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Interview with Phil MorimitsuAuthor of In the Company of ECK Masters and The Seeker
London, Ontario, March 29, 2001
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Phil
Morimitsu is the author of two books that have gained him popularity
with spiritual seekers around the globe: In the Company of ECK Masters
and The Seeker. An American artist and writer, Morimitsu has
traveled worldwide giving talks about his books and about
Eckankar. He recently completed an Eastern speaking tour
including Japan. Currently, he lives and works in Hong Kong.
I made the three-hour drive from my home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to
London, Ontario, on a Thursday afternoon to hear Phil Morimitsu,
renowned among members of Eckankar for his published books and public
speaking. Morimitsu was the featured speaker at the 'Evening
of ECK' held at the Four Points Sheraton Hotel on Wellington
Road. The subject of his talk was "Keys to Life's Mysteries."
He began by recounting a
recent trip to India, during which he had become lost in a town in
which he was a guest for the night, and used his inner guidance to find
his way back to where he was staying. "What distinguishes
someone who listens to their inner guidance--who 'talks to God'--from
someone who simply thinks they talk to God?" he asked. "The
answer has to do with vibration and with stability. Money,
for instance, is something that people feel gives them
stability. But it is actually completely
unstable. A business, to be successful, needs
stability--stable laws, a stable currency. The same is true
of relationships. You need a certain number of stable
factors to hold a relationship together, a measure of agreement between
the two parties. If it's not there, they have to
renegotiate, or they break up. The point is, if you're going
to base your life on something important, base it on something that's
not going to change. The ECK Masters have figured out what
doesn't change."
He then launched into an
explanation of the structure of an atom. "The size of an
electron in relation to its distance from an atom's center is such that
if all the electrons of all the matter on Earth were compressed,
scientists have estimated that the Earth would be the size of a
baseball, yet weigh the same as it does now. And more recent
speculation is that if an atom were taken apart, there wouldn't be any
matter at all--just energy. If you can understand what this
energy is, then you have the key to life. For instance, have
you ever seen the way a sunflower turns itself toward the
sun? Whatever can react to light, we define as living, and
whatever no longer does this any more, we say is dead. Sound
is vibration, and light is a byproduct of sound. God is
Light and Sound. How, then, do you talk to Light and
Sound? What does God look like?"
He drew a sketch of an energy
source sending a vibration, or pulse, outward through the
universe. "The ECK Masters," he continued, "give God an
entirely different name--SUGMAD. It would make sense that
God is whatever is powering this energy, the source of this
vibration." He then drew a sketch of the human body,
indicating the seven chakras, or energy points, explaining that each
chakra had a corresponding sound that could be used by the individual
like a tuning fork to harmonize with this vibration at each
level. HU, he explained, was the sound that corresponded
with the thousand-petaled lotus, the crown chakra, located at the top
of the head. "Just as white light is a combination of all
the other colors," he explained, "the HU is a combination of all the
other sounds. Whenever we make a decision, it's either
taking us towards the source of this vibration or away from
it."
After his talk, I sat down to
dinner with Morimitsu, his wife Nancy, and a group of Eckankar
members. "There were a couple of things that struck me about
what you said," I began. "You were talking about the
difference between someone who talks to God and someone who just thinks
they talk to God. And then you said that this has to do with
vibration and stability. This was a very a very intriguing
comment, but it would seem to require some greater
elaboration. It would be easy to say that a person who
merely thinks they talk to God is unstable, but I got the feeling you
were using the word in a deeper sense."
"If I had finished up that point," he replied, "I would have gone on
and talked about some of the ways you can tell that a person's really
getting guidance from God or not. Generally, you look at
what they're doing. What are their actions? Are
they helping people or not? If a person is really getting in
touch with life, they'll be happier and they'll be giving more
love. The very essence of this energy wave I talked about is
love. If you think about what is keeping us alive, I can't
think of anything more loving than that. So getting back to
this idea of how to tell if you're in balance or not, ask the question:
Is what you're doing helping you and other people gain some kind of
love, in a survival sense, and is it making your life better?"
"Are you contributing."
"Yes. Are you
contributing? For instance, if a person's complaining, just
look at the way the energy is flowing.
"They're putting a lot of energy into themselves."
"Exactly. That's it. You don't even need to
listen to their words, just look at what they're doing. If a
person's complaining, it doesn't matter what they're complaining
about. They're complaining," he laughed. "I think
sometimes we get fooled by the content or the context of what people
are saying, rather than looking at what they're actually
doing. In the case of people who are really crazy, you know
that there's something wrong with them, but the more you listen to
them, there's a weird logic to what they're saying. If you
listen to these people, it sounds pretty good. But if you
pull away, and get away from trying to understand their train of
thought, and just look at their actions, what they're doing, you see
which way the energy is going. Are they sucking your energy,
or is what they're saying making you feel empowered or better?"
"So when you said that the difference between someone who's crazy and
someone who's not has to do with stability, what were you thinking,
yourself, when you used the word 'stability'?
"It comes down to whether or not you are in harmony with the Light and
Sound. You could have mass craziness. This is
what happened in Nazi Germany, where everyone decided that it was OK to
persecute one race of people, and they all agreed on it, and they were
all in harmony with each other. Everyone was going with the
flow, yet they were killing millions of people. The basic
flaw in this was the idea that it was based on. The idea was
not stable. This is the whole idea of basing your life on
Light and Sound. If you base your life on something that
doesn't change, on principles that are always going to remain constant,
then you've got real stability rather than a social stability."
"You were also talking about decision-making," I said, changing the
direction of the conversation somewhat. "That's a huge
problem for me. I'm a Gemini, and I always see two sides to
everything. They say that one of the life problems for
Geminis is to become decisive in making decisions. I have a
terrible time making decisions, especially the less important they
are. Every time I'm faced with this crisis of
decision-making, I feel like I'm walking the razor's edge. I
feel that, just as you said in your talk, one decision is going to take
me towards the light and the other decision is going to take me away
from it. That's what makes it so hard. Other
people will listen to me. They're detached from the
situation, of course, and so they tell me: It doesn't make a difference
what the decision is. Just go ahead, make the decision, and
you can always revise it."
"They don't have to live with the consequences," he interjected,
laughing again.
"Exactly. But for me, it's crunch time for every little
decision that I have to make. And listening to your talk, I
felt that you were connecting this with the idea of stability, and
couldn't help thinking how unstable I feel so much of the time,
especially when I have to make decision. Paul Twitchell, the
founder of Eckankar, talked about the concept of being what he called a
Cliffhanger, someone who walks the razor's edge, so to
speak. And I wondered how this idea of being a Cliffhanger
connects with the notion of stability. Are you saying that
the stability is in the Light and Sound?"
"Yes. When I try to make my decisions, I always look for
Light and Sound in the decisions. I'll say: 'Should I go
this way, or should I go that way?' That's where all these
Eckankar techniques come into play. There are dreams, waking
dreams, and sometimes you'll see a point of light or hear a
sound. The better you get at recognizing when a situation
has Light or Sound in it, the higher your survival rate."
 "Often
for me, it's a question of intuitive versus mental," I
commented. "And if I can feel that I am going towards the
intuitive, I feel that that is towards the Light."
"Well, let's say we were to take a chart of the God worlds and paste or
write in where these different techniques would be located in
correspondence to the various planes. Dreams, of course,
originate on the Astral Plane, because that's where you go to
sleep. Soul Travel could involve any of the lower
planes-Physical, Astral, Causal, Mental, and
Etheric. Intuition, of course, involves the Etheric
body. So the trick is, in every situation, you have to make
a choice of which action is in line with the ECK, or Spirit, and which
isn't. Now each decision that is in accord with the ECK will
have a greater degree of Light and Sound in it, because the ECK is
going to highlight the best decision for you to make.
"The problem," he added, "is how good are we in identifying
it? And that's where the skill comes in. Now
here's my take on the spiritual exercises. The more time you
spend practicing getting in touch with Light and Sound when you do your
exercises, the easier it is to recognize it in daily
life. So if you have a waking dream, the feeling that you
have when you're doing a spiritual exercise should be the same as when
you see it coming at you in life. Now, it's the same thing
if you have an intuitive thought, and you're asking: 'Is this
intuition, or is this my mind?' If you remember how it is
when you're in tune with the Light and Sound, you just match it up with
that intuitive feeling or hunch.
"I have this ongoing conversation," he continued. "I imagine
the Inner Master and ask him: 'What should I do--this or
that?' And I've found that I have to break it down to yes or
no answers. I'll either see him or I'll hear his
voice. Sometimes I just see him either nodding or shaking
his head. It's a fifty-fifty chance, and I'm not always
right. So I go with the choice I think he's nodding at, and
wait to see how it plays out. As far as I can see, that's
the only way you really know for sure that it's the right
decision. If the decision you made benefits not just you but
everyone else, then you know. Then you have to remember the
next time another situation comes up what it felt like when you asked
the Inner Master: 'Yes or no'."
"So it has a lot to do with memory."
"Yes. You're using your Causal body. It's
remembering what it's like when the Mahanta speaks to
you. Now, when I make a mistake and disaster happens, or I
know clearly that this was a wrong choice, I try to remember what it
was like when I asked the question, originally. So the next
time it comes at me, I'll remember."
"So it's the difference between being experienced and not being
experienced," I offered.
"That's the whole thing. It's all experience.
And if you don't pay attention and don't remember it, then you just
keep going through the same thing over and over again. Or
worse, you reduce Eckankar to superstition by thinking, 'The Mahanta
will take care of it.' In that case, you've reduced the
Mahanta to the role of a caretaker, giving you the same information
over and over again."
"Right," I agreed. You don't want to get into the situation
where your experiences aren't productive because you're repeating the
same experiences."
"Then it becomes superstition. That's when people start
saying something like: 'Last time the Mahanta told me to use this fork
instead of that fork.' So from then on, instead of checking
with the Inner Master, you just use the same fork."
"In this connection, can you elaborate on the difference between a
religion and a spiritual path?" I asked him.
"There's nothing wrong with the word 'religion'," he
replied. "But I think what happens in a lot of religions,
and maybe with some people in Eckankar--myself included--is that you
start believing in things without really knowing. And what I
want to point out is that Soul is the only body that has the ability to
know and recognize love. All the other bodies are
machines. The reason we can recognize love through our
emotions, or our physical body, or our minds, is because Soul is
operating through that body. For instance, if I ask the
Mahanta for an answer, and receive one, it can only be perceived by
Soul, via the mind. But if you just use your mental body to
pick up an answer, it always relies on logic, and logic is always based
on past experience. As soon as the mind gets hit with a
situation it's never encountered, it falls on what it knew before."
"And so the dogma that we find in many religions is actually a shared
past experience for that body of
believers."
"Exactly."
"So how does Eckankar avoid going the path of the major world religions
in this respect?
"Well, I have to speak for what Nancy and I try to do where we
live. We try to teach people to recognize when their
decisions are coming from the Mahanta, and when they're
not. Again, like any other skill, the more experience you
have recognizing when you're making decisions that are connected with
the ECK, the better you get. And we try to encourage people
to use this technique in the smallest details. Most of the
time people only turn to the Mahanta or God when they have a really big
decision to make. Well, our theory is, unless you practice
all the time on the little things, how are you going to really know
when it's coming from the Mahanta on the big things?"
"This is something that I have had a big issue with for many years," I
confessed. "To ask inwardly for help with every little thing
has just not been my style. But at the same time, I've had
the feeling that this is something that I have to learn. And
only recently I've had some experiences in which I tried it, and it
worked for me. So I feel, at least, that I've moved a little
more to the center on the issue, instead of being way out on one side
of it. Does that make any sense?"
"Yes. But I tend to ask inwardly all the
time. Someone told me that they don't like to ask the
Mahanta for certain directions because they're afraid they're going to
wear it out. But how can you wear it out?" He
chuckled.
"That's a hard one for me," I told him.
"Well, here's how I look at it," he replied. "I don't look
at the Mahanta as an individual. I conjure up the image of
the Living ECK Master, but to me, the Mahanta is not limited to this
person. No disrespect intended, but I think of it as a
thing. And it's the thing that connects me to the
ECK. So no matter where I am, I'm always asking this thing:
'What is it that you want me to do?'"
"I think my hang-up is that if I were to ask for something specific,
and then it didn't happen, I feel that my faith in the process would be
in jeopardy," I explained.
"Well, I don't necessarily as for anything specific. I
always ask 'What do you want?' instead of asking for what I myself
want. I do it even when I eat. Now it's like this
running conversation--'What should I eat now? When do you
want me to stop?' And sometimes I'll just get this impulse,
and I recognize it enough by now, that says 'That's
enough.' And I've tested it. Sometimes I'll say,
'I don't know if this is really coming from the Inner or
not. I'll just eat some more and see what
happens.' And something dreadful happens. I get
sick, or something. And then I think back and say to myself:
'OK. The next time I hear that voice or have that kind of
feeling, I'm going to pay attention.'"
"So you're always asking. You're always in dialogue."
"Yes. I figure, 'This is your teacher, and he's trying to
teach you how to master your self. The more you can follow
the minute details of what he's trying to teach you, the quicker you're
going to learn it.'"
"I think I see what you're saying. You're saying what's the
point of just scheduling the lessons of life for a certain time, or
deciding to take long breaks from learning anything. If life
is teaching you all the time, you might as well be receptive all the
time."
"Yes. After all, if you don't ask, who's running your show?"
"Good question."
"If I'm not asking, I feel that the real me is not making the
decisions. I'm letting these other bodies run
things. And I've noticed something. Whenever I
let my mind or emotions make the decision, it's always the wrong
one. These lower bodies work out of habit. And
life doesn't work the way our minds would like it to
work. It's always putting you in a situation that you're not
equipped for with what you've got in your past."
"That's a very practical approach."
"It's totally practical. I figure when I'm always asking,
I'm not going to wear out the Mahanta. How do you wear out
life? To me, that's the essence of being a co-worker with
God. When I say 'What do you want me to do
next? When do you want me to get up? When do you
want me to go to the bathroom?' I feel that this is really being a
co-worker with life itself. You're allowing yourself to be
used by life itself. And most of the time I have no idea why
I'm doing the things I'm doing. I have no
idea. But I've learned that when I'm in harmony with it,
good things tend to happen."
"Just by asking 'What do you want me to do?'"
"Yes."
"For everything."
"Yes. I've found that big decisions are not one big
decision, they're a million little ones. And the more
correct little decisions you make will determine how successful you are
at making big decisions. So that's why I tend to ask for
guidance regarding the minutiae of life, because when you put them all
together, that's your life! Then when you come to these
life-changing decisions, you're not at the mercy of
life. Alternatively, you can work at the decision-making
process by breaking down the big decision into little
ones. So by the time you've got to make the final
commitment, you've had a whole series of experiences that you've sorted
out, and you know which are the good ones and which are the bad
ones.
"I'm a Gemini, too," he confided. "I used to have a terrible
time making decisions, and still do. The fear I have
concerns how to be sure I'm making the right one, without
guessing. I hate to guess when it comes to making
decisions. But if you can break it down and figure out when
you're right, you reduce the guesswork exponentially."
"I think the Gemini problem has to do with the fact that when they're
faced with decisions, Geminis feel that the two alternatives have
exactly the same weight."
"To the mind, they will. The mind can't perceive Light and
Sound--only Soul does. The mind wants to eliminate all the
wrong answers. And every time it makes a mistake, it sends
you the message that you blew it and that you're a terrible spiritual
being. Instead, you have to just realize that that wasn't
the correct decision, and you've got to try something
else. If we're able to look at all the mistakes that we've
made like that, I think that's really what the Masters are trying to
get us to do--to stop beating ourselves up for making the wrong
decisions."
"Well,
years ago someone said to me the exact same thing that you said
earlier: 'Asking for the little things is practice for the big
things.' Now, at the time, I thought that was the most
ridiculous answer I had ever heard in my entire life!"
There was laughter all around the table at this remark.
"But now I'm starting to see what you mean," I
continued. "I'm starting to see some ways in which my whole
approach needed more examination than I gave it at the
time. What can you say about it except, 'Oh,
well. Now I have that information. Now I
understand. Without having done it wrong for however long I
did it, how would I know?'"
"I look at the time when I first got into Eckankar," he replied, "and I
remember how I perceived what the Living ECK Master was
saying. And so much of it was wrapped up with my concept of
who and what the Godman was. Now I tend to look at him more
as I would just a good teacher. And the thing about good
teachers is that they will see what you're doing wrong, and then make
suggestions on how to correct it. Before, I was too afraid,
actually, of making wrong decisions or not pleasing someone
else. It took me years (and I still don't know how good I am
at it) to get over this self-judgement and fear of making
mistakes. The more I get over that, the more clearly I think
I hear what he's saying."
"I'm still interested in how this applies to the difference between
someone who talks to God, and someone who just thinks they talk to
God," I persisted.
"This is what I think," he replied. "When people make a
wrong decision, it's usually because of 'want' and 'should', rather
than because of 'is'."
"So people who just think they talk to God are projecting their
desires. Is that what you're saying? If you want
to believe something, you can make that experience so real for yourself
that it will convince you that it is true?"
"Everything you see, every dream you have, you can interpret to fit
your want or need. It has nothing to do with reality,
though."
"Is that
something that we all do? Or is that just something that
applies to people who are seriously aberrated?"
"I think the test of real Mastership, what the Master is trying to
teach us, is how to see the 'is', rather than our 'wants' and
'shoulds'. And we all have them. You have to be
objective to see the answers. The 'wants' always distort the
choice."
"So what
you're saying is that a lot of what we see is what we want to see
instead of what is."
"If you don't know the difference, yes. And the only way you
learn the difference is by experience. And I'm constantly
fighting with that. Every time I have to make a decision, I
say to myself, 'Now I know what my 'want' and 'should'
is.' But, of course, life always throws the decision to
you. It's always something you want so badly, or something
you don't want."
I ended the interview at that point, feeling suddenly overwhelmed with
the information that had been imparted to me. I wasn't sure
if I felt more confident about making decisions, but I was more aware
that this was something that demanded my closest scrutiny. I
remembered the title of his talk that evening-"Keys to Life's
Mysteries". The process of decision-making was clearly one
of those mysteries, and what struck me was that his approach to solving
this mystery was very practical--even scientific. The
objectivity that he stressed as necessary to make good decisions was
akin to that of a scientist, weighing his past experience like
investigative data. In this sense, I felt that there was
indeed justification for viewing Eckankar's approach to spirituality as
a science. And if we could see ourselves as scientists,
capable of unlocking the mysteries of life, maybe some of them would
one day not be so mysterious! |
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Date Submitted:
7/17/01 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © The Spiritual Traveler, 2001 |
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