Confluence

Transcript of the Annual Global Meeting Waterperry House, Oxfordshire 20th October 2024 given by Donald Lambie

"The subject of this talk is confluence, which literally means flowing together, moving together. The picture behind me is of the river Ganges and there is a city named Prayagraj where the river Ganges meets another great river, the Yamuna. They join, come together and then flow on together. There is a confluence. Some people say that there is a third river, the Sarasvatī. There is no physical third river but some people say it is a mystical river, and others say historic.

Be that is it may there is a confluence of at least two great rivers. When these two great rivers come together and flow together, they are given an extra strength and momentum. The destination of the Ganges is the ocean, but to reach the ocean, it is necessary to somehow flow round mountains, ravines and goodness knows what else.

It’s easy enough to see for that to happen, for the river to reach its destination, and not fall short, it has to have strength and momentum. This is really the great benefit of coming together and flowing together. It gives us a strength and a quality which on our own we would not necessarily have. And it is this idea that I would like to explore and try to elaborate on a little during this talk this morning. So that’s what we are about.

I want to consider confluence in a couple of different ways. The first way is in relation to the school itself because we are in a way the result of a confluence. We are a Western organisation, we are sitting here in Oxfordshire, which is about as middle England as it is possible to get. We don’t have saffron robes nor do we have Indian names – it’s a western set-up. And what’s come to us with the Western river, if I could call it that, is wonderful. There is the whole Judaeo-Christian tradition which is magnificent. I did smile when I saw an article in the paper saying that the great arch- atheist, Richard Dawkins, calls himself a cultural Christian. He is not very fond of Christianity, he is not very fond of God if I can put it that way, but loves the culture of Christianity. The churches, the art, the music and goodness knows what else. So we have that whole massive influence.

We also have the whole Platonic tradition – indeed starting even before Plato with Hermes Trismegistus, and Parmenides and others. And later there is Plotinus and in comparatively more recent times, Ficino, Shakespeare and the like. All of which combines to give the most magnificent philosophy, literature and culture. I mentioned Shakespeare as it is an interesting example. For quite a lot of people coming into the School, Shakespeare is a bit of a closed book. Indeed, for some it may be absolutely a closed book. It is not so easy to connect with Shakespeare if you haven’t been brought up with it. And so people come to the School, hear some Shakespeare, scratch their heads, but in a little time and a little patience it’s possible to connect with Shakespeare. It’s really wonderful to see people connect with something they haven’t connected with before. The light the beauty of the language and poetry fills the person up. All of this is part of our Western river. 

Then we have the Eastern river which for us has been brought by Śrī Śāntānanda Sarasvatī and his successor Śrī Vāsudevānanda Sarasvatī. In summary, it consists of the advaita philosophy - the knowledge of the Self. Advaita means one without a second. So we have the advaita philosophy and together with that, the meditation. There is much more besides, but this is the heart of the Eastern river, if I can call it that. When these two come together something magical happens, a kind of alchemy. Now I would not say that we are the only organisation in the world which combines these two streams – I don’t know. But I am not particularly familiar with many others. And we try to do it as well as we can, as carefully as we can and as beautifully as we can.

And the result is a kind of alchemy. Now here at Waterperry, we are in what’s called the ballroom. Quite a lot of work has taken place at Waterperry by students in the School, and quite a lot of work took place well before the School purchased the building. I am hoping this will work. We have got two little films, both short. One is if you imagine coming out of this door on my left you will enter the Georgian part of the building with a beautiful staircase and stained glass windows, most of which are from the 16th Century. This represents the Western river.

Then if you were to go out of this door on my right you would see the work which has been done by members of the School. It is a newer construction with lots of wood, glass and extensive art work – frescoes showing stories from the advaita teaching. It’s rather pleasing – you’ve got the Western and the Eastern. And they come into this room and flow out of this room. This room you could say symbolically represents the heart, the universal heart, from which and into which the streams flow. And we, both the people here physically and the people online, are In the centre of all of this. This is how the confluence is represented here at Waterperry.

So this is the School, this confluence of east and west. This is not to exclude everything else – we have wonderful material from Rumi, from African philosophy, Chinese philosophy, all sorts of things such as Lao Tzu. The streams are capable of absorbing more streams. But these are the two essential streams for the school.

Śrī Vāsudevānanda Sarasvatī, who I referred to, called the eastern stream ‘the pure stream of advaita’. If I could give an example – about 50 years ago I was introduced to meditation which has been a constant companion over those years. It really would be impossible to describe the effect and influence of that on this life, but the pure stream of advaita is as good a description as I can think of. It's just the most wonderful thing to have happened, and one shouldn’t be afraid of being taken. The great river moves towards the ocean and we can flow with it and be taken to the ocean along with it. If we just stick on our own tiny little patch of land and let the waters pass us by then its less likely that we will flow towards the ocean. So join the flow.

This Is the first way I wanted to speak about confluence. The second way is in relation to each of us as individuals. The three rivers which I referred to are sometimes said to represent the ways of knowledge, love and action. The Sarasvatī is the way of knowledge, the Ganges the way of love and the Yamuna the way of action. Śrī Śāntānanda Sarasvatī gave a beautiful description of what happens when these forces come together. For example he said:

An active person would note the systematic simplicity of knowledge and the beauty of tenderness and devotion. This is how craft is turned into art.

This is lovely, how craft is turned into art. The man who was overall responsible for the fresco work here at Waterperry and was responsible for the house and estate for many years was himself a most active, energetic man. But he very much appreciated the systematic simplicity of knowledge, and the meditation – he took these most dearly to heart. As a result of which we got this – an active man became an active and artistic man. And the active and artistic man became a great man, a universal man - this is how confluence works. We can become great men and women, and universal men and women.

Here is another description:

The heart of someone on the way of knowledge will be cleansed by love and devotion and turn the power of reason into a sharp yet sweet instrument.

Sometimes we see that highly intellectual people can be cutting, harsh and hard and the highly developed intellect can sometimes be used to divide people and to cause difficulty. With the love and devotion, the power of reason retains its sharpness but it has a sweetness added to it. It doesn’t divide, it unites.

In the School, as many of you will know, there’s been a great deal of work and study on the translation of the letters of Marsilio Ficino – we’ve just finished a retreat here at Waterperry a few days ago where people were considering all of this. He must have been a most remarkable man – his sense of being must have been profound and his love for humanity is evident from the many, many letters that he wrote. But also his intellect was extraordinary. He translated all of Plato, all of Plotinus, he wrote hundreds of letters and much more besides. Somebody once compiled and read through the astonishing list of all that he did, at the end of which one thought ‘goodness me I haven’t even started.’ It’s marvellous when you get a combination of love and knowledge and a great sense of being. Again, this is how confluence can work. We can absorb all of these streams and be taken by them. So this is the example of confluence in the lives of individuals.

A third way to consider confluence is this meeting itself. In this room, forgive me if I miss out some people, we have people from Finland, Hungary, Ireland China, England and a few more maybe. We were just having a chat before the meeting starts and it's great to see, because you get "Hello I am so and so from this place" and every country under the sun which is marvellous. So we’ve got this confluence of people here now with people from all around the world. One group in particular I would just like to mention - that is the students in the School in Israel. The last year has been exceedingly difficult, but throughout it all the members of the School in Israel decided ‘we are going to meditate, we are going to continue to meet to deliberate on the knowledge of the Self. Whatever else happens this is what we are going to do.’ To my mind that has been marvellous, just wonderful.

So, we have a confluence here and now as I’m speaking and as you are listening. We all can help each other. We all can learn, we all can teach. There’s no rivalry, everyone works together, helps each other, supports each other and achieves unity together. It's obvious isn’t it – I can't achieve unity at your expense - the only way for one person to achieve unity is if the other person achieves unity as well. So the unity has to be experienced by us all. And whether we are experienced or inexperienced in the School doesn’t matter. Śrī Vāsudevānanda Sarasvatī is always most encouraging – he says ‘keep going, keep going ,keep practising, keep practising. One day sooner or later you will find the Self. Just keep going, keep practising keep helping each other.’

Now to come back to the Ganges there is a description given by Śrī Śāntānanda Sarasvatī:

The desire for truth is like a river, the river Ganges. She starts somewhere with a small beginning facing all sorts of high mountains which hold her up but she fills up and flows over them, intertwines around them for nearly 200 miles of high, low and deep mountainous ranges, and she finds her way to the ocean to which she belongs. One need not be lured by the high peaks nor sink into the deep ravines but keep going. One day truth will be found. Spirit will find truth one day.

That is the rather lovely description and that is the subject of confluence.

Thank you very much."

Donald Lambie