But let me go on and state what I was going to, namely that the proportion of esoterics among exoterics in the primitives was greater than it is among us. Part of this is when you get something like the Red Indian tradition and likewise in something like Shinto, you know, going back. All you need was a grand phenomenon of nature and that was the aperture to the infinite. So you have a torii in Japan opening out over a seascape because that's all you need, you know. So there's the sea and through the sea one sees. Yes? I know it's changing the subject, but I saw your film and I'm curious about it.

[01:04]

What was your experience of it, for instance, what did you think of it? Well, it's a very mixed torii and it is changing the subject. Well, I'll tell you, I feel a little uncomfortable talking about personalities. It's mixed. On the positive side, I will say this for that film, I've now seen it maybe a half dozen times. I also have done in the course of years a number of interviews and that one's qualitatively different from any of the others. And even, I would have to say, Daisette Suzuki, different in this sense that, as I say, even in the case of Suzuki, I thought I knew what Suzuki was talking about, you know, never

[02:09]

mind whether I knew or not, I thought I did. But in Krishnamurti's case, I knew I didn't know and that gave a kind of liveness to it in the sense that I was just reaching all the time, scrambling, you know, to get where he was and there was no going through the motions to tease out for the audience what I already knew but pretended I didn't so he would say it for them to know. All right, so the film continues to interest me and another thing I will say for it, each time I've seen it, I see a little bit more in what Krishnamurti is saying than I did before and, you know, down that road, if you extrapolate logically, if I just look at it enough, someday I'll get the point. So those are on the positive side but I must say that I, well, I'm not a Krishnamurti and

[03:17]

I have all kinds of problems with both the statements that are made and also, I don't know, I have a feel of something of, well, I think I'd rather not say. I have two questions. The first one I really don't know much about. It concerns psychology. I wonder if you would consider, like, Jungian psychology or European or American psychology as a sort of a means or a branch of that sort of thing that might lead to a realization that you could almost include in that way, since psychology or this field of psychiatry

[04:21]

seems to have developed in almost a religious institution. Well, I'm afraid I would put psychology on a lower level than either of these, Western psychology. Now, I think that there are very interesting signs, first in the humanistic psychology and then in the step beyond that in the transpersonal psychology, seeking to grow. No, it comes out really of much the same, a nucleus within the humanistic psychology. I think that their journal of transpersonal psychology is published in Palo Alto, and Anthony Sutich is editor. I don't talk to Eric Fromm very well. The impression I have, and not beyond speaking of personalities, the impression I get from

[05:21]

this man is that he definitely is afraid to die. He's an old corpse. I am closely associated with one of his direct disciples, Dr. Jorge Verdes of Mexico City, and he is in the same bag. It is very tragic. One of the students, Francisco de Villar, doctor, 30-year-old, he talks to me. I go to give him English lessons. That's how I make a living. And he talks to me about Laying and Cooper, and gave me their books. These men take schizophrenia in the school of Harry Stack Sullivan and bring you right back to the original horror. Through all the mores and horror of it all, you'll go back to the point where you sit in a room and play with your pieces, or whatever, and come through the other side of the curtain.

[06:28]

Something like might have happened to Versailles, the photographer, if Sartre had let him alone. That kind of thing. Why don't we let Dr. Sullivan speak? Of course. Yes. My other question may seem sort of superficial, but I wonder if there is any greater percentage of success through any different ones in one of these groups of people? No. No, I don't think so. I mean, as a study, what is your opinion? See, another difference is, one could go on and bring out some, but for the exoteric,

[07:32]

the way to the divine is basically through love, whereas for the esoteric, it's basically through knowledge. Now, ultimately they converge because the esoteric comes, I'm sorry, the exoteric comes in the end to know what he loves, just as the esoteric comes to love what he knows. But along the route, the emphases are different. So, this is mostly bhakti and devotional down here among the exoteric. The love of Christ, so on, or the love of Hari and the Hari Krishna people, so on. But it's no accident that, you know, Manjushri is a patron saint in Zen Buddhism.

[08:34]

Yes? I'm used to a number of talks, historical talks. And one thing that I sense in this question, which is a question of my own, a number of parts to it. One is, sort of, what's been happening since the Industrial Revolution? Is it a phenomenon below esoteric and exoteric? Or does the science and technology have its own esotericism and exotericism? And then in relation to what Lou is saying, if you have some feeling as to where we're going, as you were saying with Christianity, very many, a good deal of exotericism with a little sprinkling of esotericism, but perhaps with some other tradition, more percentage of the esotericism. Are we moving toward that more?

[09:38]

Or is what's happening just a movement toward both esotericism and exo, away from the anti-religious feeling or something like that? Yes, I do. I would want to preface it by saying, and it's interesting and it's good that you bring up Bill Thompson in this connection, because, you know, he is a historian and history, he's tuned in on that kind of thing. And I don't have much of an elbow for that, not much of a feel for predictions, where we're going, trends like that. Perhaps ultimately because history is not that important. So much the worse for history. Dismiss it like that. But it's true, that's not the field of action.

[10:40]

I don't think that's where decisive things happen. There never was a war that was not inward, as Marianne Moore put it. It's the inward, individual life, which is the field of the real happening. Well, that's just a preface. Now I will say something about trends. I would have said, perhaps a couple of years ago, that I thought that in the West, esoterics are on the rise in proportion to exoteric. But now I'm not sure, because, you know, for any small nucleus of esoterics, like us gathered here, there will be thousands in the charismatic Jesus movement, say. I heard there's been a very thorough study. I just came on to, two months ago in Europe, by a Frenchman of the charismatic movement

[11:44]

in American Catholicism, and he has very hard figures to come up with just about two million American Roman Catholic charismatics. These are the people, you know, that speak in tongues and have the direct sense of the Spirit. But that's mostly, that's virtually all exoteric. So, I guess I don't, that keeps me from saying that the esoterics are on the rise. But that doesn't matter, because nothing turns on that. We've already said that you can, somebody asked, can you make it just as well being an exoteric? And the answer is yes. So, it does, nothing turns on whether the proportion is changing on this. Now, I think there is a real change between, if we had another level down here, the secularists. I think there is a change there. I think we're in the midst of a third great awakening, religious awakening, in the United

[12:45]

States today. The first having been at the end of the 18th century, starting in New England with Jonathan Edwards, and then the second about 50 years later, in the middle of the 19th century. And now we're in the third one. It seems to me it's just bubbling out all over. But I don't think the ratio, I don't see the ratio is changing. Would you say an esoteric would be teaching a form of emptiness, and an emptiness form? Esoteric, emptiness, exoteric form, and that they're not mutually exclusive? Well, I think that an exoteric really won't find that statement meaningful.

[13:45]

I think it will appear like gobbledygook to him. Emptiness is nothingness, and nothingness isn't taken in the esoteric, or we could say the oriental sense of the vacuum, plenum complex seized by its vacuum handle, you might say. It's not that at all. Emptiness is just zero, nothing, curtains for the exoteric. And he can't make any sense out of that. Well, from the emptiness will come all form, if that is the case. All right, you know, you sound to me like an esoteric. I think I understand what you mean there. But I'm saying this is a little private dialogue between us, which the exoteric is not going to find. You know, I was in a group at the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions a couple of months ago,

[14:56]

talking about this, and someone there, he was a Mahmud, he was from the Islamic tradition. And he said, you know, when you try to get beyond the transpersonal, you bring in things like, it gets vague and fuzzy, you know. And, you know, I just felt like screaming, you know. But that's the way for the exoteric. This is concrete and this is abstract. But for the esoteric, as you move in this direction, the more concrete it becomes. And this is the difference in fundamental personality, spiritual types. Am I missing what you're saying? No, more concrete emptiness will come. No, perhaps I shouldn't introduce that, but concrete as the opposite of abstract.

[15:58]

Abstract tends in philosophy to mean kind of the shell of reality only, but it's not filled, not really tangible. The idea of an apple is an abstraction. There's the real apple, which is concrete. And all I'm saying is that for an esoteric, as you come up this way, it doesn't get abstract, it doesn't get empty, it's full. It's real, palpable, tangible. Do you use this mode of thinking of things as sort of a tool? As a tool in your own understanding of what's going on around you? Or in your own practice? It's very interesting to me, it seems kind of true, but I don't know how I can see how to use it. Or how to, I mean, not even use it, but how to look through it at other things.

[17:05]

I mean, I sort of think like that. Sure, sure. Well, it doesn't help in practice. It helps in, if you say, do I use it as a tool for understanding, as I look around, look out and try to understand. Yes, I use it as a tool there. But I don't think it, I don't see any way that it helps in practice. Okay. So, yeah. One thing, you stated earlier, you didn't see how different exoteric traditions matched up with the idea of, is there a chance of there being a new tradition coming out of all these different traditions? Whether it be some unifying, some unifying scripture, some unifying text. You know, outside, you immediately assume that the esoteric does see the unity within, you know, a variety of teachers.

[18:10]

But on an exoteric level, taking the Bible and the Koran, it's hard to put the two things together. Right. You also stated that the reason we have these different traditions is because the divine was expressing itself. Right. In a unique way. Different civilizations. Using that assumption there, premise. Almost here, we are in a unique position here. Maybe Thoreau thought of these different kinds of things that you can do with Christianity. But it's pretty, the man on the street today is, might be a Christian, but he's forced to face things like a Hare Krishna. He doesn't necessarily want to reject Hare Krishna. He's seen someone there who has something, you know, possible. It brings questions up in his mind.

[19:12]

If he goes to his own religious instructor, his priest or his pastor, he'll tell him, well, Hare Krishna is our demons or something like that. I don't think that's acceptable to even the man on the street, to tell him. Perhaps to some, to a great deal of them. So I have to disagree with you. I think there will have to be a new creation that will come out of it. Yes. If the differences came from the divine addressing itself to different civilizations, now that we have one world civilization, will it not follow that we will have one religion on the exoteric plane? Right? Yeah. Well, it may happen. Now, there's a place where, I guess, my interest cuts out, you know.

[20:17]

It doesn't matter. Why? Is bigger going to mean better? I don't see that there's any grounds for that. Is it going to add something new, this new revelation for one world that was lacking here? I've become like Confucius. I'm just a lover of the ancients, you know. I think they had it all. Each one of these had it complete in its own terms. Pardon? The Tao Te Ching, Dogen, Nagarjuna. They all sound different. But Joe is asking this. When you mentioned there aren't popular traditions, like Christianity is very popular. Yeah. Christianity is very popular.

[21:18]

I'm talking about something for the master. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you can answer it. It's just something that would just seem to be a logical conclusion, coming up with the idea that Christianity rose from a particular environment. Well, just to carry it quickly another few stages. First of all, I don't think we're that near a world civilization, in point of fact. The difference is, on the surface, we're a nodding acquaintance. But, you know, Philip Kaplow at Rochester, I remember a conversation with him in Kamakura. We were talking, I forget what, and a little five-year-old, looked like four or five-year-old Japanese girl, came walking by. And Philip said, that girl will have more Zen in her, simply from having been born in this tradition in Japan,

[22:21]

being Japanese than I will have if I sit till the end of my days. Now, first of all, that was 13 years ago or something. He may have changed his mind. Second, it may not be true, you know, even if he said it. But I cite it because there's a kernel of truth in this. I still go around poking. I was in Morocco last month. And on the surface, you can think you understand these traditions. But I'm currently, you know, I've had experience working in some of these, and only lately seeing some of the, really been exploring the esoteric and the Islamic mode. And even though, in principle, I'm open to that, you know, it's very hard for me to have, really, a feel for Muhammad. I don't think we're at one where we are.

[23:22]

But even if we... Yes. Yes. Well, I remember being in a meeting in 1950, when it was on a totally different subject, but a Baha'i got up in the question period, instead of asking a question, made a rather long speech, the end of which was, the whole world will be Baha'i in 1964. Well, he was a little off on the timetable. I don't know. It may happen. I just don't know. One more question, I'm told. Have you asked one? Then I guess... Well, I think there is.

[24:23]

And that is... See, but I'm going to give you an esoteric view of what that common ground is. Namely, God in His absolute or transpersonal nature, I think, really is ultimate. And I think that the Divine, in that form, discloses Itself to exoterics in modes that will make contact with them, which means through forms, written statements and lives, as I've said. But it's the same reality manifesting Itself in different ways to different persons. Now, that's what I will say. But an exoteric cannot be expected to believe that. Could I say that esoteric includes exoteric, but exoteric does not include exoteric?

[25:27]

I think that's true. But again, I'm answering as an esoteric. I think that there is this advantage that the esoteric can give, can position the exoteric and affirm him, and saying, you're doing just right, just fine, just keep on going. But I don't think an exoteric can do that for the esoteric, because there's one thing about this I really don't like. It is elitist, you know. I've got the exoteric in my box. I see what he's up to, but I, nevertheless, elitist or not, I'm afraid that's the way it seems to me. He cannot see what I am up to, and therefore there's always the tension, less in Asia, because theirs are much more exoteric. Incidentally, this roots back to the primitives,

[26:29]

because they haven't been, perhaps, no, I was going to say infected by modernism to the degree that we have, but that won't work, because way before modernism, Judaism and Christianity were already exoteric. But, no, I've lost my train of thought. I think, perhaps, since your hand was up. It was the same field of questioning. I guess I was sort of curious. I've always, I guess I've had always some strong feeling that the esoteric thing was the way we're going, even without knowing it, because being a modern Christian, of course, you don't, in this country, you don't have any sense of the esoteric until, you know, in this time, when somebody says, oh, you realize that's what you were. But do you actually, is there some sense of a real hierarchy here?

[27:33]

I mean, I detect that you start as an exoteric, maybe in a sort of movement to esotericism, but is there some place for that kind of remaining exoteric all your life? I mean, is that a viable place to be, or is that a way station on the way to becoming esoteric? Well, that's a very good question. And at the moment, I'm more inclined to think that these are innate, inborn, maybe a result of karma or transmigration or something like this. Not that no changes occur, but I'm more impressed with the fact that this seems to be a kind of continental divide, and you're almost born, like a born Platonist or an Aristotelian, that that is more determinative than any. In my case, you know, and long before these words,

[28:34]

but though all my tradition bringing up was exoteric, I still remember the first time I opened the Upanishads, you know, and this transpersonal came through. And, you know, just with every page, yes, yes, yes, and the marvel was that language could capture so powerfully the truth as this. But then I know another friend of mine who teaches in world religion. We once were on a long train ride because we were at a conference and the airport got sucked in. We had this long train ride, and around midnight, this is in my pre-Buddhist days with the help of a number of drinks at that point, why the barriers came down, and he said, I want to make a confession to you. He said, I've been teaching Hinduism for 15 years and I still don't know what the Upanishads are talking about.

[29:36]

Well, it's, you know, honest, but the difference is so large. I want to just pick up on what, I lost my train of thought, but I want to say that I do think that the esoteric can make a place for this, but the exoteric cannot. Where the man, and exoteric from the word go, you know, and just ending there, was in vain against the transpersonal view. And he used a really, I thought it was a splendid metaphor. He said, you know, what is this business about transpersonal views of God? He said, if one is going towards the North Pole, there will come a point where you will think you're still going North, but you step there and you're really going South. And he said, that's what's happening. They think they're going further

[30:37]

in this direction, but they're really going downwards because there is no up beyond the personal God. And again, that's why the exoteric does not, cannot, I'm tempted to be envidious and say doesn't have the spiritual space to accommodate an alternative point of view, which is why Al-Halaj was crucified by the Muslims because he said, in effect, glory to, what, glory to me, the supreme or something like that. And so he committed shirk, ultimate sin for a Muslim, rival to God. But of course, what he was really saying was, there is no finite me. All that's here is the transcendent.

[31:37]

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