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♪♪ - Hello.

I'm John Cleese.

It seems that beneath all the apparent differences that separate the world's religions, there's a deep undercurrent that points towards what is called oneness or unity consciousness, the single indivisible essence of all creation.

To get some further understanding of this, we're going to explore the concept from both the mystical and the scientific perspectives with an east Indian physicist and a British mystic.

So settle back, take a slow, deep breath as we join our trusted guide and host, phil cousineau, on this fascinating episode of Global Spirit, the first "internal travel" series.

[percussive music] ♪ - The labyrinth is an ancient symbol for the journey of the soul.

For thousands of years, people have used the labyrinth for walking meditation and to find inspiration and peace of mind.

I often walk the labyrinth when I need a few moments to calm down and to center myself.

It's the perfect place to contemplate a word and a concept that has intrigued me for years.

The concept is oneness, the mysterious state of being one, one with life, one with nature, one with God.

It starts from the belief that everything is, like this labyrinth, interconnected, coming from and leading back to the center, the one.

It claims that the whole idea of separation is a total illusion, since nothing in the universe is separate from anything else.

We've invited two extraordinary people who bring quite different backgrounds and perspectives to this exploration.

Dr.

Ravi Ravindra is a scientist, a professor, and a widely published author.

Dr.

Ravindra's spiritual search has involved him in the teachings of Krishnamurti, Gurdjieff, and Zen Buddhism.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee has been trained as a Naqshbandiyya Sufi Sheikh.

He lectures throughout the world on the spiritual journey on dreamwork and on Jungian psychology.

Welcome to Global Spirit's The Journey Towards Oneness.

You've both written and spoken a great deal about this concept of oneness, and yet the word and the concept itself confuses a great many people today.

Can you describe it for us?

What is oneness?

Ravi?

- Oh, my goodness.

[laughter] This is a tall order.

First of all, really, it can mean many things.

For example, really coming, let us say, from the scientific side, more and more the recognition that everything in the universe is connected with everything else, and it sometimes, in the popular imagination, the idea-- actually the fact, that if a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere in the pacific ocean that it can create a storm somewhere else far away.

Now, that is one kind of interconnectedness, and more and more a recognition that everything is connected with everything else.

Then there is another way, again from the scientific side, it enters, particularly in physics.

There is essentially a driving force in the history of physics to search for one single theory that will enclose or include all the other theories or all the other forces to find one force or one law, so we get words like "unified field theory" or "theory of everything."

You know, words like that.

So that's one thing.

But then there is really the-- more the mystical notion, particularly in the great spiritual traditions of India.

It's better to speak about this in the plural, traditions of India, because it's not just one tradition.

Practically all the great sages in India have at one stage or the other come to this realization about the oneness of all there is.

Absolutely.

In fact, one might almost say that in the general Indian traditions, this is practically the definition of a sage to the degree this is in fact the fact for them, not an idea, but to the degree it is a fact for them, to that degree they are a greater sage.

- Llewellyn?

- Yes, for me, oneness is actually a living presence.

It is a manifestation of the divine, and the divine is one, whether you call it "he," "she," "it."

The sufis say, "in the name of he who has no name, but who appears by whatever name you call him."

And one quality of the divine is oneness, and so in a way, for me, there's not a concept, oneness.

This is very, very important for me, that oneness is not a concept; it's not an idea.

It's a living reality; it's a presence which you can either experience inwardly-- for the sufis, this is within the heart, within where the divine is always present.

And the sufis say, actually, "in the heart of hearts."

In this very innermost chamber of the heart, that is where you go within and you find that extraordinary reality the sufis call the beloved, because the sufis' God is the beloved.

Or you can experience that living presence in the outer world, in creation, and all the extraordinary manifestations of life, which yet are one, and it is this multiplicity and unity and unity and multiplicity that is, again, a living expression of the divine.

- Is this a universal longing?

- I have that impression.

Yes, I think it's... We should not imagine that this longing is necessarily either easily fulfilled or even easily manifested.

No, because we have-- there is opposing force, very strong force, which is one might simply say, "me, me, me."

The force that I am the one that matters.

[laughs] so that my concern becomes more or less exclusively for my own benefit, for my own advancement, or for my own glory, and then sometimes we expand this to include the family, maybe my religion or my country.

But, you see, that tendency actually opposes this.

- Yeah, the sufis say, "take one step away from yourself and behold the path."

That is, you can't begin unless you take that step away from yourself.

There's this beautiful quotation from Rumi at the beginning of his great poem the Mathnawi about the reed torn from the reed bed, and from the reed torn from the reed bed there is the cry, the lament, like the ney flute of the sufis, that is this call, this longing.

In fact, one of my favorite definitions of Sufism is, Sufism was at first heartache.

Only later did it become something to talk about.

It is this sigh in the soul, this is primal longing for God, to return back to the source, to return from separation back to union.

And as Ravi says, there are all these forces, whether belonging to the ego or society, that stand in the way.

Sufis call these the veils that separate us from that union within the heart, and through love, because love is such a powerful force-- love is the greatest force in creation.

That is the longing, that is the power that takes us from this world that appears to be separate.

Of course it isn't separate, because everything is both interconnected and also an expression of divine oneness.

But it is one of the great human veils that we think we are separate.

You think you are separate from me.

You think you are separate from the chair you are sitting in.

In fact, particle physics might say that that is an illusion.

There is just a probability that you are separate, no?

- But, you know, this is actually very interesting, because I said one force is, if you like, it's a force which is centrifugal, takes us away from the center, which is selfishness.

But there is this other force of love, with is centripetal.

It really takes us towards the center, because it connects.

Selfishness isolates us.

Love connects us.

But it's very, again and again-- I mean, I'm sure this is, in a way, obvious, but obvious is what needs to be said again and again, it seems to me.

At least in my life, that's what I seem to be always doing.

I say only the obvious.

Otherwise people argue.

And one of the very obvious things is that there are levels of love.

It's not just anything can be called love, and then it can cheapened also, but I was just actually, since you mentioned the word "love," I was thinking, dante's divine comedy, the very last canto, absolutely the last canto of the paradise of the divine comedy, "there my will and my desire were one with love, the love that moves the Sun and the other stars."

Now that's a love of a very high order.

That is the great universal force that it moves the Sun and the other stars.

Actually, some historians of ideas have in fact tried to trace this very much, that from the time that Dante wrote, three or four centuries later, only one force of love, or one aspect of love, which is attraction, became the driving force of the cosmos, namely gravitation.

That that is what holds the Sun and the stars together.

- See, poets are mystics; mystics are poets.

By definition, a mystical experience is rather ineffable, beyond words, and yet we're human, and we have to try.

Are you willing to try to describe a direct personal experience you've had?

- What always intrigues me about mystical experiences is, they take you by surprise.

They are not the way you thought.

Now, I am, by tradition, I always say to myself-- call myself a traditional mystic.

I love to meditate and spend hours in meditation.

So I always presumed that my experiences of oneness would come through meditation.

And, of course, it happened the complete opposite.

In fact, it was almost 20 years ago when I was sent to california to start a small sufi center in California, and I spent a lot of time walking in the hills, in the hills along the coast, and they're very beautiful there.

They're full of flowers and trees and all sorts of wildlife.

And suddenly I found, walking in those hills, I saw that everything was one.

I looked around me and I saw all the flowers, all the trees, all the leaves of all the trees, all the plants, the clouds.

I had this direct experience that they were all one.

And then I could kind of look again, and I would see they were all individual-- each leaf was different, each tree was different-- and then I would step back, and it was all one.

And it was an incredible experience, because, again, it was like a living presence of oneness.

It wasn't an idea; it was there, and I thought at the beginning it was just in nature and I could only have those experiences in nature.

And then I went into the supermarket and I saw that everything in the supermarket was one.

And, again, I step back, and I could see all the different sorts of breakfast cereal, and they were completely unique and different, and maybe they all taste the same, but they were-- it was all one.

The sufis call it the opening of the eye of heart.

When the eye of the heart is open, there's actually-- I think it's also in saint luke, "when thine eye is single, thy whole body shall be full of light."

And it's a mystical state in which the eye of the heart, or this single eye, opens, and then you see the oneness around you, the oneness that is in everything, and it's actually-- that was almost 20 years ago, and that experience has stayed with me.

It gets deeper and deeper and more permanent, and it's this dialogue between the individual.

Everything is unique, everything is incredibly individual, and there's a great importance in that individuality.

It's a unique expression of the divine.

And at the same time, everything is one.

It means you really are living in that presence.

- Beautiful.

Ravi, how about yourself?

Are you willing to describe some kind of unitive experience?

- First of all, very happy to hear what Llewellyn has described.

I was a postdoctoral fellow in Princeton, and I used to-- I was not required to do this, but I just sat in happily in a class on the general theory of relativity.

It was in that class I suddenly had this deep experience.

I would really have to say I was outside myself.

That's really the meaning of ecstasy-- in which as if I understood the equations of general theory of relativity so deeply that they were arising from me or in me.

Now, these are the equations, which I don't want to give you any details of this, which have been-- for example, Oppenheimer described them as "paralyzingly beautiful."

They really contain all of classical physics.

It was a feat of unimaginable both audacity and, really, a scientific imagination of the highest order, which Einstein produced.

But to somehow feel that they were mine-- not mine in any possessive sense, or I could almost say that I was else, but that full feeling of... But enormously a sense of belonging to this mathematical order in the universe.

- That's the key.

Taken out of the ego, you're taken out of what you think you are into this bigger panorama, into this bigger dimension that's all around us.

- And it seems to me selfishness basically means I'm wholly occupied with myself.

- Which is a trap.

- So, now, how these events come about-- now, supposing I were to claim that I brought them about would be completely silly, because I could not bring this about.

- That brings up the question: can these sacred techniques, as they're sometimes called, be cultivated or developed, or is this sense of oneness visited upon us?

Is it bestowed like grace?

- Both.

The practices are important, but always, as far as I know, it is an act of grace.

It isn't because you do anything, but because for some reason the beloved looks at you with fondness at that moment and reveals a little bit of his incredible beauty or nearness or oneness or tenderness or all the many attributes of God.

- I actually recall a remark of Einstein, which is completely relevant here.

Obviously nobody is gonna doubt that Einstein was a very creative scientist, right, so I can proceed with that assumption.

And he was periodically asked by people, because of his extraordinary creativity, is creativity a matter of hard work, or is it a matter of chance?

And the word "chance" was sometimes used really more to say "matter of grace."

But the reporters don't feel always altogether easy about using the word "grace."

It sounds too religious to them, so they would use this other word.

On one occasion, Einstein actually spoke about this.

He was quiet for a few moments, and he said, "well, creativity really is a matter of chance, but it seems that the chance seems to favor the prepared."

[laughter] - That's very nice.

- Different people from different parts of the world have different approaches to this experience of oneness.

So today we'd like to screen a few video portraits from different corners of the world.

And the first spot that we'd like to show takes us to the Australian Outback.

[wind rushing] [bird screeching] - Yeah, we're here at Mutitjulu, you know, right beside Uluru, You know, the home of my ancestors.

♪ But of course, bush living was bush.

You totally took most of your things from the land you're on.

We just lived on the land as people of the land.

To us, it was a natural way of being.

Being part of all that there is was just the way you was.

♪ You didn't see anything any different from you.

♪ It was just a way of life that was inclusive of all that there is through life.

♪ Life is the binding and the connecting way the oneness is.

If you're alive, you're connected to everything else that is alive.

But the oneness included everything that was around us and you was raised with that teaching from a child upwards.

Part of land which has been handed down to you by your ancestors-- we say the Granny law-- has given me my responsibility now that I'm grown up to care for my country, care for my mother, you know, care for everything that is around me.

The oneness, the completeness of that oneness, to be responsible in both caring in every single way, which we call the kanini, kanini, caring with unconditional love with the responsibility.

♪ You feel that.

You feel that so well that you feel good when you're in that space and you kind of feel you're living with family when you include everything that is alive in that space, and, that, it's a huge space, and there's a lot of specimens of everything you could possibly imagine there with you, and then you go grow up knowing that these are all your family.

You can never feel lonely in that situation.

You know?

You just can't.

How can you when all around you is family members, from this ground up to all the trees around you to the clouds hanging up around you?

The birds flying by, the animals and reptiles that are just hidden in the shrub there for now, you know, but can come out if they want to, hunt around for their little food.

You know, and then they can become food for us as well.

You know, it is a beautiful way of being.

It doesn't push anyone out, but it brings everybody in, and the completeness of being who you are, where you are, is a really good feeling, and it's a beautiful feeling.

I wouldn't exchange it for anything.

That's why I'm here, right beside all of it.

[laughing] I am so lucky.

- This Aborigine gentleman makes it look so natural to live in harmony with nature.

He's the epitome of someone living in a state of oneness.

But what about the rest of us?

Why is it so difficult for modern people to gain access to these experiences?

Ravi, any ideas?

- Part of this goes back at least to the 16th century when the whole idea of nature was a mechanization of nature, that the nature is like a big machine, and we can study it like a machine, et cetera.

And then a kind of separation of ourselves from what we study.

In spite of the great glory of science, one has to also realize that it has a way of going about knowing something which separates the knower from what is known.

- In a way, it is the product of a patriarchal culture that says God is in Heaven, he is not on Earth, so it doesn't matter what happens to the earth.

The earth is a province of human beings, who are the lords of the earth, to with what they will.

And this has caused a devastation, and what is not understood, I think, is really important.

This has caused not just an ecological devastation, but also a devastation to the soul, because the soul is traditionally the place of connection between Heaven and Earth.

That is the symbols, the archetypes, this inner world of the creative imagination, and we have wrecked havoc in the outer world.

We have polluted it, we have laid waste to it, and we have also polluted the inner world of the soul, without even knowing what we are doing, because we have--we no longer honor the sacredness of everyday things that connected us to life, and life is something extraordinarily sacred.

- At the root of it, it is the same devine energy from which everything is coming, and the understanding, as it is actually said in India, brahma is not in everything; it is everything, that understanding.

Now, the incident that I was going to describe to you, this used to be one of the pleasures of my father, who was a very distinguished lawyer, who was a very distinguished lawyer, and he read something from the Bhagavad Gita, and now I can tell you in Sanskrit.

At that time I was neither interested in this.

I was just simply standing there sheerly, purely out of politeness.

But it still left a very great mark on my psyche, and that's the reason I'm mentioning this now here.

And this verse is from the Bhagavad Gita in which Krishna actually says that at the end of many lives, a wise person comes to me, realizing that all there is is Krishna, realizing that all there is is God, and then he goes on to say, such a person is great-souled but very rare.

And so my father reads this out in Sanskrit, I can even now really hardly recall this without getting moist-eyed, because it had such feeling.

And here is a very distinguished person, highly regarded in the society, and, of course, for us young boys, he was practically like a Godlike figure, as fathers often are.

And he says, "you know, Ravi, I could tell you the words, "what it says, "but I can't tell you the reality behind this.

I don't know it."

And then he said, "I wish for you that in your life "you will meet people and teachings "that will help you to know the essence of this verse: all there is is Krishna."

And this has been really for me a lifelong project.

- That's beautiful.

From that moment.

- Does that touch something in you?

- I mean, everything is he.

This is, you know... This is wheresoever you turn, there is the face of God.

The sufis call it baqa.

On the sufi journey, there is the stage of fana which is the disillusion, the dying, to the ego, to the separate self, and then you awaken, or you-- in the state of baqa, which is abiding in God.

And in that state, you then-- you are in the living presence of God.

Not as some separate entity, not as some being in the sky, not as some idea.

- That's just an image people have of God.

- But as a living presence, as, you know, that is in everything, around everything, beyond everything, and, you know, say, for the sufis, he is our beloved, so it is a love affair, it is a relationship of love with everything that is.

And, you know, just to look, for example, to look into the eyes of somebody and see not just a separate person, but your beloved looking back at you in a different form, and you come to know him in his creation, the sufis say you cannot know God in his essence.

They say he is beyond even your idea of the beyond.

No one knows God but God.

So how do you come to know him?

You come to know him how he reveals himself in his creation.

So for the mystic, this creation is a way to know God.

It is a way to play with God.

It is a way to be with God, to be alive with God, and that is really the purpose of life.

It is this hide-and-seek with the divine.

- It seems, then, this journey to oneness is a paradox.

On one hand, it's as natural as breathing.

On the other hand, we're human, so it's an ordeal.

What role, then, do meditation, prayer, yoga play in this journey?

- You took a very good example of breathing.

We are breathing all the time, but if you actually become aware of this fact, it changes the quality of your breathing.

You cannot not breathe.

But the moment you become actually aware of this-- this is one of the standard meditational practices, but it doesn't matter.

But if you just, right now, if one just becomes a little aware of this, first of all, inevitably, breathing deepens and it becomes more... One might really say harmonious or smoother.

And that change in the quality of breathing brings in substances which, really, if one is not totally timid about all this, one would simply say they are more alchemical substances, which we don't ordinarily breathe.

Transformation of being has to do with a qualitative shift, not a quantitative shift.

I remember a conversation with Krishnamurti in which I actually specifically had this conversation on which I was trying to bring this point which he totally agreed with, that a new consciousness requires a new body, and a new body is partly generated by a different quality of breathing.

- That's correct.

That is completely, completely correct.

- So you took a very good example, that it is like breathing.

I agree.

[laughing] so oneness is like breathing, except that when we begin to pay attention to it, if you like our quality-- or the quality of our relationship with it changes, whatever I pay attention to changes in its quality.

Breathing is a good example of this, but that's the most obvious example.

If I begin to pay attention to my soul, the quality of my soul will change.

So you see, attention is the power of transformation.

- Consciousness.

- Yeah, well, consciousness.

I mean, attention is its chief feature.

- Yeah.

- And so I would even say that what we need, in a way, to learn, and this is partly a matter of practice, but partly everything is a matter of grace.

This I said earlier too, that--but one can begin to see what stands in the way.

If he's saying something, and if I'm just meanwhile weaving my own stories so I can't hear what he's saying.

So what stands in the way of my listening to him is not-- there's nothing wrong with my ears.

The words are coming in.

If I actually want to listen to him, what I primarily need to do is actually not to listen to him.

I need to listen to all the noise in myself, which will then, because I pay attention to it, it silences.

It's actually almost a mistake to try to place my ears like this.

There's nothing wrong with my ears.

Of course, if there is a trouble with ears, that's a different matter.

Then I need a hearing aid.

But otherwise, what I really need if I wish to actually hear somebody-- you ever watch a zen master, if you say something to them, their eyes are closed.

They're listening from their belly.

- I'd just like first to say something.

That is really the next step that we need to take.

I always say the wisdom of the doctor and the shaman should come together, of the scientist and the mystic, because really, we are seeing the same reality from different perspectives, and we each have something to give us.

We can't go back to the-- you know, to that pristine world of the hunter-gatherer.

We can't lose the fruits of science.

There are too many people on the planet.

We need the fruits of science.

But we need to use them in a holistic way in an understanding of all the interconnectedness and all the wisdom that, for example, a mystical appreciation of oneness can give.

- Ravi, what do you think?

Are we focusing on the same thing?

- It is not-- Niels Bohr, a very great physicist of the 20th century, made this comment, that it is wrong to think that physics speaks of nature.

Physics speaks of what we can say about nature.

- Do you feel that science has cut us off from direct experience?

- Exactly.

- Because from a mystical point of view, direct experience is what life is all about.

- Exactly.

Non-mediated by the mind.

- Right.

- Direct experience.

- But there was, I mean, you see in shamanic traditions, there was a time when they learned their wisdom, their knowledge, their science, from direct experience, from a oneness.

For example, the shaman learned the properties of plants through being one with the plant and the plant actually communicating its healing properties, so that there is a tradition of--belonging to indigenous people-- of science that belongs to oneness, and maybe science can grow up and go from this view of everything having to be separate and isolated.

- Yeah, again, this is a very important point that Llewellyn has just made.

We have to have a certain amount of faith that there is some order to be discovered.

Otherwise we'll never get around to doing any science.

So even that-- that science and faith are not opposed to each other.

Nobody could actually proceed with any scientific research without a kind of a conviction, if you like, or a trust that there is an order in the universe.

- Let's turn now to a different perspective on oneness.

This is a film clip from Ecuador.

[Liturgical chanting] [Indistinct chattering] ♪ Luna: He sido, soy y seré siempre un rebelde.

Y de frente a la autoridad, toda mi vida la he dicho lo que he creído que debo decirle.

Lo que encuentro coherente con el poder que tenemos y lo que no lo encuentro coherente al poder que podamos haber llegado a tener.

Yo creo que nosotros muchísimas veces cuando nos creemos dueños, poseedores de una posición alta, de una posición mayoritaria, no hemos perdido toda esa delicadeza, toda esa ternura, toda esa entrega que tuvo Cristo y que la sigue teniendo como fe para con el más necesitado.

El poder endurece.

¿No crees tú que una de las grandes crisis de la humanidad es que haya perdido valor la palabra "nosotros"?

No hay nostridad en la vida, hay comunidad, hay yoidad, egoísmo, hay tuísmo, tú, tú, tú, tú acusado de todo, yo, yo, yo el dueño de todo, pero nunca se habla del nosotros.

¿Cuál es la auténtica, cuál es la verdadera religión?

La auténtica y la verdadera religión es la que da culto a un auténtico y verdadero Dios.

¿Cuál es el auténtico y verdadero Dios?

El auténtico y verdadero Dios está en tu corazón con toda sinceridad, en tu corazón y está en el corazón del otro, y está en la mente de todos.

Si todos nos acercamos a él con la misma sinceridad, llegaríamos un día a la unidad absoluta de religiones, porque a quien adoramos es uno solo.

Congregation: ♪ Santo, santo, santo ♪ Santo es el señor Luna: Cada religión tiene su modo de buscar esa unidad, tenemos que ponernos de acuerdo todas las religiones para encontrar la unidad de actitud frente a ese Dios que sería ya la unidad de religiones en el mundo.

[Liturgical organ music] Ese es el ideal cristiano, ese es el ideal de todas las religiones, ese es el ideal de todos los caminos, ese es el ideal de todos los caminantes.

[Liturgical organ music] No hay caminos.

Cada uno hace el camino al andar.

¿Y al andar hacia dónde?

Hacia adentro, nada más que hacia adentro.

Y cuanto más adentro te vas, más te abres al infinito.

[Liturgical organ music slowly fades] - The Archbishop here says that every religion has its own way of achieving this experience of oneness.

And then he goes on to say, paraphrasing the great Spanish poet Machado, everyone has to make their own path.

There is no way or path.

What do you think?

- This Archbishop is really much to be commended.

I think he's wonderful in what he's saying.

But as he also pointed out himself on the film, that he's a rebel.

Because the moment it is-- this is why I often feel that it is very important to separate religion from any spiritual discipline or spiritual practice.

Religions are generally not interested in spiritual disciplines or practice.

And the corresponding part of the religion here will be the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church.

He is a Bishop of the Roman Catholic church.

Extra ecclesias nulla salus.

"outside the church, there is no salvation."

You talk about oneness.

- How can you?

- You see, that is religion.

It is really important for us not to just be so wishy-washy about this.

As long as this tendency remains, us and them, we have the real jewel here.

The others are just an illusion.

Which is not what this archbishop is saying.

So this is why his a rebel.

And, in fact, I am surprised that he hasn't yet been asked to leave the church, because it's really the tragedy of religion.

So it's not that we have cheapened love only.

We have cheapened religion.

- I think it is fundamental to realize that deep within each of us, we have a yearning for oneness.

And then you begin to make this journey, and some people make it more seriously.

Some people make it more intensely than others.

Which is, the sufis call it, simply, "the journey home.

"the journey back to God.

"the journey back to the source.

The journey back to oneness."

And the beautiful thing is, really, all of humanity-- in fact, the whole of creation, as Ravi said earlier, is longing for oneness, wants to make that journey, either consciously or unconsciously.

- Llewellyn, do you see any other models in our time?

You have written and spoken beautifully about the internet.

- Well, you know, we've been talking about the individual inner journey towards oneness.

Now, I'm a mystic, and I have spent much, much, much time in meditation, and you can go into meditation to a certain plane of consciousness where you see that everything is one and everything is interconnected, and the fact that any individual anywhere in the world can plug in and they're immediately connected to this web of interconnectivity, that is how consciousness of oneness really functions, through interconnectivity.

And one thing that the mystics have always understood, that real evolution it's not the evolution of buildings.

It's not the evolution of science.

It's the evolution of consciousness, how our consciousness evolves, that that is really the key to evolution.

And if you see the internet, the internet is actually a vehicle of consciousness.

It isn't so much one person connecting to somebody else.

It's the consciousness of the world coming together in a new way.

- Ravi.

- I think the internet, it's very interesting comments that Llewellyn is making, and, personally, I also feel very strongly that we have not yet appreciated practically a whole revolution is going to be brought about, and is being brought about, by the internet.

But as in every other force, we have to be very careful that it can be misused.

What the important realization is, if we begin even to allow this possibility in our ordinary mind, even, gradually, it becomes a part of the heart.

It's not that the body has the spirit; it's the spirit which has the body.

It takes on a body for some purpose, and part of that is that therefore I am responsible to the purposes of the spirit.

This would actually-- every great tradition says this, in slightly different ways, maybe, but we don't ever realize this.

We somehow think that the body is primary and then it somehow has-- if we even allow the spirit, we say, "well, it has somehow evolved and has got the spirit in it."

This is the other way around.

- There's a nice description.

Somebody said that, "we are not human beings "trying to have a mystical experience.

We're mystical beings trying to have a human experience."

And it's really, again, what is that human experience?

What is it about?

What are we here for?

- We'd like to share one more articulation or this elusive concept of oneness.

This time we turn to Tibetan buddhism.

[ethereal music] ♪ ♪ - [speaking foreign language] [dramatic percussion] ♪ ♪ [all chanting] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - the 17th Karmapa says that just studying religion is no longer enough.

Now we need to ultimately reconnect with the rest of the world.

Do you agree with that?

- Completely.

Traditionally, the mystics went into the desert, went to hermitages in the mountains, and now we're needed in the marketplace of life, because life is dying, because this crazy culture of exploitation and greed and consumerism and commercialism is destroying the fabric of life, the fabric of the soul, and something is needed to come back into the marketplace of life.

- You know, we need to love our world.

This is our world, and I'm responsible for this.

At the birth of each one of us, there is such agreement from subtle forces and laws.

Some of which we know-- some almost certainly we don't know anything about-- are all playing in there.

Which means that it's not that I have somehow crashed this cosmological party.

I belong here.

This recognition is very necessary, that I could not possibly be here without the agreement of these higher forces.

Therefore, I am a wanted child of the universe.

Precisely because of that, it is a family business.

I belong here.

I need to take care of this.

- Beautiful.

- So a sense of responsibility actually naturally arises if I recognize that I belong here.

But there is, in fact, if I seriously recognize this, then it takes away all fear of death.

I say this quite seriously.

People are afraid of death because they have, somehow, a feeling they have crashed this party and they'll be found out and they'll be kicked out.

If I belong here, I've been brought here, and I'll be naturally taken away.

There'll be other parties.

So I think if I realize that I can't possibly be here without these forces, then I'm naturally a wanted, needed, loved child of the cosmos, therefore responsible.

- Yep.

I agree.

- Wonderful.

Thanks.

Llewellyn, as a mystic, where are we going as a species?

Have you had a glimpse or a vision of where we're going?

- Yes, I have had-- I have been given a glimpse of what is possible for humanity.

Oneness is really a quality, a way of being, and that it can be given to us, but, as Ravi said, we have to make this step away from our self, away from our self-interest.

Or as the bishop said, to go from the "I" to the "we."

It is a very, very simple step to step away from one's self to embrace the whole.

And yet for some reason, it is the most difficult step that human beings seem to be able to make.

- Ravi, as a scientist, what does the future hold?

- I think the future-- generally I'm quite optimistic, but not stupidly.

I think there are grave dangers.

One is just the catastrophe that looms.

This may--sometimes that is needed, you know?

Hell needs to loom ahead of us to see that we could live otherwise.

If we see the terror of this situation, then something else is looked for.

And I don't think we need to go very far to see signs of terrible things.

And it could be economic disasters, certain ecological disasters.

Global warming is a good illustration of the disasters looming.

More and more scientists are speaking about it.

If the glaciers were really to melt as much as is being predicted by many, many ecologists, China and India-- now, this is more than half the world population we are talking about, or nearly half the world population just within these two countries-- they're going to suffer enormously, because all their rivers are fed by these glaciers in their waters.

So my impression is that this kind of looming catastrophe is itself going to give us pause whether we are heading in the right direction.

But I am, myself, probably very much in harmony with Llewellyn here.

Ultimately it is all in the hands of God.

- Ah.

- And if it is even necessary for us to be destroyed, even that.

I think one should not really forget, we do our part, whatever our projects, that without God, it cannot be done.

Without human beings, it will not be done.

- Hmm.

- So we need to do our part, but unless we have connection with God, nothing will be done.

- Beautiful.

Beautiful.

By now I think the viewers have a pretty good idea about the parallels and correspondences in your worldviews.

To site a wonderful metaphor in your writing, Ravi, "we're all pilgrims walking up the mountain slope, and sometimes we do meet each other."

So imagine the two of you as pilgrims walking up that mountain slope, seeing each other on your own personal quests, your pilgrimages.

What do you say to each other?

- I think this meeting has been that coming together of these two streams that are different and yet the same.

And to me, that is a real celebration of oneness in its deepest sense.

- And, actually, another thing I would say, which has actually, in fact, happened when pilgrims meet on a mountain slope, which is quite different, then somebody can ask, "did you run into some crevices that I need to be careful about?"

You know, the kind of-- "or were there some particular chasms "or some particular glaciers, or is there a fire ahead?"

You know, this is actually the kind of exchange that pilgrims can have and need to have.

- But for me, deeper than that, there is what I would call a celebration of oneness.

You see, you think we are two separate people who have met.

From a perspective of oneness, we are just aspects of oneness that at a moment in time where all of us have come together.

And what, in a way, moved me most deeply was when Ravi said, "it is all up to God," because that was something that I know and feel and yet was for certain reasons reluctant to say, because, in a way, it is the most controversial, the most dramatic thing, one can say in this culture today.

And so I was so grateful that Ravi said it, and I thought, "ah, that was the missing piece to finish everything," because for some reason, I was hesitant to say it, and yet that to me, as a mystic, it's all up to God.

It is his will.

- But we have to do our part.

- We are doing our part now, just being together and sharing it.

- I agree.

But ultimately oneness or real love or divine love, if you like, or truth, it always remains a mystery.

It drives the arts, drives the sciences, drives philosophy.

But this mystery can never be solved.

What it calls for is celebration.

Physicists celebrate this by doing physics.

Philosophers do this by philosophy.

Musicians make music.

Artists by art.

Everybody celebrates it, but it always remains a mystery.

- Well, thank you very much.

Thank you, Ravi Ravindra.

Thank you, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, for sharing your thoughts, your reflections, your pilgrim spirit on what is a very elusive topic, that of the journey to oneness.

- Thank you.

- Thank you, Ravi.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much.

- God bless.

- Welcome back.

I'm still John Cleese.

So how was that program for you?

I found it extraordinary.

Those centrifugal and, especially, those centripetal forces, all pointing where?

Towards love.

That was a wondrous surprise, wasn't it?

So I hope you're enjoying this unique series as much as I am, and I trust you'll be joining us again soon for another episode of Global Spirit, the first "internal travel" series.

♪♪ ♪♪ Marz Attar and the Attar family.

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