ELEVEN MINUTES

"Whoever does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."

   Professor David Bohm was one of the leading quantum physicists of the 20th century. Whilst still a relatively young man he wrote a textbook explaining Einstein's theory of relativity which Einstein praised as the best he had ever seen. The significance of this is that up to the present no-one has been able to discover how to unite quantum physics and relativity in one theory. It remains one of the greatest challenge to science to do so. Bohm understood both at least as well as anyone.
   A far greater challenge is to understand consciousness - and its limitations. Bohm was interested in this as well. As a physicist he is best known for suggesting that the events detectable by either our senses or our instruments are what may be thought of as ripples on the surface of vast and deep 'implicate order' out of which the detectable events, together with their interactions and history, 'unfold'. In common with Einstein, he also did not accept that human minds will never understand the cause of the events which appear to be the deepest foundations of our reality. He would only agree that human minds cannot do this - yet.
   Some years before his death, in discussion with friends, Bohm made an interesting observation about the nature of the God who identified himself to Moses. He was not at all concerned by the strangeness of the burning bush which was not burnt itself. Biologists believe this may have been a flowering desert shrub called Dictamnus Albus, which does exude an inflammable vapour from its leaves, which burns so fast the leaves are unharmed. Bohm's comment was only about God's reply, when Moses asked God his name: "You must tell them the one who is called 'I AM' sent you."
   I am now going to quote twice from this discussion.
   "You see," said Bohm, "this word 'I am' has an interesting character in Hebrew, or in the Aramaic language, which has the same grammar and was used by Christ. In Hebrew it is not possible to, really, to say 'I am' in any proper way. .. The present tense of the verb 'to be' is not used. In order to say this [that is, to answer Moses' question] the voice in the burning bush said 'ehyeh', which means 'I will be whatever I will be', or 'that I will be that I will be', right. But it was translated into English as 'I am'." Bohm adds the comments: "That illustrates the responsibility we have in doing a simple job even, like translation. That can have very great consequences in some cases - to mistranslate."
   A few minutes later he tries again to make his understanding clearer: ".. the primary meaning is, 'That I am, is what I am.' Or it could be translated as 'I am whatever I am,' but that's probably not as good as to say, 'What I am is that I am' - in other words 'That I am is all.'
   Which - you may agree - is to extract a great deal of meaning from two syllables spoken to a shepherd alone with his flock several millennia ago, even if it is to a very unusual shepherd, born a Hebrew, raised and educated as Egyptian noble, now a fugitive wanted for murder.
   Most religions are attempts to interpret similar unusual perceptions - but not always from particularly unusual people - to offer a more coherent understanding of existence and the direction and the purpose of our lives. Whether the perception was real; in what sense it was real; or whether it was hallucinated or imagined, or whether it was real in essence but was necessarily embroidered - is unimportant in the last analysis. What matters finally is the effect.
   The effect depends on an assumption that the preferred interpretation is be true for others. Once beyond this hurdle, the assumption may be developed further, to insist that this - or that - particular interpretation must apply to others.
There is nothing illogical about this progression. Once the divine purpose is fully understood, there is no further need for freedom, or dissent, or any need to develop any more ideas. All that is now required is a endless examination of people's lives by the experts and authorities in this understanding to ensure that nothing that might be affected by it has not received their judicial ruling. This is how religions - but not only religions: all ideologies which depend on unexaminable revelation from the past or future - almost inevitably become totalitarian in their nature and fascist in their practice.
The logic of this may impress itself only very slowly on liberal minds: but it will. Recently, for example, a Quaker friend of mine proposed that I address an important Quaker conference on education. "Is he one of us?" he was asked, and when he had to admit that 'he' was not, his proposal was refused. Far more cruel, however, was my unfeeling comment to my downcast friend: "So, you have become tribal as well, I see."
   Fortunately, mankind has cast a great wide net over the great deep dark sea of heresy. After ten thousand years of trying - of trying to understand every report, every interpretation, rejection, translation, restoration and reformation, we have now, and these are only the best known examples: thousands, of distinctive sects of Hinduism; eighteen schools of traditional Buddhism; the two major forms and many minor of Judaism; eight main schools of Islam; two major and several dozen important Christian churches; countless thousands of offshoots of all of these, and more, ranging from the sober and respectable to the glaring-eyed and dangerous, the quietly pietistic, the animistic, the mad.
   Many attempts are also made to deny that any of these are important. "We are just evolving creatures in a pointless universe" was how a distinguished psychologist recently summarized her own belief. Others are often perfectly honourable attempts to stop the bloodshed and waste of lives, the brainwashing and conditioning imposed on helpless young people, usually, but not always, with their equally helpless parents' assent.
   But is nihilism better? I do not mean the cultured nihilism of the intellectual upper-classes mouthing deeply serious languid inanities at one another. I mean the dirty concrete, rotting mattress and burnt car littered streets, the dangerous parks, the urine-stinking stairway and filthy children left alone nihilism of the city slums. Must it not be better to have almost any belief which brings some hope and colour and purpose to a life - especially to a life like this - than to have none?
   No, is my answer. Any belief will not be better than no belief. Belief is not the issue. Belief is not important. Belief is what people use a substitute for experience. Belief is not a good substitute for experience. Experience is true: belief only may be.
   The really awesome difficulty which scientists cannot make disappear - however much they may dislike or distrust religions and fear their conflicts, which are indeed inevitable when people are more serious about their beliefs than they are about their experience - is that these events on which religions are based - and however misguidedly, venally, vengefully, cruelly, stupidly they are sustained - keep on happening. Not only do they keep on happening to people all over the world and in every culture and epoch, but they are always convince those to whom they do occur that the universe has a point to make about life, and that we must be pretty damn stupid not to know it, since it keeps on telling us over and over again:

"Before you trust anything or anyone in your life, and even before you trust yourself, trust this: that I AM."

   This is the command that has made itself known in every one of those thousands of systems of belief which divide and confuse mankind. And given the obduracy and vanity of those who control these systems, including science, there is literally no end that their leaders can see: except perhaps some final desperate war or some unimaginable holocaust which will wipe out every one but one; and then, you can be sure, with the same blind guides in charge, the whole silly business will doubtless start all over again.
   There is a solution to all this confusion, and with it an end to all the conflict that otherwise lies in wait for us. Fittingly, it is exactly the same as has been proposed in the past by all the greatest authorities in their own times to their own people. Here is one:

'When you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. .. And when you pray, do not use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do, who think they shall be heard for much speaking'.

   Could hardly be clearer. Could hardly be a better rate. I once read an attractively glossy pamphlet which promised to smooth the path to heaven through the successive attainment of sixty-three distinctly different levels of awareness before achieving - although more careful reading revealed that this was not guaranteed - the final goal of diamond-pure awareness and total cosmic consciousness. This would require several hours of application every day - for years. It also required fifty percent of one's income: apparently for life.
   But what exactly is it: 'to pray'? Martin Luther was once asked this by his barber in Wittenberg, the same Wittenberg in which he later nailed his ninety-five theses to the church doors, the same in which, in 1520, three years later he burnt the papal bull against him.
   "How does one pray?" his barber asked him.
   Luther was so impressed by this question, as the man stood there stropping his razor - for it was, and it is, an outrageous question - that even tells us his barber's name: Peter Berkendorf. But Luther's response was also typical. He did not tell the man, this simple peasant, to attend church more regularly and listen to his, Luther's, sermons more attentively. Instead, having been shaved, he went back to his cell, reached for his pen, and wrote forty pages of simple straightforward but beautiful prayers for Peter Berkendorf. They were published in 1534, entitled: A Simple Way to Pray - for a Friend.
   By 1525 the Peasants' Revolt in Germany and Austria - which Luther had been thought to support, but which he most vehemently and publicly did not - had burnt itself horribly and messily out. Thousands were killed. The peasants gained very little. Possibly their publication was a way for Luther to make amends.
   Although each short prayer is certainly meant to be used repeatedly, Luther could at least argue that they were all meant to be used alone and not as a part of the display of orchestrated piety, 'babbling', as he called it, of the kind that earned Christ's contempt.
   Soldiers have learnt do it quickly: or be dead. Soldiers are generally not much respected for their intelligence. How can anyone - so runs the argument - who is so plainly prepared to give up their life for their nation, for an ideal, a dream, how can anyone this stupid be called intelligent? There is a lot of truth in this. There is a lot of truth in any platitude. It's what gives them their charm.

And yet:

"I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

Or this:

"Je vais vous dire un grand secret, mon cher. N'attendez pas le jugement dernier. Il a lieu tous les jours."

   So, here we have this deeply puzzling and divisive universe - deeply puzzling to our distinguished scientists; deeply divisive to religions which fail to bring us together as they are supposed to do - religere means to gather together. We even have religious leaders, soi-disant, who appear to glory in their powers of distinction, denigration, and division.
   Just two years before Luther hammered his theses to the Wittenberg church doors, years before he wrote out his collection of prayers for Peter Berkendorf, eminent Catholics were pleading for new inspiration. In 1515, Erasmus: "There is only one way left - let us all make a joint confession, that the mercy of God may be ready for us all." The Diet of Worms, which has delighted schoolchildren ever since it gathered in 1521 and at which Luther refused to recant, was certainly not what Erasmus meant. Four centuries later John XXIII offered a prayer at the Second Vatican Council for " a new Pentecost". Twenty years after him, John Paul II asked for "spiritual renewal at all levels."
   But the question remains: How does one pray? When I once asked a modern bishop, he said, in effect, he didn't know. I had to find my own way.
   Soldiers are trained to respond to situations very systematically. This means they can continue to respond intelligently when their comrades are wounded or dying and they are frightened. This is what their training is for. It has, however, yet another virtue. Once one had learnt the drill, there is no need for further debate.
   This method is often surprisingly successful. It becomes more successful the more it is practised. An experienced leader can then give his team an adequate explanation of what they have got themselves into; what they have to do to sort it out; how to do this; and how long it should take. All this can be delivered in minutes. This, typically, is how the method works.

1. SITUATION

The people here are afflicted with spiritual anxiety. Over millennia it has been discovered that there is nothing in life equal to the experience of their own fragile identity connecting with a universal timeless power. Being generally unsure how to do this, most people depend on instructions given to them by different authorities. But these authorities do not agree. This is the cause of their anxiety. Their anxiety is then the cause of wars.

2. MISSION

You will experience this connection yourself. If you dumb clucks can do it, anyone can. Then you will tell them how to do it.

(And, this off the record: you will show everyone, without distinction - and I mean without distinction - that they can do it too. This is not political. It can happen whether people think they are religious or not. It's just about choice. It should be obvious to anyone with the tiniest grain of sense that a God who is really universal to mankind cannot possibly give a flying fuck if people want to believe He wants them divided. That's not His plan. It's their own stupid idea and it's deadly. Keep it simple.)

3. EXECUTION

A. Find somewhere where you will not be disturbed for at least quarter of an hour. Go there alone. Do not kneel. There is no-one to impress. Lie flat. Relax. This is the hardest part. There are lots of good books about relaxation. Get one of these and practice.

B. Once you are as limp as overcooked spaghetti now recognize that there are two levels of identity which are indispensable to those who hate you, just as they are indispensable to those who love you, and they also seem to you as natural as the clothes you wear. They are not your real identity and they are irrelevant here. You are going to drop and leave them.

C. First is Mass Identity - call that 'me': this includes your sex; your race; your own nation's history, wealth, poverty, virtues and its crimes. This is not 'you'. Put this identity aside.

D. Second is your Social Identity - call this 'Sid'. Sid includes all that your family and then your society has always used to recognize, address, and control you. It also includes details that you no doubt think important: like your name; your appearance; skills; social importance; dignity and pride. This is not 'you' either. Put this identity aside. [And this by the way, if any of you know what I am talking about, is what Paul meant when he said: "I die every day."]

E. Welcome to the real world. What you are now experiencing - and many never have, and many never will - is your Intrinsic Identity: the I am that I am; the ehyeh that spoke to Moses. You has died: 'you' has just been born

F. You will find that this Intrinsic Identity has a guardian. Within your mind, speak to it now. Say 'Hallo' if you like. It may reply. In any case, in your mind, say: 'I am ready'.

G. Wait until you feel a response. It may be only deeper silence, but conversation is not want you want.

H. After a moment, say: "Please, fill me with grace!"

I. The next experience may be very sexual. If so, it will be more familiar to women than to men. [This realization was the cause of the intense hatred of women's sexuality which appeared out of monasticism in the Middle Ages. If the sexual pleasure of women can be very like the experience of spiritual grace, and it can, then women must be denigrated and their pleasure denied in order to suppress this fact.]

J. But do not be surprised, disappointed or distressed by anything that you experience within the next half minute. Nothing can happen in that length of time that has not happened to many people over thousands of years. It is only not so much talked about because it is impossible to control. Since it cannot be controlled, people cannot be told what to think. [And this, of course, is why Christ had to be stopped.]

K. It is quite possible that nothing will happen. This may be disappointing, but if you are sufficiently relaxed, you may anyway have a few minutes zizz. I often do. In any case lie quietly for a while before becoming ME and Sid again and going out just like another passer-by. You can try again when you are quieter. Be warned that this is not a splint for broken minds, lives, or hearts. You need to be confident that you can succeed, but also ready to fail. Success does not prove anything special about you at all: except that you are capable of passing this on. All that it proves is supposed to prove: that this is an experience just about as natural as breathing.

4. TIMING

A. Start time: H-hour - any time that you are in need of spiritual refreshment and you have somewhere quiet to go to. Early morning; after lunch; before important meetings; before making; after making love - even better; last thing at night if you are alone (but then no wine: don't mix communions.)

B. Duration: Eleven and a quarter minutes: max. Less is too little; more, try later.

15/08/05

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