[00:00:00] Speaker A: So welcome everyone.
Thank you for coming and listening to alchemical dialogues. And it's a real pleasure that I get to have this conversation with Alan Berkowitz, known as Mikael. And thank you for coming.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: I would say ditto to all that. It's been a real pleasure to get to know each other and to explore our respective traditions and their commonalities. And I'm delighted to be here for this podcast.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: I met you through our common friend Brian, who studies Sufism with me, but also studies Vedanta and used to work. I. I think he used to work. Yeah. At Hobart and William Smith College, where you used.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: I used to work. Imagine that. We had the same job.
He filled my shoes.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Right. Did he meet you there?
[00:00:51] Speaker B: No, it was like there was a gap.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Right. But he. But he knew of you and so we got introduced through him.
And then.
So I, I actually like this story. Part of what happened is years ago I bought a book just because of the title. I've told you this story, but it's for everybody listening here. And the title was the Short Path to Enlightenment.
And I couldn't resist, so I bought was by Paul Brunton. I knew nothing of Paul Brunson. I put it on my bookshelf and ignored it for years.
And it's not a big book, it's a short book. But apparently I was somewhat attracted to the Short Path to Enlightenment, but not very motivated. So I kept on doing my Sufi studies and. And I had. I have a mentor and a friend that I think we had on a podcast, Iqbal Lewis.
We're talking about one of the Sufis that I follow. He's passed away now. Mershad Samuel Lewis, who is teacher of the hippies in California.
And somehow it came up in our conversation about Paul Brunton, or maybe Iqbal brought it up and he said, oh, he was a major influence early on in Mershad Sam's life.
And Murshid Sam had always wanted to meet Ramana Maharshi, but never had a chance. And Paul Brunson was heavily influenced by Ramana Maharshi. And so they, they met and they exchanged and he was a big influence.
So that led me to my bookshelf saying, wait a minute, I faintly remember that name.
So I read it, and it is for those of you who have not read it, go out and buy it and read it.
And I read the first edition. There's a second edition you told me, that has more love in it, which would make it even more Sufi friendly. But it was. It was Sufi friendly right from the beginning. And I just fell in love, in love with that. And so I learned a little more about Paul Brunson.
My friend Brian gifted me with the notebooks of Paul Brunton, which you can find online, but you can also get hard copies. I'm sure we'll talk about that. And in the course of getting excited about that and trying to ferret out the influences with Merced Sam, I was introduced to you and so we meet pretty regularly on Zoom because you're off in California and I'm here in Rochester, around Rochester, New York.
And it's been a real pleasure to delve into the teachings and explore the interrelationships and how this all, you know, mysticism, like everything else, has different perfumes and, you know, different sects like Vajrayana Buddhism and Sufism and Zen and who knows what else. But there's a, there's a common essence.
And those of you who've listened to these podcasts before, that's what really excites me, finding that thread and being able to follow that thread no matter what, and picking what resonates with you.
So that being said, I'd like people to hear a little more about you, how you got involved with Paul Brunson, a little bit of your background and what you're up to nowadays, and then we'll talk about Paul Brunson and his teachings.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: So first I want to say that you're on the long path to the short pass book.
So our, our bookshelves contain many treasures of wisdom that we have to become ready for.
So I grew up in suburban New York in a Jewish, not too religious family. And like many people who are exposed to institutional religion, it felt very empty to me and didn't feed me, didn't feel there was a sacredness in it.
Then I went to Cornell University in 1969 when everything was exploding all over the US in terms of the Vietnam War and everything. And I was always very politically active and involved in social justice issues. But I got very disillusioned with the people who were the leaders.
They seem to be not mature enough for the leadership they were exerting in the so called radical circles.
And I also became disillusioned with college because I had this naive idea that now I was here to really learn. And it's like the same thing about memorization and grades. So in college I went through a massive existential crisis and a friend of me said, well, you should go to the American Brahmin Bookstore, which is a spiritual bookstore. In Ithaca, New York, founded by Anthony Damiani, who is a personal, very close, one of the most important students of Paul Brenton.
So through Anthony and his teachings, Anthony's very universal, which is something you touched on. We studied all the great traditions of Buddhism, the schools of Buddhism, Hinduism, the schools of Hinduism, Sufism, alchemy, young Steiner, you name it. The idea was to get the big picture.
And through Anthony, I got to personally meet Paul Brunton three times.
Two in Switzerland, where he lived for the latter part of his life, and one when he visited us to the center Anthony founded near Ithaca, New York, called Wisdom's Goldenrod center for Philosophic Studies.
So Paul Brunton, or he called himself pb, became a central focal point of my life, although I did have other people that I considered to be teachers.
And my wife Braun and I are now the disseminators of PB in India and in Brazil, where I am now. We also translate his writings into Portuguese.
And we represent the Paul Brunton Philosophic foundation, which I served as president of for a while, in sharing PB and his teachings with whoever's interested. We're not pushing anything.
A lot of us have whatever we need from the spiritual traditions that we're part of.
But for those who are interested in PB, we share PB, we give talks, we have a YouTube channel called Brenton Official, we have Zoom classes.
And as you touched on with the perfume flavor theme, all of the traditions that are genuine acknowledge that there's one reality or one truth to which they are all pointing.
And when we absorb that, we put aside our differences and view each other as seekers of a common goal.
And Paul Brunton was very much a synthesizer who throughout his life encountered teachers and texts and students and scriptures from all of these traditions and made a kind of modern synthesis of them.
So he's very compatible with any tradition. And Murshid Sam is an example.
Phoebe was a huge influence on many, many world leaders and teachers and politicians and artists and royalty, you name it. That was his secret life.
And his public life was writing books. He wrote 10 books, the first being a Search in Secret India, describing his journeys in India and meeting Ramana Maharishi. And then 10 more books which were international bestsellers, each published in over 15 languages, still in print over 90 years later.
And then what we call the Notebooks of Paul Grunton, which is his posthumous work that was reserved for later publication. And the book that you encountered, the Short Path to Enlightenment, is drawn from those extensive notebooks spanning 28 themes published in 16 volumes.
So I don't know if that answers your question.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: It certainly does. But I'm curious. I haven't heard about his influence on artists and politicians. Can you give any examples?
[00:09:43] Speaker B: I'll give you one good example. And then a contemporary example.
Well, when he was in India, he became famous from the Search and Secret India Book. And his presentation of Indian philosophy was very meaningful to Westernized or colonized or Britishized, quote, unquote, educated Indians.
So many of them got back in touch with their own spiritual heritage through this Britisher, including many royalty. And he was friends with a lot of Indian royalty, especially the Maharaja of Mysore, who was a major figure at that time.
And it seemed that he helped prepare them for the transition of independence away from maharajas and independent states to a unified India. So that was one impulse.
One of the reasons he lived in Switzerland, in addition to reminding him of Himalayas, was he was close to Geneva. And so many important people would say, well, I have an important meeting in Geneva. Then they would go visit him. And if you look at his archives, it's pbrchives.org there's letters from all kinds of famous people, musicians, artists, writers. One example is Werner Heisenberg had an experience of what we call nirvikalpa samadhi, or in Zen, in Buddhism, we would say the void.
Sufism, I think it's Fana.
He had an experience of extinction, and Paul Brenton helped him understand what happened to him.
And last year, my wife and I were at an ashram in India and we made friends with the Mataji, and we gave her a set of the notebooks.
And when we came back a year later, she said, he helped me understand and give words to and find a language for experiences I had that I couldn't put into words.
So he speaks to a full range of speakers, from beginners to more experience.
And in the case of Murshid, Sam, Phoebe was very well known, as you pointed out, he wanted to meet Ramana Harishi, but in some aspects hinted at in Rashid's biography or autobiography. Phoebe was like a model for him because Murshid also went all over the place and encountered everyone and everywhere did all these amazing, unusual things and including, let's say, supraphysical things that were also part of PB's life, even though he chose to not talk about them, just the context.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: What, what was. When was he born? When did he die?
[00:12:31] Speaker B: So he was born in 1898 in London. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants.
He. He lost his mother At a very early age he. He changed his name from a very Jewish sounding name, which I forgot, to Paul Brunton.
If you know England, the anti Semitism in England was very severe.
He had an early on very bohemian existence, but he was always a spiritual seeker.
He had a number of important spiritual teachers in London that at that, you know, after the Theosophical Society was founded in Annie Besant, there was a whole hotbed of a cult and theosophical and spiritual activity in England. So he was very close with AE or George Russell, who was a very important Irish theosophist and writer and poet and politician. Actually he was a Renaissance man.
One of his teachers was Ananda Mate, who was the. One of the first Western Buddhist monks who kind of help bring Buddhism the West. So he was really steeped in all this, including severe disillusionments and depressions and crises that us normal people go through also.
So he's kind of a model for us of how to evolve through the human psychological experience and form to something more enlightened. And that was all before he went to India. Once he went to India, he never lived anywhere. He circled the globe three times. And this is before airplanes, living in different places, giving talks and writing.
And then in his 60s he settled in Switzerland where he lived the last 20 years of his life.
But he also spent time living in Mexico and New Zealand and Australia and different parts of Europe, as well as a number of trips to India including, including a six year stint when he was trapped there during World War II.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: When did he die?
[00:14:38] Speaker B: He died in 1981. So he was 83 years old.
But he was so invisible in his last phase in Switzerland when he was really a hermit, that he wrote somewhere that there were two obituaries written about him because he had kind of disappeared, I think. I mean, these people don't disappear. They're still working on the inner planes, they're still doing active spiritual work. But some of them are not working, let's say outwardly, although he did that too because of all these people that came to see him.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: So when I was learning more about him, on your recommendation, I did read the book In Search of Secret India.
And there were overlaps with some of the people that Anayat Khan had met. Anaya Khan came to the west in the early 1900s.
So before then he was in India and at the time he was the most famous musician in India. And he gave that up to come to the West. But they met some people and had transmissions from some people. So that was Interesting. But after that he also, another book that was just fascinating was, was it the search in, in Secret, Secret Egypt. Right. And for me, the India one was more interesting. But the first few chapters in the book on the search for secret Egypt are just mind blowing. I, I, it's, it's, you read that and it's like you could make a science fiction movie out of this.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: You know, maybe one day we will.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Well, maybe we will. But it's, I would really, they're fun books to read and I have no doubt because of what I'm getting from talking with you and the study that I am doing and how it fits with the Sufi practices and lineage and concepts, it's all fitting together.
There's an authenticity to the stories that, you know, the fear is if you drop into it and you, you know nothing else, you could really call it a fantasy science fiction story.
But then you, you catch on that this guy's not fooling around.
[00:17:09] Speaker B: No, he was never fooling around. And he was really serious and intrepid and you know, like, I've been to India and Egypt and you could stay in three star hotels and have nice meals and don't worry about the water.
And when he went, there was like mosquitoes. He, you know, going to the sacred sites in the Himalayas. He would walk across these narrow bridges over gorge that were swaying and the floorboards were tipping in either direction. And if you made one slip, you were dead. So he was really courageous. Right. And motivated. And we are the beneficiaries.
[00:17:51] Speaker A: Yes.
And also his, his approach to the people he met and the practices he did.
He, he was a mystical scientist.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: That's a good appellation because he really felt the two were necessary. And he was a journalist and one of the earliest articles he wrote was something called the Occult Value of the Scientific Attitude. So he was a follower and an experiencer and a disciple of the occult tradition.
But he felt that the occult and mystical traditions needed to be viewed through a scientific, critical intellect lens. Obviously not limited to the critical intellect. And you see that in those two search books that he was willing to consider anything and open to anything, but he wasn't naive.
And obviously, as we know, there's a lot of fakes, there's a lot of charlatans, there's a lot of, my grandmother would say, which is fake stories.
And, and he was very attuned to them and he didn't get trapped in them.
He was after the real deal. And another thing about him is all these great teachers that he met saw they had a destiny, like they knew more about his dharma than he did. So they all embraced him, to the surprise of their students, because they would just, like, take PB into their arms and bring them to all their initiations and share all their doctrines with him. So he really got a download of a. Of. Lot. Lot.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: That's fascinating. That. That's. That's somewhat the story of Murad Sam.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: That's why there's a little similarities between them.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Right. Mercy Sam, for those of you who don't know, wasn't accepted in the States very easily.
And he. He was probably, it's fair to say, on the eccentric side.
But he was a serious seeker and really bright and very dedicated.
And finally, in his middle life, he was able to travel. And much like you just described Paul Brunson.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: Right. Egypt, North Africa.
Rashid Sam was more outwardly eccentric.
Phoebe was really a British gentleman on the outside. And even when he went to India, if you look at the pictures, he wore a tie.
So he was. He was. He wore a tie in a jacket while I was with Ramona. So. But it was a linen jacket because he didn't want to be too hot.
So he was also eccentric, but in a different way than Mursheed Sam.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: That's a really good way of putting it. Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: You know, Mursheed Sam, you could be put off by his outward eccentricities, which would be unfortunate.
And PB you can be put up by his outward bl. Outward. Outward seeming blandness. Right, Right.
Although people who felt something. They was like, knew there was something going on with this guy.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: Well, that's. That's the point that gets through that with Murshid Sam, like you described, PB Murshid Sam would go to Japan and was immediately accepted, was given robes, was the Dharma transmitter.
He went to Pakistan, was immediately valued by the Sufis there, and was seen for who he was.
And in America, it took the hippies. The hippies knew.
[00:21:34] Speaker B: Right.
They say it takes one to know one. Right.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: Probably. Right.
And so I've always had fun with those stories about Murshid Sam. So that's another way that the two of them, their lives kind of paralleled.
So pick some. Pick part of his teachings that really you think would be useful for people to get a feeling for what.
What he.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Sure. So I'll just say he wrote these 10 books, which are very valuable.
Many Indian teachers, including Ramana, recommended them to Westerners.
Then as his mind became more and more quiet, he would receive intuitions. Like something would just drop in and he would write it down and he organized it into 28 themes which he called ideas.
And then he reserved those for posthumous publication and it was published as the Notebooks of Paul Brunton. So first, so we'll talk about some of those themes that are in the notebooks.
You mentioned that there's an authenticity to him. So I want to read something. He says this. I might say that my work throughout has always been based on a firsthand knowledge of what I write about and not upon hearsay or tradition.
Then he says this is a pioneer work, this making of a fresh synthesis which draws from, but does not solely depend upon the knowledge of colleagues scattered in different continents, as well as the initiations of masters belonging to the most different traditions, as you said about Mursheet SEM. Finally he said my researches were made not only amongst modern books and ancient texts and living men and women, they were also made in the mysterious withinness of my own consciousness. So say that all these traditions he studied were experientially validated. So when you read his books, you feel he's speaking from experience.
And he never would ever allow himself to be called a guru or even a teacher. He always called himself a researcher.
So in this volume is kind of encyclopedic synthesis of the.
The spiritual path. It's all in the English language. There's no words from other traditions. He coined his old terminology to avoid confusion.
And he speaks with profound.
My opinion. He speaks with profound insight into almost every aspect of human seeking. So let's talk about the spiritual path, which he calls the quest.
He says there are four goals which philosophy, because he decided to call his writings philosophia, in the ancient Greek sense of love, of wisdom.
There are four goals which philosophy sets before the mind of a person.
To know itself, to know its higher self, which he calls the over self. To know its over self, to know the universe and to know its relation to the universe.
The search for these goals constitutes the quest.
So we have many teachers which talk about know thyself or get to know your soul or whatever, transcend your personality.
But Phoebe's bringing in that we need to know the objective world we live in and our relationship to it, which he brings in a lot of modern science.
And really that's the true path to non dualism, because the world appears as separate, but in the non dual experience it's all a unity, a oneness.
And the need to understand and know the world is part of the trajectory towards that.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: I think he made it in what you Wrote, if I remember right, because I looked at the quotation.
There's the universe with the big U and the universe with the little U.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Just to make that clear, he's making a distinction that there's creation, but that comes out of something.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: Right. So let's read something else.
This is from the part of the notebooks called Human Experience.
So the quest is volume two and category one. So there's these 28 themes I cannot reiterate enough, that the fortunes, events, and experiences of human existence are controlled by higher laws, that there is meaning and purpose in them, and that it is a business of human intelligence to seek out and learn the reasons for them.
So that's the big you, universe shaping us and our universe small you.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Right.
And you can touch that.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Right, Right. And so here's another interesting thing. He talks about illuminations, and he says you could have a temporary illumination, which he calls a glimpse. It's like you're hiking up a mountain and the trees part and you see the top of the mountain and you go, ah, that's where I'm headed.
And most of us on a spiritual path had a glimpse in this life or past life, because that's what.
That's what lit a fire under us.
Then you could have a more permanent illumination.
Many people have glimpses, are thought to be. And think of themselves as teachers, but they're not finished.
You can have an illumination or be illumined at the personal level, which is to know your soul.
But then PB speaks about cosmic illumination, and he actually talks about some of his own experiences of this, where that's when you. You know, the higher laws that are behind everything.
And so teachers who have a. Like, if you study Jacob Burma, he wrote, he made all these pictures of diagrams of, like, years churning together and everything.
And he was trying to illustrate the cosmic illuminations that he had about the laws that govern the functioning of the universe.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: So let me share with you a quote that I found really enlightening.
So this comes from one of the notebooks. It's kind of the overview of the notebooks, the first one, Perspectives.
[00:28:25] Speaker B: I'll just say the first volume of the 16 is one chapter on each of the 28 themes. So that's a good place to begin because you kind of get a little of each.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: Right.
So I share this with those studying with me when we are working on meditation, why you meditate. And, you know, in the secular world that we live in, meditation is thrown around.
So what Sufis call meditation and Christians call contemplation we have to get the word. The words are depending on what tradition you follow.
So for Sufis, meditation is what Christians call contemplation. It's going into the void, an empty mind, and trying to have that. That experience.
It's not just calming down and relaxing.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: That's like the best people think meditation is, right?
[00:29:28] Speaker A: So this was. This was really helpful to me. It's a little bit long, but we're friends.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: We can handle it, right?
[00:29:36] Speaker A: We know that one mind can influence another through the medium of speech or writing.
We know also that it may even influence another directly and without any medium through the silent power of telepathy.
All this work takes place on the level of thought and emotion.
But the adept, the spiritual seeker, may not only work on this level.
It is possible for them to work on a still deeper level.
They can go into the innermost core of their own being and there touch the innermost core of another being.
In this way, spirit speaks to spirit. But without words or even thoughts, within the innermost being, there is a mysterious emptiness to which the adept alone gains access during meditation or trance.
All thoughts die at its threshold as he enters it.
But those first series of thoughts are endowed with a peculiar power, are impregnated with a magical potency.
Their echoes reverberate telepathically across space in the minds of others to whom they may be directed deliberately by the adept.
Their influence upon sympathetic and responsive persons is at first too subtle and too deep to be recognized. But eventually they reach the surface of consciousness.
What the adepts may expect to find with intellect at most is the slow uncovering of little fragments of what he calls the world. Idea can talk about that, but with intuition, the subtler meanings and larger patterns are possible.
These include but. But also transcend the physical plane.
A few fated persons whose mission is revelation are granted once in a lifetime. The cosmic vision,
[00:31:56] Speaker B: like Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. So that's like a mouthful, right? We could have a seminar on that. Right. So just some comments about the inner telepathic communication.
The last message that Ramana Maharishi said to PB When PB was in England through a student was when heart speaks to heart. What is there to say?
So there's many examples in many traditions, and there's a lot of examples that in the Search and Secret India book of very advanced students having telepathic contact with their teachers who could be anywhere else in the world.
So that's. Let's say that's a known phenomenon and us lesser Mortals, when a person like that thinks of us, we might. Something might happen right away, or it might have a delayed, like a time delay capsule until we open to it.
You can see if you study Buddhism and know about emptiness or, you know, the void or Sufism and fauna and the transcendence of the ego.
You can see how his universal synthesis describes these things in a way that is harmonious with all these deeper traditions.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: So that's what, that's what he did. That's when he said in the quote I read, this is a pioneer work making a fresh synthesis.
So it doesn't contradict anything. If it did, then it wouldn't be the truth.
But it's like another thing. My teacher, Anthony PB student talked about comparative philosophy. It's like when you study medicine, you learn comparative anatomy and by comparing the differences, you articulate the body that you're familiar with living in.
So you get really into a tradition like let's say Sufism or Buddhism or any tradition, Hinduism, and that's your ground.
But then you study another tradition and it helps you articulate. Just like you said, the words might be different, like it might be. Well, is contemplation the same as this or this? So it forces you to really think through and understand the underlying similarities as well as the differences in expression. And PB is very helpful with that because he uses a neutral language.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: Right.
That's what I found really helpful.
So in. In the tradition, when I was in training, there was a respect for all traditions.
[00:34:33] Speaker B: That's one of the nice things about Sufism. It's outwardly articulated. It's not like.
[00:34:41] Speaker A: But a night Khan, it's. It's. The founder of that tradition had said, you have to pick the tradition you want to follow and you have to stay with it. Because if you start following different traditions, it's like having your feet in different canoes and you'll go around in circles
[00:34:57] Speaker B: and you're only getting a diluted version of each.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: Well, yes and no.
So I don't.
That can happen.
But what's also been written by. By people in our era and icons in our era, but. But later is that it depends on how you do it and it also depends on who your mentors are.
So if you are going to study only in one tradition, don't start trying to integrate different traditions because that teacher isn't going to be able to do that.
But there are people like Paul Brunton, like Murshid Sam, I think, like Anaya Khan, in spite of what he said, who can integrate.
[00:35:51] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: And when you do that, you're not getting a diluted version. You're getting the synthesis and you're finding.
[00:35:58] Speaker B: You're getting the depth.
Well, first of all, you said yes and no. So that's one of the things I like about you, is we don't have to be so agreeable. We can, but I think we're agreeing because it's really good to be grounded and steeped in one tradition and then you have a basis of comparison.
And someone like Paul Brunton, he wouldn't adhere to any tradition.
He said, when I went to heaven, there weren't any labels there.
Someone like Eniyad Khan has a dharma to be a Sufi and teach as a Sufi. But his realization is so profound that he has this internal integration of all the traditions. And he speaks from a truth which is, you know, it's interesting because Pirvilla, his son, was much more outwardly universal.
But I think Sufism is eminently universal whether it's outwardly expressed or not.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: Right.
So my teacher had an interesting perspective on this.
So in Ayodkan, when he brought this to the west, he was the first person to bring some sort of organized Sufism west.
And one of his major contributions, which is still provocative in more traditional countries, he said, you don't have to be Muslim, you don't have to follow any religion if you don't want to, or you can. That's up to you.
So already that's a major.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: That's a breach. That would be considered a breach.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: Right.
So he was, he was really pushing the limits. I mean, early on. And I, I, when he coined the term Sufism, I'm, I'm taught that people said, well, why are you picking that name?
And he said, well, I want to pick a name because somebody's going to name us something. So I'd rather be in charge of what we name.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: I'm paraphrasing, like maybe in what he called philosophy. Right.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: But my, it was interesting. My teacher said, back in the early 1900s, Sufism wasn't. It was tied to Islam, but not, not like it is now.
And Anayakhan meant it. And you'll get this in his readings, this is a universal tradition.
So here's another heretical that predates Islam, predates Muhammad, which you're not going to get in traditional teachings.
So for him, what he meant by Sufism was the wisdom that we inherited and we're going to give it the name because you need to give it a name.
And my teacher said, now, so from the early 1900s to here we are 20, 26, he said, the definition has changed, and it's become more narrow.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: And maybe I would say, but it still has a kind of internal universality about it.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: Internal. It does with this particular lineage. Right.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: See, I would say that even though Masheed didn't require that you be practicing a, quote, religion or tradition, I'm sure if you were his student, it was very rigorous.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: So that's the one canoe part.
So the concepts are integrated. There's a respect for an integration of different aspects. But when you were serious and you were studying and practicing, it was basically. I'm going to have to paraphrase.
This is what I feel. He didn't quite say this, but it's like, this is what I know. So this is what I'm teaching and transmitting to you.
So once I. I went off into an exploration of some aspect of shamanism, and I asked my teacher, you think this is okay? And he says, well, it sounds okay to me. And I came back and I tried to tell him what I thought I had learned. And he looked at me and he said, it sounds good, but I don't know that. What I know is this.
So, okay, sounds good to me. But I can't help you more than that, because that's not what I know.
[00:40:36] Speaker B: You have to want what he has to give.
[00:40:39] Speaker A: There you go. Right.
[00:40:40] Speaker B: And he. He has to not have the pretense of knowing more than he knows, because even though he knows everything from the ultimate point of view, he doesn't know everything from. From the relative point.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: Right. But at least with my teacher, he also gave me the freedom to be a researcher and explorer. And what he did, which I think is really important, I try to do this with my students, and you're doing it with me.
It's like, it's your life. It's your dharma.
I'm going to try to help you not go around in circles. So if you want to explore Paul Brunton shamanism, but your grounding with me is in Sufism, okay with me. And if we're talking about things that I don't know, I will tell you that.
But I'm really good at catching the thread, and I'm really good at being able to intuit if you're going around in circles or you're going in a direction, and that if you're going around
[00:41:44] Speaker B: in circles, you're not going deeper.
So.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: Right.
[00:41:49] Speaker B: If you choose to step outside of the tradition that you're trained in or that you have a teacher in then that outside exploration should deepen you. The Dalai Lama always says that. The Dalai Lama is great. He says, my job is to help you be whatever you better, whatever you are. Right. So when you're going around in circles, that's, that's what I would call the spiritual diligent diligentism or the window shopping or, you know, what they call the spiritual bypass, which is dabbling in a little bit of everything, but not really going deep enough to confront yourself and realize that you need to transform yourself. Right.
[00:42:33] Speaker A: So that gets into another point that I want to ask you about.
So in our tradition, one of the ways of trying to guard against going around in circles and being a dilettante is to have a teacher that you can bounce ideas off of and that can respectfully say, yeah, you know, I think this is going in a direction.
Paul Brunson, from what I've read and talked to you about, Said I. And you'll, you'll, you, you'll have more to say on this than me. He said, yes, having a teacher is great. You just can't find them anymore because there's not real teachers there or there's
[00:43:20] Speaker B: very, they're very rare.
[00:43:21] Speaker A: Right. But if you find one, oh, it's great.
But the other part that I absolutely love, because I I in Sufism, well, I'll many traditions, but in Sufism, I hear a lot from my mentors and including my teacher, you can't learn it from books.
And I chuckled because the N would give lectures that were published as books, and he was thrilled when they were published. The faster they were published, the happier he was. Right. And I learned a lot from books. But I'm trying to be respectful, and my teacher says, you can't learn it from books. And I'm reading Paul Brunton, who wrote, of course you can learn it from books or else you're going to learn. Who do you think wrote the books? So it's kind of like, yeah, if you're lucky enough to find a teacher really valuable, but find books that you can depend on that can lead you in a direction.
Most of all, you learn from going within.
[00:44:20] Speaker B: That's.
That's the most important. But let's take Maheed.
He gave a talk and it was published as a book.
He has certain insights, he has certain thought process, he has a certain style.
So if you really study him in a concentrated way, not just superficially, you will contact his mind, which is behind the words, and then in some way he will be your teacher. Which is the same with Paul Brunton. He said, but it's also true, as you said, if you can meet a qualified teacher, which underline bold italics.
Because there's a lot of problematic teachers who, let's just say they take on more than they're qualified for and they get tripped up by their lust for money or sex or Passion Tower or building big buildings and all this stuff.
If you could find a true teacher, absolutely, totally should you benefit from that person. And that's what PB says. But you don't have to feel that if you can't find a teacher, you can advance. And PB also calls that the independent path, which is you go within, you go within and you go, wow, that book has been sitting on my shelf all this time. I should read it now. Well, why the hell didn't you read it before? Because maybe you weren't ready for it, maybe it wasn't right for you. You know, there's, there's a.
If there's a higher self that has wisdom in us, which all the traditions say, then we can be guided from within.
But we have to be open to that, we have to be intuitive, we have to train ourselves. Because we also all fall astray by being guided by our desires and our rationalizations and our personal egoic stories. So it's easier said than done. Whereas I say it's a razor's path.
[00:46:29] Speaker A: So I want to talk a little more dovetailing off of what you said about finding teachers and all of that and also, you know, institutions and organizations and you know, I'm not hot on big formal organizations and I have the sense Paul Brunton wasn't either.
[00:46:50] Speaker B: He saw so many dysfunctional organizations and so many monks and others living dysfunctionally in dysfunctional organizations that in general he was against organizations.
[00:47:04] Speaker A: That being said, you have a teacher, I think you have students
[00:47:11] Speaker B: and my teacher had students and he founded an organization.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:47:17] Speaker B: So it's like the exception proves the rule because PB believed in what Anthony was doing and actually visited us and gave interviews to all his students. So in general one should be wary and cautious of self proclaimed teachers and organizations.
But there could be organizations and of course teachers who are beneficial.
But you shouldn't feel you have to join an organization or be a member of an organization or get initiated by organization of someone wearing robes or whatever ceremony they have. It's not necessary these days we have all these books we can read that will elevate our consciousness and we all these practices that we can do that if we're serious.
You know, I have a friend, a colleague, and we were talking about these things and talking about meditation. He said, oh, I meditate. And I said, really? What do you do? And this person said, well, I have a podcast in for five minutes every morning when I wake up, I listen to. Listen to the podcast. Like that's better than nothing.
That person is better off than someone who doesn't. But that's not serious. That's not going to take you deeper, that's not going to take you inward.
So there's a lot of work ahead for all of us.
So in most cases, most organizations might trip you up and not help you because they become like religious organizations full of gossip and intrigue and psychological warfare and power and control issues. So those organizations and those teachers won't be helpful to us except from learning by our. From our mistakes.
[00:49:05] Speaker A: So if you're going to form an organization, be careful. And if you're going to join an organization, be careful.
[00:49:14] Speaker B: Right?
And I would say if you think you're supposed to form an organization, you should be very careful because you could have some, some egoism left, some desire for something left that would.
Many people wanted PB to form an organization, including many famous people. And he. He wasn't interested.
[00:49:35] Speaker A: So the Philosophic foundation you were president of, that was not formed by pb?
[00:49:42] Speaker B: No. But when he passed the body, there had to be some organization responsible for his literary estate.
So his. He had one son, he was married three times and with the first time he had a son. So he, he knows the life that a lot of us live.
So his son formed the Paul Brunton Philosophic foundation and Larson Publications, which at that time was an independent publisher publishing his books, was merged into it.
But the Paul Brunton Philosophic foundation is really more of a foundation than an organization.
Its purpose is to share the teachings of pv, period.
So isn't like other spiritual communities or organization.
[00:50:34] Speaker A: So what if somebody wanted to study more intensively and be guided by a person who knew this, like, like a teacher, Would they be able to find one in terms of the.
[00:50:53] Speaker B: There is no one I know who, who claims to be a student of tbb, who also claims to be a teacher.
Okay, that may be my teacher, Anthony, but there's plenty of teachings and there's plenty of worthwhile material developed by senior students of PB that share his teachings and his knowledge and his philosophy.
Both the YouTube channel, the Paul Brunton Philosophic foundation through the YouTube channel, Brown and I have called Paul Brunton official.
And there's Wisdom's Goldenrod center for Philosophic Studies still has regular seminars and classes which are accessible by Zoom and Paul Brunton. So it's kind of a.
A co learning model. And even we had another teacher from Italy named Raphael who translated all of Shankara Vedanta into Italian. Raphael used the word the tradition.
Raphael would only refer to himself as an elder brother.
So, all right, let's just say it's a different approach that doesn't negate the value of the teacher, but it teaches you that you can do a lot without a formal.
A person in the formal role of a teacher, which is different from what you do because you belong to a tradition in which people are certified as maybe not the right word, but they're trained to be teachers and give teachings to others.
Right. And you know, they both fail it if they're good.
Maybe we're both pathetic and we shouldn't be doing what we're doing. But that's for other people to judge.
[00:53:01] Speaker A: You know, there's.
From my point of view, and you and I have talked about this, there is organized religions, which I think are too organized, and there's still value. But also the organization.
I'm not saying it right.
It's not that the organization doesn't provide value. There have been many beneficial things.
But organizations tend to get involved in things that are not very healthy.
[00:53:35] Speaker B: They tend to become tribal.
[00:53:37] Speaker A: Right.
And then there's.
Then there's mystical paths, which for me should. Shouldn't be as organized.
Well, right. But you know, if you're in America and you need to be a 501C3, you're going to get organized and then you're.
[00:53:56] Speaker B: Someone will try and organize it, and someone will try and organize it and make money from it.
[00:54:01] Speaker A: Right.
[00:54:02] Speaker B: By the way, PB never took any money for anything.
That's part of the tradition I belong to.
[00:54:08] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:54:10] Speaker B: So let me just share something. So he has a scheme. Let's call it a scheme. He says the first stage of human evolution is materialism. Like, I want more money, a bigger house, a nicer car, a more beautiful partner, whatever they think that is.
Then there's religion, which is giving me something from the outside. God is on the outside. I have to go to God through the minister, through the sacerdot. But religion teaches people values and ethics and a certain amount of discipline.
And then when you realize that God is within and you don't need to go to an organization that's called mysticism.
But the mystic still doesn't have this rational, scientific approach.
So the next stage PB calls philosophy.
By the way, PB shared that in the past incarnation, he was Miguel de Molinos, who was a Spanish mystic, and he was very popular.
He was friends with the pope, but he ran afoul of the Inquisition because he taught. He taught this system called quietism, which you can look up, which basically said, hey, dude, you don't need to go to a church. You can meditate and contact God. And so obviously, the church authorities, despite his friendship with the Pope, got him in trouble, and he spent a lot of his last years in a dungeon. So maybe that's kind of feeding the current incarnation of PBS skepticism.
[00:55:47] Speaker A: We're going to have to stop soon. But I want to touch on a couple of other things.
So in just about every tradition that I've been exposed to there, and especially now, a lot is being written about teachers who are not authentic or who seem authentic. And then you find out about scandals they're involved in, and it makes you wonder.
Well, you throw. I mean, how could they be real if they were involved in this or that, anything like that with pb?
[00:56:24] Speaker B: Well, PB certainly had critics.
He was harshly attacked.
But any.
You know, like they say, wherever there's a light, there's a shadow. And in the world of duality, there are evil forces. So now you're raising a complicated problem, which is there are false teachers.
There are teachers who are beneficial to some extent, but are not as evolved as they claim to be.
And there are true teachers, and how do we discern between them?
So PB certainly had critics. And there's one book that tries to take him down, okay, called My Father's Guru, which I have some thoughts about, because I don't know if we want to go into it, but if you read the book, you can see that it was a very psychologically problematic family. And the parents weren't good examples of a serious spiritual seeker.
And pbs, I think, for karmic reasons, spent a lot of time with this family.
But then the writer of the book kind of became a professional debunker.
So Robert Coles, who's a famous psychiatrist who wrote biographies, reviewed the book, and in the end he said, well, I think this person's problem was with his father, not pb. So I don't recommend the book, but it's an interesting case study. But let's read something Phoebe says about attacks the sage's enlightenment. Like the sage, him or herself, eludes the unenlightened observer who can not comprehend this kind of person, and so usually ends by misunderstanding them.
Another one and the same master will appear to their followers as an incarnation of God, but to the worldly wise as a lunatic.
I think Murshid Sam could really like get smeared with that right.
Otherwise, as a lunatic, if not a friend.
But none of these views may be correct.
But you know, one of the volumes of the notebooks is called the Dangers and Dynamics of Mysticism. He talks about false teachers, disillusioned students.
So in the end, I would say we have to judge for ourselves and we're going to make mistakes. And you could judge for yourself if PB's worthwhile by looking at his books. And if he's not worthwhile, maybe you already have something worthwhile or you can find something worthwhile, because there's plenty of worthwhile things floating out there, including, you know, Rashid Hazard and Irkan. And I'm sure PB must have known of him in his work. But if you look at the ages of their maturity, I think he like, probably missed meeting him.
[00:59:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:59:18] Speaker B: Although he met many, many prominent Sufis, he was very, very influenced by Sufism and had a profound respect for him.
[00:59:31] Speaker A: There's something I like quoting. There's a great book by Mariana Kaplan, C A P L A N, and it's fairly autobiographical. And she talks about her search for a teacher and she was searching among indigenous. And maybe there was a Hindu influence too, I can't remember.
But she said something I find so, so freaking valuable.
She said, you know, I'm paraphrasing, do your research, get to know your teacher and stop looking for the perfect teacher. Because you're never going to find that
[01:00:08] Speaker B: there can't be because they're still living in this world with a. A shell of an ego that they function through.
[01:00:14] Speaker A: So look, look for the teacher whose limitations you can tolerate or don't bother you.
[01:00:22] Speaker B: You know, as a great example, Pema Chodron, right?
[01:00:25] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:00:25] Speaker B: Chongnan Trippa was an alcoholic and he was accused of sexual abuse and all this stuff.
[01:00:30] Speaker A: Right?
[01:00:31] Speaker B: And she said, look, when I was with him, I felt a heightened state of awareness and I learned a lot from him. So he was still my teacher. But at least we need to not expect perfection.
And it also, we need to decide how much imperfection will tolerate. And at one point, the imperfection invalidates the so called teacher.
[01:00:52] Speaker A: And that's what I think our ear is struggling with.
[01:00:55] Speaker B: Right. And you know, we should struggle with it. The Dalai Lama said that in the Ben Buddhist tradition, I'm making up the number. But you're supposed to study your teacher for like, six years.
And the point is, is this person walking the walk?
Is this person doing what they say?
Is this person genuine?
Does this person know something by experience and not only by training? So let's say there are criteria that you can judge by. But if we're too hungry and desperate, we might make mistakes.
Right.
[01:01:33] Speaker A: So I hope we can put this in the notes that accompany this podcast. But can you give a recommendation of where to go?
[01:01:46] Speaker B: So Search and Secret Indian. Search and Secret India are Phoebe's first and third book. And as you said, they're just, like, awesome to read. Like, he spends a night in the pyramid and he learns to be a snake charmer in Egypt. So you have a snake in your front yard. The guy with local snake charm.
Perspectives is an overview of these 28 themes. It's very valuable.
[01:02:10] Speaker A: That's one of the notebooks, right?
[01:02:12] Speaker B: Right in the notebooks. If you are more serious or more mature or in a spiritual path, I think the book you mentioned, the Short Path to Enlightenment, is really good. There's a book of essays called Spiritual Instructions for Modern Living. That's great.
There's a chapter in there called Probations and Trials of the Aspirant. So it's like, not an easy.
There's a chapter on there like, the sage has an ego. The world is not an illusion.
I think of PB as a circle. So wherever you start, you'll find something. You. If you find something that you think is valuable, you'll start going around the trajectory and pulling out other stuff. So it almost doesn't matter. But there are better places to start. And I would start with the notebooks because they're his mature writings. And he was very critical of himself.
He was his own worst critic. And he was critical of his early books, which he said even though they were still very valuable, there was an imbalance.
So the early books are great, but it's also good to see what he ended up with.
[01:03:23] Speaker A: Is there a website people can go to?
[01:03:26] Speaker B: So there's WWE.
PaulBrunton.org okay, that's the best place to go.
Within that is a YouTube channel.
The PaulBrunton.org YouTube is compilations of his writings on different themes. So you're listening to his voice.
Someone is reading.
Grant and I more give teaching. So we pick a theme and we elaborate and we explain it. So that's part of the Paul Brenton official YouTube. That's a YouTube channel.
[01:03:58] Speaker A: That's your YouTube channel.
[01:04:00] Speaker B: Paul Brunson, our YouTube channel. Okay. We have our own website called the path of philosophy.org which if you want to check us out and see what you think of us, that's like our own teachers and interests.
And then if you're really serious, there's PB Archives, which is all of the unpublished material. His letters to his wife, his letters, letters from his wife to him, his letters to his son, letters from all these people that influenced and were influenced by him. All the pictures he took. Like he snuck into Tibet in the 1940s when he wasn't allowed to go there. So if you want to see a lot of really cool pictures, go to the archives and just look at the pictures, including of Egypt.
[01:04:43] Speaker A: Oh, that's great.
[01:04:44] Speaker B: But let's just say there's a lot there for those who are interested, and for those who aren't interested, there's a lot somewhere else.
[01:04:53] Speaker A: So look, this has been a real pleasure and I actually hope we can do it again. But I want you to have the last word. But I want you to comment on another slightly long reading. I apologize. This has been so influential for me and you know, my organization, Amberlite international.org if you want to find it, under which we have these podcasts, alchemical dialogues.
You know, it's.
I did it because I had to have something to have an email list and to have some donations flow through to support what we're doing. But I didn't envision it to be something having membership or whatever, you know, something big. And I found this excerpt from one of the books you mentions. Instructions for Spiritual Living.
[01:05:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the title. I might have said it wrong before. It's a great book.
[01:05:57] Speaker A: Even though you and I talked about one chapter, I just. Why did he have that chapter?
Okay, so let me read this and then I'd like your comments. And again, I apologize. It's a little long, but it's is so meaningful.
[01:06:13] Speaker B: And I think you think it's worth it. Hopefully someone besides me will listen to it.
[01:06:18] Speaker A: Right, so this is really for seekers on who are just determined to find the meaning in in existence.
They philosopher sages follow the wisest course in spreading such abstruse ideas and work intensively, not extensively, deeply, amongst the few who are loyally truth's own and not superficially among the many who are lukewarmly here today, gone tomorrow.
Their students live their own autonomous lives.
They arise spontaneously and come to them or their writings out of their own desperate need for inner guidance.
Thus the sages energies are channeled into purely spiritual lines instead of being wasted in merely physical ones.
They will indirectly impart this knowledge through writings to some and directly coach others to carry on the work after they have gone.
This is the part that really grabs me.
If they can create a loose, scattered and unorganized group of individual students, separated and spread out far and wide, in whom the finest ethical values, the loftiest intellectual standard, and the soundest mystical experiences will live on after they have vanished from the scene.
Even if each of its members strives and works in isolation, they will have done no less in the end for humanity than if they created a formal organization.
And to the eyes of those who can look on life from the inside, they may have done more.
One more.
Under normal conditions, philosophic truth should be administered to a sick world in small doses. If, on the one hand, the patient is to be persuaded to swallow it, and if, on the other, it is to be administered successfully at all.
But today we are living under very abnormal conditions.
If it was sinful to disclose the philosophic teaching in former times to the simple illiterate masses and thus break their faith in the only spiritual standby they could comprehend, it is equally sinful not to disclose it today, when inherent sufferings and democratic educational developments have rendered them ripe for its consolation and instruction.
Consequently, the moment has come when it is the sacred duty of progressed students to disclose cautiously what will help their fellows in the present crisis and to quietly, unostentatiously make these teachings available to all seekers.
For the past eras of secrecy have served their purpose and come to an end.
They need not expect to enlighten all humankind and would be mad to do so. But they may reasonably expect to enlighten a small nucleus around which the future will form steadily expanding accumulations under evolutionary pressure.
[01:10:06] Speaker B: So that's another one. We could spend a few hours. Right?
[01:10:10] Speaker A: Right.
[01:10:11] Speaker B: I might have a few things I could say about it. So, first of all, there's different kind of teachers, and PB Talks about this. So if you take Murshid or Pierre Lied His Son or the Dalai Lama, there's teachers who have a dharma to be public figures with large groups of students. And historically, that's true. The great Sufi masters.
But even then, most of them had a close circle of students who received the deeper esoteric teachings, including Jesus or Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna is a great example.
So PB Is describing himself, and he's telling you what he hopes his legacy will be.
And then he's telling you something else about himself which is.
Which is true, I think, of all teachings which is the progenitor of a teaching is brought to the earth at a particular time, in a particular place to adapt eternal truths to that particular time and place.
So the prophet did that, you know, Shankara, the Buddha, all the religious reformers walked into a mess and help to fix it up.
So what PB is saying is now we're in a planetary mess and the times are so urgent.
This is also the Bodhisattva vow, which is you don't seek liberation for yourself. You seek liberation to help others who are suffering. And your compassion is so great that you can't not want to help other people based on what you've become and learned.
So he's saying we live at a particular planetary moment of human evolution when we have a responsibility to make these teachings as widely available as possible in an accessible form, even though we know in the end that it will probably only be.
I don't want to say adopt, that it will probably only receive interest from the few.
That's what my teacher Anthony called it, the American Ramen Bookstore.
Because he wasn't looking for like a large following.
And that's why, in my opinion, pb, I like to say PB has the karma of being invisible.
Because a lot of serious people and teachers, like the book you just mentioned, is recommended by Moji and Gangaji and really big time public teachers.
PB takes a lot more effort. So it's not for everyone, but it's there for those who are interested. Right.
[01:12:55] Speaker A: So I love talking with you about pb.
[01:13:00] Speaker B: I'm in Brazil. They say the pleasure is all mine.
That's a way of saying it's really a pleasure.
[01:13:07] Speaker A: So I know you and I are going to have more conversations and maybe in the future we'll have a podcast. We've talked about doing a workshop.
So again, Mikael Alan Berkowitz, you can find him on his YouTube channel. You can explore Paul Brunson.
You can find some of that through
[email protected] because we don't have a class on Paul Brunson's teachings. But I can't teach a class without mentioning PB these days. It just, just comes out naturally. So it. I really want to thank you. It's been a pleasure and thank you for spending this time.
So enjoy all and if you have any comments, shoot me an email through Amber Light International. There's a way of contacting me through that. Take care.
[01:13:56] Speaker B: Thank you so much. It gave me a lot of happiness to have this sharing with you.
[01:14:01] Speaker A: Good.
