Apartheid and Karma - Essay No 1

Someone on the Crossroads discussion group web site made this statement....

'Leon MacLaren once said something about recurrence which struck me as true. Referring to South Africa (during the time of apartheid), he said that “those who now practised apartheid would find themselves in the next life being practised upon”. I took this to mean that, if you practise something, you get good at it and the more you practise the better you get. An extension of this would be that, if you practise duality (apartheid), you get good at it, that is your world, but there's a twist in the tail. From being the bully you next become the victim. 

I'm not sure how this could be an objective truth but it certainly speaks to me emotionally'.

[Note: Leon MacLaren 1910-94 was the founder in 1937 of The School of Economic Science in London, now a world-wide organization, which first taught Economics based on the ideas of Henry George and later in the 1950's gave lectures on a non-academic, mystical form of Philosophy which at first was based on a large collection of philosophical quotations collected by Peter Goffin, and then in 1953, after a meeting with Dr Francis Roles, switched to teaching the ideas of PD Ouspensky, which in the early 1960's became modified by the Vedic version of Advaita Vedanta taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and finally modified again from 1965 onwards by direct contact with the purer Advaita Vedanta teaching of Shantanand Sarasvati, Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, India.]

This was my reply....

I think that any attempt to understand the words and methods of Leon MacLaren is aided by a little knowledge of his particular biography, especially the esoteric philosophies he encountered in the first part of his life, which left impressions deep in his mind. Here is a short meander through some of them.

The concept that 'if you practice something unethical upon others, then in your next life the same will be done to you' contains several philosophical principles as well as several assumptions. It seems to be based upon a particular view and variation of the Hindu philosophy of karma, which essentially states that merits and demerits are accumulated in life and these condition the next life, via the subtle instrument of the chitta which transmits karma from one life to the next, by means of the impressions left upon it.

A common assumption is that the next life will be different from the present one, but this is denied by some esoteric philosophers, eg P D Ouspensky, who state that we are in for a surprise... because the next life is this same one again. We find ourselves placed in recurrence. If we are unable to remember our past lives we will not realize that we live the same life over again. An appropriate attitude towards such a recurring life is to become tired of it, bored with it, seek to escape, work for liberation or release from it... moksha. Another esoteric quasi-philosopher was Ouspensky's teacher, G I Gurdjieff, who hinted that the next life is indeed a recurrence of this present life, but with the 'twist' that the roles are reversed. He gave an example from Christianity: Jesus and Judas are the two principle characters in the Christ drama, but whoever played Jesus in one life may well play Judas in the next. The roles would be reversed. Strangely, this seems slightly similar to what Leon McLaren was saying? Such an idea is not merely a Gurdjievian invention since it is found in older Greek philosophy to which Gurdjieff, as a Greek-Armenian, would have had cultural access. It is interesting to note that SES lecture material in the mid 1950's to 1970's period, written by Leon McLaren himself, was largely derived from P D Ouspensky's writings and lectures, especially 'In Search of the Miraculous', although publicly such a source was not acknowledged at the time. The Study Society was more open, and both acknowledged and revered Ouspensky as a source, whereas SES seemed embarrassed and generally tried to hide the fact.

Ouspensky came to realize that something was missing from the teaching he had received from Gurdjieff, most probably some type of practice which would facilitate higher states of consciousness? After Ouspensky's death, some members of the Study Society and SES were given the task of trying to discover the source of the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky teaching. Gurdjieff was a member of a small group of 'Seekers of the Truth' who studied and absorbed the philosophy and practices of many Central Asian religions, and claimed to have found the source of them all, the enigmatic Sarmoun Monastery, which was said to have had three branches, one vaguely in the Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan Hindu Kush, one in Tibet, and a third in Himalayan India. Gurdjieff had hinted that he had gained most of his knowledge while staying at the remote Hindu Kush Sarmoun monastery Many, including Gurdjieff's direct followers, went looking for the Hindu Kush monastery but no one is ever reported to have found it. (Desmond Martin reports finding it in northern Afghanistan in 1965 but his account is suspect?). It would have been difficult for the Tibetan branch to exist after the aggressive Chinese invasion and then, just as today, the Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan branch was believed to be located amidst very hostile tribes. Not finding anything, some began to speculate that Gurdjieff, rather characteristically, had invented the whole idea, as a teaching allegory, and there was no inner circle of mankind on Earth, periodically putting beneficial influences into humanity in the form of philosophical knowledge, religion and culture. Ouspensky actually hints that the inner circle is located in heaven.

No one found anything significant for years until Maharishi Mahesh appeared in London in 1960. It was not at first realized that Mahesh was a link to the deeper knowledge and special practices that were being sought. Contact was made with Mahesh, meditation taught, and discovered to be beneficial, and so Mahesh's version of the advaita teaching began to be incorporated into the philosophy material read out in groups. Even tape recordings of the Maharishi were played in an atmosphere of induced reverence. The Maharishi had initially created an extremely strong and favourable impression. Soon Mahesh proposed that the Study Society, SES, and his own organisation be combined together under his personal direction. Leon MacLaren and Francis Rolls discussed the proposal together but MacLaren found it difficult to reach a decision, saying that whatever Dr Rolls decided he would agree to. Francis Rolls decided to keep the organisations separate. That was quite a decision, without it the two schools would probably have gone down the same line of development as the TM movement, and become engulfed in endless vedic ritual and the idealized science of being and art of living that Mahesh developed. Later Maharishi Mahesh angrily denounced SES in a public lecture given at the Hilton Hotel, London, attended by the Beatles, accusing them of stealing mantras as well as combining meditation with philosophies that caused harmful stresses. It is probably true that SES did steal many mantras that the Mahesh system of meditation employed, particularly by getting one of his female initiators drunk and encouraging her to reveal everything she knew. Ironically, having tried the mantras and found them to be less effective than the traditional mantras employed in the Jyotic tradition as revived by Brahmananda Sarasvati, they never used them. Mahesh's teachings and tapes were quietly dropped from SES and School of Meditation group lecture material.

Previously, further encounters with Mahesh took place in India circa 1961, where Francis Rolls coincidentally met Shantanand the successor to Brahmananda (who was Mahesh's own 'teacher'), and heard him use the same language as Ouspensky... emphasising the importance of 'self-remembering' etc. An astonished Francis Rolls then sought audience with Shantanand at his Shankar Math ashram in Allahabad, believing that he had at last found a living source of Gurdjieff's philosophy. (Shantanand spent the winter in Allahabad, summer at Jyotir Math). When McLaren was informed, he naturally imitated and, starting in 1965, arranged his own audiences with Shantanand. As a consequence the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky lecture material, a mix of Sufi, Christian, Indian, Asiatic and Western philosophies was replaced by a purer form of Advaita. Nevertheless those who had been studying the Ouspensky ideas for years would not be able to easily discard the old valued philosophical material, nor erase the methods completely from their minds.

It is easy to detect that much of Ouspensky's subtle influences and philosophy still remains embedded in SES, especially in the attitudes of the old hierarchy. Examples are: the secrecy, the habitual slyness, the emphasis on payment, the school's negative methods of teaching, rarely answering student's questions and frequently turning the question back on the questioner with a 'what do you think?' the rigid catechetical style of teaching, the cryptic double language employed, the emphasis on discipline and absolute obedience, also the tricks played on students, particularly the unpleasant artificial teaching scenarios the hierarchy act out and create for the purpose of testing their unsuspecting victims, and in particularly the attempt to take over of the personal lives of almost everyone who comes within their influence, often with disastrous consequences. All the negativity in SES can be traced back to an imitation of Gurdjieff's methods. Gurdjieff and Ouspensky believed that doing something negative to someone, through the invention of an unpleasant scene woven around and exposing the student's chief feature, could produce good teaching results, enlightenment, first-hand knowledge, a hard lesson never to be forgotten etc. Consequently, as a result of the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky residual legacy, I think you will find that Leon McLaren's publicly expressed beliefs about karma were a somewhat confused mixture of Fourth Way Philosophy and Advaita.

Recurrence is in eternity, reincarnation is in time.

Leon McLaren appeared to believe unquestioningly in the cast iron law of karma. I heard him say: 'you can not remain where you are, for ever in the same place, either you work and evolve or you go down'. 'If you don't take advantage of the opportunity you go down into the lower forms'. 'There is great competition for human life, and everything must have its chance'. 'Criminals are those who will soon be out of the universe'. 'God is that which puts things up and puts things down'. In old age, the now frailer shrunken MacLaren, walking with the aid of a stick, would explain that it was 'his karma'. Being relatively authoritarian, McLaren, a barrister by profession, would probably have enjoyed the concepts of retributive justice and corrective punishment that forms the basis of the law of karma, but relatively lacking objective reasoning powers he may have failed to see the fundamental contradictions and paradoxes within such a doctrine.

The chief paradox is that the self is pure consciousness and is not an agent of action. The self does nothing. If the genuine self never performs action who is it that accumulates merit and demerit for actions? Who is performing the actions? How can the self reap the karmic consequences, be put up and down by God, for actions it never performed, but simply observed? The self is never born, nor ever dies, universes come and go and it remains unchanged.... so who is there to be reborn, reincarnated, and beneficially or detrimentally affected, or ethically responsible for, and even improved by, the effects of karma? No one.

The idea of role reversal in reincarnation, even of you becoming your enemy and he becoming you, is also found in the Russian Leo Tolstoy's writings, but to date I have not detected the same idea in Advaita Vedanta. In Advaita you and your enemy are the same, there is only Brahman, and all separation and differentiation is illusory. It is the same Brahman in both South African whites and blacks, and to reverse incarnations in any subsequent life as an administration of justice because of the unethical practice of apartheid is ultimately meaningless.

The concept of role reversal appears to contradict the principle of karma, since in the Gurdjievian Christian example a meritorious Jesus with good karma will next play the role of a despised treacherous Judas. And the reverse, Judas having allegedly accumulated bad karma is apparently rewarded by the role of the paraclete Jesus. Someone who plays their part extremely well, even if it is the part of a villain, must be rewarded according to such an interpretation of karma. To many minds this may appear extremely puzzling. One resolution of this contradiction is to view the whole world, life itself, as nothing more than a subtle drama. Shantanand and many advaitins say that 'the world is a show which God, (Saguna Brahman), is staging all around you in the shape of the universe'. That, I feel, is an essential clue by which one can escape the paradoxes within the law of karma

If life is merely a drama, then it is not completely real. Karma and reincarnation are therefore both part of Maya, illusion. The Self does nothing therefore it cannot be subject to karma. It is the false self, the me, which is subject to karma, and the illusion persists for as long as the individual self is identified with the part in the drama, identified with the suggestion 'me'.

Francis Rolls reports Shantanand saying: 'The way to rid oneself from evil is to cultivate the attitude that it is nature (prakriti) that is acting through the body, and not the self.'

Recurrence and reincarnation continue as long as, the me, the person, the soul, the jiva, believes it is the cause and originator of action. Consciousness and knowledge enable the jiva to realize that the self does nothing and it is prakriti, nature, that performs all action, as part of the drama, as the characters in the play being performed in the theatre of the universe. As long as an individual self believes it acts, it is subject to karma, and it appears to experience of the effects of past actions.

Knowledge removes the effects of karma by the realization that the self does nothing, accumulates no samskara, and is invulnerable, quite beyond the law or effects of karma. Karma is realized to be merely a subtle aspect of Maya. To the genuine self, the Parabrahman, which is beyond the limitations of, and entanglement with, Prakriti, beyond both time and space, karma is illusory.

Therefore it is Prakriti which is practising apartheid. But.... who is it practising on?