Online series The Urgency of Change with Javier Gómez Rodríguez, March 15, 2026
This was the last of the six-part series on The Urgency of Change, entitled ‘The Religious Life’. The presenter framed K’s approach in the historical context of the clash between science and religion in the 19th century. Science dismissed religion as superstitious and philosophers proclaimed that God was dead. In contrast, the theosophists felt that the rampant materialism and social Darwinism of the new age of progress was ushering the Kali Yug or age of chaos. They maintained that at such times a new teacher appeared to impart to humanity the new religious wisdom needed to bring about a new culture. And they identified a scrawny Brahmin boy standing on the beach outside the TS compound in Adyar, Chennai, as the vehicle.
K accepted the term ‘religion’ as the most suitable to what he was and had to teach. He dismissed the authority, belief, dogma, and moral systems of organised religion. He maintained that the first rule of spirituality is that there is no authority, and he emphasised questioning and seeing rather than the acceptance of dogmas. His approach focused on self-knowledge, which requires freedom. While we can all learn from whatever religious tradition, truth itself has no tradition, for it is a matter of perception of what is from moment to moment. Religion is thus a living thing requiring the highest awareness and intelligence rather than moral principles and their dualistic judgments. Right action arises from immediate perception of what is, which involves freedom from prejudice, fear and self-interest. So morality is perceptive, not prescriptive. As the self is the core factor of division, the ending of the self is the ending of conflict and suffering and the essence of wholeness at the heart of the religious life.
The question was raised as to the meaning of dying to the past, as this is what the ending of self implies. It was suggested that the past ends when we stay with the patterns of conflict that make up the self and there is an insight into their falseness. When we see something is false, it vanishes as though it had never existed. While this happens in relation to particular patterns, K’s deeper quest is for an insight into and ending of the pattern maker. Another participant raised the question of suffering. K defined death as the ending of attachment and attachment as one of the causes of suffering, so death would be the ending of suffering. But while there is a natural component to our attachments and their losses and pains, there is a psychological attachment not to the person but to their image and this is the ground of suffering. It is in the ending of this false attachment that suffering ends, and that is the death of self.
One of the participants shared her personal experience of an uninvited state of non-duality, which brought her in contact with the actuality and revealed the meaning of living without a centre and the qualities of freedom, love and peace that emerge from it. Next the group discussed suffering as resulting from the time-bound nature of self. It was proposed that psychological suffering is delusional since it springs from the past interfering with perception and creating a division from what is. The self is time and as such it is always incomplete, so it pursues becoming. The time of self denies being, and that is suffering.
One of the participants proposed that the group continue to explore together after the seminar, and it was agreed to share emails. Ralph invited participants to consider attending upcoming retreats at their centre in Victoria, including a five-day online workshop with Jackie McInley. It was announced that Javier would be the support person at the centre this coming October.
- Javier Gómez Rodríguez
