The Empty Bell Volume 6
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The Lectures of Irina Tweedie The Empty Bell Volume 6 German Lectures: Schwarzsee, Switzerland July 10 - 16, 1988 & Zurich, Switzerland April 1990 Translated and Compiled by Harvey L. Stahl 1 Make your heart Like an empty bell, And wait… In stillness. During the time that Mrs. Tweedie was with her teacher, she was ordered by him to write a book based on the daily experiences of her training. That book, “Daughter of Fire” and its abridgement “Chasm of Fire” has since proved an invaluable help to many people at all stages of the spiritual journey. Since that time, Mrs. Tweedie has clearly and repeatedly refused to write anything more, saying that her duty to write was fulfilled with this one book. And yet, those of us who have had the privilege to spend time with Mrs. Tweedie in her group in London, know that over the years she has spoken on many themes that are not in her book. It is to make some of this material available to others that I have compiled dialogues based on her lectures. I have focused on her German lectures because these have been especially inaccessible to the English reader. I wish to make it clear that although these pages are based on Mrs. Tweedie’s lectures, and that I have tried to convey this material in something of her own style, that ultimately they are my own words, and alas, are limited by my own understanding. I would like to thank the many people who have given me support and encouragement in this undertaking, especially Liselotte Treytl, from Vienna who took the time and care to meticulously review all of the translations in this volume for content and context and to correct my limited German, and who has been an enormous help and support, for the entire project and to Gillian Stokes for her final review and evaluation of the volume. And lastly and most of all, I wish to express my deepest respect and gratitude to my teacher. Irina Tweedie The Empty Bell Volume 6 2 Cover Photograph: Chinese Bell, Chou Dynast, 5th century BC. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. Copyright © 1996 H. L. Stahl. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopy recording or any information storage system without the written permission of the publisher. Edited for digital formats: July 2019 Email contact: [email protected] Volume 6 The Empty Bell Translated Lectures 3 The Lectures of Irina Tweedie Sufi Camp of 1988: Part 7 The Stage of Meaninglessness Based on a Series of Lectures given in Schwarzsee, Switzerland July 2 – 16, 1988 (‘R.’ begins the session with a beautiful Mevlevi song of longing…) Over the next five days, we will occupy ourselves with meditation. You see, I returned to England from India in 1967, and since that time, our meditation group in London began, as have other meditation groups connected with this line of Yoga. And they have continued. And of course, the people in these groups have progressed and now understand much more than they did at the beginning; and many of them have had real mystical experiences. I have already spoken about this in Bern at Easter, but since then I was asked to speak still more about it. Of course there are many people here who were not in Bern, and many of you have already had experiences, and until Easter I had only spoken about these experiences privately with people, and never publicly. And that is what we will do this week, and I think that you may find it useful to take notes. So if any of you would like to bring paper and pencil with you starting tomorrow, you are welcome to do so. Sometimes people ask me what it means if, for example, they see a blue light from the left or from the right; or if they suddenly cannot feel their legs while they are meditating, or when they can only feel their heart; or when they feel as if they have no hands or legs or head, or when the heart does not beat at all. All of these are mystical experiences. And if one does not have a bit of guidance, if one cannot find an explanation, then one can become very frightened. And there is nothing to be frightened about. In these five days, you will work more than I will. Today, I will do the introduction, but from tomorrow on you will ask me about your experiences. And I may not able to answer your questions. That is quite possible, because I can only answer about things that I, or people close to me have experienced; and of course, I cannot know everything. And when I do not know, then perhaps someone in the group here will know more than I do. Someone may have had very interesting experiences that will help to answer the question. So. This will now really be a workshop where we all work together. And today will be the introduction. The Sufis say, “Live in such a way that He can be born in your heart in every moment.” And Meister Eckhart said, “The eternal job of God is to be born, now and forever, in the hearts of men.” You can see that these statements are both the same. But what is the significance of that similarity? After all, Meister Eckhart was not a Sufi. It means, quite simply, that mystics, and everyone who loves God, and everyone who lives for God and with God, all have the same experiences. The experiences are colored according to the temperament of the person, the culture, and the conditioning; but basically they are always the same. He, the Great Beloved, must be born in our hearts. We must live in such a way that we are always in His presence. We must live in such a way that we cannot live without Him for a single minute. Look. When you are in love, you always think of the one you love. And almost all of us have been in love at one time or another in our lives, or have loved someone very deeply – I am also including the love of a mother for her child. That is also like being in love. It has another form, but it is very similar. The mother will always think about the child, even when she is not in its presence. And the Irina Tweedie The Empty Bell Volume 6 4 lover will always think of the beloved, and the beloved will always think of the lover … all of the time. And the time comes for everyone when we think of the Beloved the whole time. You see, if you love someone, and you see something beautiful, and the one you love is not with you, then you think, “Oh. That would have been lovely if he too could have seen this, or if he too could have experienced that, … this music or this landscape.” It is quite natural. And that is what happens when you are with the Great Beloved. When you experience something special in your heart, then you will say to your beloved, “Look, that is so beautiful. Have you given that to me? And if not, then look at me, and see how happy I am. Look at how much I love you.” And the greatest mystical experience is when you find God in your heart – and that usually happens when you are alone. It must not necessarily happen in the night. It can happen in nature. I can be among the trees, or in the mountains, or you might be swimming in a lake, and suddenly, quite suddenly, He … or She – It can also be a She, because He also has a feminine side – He or She is suddenly, quietly, in your heart. Then there is a bliss that might last a second … or a long, long time. There, where this bliss is, is without time. Time only exists on the level of the mind, so you will not know how long it lasts; you cannot know. It might last the whole night, or perhaps hours … or only a few seconds; the experience is the same, because for the Beloved it is always Now. There, where you reach Him, it is always Now; there is no time. It is not yesterday, and not tomorrow, it is Now. It is totally and completely Now, and it is Now forever. “To be born in your heart forever.” That is the only job that God has. He has no other job. Everything else is only illusion. God’s only job is to be born in your heart, to be born in every heart – into each one of your hearts. And this birth is completely intimate. He is with you alone. One feels completely loved. One is so fulfilled. But you must earn that. And you earn it with your meditation. (Now quite emphatically,) The non-plus ultra of every spiritual life is meditation, meditation and meditation. The time comes when meditating is much easier for you than not meditating. The time comes when you fall into meditation automatically as soon as you are alone. Then you really begin to live a spiritual life. So, as I said, I want to speak to you about the experiences – your experiences, not mine – that one has during or after meditation. We will speak about what these experiences mean, and where they lead.