Science and Mysticism

Titre

En Science and Mysticism

Date

En 1978-Mar-08

Decade

En 1970s & Earlier

City, State

En New Lebanon, NY

Lieu

En Abode

Description

En Pir Vilayat shares his excitement about the emergence of scientific understandings that match contemplatives’ descriptions of reality. Great scientists are mystics reaching for greater understandings! His overview goes from Einstein’s time-space continuum and Heisenberg’s law of probability to multidimensional space, white holes, electrons and photons as beings, different universes and planes of reality. Science is no longer about laws of nature. Our time is one of awareness, suffering, and discovering the heart of God. Ends by thanking the many who are committed to Taj’s initiative [possibly a reference to Amnesty International].

Topic(s)

En Energy

Freedom

Science and Spirituality

Subtopic(s)

En Modern science; Correspondence; Forms of Energy

Type of event

En Public Talk/Seminar

Type of publication

En Recording

Media

En Audio

Transcript

Importance matérielle

En 1:17:16

Identifiant

En L7802

File Format

En mp3

PDF

Langue

En English

Digitizing Team

En Abad

TajAli Keith

Author(s)

En Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Full Text

En ... a lecture or a class, so let us announce it as such at least. I hope it won't turn out to be a lecture. I just wanted to sort of relate to you of my latest trips, or trip, or just to say how I feel about things, perhaps in a more personal way. It's perhaps my karma to have to pick up sort of trends in the air and express it in words, that sets the meaning of my life. So I'm conscious of something that's happening in the thinking of humanity, and I'm reacting to it. The other aspect of what I have to do is perhaps to communicate my enthusiasm. Every time that I see something that I hadn't seen before, I feel like sharing it with anybody who would like to share it with me. I'm not sure that you all had the same interest of course, but I suppose I still can't help telling you how excited I feel about all the things that I've been discovering, and perhaps you will share some of my enthusiasm. I seem to be ... I was just saying to Taj, how I have a feeling of being surrounded with so much beauty that is almost unbearable, and incredible. There's Bach on one side and it's always the discovery of the wonder of creation on the other and there is the very deep spiritual link with you and with many other mureeds that seems to get deeper and it moves me so deeply ... my soul ... I can't say what ecstasy I'm experiencing all the time. And of course, my mind keeps on ticking over. Sometimes I feel like apologizing for it, but it's perhaps one of the ways in which I communicate my ecstasy. It's also the ecstasy, as I say, of realization, of discovering things that one hadn't seen before. And of course, perhaps the most exciting thing for me is to find a confirmation in different departments, in other departments to those that I'm used to, of the very things that I've been teaching and that I've been realizing. and especially the things that Hazrat Inayat Khan has been saying.


Perhaps the thing that has been the most gratifying for me is the fact that for years I've been teaching meditation, exposed to those who could understand or could relate to what I was saying and also to sometimes very tough and incredulous publics. I remember once addressing a public of people who just had no idea about what I was talking about at all. And then you have every now and again a wiseguy, who says, "Well, aren't you hallucinating?" And then you don't know how quite to answer that, because you can say, "Well, I can only say this is the way I experience things." And he says, "Well, that's what I mean; you are hallucinating, of course." So it's very nice when you can sit back and say, "Well, as a matter of fact, I can quote such and such a scientist who says this and that." Oh, well then of course that has some bearing, it has some weight, you see, if it's a scientist who says it then of course they think it's more reliable. So one has to answer a lot of people. I find that some people lose their faith very easily, like they've come out of a retreat or meditation seminar with Pir Vilayat and feel sort of high. And then they meet someone and he says, "You believe in all that balderdash?" And then the person doesn't know how to answer that, and then they begin to doubt their own beliefs and so on.

So, but that's not just the ... it's one of the reasons why I feel enthusiastic about all the things that I've been discovering, but the other is this fantastic ... well, it's something that's happening in the universe at present, let's say, particularly on the planet--we don't know much about the rest of the universe. But it's that, it's like the one intelligence has been working in different departments. And those departments were closed from each other. Now they're beginning to communicate. And so what we're ... what the Rishi is doing in his meditation in the cave, is being corroborated by what the scientist is finding out in his laboratory; and then the social worker's actually discovering exactly the same thing, and so on. All those different departments are beginning to communicate. It's very heartening. As I said, once, you know, you can have someone making a discovery in Stockholm, and telephoning to Princeton University, to his friends and saying, you know, I've just discovered this and they say, oh, but that's extraordinary, we just discovered it five minutes ago. It's just because there's that one consciousness, it is acting in all its different departments, and it can break through here and there in other ways. That's why, well, we're living in a terribly exciting period in the history of the world. And I think it's very important for people to know what's happening. Otherwise, one gets, you know, caught up in one's little life and routine, and so on and so forth. It's very difficult ... sometimes good to just start looking out the windows and seeing all the wonderful things that are happening.

So as I say, I'm going to tell you why, of course, it's also meaningful to me. You see, the dervish is always in a state of intoxication, as they say, and the word that the Sufis use is hayrach, which means perplexity. It's because, as he looks in the depths, he discovers such intelligence and such wonder in what he discovers that, of course, he is completely overwrought with ... the word that they use is 'bewonderment.' And the curious thing is, that is exactly what happened to the great scientists, whether it was Heisenberg or Dirac or Niels Bohr, and, of course, Einstein, most of all: they all express something beyond just what we think is just scientific technology, and so on and so forth. There's a difference between a scientific technologist and a scientist. A scientist IS actually a mystic ... who is discovering God, God's intelligence working in all things. And the more he discovers it, the more he is totally perplexed and in a state of complete wonder ... as of something that most people don't know. And some of them have expressed their feelings in terms that are worthy of the poetry of the greatest Sufis. In fact, to tell you the truth, the experience of the scientist is very similar to the experience of the contemplative.


You could say well, there are differences, in that the scientist is using instruments to prolong--let's say to extend-- ordinary experience. Both of them are investigating into experience beyond the normal range. The difference is the scientist is using instruments, but believe me, the amount of work that is done with the instruments is extremely small. In comparison with most of it, most of the scientific work is done in an armchair discussing what they call models, that is a way of looking at things, of relating an experience. And really speaking, the contemplative is using the instrument of, well, the mind, and the body, and many different bodies, of course. And his realization comes by altering the focus of his consciousness.

And, you know, the scientist is now really forced to also consider new dimensions of consciousness, because he realizes that the ordinary, everyday consciousness of people is not adequate to understand reality. In fact, the best picture of what the scientist is doing is, it's a little bit like a map that is made of a curved surface, like the surface of the Earth; you can never get a map that is not distorted, it's not possible. It's distorted either longitudinally, or latitudinally or at the edges or in some way or the other. But you can't get a very clear, absolute reproduction of reality. And the scientist is always working with approximations, and he knows it. And the public thinks that, you know, the findings of the scientists are 100 percent sure, and so on so forth. And of course, it isn't true. It couldn't be true.

And what is more, the scientist is limited by the fact that nature will ... He's asking nature questions, by his experiments. That's what he's doing. He's asking, well, how does nature behave in certain circumstances? He's limiting the arms of nature by the question that he's asking. So he can't get the full answer, because he's limiting the answer by what he's asking. And that depends upon his way of understanding things. And, as his understanding can never be perfect, the answer that he gets can never be perfect. It is always limited.

Now, the same is true of the contemplative because, when he tries to explain what he's experienced, he's using the ordinary language, but it doesn't apply. Like, for example, the word 'me' doesn't apply anymore. So he doesn't know how to use that language. The scientist is in the same predicament, because he can't use the ordinary language, he's using symbols, which are only meaningful to other scientists. He's trying to explain it to the public, by using the language that the public knows, which doesn't correspond to what he has found. And people just believe in his vision, because they see its applications. in the atom bomb, and so on and so forth. So they think that his explanation must be perfect, but it isn't at all. For example, Newton himself knew that there were slight deviations from his law. And if his law was, you know ... gravitation was absolute, then it should have been absolute, there shouldn't have been any exceptions to the rule. Now, everyone always thought that, of course, these rules were absolute, 100 percent. Sure. Now, of course, they're discovering other laws.

You know, that of course, the great revolution science came through ... Einstein was a real breakthrough when he discovered that there is no such a thing as absolute space. And, for example, that things aren't ... Two people moving at a different speed will experience things in a different time relationship. And so there is no ... like, you can't say that there's a ... if things happen at a time "t" on the earth, that you could say that it happened so many millions of light years ago in another galaxy, for example, that something happened--an explosion or something--it's not altogether true because time is relative. And of course it's difficult for us to understand that. But you realize that when we're looking at the sky, at nighttime, we're looking right back into the past. Many of the stars we're looking at, that had not existed long before Moses. And we experience them now. Actually one can say that they are--not only we're experiencing them now--but in some sense they are here now, but where we think they are, they are not. And what is more, space is actually curved, so you think that you see the star there, but in fact it's right … maybe right behind your back, but you think you see it there. We're living in a complete illusion. And we're so sure that what we experience is true. That's exactly what we've been saying as contemplatives all the time, what we mean by maya; that is, people are so convinced of what they're experiencing, and the whole thing is an absolute illusion.

Now, as I say, scientists have discovered, you know ... the breakthrough of Einstein was that time and space are a continuum that is exchangeable, like ... we could go into this, of course, it would be very technical. But let's say he accounted for the motion of the stars, in terms of a four-dimension continuum, that means that time would be interchangeable with any of the other dimensions of space, which are limited to three. But now, of course, they've discovered that ... I mean, it's very clear that time itself is multi dimensional. So, to reduce time to one vector doesn't give a satisfactory answer to the problems of science. And what is more, that, in fact, if we say ... we assume that space is three-dimensional, it's just because our intelligence can only reach three dimensions. But actually, it is possible at the frontier of our intelligence to conceive of four dimensions. Now, what would that mean? It would mean that... it's like, what we experience is a cross section of a reality that is four-dimensional. Actually it's multi-dimensional, but let's say, for the sake of argument, it's four-dimensional. So what we experience is just a cross section of it. For example, you know what the cross section of a three-dimension is ... for example, a wheel, if it were intersected by a flat surface, like a piece of paper, for example, well, then, that wheel would appear as perhaps like two little round circles, on that flat surface of paper, and maybe a line in between, and that line in between would look as though it were vibrating. So in our experience, we say this, we say, for example, there's such a thing of vibration, like the oscillation, wave frequency, radio waves, or frequency waves, and so on and so forth. That's because we're thinking in three dimensions. But if we were able ... now, I'm making a comparison with the three dimensions becoming two-dimensional. So, for example, the people who could only experience two dimensions, for them, they wouldn't experience a wheel, but they would experience a vibration. Now, if they were able to see the three dimensions, then they would see the whole wheel and then they wouldn't think of it in terms of vibration anymore. And so in the same way, if we could realize that this physical world that we experience is just a cross section of a far greater universe, then we would realize that the way we look at things is limited by ... our intelligence is only able to conceive three dimensions.

Now as I said, the limit of our intelligence. We are able, however, to imagine a four-dimensional world and I'll give you an example of it. It's difficult. [pause] First, I have to make this commentary and say as a preparation that anything that we can't experience, that we can't fit into the three dimensions, we attribute to time. Now imagine a planetary system, for example, that ... the atoms, you know, have exactly the same structure: the electrons are moving at a very fast rate around a neutron, exactly like the planets move around the sun. Imagine that you were looking at it from outside and that they were moving at such high speed--as the actually do, electrons do--but you would see like a kind of a ... you wouldn't see them moving, but you would see, like a shape that is made up by what they call the probability of their motion. That is, at certain places ... the paths are more frequent in certain places than others. So those places would be more bright. So you'd have a shape that was kind of rounded, but in which certain places were brighter than others. And now that would be an idea of a three-dimensional reality, because it accounts for the change that takes place within the three dimensions.

Now, this is a way of meeting what Heisenberg calls the law of probability, by which he means to say that there is no way of knowing exactly in which position an electron will be at any time--and it's an orbit--and at the same time, you could know its speed. And you could know its position, but then you wouldn't know its speed; but you can't know both at the same time. Now, you could ask, well, how do we know this at all? Well, actually, of course, as probably some of you know, Rutherford was working with crystals and found that one could bombard the particles within a crystal, within an atom, with rays which are similar to X rays. And you could dislodge the particle by the action of the ray. And so then they make these enormous--I don't know, it covers something like three miles--enormous circle, a tunnel, and then they accelerate the atoms within that tunnel. And they can actually photograph the traces that are made by the sub-particles within the atom. It is accelerated at a tremendous rate. Anyway, we needn't go into the detail of that. But the main thing is that what Heisenberg's probability law says is, really, that there is freedom, that there is free will. But I think that the best way of putting it is this--and this is where Bach comes in handy--it's like ... the notes flow with such meaningfulness. It's not like, when one thinks of freedom, it just doesn't mean just that things are completely at random. It means that the motions are ... the meaningfulness of their motion is so great that we cannot conceive of it or we cannot predict it with our intelligence. And so it's something like the music of Bach, where it all flows with such perfect precision. And yet, it's unpredictable. It's just a marvel of ... well, as I say, the more you'd enter into the divine intelligence, the more one is absolutely perplexed by the extraordinary ... the marvels of, not just of intelligence, but of beauty, of glory.

Now, this is important, because if the whole universe ... well, let's say, multidimensional and time didn't exist, that would mean that everything was already there. And then there wouldn't be any free will if everything was already there, and it's just unfolding in time. But in fact, there is no time, but it seems like it's unfolding in time because we're incapable of encompassing it all in one glance. Then, in that case, there would not be freedom. And it's a very big issue, because it seems as though evolution is progressing all the time, and now it's in the realm of biology that one is able to see something which you can't quite ... at least that scientists were not able to realize in physics. And that is ...the secret of this is to be part of the DNA structure. I've often talked about it, it's a molecule in every cell of our body--and you can imagine how many cells we have in our body--not only in the reproductive glands, but every cell has within its kernel ... it's a molecule, which is constituted by millions of atoms--a very complex molecule--and the structure of that molecule is the coded message of the whole past of the universe. The whole ... for example, the fish, and the donkey, and the palm tree, and everything, all of the basic structure that started with the simplest forms of life is there. And then it built up to the next form of life and so on. And everything is present within, as a structure, within the DNA molecule. Now, the DNA molecule ... when a cell divides, the DNA molecule divides--no, I'm sorry, it creates another DNA molecule that's exactly like itself. So that means that it has to draw food, let's say, from its environment, so it's transforming its environment into itself, like it's multiplying, proliferating. Now, that seems fair enough, but the extraordinary thing is this, that it improves itself, through what it nourishes itself with; so that it doesn't just reproduce itself exactly as it was, but it … not only adapts itself to circumstances--which is one of the principles of evolution--but it also finds better ways of structuring itself, so that it's able to reach a further degree of progress in evolution. In other words, the DNA structure is able to store information in itself. Now, scientists thought that this information was, let's say, simply to be found in the structure itself, which ... the structure of the atoms within the molecule. Now the scientists have discovered that, at a certain moment, the whole structure is completely scattered, pulverized, and it's rebuilt again. In other words, the information is not in the structure, but is in a reality beyond the structure.

Not only that, but now the scientists are discovering that the evolution is not only due to the accumulation of information that is gathered by the DNA as it progresses, but it is also monitored by Gamma rays, cosmic rays, which, let's say, descend upon it, from beyond the planet Earth. And so, well, the multiplication of the cells is not simply limited to the physical, let's say the purely physical environment. Now scientists have discovered that the electrons--which are the subatomic particles that keep on orbiting around the neutrons in the atoms--first of all, are indestructible, that is that they live an eternal life, there's no ... they never die. And secondly, what has been discovered is that they also gather information, accumulate information and not in their atomic structure, but in their spin, that is, their rate of turning, and also in their charge. It's a coded message, but it's recorded in that. But what is more, the electron has exactly the same age as a black hole. It's due to a black hole--perhaps you've heard about the black hole; now they're even talking about white holes--that the mass is increased to such an extent that space is curved. Now, I’ve mentioned this, but of course I think that most of you know that one of the basic features of Einstein's relativity--at least extended relativity--was the curvature of space, that actually, space is curved. And in fact, the whole universe is actually ... we always thought it was infinite, but in fact, as far as space is concerned, it's perhaps like, as though you were in the inside of a sphere, like inside the earth, for example, if you imagine that you're inside the sphere. And, the reason is because space is curved, curves upon itself, by the weight, by the mass. Now, imagine that the mass becomes so great in one area of the universe, as they say, within the whole universe there are pockets that are formed because the mass of a collapsing star or whatever, or a collapsing galaxy, has become so great--let's say, the pressure between the atoms has become so great--that space has completely enclosed itself, encapsulated itself away from the physical universe, is completely like a pocket outside physical space that has no more connection with physical space. At least one thinks it has no connection with physical space, for example, any light that would enter it would be unable to come out of it again. Well, it's a rather frightening thought, I know, but when one ...

Now, of course, scientists have been reflecting upon this further. And they realize that, in fact, it's really like a door from the physical universe into another universe. And the physical universe is just one universe amongst many others. And, in fact, this again, confirms what the Sufis have always said--that Ibn Arabi says-- one atom of the plane of hurkalya would be strong enough to destroy the whole physical plane, and has within it much more richness than the whole physical universe, and so on. So you have, like, a whole infinite number of universes. You needn't be afraid that the universe is limited. It's only the physical universe, but beyond it, there's no end. And now, the extraordinary thing is that the electron has exactly the same structure as a black hole, or a white hole, in the sense that it ... first of all, perhaps you have heard that in a black hole time's reversed, and space is reversed. So what was space for us in the physical universe becomes time. And what was time for us becomes space now. Is it possible to understand that? Supposing that you were walking straight ahead, you could walk, but I mean, you could fly straight ahead in space, and you lived many thousand millions of centuries, you'd be able to find yourself back again to the place where you were in the first place. That's what the curvature of space means. It means that if you kept on walking in a straight line, you'd reach back to where you were. Now imagine the same thing with time, that you would find back the time where you were at so many centuries ago. Now, of course, it defies our understanding. But do you realize that memory is exactly that. Memory is making a past event present. And what the electron does, it inverts space also, that means that it is able to record the past inside its space within, and the space within is a space of understanding instead of a physical space. And so you could say that gradually, as the physical world is unwound--let's say, all the energy gets expended in what we call entropy--it is evacuated of its physicalness and resurrected into a world of pure understanding. So that's again a confirmation of what we've always taught, what we mean by resurrection ... and that it happens physically within each electron, and it happens in the black hole. And now they've realized that, of course, the whole universe is really what they call a perforated universe. That is, that it's full of black holes, or let's say, the electrons and so on, it's full of little holes whereby the reality that is experienced on the physical plane is moved, is transferred--and transmuted--into a reality at the level of understanding instead of physical reality. And now, of course, they're speaking about, as I said, a little earlier on this afternoon, they're speaking about other planes of reality. For example ... well, one thing is, of course, especially a French physicist who's speaking now of a noetic plane, the plane of pure mind. And, of course, they're discovering a lot of other levels of reality between the physical and the mental. For example, up to the present, there were only four types of energy that were discovered. There's the gravitational energy--that means the gravity pull, for example, if you are able to stand on the earth, it's because of the gravity pull of the earth; otherwise you'd be flying off in the sky. And then there's ... the gravity pull of the Earth is drawn by the gravity of the sun and so on. And Newton knew that. That's the law that Newton has discovered. And then there was the law that Maxwell had discovered, which is the electromagnetic laws. It's another force than the gravitational force, a completely different force, although one would have thought that it was the same, but it acts differently. And then they discovered two atomic--nuclear forces, what they call nuclear forces--one close one and one distant one, which is the force which they're using in the atomic explosions, of course. It's the force that holds the nucleons--that is, the neutron and the proton in the atom together. And one of them is at close range. The other one is at a more distant range.

And now they're discovering many other forces. They're discovering, first of all the biological--the biofield--which, at first, they thought was just simply an electromagnetic field, like [Harold Saxton] Burr, you know, made an experiment with a salamander in an aquarium. And he turned the aquarium round ... the water around the salamander--I don't know how he managed to get the salamanders to stay in one position--and as a consequence of it, he was able to create a magnetic field in the water, which means that the salamander was radiating a form of electromagnetic energy, which can make a current in a wire, and a millivoltmeter is able to measure it. And so of course, in the same way, the human body emits a magnetic field--and that's the one that I'm always talking about, of course. But now, of course, they’ve discovered that there are many other aspects of that field. There's the one of the photons that I spoke about, which are particles that don't have any mass. And that's a very extraordinary thing that means that ... photons have the same properties as the electrons, in fact, they can have been an electron sometime. And the extraordinary thing is that they also carry ... let's say, they're all beings. Electrons are beings, it's all ... we must think of it all in terms of beings. So we are composed of millions and millions of beings. And those beings are not all inside our body. They're all ... some of them are scattered throughout the universe. And these photons carry information, realization. They're beings. And they are continually radiating further and further away out of the physical universe, into the world of light. So this again confirms all the things that we've been talking about, the worlds of light which are, let's say, a higher plane than the physical plane.

But now they're discovering other things. They're discovering a bio-gravitational field, which has nothing to do with any of the four forces that have been discovered so far. lt's a purely biological field. Not electromagnetic, not gravitational in the sense of the planets, and so on. And then they've researched further and there's this code ... what they call now bioplasma, which is another state of matter, that is beyond the ordinary state that we know of. Like there's the solid state and the fluid state and the igneous state and the volatile state. And then there's a state now, which is called the plasmic state. I think, if I remember, the electrons have been ... it's a state in which the electrons have been stripped of their nuclei. And it accounts for the kind of energy that ... I don't know whether you know that there's more energy that we expend in our action than can be accounted for by the energy that we could be taking in through food and breathing. So that accounts for what the astral projectors have always been talking about, of course: they say that in the course of sleep, there's a slight displacement of the astral body, and it is able to draw in what they call the cosmic energy. Now, scientists are discovering, indeed, that there is an energy, a form of energy, that can be converted into physical energy, but which they call plasma. It's like, to come back to what we called the etheric body in the old days, and even now, of course. And, you know that Einstein had found an explanation for events in the universe without having to account for ether, because I always thought that, you know, how could light be a wave--because it does exhibit the property of waves, electromagnetic waves--but how could it be a wave if there wasn't anything of which it could be a wave. I mean, a wave in water or air. But if there's ... they thought that there can't be such a thing as empty space, so it must be filled with ether. Then, of course, Einstein showed that it wasn't necessary at all, and that one could account for it in terms of radiation. But nowadays, they're coming back to the old ether theory again, and they say that there is no such thing as empty space. It's all ... it's filled with what they call a neutrino sea. Perhaps it's a bit too technical but ... of course, now we're realizing that, let's say, science is extending beyond what we call matter. So that there's no limit anymore to, like, we say, matter and mind, and so on ... like this Cartesian distinction between mind and matter. And it doesn't ... it's not valid anymore. And that is again, exactly what Murshid said in that book when he speaks about spirit and matter: Some people say it's spirit, and some people say it's matter, and–he said– it's the same thing, you can't ... And now we know of course, pure energy can suddenly, in certain circumstances, be converted into mass, and mass can be converted into energy.

So we're on the verge of [laughter]... Is it going on beyond an hour? [laughter] No, I still have … it is only three-quarters of an hour [more laughter]. I'll stop at half past. So in one way, of course, it's wonderful that all preconceived ideas have been scattered by the wayside because it was those ideas that were the basis for materialism, that's the materialism of the early part of the century. Still, most people are still in the old-fashioned idea, they haven't realized all the discoveries of the recent years. So they still think that this is matter, you know, and then there's my mind and my personality, and all these ideas about me and the universe outside me. All of these things are absolutely misconceptions. And so you can understand that the scientists are beginning to try to listen more to what the contemplatives have to say, because some of the things that the Sufis and the Far Eastern mystics have said, is exactly what they're finding out now.

Now, one of the greatest challenges to science was the phenomenon of Uri Geller. Up to the present, you know, they were people who were on show business, and scientists never took it seriously. They thought, well, there must be some kryptonite, and so on. But nowadays, of course, people like Uri--well, there aren't many people like him--are being really subjected to laboratory experiments. And they found that indeed, it's true that he was able to bend iron, and he's able to teletransport an object, which means that, here's a ring, or whatever it is in his hand and [snaps fingers], it's gone, and then it's back again. Well, you couldn't believe it, but in fact, they're obliged to admit that there is no ... there can't be any trick in it, it really is so. And so they're forced to try and find a theory that would account for it [laughter]. And it's really very difficult to. So, of course, there's nothing one can't do, like, there's always a way of trying to turn things around this way or that way to account for it.

So now, they are talking about this correspondence between the physical plane and the non-physical planes. And how ... I spoke about the black hole and the perforated universe so that, you know, there's an evacuation of the physical universe into this other plane, and there's motion from that other plane back into the physical universe. And there are kind of models to account for it, like, I'm sure that you've heard of the Möbius strip, which is like, a piece of paper, for example, cloth or whatever, and then you turn it around, and you tie the two ends together so that ... it's not like a cylinder, but the part that's outside on one side becomes inside in the other. And it shows then that there's ... you can move from the outside to the inside, and back to the outside again. There's a complete correspondence between the two, but--it's getting very complicated, of course, because then it's only right-handed or left-handed, and now they're trying to find a model that would be four-dimensional, which would be right-handed and left-handed at the same time [chuckles]. And then we go beyond that into a fifth and sixth dimension and there's no end to it. But the scientists are racking their brains to explain two phenomena: one is teleportation, or psychokinesis--which means not only that ... teleportation, which means that an object can be dematerialized and rematerialized again. And you know, we've been hearing about that a long time. I mean, most people never believed it--like Babaji was supposed to materialize all of a sudden in one place and then de-materialize and found in another place. Sahi Baba was supposed to produce rings and I heard of a fantastic story that they ran out of gas once and the lady who was driving the car said, "Well by the grace of Baba, I'm sure he will transform this water into petrol [chuckles] and they put water in the gas and [laughs] ...

I'm sure you're not going to believe me anymore, going on like this. Then of course, the other phenomenon, psychokinesis is like they've made experiments with astral projectors who were able, with their astral body, to displace a feather inside glass, under observed conditions so that you've measured exactly the displacement. So that's again proof of the power of plasma, for example: it's a non-physical substance on physical substance.

And then the other thing that has surprised a lot of scientists, of course, is the phenomenon of telepathy, especially in thought transmissions that had been taking place in the experiments taking place behind the iron curtain that I've often referred to. And well, you know that Jung, in the last part of his life, was very amazed by a certain phenomena, which he discovered, and that was the action of thought, upon dice--throwing dice--which couldn't be accounted for by physical laws. And I witnessed that once with Serafil. He was ... he couldn't believe it himself. Every time he threw the dice, he got five. He kept on doing it, every time he got five. And I was a witness, I was there, there was only dice, there was no trick. So that would account for the I Ching, you see, that way you throw your ... whether it's dice or those sticks or whatever it is, the action of thought, or whatever it is, or consciousness, upon the physical phenomenon. Now Heisenberg had already talked about it. He said: You can't talk about phenomena objectively, because there's your action upon it. But of course, he saw it mainly as your having asked a certain question to nature, as I said before, or the fact that you separate the phenomenon from its normal context by an experiment... like it's not functioning in its normal way, because you're separating it from all of the vectors by isolating it. So you're deforming your answer. But I'm not sure just whether he foresaw this action of the mind upon the phenomenon. But that's, of course, bothering scientists a lot now, because there is no such thing as objective phenomena anymore, you see that. You have to account for the action of the mind. Well, that, again, is wonderful for us, because that's what we're saying all the time. And it shows how your action when you're meditating, your concentration, it has an actual action and influence even upon your physical body, and so on. So we're not just talking in the air, we're talking about something very concrete and tangible.

So now they're talking about the curvature of the space of the mind [chuckles], not just physical space. So that they're talking about this interrelation between phenomena that can take place in different parts of the world, and you can't see the causal relationship, and yet it's there. And that's something that Murshid said in one of his lectures, if I remember. He talked about, you're walking in the street, and you have chaotic ideas, and there's a horse and cart that is upset, and something else goes wrong, and it's all interconnected. It's like, you see, the whole foundation of science was based upon causality before. They always assumed that a phenomenon is the cause of another phenomenon and so on. And even that's broken down. They realize that things don't always work that way. There are other factors. And so it seems like ... well, this, again, accounts for what I've been stressing so much: the divine intention behind phenomena. So that phenomena cannot just be accounted for by the laws, but by a purely spontaneous programming of the divine being. It's something that is very close to the discovery of free will, as I said, in the principle of Heisenberg. And of course all of this confirms exactly all that we've been teaching. Because, there again, I've always been saying that life on Earth, that you can't say that everything is in the world of causes, and that you are unfolding that which is already in yourself, no, because there's something gained by the fact of your existence, because you're communicating with other people and by the interfacing with other people, then something of the nature of other people is accrued to you, and as a consequence, then there must be a modification in the world of causes. So everything can't be accounted for simply by causation.

So as you see, all the most fundamental assumptions that people had thought were so definitely sure, and with which people were, well, belittling the experience of mystics, all of those assumptions have fallen completely flat. And that is the reason why scientists are very interested now in working together with mystics and contemplatives and finding the ... well, we enrich each other by comparing notes and by ... as I said, it's different departments of the one consciousness that are beginning to cooperate together, to reach what they call a holistic realization. And that's the next movement in the new age. It's called a holistic approach or the holistic understanding of our time. Now, perhaps, again, you realize that this is the basis of Hazrat Inayat Khan's teaching, when he defined what he called the message. He called it the awakening of the consciousness of humanity to the divinity in man. It's an awakening. That means it's a realization. If one assumes the absolute reality of the physical world, one can't see the divine in one's being ... like this old-fashioned idea of God up there and the physical world down here, and God created it all out of nothing, and so on, which, you know, it just doesn't ... it's not valid anymore. And now we can see how it's all a matter of realization ... like, it is the one consciousness that is gaining awareness of itself through the awareness of each part of itself. And so, it's just important for us to become transparent to the divine consciousness that is gaining awareness through us as long as we don't stand in the way of this awareness by imposing our ego consciousness. That's, again, a reason for meditation because meditation will help us to overcome our ego consciousness. So you see how it all ties up together.

And perhaps the most important point in it all is that we are talking about a different dimension of understanding to the ordinary, rational understanding. This is again something that the Sufis have always said ... they've said in different ways. Jalal al-Din Rumi said for example, "If ever people could realize the extent of my love, the world would be in flames." You remember that poem of Murshid, the poem Mandal [?]: “One drop--he says--of my tears would be like an ocean in which the world would be drowned.” And al-Hallaj, of course, says, “Do not think that you are the instrument through which God knows things, because whatever knowledge accrues through this means is very limited. If only ... it is well possible that the divine intelligence should all of a sudden break through your mind. And then for a moment of that flash of divine understanding, you will realize that your own understanding has absolutely NO validity whatsoever. It's completely overshadowed by the Divine understanding.” And this is the thing that, of course, the mystics have been saying all the time. And here, these people have been working in their laboratories and being so sure of their understanding. And now they're beginning to realize the complete breakdown of their understanding, in the face of this greater understanding. Buddha himself spoke about a transcendental knowledge as compared with ordinary knowledge. And so, scientists are beginning to discover this further dimension of understanding, which is well beyond the purview of just, you know, observing physical phenomena and trying to discover the laws, as we think science is. It's far beyond, because they realize that that's not where it's at. It doesn't meet... the beauty, the miracle of life is such that it requires of one to go any further now, the scientist has to enter into the experience of the mystic.

[Faint: woman speaking, commenting/asking a question. Transcription is only approximate]. Do you know, are you aware of anybody in the world that studies such law and revisionist [?] science, and [.....?] like a phenomenon occurring, like, let's say, the phenomenon of torture now. It's like, all humanity, at many places, suddenly disappear. The phenomena of consciousness taught you shouldn't be there, or I'm thinking, let's say, of the meeting of ... you can still hear there's communication, like Christ died 2000 years ago, and some people still meet him now. It seems there's a whole series of laws, very connected.

PV. Yes, it's connected

[more unclear words from woman speaker]: Are you aware of anybody who's still studying this, is it still a field?

PV. Well, no, I can't say it that way. But I can say that it is part of all that I'm talking about because ... It is the heart of God, the bleeding heart of God in the universe, that some people have been called upon to experience more deeply than others to the point of torture and despair. And of course, perhaps the most flagrant case is where this torture is imposed willfully by people in governments who are torturing prisoners, political prisoners, with complete disregard for their ... If one could place oneself in the position of those people and could realize what they're going through, one couldn't believe it. I've said this very often, I don't think that there's one moment that I'm not aware, that I'm not thinking of Noor-un-Nisa, my sister, in that prison for ... I don't know how long it was, but it was certainly more than a year and a half. In the cold winter, it was in Karlsruhe. Very, very cold. Chained, not being able to stretch yourself. Receiving a bowl of soup made of potato peel, you know that burns the stomach. Toothache or illness, cold, no medicines, no help, nothing, no way of communicating with any human being in the world. Do you know what that means? And then finally being delivered to the executioner and being whipped to death. Now that was my sister. But there were millions of people who ... there were the Jews who were taken into the gas chambers. You can imagine the feeling of claustrophobia and being invaded by gas, not being able to get out. That moment of horror. Well, it's happening NOW. It's not just then. It's happening now. And ...

[Same woman speaker]: like a law, more like Noor-un-Nissa died 25 years ago, 35 years ago. And suddenly 30 years after there's been many people, a consciousness that comes through. And in that sense, it seems to me that it's the same thing as science discovering

PV. Yes [excitedly]. It's ... Yes.

[Same woman continuing]: communication, discovering suddenly that it works from some law and the consequence is that [... ?]

PV. Yes. Well, it's discovering the heart of God. It's discovering ... as I say, it's a time of awareness that we're living in. So things that people were not aware of before, it's all coming. Everyone is becoming aware of everything that's happening, whereas people weren't before. And it goes right into the depth, right into the heart of God that is being tortured by the very limitation of life on Earth, delivered into the hands of the Creator's [?].

It's one being, and it's like, perhaps, certain parts of the being had become so imbued with their self, they weren't aware of the other parts of the being. And now, every part of the being is being aware of every other part of the being. But perhaps, one of the questions really is, why is suffering necessary. Like, in this case, suffering is being imposed by people, but there are people who are dying of cancer, there are people who are trapped in a mine, there are people who are suffering from terrible despair in their minds. There are people who are suffering from a kind of fear of death. There's just a lot of suffering everywhere. And it's easy to theorize about it and say, well, this is the cost of the freedom or the joy that we are experiencing. You speak about a law ...

Somehow, there seems to be a real need for suffering. Murshid said it makes the heart sincere. And I can see that in people who have gone through great suffering: they either become bitter, or they become very true. It's like a purification. It's a law. It's again, a law that is related to this understanding that I'm talking about, this understanding of the emotion. If there wasn't this understanding for the meaning of suffering, there couldn't be this tremendous enthusiasm that I'm talking about. It's tremendous. The wonderment before the glory of God is part of it.

They say that, well, there's a saying that those who have gone through the greatest suffering are amongst those who can give the greatest joy. And that was the experience of ... I met a lady who-- in a concentration camp--a French lady who came out of a concentration camp. And I said to her, "Well, just imagine how terrible it must have been." And she said, "Well, you know, when I see people today I realize that I've been privileged to experience the greatest glory that I've ever seen among people." I said, "Oh, what do you mean?" Well--she said--not only was the cruelty of the Nazis just beyond description, their brutality, but the inmates themselves were incredibly cruel to each other. You know, they became like animals, tearing each other apart for a little bit of bread and things like that. But--she said--in the midst of all of that horror, there was such heroism that you wouldn't believe it. There were people who were dying, who were helping people who were far less ill than themselves. There were people who were volunteering to die. When ... well, the person who was going to be chosen as a hostage was a very brutal person. And this very beautiful person was sacrificing himself for this very brutal person. She said, You wouldn't believe the heroism of these people. And she realized that the need for suffering in the world now she had seen suffering at its worst. So you realize that the realization of that person is very valuable for us, because I expect that none of us has experienced suffering to that extent. But somehow, through her or through what I'm saying now, we begin to understand the condition of the heart of God that is suffering. Why it is. Not with our minds, of course. It's the understanding of the emotion that I'm talking about [pause]

It's part of the marvel.

Of course, the [pause] ecstasy of the being who is facing suffering bravely is something beyond description. Hazrat Inayat Khan spoke about it when he spoke about the ecstasy of Christ on the cross. It's the experience of the divine perfection suffering human ... and human limitation. It's like the very limit, the very extreme of emotion.

Anyway, the fact remains that nowadays, we are going through a change, and I think that no decent person can go on living and enjoying the ... Well, as I wrote in my article on Noor, enjoy the benefits of the sacrifice of those few beings. I don't think that we can do this knowing that there are other people in the world who are suffering the same thing as Noor was suffering, and not do anything about it. I think it's so urgent that I'm so glad that Taj has been taking up this cause and many of you now are joining in and we're constituting a real group of people who are working for that, to allay this situation. And we're gratified when we hear that, in fact, we can do something. You see, most people think we can't do anything. No, that is in a country ... I don't know anything about that country, and how can I interfere and so on and so forth. And now we know that in fact, many of these people have been helped and have even been freed. So there's no excuse anymore. Now we know.

Now, of course, it's very ... it requires a very careful planning and thinking out. It's not easy, of course. But we have some indications now ... we've gotten some new indications today, of exactly ... You see, from Noor's experience, we know now how the person feels in those circumstances. For example, most people think, well, we have to try to release that prisoner from that situation. Well, of course, that's the ideal thing. But in between times that prisoner is there, living in conditions that we know now, and has needs, like needs for food and needs for heat and need for communicating with people and needs for medicines and so on and so forth. And moral support and a lot of things. And so these are the things to cater for, while trying to give them the necessary assistance to be able to free them. So anyway, these are things that Taj will be talking to you about and working in. We have a lot of new perspectives opening up. Which is again, a wonderful feeling to know that ... There's an awakening in our time, and there's a way and a means of doing something very concrete and objective to build a better world.

Ok. And thank you for your help in this work. It's very important.