Andrew: Well I think the most important thing we can do at this moment is to witness the Spirit in whatever way it comes to us. Mine came in the way that you know, but there are many people all over the Earth having the most extraordinary openings. Some are Catholics, some are Hindus, some are Buddhists, some are Muslims; but in fact Spirit, the Light, is teaching people, helping people to wake up at this moment because it's a desperately important moment in the history of mankind. So, thank you for thanking me but I am just one of a whole army of people.

Rick: You must be psychic, also, because that was pretty much the nature of my next question. What do you see happening on a global scale? Is humankind starting to get the picture?

Andrew: Well, mankind is being brought to a moment. Teilhard de Chardin had wonderful phrase. He said, "Humankind is being brought to the moment where we will have to choose between suicide and adoration." And I don't think we have very much time left. I would say we have 20 years in which to make major decisions about absolutely everything. Starting, of course, with the environment but including also nuclear bombs and the whole question of the appalling poverty both in and out of the towns and of the third world and of the fourth world, what Abbey Pierre calls the fourth world, the world of the rejected even within our world. I think that people are beginning to be aware, but we're still in a massive state of denial as to the extent of what we're actually facing. Most people are still pretending to themselves that there is far more time to change than in fact there is. There is extremely little time. But, the Divine Light is here, it's streaming toward us in immense power and compassion because of the hugeness of what we face. While it's a time of terror and horror, it's also a time of tremendous opportunity. But we all have to make that choice. We all have very much and very passionately to want to. Fortunately, there are very many teachers of all kinds who are helping us forward in this.

Rick: We see that traditionally religion has been a major base for consciousness - influencing consciousness. Do you see western religious thought being overtaken by eastern, or vice versa?

Andrew: No I don't. I think that in my own case, I've had a very strange journey. I was born Christian and because of the complete lack of any real spiritual intensity in the Anglican Church that I was born into, I went on a very, very long journey which took me to Tibetan Buddhism and of course to Mother Meera. But as I develop, I realize that in Christianity itself there is an extraordinary fund of the most sacred wisdom. Christ himself, the Mother, the Virgin, are huge reservoirs of power. It's not that there is a difference between east and west, it's that for many people, going on a journey into eastern religion has made them much more profoundly aware of the deepest sources of their own spirituality and of their own culture. So what I see happening is many, many, many Westerners not returning to Christianity exactly, but reclaiming the power of the love of Christ. And the power of the love of Christ is an immense force at this particular moment because it's the power of action through love, the power of parity, the power of really helping each other in very practical, very passionate ways. It's also of course the love of the Mother because Christ and the Mother are very deeply connected.

Rick: We've witnessed in western culture, beginning in the mid-to-late 1800s and accelerating in the last 30 years a beginning of what I'd call a metamorphosis in western religious thought. Something that we are calling the Consciousness Movement. Some people call it New Age and others see it as a revival of the old-time religions, Earth/Goddess-based religions such as Paganism, Wicca, Native American, etc. Do you think that this general movement is a true spiritual awakening or, in your view, is this simply a power struggle such as occurred in the early days of the Christian church?

Andrew: Oh, I think definitely it's an amazing and huge and true spiritual awakening but there are aspects of it and there are movements within it which are very troubling. That are, um, if you like, religion made by Calvin Klein, which is superficial and materialistic. But this is only to be expected because we have lost our own wisdom tradition. For centuries we've been without it so we have very few categories, very few standards, to judge the kind of stuff that's being thrown in our faces.

Rick: In Hidden Journey, you said, "I had always disliked the strain of escapism in a good deal of mysticism." What meaning would those words have for you today?

Andrew: They have an even stronger meaning. I feel that given the horror and terror and immense difficulty of what we're facing, any desire to use the mystical adventure as a way of escaping from the world really is a tremendously unhelpful one, to put it mildly. People go on a mystic journey to find in the Light the source of immense strength, immense confidence, immense hope, so that they can turn around and fight for peace in the arena of the world as Ghandi did, as Martin Luther King did, as the Dali Lama does, with that passion and that sweetness and that fundamental sense of the unity of all humankind. But that can only be found by prayer. That prayer must now be translated into political personal action in every possible dimension for the world to be saved. So it's more important than ever that the mystical adventure does not become an excuse for narcissism, for self-absorption, for the escape from public and private responsibilities.

Rick: Right. We don't want to be caught up in being so spiritual that we're no earthly good.

Andrew: Exactly! It's a wonderful phrase, so spiritual that we're no earthly good. I think that we have to look at what real spirituality is. St. Teresa of Avila has a wonderful phrase. She says "Don't separate Martha and Mary, combine them." We need a spirituality which is at once very exalted, very ecstatic, full of adoration, full of direct mystical experience, and a spirituality that is immensely practical and focused on the real issues that need to be dealt with and healed.

Rick: We are, after all, in physical form here.

Andrew: Well we're here in physical form for a very important reason. One of the disasters I think of all the major religions is that they deny the body and they deny the glory of this experience in some way. And what we're seeing, I think in this very important part of this great spiritual revolution that we're having, is the consequence of this denial of the body and of matter. Only a race that's been taught the body is in some sense evil and that matter was somehow degrading could be on the brink of destroying itself and the Earth. So what is necessary now is to reclaim the sense of the glory of being here and of the glory of the Earth and that is where I think religions such as the Native American religion and the aborigines and all the tribes people of the world have an enormous amount to teach us. More sometimes in fact than the highest metaphysics of Mahayana or Hinduism because the tribes people of the world kept a sense of the ultimate sacredness of nature and of the ultimate intensity of our dependence upon nature. And until we all wake up as a race to just how dependent we are and how gloriously so upon what we are surrounded by, thinking about Nirvana is not going to save the world. What is going to save the world is waking up to a sense of passionate loving dependence upon everything.

Rick: What comes to mind when we talk about the natural spirituality of man is that it focuses a great deal on the inner person. Hindu and Native American and others don't necessarily worship a single deity. There are many nature spirits, but they see Spirit in all nature ...

Andrew: I think that if you look very carefully, if you read a book like Robert Lawler's book on the aborigines, you see that it's like Hinduism. There is a tremendous sense of plurality, but there's also a very, very mysterious and mystical sense of unity behind plurality. So I don't think we can in any way patronize the nature religions as saying that they don't have that. I think they have that very deeply. They have a sense of the ground of Spirit out of which all reality comes and in which all reality is soaked.

Rick: But I think also they tend to focus on their history in a more collective sense. In other words, the forefathers as a group ...

Andrew: ...well, I think that comes from a tremendous sense of responsibility to a tradition of heritage. It is a great loss that we have no such adoration of the whole work that the human race has put into being here.

Rick: I'd like to head off into a little bit different direction now. I'm very interested in how you define today what an avatar is. And I'm going to be heading toward the difference in an avatar and, let's say, an evolved master. Is there in fact a difference?

Andrew: Well, I'm less and less sure of all of these names and distinctions, and I'd rather not give any definition. What I think is very important is now for people to concentrate on the depth of their own spirituality and to realize that what is in us is nothing less than a spark of the godhead in each one of us. And that there are certain beings on the Earth who have realized this more than others. We can get lost in names and categories at a moment when it's absolutely essential that all of us claim the passion of our own spirituality. There are many ways of doing that. You can go to a realized master, or you can go to the Divine directly. And more and more I'm thinking that it may be absolutely the best to go to the Divine directly.

Rick: I agree, eliminate the middleman. There area lot of people, though, that will define for us, and I have to be conscious of where I am today. Right now I'm in North Carolina and there are a lot of people who like to define things for us here. I was speaking with somebody who was telling me that in their view an avatar is somebody who comes down to Earth so to speak. Whereas an evolved master is somebody who has evolved through many Earthlife incarnations. The question comes then, and I'm thinking specifically here of Mother Meera, is to what I call Earthlife's struggle-misery savvy. I mean, how is there a difference here? Does she really relate to the pains and the struggles of just the average person, somebody who is worried about their next meal, this sort of stuff, on that same level?

Andrew: Well, I'm not going to answer any questions directly about Mother Meera because I think everything that I can say is in my book and in Answers (by Mother Meera). But what I will say is that we can get very, very lost in irrelevant kinds of distinctions at a time when it's much more important to realize our own spirituality than to go on discussing Sanskrit words. We must find the heart of love in ourselves and act from that heart of love. And whatever road takes us there, whether it's the Dali Lama, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mother Meera, or the Divine itself, is a road that is wonderful to take. But don't let's get mixed up and lost in questions which we really don't know the answer to until we're enlightened ourselves. At which point, of course, the answer stops being interesting. (both laugh!) So why get tom up in all of that? My emphasis is really more and more on action being born ... real action in the real world, being born out of spiritual knowledge. And also that people must stop giving up their power to other people.

Rick: This is something that kept coming back to my mind as I read Hidden Journey. Without her grace, none of this would have occurred in your life. You've made statements of that nature at several points throughout the book. How can I realize my own divinity if I feel that I am continually at the mercy of another, even if this is an avatar, a Krishna, a Christ, or any deity or perceived deity?

Andrew: I had a particular path, but there are many, many other ways of realizing one's own inner divinity. I just had one particular way in the terms of my own psychology and in my own past and the circumstances of this life. But of course people can realize their own divinity. They can simply ask God to awaken it in them and they can pray. They can contact the Light directly; they need no middleman. And I think for that, you just need a great deal of passion and a great deal of patience and a great deal of perseverance. Because everyone is the son and the daughter of God, everyone has a direct line to God and in a time like this when the Light is streaming toward the Earth everyone can in their own privacy realize the Divine through prayer. The best way is through repeating the name of the aspect of God that you find most valuable to you. If you don't have that particular need to realize God through adoration of a being through whom God is streaming, then go to the source directly and open up. In some ways it may be easier to go to the source directly because there are lots of confusions and difficulties that can sometimes settle in with the master which can be obviated by the direct source. Both ways have their problems and both ways have their opportunities and they both lead to the same goal.

Rick: What I'm trying to do is to convey what you're saying to a very conservative part of the world.

Andrew: Well, I think to say to the conservative part of the world that there is a great spiritual revolution going on and that in Christianity itself is a message of supreme charity and supreme love toward all beings that is lived out in the life of Christ and of course also in the surrender and love of the Divine Mother in Mary.

Rick: Okay, but this is the pure message of the Christ. What we've seen in the last 2,000 years is a basic religion built on this message which of course has been influenced, colored, controlled, blah, blah, blah, by people ...

Andrew: ...use the great spiritual revolution that's happening all around you. Use the facts of this terrible situation to rediscover the Christ within you, the Christ that you say you believe in and that you love. Find that Christ and find the Mother and that Christ inside your heart and act from that. The West has its own wonderful system. It's true that the Church has been a total disaster, but it's also true that within the Church there have been very, very great mystics and saintly beings who really have been Christed and who have really understood. So turn to them to them for guidance. And turn to, the Hindu scriptures, the Buddhist scriptures, the great Sufi masters, and anybody on the Earth who can give you inspiration. But to those of you who feel that all the New Age is chancy and dicey and that Hinduism is foreign to you, by all means, don't reject those things. Realize that they are expressing a genuine hunger, but turn to the source of your own truth. Turn to the source of your own religion.

Rick: But, there is a real fear of taking that step. People have been taught for so long this idea that "you are worm of the dust." Nothing's going to happen until some great divine intercession occurs ...

Andrew: ... well that is exactly what Christ came to stop. Christ never made people feel like worms in the dust...

Rick: ...I agree, but you see, what I'm saying is that we have ...

Andrew: ... Oh! This terrifying conditioning of original sin?

Rick: Right!

Andrew: Well this, the conditioning of original sin, the doctrine of original sin has been a psychic disaster for mankind, most notably because it ensures that the glorious truth that Christ and all the other great teachers of mankind can't get through to the human race at the moment when it needs it most. It's almost as if the Church and the doctrine of original sin were huge black walls blocking the light of Christ and of all the other great masters from healing the heart of the world.

Rick: Right! And, I see this has created a kind of victim mentality or attitude, but it's also become a nifty device for avoiding personal responsibility for our own actions. Not only to each other ...

Andrew: ...I totally agree with you! This is the great danger at this moment. All the old religions have failed us. They've all betrayed their originators and there's a tremendous streak in the New Age of escapism. And there are very few people in the world who are realizing firstly how dreadful everything is, and how terrifying, and secondly how essential it is that love must be made active. There's no true mystical transformation without a transformation of the world around us. That is our duty now. If you've seen the nature of unconditional love, if you've seen the nature of the fundamental unity of all beings, then you have a tremendous responsibility to honor it in the depths of your life and to put it into practice in all the aspects of your life. And that includes, of course, political aspects.

Rick: And this is consistent, because politics is the vehicles of economics, the source of poverty, starvation, etc. etc.

Andrew: It makes absolutely no sense to talk about love and not to give money to the person who's starving on your doorstep. No sense at all to talk about love and not to really examine how your habits influence the destruction of the planet. It makes absolutely no sense to talk about love and not to really scrutinize the way in which whole persons of the populations are treated, and by which I mean the poor, women, homosexuals, drug addicts, the rejected, the despised, and the humiliated. I mean, we have to go through a linked revolution. And the revolution is a calm revolution, but it's political, it's moral it is spiritual, it is sexual. It means nothing less than an examination of absolutely everything we've inherited, and an enacting of love in all those different dimensions.

Rick: You have said that we have 20 years to really get...

Andrew: I'm a tremendous optimist, you know! (laughs)

Rick: (laughs) Uh oh. I don't know if I like that.

Andrew: ... many people in the ecological movement and the environmental movement think that it's already lost. I think that by saying 20 years, I'm being very optimistic. Many, many very serious people, many of them scientists, believe that the problems are already too great to be solved and that what we're really going to be seeing is a catastrophe which is going to deepen. I don't think that is the case. I don't think the Light would be present in the intensity which it is present to anybody who contacts it, that it not mean serious business. And I think it totally does. The Divine really does intend the transformation of the human race and is going to make sure that it happens.

Rick: Well, there are some who say that we are now in what is being called the Age of Enlightenment. What Peter Russell, Gary Zukav, Chardin, people like this talked about. And certainly we've heard in prophecy from the Great Pyramid, Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, and people of this nature ...

Andrew: ...yes, we are there.

Rick: Okay. We have an estimated 60 million people every year who are literally starving to death because of economics and the misuse and abuse of the environment...

Andrew: ...this is horrific! We have to stop congratulating ourselves on the spiritual revolution and start putting the spiritual revolution into practice to feed the 60 million, to clear up the environment, to stop atomic bombs being made, and to look at every aspect of society. The wealthiest societies like America, England, and France, are creating a whole class that is indisparate, taking drugs and shooting people. I mean, we cannot afford not to look at the absolute degradation of the world we are in ...

Rick: ...and, you see, here in the U.S. we're insulated from what's really going on in the rest of the world (media control). My concern is that we run a very high risk of just playing the game that we are so enlightened, while people around us are literally starving to death.

Andrew: Well, I don't believe this is true. I think that the U.S. is going through convulsions, I mean the earthquake of Los Angeles, the weather on the East coast clearly shows that the U.S. is in fury.

Rick: Well, I agree with what you're saying on that level, but I'm talking about individual people ...

Andrew: You're dealing with a media that is entirely corrupt, whose entire life is lulling people into a state of coma. With the U.S. having the most powerful media, it also has the most powerful coma to wake up from ...

Rick: ...and this is what I see as a great danger to us because we�re buying into that ... just because I believe something doesn't mean it's true. In other words, we need to think beyond ourself, beyond our own country, and yes, we've had earthquakes in California, and some other things happened. But this is nothing compared to people in Africa who have been starving to death this entire century.

Andrew: I entirely agree with you and I think that would be a wonderful way of using these disasters, of opening the heart to the pain of the whole world and to looking at our responsibility as rich and powerful nations. And really accepting that every time you collect the money that comes from your investments, that you're really speculating on the death of the third world. And we have to just see things for what they are. It doesn't mean that everybody should go on a convulsive guilt trip. It means simply waking up to where we are ...

Rick: ...well, it moves to action. I mean, this is what we hope to do here, is to move people to action.

Andrew: To real action. I tell you what I really think, which is that in the next 10 years, if a massive peaceful civil rights, civil disobedience movement doesn't take place all over the world, in which millions, really millions of people calmly take to the streets and say "No more pollution, no more atom bombs, no more destruction of the forests, no more allowing millions to starve in Africa, in Asia, while we feed our faces, no more Bosnias ever again." Until we take to the streets, millions of us, they will go on - the politicians and the bureaucrats and the big businessmen - creating madness. And the media will go on lulling people into a coma with lies. The survival of the Earth depends upon whether we can find a way of expressing in a massively effective form the terrible disenchantment that we all feel in looking at the world.

Rick: But we must look at our own personal choices. Eating meat. This is the biggest driving force behind the destruction of the rainforests, for instance. 90 percent of all the beef that's raised in South America comes to the U.S., Australia, and to Europe.

Andrew: I think we've all got to look very carefully. I think partly there's of course not enough, in some ways there's too much information, but in other ways what we need more than anything else is people to gather the information and make it impossible for people not to see the connections. One of the most important things that anybody in the spiritual path can do now, if they're really serious about it, is start looking at the connections. It's no good having marvelous visions and mystical thoughts and going off into what you imagine to be Nirvana, if you're actually conspiring to the destruction of the rainforests and with poverty.

Rick: Exactly! And, this is what l mean by moving people to physical, worldly action. To actually do something in your life ...

Andrew: But, action without wisdom will not change anything. The two have to go hand in hand. Mary and Martha have to combine. There has to be a deep inner foundation in prayer and in the love of God and in the direct experience if possible of the Light, and there has to be actions in the world, informed by the Light, informed by that prayer, informed by that inner understanding. Otherwise action will just repeat the mistakes of the past. So that really we�re being asked by the Divine and asked by our own terrible mistakes to make a new kind of synthesis of inwardness and action which has never really been found on the Earth. All the religions have been attempts at it and they've all failed in various ways, in disastrous ways. Let's face it, nearly all the modem movements, all the spiritual movements, unfortunately pander to an exaggerated transcendence and very few people are really bringing the Light and matter together. God and the Earth together. Transcendent love and actual practical, direct love together. That's the only possible way, and that's why I think Christ is so important because the true Christ is that utter combination. And I think that the Dali Lama is so important for the same reason. He's not simply a realized master whose a very high metaphysician, he's somebody who puts his whole life on the line every day for the world, and lives his message. We should be able to say that, at the end of our life what Gandhi said once. Somebody said to him, "What is your message to the world?" And he said, "My life is my message." That's it, isn't it? There are no words, there are actions.

Rick: That's it. That's all that gets anything done.

Andrew: And it has to be done fast. What I particularly worry about is that the New Age will just allow a lot of people to take massive spiritual aspirin at a time really in which they need to be awake more than ever.

Rick: A lot of people are drawn into it because of the glitz and glamour. This is what concerns me.

Andrew: It concerns me tremendously. Unfortunately, we're dealing with a very tragic situation which is that the West has been corrupt for so long and there has been very, very little of a wisdom tradition in Christianity because it's become entirely worldly-materialistic, so that people have very few standards of spiritual intensity to reach for.

Rick: But, I also think "Whatever it takes to get them involved." They may come in because a crystal dazzles or some fancy therapy, or something like this, but once the path is begun, it's pretty hard to stop.

Andrew: Oh; God yes! Exactly. And I think that one shouldn't criticize people, because we're all in a mess. Everybody's neurotic, so don't let's criticize people too much. Let's warn people of the dangers, because one has been through them oneself. Reformed alcoholics are the best people to talk to if you're trying to break the alcoholic habit! I think it's very important that people are given tremendous hope from within their own tradition. I think it's very important that no one person is made to be the "only One." I think it's extremely important to say that "God is in everyone, and in every single human being" and that every single human being can realize God. And demystify a little bit the whole guru business. Not to say that there aren't such things as gurus, but to say that people must have very much a great discrimination.

Rick: We must see them as teachers, not as "Saviours," so to speak, where we're more or less at their mercy for them to do something good to or for us.

Andrew: That's a very good distinction. Because seeing people as "Saviors" can mean that one doesn't have to do the work one's self. But this is the danger with every teacher.

Rick: I did have one question, and if you still choose to not answer, that's okay. Do you see a religion, in the traditional sense, forming around Mother Meera. Or other current teachers, such as Sai Babbha?

Andrew: Whenever you have a great charismatic figure...tremendous danger of a religion, a sect, forming around them. I don't see it, but anything is possible. I just hope it won't happen. Especially around her, but around anyone. We've had enough sects, we've had enough religions. What is needed is direct spiritual experience, direct humble spiritual learning and direct humble spiritual teaching.

Rick: All that's really necessary is that we know we can access this directly.

Andrew: Absolutely! It's an impossible question to answer because the whole presence of the Mother ... she's still very young. I think it would be a tremendous disaster if a religion formed around ANY of the Mothers, particularly, because the whole vision of the Mother goes far beyond religion. It goes into the experience of direct love. I really want to emphasize action and the end of Narcissism and the direct nature of the relationship with the Divine...which can, of course, go through a Master, or a Realized Being. But, can also be done, quite simply, wherever anybody is.

Rick: This is part of our mission statement - what I want to do personally, what we're doing with this magazine. (and now, website etc.)

Andrew: It's terribly important, but we mustn't, by praising one person, make everybody else feel like they don't have their own access. Of course they have! God is right in your own front hall, God is in your garden, God is sleeping in the bed next to you. And God is the air you breath, and God is the mouth with which you're breathing the air. So, let us just realize that and love everyone AS God, and IN God.