Inner-Vikna

Transcription

Q: Earlier this evening we managed to abduct John Lennon and George Harrison. The film of the Maharishi was still being processed at the time but we started by taking up a point that the Maharishi had first made at the end of his conversation. The two things that the Maharishi said this morning were the results for people who meditated and followed this system of meditation. The two things he claimed for it were serenity and energy. Have you found that? Lennon: I've got more energy. I mean, I've got the same energy, but I know how to tap it sort of. Q: How do you mean, exactly? Lennon: Well, you know, the energy that I found through doing it, I know damn well I've had it there before. I just haven't, I've only used it on good days, you know, when everything is going well. And then I found more energy, because it's been going well. So with meditation, I find that, if it's not too good a day, I'll still sort of get the same amount of... Q: And can you link the two in any way? I mean, is it true of any day of meditation is equally good? Lennon: Well, the worst days I have on meditation are better than the worst days that I had before without it. Q: Have you found that George? Harrison: It's all...the energy is latent within everybody. It's there anyway. The meditation is just a natural process of being able to contact that, so by doing it each day, you contact that energy and give yourself a little more. Consequently, you're able to do whatever you normally do, just with a little bit more happiness, maybe. Q: How do you come to reach this stage of meditation? The Maharishi this morning was very clear about how that he gave to everyone or his teachers gave to everyone a specific sound, and that each person had a sound that was, tried to be in rhythm with the person... Harrison: Each person, the individual life sort of co-relates with their own rhythm, so they give a word or a song, a mantra which co-relates with that rhythm. So by using the mantra rather than a thought, because the whole idea is to transcend to the subtlest level of thought. So you replace the thought with the mantra, and the mantra becomes more subtle and more subtle until finally you've lost it in the mantra. And then you find yourself at that level of pure consciousness. Q: What I was in fact...is the mantra something you use to get back to the subject, if you find earthly or irrelevant thoughts... Lennon: Yeah, it's also like that. You just sort of sit there, and you let your mind go, wherever it's going, it doesn't matter what you're thinking about, just let it go. And you just introduce the mantra or the vibration, just to take over. You don't will it or use your willpower. Harrison: If you find yourself thinking, then the moment you realize you've been thinking about things again, then you replace that thought with the mantra again. Sometimes you can go on, and you find that you haven't even had the mantra in your mind, it's just a complete blank. But when you reach that point, because it's beyond all experience, then it's down there and that level is timeless, spaceless, so you can be there for five minutes and come out. You don't actually know how long you've been there, because it's just the actual contact of that, and then coming back out to the gross level, like this level, and you bring that level with you. Q: But I mean, in fact, then the aim as opposed to sitting and thinking or anything, is to reach a point in a sense when you have no thoughts, is it? Lennon: Yeah, but you're not even conscious of that sometimes. You just know that, the only time you're conscious is when you suddenly, it's like you don't know you're awake or something, asleep until you're awake, most of the time, you know. You just aren't asleep before. You come out in twenty minutes. Sometimes you come out and it's been twenty minutes sitting there, and other times you come out and it just seems as though no time has gone at all. Q: And can you look back at the end of that period and recap what's happened in the last. . . Lennon: That's why you go and see these people. So they sort of say, ëWhat were you doing?' and you say, ëWell, nothing, I haven't done anything,' and they say, ëWell, how about this?' and you say, ëOh, it did seem very short' or ëThat seemed to happen.' Harrison: You can't really tell anybody what it is, because it's, the teaching is all based on the individual experience. But if you were to do it then you get instruction, which leads to some sort of experience, and upon having experience you're taught the next part. But really. . . Lennon: It's like we're trying to tell you what chocolate tastes like. Harrison: Or how it is to be drunk, you know, they've got to be drunk themselves before they know what it is. Q: I can see that, I mean you're doing very well in fact, in expressing something that probably is inexpressible. Because, I mean, the thing is at the end of it, do you feel more relaxed, do you feel you know more about yourself, do you feel you know more about something else or someone else? Lennon: You don't feel you have more knowledge or anything. Well, maybe you do, but I can't feel that exactly. You just feel more energetic, you know, just simply for doing work or anything. You just come out it, it's just ëLet's get going!' you know. Harrison: The real thing is, it takes a lot of practice to arrive at the point, if you can remain there permanently. But the whole thing, we've only been doing it for a matter of six weeks maybe. But there's definite proof, I've had, that it is something, it really works. But in actual fact, if you take a long time to arrive at the point where I'm able to hold that pure consciousness on this level or to be able to bring that level of consciousness into this level of consciousness, which is the aim of it. Q: You mean the aim is to carry on the state you're in, in meditation, when you're here, when you're in your rec room. Lennon: You know, we practice. He said, one of his sort of analogies or whatever, is that it's like dipping a cloth into gold. So you dip it in, and you bring it out, and you dip it in and you bring it out. And if you leave it in, it gets soggy, you know, like if you're sitting in a cave all your life. And if you bring it out then it's the same. But the meditation is going in and going out and going in, so that when, after how many years or whatever, when you bring it out, it's the same when it's out as it's in. So when you do it in this, you really zap in all the time inside. But that's something else. Q: But I mean, the thing is, you said permanently. One of you, I think it was Paul, said in fact that this feeling that meditation gives is the sort of permanent version of what drugs can give temporarily, is that true? Harrison: Well, not really, because drugs, it's still all on the relative level. Like this, sleeping and dreaming and waking, all those three states that people live through, is all only relative, which is on this level. Whereas this is on a subtler level, so really you couldn't compare it. With drugs you do have a glimpse of a few things like that. Q: Is it as deep? Harrison: The thing is, you could take drugs, which would heighten perception a little, and then maybe to try and get into that subtle level with the drug. But just to take the drug and hope it's going to bring that subtly onto this gross level is a mistake, you know, it never worked. Q: I mean, you experimented with drugs, is that why you put them on one side? Lennon: Well, we dropped them long before the Maharishi. Q: Oh, it wasn't. . . Lennon: Yeah, we just, you know, we'd had enough acid, it had done all it could do for us, you know, there was no going any further. It only does so much. Q: What does it do? Lennon: Well, what it does mainly is that is more finding out about yourself, you know, and that kind of scene, so it's more psychological than anything else. Q: Whereas this is not psychological? I mean, it seems. . . Lennon: Well, it will be in the end. But I mean, with acid, it is just all about yourself, it's all that, but this just sort of a bit gentler. Or more gentle. Q: See, you're on the ball even there. But do you think that with acid in fact that what you discover is yourself or just a fantasy? Lennon: No, it's yourself more, but obviously you do have hallucinations as they call them, it's only a sort of state, but it is about yourself, you know. You don't find out, I mean you could find out about other people, but they're only mirrors of yourself anyway. But you find out about yourself, you know, instead of taking a hundred years, or maybe you never find out. Harrison: People can look at themselves objectively, you know, instead of thinking that you are the big cheese. Lennon: Or even you're not the big cheese, whatever you think. Harrison: Yeah, or whatever you think, you can see yourself from a different point of view. So consequently, it shows you a bit more truth than you've seen. Only, of course, truth depends on the person's feelings. The thing is, you see certain things that have been there all the time, and yet you've lived with such a narrow concept of just general things, just like the trees or the glass or anything. Q: But I mean, presumably when you gave up those experiments with drugs, it wasn't because you felt you knew everything about yourselves, but because of the disadvantages of the thing as well. Harrison: Because the thing is, your true self isn't on this level, again, it's on a subtler level. So, whatever the true self is, the way to approach it is through that meditation or some form of yoga. We're not saying that this meditation is the only answer, it's obviously not. Yoga incorporates lots of different techniques, but the whole point is that each soul is potentially divine, and yoga is a technique of manifesting that, to arrive at point that is divine. Q: You've had six weeks of this and it's already had a tremendous impact on you, do you find that this sort of tremendous concern with meditation and one's own self and so on, is now starting to impose, not necessarily rules, but a difference to your conduct of the rest of the day, I mean towards other people or anything? Lennon: No. Q: Or rules of any kind? Lennon: It doesn't, you see. It's just something you had, if you haven't been treating your teeth all your life, it's just suddenly that somebody says, ëHey, it's a good idea of you clean them.' So you try it, and it seems quite good. You just add it to your routine, you know. So you're just the same, just with that, the little difference of doing it. You add to your religion, you don't have to change your religion or anything. You know, whatever you are, you carry on. But this is something that is a plus. Harrison: And you're surprised your teeth are suddenly shiny. Q: But I mean, in fact, if you'd compare this with say something like Christianity, which is concerned to try and find serenity, to give energy through the Holy Spirit or whatever. At the same time, a good fifty per cent of that is concerned with then, one's responsibility to other people. There doesn't seem to be any of that in this. Lennon: Because it's, you know, if you go, if you asked Maharishi or any of the people, give us a few rules for living by, well, they'd be the same as Christianity. You know, Christianity is the answer as well as this. It's the same thing, just. . . Harrison: Christianity, how I was taught it, they told me to believe in Jesus and God and all that, they didn't actually show me any way of experiencing God or Jesus. So, the whole point of to believe in something, without actually seeing it, well, it's no good. You've got to actually experience the thing, you know, if there's a God, you must see Him. And that's the point, you know, the whole thing, it's no good to believe in something, you know, just. . . Lennon: And the whole thing about the kingdom of heaven is within you, you know, that's all it means, to have a peep inside. There's nobody to see, you know, some old fellow, it's still just like electricity, you don't see it. Q: But I mean it's the same in a sense that you now have evidence, you personally feel of this thing, equally Christians feel they have experience of that thing, but in both cases, it's impossible to prove it to anybody else, isn't it? Lennon: Yeah, but having been, I'm still, I'm really a Christian, I've done this, I know the difference between being fifteen and just being, ëOh, it's very nice' and all that, and had I been told meditation at fifteen, now I would be pretty groovy. Q: Yes, but I mean, the word, for instance, the word God, does it mean something different to you now than it did before Maharishi? Harrison: It means all sorts of things to me. I mean, the first concept of a man in the sky, well, I kicked that one a few years ago, but I've got back to that now, because it's a man in the sky as well if you like. It's just everything, the whole thing that it's just everything, every aspect of creation is part of God. Lennon: I think of it just as a big piece of energy, you know, like electricity, just a bigger piece, a big powerhouse. Harrison: The energy that runs through everything, that holds everything together and makes everything one. One big piece of energy. Q: But yes, I'm still concerned about the outgoing part, I mean, how does it, is it solely concerned with one's self, or does it in any way, make one feel more responsible for other people or more responsible people that are depending on you or. . .? Harrison: Well, you realize that your actions are going to lead to whatever the reaction is. And so, that's like the only thing about your attitude to other people. If you treat other people good, they'll treat you good. If you kick them in the face, they'll probably do the same thing. And that's the easiest thing to do with religion. Action and reaction, that's the thing that Christ was saying about you sow you reap. It just means, whatever you do, you get it back. And that's why it doesn't really matter what people say or think because they get it back just like you'll get back what's coming. Q: That's Old Testament. Lennon: Everything you read about all the religions, you know, they're all the same. It's just a matter of people opening their minds up, to allow the, yeah, all right, Buddha was a groove, Jesus was all right. They're all saying exactly the same thing. Q: How would you, what differences would you say there were between Jesus, say, and the Maharishi, for instance? Lennon: Well, I don't know, you know. Maharishi doesn't do miracles, you know, for a kick-off. I don't know how divine or how you know, super-human or whatever it is, he is, that's all. But I mean Jesus was. . . Harrison: A divine incarnation. Like some of the people like Christ and Buddha and Krishna, and various others, are divine the moment they're born. That is, they've achieved the highest thing, and they choose to come back to try and save a few more people. Whereas others manage to be born just ordinary, and attain their divinity in that incarnation. Lennon: So Maharishi was probably one of them, you know, who was born quite ordinary, but he's working at it. Q: How do you think in fact, this, the Maharishi, this meditation can for instance help the world's problems? Lennon: Well, if everybody was doing it, it would just be. . . Harrison: It's the same thing that Jesus said about go and fix your own house, and it's solved, everything's fixed up then. If you sort yourself out, everybody needs to go home and find out for themselves, and fix up all their personal problems. Then no other problems exist, because they only cause the problems that exist in the world. It's all each person, individual, it's just up to him to do it. Q: And as each person does that, as each person goes deeper and deeper within themselves, is each person going to find good and good thoughts below? Lennon: It doesn't matter what you're thinking when you do it. I mean, you could be thinking the most awful things in the world, I suppose. The point is to get down there and then you're not thinking anything. It's when you come out you might be thinking quite the same, you know, after a few weeks. I mean, we don't really know what happened to a sort of, a killer or somebody that did it, you know, maybe he changed his mind, we don't know about that, you should have asked him that side of it. But, it's for the good, you know, and it's simple, that's the main bit about it. So they're bound to be a bit better than they were, whatever they were before they did it. Q: And each person, you're saying, each person, there's no one to which it's not possible. Lennon: Anybody. All you've got to do is be interested in it, whether you're interested in it to knock it, or to do anything, but if you just want to try it to find out, that's all you need, you know. Because the fellow that runs it here in London, was a real sort of, you know, trying to knock it down for months before he got it. You know, he was a real cynical whatever you call it. Q: I mean, even so, as you look at this thing, you find that you say on the one hand there's no rules for how it will affect people or anything, but I mean, looking back in your last work in Sgt. Pepper, there the music was affected by the experiments with the drugs and so on that you'd been doing. Are you finding now we've grabbed you in the middle of this day of a recording session, are you finding a difference in yourselves as you work, in what you work at, and how you work? Lennon: All the differences in Pepper and all that were in retrospect, you know. It wasn't, sitting and thinking, oh, we had LSD, so we'll make a little tinkle on this, you know, it all. . . Q: Oh no, as you look in retrospect to what you did yesterday. . . Lennon: We can't see what we've done now. Harrison: I feel that we're all a little more tolerant, we've been learning that over the past four or five years, but I just lately, I think we are very much more tolerant than we have been. And I hope that we'll get even more tolerant. Q: One of the last things I asked the Maharishi was what he thought that people were on earth for. After six weeks of his teachings, what would you say? Harrison: To create more happiness, to fulfill all desires. The personal things, that everybody's going to be here until they have fulfilled all desires. I mean, this gets into other things that may take up hours of argument. Q: How do you mean they'll still going to be here? Harrison: Well, I believe in reincarnation. I mean, it's just something that I feel exists, that what you sow you reap, so when you die, life and death are still only relative to thought, there's no such thing really, you just keep going. I believe in rebirth, and then you come back and go through more experience and you die and you come back again and you keep coming back until you've got it straight. That's how I see it. Q: And then what? Harrison: Well, the ultimate thing is to manifest that divinity so that you can become one with the Creator. I mean, it sounds pretty far out, talking about things like that, but that's just what I believe. Lennon: I believe the same, but it's just when we're talking about meditation and that, it's frightening really for people that haven't done it or still, that still fancy the meditation but they hear about coming back and all that up there. So, you know, I'd sooner put it over and forget about that. Harrison: Because that's not really important. Lennon: That happens anyway. Harrison: The whole point of his meditation is for now, you know, because it's now all the time, it's present and past has got nothing to do with it. Lennon: Not to live to get into heaven by being a good boy, or to go to hell, just to live better as you're living, do whatever you're doing better. And live now, you know, not looking forward to the great day, or whatever it turns out to be. Q: And there we must leave it. John and George, thank you very much indeed. Lennon & Harrison: Thank you. Q: Thank you, thank you and good evening. We're returning to a subject we dealt with last week. Before that, we return to one other subject we dealt with last week. Namely, the bad news, good news jokes we asked you to send in. I've got bad news for you and good news, the bad news first. Mrs. I.M. Lancaster of Ilford said I've got bad news for you and good news. The bad news first. Here's a letter from our son's principal. He's being sent down for having a girl in his room. And now the good news: he's passed his biology exam. G.W. Pilson of Upper Warlingham, R.S.M. to soldier: the bad news for you, you've been posted abroad. The good news: she's a cracker. (Laughter) Antony, I never know whether this is Tiggy or Thye of Bushy is right up to the minute. Policeman to motorist after crash: the bad news first, the doctor says you have ten crushed ribs. Now the good news: you passed the breathalyzer test. Some of them went further than that and wider. From Oswestry we had this: doctor after examining woman. I have good news for you, Mrs. Smith. Woman: No, Miss Smith. Doctor: Well, I have some bad news for you Miss Smith. (Laughter) You're going to have a baby. Woman: That's impossible, I have never ever been with a man. At this, the doctor takes a pair of binoculars from his drawer and looks out of the window. Woman: What are you doing? Doctor: Last time this happened, three wise men came over the horizon and I don't...(Laughter) And Alan Iliff of Keele, the bad news first: the Chinese have landed on the moon. The good news: all of them. And now we return to the subject we dealt with on Friday when we talked to the Maharishi, and then we talked with John Lennon and George Harrison and we welcome them back very much indeed again tonight. We said we were going to deal with the letters that you sent in and so on, and that's what we want to do. First of all though, one subject that lots of people have referred to, and we talked about a little in fact after the program, talking about meditation and the Maharishi in general, and after the program on Friday, is the whole area is . . . what would you say, would you say that your lives have altered since the Maharishi, that they've got more meaning and purpose, or more fun or something? Harrison: I think our lives have been altering all the time, that's what life is, it's one continuous alteration, and you keep altering until you've made yourself perfect, or as near perfect as you're capable. But, we have altered a little more, probably, since meeting Maharishi, because we've got something more to work on now. I mean, before we've known . . . I've been under the impression that meditation and yoga, things like that, have held the answer, personally, and yet I haven't actually had any form teaching, whereas when Maharishi came around, there he was, ready to teach us. Q: But in fact from what you were saying, it would seem as though, that before meditation and before the Maharishi, there weren't enough answers or from what John was saying last week. . . Lennon: Go on. Q: . . . that life, [laughs] I'm implicating you here, that, I mean, that life, you had bad days and good days. That now, there are more good days, that life has more purpose, that things like money and so on weren't enough before. Lennon: Yeah, well I mean we said that last week. It's just that the good days are very good and the bad days are okay, you know. It's just through tapping me source of energy. Q: And I mean, has it altered your attitude to something like money, was money ever satisfying and it isn't now, or what? Lennon: No, it's not all . . . what I meant about the money last week was, before we sort of made it, as they say, money was partly the goal but it still wasn't a, sort of, "let's get some money." But, we sort of got, suddenly had money, and then it wasn't all that good, you know. Harrison: By having the money we found that money wasn't the answer. Because we had lots of material things that people sort of spend their whole life to try and get. We managed to get them at quite an early age. And it was good really, because we learned that that wasn't it. We still lacked something, and that something is the thing that religion is trying to give to people. Q: And now that you've got meditation, would you . . . now you have that plus. Would you be as happy now if all the money were taken away? Harrison: Yeah, I'd probably be happier actually, because it's the . . . if you have some income, then you have some income tax and if you have a big house, you have all the other things, headaches that go with it. So, naturally, for every material thing you gain, there's always a little loss, whether it's mental or in some other way. You get a headache for everything you own, so if you don't own anything, you've got a clear mind. Lennon: You'll get them all saying, "give it away," now. Harrison: Yeah. [audience laughs] Harrison: You see that's like. . . Q: Yes, a lot of people seem to think that, that this was one of the things that was sort of too easy about meditation, that where Jesus Christ said "give everything away to the poor," the Maharishi says "just give one week's wages." I mean, do you think that's too easy? Lennon: No, I mean, why is it too easy? It's better than not doing anything. Isn't it? You know, what's easy about it? Q: Well, I'm quoting them, I'm not sure really. Harrison: You see, his meaning for this meditation is to . . . so that people don't alter their day to day routine, but through the meditation their routine will naturally become influenced by the meditation experience, so they can keep all their material wealth and things like that that they have. It's just that this gives them some spiritual wealth to go with it, and with that you're able to put the material wealth more into the true perspective. Instead of, I mean you can use all the material things, like we've got them and it's nice to have them, but we don't really believe in them, whereas some people, who haven't the material things, they tend to believe in them. Q: But if you were to choose at this moment between having meditation and all that goes with it, and having all your possessions, you would choose to give up the possessions? Harrison: Yes. [Lennon nods in agreement] Q: Jay Gadney writes, from Plumstead, London, about a friend of his, who is a compulsive gambler. And he says that this friend is married with two children. And he says "could meditation stop the friend gambling?" Now does it . . . because he says that it was implied on Friday night that meditation helps people to do the right thing. Now does it? Is it a practical aid like that? Lennon: I don't know whether it could just do . . . I mean, you've have to ask that John that, sort of, it would help him, you know. He might see what he's doing a bit better. Maybe he wouldn't have so much time for gambling. Harrison: You see, with the meditation, the natural thing, it comes: consciousness expansion. And once a person's consciousness has been expanded, then things that they used to do, they probably have less meaning for them, because they're just able to see themselves a little bit more, a bit clearer. So, consequently, things like gambling, probably the person would just see that it was pointless himself. Q: Yes. A lady writing from Gosport, goes further. She's been practicing transcendental meditation for some time, and she says that you become more and more aware of all the dangers that exist in present living. And she finds that she avoids social things and withdraws because you find it such a strain to have patience with a senseless conversation, apart from it being an aimless waste of time. Well, thank you for coming. But the . . . now, can you see yourself getting as impatient as that. . . Harrison: No. Q: . . . with life on the superficial level. Lennon: Is she doing the same one? Q: Well, she calls it TM, but I mean, which I assume is . . . but she says. . . Harrison: There's various forms of meditation. And as we're trying this one, we're not able really to comment on hers. Obviously, hers isn't much cop, otherwise. . . [audience laughs] Harrison: Otherwise she'd be happy and able to go through society with whatever she need do, I mean, it's . . . this is part of this thing, is to stay and be able to do everything that you normally do, just to be able to do it easier. Q: Can you, you explained sort of after the program was over on Friday, that, I mean, I was, what the eventually aim of it is and the eventual aim of life is and the eventual point with meditation that you hope to reach. Scribbling on there again if you like, what were you saying there? Harrison: Well, with this expansion of consciousness, these three states that we live in at the moment, like sleeping and waking and dreaming. They're all known as relative states, because it's all relative. Transcendental meditation takes you to that transcendental level of pure consciousness. But by going there often enough, you bring that level of consciousness out onto this level. Or you bring this level onto that level. But, the relative plus that level becomes cosmic consciousness. And that means that you're able to hold the full bliss consciousness in the relative field, so you can go about your actions all the time with bliss consciousness. Q: Yes . . . and can you go as though. . . Harrison: And there's a higher one, yes, they go higher and attain what's known as god consciousness and then higher still to one known as supreme knowledge where the people who know about supreme knowledge know about all the subtle laws that control the universe. Consequently, they're able to do all those things that are called miracles. In actual fact, a miracle is just having knowledge of supreme law. Q: And so these people are able to do miracles, are they, when they reach this point, also able to live longer and do this? Harrison: Yes, well there's lots of cases, there's a book I've been reading about a yogi known as Sri Puri Baba. He lived to be 136, and when he was 112, he got cancer of the mouth, and started smoking cigarettes and got rid of it. [audience laughs] Harrison: And there's another one, there's one who's in the Himalayas at this very moment and he's been there since . . . I mean, it sounds pretty far out, you know, to the average person who doesn't know anything about this, but this fellow's been there since before Jesus Christ, and he's still here now in the same physical body. Lennon: Same suit. Q: So, from before Jesus Christ. He's still there? Harrison: They get control over life and death. They have complete control over everything, having attained that higher state of consciousness. Q: And this is eventually the aim of anyone who takes that meditation? Harrison: Yeah. Q: But a long, long time ahead. Harrison: Well, I think Maharishi's. . . Lennon: I mean, they don't mean this life, you can be at that miracle scene. That happens later, a few more lives, maybe, you might get. Q: When you've returned a number of times. Lennon: Yeah. Q: Yeah. Harrison: But his plan is so that people from the age of say 15 practice it. By the time they're our age they've already attained cosmic consciousness, that is, the state of bliss. Q: Stage three, as it were. Yeah. Harrison: And then, they're at an age where they can go and act, and manage to change the world a little bit for the better. Rather than sort of waiting ëtil you're almost dying, then thinking, you know, "What is it? We've got to find out where we're going, what's all this thing about death?" And then they start panicking, and then it's a bit late. The whole point is to try and find it out at this age and then you've got your whole life to go and act upon it. Q: And then, you set about doing something about the world around you. Harrison: Well, obviously, that if you believe in certain things, and other people aren't, as it were, harmonizing with these laws. It's all the thing about the Ten Commandments, all that, it's that sort of thing that certain people have laid down laws, or they've said that these laws exist and we live within these laws anyway, whether we like it or not. We're controlled by these divine laws. So, if you harmonize with the laws, then everything's much nicer, and nature tends to support you. Q: Right. At that point can we throw it open to our audience here. I can see in the audience a number of people who are leaders in the practicing of meditation, who have come along here tonight, including John Allison, and Nick Clark, and also John Mortimer, who's expressed his views in print on the subject of meditation, so if we could turn our cameras around to audience. . . John, have you got some comment to make at this point? Mortimer: Yes. First of all, I don't accept universal divine laws, that's a difficulty, but I think you've really got to judge these beliefs by their pragmatic effect, and the amount of good they're going to do in the world. And what worries me, very much about this attitude, is that it seems to be tremendously self-involved, and finally, tremendously selfish. And, the idea of sitting very quietly perfecting yourself, while everybody else goes to hell around you seems to be not really. . . Lennon: For 20 minutes a day? Mortimer: . . .the most, well, but it seems to me there is a great deal of very important things happening in the world, we're in a great crisis of history. And if we all wait to perfect ourselves, nothing will be done about it. Lennon: But it's 20 minutes in the morning, so's you can go out and do something about all the. . . Harrison: You're not listening to what we said, I mean. . . Mortimer: But you see, this kind of doctrine of universal love, in a way seems to me to end up by not really caring about anybody very much. Harrison: Well, that's your point of view. Mortimer: What I think one needs is a little, well-earned loathing of things like President Johnson and Ronald Reagan and so on, and not sitting in San Francisco watching the flowers grow, and letting Governor Reagan be elected perhaps for the presidency of the United States. Lennon: Well, that's not the same thing, you know, I mean, that's . . . watching the flowers grow in Haight-Ashbury is not what we're talking about. Mortimer: No, but I think that everything, nothing that you've said seemed to me to have any real consciousness of the historical crises in which other people are getting. . . Allison: This is the whole point of this whole situation. This is in order to expand the conscious capacity of the mind for right action. And if the intelligence is increased, and if the contentment is increased, and if the energy is increased, this all comes to bear upon whatever the moment may be. The whole purpose of this teaching is for action. Mortimer: But with great respect, that hasn't happened in India. What's happened in India is an enormous acceptance of disaster and the kind of placient. . . Allison: Precisely, now this whole point is what is wrong with spiritual teaching, it has been wrong for centuries. Mortimer: Well, that may be wrong with the Maharishi himself. Allison: This is precisely the situation which he has come to reform. His position is exactly the position that you're taking up. Q: How do you mean? Mortimer: Well, I'm very pleased to hear it. Q: How do you mean? Clark: May I say a word? Q: Yes, of course. Clark: A few moments of silence every day, of deep silence, can only be good, do good to us all, in this world of noise, first. Second, in these moments of silence, once we are conscious of something deep in us, which is our own being in eternity, independent of our becoming in time, then we have had the greatest and deepest experience of our life. Third, if in that moment we can feel that our object is to receive the love of the universe that brought us here and to give something of this love to all, at all times in all places, if we can, and if not we struggle to do it. It can only be good. Q: John. Mortimer: Well, again, it's very very self-involved. You want to get peace, you want to enjoy peace, you want to enjoy prosperity. You think the universe is something which has independent love for you, I don't happen to agree. I think the universe is a soulless, biological thing, and it's up to us to improve it. And we're not going to improve it if we're going to stay quite still, enjoying peace and perfection. Lennon: But nobody's staying stay still all day, are they? Allison: I'm not doubting your sincerity about this John, but do you think you're capable of doing a right action from a state of unlovingness? Mortimer: Oh yes. I'm sure you are, I don't think there was much love in Lenin, or much love in many many people who have enormously advanced the happiness and the progress of humanity. If Lenin had stopped quite still and had 20 minutes silence and then contemplated his navel, we'd still have czars. Allison: You might not have had the purges in the 1930s. Mortimer: Exactly, it's a very difficult choice. Audience member: What is the basis, what is the motivation of your action and your social concern? You're a man who is socially concerned. On what basis? Mortimer: I think that you must try and do an imperfect best to improve a lot of other people. Audience member: But you don't seem to know why. Mortimer: Because I think that it's finally a kind of evolutionary necessity, I think that we must advance. Clark: Must you not improve yourself first? Take the problem of war. We all want peace, I mean except idiotic people who . . . or evil people. But, first, if we work for peace, we cannot truly work for peace unless we have peace in ourselves, unless we have love in ourselves. Then, you can work for peace, and you can be crucified if necessary, it is. But you cannot suffer and work, finally, and this is the solution of the modern world, what we might call Christian communism. Q: At that point let me go back to John and George. I mean, is this fair the parallel that's being drawn here, between your sort of, getting very involved with meditation, and that somehow being very very selfish, and not caring about the world. Lennon: No, what they're saying about selfishness is it sounds as though you're going to sit down in silence all the time. You know, you do it in the morning, say, to do your day's action, whatever it is, better. But you're putting it down, saying, "we can't sit down contemplating our navels, while all this is going on." The whole point of doing it is to have more energy and more control over yourself, to be able to do whatever action you want to do. Mortimer: I never thought any of that for a moment. Lennon: What were you saying then? Audience member: Some of us here are Quakers and we've been practicing what some people would call a form of meditation, which has driven the society of friends into action. Now, after last week's wonderful program, we're very impressed and people have been saying to us, there's a couple of lads there who are natural Quakers. Now, do they think they're Quakers? Harrison: Well, it's all the same. This is the point we've got to try and get over to people, that religion, there's only one God and they're all a branch of the same thing. And the sooner people get over this sectarianism, the better, you know. I mean, I'm a Quaker, I'm a Christian, and I'm a Buddhist, and I'm a Hindu. And it's all the same. Audience member: Well, that's what Quakers have been saying for the last 300 years . . . the divine in all of us. Allison: I want to come back onto this thing of action. It's a commonplace that we live very much on the surface of our minds in relation to the surface of events. This is a very weak situation, now, it's also commonplace that there's a great depth in every human mind. All this transcendental meditation is, is a simple technique of coming to the deepest aspect of that, having established oneself in that state to come out and act, like pulling an arrow back on a bow. If you don't know about shooting an arrow, you say, "well what are you pulling it back for?" But this is the whole technique of shooting the arrow. Mortimer: Yes, but then you see there is in this belief a kind of faith in a transcendental will in the universe, which I don't happen to share. But I think you can waste a tremendous lot of time trying to get into a state of bliss, in communion with that. Q: There's no faith at all, John Allison? Allison: This is a perceptual method, it's absolutely unconcerned with conceptual apparatus. Mortimer: I don't think the Maharishi made it that clear to us really. Q: Do you find, John and George, that your beliefs have altered as a result of meditation? Harrison: No, they've been strengthened. But I've always believed this for the last couple of years, but through the meditation, it's just strengthened it. You see, all these doctrines and beliefs that have been laid down by great prophets, they've been put down there because these people have actually experienced it. And by their experience with some form of truth, they've tried to put it out for all the rest of the people to take up. But his argument is just based on no experience at all. Q: You said just now that you're a Hindu, you're a Buddhist, you're a Christian, you're all of these. Harrison: Yes. Q: People think of those things normally as different. What is it . . . in what way is it that they're all the same? Harrison: Well, because it's teaching the people through various forms how to approach God. And God being the one and only creator. They're all different. Audience member: But is this experience driving our friends into some kind of community, this is what's bothering us a bit. Is this something you must do on your own, or does it lead you into community action? Harrison: Well, you must do it on your own to attain your own bliss state, naturally. It's something that Jesus said, something about "go and fix your own house first," and that's what you've got to do. Everybody goes and fixes themselves up, and when they're all straight, then they're all able to act together, because we're all one anyway whether you like it or not. Q: We've got about three more things to do in this second half tonight, but it's quite clear talking to the audience and so on during the break that there's a lot more to be said on this subject. So, we'll scrap the rest and we'll carry on with this. Do you think it's fair, what's been said so far by John Mortimer and so on, suggesting that meditation is selfish? Lennon: I don't see how it's selfish, if we've no need to be here. You know, I mean we don't sort of dig doing TV for the fun of it. We're here just because we want, you know, we believe in meditation. So that's not very selfish. Harrison: And we can sort of maybe help a few other people to understand that it's, you know, that it's easy. Mortimer: But we've got no need to be here either, really. [audience laughs] Lennon: We're not claiming you're selfish though. Mortimer: And I would like to understand, I think that perhaps we should try and get it a little clearer, what we're talking about. If we're talking about a mystical religious belief, which I think that George Harrison is because he talked about the divine laws. . . Harrison: It's not mystical. . . Mortimer: Well, let me just finish this. Then that's one thing, which I would dispute, but I would like to ask John Allison, whether really this has got anything to do with a belief in God at all. Because if all we're talking about is a technique of self-examination that you can perform over shaving in the morning and then go out and help mankind more as a result of having done it, then nobody in their senses would dispute that it was a very excellent thing to do. Are we talking about that, or are we talking about a universe which has some hidden laws and a hidden creator, who manifests himself only to people like Mr. Harrison and the Maharishi when they get into a state of trance, that's what I want to know. Harrison: Well, let's face it, these laws that you say, hidden laws, they are hidden, but they're only hidden by our own ignorance. And the word mysticism is . . . just been arrived at through people's ignorance. There's nothing mystical about it, only that you're ignorant of what that entails. Mortimer: Everybody with any religious belief has always thought that everybody else was ignorant about its mystical value. But are we really talking about mysticism, or are we talking about a technique of improving yourself, which is totally scientific and rational? Allison: You can take it either way, you can take it either way. This is because it is a perceptual method. If a man has got a great conceptual apparatus and he meditates, he will begin to understand the nature of the conceptual apparatus and if he's wrong about it, he will begin to understand where he's wrong about it. If he's got no conceptual apparatus, he simply perceives an abstract experience. Now, when he's had an abstract experience, he may wish then to give himself explanation for it. But it's primarily a perceptual method. Q: And how, for everybody, do you define the word "perceptual"? Allison: Experience, rather than thinking about something. Not an idea, not an attitude, not a belief, an experience. It's the difference . . . conceptual is a biological textbook, going for a walk in the country is an experience. They refer to each other, but they're in different situations. Mortimer: But why should this abstract experience be any more valuable than the other experience, you see. George Harrison talked about a bliss experience. Well, you can have a bliss experience by drinking a bottle of whiskey. Why is his bliss experience. . . Q: A hell of a non-bliss experience the next morning. Mortimer: How is his abstract bliss experience in any way more valuable than anybody else's bliss experience? Audience member: You are notoriously as an anti-God man, but if you told me that the God that you don't believe in, I'm sure we'd all say we didn't believe in Him either. But one isn't talking about belief, one is talking about experience. And this experience is an inner experience, and having had this experience or having this experience you then have to describe it. And certainly there is a language to describe it. But it's something that can be talked about, it's something that is actual, it happened as much as the historical... Q: Yes, but look, but I mean the thing is that, what is the difference then, what is the difference between the two things that John has just said. What is the difference between a bliss experience through meditation and assuming it's possible, a bliss experience through drinking as I sound as though I'm doing at the moment . . . a bottle of whiskey. Harrison: Because the bottle of whiskey one is relative. It could be relative bliss depending on how intoxicated you got, whereas the meditation, you go beyond this ordinary experience that's on the relative level of experience, it's beyond that. And this is why you can't tell the people about it really, it's something that if they did it themselves, then they'd know because they'd actually experience the thing. You can't talk about an abstract experience, you can't really put it into words. Mortimer: You see, that's what Dr. Allison has talked about, he says it's an abstract experience. Well that sounds to me a very blurred conception, and as uninteresting really as abstract art. Why isn't it better to have an experience which is related to the actual world we live in? Lennon: What's wrong with abstract art? Allison: Well, this is the point. Could I make this point? John, the thing is, that in the last resort, people can talk about meditation until they're pie-eyed, as if you're a public meat on television. And in fact, it won't convince you or anybody else at all, it's just simply something you have got to try. I cannot tell you what a strawberry tastes like. The last resort if you want to know what a strawberry is like, eat it. You may like it at the end of it, or you may not. Now, the point. . . Mortimer: It doesn't give the strawberry some translucent, mystical. . . [audience laughs] Allison: No, look, let's . . . see for yourself, I adore strawberries, they're one of the most delicious things in the world, but I mean, let's get on . . . a side track. Yes. Q: Now let's get on to your restaurant. [audience laughs] Allison: No, but the point is this, the point is this, John if I could just finish. It's the reason that all of us who practice meditation feel it's so important for people to know about it, is because you do come to a state where you can find total serenity, total peace. And this is desperately what the world is needing. Mortimer: There are many many ways of achieving total serenity. Lennon: How do you do it? Mortimer: I've never have had it. Lennon: Well, why don't you try it then, instead of talking about it? Mortimer: I don't honestly know whether it's something I'm particularly interested in. You can achieve total serenity by going mad, you can achieve marvelous serenity by going to sleep. What one has got to decide is whether the serenity which you are seeking is (a) of practical value to the world, and (b) particularly enjoyable to yourself. You say it's enjoyable, we don't know. Allison: Don't worry about whether I personally enjoy this, it's totally irrelevant. Do you believe there is such a thing as evil and sin in the world? Something unpleasant. Mortimer: I certainly believe there are very many unpleasant things in the world, yes. Allison: Now, I believe it is true to say that all sin is fear-motivated. I believe fear is the central enemy of mankind, whether it's neuroticism, whether it's actual active aggressive evil, it doesn't matter what it is. Fear, fear, fear, this is our heritage. I think for original sin you can read original fear. Now, paradoxically, society, for countless generations have been trying to fight fear with more fear. Fear of hell, fire, and damnation. Fear of what society will say, what people will say. Fear of the hell, of the cat, fear of the galleys, fear of prison, fear of this, fear of that. Piling fear upon fear upon fear. It's not surprising, that in fact society is in a ghastly terrible state. Now, where the Bible says "perfect love cast without fear," this is just what we're talking about. You arrive at a state of peace, of serenity, of joy, inside yourself. You are no longer afraid, therefore you are able to give out love to other people. Mortimer: Nobody is going to argue that it is not a good thing to cast out fear. Nobody's going to try and pretend it's not a good thing to love people and have goodwill as much as possible. The only thing that I'm venturing to question is whether the pursuit of your own serenity is the best path towards achieving all these excellent. . . Lennon: Well, if you're happy, you're more likely to make other people happy, that's all it is, you know. Mortimer: Not necessarily. Lennon: Why? Mortimer: I can imagine a very happy husband giving his family absolute hell. Lennon: Well, he's not really happy then, you know. I'm talking about true happiness. Q: How would you characterize true happiness? Lennon: Well, as opposed to happiness from a bottle of whiskey, and happiness from going in there. You know, same again. Audience member: Is it not a difference of words? A bottle of whiskey, I would say, gives us pleasure, if there's something transient, if I drink it, somebody else cannot drink it. But an experience of joy, even the experience of a poem or music, of contemplation of nature, we all can have it. And therefore, that higher experience, and we call it joy, is the joy, and this joy grows higher and higher until we can find a joy in the very center of our souls. The joy of being and the joy of love. If for a moment we all have this feeling of love now, here, universal love, the millions or thousands of people who hear us would feel it. Q: Yes, but what is a feeling? Harrison: What is a feeling, right. This is it, you see. It's all . . . it's vibrations that people give off. I mean, if somebody's happy then he gives off a good vibration as opposed to being annoyed, he'll give off a bad vibration, it's something like that. If you get a lot of people like when we first went to Bangor, we met all these meditators, and it's so obvious just by seeing the people because they give off this peace and happiness. And that's the thing, the more people who do it, the more the vibration, and that's the influence for everybody else. The bigger the vibration, the more people receive it, and the more the other people will believe it. Mortimer: You see, there were a lot of Christian saints who spent their time up in convents, carefully cultivating their innocent serenity and the grooming the perfection of their own soul. And there were other saints, I suppose, who went out into the world and tried to improve a lot of other people. I think you simply have to choose which you admire the most. Harrison: But sometimes you don't. . . Allison: John, this is literally a cake-and-eat-it scene. I agree with you, there have been techniques, and there probably still are techniques of people withdrawing totally from the world and living in a cave, or sitting on the top of a pillar and doing absolutely nothing at all, apparently doing nothing at all. Maybe they feel wonderful and quite fairly you say "what good do they do?" Now, all Maharishi has come to do in the waste, is to teach every single one of us, what. . . [sound of objects falling] Lennon: Look out, Charlie! Q: Oh, the end of the world, this. Lennon: It's a miracle. [audience laughs] Q: No, somebody's just drunk a bottle of whiskey. [audience laughs] Allison: This is cosmic consciousness at work, obviously. Now, what was I saying? Q: You're not expected to remember. Allison: No, this whole point is that it is a technique whereby somebody, whatever you're doing or maybe frightfully busy, you just meditate for 20 minutes, 25 minutes, half an hour, twice a day and you come back slap-bang-on with very much more energy to get on and do things. It is an increase in energy. Audience member: Are you claiming this is something new? Harrison: No, no, it's ancient. Audience member: You are expressing in a new way something that has been with us all the time? Harrison: Yes, yes, and it'll always be here. Audience member: But it had to be rediscovered from time to time because our society, as it goes on, overlays it with materialistic concerns, we build a nice structure for ourselves, we're getting at the money, we're building ourselves a nice career, and we're kicking our people in the teeth while we're doing it. Q: The thing that people were concerned about after Friday's thing, was that, that this meditation, while it may do something for the individual, was not also concerned with the other 50% stopping us or other people kicking each other in the teeth. Now, today it's clear that the way John Allison, George, and John see this thing, it equally then reacts on the way you live and the way you behave and the way you care about other people. But I don't think it is the meditation that does that, is it? We've rather fortuned to have three exponents here who do care, you could be an exponent and not give a damn, couldn't you? What you just said is that. . . Allison: It's not this matter at all, you see, one thing that Halliman said, that state of pure consciousness which is what the tension is led to, is the same in everyone. You come to that state, this is union with the whole creation. Having established that in the mind you come out of it. Little by little as you go on, year after year meditating, more and more and more of that comes out. So, in the midst of your dynamic frenzied activities, that is not overshadowed, and that becomes automatically expressed by your actions. Mortimer: Then you're back on a mystic faith and a universal conscience. Harrison: Mystic, mystic, all the time! You know, there's nothing mystic about mystic, you know, it's just a word that people have invented because they don't understand it. Q: But alright then, John, what is then the difference would you say between John Lennon before meditation and John Lennon after a few weeks of meditation? Lennon: Well, before I wouldn't have been here. I've got more energy and more happiness. I don't know about intelligence. I'm just happier, you know, I'm just a better person. And I wasn't bad before. Harrison: I'll second that. [audience laughs] Lennon: Thank you George, thank you. Q: And that, there with personal testimony, is where we must leave it. Until tomorrow night, good night.