Magic

Magic is a craft. It is the technical capacity of being able to use spiritual energy to create an illusion. It is not a giving, but a manipulating of the forces that are drawn from a human being, by stimulating his imagination and using his wish (like the spit that comes out of a caterpillar to make a structure around itself). The building of this artificial world allows him to feel secure, for it comes from within himself. It expresses his limitation, imagination, and immaturity. The person becomes like the princess locked in the ivory tower who is so thrilled waiting for the prince to come, that she is not aware that time has passed and she is an old lady. It is being caught in the illusion of what we wish to happen, instead of living in the reality and consciousness of what is happening day by day, and moment by moment. Magic is the promise. It gives no fulfillment since it has no content. It is amazing to see someone guarantee many things. Hours go by without result, but people are satisfied because they are not threatened by any reality that forces them to grow. A magician has no capacity to give; only a will that must control the level of the people who come to him. It is like going to Las Vegas. There are always people who win, but the percentages are against them. A magician has energy and if someone coming to him by chance tunes in on his frequency, without relating to his mind, personality or ego, there is a chance for him to receive some nourishment. If he stays, time is working against him, as in the gambling hall. One of the ancient images of a magician is of a dragon inside a castle holding a great jewel. The challenge is to slay the dragon and to capture the prize. The jewel is usually of such an enormous size that it has great value. But it is almost impossible for anyone to steal something that valuable and not be destroyed by what it attracts. It is always the wish of a person without the guts and capacity to pay for their spiritual growth on a day by day basis to serve a magician and to be rewarded some day. If the reward is not continually being given, then one is a fool waiting to receive a fool’s reward, which is nothing. I have known many magicians. They are generally contemptuous of the people whom they attract. They are only inspired to perform when they feel challenged to capture a prize by using their craft. Only the pure of heart or someone with a deep sense of surrender can enter into a relationship with a magician successfully. They can absorb energy without succumbing to the attachment of matter. Taking nourishment without crystallization is the only way to grow in any situation, but with a magician, it is crucial. In fables and fairy tales, magicians are usually served by drab servants who are the living manifestation of what their masters have to offer. Magicians may possess great spiritual powers of various kinds be- cause they are driven and possessed. As such, they have a potential that is not expressed by ordinary human beings. It is only through their insatiable capacity to use life, that they can satisfy the endless void within them. The material world around them increases, but the physical people who inhabit their kingdom do not become free. It is only the creation of independent or enlightened people that represent spirituality. Magicians delegate authority; they in no way give freedom. The outstanding difference between a magician and a spiritualist is that the spiritualist produces teachers and people who are on an increasingly equal basis with himself. A magician continually creates more extraordinary illusions but never gives equality. It is only by nourishment and love that a human being can grow. It is the void within magicians, the lack of love, that never allows for the filling of their heart. This void can suck in the entire world, and produce absolutely nothing but more and more materialization. It can build great and beautiful buildings and many other physical manifestations. It cannot give the nourishment that develops on the spiritual level a detachment from these outer conditions. It is another kind of hero worship, this attachment to the external. it is like a girl loving a movie star when she cannot satisfy the needs of her husband. The unreal world and the unreal relationship make her incapable of coping with the reality of her own existence. One of the classic examples of being under the spell of a magician is the story of a prince going into a foreign land in search of truth. He is captured, often by a magician in the form of a beautiful woman. While he is under her pell, he forgets about time, his family, and his kingdom. He is lost in the pleasures of the moment. This is the very clear difference between magic and spiritual reality. Spiritual reality allows us to maintain all of our responsibilities as we grow. Magic allows us to forget about everything and think we are what we wish to be without effort. The enormous appeal of magicians is their ability to instantly relieve a person of their tensions by creating the one inch of snow on a mountain of shit that allows people to think that they are on a mountain of pure snow. How can anyone hope for the instant enlightenment that magicians promise? An immediate remedy to all of the shortcomings of life can only be experienced through illusion. Life and reality are strong forces. it takes incredible perseverance and endless growth to bring about enlightenment. It is only the contempt for God that these people have as part of their contempt for life, that brings them into power. They also fulfill the need of the multitudes to have an immediate inner experience, which they are incapable of working for consciously. A great barometer of our growth is seen in the merry-go-round of karma that brings the same situations back to us again and again. The amount of time that it takes for us to deal with them truly represents our spiritual maturity. It is this repetition that is life’s way of freeing us from patterns. Our ability to see in every person the accumulated psychic quantity of past situations, gives us the clues to deal with situations on higher levels with less involvement, thereby increasing the speed with which we finish our learning in that situation. There are principles that are essential for anyone to learn if they wish to accelerate their growth. For example, they must realize that the time spent analyzing what is dug up in the process of development is wasted. Who needs to know? You have to be big enough not to keep count. This will free your energy to ascend to higher realms of consciousness. It is like trying to rid somebody of cancer while they are continually asking you what is happening to it. it is always remarkable to see people hold onto what they claim they don’t like. The world and everything that it represents does not need justification to carry on the process of eating life and giving nothing. It is only by surrendering all matter and opening to higher energies, that we can rise above the level of the earth. The analysis of matter is of no possible consequence for enlightenment, for what you are analyzing is what you are trying to surrender. A spiritual body has no discernible parts. It is all energy. What we experience is the reduction of matter and the increase in energy. If it feels like your head is being sawed in half, it is just the releasing of tensions. The physical discomfort that we feel allows us to turn our mind to the sensation of matter, whereas what we should be experiencing is the releasing of energy. Our ability to grow is directly proportional to the length of time we take to pass through these painful periods when we are breaking down matter into energy. It also depends on our capacity and willingness to draw from other people’s energy the necessary nourishment. This re- quires a sense of humility and gratitude. The ego that needs to be independent of everyone is another expression of a magician. It can in no way ever be grateful to anyone and it places itself above the need for others, and so must create more illusions to support itself. A spiritualist is continually more and more dependent on other people to attain his freedom. It is with tremendous gratitude that I see through the years the development around me of people who can relieve me of responsibilities in many of the duties with which I was formerly involved. it is the mutual freeing that represents spirituality, and the conscious involvement in using life on all levels that makes a living chemistry of growth. Contempt for anyone is contempt for everyone. It is a deadness that completely contaminates one’s existence. It is like the bad apple n the barrel that infects all other apples. Not understanding that every- thing functions according to God’s will causes us to become prejudiced against others. It is by understanding that everyone serves that we begin to understand how extraordinary God’s creation really is. I have spent many years serving magicians, as I did not find the consciousness among spiritual people to satisfy my inner need for development. It was essential, not to learn their craft, but to develop the spiritual mechanism. Once the mechanism was developed, then the craft could be surrendered, as it was the mechanism that brought me from below the earth to a point where I could reach into the atmosphere and connect with God. Most people exist in the underworld while they claim to wish for spiritual attainment. They are less than developed, and in no way qualify for spiritual work. So they reach for magicians who are the rulers of the underworld. They do not have any capacity to judge what Behind the Cosmic Curtain they have not attained. It is only by consciously recognizing where we are in the structure of the universe, that we begin to understand how far we are from higher spiritual energy. The world of magic creates such a complete void of itself that it is almost impossible to see within it. it is only possible to see what it ejects. it is the students who are thrown out of an organization, because they no longer could serve it, that truly represent the capacity of the teaching to give life. it has been a constant expression of mine for over twenty years to continually raise the level of our work. This attracts better people and makes it increasingly difficult for older people to stay. This should be the real expression of growth and evolution. It is not a level that is maintained, but one that is rising, so that the capacity for the people who are there to grow is the expression of the potential for realization. In most spiritual organizations and groups, the purpose is to perpetuate a certain level, which limits anyone who might be gifted by God beyond that level. They must be cut and packaged to conform to the students of the group, rather than express their gift and feed into the group an energy that raises the spiritual capacity for everyone. What best serves the group is to cater to the extraordinary person, who can bring to everyone a greater capacity to grow, and not to limit the gifts that they possess. Magic always processes energy so that it does not become competitive, but conforms instead to the limitation of the magician in charge. Once somebody enters an organization in which the top person is considered enlightened, there is no capacity to come close to that, for this person represents the end, and as such stands between you and God. If they are serving you, they are beneath you. A true teacher is a servant, trying to bring his students to the same mastery as himself. He is only an elder brother, and not in any way trying to be the superior. It is his dependency upon his students, his conscious use of them, that allows them to exchange energies so that they can all go towards their enlightenment together. It has continually been my experience that I deeply need the people who study with me. I could not grow without them. In the recycling of life, we see again the people whom we knew in other forms coming back into our lives; but now we have a greater ability to deal with them because of a higher consciousness and a greater energy. It is by remembering and retaining that consciousness throughout the new manifestation of an old karmic connection that we do not waste time trying to justify the present by a past error. During the recycling period, because of the higher level of energy that is always the expression of advancement, all the psychic chemistry becomes intensified. We are required in our spiritual advancement to face the same situations under higher pressure and temperature, for we can only reduce the crystallization of a situation by a higher intensity than that which set it. It is similar to repotting a plant. An increased root system always requires a larger pot. It is also similar to the setting of a pleat in a skirt or trousers. If it is done badly, it can only be taken out by using a higher temperature than the temperature at which the wrong pleat was set. It is necessary, therefore, to consciously under- stand that all our recycled situations require greater intensity. I have never met a recurrent situation in which outside forces did not play a distracting but vital part. In the midst of these intense events, we will receive bad news that tries to take our energy and occupy our mind, to displace us from the moment, as the pressures build to reduce the situation and remove the crystallization. It is only the capacity to keep his mind on his objective, that allows a person to avoid these outside forces and illusions. What usually takes place during our dramas is a shifting of energies. It is something going from the right hand to the left hand. We are so small in our nature that we try to hold onto both, rather than allow for the change to take place. It is God taking from the right hand while he is simultaneously placing in the left the difference that we need to allow for the change in pattern. We are so busy watching what is being taken from the right, that we cannot perceive what is being placed in the left. In all spiritual work, it is necessary to ignore what is being taken away and to watch what is being received. It is the nature of man to see his losses, and the nature of a spiritual person to see what is being given. Creation is a process of life. When we focus on life coming into us, we see everything as creation. When we focus on what is being taken away from us, we see everything as death. Another barometer of our progress that must be observed is our attachment to a rising creative energy and the parallel need to simultaneously maintain all other creative connections. It is amazing, and appalling, to see how people can give their attention to something new but have the inability to sustain a prior commitment. It is not that one is greater than the other, but that the newer creative force rises from the accumulated connections with the past. If we destroy the past, we will be unable to sustain the present. It is like a married couple in love, who produce a child. If they focus on the child, rather than on each other and also the child the fail to keep the situation in balance. It is always the sacrifices that we make, not the sacrifices that are asked of us, that destroy our life. Spirituality and growth are like a one-man band to which we continually add additional instruments, because of our increased capacity to deal with materiality. Like a pl ant, we take in matter, refine it, and give out a higher energy. That we can function as a plant is our highest ultimate consciousness. it is the nature of man to think of himself as a more complicated mechanism. It is true that he can be complex, but his complexity should in no way interfere with this simple process for which he can be responsible. We buy our mechanical gadgets with more and more varied attachments, which unfortunately lessen their basic usefulness. if we buy an air conditioner, which also can be a heating unit, it is necessary to find one that gives the maximum of both services. Complexity for its own sake is the need of emotions to use up energy. It is always easy to see a childish person buying an involved gadget or creating an involved relationship, for they do not have the capacity to live without the tensions that such a situation or device will bring about in their life. I had a student who bought a cheap secondhand foreign car. I asked a friend who had been a race car driver about it. She said, "If you think your life is simple, buy a secondhand foreign car." I respected her judgment, but kept out of the situation. For seven months, I listened to the student tell me about what a bargain he had gotten until he finally carted the car off to a junk yard. It is similar to somebody telling you about their marriage getting better and better until one day they tell you they’re getting divorced. The inability to correct situation because of an enormous ego, which must express itself as having al- ways made the right decision, is a costly and immature way to live. it has been necessary for me, as my teaching has grown, to judge people and make decisions. It has also been amazing for me to see that it was the weakest of people who always said it was unfair to judge them. At a dog show, I am sure all of the mutts protest the judges’ actions. But it is only someone’s lack of capacity that resists submitting itself to appraisal. in all the years that I studied, I always asked for judgment on whatever work I was doing rather than assume that it was correct. There is an old saying that nobody can do as much damage to you as that which you do to yourself. I heard a few years ago about a teacher who built an incredible fantasy about his own spiritual life. He spoke to his students about his teacher, whom he had actually never met. He built the relationship to such a degree that he began to believe it himself. He had the nerve to finally take eighty students to India to meet his so-called master. The teacher denounced him as a rogue and vagabond to these eighty students. The man’s students left him. He had succeeded in destroying his own creation. It seems that the need to lie is part of an illusionist’s attraction. He builds his fantasies like dream castles, and eventually begins to succumb to his own lies. I met this man once. He kept claiming that he could teach a particular kind of yoga, of which he was abysmally ignorant. But I found him remarkable in the type of Bhakti yoga that he was practicing, and I met and was impressed by some of his people. If he were not made defensive by his own projections, he would have had greater success and I am sure we could have become friends. This kind of fantasy exists in all creative fields. A ballet dancer wants to be a mime, a mime wants to be an actor, an actor wants to be a director, etcetera. It is an inability to live with the creative gift that God has given us. We willfully try to distort the energy to satisfy some vague expression of what we feel success should be. I have always been heavy. I was a heavy baby, a heavy child, a heavy young man, and unfortunately, I am approaching my middle age with an increased weight. I could certainly discipline myself and cut down on my food, but for the type of shock my body goes through, my bulk helps absorb and lessen the physical pain. If the food I eat acts as dope occasionally, I find it forgivable. I have been criticized by those Hatha yoga enthusiasts and health food fanatics who I understand have reasons to pursue their own ideas. Certainly a mouse is what it is because of its nature, and an elephant also expresses its nature. I am closer to the elephant than the mouse. There is no reason for me to try to pretend I weigh 150 pounds when I weigh 250 pounds. It is the ability to live with what you are and do the work that you can do that is essential, allowing God to enter you, and growing endlessly as a channel for this divine force. It is always the mind and the emotions of a human being trying to conform to the outer manner rather than surrendering to the inner that brings about problems. I know another Indian teacher who looks like an ideal spiritual person. He has the classical cow eyes and profile that make people’s hearts flutter when they see him. For many he is spirituality. I found upon meeting with this man several times only a great hostility and an inability for him to open his heart towards me. His attitude did not fit with his purity and holiness, but suggested quite a different type of person that was ordinarily hidden. I have found the same kind of inconsistency in most people. They want until they are given, and then they withdraw as they are unable to sustain the relationship and responsibility. Loving God is the great reality in this world, for it is the force from which all other things emerge. Lying and not being responsible does not allow us to grow towards a more absolute truth. You have to empty yourself so that some saint or spiritual person can live in you and eat out your ego. When this person leaves you, then God comes in. In dealing with magicians or deeply negative people, we continually place ourselves under judgment and pressures that take away our creative capacity and destroy the matter of our attainment. But it can in no way harm the content, which is recycled and comes back in a purer and stronger form. It is only when someone objects to the destruction of matter, because they don’t have the capacity to sustain working again, that this refinement does not occur. The entire meaning of "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away" is embodied in the ability to surrender over and over again that which we receive. It is in the nature of man to take; it is not in the nature of man to give back. But it is in the nature of spiritual work to see matter reduced to spirit, and if we are fortunate, to see the matter destroyed completely and forever. This is the only way we are freed from the tensions and restrictions of the earth. It is only when we see the deepest and most meaningful of all our possessions taken from us that we can understand the process as the manifestation of mind. The surrender that allows for the immediate recycling of a situation on a higher level more than rewards us for that which has been taken from us. it is only the grieving for that which we think we have lost that actually brings about the loss. Instead of recycling the energy, it goes into the void. if we truly believe in God and creation, then we must accept that everything happens for the best. if we accept that, then we never cry and complain to God but try, through our surrender, to allow for the immediate recycling of the energy so that we can understand why this particular event took place. . . . We draw from people who have died. We cannot leave them in peace. To continually provoke someone who has physically left the earth has unfortunate consequences. Instead of loving them and sending energy to them, we are taking from their spirit content that is needed in the recycling of their life and their rebirth. We are bringing them down and milking them, because we cannot find the detachment to accept that which has already taken place. A very dear friend of mine died some time back. I went to his funeral service and, as the man had been a Parsee, there was a passage read from the book of Zarathustra. It spoke of a wonderful man who was very beloved in his life. He died, and as he climbed the mountains to heaven he came across a great and turbulent river. He cried to God and asked why this river was placed in his path as an obstacle to his reaching heaven. God replied, "This river is composed of the tears of the people who loved you." It was a great shock for me to hear this explained and I was deeply grateful for the understanding that it awoke in me. it is not right to make people so attached to you that upon your death, they are left incomplete and dependent. It explained why in the Orient a man who reaches the age of sixty, regardless of his station in life, takes the path of a priest and dies without family or friends. He removes this obstacle from his path, and does not have the attachment of people and their dependency on him become a negative quantity in his cycle of rebirth.

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