Can you see what we’re up against? We’re up against the mass media. We’re up against all this entertaining stuff. We’re up against religions that have got things established and have vast amounts of money behind them. You know you go into a church and some of them are really fantastic buildings. And people walk in and they feel there’s something secure in it - like there’s a connection with the divine and this is your way to get to the above! But we have these little Centres. And if that’s all we have, then, we have to make sure that we do them well.

And you know people write and they write what they think people would like to hear, so that they become famous, so they get their name spread around the place. And many of them could even rip off other people’s work, so they get this fame - in doing that, they have no integrity whatsoever, nothing. That’s not spirituality. To write about spirituality we must have experienced it. And there are things which people look at for guidance, or in a figure. There are particular ways of talking and acting that people expect, or some people expect in spiritual figures and leaders. And so, it’s easy for a guru-type to go and imitate that, to write what people want to hear, present it, and before you know it, you have something which takes off, which is a real hit. The people are saying, “Well that’s a real advanced spiritual person that I can go and get teachings from”. It’s all a big con. It’s a big lie; it’s made up to entice those who have no idea what real spirituality is, so that that person can do something better than working in a nine-to-five job. If they can write all kinds of things that people want to hear, why wouldn’t they do that: get themselves famous, rather than working hard, in an office? It’s a big lie, and it’s all presented as spirituality.

And some work within traditions. Traditions, you know, a fine thing - to be part of this tradition that goes back a thousand years, two thousand years, or five thousand years. Tradition is meaningless; it has no value spiritually. Tradition is something which was passed, which is over, it’s ended. The life has long since left it, but the people carry on in the old ways because it’s secure, and it promises them a road to heaven. It promises them salvation, but it’s a ticket to hell. No one really changes. No matter how much you spend walking around in a circle trying to be aware, no matter how many hours you spend, days, years in practices rooms in meditation, you won’t achieve the true illuminated void, within yourselves, permanently, you won’t achieve the absolute, you won’t fundamentally change, because it takes Alchemy to bring about fundamental change. And if you don’t have alchemy, you will never really change. And if you don’t understand what alchemy is, you have no hope of changing. That’s the reality of it. But it’s secure in a tradition isn’t it – to go and do certain things, to repeat things in certain ways, to feel comfortable knowing that by doing what the tradition says, you’ll have immortality, because everything which is above, is all part of that tradition – nobody else’s tradition, just that one. Have you ever wondered why people that are brought up in a certain religion, stick with that religion, become defenders of it? Where’s the search for truth? Where’s reality behind it?

Life is constantly renewing itself. Gnosis is found within those who practise it. This is the real knowledge. It doesn’t belong to an old tradition. And we won’t find it in the flashiest presentation or movie – although we do our best (jokingly)! We won’t find it in the latest song. But we find it within ourselves, if we practise it properly. So we’ve got this fantastic opportunity, haven’t we, you know, life, being alive. Have you ever really wondered what that is, what a fantastic gift it is to have a human body, and to have it in this time, to have it now? If we think of how much time has passed before us, which we can’t, how much time is ahead, and, we have this body now, we are alive now, we can see, we can hear things – what a fantastic gift it is. We’re going to spend it burdened with the results of egos, of bad inner states, always mediocre, never doing anything marvellous, because the egos keep us trapped in that mediocrity; while all the time, we could do something marvellous with our lives, we could do something really wonderful with our lives. We could have the divine within us. We could perceive nature fully, as much as it is possible to do with a human body. We can perceive things transformed into states of bliss, unimaginable, not known by all those writers in the new age, not known by those in their traditions – completely unknown to them.

And they won’t like it if you tell them that you have this divine within you. And they hate to hear the word, ‘the Christ within’, but that’s the reality. And no one knows what it’s like, except those few who have it. And when we have it, we always have it. It’s always there. It’s always there to help us. But the new age writers, ‘mind, body, and spirit’ crew, traditionalists in religions, will never have it, will never know what it’s like. So in a way, we get the last laugh, because we get rejected by all of those people, all of those ‘Pharisees’ and the intellectuals who think they know everything about the universe, the scientists or the ‘scribes’. They reject us; they don’t want to know about us. They don’t care about the real Christ. They don’t care about the living Christ. They don’t want to know about it. They all think they know, but they have no idea as to the real living thing.

But we have the chance to realize it within ourselves. We have the chance to have the Christ within us, to have the Spirit within us, to have the Absolute within us – we have that opportunity. We are very, very fortunate; a fortunate few. This is why we should make use of the time to create this marvellous thing, this masterpiece within ourselves, to undergo this great transformation, to bring peace within us. To bring that spiritual child, which carries the peace - without it, no one knows what real peace is like; no one has a clue, not a clue. Everybody talks about peace - in different writings of religions, mystical writings today - and they have not experienced it. Only those who have experienced it know what it’s really like. And that’s a shame, that’s a tragedy because they’re misleading people. They’re taking people down the wrong path, a path that does not lead to that peace. So we have to get this message across to everybody, as much as we can - and realize that peace within ourselves.