern philosophy. It’s an Eastern practice. It’s an Eastern way of trying to get to God. I remember in the Tao de Ching in which they said, “He who sits passively waiting for God to enter into his life is apt to have,” or what they call God. they call the Tao, “the Tao enters in him and he becomes enlightened.” Now, the Easterners within the masses are, they are, passive people. They are because they have many. There are millions and millions and millions of them and their opportunities are not like there are in the West, in which that we, as Westerners, have economic opportunities and we have many other opportunities to do things. But, they don’t have it. So, therefore, they have an area of passivity. And, the passivity is, once they become passive to this thing that they call God, then they are in the state of being a receiver. In other words, they become the effect of this force or this power, or whatever you want to call it, unknown deity.
In the West, it’s done in a different sort of a thing. We have been in the position of always being active. I forget when Clive went into India and conquered India for England. It was about 1840 or 50, someplace in there. Ever since then, they have been making inroads in the West and opening the West to the Indian philosophy and gradually bringing this in and teaching it. And, in a sense, now you have to accept my word in this sense and weigh and balance it for your own thing because what I am saying is my observation because one must do their own thinking for themselves or use a system that is best for themselves. But, I am using the observation, here, that the breakdown in the individual, as a person, as he goes along in life and he becomes more frustrated and more unhappy and cannot meet his daily life’s problems, he becomes more passive and more passive and accepts meditation as that which can pull him out of the area and begin to resolve his problems and put him back on his feet again.
And when this has begun to be applied to masses of people then it begins to be the breakdown of society. And, let me point it out that Hitler discovered something during the early part of his regime in experiments with a pig. And, the scientist would have the pig, at a certain ringing of the bell, and the pig would go to eat. And, then they would begin to change this up so that they would begin to put all sorts of little bends and curves and everything that he would have to run through all of these in a little cage to get out, to finally get to the end of this tunnel and have his food waiting for him. So, they found out that they could bring the pig into frustrations. And, what would happen to the pig would be the fact they would ring the bell, he would run through all these tunnels and everything and, finally, he couldn’t find where the food was. And, he would just sit down in frustration.
So, they decided this would also work on masses of people. And, coming back in a minute to where it belongs in this pattern of the thing that I am talking about, they found out, the German regime at the time, that when they created a great crisis and nothing happened that the people in the opposing nation, like England and those places, would just give up and sit down. They were destroying the will this way. See? They were creating a huge crisis. Then when they created the crisis, the English and the Western nations would get up and they were all tense and ready to go, then they just put off the crisis. And, here these people, nothing to do, they were like the pig, They would just mill around and sit down and become very passive. And, they were doing this to break the will of their opponents. Now this, you can even see, that today, that’s going on between the East and the West at the present time.
But, anyway, where it comes back to this sort of thing, is the fact that we build up, in our outer life, these crises and these problems then we sit down and be very passive and expect something, beyond ourselves, to resolve these by using certain things, certain techniques. Now, after spending a lot of time in the East and coming back into this world, I found out that the people, on a whole, were active people and they did to want to spend time or did not want to take the time and spend it in meditation to let something else handle that, a problem for them. They wanted to do it themselves.
So, you see, the whole thing was resolved for me when Rebazar Tarz, at one time, said, “Sit still and do something.” Now, what he was saying here, that if we would sit still within ourselves and when that opportunity came, to seize upon this force that had started to move someplace. Then we grasp it and move with it and have this inner-activity. Then we could have an inner-activity as well as an outer activity. And, this inner-activity would make us become a coworker with God. It’s like the fellow who was sitting at the table trying to work out a problem in his business or an artist standing in front of a canvas trying to work out a particular thing for a scene or a portrait. This activity would come through him and stir his mental processes. And, his mental processes will form into the idea of what to do. Well, this is what he’s talking about.
And, this is what they’re talking about, being a coworker with God while we’re here now. See? Because that which comes out of us comes up the betterment of the whole while at the same time it’s taking care of the individual. So, the idea, here, is the fact that the painter, that the artist, he makes a scene or the portrait and it’s for the whole. If he, himself, enjoys the fruits of his labor by the fact that he is paid for his work and he is recognized for his work. And, therefore, by allowing this, the work within him, and the activity, he has benefited himself while he has benefited the group or a whole of things.
Now, this is the same thing as the head of, let’s say, General Motors who, by some means of the inner power working within him, will originate new Ideas which will be for the benefit of the whole company. And, the whole company would benefit by that which would benefit the public. That means that he has become the coworker, which has worked with the whole. And, at the same time he, himself, is benefiting by that because he is becoming greater, recognized greater in the work as an executive. And, being a man who can follow through and follow out and do what he is going to do with that, therefore, he is, what we say is, being still and doing something.
So, this comes back to the point that the work, of itself, is, to me is a misnomer. And, it is something that we, ourselves, should not be concerned with because we should be concerned with doing an exercise, of some kind, which would bring this thing through. See? It must bring this. It must make the contact. It must make the linkup with this power to bring it through. And, many of us can come back and say, “Well, this is still meditation.” Well, in a way, it is still meditation. See? But, the point is it is not meditation in the form the Easterners are doing it because they say, on the whole, to sit still and let, (Let’s see, what is the term they use in the Bible? “ Be still and be God” or something like that?) let God do it for us.
Now, if one is over there and sees all these masses and masses and masses of people and their problems that they have in which they have practiced a great deal of this because it is a form of their religious background, they run into the great problem of saying, ”Well, there’s nothing for me in this life so I will meditate upon the tiger’s rug, as it says in the Bhagavad-Gita and in my next life I will become a Brahman and a rich man.” And, I don’t know what the interpretation of that is, according to many writer’s interpretations of that in some way. But, this is what many actually believe is, that if they spend enough time meditating in this life, that in the next life, they’ll be something. Well. then what good is the meditation for him, to be working with his fellow man, in serving his purpose in society? You see?
Now, this is the Hindu religion, mind you, the whole form of the Hindu religion. It mainly came into this country, when Vivekananda came in here about 1909 or something like that, and then formed the Vedanta society. But, what I’m trying to say is that type of meditation breaks down the will power of the person. And, it puts him in the position of not being able to meet his daily problems.
I have an isolated example to give here. It was a case about two years ago. A woman came to me and she has been meditating for five years in this manner and she had reached the end of her rope and hadn’t gotten anything out of this in five years of meditation. And, she ran into the problem of herself being, all of her finances were running out. She had quit an active job and had made around $9000 a year which was very good for a career woman. And, she had given that up and went into meditation and she and was running out of money. She wasn’t getting any word. She wondered why God wasn’t taking care of her and everything. And, the first thing she did, without saying anything to anybody about it, she goes out to get herself a job as a secretary with a firm and took a test. And, “For goodness gracious, she flunked the test.” See? Well, no wonder, she hadn’t been doing anything for five years. She didn’t even prepare herself for the test. And she came to me crying and saying she felt meditation should bring everything into her life. I says, “Well this true, in a sense, but you’ll remember, you’re living here and now. And, what you’re putting your mind upon, or rather, what you’re putting your mind and thoughts and your attention upon, is what you’re going to have in your life.”
And, I’ll give you another example of this because there was a woman in ECK who had been taking the work and she was quite a businesswoman and she reported to me one day, after about a year in. She says, “My income’s been going down. I’ve been practicing ECK and I thought it was supposed to take care of everything for me.” I says, Well, now let’s take, for example, on the case here, what are you putting your mind on mostly?” She says, “I’m putting it upon ECK.” I says, “Well, you have a business. You make a good living out of your business, about $12,000 a year. Now, you begin to lose money.” I says, “Aren’t you thinking too much about your business?” She says, “No, I’m not thinking about my business because I think about ECK and that should take care of my business.” I says, “What you think about is what you’re going to get most in your life. See?” I says, “Change this up and think about ECK a half hour a day or maybe two half-hour periods a day. Then go off and let it work in your life and you think about your job. See? Put your mind on your job.”
I think another 6 months went by and I met her again, someplace in town where she lived, and I said to her, “How are you getting along now? Well, she says, “Oh, I getting along just fine.” She says, “The whole thing is working out.” And, what a good the balance is. Begin the balance inwardly and outwardly. See? Because, while we’re here,’ if this outer thing is neglected, it goes away from us. See? If the inner is neglected, it goes away from us. So, we’ve got to balance it. We’ve got this thing to balance this way so the inner can work with the outer and let them both get together here. Because if you take your mind off your business then you don’t have a business anymore.
It’s just like this woman who completely gave up everything and sat down for 5 years of meditation and thought she would have God in her life. Well, she may have had God in her life but there wasn’t any proof in it.
It’s the same thing with those who say the world is coming to an end and they’re the prophet and everybody gathers up on top of the hill and follows him. And, they wait until noon when they heed the prophet who said the world’s coming to an end and what happens? See? This is what I’m saying about the fact that we have to be careful with what we’re doing inside before we start opening up and talking about it.
Paul Twitchell – “Next question?”
Student – “Well, about people in India, what with their poor lot and bodies, and give up and not take care of the body, they are more or less like hermits.”
Paul Twitchell – I tell you, this is true of peasants, the peasantry over there. You think of people in the grottos there. Well, there are millionaires besides a lot of those people over there, but they have nothing, absolutely nothing. You give them 10 cents a day and they would work themselves to death to earn 10 cents a day. Now, there was a case over there in South Korea, that I read about not long ago, where the women there, they went out and were lined up, oh, I don’t know, maybe hundreds of them. They get employment, government employment for the day, and this was labor. Mind you, this wasn’t just women’s work like we know it here. This was labor work and they were getting 25 cents a day. See? So you see, these people don’t have anything.
And, it’s so easy to fall into this passive state. Judy, you saw this a long time ago in the Deep South, where there were some people who were that way, who lived down on these, well, we call them “Tobacco Road” sort of people. And, I’ve seen that in the mountains down through that area. They have nothing. So, these people think this is the way out. They become very passive to anything. All life itself beats them around, throws them around, so they think, through this form of meditation, they will gain something for another life. See?
Student – “But, this is much on the order of the hermit because the hermit has withdrawn from society and he doesn’t contribute anything and he doesn’t accept anything so it would be like, more or less, a wasted incarnation. Would it not?”
Did you ever read this book called The Guide? It was by some Hindu and it’s a very funny story about this fellow who ran off from a small city there in India because he got in trouble with some prominent man’s wife. And, he was wandering off along the Ganges, making his escape. And, he goes up and he sits down in a cave, you know, and starts thinking about what to do next. And, along comes some of the villagers and sees him there and says’ Oh, we got a guru. We got a Master. A holy man’s come to live with us.” And, they accepted him as a holy man. So, what does he do? He’s well fed. And, all he has to do is just sit there in his cave and look at all the people and advise them on what to do, all their crops and everything. So, you know, the whole ironic part about it, they hadn’t had any rain for a long time. And, they said, “Well, maybe the holy man would fast for just a little while and it would rain.” So, he said, “Sure I’ll fast for you.” But, the trouble was it didn’t rain for about 3 or 4 months. And, they all sat around looking at him. And, he was lying there on his little pallet thinking of all the good food. And, he couldn’t get to it because they were watching him 24 hours a day.
Basically, on the whole of this is that one must remember, this is, altogether, a different type of mentality than we have in the West. These are two different types of mentality. Now, we have in the West, a man who has earned his way up to the right and into a standing in society through education. Education has brought more people into a prominent and a social position, an economic position, than any factor that we’ve had. Because he goes and gets himself a degree, he becomes a great engineer or he becomes something in another field and he rises to prominence in it. Over there you don’t have it, even in France you don’t have that. In France, they say you have a freshman class, say in 1968. They say, “We can only take in so many doctors into the universities within France, private schools or state universities. We can only take in so many within these because we know, by 1972, what is going to be the limit in these fields. We can’t graduate 10,000 engineers because there’s only going to be a field for 5,000.” See? And, they control their economics that way. They even do that in Europe. Where that, in over here, we don’t have that. Anybody can go to school and be what they want. And, it’s coming back to the point of mentality.
So, when anybody studies a religion or he wants to go into something, he has to go back to the background and look at the background and the times of what started this. See? What brought it into prominence. How come it came to be what it is? What was the historical background? What were the people like? What was it then and does it apply today? You can say one thing for the Catholic Church, that every century that came along, it changed itself. It changed its policy. It didn’t try to hold the people to a thing because people were growing. And, there’s the difference. There’s more education coming into the fact. So, they changed. See? They don’t, in those countries. They hold to this rigid tradition.
So, a man in India, he’s a peasant in the field. He hasn’t got much chance to be anything else, except maybe join the army.
Student – “What purpose is actually served by seeing someone going into these prolonged meditations for years and years and years and years and have someone else care for them and so forth? What actually is accomplished?”
Paul Twitchell – “Nothing.”
Student – “Even though the profound things that come, if they come, is it just because they are capable? They are not really gone that long are they?”
Paul Twitchell – “Well, let’s take the case of Meyer Baba. Meyer Baba has never contributed anything to the civilization, has he?
Student – “What is it that you’ve already read that hasn’t been repeated somewhere else?
Paul Twitchell – “That’s right. He goes through these terrible austerities, where he fasted for 30, 40 days. And, he’ll be in silence or…”
Student – “Yeah, that’s what I’m speaking of, is the silence period.”
Paul Twitchell – “But, what did he come out of it with? See? But, what I’m trying to say is, maybe he influenced a lot of wealthy people in this country. I admit one thing about it, it does sharpen your senses but you can overdo that.”
Student – “Could you accomplish just as much by what you said earlier by the balance of doing the things you have to do and spending a certain time, regardless of what time of the day it is, would that be more in balance then?”
Paul Twitchell – “That would be more in balance. I know that in Vardaswami, they had one fellow who started Vardaswami and he spent sixteen years in silence and he came out with what he considered a great technique of gaining God through it and he didn’t have anything more than somebody else had. Well, I tell you, these Indians are apt to overdo it. You can go into India and you can meet a lot of intellectuals and those people who have money. And, these young people, you’ll meet them, a young fellow of 35, 40 years of age and he’ll still be going to school. See? And he’s been in college for 15 years and he’s been doing alright. He hasn’t been flunking but he’s been taking everything he can put his hands on. When he finishes one school, he’ll go on someplace else. And, this is the point which I’m trying to emphasize. They just, simply, go overboard. See?”
Student – “But, they are the only ones who can do that. They are the ones, in which you say, they have money.”
Paul Twitchell – “Yeah.”
Student – “But others try to follow them.”
Paul Twitchell – “Right.”
Thank you.