THE FORK IN THE ROAD

The spiritual odyssey and autobiography of Neville Jayaweera,

written by him in the third person in order to avoid using the word “I”

He shall be telling this story with a sigh,

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and he –

He took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

(Adapted from The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost)

 Editor’s note: Neville Jayaweera wrote the major part of his autobiography below in 2009 and 2010 with a few later additions. Some portions of this autobiography were published as a series of memoirs in the Sunday Island newspaper in Sri Lanka.

Introduction

Neville Jayaweera was a Civil Servant, both in Sri Lanka and on the international stage, and an Ambassador for his country as well, who in later life became a mystic and a man of God. While by mundane and conventional criteria, he may be said to have distinguished himself both in Sri Lanka and in the international arena, he considers whatever he achieved in these spheres as mere chaff, when compared to what he has now to share that is of real meaning and worth.

Because he feared that it would become an ego trip for him, for years Jayaweera had resisted entreaties from family, former colleagues, and publishers, to write his life story. An ego trip would completely contradict the values by which he now tries to live, hence his abhorrence of any initiative which would seem to encourage it. 

The only reason that now, in his 80th year (in 2010), he has relented and agreed to write his autobiography, is the hope that whoever reads it might be persuaded that the world in which he was supposed to have distinguished himself was just an illusion, and that there is an alternative reality which he knew – through a sixth sense – existed but dared not explore, and which most of his friends and associates whose feet were planted firmly in the world, knew nothing of. 

Many spend their lives hankering after name and fame, position and power, and riches and wealth, and either clinging to or defending their so-called achievements and possessions, exposing themselves thereby to untold stresses and tensions, conflicts and frustrations and unhappiness and misery.

Jayaweera claims that there is an alternative model for living, an alternative reality, which, however, is not the traditional heaven which people hope to have once they are dead and buried, but a reality that can be lived on earth, here and now.

He wants to say that this alternative reality is largely devoid of the constraints which characterise our normal earthly experience, and is not only fulfilling at a personal level, but is also catalytic for the world around us, in the same way that an immersion heater is catalytic for the bath of water, or a lighted candle is catalytic for the enveloping darkness. He emphasises that this alternative reality he talking about is not theory or a theology, but an experiential reality, a way of life, an experience to which he can personally attest, and which is available to whoever will steadfastly pursue it.

He says that he feels like a member of the human race who, having been long trapped in Plato's cave of insubstantial images, giving ear to a call from afar saying that what he had been mistaking for the real world are but shadows on the wall, opened his eyes and walked out into another universe – the real world – ablaze with light and framed in love, joy and peace.

Jayaweera says that the only reason for him now to talk about his life is to show that the life he lived in the world during his first 40 years, although successful by the world's standards, was really tinsel and fluff, and based on values that are the polar opposite of the life that he now understands real life to be.

He says that the fundamental difference between the first 40 years of his life and his later life was that his former life was "of the world", and although lauded by it, was driven by Ego and devoid of substance. He confesses that while he was working ostensibly as a "dedicated public servant" he was only using the "public" and their "problems" to "piggy back" his Ego, and legitimise his existence. He says that he did not do so knowingly or deliberately but, like the rest of the world, was ignorant of how Ego, ever hidden from view, converts the world's problems into opportunities for indulging itself.

The Ego that Jayaweera is talking about must not be confused with Sigmund Freud’s three psychoanalytic categories of the id, ego and super-ego, or even with narcissism, all of which can be subsumed within it, but are not the thing itself.

Neither does Jayaweera use the word Ego simply to mean egoism, self-centeredness or narcissism which, although they are obvious manifestations, are not Ego itself.

There are other blatant expressions of Ego as well, such as overweening ambition, pride and arrogance, elitism, the desire for ostentation and public adulation, fear and paranoia, oversensitivity and a constant feeling of insecurity, acquisitiveness and greed, anger and impatience, hostility and aggression, a manipulative character, rage in the face of criticism, a hypercritical and judgemental tongue, bitterness and resentments, and, not least, constructing elaborate defence mechanisms for concealing itself, all of which, although unmistakable evidence of Ego, are only its manifestations, and not Ego itself.

 Jayaweera says that the Ego he is talking about is a spiritual category rather than a psychological syndrome, and that it has no place within the curriculum of psychoanalysts, psychiatrists or psychologists. The Ego that Jayaweera is talking about can be understood only by postulating an overarching concept of Self or Overself, better known as God, of which it is only a poor imitator and impostor.

Ego is essentially a quality of consciousness – a flawed consciousness if you like – that is universally immanent in homo sapiens from birth and persists through life. It is a belief in the ultimate reality of the individual earthly self, a belief in a self-subsistent, individual existence. It is a branch broken and separated from the vine, believing that it is itself the true vine.

In Christian belief, Ego would be the Fallen Adam. In Theravada Buddhist doctrine, Ego would be the product of Avijja (ignorance) leading to the belief in Atta (an independent existence). In Hindu belief, Ego would be Maya (illusion) and in Islamic belief, Kbir (arrogance). All these concepts signify the same truth, concerning the claim of an illusory self to be a self-subsistent identity.

The world of which Jayaweera was once a willing collaborator was essentially an outworking of this illusory Ego, and therefore reflected, through its structures and systems, all of the ills that Ego manifests at the level of individuals and personal relationships. Later on in this autobiographical sketch Jayaweera discusses in greater depth the origins and nature of Ego (see section on “Ego and separation”).

He says that while the contributions he made towards bringing the benefits of "development" to hundreds and thousands of people in Sri Lanka, or towards resolving ethnic conflicts, or to running institutions and corporations efficiently were, by the world's standards, objectively beneficial, he also confesses that, looked at from the perspective of the big picture, they were entirely superficial and marked him out as a collaborator in an enterprise which was totally illusory.

Now, though still living "in the world", he no longer considers himself to be "of it". That is to say, having identified the spurious Ego to be the source, the motor and the end of earthly existence, he no longer has any illusions about the world’s unreality and therefore no longer conforms to its values. However, without actually retreating physically from the world, and while continuing to discharge all his duties towards family and community, he seeks to engage the world at another level, by laying the axe to the trunk, so to say, rather than by engaging with it superficially or with band-aid and plaster.

An important distinction between the life “of the world” he lived then, and the life he lives now, is that while he was “of the world”, most of the factors and circumstances that impacted his life were beyond his means to control, and that to that extent, he was mostly their plaything or victim. However, now, regardless of external circumstances, he remains centred and at peace, exercising dominion over those external factors that once shaped his life. Then, he lived at the circumference, on the outer plane, in constant tension with billions like him stranded out there on the fringes of reality, whereas now he lives at the centre, on the inner plane, at one with and reconciled to all of creation. 

Jayaweera admits that, to any person who does not share his paradigm, his claim to engage the world at another level, by laying the axe to the trunk, rather than superficially, must sound perplexing, and even presumptuous. However, he concedes that he is not at all surprised by that, but on the other hand, neither would he enter into contention with anyone in order to prove his case. He says that what is involved here is a radical opposition of paradigms, and that communicating across these two paradigms – the Ego-driven world paradigm and the non-Ego-driven transcendental paradigm – will be as futile as trying to convey the beauty of a great painting to someone who had been born without the faculty of sight. 

The premise underlying Jayaweera's thinking is simply that the problems of the world, whether they are personal problems or political problems, economic problems or social problems, are not in and of themselves the real problems, but that they are only the manifestations of a deeper malaise.

That deeper malaise is the Ego, the belief in an existence separate from and independent of, the Transcendental Reality or God. It is a belief that is universally immanent in, and animates, Homo Sapiens and cannot be shaken off by an act of will, even when exposed.

Ego’s universal presence as a spiritual category cannot be proved empirically, although its reality can be inferred rationally. However, as a spiritual category, it escapes detection even by the most brilliant and talented minds, because they are themselves invariably driven by it and serve as its agents. Neither can Ego’s presence and true nature be grasped through an intellectual understanding or through the accumulation of knowledge about it and certainly not through psychoanalytic and psychiatric categories. A deeper faculty of understanding, which Jayaweera calls the faculty of spiritual discernment, is required, and only the exercise of that faculty can lead to the ultimate exposure of Ego. More of that later in this text.

He says that it will never be possible to resolve problems at the manifest level, whether personal or political, economic or social, until the deeper malaise is addressed first. Unless we do that, says Jayaweera, those problems which we think we have solved and disposed of will keep bubbling up like molten lava from a hidden volcanic flow, in different places, in different forms, but basically the same problem regurgitating.

Jayaweera reminds us that from as far back as recorded history mankind has been trying to resolve the basic problems of greed and envy, of fear and suspicion, of conflict and violence, of lack and limitation, and of disease, decay and death; but despite great strides made at the surface level, the underlying malaise keeps turning up, even though in different forms.

He says that during the first forty years of life he was like a squirrel in a cage, whirling away furiously, thinking that he was contributing to the world's progress, but actually getting no further than that hapless furry creature. However, he says that in his fortieth year he was set free from his illusion, and now watches with compassion as most of the rest of the world continues to squirrel away as he himself once did, producing effects no different from those that he produced during his own squirrelling years.

The squirrel gyrating in his cage to no purpose is Jayaweera’s metaphor for the human predicament.

Jayaweera insists that the “alternative life” he is talking about does not require that we retire into a hermitage or a monastery or to a desert island. Rather, it is a life that has to be lived “in” the world, amidst its tribulations and strife, performing whatever vocation or task we find ourselves in. Actually, the “alternative life” has little to do with our vocations, or even with our habitat, although certain vocations, such as politics or soldiering, which usually require duplicity and violence as a way of life, will always militate against it.

Jayaweera claims that the alternative life he is talking about is primarily a state of consciousness which, once attained, will not only place one above the madding crowd, but most importantly will also enable one to influence it in the direction of its own liberation. It is a state of consciousness which, once realised, will enable one to lay the axe to the trunk and solve the problems of the world at a radical level, which is the only way they can ever be solved. In that sense, the “alternative life” is not an opting out of the world, but an absolute commitment towards transforming it.

The only justification he sees for talking about his "old" life when he was "of the world", is simply to show up the difference between these two completely contrasting and irreconcilable modes of existence, That is, the difference between appearance and reality, between form and substance and between living at the circumference and living at the centre.

Jayaweera responds to these contrasting modes of life in the words of the beggar who, upon being healed of his blindness by Jesus of Nazareth, ran through town shouting,

“One thing I know: that though I was blind, now I see!” (John 9:25).

How Neville Jayaweera escaped from his squirrel cage and gained his freedom is the story line of this autobiography.

[Spiritual journey:  Readers who would prefer to bypass career details may wish to go directly to the start of Jayaweera's spiritual journey, beginning in section:  2.5. Director of Research and Planning, WACC, London]

CONTENTS

1. Personal and family history

2. Career and personal crisis

2.1. General Manager, Gal Oya Development Board

2.2. Government Agent, District of Jaffna

2.3. Chairman and Director General Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation

2.4. Government Agent District of Vavuniya

2.5. Director of Research and Planning, WACC, London

2.5.1. Downsizing

2.5.2. Fresh round of ego building

2.5.3. A precipitous fall

2.5.4. Dark Night of the Soul

2.5.5. On wings of eagles

2.5.6. In denial of reality?

2.5.7. The Communication Revolution

2.5.8. Globe girdling

2.6. Ambassador to Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland

3. Looking back on career

4. A dramatic life crisis and an awesome encounter

5. A transformed life

6. The power of meditation

7. The spiritual value of traumas

8. Ego and separation

9. A new world view

10. Homo resurrectus and the New Creation

11. Manifesting the image and likeness of Christ

12. Organised religion or spirituality?

13. Concerning nationalism and patriotism

14. Jayaweera’s writings and publications

Chapter 1

Personal and family history

Neville David Jayaweera (born 23 October 1930) is a former Sri Lankan Civil Servant and Ambassador, who in retirement has turned writer, teacher, preacher and expositor of spiritual truth. Although he belongs to the majority Sinhala ethnic group in Sri Lanka, he deplores ethnic distinctions as divisive and, although valid as cultural categories, considers them to be anthropologically and spiritually untenable.

He was born to Robert and Constance Jayaweera in Colombo, Sri Lanka, the third of four siblings. He had his secondary education at St Thomas's College, Mount Lavinia, and at St Peter's College, Colombo. He took an Honours Degree in Philosophy from the University of Ceylon in 1953 and passed into the prestigious Ceylon Civil Service in 1955. In 1949, his brother Stanley had also taken an Honours Degree in Philosophy from the same university and in 1953 had passed into the elite Ceylon Foreign Service, within which he held several senior diplomatic positions and retired in 1988 as Sri Lanka's Ambassador to Germany.

[Editor’s note: In the then Ceylon (named Sri Lanka after 1972), the term ‘civil service’ did not mean what it means in Britain or in other countries. The Ceylon Civil Service (CCS) was an elite cadre of officials, which even as late as the 1950s, did not number more than 120 out of a total public service of over 200,000, and boasted a tradition and a history stretching back to 1833. Civil Servants were recruited directly from universities where most of them had achieved academic excellence, but even then, only after passing a notoriously stiff competitive exam, at which only the first five or six were selected every year, out of about 200 who competed. Following entry into the Service, after a two-year cadetship, Civil Servants were posted to the higher echelons of the bureaucracy. Because it was considered to be a colonial legacy and also because of its blatant elitism, in 1963 the Ceylon Civil Service was abolished as a separate service and its cadres integrated into the new Ceylon Administrative Service.]

Jayaweera wants to emphasise that although he was a totally committed Buddhist up to his fortieth year, he owes much of his character as a public servant, to the education he received at two premier missionary institutions – St Thomas' College in Mount Lavinia and St Peter's College in Colombo, where he imbibed values which still endure with him and which still guide his conduct. In both institutions, he learnt the importance of discipline as a way of life and that there are certain things that are simply "not done"; an invisible code which defines what it means to be a “gentleman”, in the best sense of that term. He says that he has been called many pejorative things during his time as a public servant – that he was arrogant, that he was an autocrat, that he was a ruthless disciplinarian, and that he lacked compassion, but never did anyone say of him that he was unprincipled, mean, low or dishonest.

Equally, he wants to emphasise two other influences in the shaping of his public life. One was his father, Robert Francis Jayaweera, whom to this day he reveres as a man of absolute integrity and the archetypal public servant; and the other, the local Buddhist temple, where he learnt most of the soft virtues that defined his character such as kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, and the abhorrence of taking life in any form.

At university, Jayaweera met Trixie Jayasekera, who by an extraordinary coincidence was also born on the 23 October 1930, to Mudaliyar William and Stella Jayasekera of Ratnapura. Trixie had her secondary education at Bishop's College, Colombo, and took a General Arts Degree from the University of Ceylon. Later, in the UK, she worked for several years as a Library Assistant under the Bromley Council in Kent.

Neville Jayaweera and Trixie Jayasekera married in 1958 and have a daughter, Manohari (Mano), son-in law Edmund Glynn and grandson Maximillian.

Having moved to the UK in 1974, the Jayaweeras now live in retirement in a quiet suburb of Kent, adjacent to where their daughter and family live.

[Editor’s note: Neville’s beloved Manohari died on 2 February 2017. Neville’s beloved Trixie died on 7 May 2020.]  

Chapter 2

Career and personal crisis

Jayaweera served in the Ceylon Civil Service (later renamed Ceylon Administrative Service) between the ages of 25 and 42, when he took early retirement. During those 17 years, Jayaweera held several senior positions under government, including:

2.1

1959-63: General Manager of the Gal Oya Development Board (GODB)

The GODB was the largest development project launched by the Government in the 1950s-60s, with over 16,000 employees on its payroll and serviced by over 15 UN expatriate experts. It was a multi-purpose development project, intended as a microcosm of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in the USA.

The GODB was set up as an autonomous authority within the area of its command of approximately 1,500 square miles. It was organised around the country’s largest dam which had been constructed across the Gal Oya river in Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province in the early1950s, with multi-purpose objectives – to provide water for irrigating paddy lands, for opening up new lands and settling new communities on them, for generating power for supplying the Eastern Province, for running a dozen or more industries, etc.

The vast reservoir that was thus impounded was called Senanayake Samudra after the country’s first Prime Minister who had conceived of the project. Under the main dam there were about another eight feeder reservoirs which fed water to the main network, and the extent of land under the command of all the dams was about 2,500 square miles, ie approximately 1/10th of the country’s surface area. It had over 3,000 miles of irrigation channels supplying water to over 170,000 acres of paddy lands and generated hydro power for the whole Eastern Province. It also provided the infrastructure for, and administered, ten industries within its authority, including the largest rice mill in Asia.

Jayaweera was only 29 when the Government asked him to take on the job of being the General Manager of this vast project. Because of its highly unionised and recalcitrant labour force, the GODB was at that time reputed to be the most difficult managerial position under government, and before Jayaweera was posted as its General Manager, only civil servants with over 15 years' service and of 40 years or more in age had held the post. Jayaweera's appointment to it, when he counted less than five years in service and was only 29 years old, caused many to raise eyebrows.

However, undaunted by the enormity of the task given him, through hands-on experience while on the job, Jayaweera learnt the fundamental difference between "administration" and "management", which the government itself had not understood at that time.  Although his main academic discipline was philosophy, in order to stay on top of his job, Jayaweera also made it a point, before assuming duties, to take a few weeks’ duty-leave and learn the elements of civil and mechanical engineering and about dam and road construction, knowledge of which were essential if he was going to be successful as the project's General Manager.

The job proved worthy of its reputation. From the moment Jayaweera assumed duties, thinking that because of his age he was just a "boy" who could be pushed around, senior staff, expatriate "experts" and a formidable array of militant trade unions driven by a Marxist ideology and commanding a workforce of over 16,000, ganged up on him and sought "to put him in his place" and establish their claim to rule the roost. However, Jayaweera would have none of it, and within the first month itself he established beyond anyone's doubt who was the boss around the place, and that settled the score for the ensuing three years.

Through strong but fair managerial initiatives he put an end to labour unrest, reduced by 80% the man-hours lost through strikes, increased fourfold the industrial output and productivity of four of the six industrial enterprises under the Board's authority, and by the time he had completed his assignment, had transformed the project into a viable enterprise for the first time in its 12-year existence.

However, 50 years on, in hindsight, Jayaweera concedes that, although quantitatively and in terms of the impression he made on political bosses and employees, he had made a huge success of his administration of the Gal Oya project, he also deeply regrets the many, many errors he committed in its management. Basically, he admits he was too young and inexperienced to appreciate the enormity of the task he had been entrusted with and that he had looked on it primarily as an opportunity to enforce his personality and will. The more subtle and complex aspects of managing such a large enterprise had escaped him and he admits that if he was to return to it now he would set about it in a vastly different style. The fifty intervening years have yielded a wisdom that at the age of 30 he could not possibly have had!

2.2

1963-66: Government Agent (administrative head) of the District of Jaffna (which is the capital of the Tamils of Sri Lanka) 

The job that the Government asked Jayaweera to take on within three months of relinquishing the job in Gal Oya, when he was only 33 years old, was even more intractable. It had been shunned by his senior colleagues because of its complicated political ecology and the post should normally have been held by someone at least ten years his senior. As he was when he took up the job in Gal Oya, at the age of 33, Jayaweera was the youngest to hold the office in Jaffna since it was first created 1832.

The problem in Jaffna, the capital of the Tamil people, was simply the refusal of the Tamils, who at that time comprised about 20% of the island's population, to accept what they perceived to be a second-class citizenship, and submit to oppression by the Sinhala majority community. In 1956, a strong Sinhala-dominated nationalist government had made the Sinhala language the official language of the country, relegating the Tamil language to a second-class status, which had provoked strident protests from the Tamil people. Additionally, the Tamils felt that they were being squeezed out of the Public Services and the educational system, and most of all that their traditional lands were being systematically taken over by the Sinhala people. These perceptions, held universally among the Tamil people, had developed into a chronic and seemingly intractable confrontation between the two communities, and the District of Jaffna had become virtually ungovernable.   

Since 1956, among senior Civil Servants, the post of Government Agent of Jaffna had become the most shunned senior post in the public service, on a par with the post of General Manager of the Gal Oya Board, which Jayaweera had only recently relinquished. In July 1963, the then Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Mrs SWRD Bandaranaike, had personally visited Jayaweera in his home in Badulla, where he was recuperating from his three-year ordeal with the Gal Oya Board, to appeal to him and his wife, for the sake of the country, to take on the job of Government Agent of Jaffna. 

Jayaweera could not turn down a personal request from the country's Prime Minister and accepted the new posting. However, upon taking office Jayaweera quickly found that the people of Jaffna had genuine grievances and he was torn between his loyalty to Government and his conscience. He chose the daunting option of seeing Mrs Bandaranaike personally and telling her that the policy of repression of the Tamils and confrontation with them would not prove of any benefit either to the Tamil people or to the Government or the country, and that if she still wanted him to continue as Government Agent of Jaffna, he would eschew the policy of confrontation and repression hitherto adopted by Government and instead pursue a policy of consultation, conciliation and compromise. Though taken aback by Jayaweera's audacity, Mrs Bandaranaike relented, but with the proviso that it was only a special dispensation granted to him for his administration of Jaffna and was not to be understood as a change in national policy.   

Thereafter, by pursuing principles of justice and fair play, Jayaweera succeeded in establishing goodwill between the government and the Tamil people, and during the three years he held this post, there was peace and harmony throughout the district.

The first fruits of Jayaweera’s endeavours to bring about a reconciliation between the majority Sinhala community and the Tamil minority community became visible when, within two years of his taking on the job of Jaffna’s GA, a new government was formed  comprising a coalition of the Tamil parties.   

However, within a year of Jayaweera's departure from Jaffna, the government in Colombo squandered all the gains he had made during his three-year tour there. The Sinhala-Tamil coalition broke up, and the conflict raised its ugly head again, leading to violence and civil war over the following four decades. Up to the time of writing (2009), the conflict is known to have taken over 60,000 lives.

Overcoming, through consultation, conciliation and compromise, the antipathy that had separated the Sinhala and the Tamil people for hundreds of years, and being able to grant to the Jaffna District an administration that was free from tension and conflict, even for the three years he was GA, gave Jayaweera great satisfaction, and the subsequent resumption of hostilities has caused him no end of distress. Jayaweera considers his tenure as the Government Agent of Jaffna to be the most successful and satisfying years of his career under government.

2.3

1966-70: Chairman and Director General of the Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation

On the completion of his tour of Jaffna in 1966, the US Embassy in Colombo awarded Jayaweera a two-year Fulbright Scholarship to do postgraduate studies at the John Hopkins University in the USA. Having initially agreed to release him on sabbatical leave for the requested two-year period, at the eleventh hour, when he was about to embark for the USA, the Government did a rethink and said that Jayaweera’s services could not be spared and that he must take on another special assignment, under the then Minister of State Mr JR Jayewardene (later to be Sri Lanka's first President under the new Republican Constitution).

Jayaweera was asked to transform the extant Department of Broadcasting into a Corporation – incorporating a workforce of 3,000 – draft the legislation for the purpose, serve as the new Corporation's first Chairman and Director General, and run the Corporation as a viable entity for at least four years.

It looked to Jayaweera that the succession of impossible jobs that government kept thrusting on him were comparable to the interminable "Trials of Hercules" of Greek legend.

Setting up and running the new Corporation proved even more hazardous than any of his erstwhile jobs. The job of Director General (DG) of Broadcasting had been the graveyard of many Civil Servants. Prior to Jayaweera taking over the job in 1966 there had been 11 DGs in 8 years, which is a lifespan of less than a year for each DG. The reason for this extraordinary rate of attrition had been political interference and the inability of successive DGs to stand up to the politicians. When Jayaweera took over the job he had insisted with his Minister, Mr JR Jayawardene, that there should be no interference either in administrative matters or in programme or news matters, or in any matters within his administration, to which Jayawardene consented, though not without some shock at Jayaweera's impudence.

Whereas not one DG before Jayaweera had survived for more than a year, Jayaweera ran his full term of four years and left only when there was a change of government in May 1970. During those four years the Prime Minister (PM), Dudley Senanayake, himself took over the portfolio of Broadcasting, but not once during Jayaweera's tenure did either JR Jayawardene or Prime Minister Senanayake ever attempt to interfere in Jayaweera's administration. On the rare occasions when individual Cabinet ministers tried to interfere, so as to project their own images on the media, Jayaweera gave them short shrift. Several Cabinet ministers complained to the PM that Jayaweera was arrogant and unresponsive to the needs of MPs and their voters, but the PM merely asked Jayaweera to continue to put his Cabinet colleagues in their place and that he would personally back him to the hilt. On one occasion Senanayake even told Jayaweera that if he had another dozen Civil Servants like him, he would gladly dismiss half his Cabinet of 24 men and women, and administer the country through Civil Servants. 

The trust that Prime Minister Senanayake and Minister JR Jayewardene reposed in Jayaweera was so high that they took the unprecedented step of incorporating in the Broadcasting Act a clause saying that during the first four years of the new Corporation's life, its Chairman and the Director General, shall be one and the same person. This was absolutely unheard of in the structure of corporations in Sri Lanka, and it gave Jayaweera extraordinary power to run the Corporation according to his own lights, free from any kind of interference.

During his tenure of four years as the Chairman and Director General of Broadcasting, Jayaweera insulated the Corporation against political interference, formulated a new broadcasting policy, restored discipline and decency within the workplace, got work out of a highly undisciplined staff, and coped with some thoroughly obstreperous and politically motivated trade unions. Managing all these competing forces resulted in Jayaweera having to displease some powerful political elements and trade unions.

If asked what his most important contribution to broadcasting in Sri Lanka was he says that it was the fundamental change in broadcasting policy and restoring discipline, decency and good order among broadcasting staff.

Up until when Jayaweera took over, broadcasting in Sri Lanka had been merely a medium for entertainment and disseminating news. However, Jayaweera was convinced that in a developing country, a powerful medium such as broadcasting should not be content merely with providing news, music and entertainment, but that it had an obligation to help in development tasks as well. This led Jayaweera to harness the resources of broadcasting in support of the Government's central policy initiative, which was to make the country self-sufficient in food. This caused the political opposition to accuse Jayaweera of playing politics to which he replied that if what he was doing in broadcasting to accelerate the development of the country coincided with the Government's aims as well, he should not be charged with playing politics, and argued with opposition leaders that it was not a condition of broadcasting ethics that the Government should not reap the benefits of the Corporation's activities undertaken for reasons totally unrelated to politics. All that Jayaweera had done was to make self-sufficiency in food one of the aims of broadcasting policy, and self-sufficiency in food was a national goal rather than merely a party policy.

On the other hand Jayaweera does concede that the intensity with which he supported the drive for national self-sufficiency in food, by putting the electronic media fully behind it, could have led the politicians of the opposition parties, whose convoluted minds reduced even national issues to party politics, to imagine that he was in fact playing politics, regardless that self-sufficiency in food was an issue that cut across party barriers and was a burning national issue.

During his tenure in Broadcasting, Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake, took a great liking to Jayaweera. Senanayake was the last of Sri Lanka’s gentleman politicians. The scion of the country's first Prime Minister, Don Stephen Senanayake, Dudley Senanayake was the archetypal upper-crust liberal gentleman from an age gone by. He was a cricketing fan, played golf daily, was a habitual photographer and an avid listener to Beethoven and Tchaikovsky recordings. A product of St Thomas’ College in Mount Lavinia and of Cambridge University, UK, it would however be fair to say that he was also notoriously laid back and a very untypical politician.

Senanayake was also supposed to have been of an indecisive mould, and very weak in handling crises. On a previous occasion, five years earlier, when after his father’s demise, he had taken over the Premiership and was confronted by a minor crisis, he suffered a breakdown, resigned and deserted the field of battle. However, this time around, in his second outing as Prime Minister, Senanayake was showing metal that people never suspected he had. Against that background, it was widely claimed that it was Jayaweera who had put steel and muscle into his administration, which though not expected to last the first year in office, ran its full course of five years, surviving many rough patches along the way.

Jayaweera admits that Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake reposed great confidence in his managerial skills and in his ability to manage crises. So much so that he was even nominated by the Prime Minister to a place in the country's Security Council whose membership had always been reserved only to the three Service Chiefs and the head of the Police, and was chaired by the Permanent Secretary of Defence.

Not only that. The measure of the Prime Minister’s confidence in Jayaweera’s managerial and organisational skills and in his unassailable integrity was best demonstrated when in 1969 he nominated Jayaweera to be a one-man committee to set up and run a National Exhibition in the nine provincial capitals of the country, and instructed the Treasury to release to him Rs 30 million from the Contingency Fund (a huge sum in those days – the equivalent of over Rs 3 billion today) for the purpose. Jayaweera co-opted as his assistant the then Director of Information Sarath Amunugama (who became a Cabinet Minister in later years), and as the secretary to the committee AJ Ranasinghe (also to become a Cabinet Minister in later years). The responsibility for accounting to the Treasury how the Rs 30 million released to him were spent rested solely on Jayaweera’s shoulders. He not only completed the National Exhibition as directed by the Prime Minister within the scheduled time and to the Cabinet’s entire satisfaction, but also accounted so meticulously for the sums spent that when the Opposition Parties came to power six months later and went through the accounts with a fine-tooth comb, hoping to trip Jayaweera, they found the accounts absolutely in order and professionally impeccable.

However, Jayaweera denies strongly that he had any hand in the politics of the Dudley Senanayake government, or that the PM sought his advice on party political issues. On the other hand, the perception of the opposition parties was entirely otherwise and Jayaweera incurred their wrath for allegedly buttressing the Senanayake government and giving it an additional lease of life.

Jayaweera’s close association with Dudley Senanayake cost him dear in terms of the displeasure he incurred among the opposition parties and the trade unions as well, so much so that when a General Election held in May 1970 resulted in the eviction of the Senanayake government from office, Jayaweera fell from grace and became a victim of the new political regime. His life and career went into crisis.

However, to this day, even Senanayaka’s worst detractors acknowledge that the Dudley Senanayake Government of 1965-1970 was post-independence Sri Lanka’s Golden Age. 

2.4

1970-73: Government Agent (administrative head) of the District of Vavuniya

This posting proved both cataclysmic and catalytic in Jayaweera's life. Following the election to power of a new government in May 1970, Jayaweera was posted as the Government Agent (GA) of Vavuniya, a grade 3 post, which was a precipitous demotion from the post of Chairman and Director General of the Broadcasting Corporation which was a Class 1 grade 1 post.  Although in terms of time-based seniority, Jayaweera had been only in Class 2 of the service, all the posts in which he had served over the previous ten years had been in Class 1 grade 1 of the service.  However, now he found himself lodged in a grade 3 post and thrown into a maelstrom of humiliation and detraction which proved totally destructive of his ego and catalytic for his life. 

It was while he was traversing this crisis that he had an extraordinary spiritual encounter which completely transformed his life. Of that, later on in this narrative.

As the GA of Vavuniya he had also to perform a task which, in the annals of Sri Lanka's administration since 1815, had never fallen to a civilian administrator. Though only a civilian, during April-August 1971 Jayaweera had to coordinate the military and police resistance within his district against an armed rebellion led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) an extreme Marxist group that held the country in its grip for three whole months. In actual fact, on the first day of the uprising, April 5th 1971, when confronted with reports that policemen were deserting their posts, shouldering a gun himself, Jayaweera took command of the Vavuniya police station. The police station came under siege by hundreds of rebels, and although down to the last few rounds of ammunition by morning, a constabulary of 32 men, inspired by him, held the station through the night until an infantry platoon turned up from a garrison in Mannar, 60 miles away, to rescue them.

Although at this time, Jayaweera was totally out favour with the government, during the Parliamentary debate on the uprising, the Minister for Public Administration, Felix Dias Bandaranaike, paid him a glowing tribute in Parliament, saying that Jayaweera's conduct during the rebellion was exceptional and without precedent.

It should be mentioned that the JVP uprising is not to be confused with the uprising of the Tamil people in Jaffna, which is a district immediately north of Vavuniya, and which Jayaweera had administered seven years earlier. Unlike the Tamil uprising which was, and still is (in 2009) – as perceived by them – a struggle of a minority ethnic group for justice and freedom, the JVP uprising, although led and supported solely by a group of Sinhala youth, was essentially an anti-state insurrection, propelled by an extreme Marxist ideology. It claimed to be influenced by the Latin American Marxist, Che Guevara, and sought to overthrow a democratically-elected government and set up its own Soviet-style government.

Jayaweera's response to the JVP armed uprising in the South, was entirely different from his response to the problem of the Tamils in the North. In the former instance the issue was an armed insurrection driven by an anti-state ideology, seeking to overthrow the legitimate government, and Jayaweera's response was fully to resist it with all the resources at his command. However, the latter was of an unarmed and peaceful struggle by a minority ethnic group for what they perceived to be their legitimate rights, and Jayaweera's response (1963-66) was to consult, conciliate and compromise.

However, Jayaweera claims that the failure of successive Sinhala-led governments to solve the problem of the Tamil people peacefully caused Tamil youth to resort to arms, and the ensuing civil war has developed into the world's longest lasting and perhaps the most brutal armed rebellion, lasting almost three decades (as at 2009) and costing more than 60,000 lives.

At the time that Jayaweera was appointed in 1970, the post of GA of Vavuniya was of no national importance, which was why Prime Minister Mrs Bandaranaike exiled him to it as a punishment; there being no humbler position available to which he could be assigned.

However, what Mrs Bandaranaike did not know was that Vavuniya, which she had intended as the ultimate humiliation for Jayaweera, would turn out to be the most important post he held in his whole life; for it was in Vavuniya that he had an awesome spiritual encounter which turned his life around and in the light of which, Mrs Bandaranaike’s intended humiliation turned out to be an overwhelming victory for him!

Within six months of his posting as the GA of Vavuniya, Jayaweera had a cataclysmic spiritual experience which turned his life upside down. (For a fuller discussion of that experience, please see the sections below, entitled, "A dramatic life crisis and awesome encounter", "A transformed life" and "The power of meditation". Editor). 

Under the impact of that encounter, having undergone a seismic paradigm shift in consciousness at the age of 43, with another 22 years of service under the Government ahead of him, Jayaweera took early retirement and accepted an invitation from the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) to serve as their Director of Research and Planning, and move from Colombo to London. 

2.5

1974-89: Director of Research and Planning at the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), London, UK.

(Much of what he describes below, while working in the WACC, may not be fully intelligible to the reader unless he/she has read first the sections below entitled, "A dramatic life crisis and awesome encounter", "A transformed life" and "The power of meditation”. Editor).

2.5.1 – Downsizing

The words "Christian Communication" in the WACC are misleading says Jayaweera. They suggest that the organisation concentrated on evangelism in the ordinary sense of that term, which is to spread the Christian faith and make converts. To the contrary, the WACC was quite categorical in eschewing any activity which might hint of evangelism. Rather, its main objective was to bring Christian values such as truth, justice, fairness, balance, moderation, decency and respect for all cultures, to bear on public media. To this end, the WACC supported models of Christian communication, so understood, across the five continents, and buttressed them with research, training, publications and funds. 

Even though invested with the dignified title of a "Director" – one of four directors working under a General Secretary, who was the chief executive – for Jayaweera, working in this new role was a lesson in humility and downsizing. Whereas over the previous 15 years he had been the "top man", supervising and ordering around cadres ranging from 200 to 300 at staff level, and managing work forces ranging from 3,000 to 16,000, and had exercised power over thousands of square miles of territory and over the lives of millions of people, he was now shorn of all worldly power and was reduced to the status of a "nobody", at least in the eyes of the world.

Now, he had only a staff of one, his personal secretary, Mary Luz Rivera, and a total of just 20 colleagues in the whole establishment. Whereas, he had once had a fleet of cars and chauffeurs at his disposal, and staff opening and closing his car door and carrying his briefcase, now he did not have a car at all; he managed to buy himself a ramshackle Morris 1300 only after he had worked in London for three years. Whereas, over the ten preceding years, he had interacted directly with presidents, prime ministers and cabinet ministers, now his bosses were humble pastors and priests.

The experience of working in the WACC was indeed a lesson in working the Christ way, anonymously and in humility, as opposed to working the worldly way, in the full glare of media publicity and public acclaim.

However, there was a compensatory element in Jayaweera’s WACC portfolio. As its Director of Research and Planning, he had the whole globe for his territory and thereby the opportunity to work in, and interact with, the most diverse cultures in all continents, such as he could never have imagined possible when he worked in Sri Lanka.

2.5.2 – Fresh round of ego building

However things changed rapidly and soon Jayaweera was being dragged back into the vortex of public recognition and a fresh round of ego building got under way. Following up on his earlier reputation as a Director General of Broadcasting in Sri Lanka, the BBC invited him to serve on one of their advisory committees and also did a 45-minute programme on his life, on BBC2, at prime time, entitled An Awesome Encounter, projecting the life-transforming experience he had had in 1970 when he was working in Sri Lanka. This made Jayaweera an instant celebrity. On popular request he also did a repeat of the programme six months later, to coincide with the once-in-ten-years Lambeth Conference which was held that year. Not least, the prestigious BBC journal, The Listener, carried in full the script of Jayaweera's programme, making him the only Sri Lankan ever, at least up to that time in 1976, to feature in that magazine. Furthermore, the BBC also carried the script of Jayaweera's talk, An Awesome Encounter in a book they published in 1977 entitled In the Light of Experience, which carried a series of articles by diverse authors on life-transforming experiences they had all been through. 

In no time, all this unsought publicity projecting him as a man of God, triggered a flood of letters from members of the public asking Jayaweera for spiritual help and asking him pray for them. Some asked that they may come round to see him so that he may lay hands on them and heal them. Jayaweera recalls that on one occasion, as he was walking along St James Street to his office which was situated nearby, close to Pall Mall, a Rolls Royce car pulled up alongside him and a gentleman seated in the rear seat got out and approached him, inquiring whether he wasn't the man who appeared on TV on a programme called An Awesome Encounter a few days earlier. When Jayaweera replied affirmatively, the gentleman pulled out a card from his wallet and asked him for his autograph. Jayaweera says that he was utterly embarrassed and even ashamed, and that mercifully it was the first and the last time anyone asked him for his autograph!

Jayaweera was not ready for this outpouring of public adulation and did not know how to absorb it! For several years Jayaweera kept a bulky file of unanswered letters from admirers and would-be devotees who wanted to raise him to the status of an Avatar. In truth he had never claimed to be a man of God, or to be a spiritual healer, having only shared through the BBC, on its own invitation, an account of an experience he had had a few years earlier while he had been in meditation.

He wanted desperately to retreat from all this ballyhoo into which he had fallen but did not know how to. He wanted to run away and be totally forgotten of the world. Various TV channels, both in the UK and in the USA invited him to talk on their programmes and The Guardian newspaper in the UK asked him to write several articles, not on spiritual matters, but on Third World development issues. Not least, the prestigious International Broadcasting Institute (later renamed the International Institute of Communications) asked him to serve as one of their Trustees, and the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex), as well as the Institute of Mass Communication Research (University of Leicester),  asked him to do research in their communication departments as a Visiting Fellow, the former under Professor Rita Cruise O’Brien and the latter under Professor Jim Halloran. Jayaweera was back in the public domain and his ego was being rebirthed!

2.5.3 – A precipitous fall

As could have been expected, all this ego building, led to a precipitous fall. In October 1978, following all that public adulation, suddenly and without any hint of its impending onset, Jayaweera went into a steep spiral of depression. He recalls that he was holidaying with his family in Edinburgh when a dark and impenetrable cloud seemed to descend upon him from nowhere! He lost all sense of bearings, and felt like a child abandoned in the midst of an impenetrable forest. He hurried home to London with his family.

As those dark clouds brooded over him, day after day, nothing seemed to make sense any longer. He suffered a total draining of energy, lost a sense of purpose in life and even the will to live deserted him. He recalls that there were days when he would set off from home for work at his office in King’s Road, Chelsea, but never reach his office. Instead he would just keep going round and round London, seated in a Circle Line underground train, unable even to raise himself off his seat and find his way to his place of work.  During those agonising days his loyal secretary Mary Luz Rivera would cover up for him as much as possible. Jayaweera also wants to recognise, with deep gratitude, the understanding and compassion he had from his General Secretary, Dr Hans Florin, who, knowing something of the trauma that he was suffering, was willing to overlook his failure to submit reports in time and accomplish several tasks that had been allotted to him. 

When Jayaweera sought counsel from his local parish priest he did not understand what he was talking about, and when he sought wisdom from a reputed local Bishop, the Bishop gave him a fat book on St Paul's Letter to the Ephesians to read and recommended that the best thing would be for him to return to Sri Lanka with his family! In the event, Jayaweera stayed on in the UK with his family, but returned the book (unread) to the good Bishop!

The journey through this wilderness of despair and anguish lasted 18 months, much longer than the crisis which he suffered on his posting to Vavuniya in 1970. The crisis was all the more horrific because, for fear of infecting his family with his inward gloom, Jayaweera did not disclose to his wife and daughter the depth of his suffering, while at the same time travelling around the world like a zombie, ticking the box and giving the appearance of doing the work assigned him by his employer. 

He says it was, without a shadow of doubt, the most miserable period in his life.

2.5.4. – The Dark Night of the Soul

Towards the end of 1979, events began to take an unexpected turn. Sister Elizabeth Baker, a Methodist Deaconess from Yorkshire who was running an ashram deep in a forest in Paranthan, in the Jaffna District of Sri Lanka, had been a friend of the Jayaweera family from as far back as the early 1960s when they lived in Jaffna. Sister Baker was not merely a family friend but had been praying daily for the family since she had met them in Jaffna, because, as she had later disclosed, she had felt all along that someday Neville Jayaweera, although still a committed Buddhist, would be called of God as a witness. In this faith Sister Baker continued to pray for them daily, until she passed away in the late 1980s, aged over 90.

On hearing of Jayaweera’s depression Sister Baker wrote to him asking him to see a Dr Christopher Woodard, a physician-cum-Christian healer based in central London who combined his medical practice with prayer and meditation and was in this way helping to heal people afflicted by depression and anxiety. Jayaweera has recorded in his diary a vivid account of his journey to keep his appointment to see Dr Woodard, at 7.30 pm on January 7th 1980, sliding and stumbling all the way through a canyon of snow, piled up on the pavement, all the way from Baker Street Station to Dr Woodard’s chambers in Marylebone Rd. It was the severest winter that had descended on London since records were kept, and the bone-piercing cold added to Jayaweera’s gloom. He recalls the hour he spent with Woodard in quiet meditation and prayer, shivering under his thick overcoat, in a consultation room heated only by an ancient paraffin heater. At the close of an hour or so meditating, Woodard had assured him that he was now healed, that he did not require any medication, and that soon he will be seeing light at the end of the tunnel, which, Jayaweera confesses, he hoped would be brighter than the light in the good doctor’s paraffin heater!

Nothing spectacular happened immediately, but Jayaweera continued to keep vigil, in prayer and faith. Eventually, however, a few months later, the light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be brighter than the noonday sun, but unlike the noonday sun, never set, and 30 years on, keeps burning brightly.

Woodard had emphasised to Jayaweera that all illness, disease, decay and death itself, and not least, depression and anxiety, were of Satan, and were never, and can never, ever be the work of God, because if they were, God would be acting contrary to His own nature. He had emphasised that God’s will for His children was always health, harmony, joy and peace, and an abundant life, and that that was why, as a demonstration of God’s will, Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead. He had asked Jayaweera, as proof of his faith in God, always to rebuke Satan whenever he appeared in any form which was obviously not a part of God’s will, and to continue affirming his faith in God, regardless of the evidence to the contrary. Not least, Woodard emphasised the importance of “waiting” on God (another word for meditation) in faith.

Shortly afterwards, on another front, having treated Jayaweera with a whole range of anti-depressant pills for almost two years, none of which worked, Jayaweera’s GP, Dr Stanley Nalliah finally referred him to a Psychiatric Consultant named Dr Dale Becket, a British doctor, qualified and practising in south east London.

Unable to fit Jayaweera into his tight schedule for three whole months, Becket took the unprecedented step of coming to see him in his home at Beckenham. Having listened to Jayaweera for several hours, confirming Woodard’s diagnosis of a few weeks earlier, Becket said that what he was going through was neither a physiological nor a psychiatric condition, and that it had nothing to do with the depletion of neurotransmitters in his brain, but that it was essentially a spiritual condition which, he said, St John of the Cross, a Spanish Roman Catholic mystic of the 16th century, had described as the "Dark Night of the Soul". Becket had explained the “dark night of the soul” as a phase in one’s life, sometimes drawn out over years, when the Holy Spirit, having once touched an individual and given him a tremendous sense of uplift, seems to abandon him/her for a while, so that whatever sense of pride and personal elation s/he still has, may be burnt away in the fire of the ensuing anguish. He told Jayaweera that, quite paradoxically, the spiritual path is fraught with many pitfalls, the most regular being elation and pride, charisma and the sense of power; to remedy these, the Holy Spirit administers periodic corrections by withdrawing Himself to a degree and letting the subject fall to his knees, again and again, the more effectively to annihilate self and pride.

Curiously, Becket had also told him that although he had been born a Christian, he was now a practising Zen Buddhist, which he said was why he could recognise a spiritual condition where other practitioners saw only a problem of chemistry. Given Jayaweera's personal history, Becket was of the opinion that the seeming dark tunnel of depression was only a profound spiritual condition which was necessary for his spiritual growth, and that he might well be on the threshold of a new burst of spiritual energy. He had said he would not treat Jayaweera medically, and had asked him to throw all his anti-depression medications out the window, and assured him that, sooner than later, he would come out of his tunnel a much wiser and spiritually more enriched man.

2.5.5. – On wings of eagles

Amazingly, by April 1980, within a few months of Woodard’s prayers and Becket’s diagnosis, life began to bubble up again within Jayaweera, exactly as they had prophesied. Quite literally, it was as if the sun that had hidden behind banks of dark clouds for years, had suddenly reappeared, and was cascading upon him from on high. However, materially and circumstantially, nothing had changed. All that had changed was Jayaweera's consciousness and as those dark forbidding clouds melted away, Jayaweera felt as if he had suddenly been lifted up on wings of eagles.

Carried on the wave of this new surge of life, Jayaweera threw himself into his work with renewed energy, and he says that since that time in mid-1980 he has been surfing that awesome spiritual updraft without letup or inhibition. He says that he has never known a day’s depression since then, and although he has had his share of life's problems, and has been through the valley of tribulation on many occasions, the sense of inner joy and peace, and above all, the sense of being empowered from above, has never left him. Not to be discounted, he says that his physical health has also been remarkably benefited. At 79+ he either walks three miles a day or works for a few hours in the garden and has never known what it means to be tired; even his GP has commented often that he is a net asset to the NHS!

Jayaweera describes the sensation of living continuously in the Spirit as similar to gliding over the globe in a balloon, observing the world's turmoil and tribulation below, but, while not getting sucked into it, overflowing with love and compassion towards all those caught up in it, and releasing from on high, through meditation and intercessory prayer, spiritual energy that will open the eyes of people below, and bring healing to their troubled minds, and harmony and peace to the nations.

Jayaweera also wants it on record that just as it was when he went through his first wilderness experience in 1970, when his wife Trixie stood solidly by him, this time around as well, during the "Dark night of the Soul" that lasted from 1978 to 1980, Jayaweera had Trixie's fullest support, as well as that of his daughter Mano, even though he had not divulged to either of them the intensity and depth of his suffering.

2.5.6. – In denial of reality?

To the charge that he has opted out of the world, and that he is in denial of “reality”, Jayaweera replies that, in fact, it is not he who is in denial of reality, but the world, and that the world's greatest religious leaders, and all the world’s great mystics, are on his side in their understanding of what constitutes reality.

He also comments wryly that even quantum physicists would now agree with him, that the world has been taken for a long ride, and that what has for millennia been perceived as reality, is not reality at all but merely an appearance, and that behind the appearance there is another reality to which our five senses have no access. 

Jayaweera also likens his predicament to the man in Plato's "Allegory of the Cave", who, having had a glimpse of the real world, was trying to bring to the attention of his comrades that they were looking in the wrong direction and that what they perceived to be reality was merely a dance of shadows; whereas if they would only turn and look in the opposite direction, the land was bright.

To the claim that Jesus’ life of living among the poor and the downtrodden, and that his work of healing the sick and feeding the hungry was a clear refutation of this paradigm, Jayaweera replies that Jesus performed miracles not to solve the problem of sickness, nor to solve the problem of hunger, nor to abolish the problem of poverty, etc, but only to draw the attention of the world to an infinitely greater thing that He, Jesus, had come to do, which was to solve the overarching problem of being constantly beset by myriad individual problems. Jesus did this by abolishing the Ego, the root cause of all problems, through His Death and Resurrection, and by redeeming the whole world, once and for all, across the board, so to say, by laying the axe to the trunk, on Calvary hill.

Jayaweera points out that, after all, by giving sight to a few hundred blind people some 2,000 years ago, Jesus did not deliver the human race from blindness, nor did he deliver the human race from hunger and poverty by feeding the 5,000, nor solve the problem of death by raising Lazarus. Even in Jesus’ time, there would have been countless deaf, dumb and blind people still left in the world, as well as those who remained hungry and poor, and who died and continued to die. Therefore, argues Jayaweera, the piecemeal approach to the world's problems was not Jesus’ way. The piecemeal approach to solving the world's problems is the world's own way – the way of politics and economics, the way of science and materia medica, the way of charities and social services – which Jayaweera neither decries nor condemns, but says that they will never finally get rid of the problems they claim to address.

Jayaweera points out that all these problems are the outworking of a single fundamental malaise that was (and is) at the heart of the world’s ills, and rather than address them problem by problem, Jesus’ way was finally and utterly to lay the axe to the trunk of the diseased tree, the trunk being Ego, and deliver the human race from that fundamental malaise, which was what he did on Calvary. “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work" (1 John 3:8).

Unless we believe that, through His death and resurrection, Jesus destroyed the entire world system, including the fallen human race, we will have to confess that He failed in His mission because He certainly did not destroy all the devil's work – ie in the piecemeal way – when He was walking the earth. Many millions of people remained unhealed, as millions still do, but that is because the world has still fully to awaken to the truth of Jesus’ mission.

Jayaweera also reminds us that when Jesus asked his followers to do the “greater works”, He was not thinking of a piece by piece approach to the problems of the world, but like Him, that they should lay the axe to the trunk.

He wants to place on record some comments on Dr Dale Becket, the psychiatrist and counsellor, whom he says he has not met since his encounter with him in 1980 and must be long retired by now (2009). He says that Becket was an extraordinary human being who saw human consciousness as more than merely a complex piece of hardwiring and chemicals and as more than an aggregate of neurons and neurotransmitters, but as a conduit for Spirit as well. For Becket, a state of depression was indicative of more than merely the depletion of chemicals. It could as well be a phase in the subject's spiritual growth, and chemical imbalances in the brain may be the effects of the depression, rather than its cause, and the depression itself primarily a spiritual condition, which would need looking at spiritually rather than medically or chemically. 

However, Jayaweera also concedes that, in discussing spiritual and religious issues with him in the course of his diagnosis, Becket may have strayed outside his remit as a professional psychiatrist, but he also says that Becket’s willingness to break out of the straitjacket of strict professional guidelines when discussing something as complex as human emotions and the human mind, is also the measure of his greatness as a man.

He believes that the reason he had to go through this frightful and protracted tunnel experience, the Dark Night of the Soul, as Dr Becket had described it, was that, in his spiritual immaturity, by flaunting publicly on the public media the experience he had had of Jesus Christ in 1970, and by getting personal profile through it, he had violated its sanctity and sacredness. Consequently, the Spirit seemed to withdraw for a while so that Jayaweera may realise that there was no space for Spirit as well as for Ego, and that it had to be one or the other.

He says that such life-transforming experiences are never to be talked about publicly, even as a testimony, because they attract attention to the human being rather than to the Spirit, and that the only testimony one can give is in the values by which one orders one's life, so that the world may ponder the secret behind the power manifest through him – and believe. The testimony must be in the fruits more than in the talking, the fruits being Love, Joy and Peace, and in the practice of Humility, Forgiveness, Gentleness, Kindness, Patience, Moderation and Tolerance. In the absence of these fruits, says Jayaweera, his claim to have had a unique experience of the Christ is simply a loud-sounding cymbal. Therefore, Jayaweera no longer talks about the details and content of that awesome seminal experience today, but lets his life show forth its fruitage.

2.5.7 – The Communication Revolution

Following on his Spiritual re-energising in 1980 and inspired by the General Secretary of the WACC at that time, the Rev Dr Hans Florin, Jayaweera conceived and spearheaded a massive global programme to bring to the awareness of Third World countries the impending revolution in communication, wrought by the new technologies, which would impact their cultures, in a deleterious fashion.

Jayaweera's thesis was that the silicon chip, the integrated circuit, the satellite and the computer, in harness, were about to overhaul completely all cultures, transform people’s values and bring about such fundamental changes in social and economic structures as had not been witnessed ever, not even during the Industrial Revolution and that whereas the Industrial Revolution took almost two hundred years to effect fundamental societal changes, the new communication technologies would effect even more radical changes within a mere twenty or thirty years.

In hindsight, three decades after Jayaweera took this message to Third World countries, all this sounds quite trite and even banal, but in the early 1980s it sounded like science fiction and in many countries and institutions where Jayaweera lectured, the local press and audiences actually accused him of being a false prophet. Today, thirty years on, Jayaweera comments wryly that he was indeed a false prophet, but only in the sense that what eventually came to pass far exceeded the most extreme scenarios he had painted in the 1980s, and that the acceleration of communication technology over the ensuing two decades has staggered even its most ardent advocates.

Jayaweera disclaims that the vision he took to the Third World was conjured up by him, and claims that he had merely absorbed, digested and re-packaged a thesis that writers like Arthur Clarke, Jean-Jacques Servan Schreiber, Alvin Toffler, John Naisbitt, Marilyn Ferguson and Herbert Schiller had been writing about for quite some time. All that Jayaweera did was to spell out in detail what the communication revolution meant for Third World cultures in particular. In that sense, Jayaweera’s vision was unique and prophetic.

Let alone Third World countries, not even Britain, nor most European countries, had any concept of the impending communication avalanche which would shatter forever (and within a generation too) their lives and the values by which they had lived for hundreds of years. 

In hindsight today, Jayaweera confesses that, even though the WACC took the high ground in alerting the world to the impending crisis, his efforts in this direction were not dissimilar to that of the little Dutch boy who tried to hold back the North Sea by poking his finger in the fissure of a dyke. Actually, he says that the little Dutch boy had more luck than he, because hundreds of villagers poured out from their houses and helped to shore up the threatened dyke. Jayaweera had no such luck, and the revolution continued to sweep across national and cultural boundaries, replacing individual cultures with a homogenised bastard culture.

Jayaweera also recalls that he must have repeated a hundred times to dozens of Third World leaders, a comment that Mahatma Gandhi had made in the 1930s. Gandhi had told Western leaders: "We want to keep our windows open to the fresh breezes that blow from your part of the world so that they may refresh and enhance our own cultures, but we do not want those breezes to develop into a tornado and blow down our little mud huts." In the event, says Jayaweera, thirty years after he first started talking about it, the communication revolution has not only swept away Third World cultures, mud huts and all, but has also installed in their place a single global culture dominated by commerce and triviality, by Coca Cola and McDonalds, by baubles and tinsel, with the only value to which it owes allegiance being money and profit.

On the other hand, looking back, Jayaweera admits that, much as he was sincere in what he was trying to do, in attempting to hold back the onward march of technology, he was utterly naive and was only about as realistic as King Canute of old, who set his throne on the sea shore and ordered the sea not to encroach upon him. He concedes that today, technology is no longer being directed by humankind to serve human ends, but that it has taken on a mind and a persona of its own. It is an elemental force, self-propelled and a veritable demon, using the human race to serve its voracious appetite for innovation and obsolescence.

2.5.8 – Globe girdling 

Carried on the crest of the new upsurge of spiritual energy, between 1980 and 1989, when he finally resigned from the WACC, Jayaweera travelled the world, from Peru in the South West,  to Korea in the North East, from Vancouver in the North West to Papua New Guinea and Hawaii in the South East, and to almost all the countries of Africa and Asia, bar Apartheid South Africa and China, interacting with a variety of people and cultures and lecturing on various aspects of communication technology, principally on the Silicon Revolution and the New World Communication Order, which was conceived of and sponsored by the UNESCO. He wrote copiously on communication issues, focusing primarily on Development Communication and on the Impact of the New Communication Technologies on Traditional Cultures, and his writings in both these areas became standard reading for university students doing communication studies in the 1980s.

During these long globe-girdling flights, Jayaweera used waiting time at airline terminals, and the hundreds of hours he spent on board aircraft and, not least, time within his hotel room, for meditating on Biblical scriptures. He rarely socialised wherever he went, would not even go out for a drink, hardly watched any television, but sat in meditation, hour after hour, letting the Word of God melt into him and become flesh. Jayaweera says that the endless hours he spent in meditation were not for the joy or the peace or the sense of inner power that it always brought him personally, which were only some of its many benefits, but primarily to channel Spirit for the good of humanity and for the world at large.

For Jayaweera, meditation was the most effective form of evangelism, undertaken silently, anonymously and imperceptibly, whereby he could channel the Spirit of Christ into the life of the world, without aggravation and without coming into conflict with anyone, and not least, without exposing himself to the risks of rebuilding his own ego.

During the time he worked in the WACC Jayaweera also served as:

• A member of the Central Religious Advisory Committee (CRAC) of the BBC, London.
•  
• A Trustee of the International Broadcasting Institute (IBI), London.
•  
• WACC's permanent representative at the UNESCO (Paris) and in the International Telecommunications Union (Geneva).
•  
• Visiting Fellow at:  the Institute of Development Studies, the University of Sussex and the Institute of Mass Communication Research (University of Leicester) where he did research in communication studies.

2.6

1991-1995:  Sri Lanka's Ambassador to Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland

After a break of almost 20 years, Jayaweera resumed his links with the Sri Lankan government under President Premadasa. Premadasa first asked him to serve as his Media Consultant and after a short stint in that role, sent him as Ambassador to the Scandinavian Countries – Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland – charged with a special task.

At that time the four Scandinavian countries were spearheading an initiative in the UN system to cut off Foreign Aid to Sri Lanka from all Western countries on the grounds of alleged human rights violations, and were planning to move a resolution in the UN Human Rights Commission (HR Commission) at Geneva censuring Sri Lanka. Jayaweera's special assignment was to head off those moves by the Scandinavians and also to be a member of the Sri Lankan delegation to the sessions of the HR Commission in Geneva to argue Sri Lanka's case. In the event, both goals were realised.

The Scandinavians failed in their attempt to cut Sri Lanka off from aid, and the proposed resolution at Geneva to censure Sri Lanka was never tabled! On the completion of those tasks, Jayaweera took final retirement in 1995, at the age of 65.

About his role as his country's Ambassador, Jayaweera wants to say that while it was the most glamorous and pompous job he did, it was also the most superficial. Most of his time as an ambassador was spent at cocktail parties and formal dinners at which he was not able to discuss anything of substance with fellow diplomats but mouth banalities and indulge in polite conversation. Also there was a deep moral issue that worried him. He says that the expenditure that the sending country had to incur merely to maintain an embassy and staff in station was relatively exorbitant – especially if it was a poor country such as Sri Lanka – and not proportionately productive, except to maintain its prestige. On the other hand, he concedes that maintaining embassies is a necessary aspect of a corrupt world system.

Looking past the glamour and the tinsel of his job as an ambassador for his country, Jayaweera says that his job was not without comic relief. He was accredited as Sri Lanka's Ambassador, simultaneously to Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland of which the first three were ruled by monarchs. On arriving in the country of accreditation, the ambassador designate has to present to the country's monarch, in his/her palace, credentials of accreditation from the sending Head of State. The ceremony that surrounds the presenting of credentials to a monarch is a daunting and even overpowering experience, which Jayaweera found both unbearable and comic. The ambassador is driven to the palace in a glass-covered coach, which must have been built about 400 years ago – at least its suspension and the rattling glass panes suggest so – and drawn by six milk-white horses. As the coach is sighted from the palace, six trumpeters blast out a fulsome welcome from its battlements, to signal the approach of the ambassador. Then there is the guard of honour mounted by the sovereign's personal bodyguard, dressed in 17th century ceremonial uniform. In Norway, Jayaweera had to walk through the ranks inspecting the guard of honour, in a winter temperature of minus 10 C, with snow falling thick around him and without any cover for his bald head. All this ceremonial, although adjuncts of his job, Jayaweera found quite intolerable although hilarious, but submitted to it knowing that it was all a part of the world's paraphernalia for projecting illusion as reality and for reinforcing both personal as well as national Ego.

There was also a huge problem connected with conscience. On more than one occasion, he was in a position of either having to speak an untruth or having to support a morally untenable position, all on behalf of his country. Today, he admits frankly that being a diplomat, especially being a head of mission, although glamorous and abundantly prestigious, is also about the most morally vulnerable job anyone can do, except perhaps being a politician, a lawyer or a businessman.

Chapter 3

Looking back on career

Looking back on the years 1960 to 1973, when he was a high-flying bureaucrat working for the Sri Lanka government, Jayaweera confesses with contrition and remorse that the dominant quality of his personality was a towering arrogance and an enormous belief in his ability to perform whatever tasks he was called upon to do. This overweening self-belief was largely nourished by the confidence that successive governments had reposed in him, by asking him to take on, when he was only in his 30s, jobs which his seniors had shunned and which were far above his seniority in the Service. In fact all of the jobs he held between 1960 and 1970, from the age of 29 to 40, were in Class 1 Grade 1 of the Service whereas substantively, in terms of seniority, he was only in Class 2 Grade 2.  During those 11 years, Jayaweera's career burned fiercely like a meteor, but like all meteors, spluttered out in quick time, so that by the time he was only 43, he had disappeared from public view.  

Having confessed to arrogance and an inordinate self-belief as his dominant shortcomings as a public servant, Jayaweera also says that he was driven by an almost fanatical commitment to discipline, punctuality and integrity in public life. He says that he elevated almost to the status of a religious belief the view that a public servant must not only return to the state, in terms of discipline, work and productivity, his response to the salary he is paid, but must equally refrain from treating the state as if it was a board of directors of a privately owned company, from whom he may extort maximum concessions.

Also, he was of the view that in a developing country like Sri Lanka, engaged in a long and arduous climb up the ladder of development, public servants must be prepared to make sacrifices and not think in terms of the regulation eight-hour working day and look to nursing their holidays and perks. He demonstrated this in his own life by working 14-16 hours a day, most Saturdays and some Sundays included, and by foregoing, most years, his annual quota of holidays and leave. He used to tell his senior staff that if they wanted to be effective managers and leaders, they must not expect from the junior staff working under them an output which they themselves would not display in their own work, and urged them, wherever possible, to work twice or even thrice as hard as their subordinates. These qualities and values, which Jayaweera demonstrated in his own working life, made him both admired and feared, but equally he was seen as intolerant and arrogant.

He also recalls that although he enjoyed a high public profile, his life was scarred by stress and tension, and by interminable conflict and discord and he says that he never knew a day's joy or peace of mind. He says that had he continued down that road his health would have given way in a short time, and that he would have succumbed a long time ago.

As if that was not a high enough price to pay for name, fame and public profile, he says that he also took his family for granted, and unwittingly treated them as if they were merely adjuncts of his career. Jayaweera confesses that he has never been able to live down that shame.

Now however, albeit belatedly, he recalls with a profound sense of gratitude the important role that his wife Trixie played in his career, uncomplainingly, and for much of the time, invisibly. He recalls that while he applied himself assiduously to his various tasks, often working 12-14 hours a day, it was Trixie who provided the backup and kept his home afloat. Also being the wife of a Government Agent in Sri Lanka (administrative Head of a District) carried considerable social and ceremonial responsibilities all of which Trixie discharged admirably. When Jayaweera served in the WACC for 15 years, travelling around the world for 3-4 months in every year, again it was Trixie who had to bear the brunt of his long absences. Not least, when he was an Ambassador to the Scandinavian countries, a huge burden fell on Trixie to play hostess at formal dinners and drinks parties, and this she did admirably. However, Jayaweera still carries a deep burden of guilt for not having found sufficient time for his wife and home.

Equally, Jayaweera confesses that when his daughter Mano was a child, the pressures of high office did not leave him with much time for her either. Especially when he had to travel extensively working for the WACC, his long absences from home took a heavy toll on her and Jayaweera carries a deep sense of remorse about it. Mercifully however, Mano came through the ordeal with flying colours, both at school and at university, and has distinguished herself admirably, both in her career, as wife to Edmund Glynn and as mother to Maximillian.

He also confesses that, although he claimed his commitment to the development of his country and his desire to uphold a public service tradition of efficiency, discipline and integrity to be his primary motives in working as he did, the high profile he gained thereby and the indulgence of his ego were the undeclared but ubiquitous accompaniments. As to which of these two sets of motivations were primary is hard to tell but he says they meshed together inextricably.

Jayaweera never tires of asking himself, in the abstract though, how much of the world's so-called patriotism, public service, commitment to the poor and all that, are really Ego trying to piggy back the problems of the world rather than being selfless commitments to the alleviation of the world's needs. He also says that the surest proof of whether it is Ego or non-Ego that is in the driving seat is the subject's reaction to criticism and opposition.  How does a patriot or a philanthropist or any person committed to doing good react when criticised, thwarted or when his/her position is threatened? If he/she reacts defensively, with anger and belligerence and seeks to unleash a stream of counter criticisms, Ego is clearly in the saddle whereas if he/she reacts calmly and co-operatively and seeks to consult and conciliate, and is willing even to step down, rather than enforce his/her will, Ego has taken a back seat. 

Nostalgia for his career is also accompanied by a deep sadness that all those, days, weeks and years he slaved away at whatever task he had in hand, foregoing the simple comforts of life and sacrificing even his family’s happiness, ultimately proved to be of no avail. Wherever he worked, he established discipline, integrity and productivity and made of them models of good governance and good management. However, within a few years of his vacating them, decay and disintegration set in rapidly, and like clearings in a tropical forest, were quickly overrun by the environment of indiscipline, corruption and inefficiency. In short order, it was as if Jayaweera had not even set foot in those places, so thorough  had been the obliteration of his work. Today, several decades later, surveying a wasteland where he once sowed and harvested lavishly, Jayaweera reflects philosophically, how ephemeral and tenuous are the works of human hands and what a wanton waste we make of our lives, chasing fantasies in a world built on illusions.

However, Jayaweera claims that in retirement, his life is incomparably more fulfilled than it was when he was employed in the world, and that at last, working silently and anonymously, he has found his métier in life.

He believes that, by releasing creative spiritual energy into the world, through meditation  and prayer, working anonymously and silently, he is benefiting the world, his community and his family far more substantially than he ever did while working overtly among them. Furthermore, he says that because the world knows nothing of his intercessory interventions, he no longer runs the risk of ego building. He concedes however that the world will never understand how that is ever possible, but neither will he waste time trying to convert them to his thinking. Summarising Jesus of Nazareth, he says, “They have eyes to see but cannot see, ears to hear, but cannot hear.”

He says that at 79+ (in 2009) he is bubbling over with energy, is not afflicted by any of the ailments common to anyone of his age, sleeps little and spends most of the day meditating, praying, writing, gardening and not least, doing household chores for his wife Trixie. He has more than 200,000 words of spiritual truth on hard disc, mediated to him while meditating on Biblical scriptures, which he hopes will benefit whoever reads them.

(Editor’s note: Many of these writings are now freely available on Neville Jayaweera’s website: http://www.nevillejayaweera.com/).

What brought about this dramatic transformation in his life, this transition from life on the outside to life on the inside, from the outer plane to the inner plane, is the centrepiece of this autobiographical sketch. 

Chapter 4

A dramatic life crisis and an awesome encounter

In 1970, in his 40th year, Jayaweera’s view of the world changed dramatically and permanently when he had a life-transforming experience of Jesus Christ. This experience exercised an extraordinary grip on him, turning his priorities and values upside down. It  provided him with an indestructible foundation for life and a permanent centre for emotional and intellectual integration.

Coming from a devout Buddhist family, and a strongly Buddhist cultural background, Jayaweera found that this experience presented him with challenges for meeting which he had no precedents. Understandably therefore, his decision to go with his experience of the Christ put him on a collision course within his own culture and he became an object of derision and ridicule within it. When thousands of one-time "Christians" who, during times of colonial ascendancy, had found it advantageous to call themselves Christian, were now quietly divesting themselves of their "Christian" encumbrances and calling themselves Buddhists, so as to catch the prevailing wind, Jayaweera was singular in doing exactly the opposite. He abandoned what was obviously a highly advantageous Buddhist platform which he had inherited, and climbed on to the "sinking ship" of Christianity. His commitment to Jesus Christ made him seem a traitor to his culture and shut him off from all possibility of a public life.

However, not all of these many disadvantages which cramped his progress in the world could turn Jayaweera aside from his commitment to the Christ, who became for him a continuously flaming inner experience.  

Jayaweera says that from the perspective of that experience, his career in the secular world has been a lot of “tinsel and fluff”, and of value only as a benchmark from which to measure his defection from it.

Indeed, he says that this seminal spiritual encounter evicted from his mind permanently the universally held belief that reality is what human beings apprehend with their five senses, and convinced him, beyond a shadow of doubt, that beyond the empirical there is another reality which human beings' sensorial apparatus knows nothing of.

How Jayaweera experienced a dramatic defection from the secular world and a total turnaround in beliefs and values should interest those who explore religious or mystical experiences such as those described by William James (Varieties of Religious Experience: a Study in Human Nature, 1902), Evelyn Underhill (Mysticism, 1911), Aldous Huxley (The Perennial Philosophy, 1946), Joel Goldsmith (Practising the Presence, 1947), Fritjof Capra (The Tao of Physics, 1975) and Ken Wilber (The Spectrum of Consciousness, 1989).

In May 1970, Jayaweera became a victim of a major political upheaval in Sri Lanka, which pushed his life and career into crisis. During his tenure in high-profile managerial posts for several years, he had acquired a reputation as a no-nonsense administrator and as a stern disciplinarian, and this had incurred the implacable enmity of leading politicians and trade union leaders. In 1970, when the government which he had served was ousted from office after a general election, Jayaweera found himself out of favour with the new government, which not merely exiled him to a relatively junior job in the provinces but also subjected him to great humiliation and public calumny. He also became an object of continuous detraction by former employees and trade unionists whom he had disciplined when he held high office. Even significant sections of the mass media, which had begun to swing round towards a partisan support of the new government, did not spare him. Worst of all, even his family became grist for the venom churned out from his detractors' hate mill.

However, throughout this unremitting assault upon his reputation and career, Jayaweera  did not even once retaliate or speak up in his defence, even though colleagues and friends urged him to do so, but absorbed it all upon his mind and emotions. He was utterly dismayed why, when he was only trying to do the right thing, as he perceived it, he should be subjected to such harassment. As a consequence, for several agonising months, he found himself traversing a wilderness of despair, anguish and chaos.

Rather than hit back or even defend himself, Jayaweera sought remedies through  diverse philosophical and spiritual disciplines that were available to him from within his own rich cultural heritage, and kept seeking light, wisdom and reintegration through them.

Coming from a devout Buddhist family, his first option was naturally to seek answers to his conundrum through disciplines that were observed with great reverence within his own Buddhist culture. He took to Maitri Bhavana and Vipassana Bhavana, two profound and rigorous meditative disciplines at the heart of Buddhist teaching, far exceeding transcendental meditation in profundity and depth. Failing to make headway along either route (which is not intended as a criticism of the said disciplines, but simply to say that they did not supply the answers Jayaweera was seeking) he resorted to the Advaita meditative discipline, as taught by two of India's greatest Hindu philosophers and saints, Sankara (700 AD) and Ramana Maharishi of Arunachala (1900 AD). Those disciplines also, profound though they were, failed to provide Jayaweera with the answers he was seeking. 

However, in September 1970, when still engaged in his relentless quest for the Truth through meditation, unsought and completely contrary to what he expected, he had an awesome experience of Jesus Christ.

It was as if Jesus Christ had manifested in his experience as the all-sufficient answer to all of Jayaweera's questions. That was quite ironic because Jesus Christ's emergence was not only totally contrary to his expectations, but, given his cultural conditioning, seemed even an unwelcome intrusion. Jayaweera's immediate reaction was therefore to be very sceptical and to examine his experience critically.

Jayaweera says that the appearance of Jesus Christ in his life was all the more ironic because at that time, as part of his search for spiritual answers to his worldly conundrum, he was seeking answers only from within his own cultural tradition. One can understand Jayaweera’s absolute consternation when, as if by some divine reprimand, unbidden and totally contrary to his expectations, Jesus Christ should appear in his experience instead!

However, after looking at his experience objectively and over a period of time, through the critical spectacles of philosophy and psychology in which he been trained, he concluded that there was more to his experience than a hallucination or a delusion, and that it had in fact been for him a conduit into another reality, or into what modern cosmologists describe as a Parallel Universe. Looking back on that experience, several decades later, he is convinced more than ever that the experience of the Christ he had in September 1970 marked a seismic shift in his consciousness and a life-transforming paradigm shift.

In support of his conviction that his life-changing experience was neither a hallucination nor a delusion, he points out that a hallucination is essentially an optic distortion, like seeing water on a desert road, or like mistaking a tree stump at dusk for a ghost, or a rope on the ground for a snake. What is common to all these experiences is their ephemeral nature. They lack durability and are easily corrected, and can never exercise a hold on a person's consciousness over a length of time, let alone over a period of over three decades; and much less, be instruments for permanently changing the subject's consciousness, character or personality.

Likewise, Jayaweera says that a delusion is essentially a manifestation of a sick or psychotic mind, often accompanied by, or producing, a chaotic and fragmented personality, rather than the highly integrated and cohesive personality it eventually produced in him.

Jayaweera also rejects the notion that his experience of Jesus Christ might have been a projection of his subconscious mind. He agrees that the subconscious mind can play all sorts of tricks on one's conscious mind by projecting images and apparitions on to one's experience like a film projector throws images onto a screen. However, he also points out that if that was the case in this instance, one would have expected his subconscious mind to project into his experience images and pictures that were an integral part of his own cultural background, and which would have helped him to harmonise the conflict in which he was snared.

In the event, the appearance of Jesus Christ in his experience proved entirely counterproductive in terms of the world, alienated him from his culture and his tradition and opened up new areas of conflict for him, which proved permanent and irreconcilable. Hardly a wish-fulfilling projection of his subconscious mind! At that time, Jayaweera was trying to work his way back into the world, which had evicted him from its midst. That being so, it does not stand to reason why his subconscious mind should come up with an experience which, far from helping him to achieve that goal, actually distanced him from it as never before, and ensured that he would never return to it!

He has never ceased to ask himself why, when being cocooned within the comfort zone of his inherited culture was clearly to his material advantage, he should deliberately have opted for an alien allegiance, for that was what his commitment to Jesus Christ meant in terms of the world, when by all worldly criteria it was absolutely inexpedient for him to do so. The only possible answer is that the seminal experience he had had of the Christ while he was in meditation and prayer in Vavuniya in 1970 had been so self-authenticating and so overpoweringly compelling, that all considerations of expediency became irrelevant.

Jayaweera believes that what actually happened at that point in his life was that, when his ego had been utterly pulverised and felled to the ground, and when, submitting to his brokenness, he had begun diligently to seek the Truth, the Spirit broke through and touched him, imparting to him a new perspective on everything that concerned him – a new set of values, a new consciousness and a whole new life.

Chapter 5

A transformed  life

Demonstrating the extraordinary life-transforming power of his dramatic experience, Jayaweera wrote to all his detractors and persecutors apologising to them for being the cause of their aggression towards him, and asking for their forgiveness for any wrongs he may have inflicted on them. He also wrote to all his former employees whom he had disciplined, apologising for the way in which he had enforced his managerial will, which he admitted was characterised by a lack of compassion.

He also confessed publicly that he had used words like "discipline", "integrity" and "productivity", which in and of themselves were perfectly valid goals for any public servant holding high office, as a mask for his own vaulting ego, and that it was really his self-righteousness that was at the root of his predicament, rather than anyone's malevolence towards him.

This extraordinary response from him filled everyone who had known him with dismay and total incredulity. In their eyes, Jayaweera had always been an insufferably arrogant man, which he concedes, he indubitably had been.

Thirty-eight years after those cataclysmic days, Jayaweera says that today he is a totally free being, liberated and devoid of grudges or resentments, and overflowing with love towards all, regardless of friend or foe; and joy continues to bubble up within him like a spring of water.

This does not mean that he has no critics or detractors (indeed he concedes he has many) but that regardless of what they may hurl at him, he never retaliates or goes into contention with them. His response to aggression or contention, whether physical or verbal, is often a benign smile, and his equanimity, which the world can neither give, nor take away, nor even understand, remains undisturbed.

Chapter 6

The power of meditation

Through the writings of an American Christian mystic named Joel Goldsmith, 15 years after his seminal experience of the Christ, Jayaweera gained access to another tremendous secret – the spiritual power that comes from meditating on Biblical scriptures.

Jayaweera goes to some lengths to explain what meditation means because there is a great deal of misunderstanding about it, especially among many evangelicals in the West. Adopting a typical 19th century Eurocentric stance, which was and still is common among  missionaries from the West, some evangelicals caricature meditation as "oriental religion" (the underlying racism is self evident) and dismiss it out of hand. Jayaweera says that those who dismiss meditation as “oriental religion” are not only exposing their ignorance and racial prejudices, but are also missing out on an important strand of Christian spirituality which Jesus himself had practised.

The basis of all meditation disciplines, whether Eastern or Western, says Jayaweera, is the recognition that beyond what we can apprehend with our five senses there is another reality which cannot be fully grasped through the sensorial apparatus, or through rational or conceptual thought. That there is such a reality can indeed be grasped by an unbiased rational mind, but to explore its contents and structures we have to have recourse to another mode of knowing, which is meditation or faith.

The two premises of all meditative disciplines, that there is a reality beyond the empirical and that it cannot be known through the empirical tools currently at our disposal, are also the two fundamentals of quantum theory. According to quantum mechanics, our five senses can apprehend only .001% of what is “out there” and, regardless of the vast advances that science has made during the past century, the balance 99.999% remains unavailable to our present modes of knowing. Paradoxically, it is these very advances in science that have exposed the limitations of the scientific method, and now the border between science and spirituality has become blurred. The tradition bequeathed to us by Isaac Newton and René Descartes, that there is world of solid matter out there, governed by inflexible laws that can be progressively uncovered through the scientific method, has hit up against a blank wall.

Jayaweera claims that it is meditation that enables us to break out of this veil of materiality, lay hold of the reality back of it, and bring it into manifestation in our daily lives. In that sense, says Jayaweera, meditation is more than a cognitive tool. It can also construct the new reality, “your kingdom … on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

However, Jayaweera emphasises that in order to ensure that what we bring into manifestation on earth is really of God and of the Holy Spirit, rather than of the human mind, his meditative discipline is firmly grounded in Biblical scriptures and the Word of God, and he will never seek to work outside God's grace.

Jayaweera also points out that contrary to the prejudices of some Christians, the two premises of all meditation disciplines, viz that there is reality beyond what is revealed to us by the senses and that that reality cannot be grasped by ordinary rational thought, is after all, the heart of the Bible also:

“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

When he started meditating on Biblical scriptures, Jayaweera’s understanding of the nature of God’s Love, and of the full purpose of His incarnation as Jesus Christ, deepened dramatically. He discovered that it is meditation that makes the Word of God come to life and become real in one's personal experience. Apostle Paul had said that it is the Spirit that quickens the Word and that without Spirit the Word is dead. Elucidating that famous Pauline pronouncement, Jayaweera says that meditation is the instrument that the Holy Spirit uses to quicken the Word.

However, Jayaweera is keen to distinguish the concept of meditation revealed to him by the Spirit, from the many other traditions of meditation prevailing among diverse cultures.

As Jayaweera has been led to understand it, meditation is simply the intensive and sustained contemplation of the Word of God, or Truth, as set out in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament. Quite simply, meditation is abiding in the Word.

Meditation as he conceives it has nothing to do with sitting postures, or breathing exercises, or emptying the mind of all thoughts, or reciting mantras, or following diets, or even with rituals and worship. 

Jayaweera's concept of meditation is simply to withdraw his thoughts from the external world and focus them exclusively on the Word of God, and let the Spirit unfold its deeper meanings.

Jayaweera claims that when Jesus urged His disciples to let His words remain in them … “If you abide in Me, and let My words abide in you, your joy will be full, you will bear much fruit, and whatever you ask shall be done for you.” (John 15:7) … he was asking them to meditate on the Word.

Meditation is abiding, and to "abide in me” is to meditate on Jesus Christ the person, and "let My word abide in you" is to meditate on the Word as Scripture. In his talks Jayaweera often quotes the first few lines of Psalm 1 in elucidation of the power of meditation:

“Blessed are those who … delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on His law day and night.  They are like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers” (Psalm 1:1-3).

Jayaweera also draws an analogy based on Einstein's famous equation E=MC2 to illustrate his concept of how the power hidden in the Word of God may be unlocked and released to the world. According to Einstein, the hard objects of our world are but frozen energy, and within every atom which comprises them, there is hidden an unimaginable power. Einstein expresses the power of the energy (E) locked up in every atom, as being equal (=) to the mass of the particle (M) multiplied by the velocity of light (C – i.e. 176,000 miles per second) squared (2) that is, multiplied by itself again, hence: E=MC2. When the atom is split, the energy thus released has unimaginable power.

Likewise, Jayaweera says that the Word of God is frozen spiritual energy which when tapped and released can move mountains, heal the sick and raise the dead. Meditation is the spiritual equivalent of splitting the atom and unbinding the energy hidden in the Word of God.

He emphasises that reading the Bible simply with the rational mind, even in faith, does not transform us in our depths, and that it is only when the Word is taken into contemplation, and mulled over and over, in the silence, through endless hours and nights, that its deeper meanings begin to unfold and impact our lives.

He believes that the deeper meanings of the Word of God can only be appropriated and absorbed when intellect subsides and places itself at the service of faith, and when, as the result of sustained contemplation and meditation, pure consciousness takes over. Just as grains of salt dissolved into a bowl of soup transform its taste and texture irretrievably, so does the Word of God, especially pertaining to the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, taken into our consciousness at the deepest level, transform us into the image and likeness of the Risen Christ.

Meditation on Biblical scriptures has opened up hitherto untapped layers of spiritual energy and has given Jayaweera access to a sustained experience of love and joy and of the peace that the world cannot give:

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives” (John 14:27).

Not only that, Jayaweera also began to see the fruits of Christ-centred meditation not only in the healing and regeneration of his own life but in the lives of those who sought his help and whoever were lodged in his consciousness.

Furthermore, he discovered that his experience of the Christ also cohered with the quantum view of the world, but he emphasises that his experience of the Christ is self-validating and is not dependent on empirical data for proof.

Jayaweera also found that, through daily meditation, as he increasingly became a channel for the Spirit, his life and work became more and more harmonised, integrated and coherent. In his 50s, through daily meditation, Jayaweera had discovered in Biblical scriptures, a source of extraordinary spiritual power that he had never even dreamt of before.

However, he valued that power not just for itself or for the elevation it gave him subjectively, but for the opportunity it gave him, unbeknown to anyone except Spirit Himself, for streaming the Christ into the lives of whoever he held in his consciousness, and into the life of the wider world and the cosmos.

He says that it was only after his official retirement in 1995, when he was 65, that he found his niche in life, directed fully by Spirit, and that it is only now, in silence and in obscurity, away from the madding crowd, that he is able to do the work he has been called by God to do on earth. 

Chapter 7

The spiritual value of traumas

From his personal experience of a deep trauma (ie a profoundly lacerating emotional or mental wound), Jayaweera has developed a coherent view about the spiritual value of traumas.

He believes that traumas can either be converted into opportunities for launching out on a new life, filled with joy, peace and power, or be allowed to drag the victim deeper into despair and misery. The choice lies with the victim.

With most people, traumas serve merely to strengthen their sense of self and push them into an even higher ego trajectory. They come out of the trauma burdened with terrible feelings of hurt and deeply resentful about whoever they felt were responsible for their pain, inevitably thereby, leaving the door open for deeper and more lacerating traumas down the road. Their lives are swathed in bitterness and devoid of joy and peace.

However, traumas can also serve as opportunities to transit from one paradigm to another. Some respond to the painful challenges that confront them neither aggressively nor defensively but with brokenness, discovering within themselves the primary cause for their suffering. Invariably, this approach produces a complete reappraisal of the victims’ lives and leads them to find integration at a much deeper level of consciousness.

Jayaweera uses two metaphors for explaining the paradigm shift that results from following the latter approach.

One is the spiritual metaphor, which sees a trauma as an opportunity to crucify the Ego-centred life (ie fallen humanity or the fallen Adam of the Book of Genesis, Old Testament) and to be resurrected into the Christ-centred life (new humanity or the New Creation).

The other metaphor is drawn from cosmology which speaks of Black Holes and Parallel Universes. A trauma is a spiritual black hole through which the subject who is sucked into it, is transmuted within it, in the twinkling of an eye, and exits into a spiritual new universe which has none of the elements that characterised the world from which he/she came. 

Cosmologists who speak of Black Holes and Parallel Universes also claim that the point at which the subject emerges into the new universe is a Singularity.

Jayaweera sees the Death and Resurrection of the Christ as that Singularity, through which the human race can exit the world in which they now live, and emerge into the Kingdom of God on earth.

The point that Jayaweera is making here is a fundamental one that may not be apparent or convincing to those who are unfamiliar with things spiritual. The point is this:

There are two approaches to the solution of any condition that a human being may confront along life’s way. One is the world’s way, which 99% of the human race pursues, and the other is the spiritual way, which apparently only a miniscule few take.

He claims that the world’s way is to deal primarily with symptoms, whether at a political, economic, social or personal level, and not to look for the causes behind the symptoms, and consequently it never really solves the problem. The world’s way is either through attack or through defence, through argument or through judgement, but neither ever yields lasting results. No problem has ever been resolved by one side’s winning the argument or as a result of the other side losing it. The problem keeps coming up, in different forms, but it is the same problem regurgitating into experience.

By contrast, he says that the spiritual way cuts through the symptoms and lays hold of the root cause and eliminates it at that level. It is rather like getting rid of a dandelion weed. There is no way one can get rid of a dandelion merely by lopping off its leaves; it has to be extracted at its root and incinerated. The axe has to be laid at the trunk of the diseased tree, and not on the branches. Once the trunk is felled we do not need to bother about the branches. Jayaweera is saying that one can no more solve a problem at the level of the problem, any more than one can cure a cancer with band-aid.

Jayaweera says that the Death and Resurrection of Jesus is the material expression of that fundamental spiritual truth. It is a metaphor given to us for understanding the central truth concerning life in this “Fallen World” and how to exit it.

Chapter 8

Ego and separation

The underlying premise here is that the one barrier that stands between God and humankind, between the Infinite and the finite, is Ego, (ie the belief in an illusory life, separate and independent of God) and that before human beings can be reconciled to God and find true fulfilment, Ego has to be annihilated – not merely civilised, not just improved, not refurbished or repackaged, but utterly and absolutely annihilated!

Ego is the affirmation of a spurious personal life, separate and apart from God, comparable to a broken branch, cut off from the parent trunk  and pretending to be the trunk itself, and heading inevitably towards decay and death. Being separated from God, Ego is a closed system, and is therefore subject to the law of entropy. Ego is another word for separation from God, and before reconciliation can take place, it has to die.

It may be useful to quote here Jayaweera's concept of Ego as set out in the introductory chapter to this autobiographical sketch. Jayaweera says that by the term "Ego", he means something far more fundamental than egoism, or ordinary self-centeredness which, although obvious expressions of Ego, are not Ego itself. There are other blatant expressions of Ego as well, such as ambition and pride, fear and insecurity, acquisitiveness and greed, anger and impatience, hostility and aggression, bitterness and resentments, and most of all, disease, decay and death. Although disease, decay and death are not normally associated with Ego, they are, nevertheless, unmistakable evidence that it is very much on the throne.

Ego arises from lumping together a human being’s physical apparatus – the form and the name – and making a single entity of them. It is like isolating a wave on the surface of the sea and giving to its physical appearance a name and making of it a thing in itself, forgetting that its reality is not in itself, but in the ocean that supports it.

Lacking substance or reality, Ego sees itself separate from and in opposition to other egos. Being separated from substance, Ego is constantly overwhelmed by a sense of its own insecurity and loneliness and tries to overcome them through frenetic activities, seeking to clothe itself in power, wealth, name and fame, and through accomplishments in diverse fields of activities. The Guinness Book of Records is a perfect testimony to how desperate is Ego’s need for recognition. One entry is from a man who claims to be able to stand on one leg for the longest period of time, and another from a man who claims to be able to spit further than anyone else!

Loneliness and insecurity drive Ego to find compensation through the most diverse external activities. It seeks to scale the tallest mountains and plumb the deepest oceans, it reaches out to the farthest limits of space and it seeks to accumulate knowledge of any and every kind, even pertaining to stamp collecting, for example. Ego is constantly seeking a niche where it can be an expert, the world’s biggest and best. It seeks solace in sensuality, in human love, in home and family, in nationalism and patriotism, in social service and charity, and not least in glorifying war, all of which bear witness to Ego’s frantic need for recognition and substance. True, some of these activities are clearly beneficial to the human race, but the driving motor is always Ego, and that is why there is so much cut-throat competition even among science researchers and eminent academics who are trying to find remedies for deadly diseases.

Ego is at the heart of all conflict, whether personal, social or political. Most of all, Ego is the driving motor of war.

Following all the great religious Masters of the world, as well as all of the world's mystics, Jayaweera says that Ego, defined as an illusory self, is the root of all the world's problems, as well as of all our personal problems. He says that in so far as Ego has no basis in reality, it is the greatest of superstitions, and like all superstitions, has the capacity to hold the human mind in thrall.

Taking the world's great religions chronologically, Jayaweera looks at how each of them treats the overarching problem of Ego.

In Hindu belief, Ego is an illusion or maya, standing between human beings and Brahman (God). Brahman individualises himself as Atman, and in every detail Atman has all that Brahman has, which is the equivalent of Jesus’ claims, “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30) and “Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). However, when Brahman individualises as Atman, it encases itself in a visible, tangible sheath, our body equipment, which constitutes our so-called individuality. The belief that that external sheath constitutes a self-subsistent entity, or Ego, is the illusion or maya, from which arise all of the problems of life, and the break-out from Ego or moksha (emancipation) is achieved through a rigorous four-fold discipline, to be perfected over countless births and rebirths.

In Buddhist belief also, Ego is an illusion, the product of avijja (ie ignorance of things as they are). In his doctrine of paticcasamupaada (dependent origination) the Buddha sets out clearly and elaborately how this spurious "i" consciousness comes into being and incurs the Law of anicca (impermanence), dhukka (sorrow) and anatta (soullessness). Living under the tyranny of Ego is endless suffering and sorrow, and Enlightenment consists of progressively realising the truth concerning Ego's spurious nature; Nirvana being the final break-out from its tyranny. However, to achieve this break-out will require perfecting oneself and attaining higher and higher states of consciousness over countless births and rebirths in sansaara.

In Christian belief, Ego was born at the Garden of Eden, when, ignoring God's admonition about the consequences of his free choice, Adam chose to disobey God and go his own way (ie The Fall). At that point, man not only set himself up as a spurious Ego, but also became a closed system and came under the law of cause and effect and incurred the law of entropy (ie the equivalent of anicca, dhukka and anatta in Buddhism). Ego is the Fallen Adam, and the only way back to God is for the Ego to repent and submit to crucifixion, but since Ego will never commit suicide (that would be too much to expect of Ego) it has to be done deus ex machina (literally – through a divine intervention from outside the system) which was what the Crucifixion was all about. Jesus of Nazareth was the deus ex machina, manifesting on earth as archetypal man, to take on voluntarily the sin (ie the Fall) of the world.

The sharp contrast between the Hindu and Buddhist understanding of deliverance from Ego on the one hand, and the Christian understanding on the other, is that whereas in Hinduism and Buddhism deliverance depends on the understanding and effort of human beings and can take millions of years of journeying through sansaara, in Christian understanding it can be achieved here and now, through faith that the Death and Resurrection have already achieved deliverance from Ego.

In Islam, the Ego is denounced as a rival of God and as Satan's representative on earth. The term used in the Quran and Sunnah for Ego is kibr (arrogance and pride). The Quran says that Ego is the one disastrous idol that believers must fight against and defeat (2:54.) It says that if we have even a mustard seed weight of kibr (Ego) in us we can never be accepted by God. Our ego always justifies the arguments offered by Satan to idolize one's own opinions, get more attached to one's culture, cherish one's inherited religion, hesitate to choose rightfully, reject guidance, refuse to increase one's knowledge because one already knows it all, and so on. In other words, Satan relies on our egos to carry out his plan for diverting us from God's path.

When one surveys how the great religious masters of the world have looked at the human problem, regardless of the many doctrinal differences that distinguish one from the other, there is one ground of unanimity among them. That is that Ego is the heart of the problem, and the only way out of the problem is to remove Ego from the scene. Every other remedy, whether scientific, political or economic, is not even palliative, but serves primarily to conceal the problem under dense layers of spurious solutions.

How to obliterate this spurious Ego, and gain liberation, has been at the centre of humanity’s perennial quest. The world has its own internal mechanisms for pulverising Ego, not because it wants it out of the way, but because to inflict pain and anguish is the way of the world, which itself is its outworking. The world, which is the Ego externalising itself, is programmed by default to inflict pain and anguish. However, when the world pulverises it, rather than go under, Ego often rebounds with renewed vigour, like the evil giant in Greek mythology who rebounded with greater strength every time Hercules hurled it to the ground, and that pleases Satan so that he can continue to use Ego to channel pain and sorrow into the world.

In a few, however, the world's demolition of Ego triggers a different reaction. Ego succumbs, bends its knees and submits to God in surrender, opening the way for Spirit to take over and commence the awesome work of replacing it with the Spirit of Christ. Humanity's reconciliation to God, or the restoration of the broken branch to the parent tree, can take place only after Ego, who had initially triggered the separation, has been overpowered by Spirit, and has been supplanted with the Christ.

Jayaweera believes that rather than risk being pulverised by the world, with the attendant possibility of reinvigorating itself, the human ego has a literally heaven-sent opportunity to die voluntarily and vicariously, in and through the Christ, that is, through faith in His Death and Resurrection.

Chapter 9

A new world view

Over the last four decades, through daily prayer and meditation, Jayaweera’s seminal encounter with the Spirit of Christ has kept deepening and widening, so much so that, under its guidance, he began to develop an entire world view with the Death and Resurrection of Jesus as its pivot. He also incorporates within it, insights from the physical and biological sciences, as well as from other spiritual traditions.

Although Jayaweera was baptised once into the Anglican Communion and later into a Pentecostal Communion, he does not consider himself as belonging to any particular denomination or church, but merely as a cell in Christ's infinite and mystical Spiritual body, whose only head is the invisible Risen Christ himself. However he worships regularly in his local village church.

For 1500 years the official monolithic church based in Rome had claimed that salvation required the administration of the sacraments through consecrated priests of the church. However, Martin Luther (1483 -1546) wrought a mighty revolution in the Christian belief by claiming that salvation was exclusively through faith in the finished work of Jesus, and not through any church dispensations or through good works or even through the sacraments – all of which have their place in Christian worship, and are even necessary, but can never be a substitute for faith in the absolute sufficiency of what Jesus accomplished on the Cross.

“For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith” (Romans 1:17).

“This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.  God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood” (Romans 3:22-25).

“We … know that a person is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:15-16).

“… I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!" (Galatians 2:20-21).

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit” (Galatians 3:13-14).

Accepting this revelation given to Luther, Jayaweera believes that those who have identified themselves with Jesus Christ, and have been baptised into Him in tangible proof of their commitment to Him, have also died with Him on the Cross, and have inherited His Resurrection as well.

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).

“For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.” (2 Corinthians 5:14-19)

They are what Paul calls the new Adam, the "born-again" adopted sons and daughters of God. The new Adam is homo resurrectus (a concept revealed to Jayaweera in meditation) who is progressively replacing homo sapiens on earth.

Through faith in the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, the egos of men and women have died with Jesus, and the resurrected Spirit of Christ has come to indwell them. Humanity has transited from homo sapiens to homo resurrectus. God, who was either on Mount Sinai, or enthroned behind a veil inside the Temple in Jerusalem, or hidden in a Burning Bush has now come to dwell within human beings and that is what the New Creation is all about. 

Thirty-nine years after that all-consuming experience, Jayaweera is convinced more than ever, that God's purpose for Planet Earth is to bring forth a new spiritual being, the Christ-centred homo resurrectus in place of the Ego-centred homo sapiens, who has made a complete mess of God’s first creation. However before that can happen, the present order of greed, corruption and violence will, under its own accelerating momentum, wind itself down, perhaps even in some cataclysmic denouement.

Chapter 10

Homo Resurrectus and the New Creation 

The New Creation, which is God’s Kingdom come on earth, will pivot on homo resurrectus, who will be of the image and likeness of the Christ, and who will in fact be none other than the Spirit of the Risen Christ manifesting infinitely as new individuals, new relationships, new activities, new communities, new structures and institutions, new nations, and indeed, as a new political and economic environment.

As Apostle Paul says in his Epistle to the Ephesians that God is and will be, "… over all and through all and in all". (Ephesians 6:4)

However, we cannot conceive of the content, shape and form of the New Creation through mental categories derived from the empirical world. We have to resort to the via negativa or the logic of negation - which postulates that reality is "neither this, nor that". Apostle Paul wrote,

"No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him – but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit" (1 Corinthians 2:9-10).

In other words, Paul is saying that through empirical thinking we cannot form an image of the New Creation.

However, using the via negativa, we can proceed to exclude from the New Creation elements that define our current worldly experience, such as the law of entropy and even the laws of space, time and gravity.

The New Creation will also be completely free from the law of, "As you sow, so shall you reap" of the Old Testament, as well as from the Law of Sin and Death of the New Testament, and not least, totally free from the Law of Karma of the Buddhists and of the Hindus. The new creation will be subject only to one law, and that is the Law of Grace, or God's will, unfolding infinitely and abundantly.

There will be no pain there, no illness, disease, decay, death or mourning. There will be no fear or anxiety there, no hate or bitterness, no suspicion or mistrust, no discord or conflict, no violence or war. There will be no lack, limitation or poverty there, and no greed or exploitation, no oppression or tyranny.

The driving power within homo resurrectus will be no longer the Fallen Adam or Ego, but the New Adam or the Spirit of the Risen Christ.

Chapter 11

Manifesting the image and likeness of the Christ

What does it mean to manifest the image and likeness of the Christ?

Quite simply, it means to show forth LOVE in all aspects of our lives – in our thoughts and in our words, in our activities and in our relationships, in our ambitions and in our vocations, remembering always that none of this is ever possible unless the incumbent Ego is first killed off.

What does it mean to show forth LOVE in all these areas? 

Love does not mean the sensual or possessive love of man for woman or vice versa, or love for anything on earth; neither for family, nor for wealth, nor for race or country, nor even for humanity as an object, for all these are but instances of possessive love, or ego-driven attachments.

This does not mean that when someone is a follower of Christ he or she does not love spouse or family, but that the LOVE of Christ is of an entirely higher and different order, encompassing, transforming and enriching every form of human love.

The LOVE that Christ manifested was a totally self-giving, self-denying love, as demonstrated on the Cross. It was a love that encompassed His disciples, His mother Mary, the family of Mary, Martha and Lazarus and the two robbers who hung on either side of Him, and Judas, Pilate and Caiaphas as well. The LOVE of the Christ also encompassed the rabble who had bayed for His blood only a few hours earlier in the day, and indeed it encompassed the whole world, including those millions yet unborn.

When Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do" (Luke 23:34), He was setting a standard for CHRIST LOVE that forever set it apart from human love.

Such is the LOVE that the Risen Christ promises to work into and through whoever comes to Him in faith.

As defined by Jesus himself, LOVE means to:

Offer the other cheek (Luke 6:29);

Forgive 70 times 7 (which means to forgive without end, as we are forgiven by God) (Matthew 18:21-22);

Go the second mile (Matthew 5:41);

Give to them that ask and lend to them that borrow (Matthew 5:42);

Bless those who abuse us, and pray for those who persecute us (Romans 12:14; Matthew 5:44);

Love is to be patient, kind and gentle, to be composed and temperate, to rejoice with others in their joy and to mourn with them in their loss (1 Corinthians 13: 4-7; Romans 12:15);

LOVE means never to return evil for evil, never to judge, never to condemn, but always to see Christ in all, through all, and all in all (Romans 1217; Ephesians 4:6).

That is what it means to manifest the image and likeness of the Risen Christ – on earth – as in heaven.

Chapter 12

Organised religion or spirituality?

Jayaweera draws an important distinction between organised religion and spirituality.

He says that all organised religions, regardless of denomination, are primarily cultural phenomena and power systems. Over millennia, seminal truths that have been revealed to, or that have been embodied as, spiritual masters, have become blanketed under dense layers of dogma, doctrines, rituals, liturgies, traditions, and not least, under hierarchical structures.

Jayaweera uses an analogy to convey his view of organised religion. He says that, having acknowledged the Light, organised religions proceed with great benevolence to smother it with layer upon layer of thick crystal, claiming to protect and magnify it, but in effect reducing the Light to a faint blur and concealing its blinding luminosity from the world's awe and wonder. Praise God, however! The Light continues to shine through all those accretions, albeit dimly, and the darkness shall never overpower it!

He says that organised religions build magnificent edifices – cathedrals, temples, mosques, images, sculptures, etc – and sponsor grand spectacles and festivals, ostensibly to enable worshippers to focus their minds on God or on their particular spiritual master. However, in reality, these things become values in themselves, ego trips for hierarchy as well as for the laity associated with them, and serve only to divert the attention of worshippers from the real thing. Organised religions tend to get lost in externals, whereas spirituality ignores the externals and works through the inner life.

Jayaweera quotes Rabindranath Tagore, the great Bengali poet and saint, who said, “God revealed the Truth, but the devil organised it.”

On the other hand, spirituality, Jayaweera says, is a state of consciousness attained through a direct and unmediated experience of the Light, whether we call it God, Christ or Spirit, and it requires neither structures, nor hierarchies for its propagation, except Spirit Himself. It is often beyond the capacity of concepts and words to convey, but leads to positive changes in behaviour and attitudes, which are its effects rather than its cause. As Jayaweera understands it, the heart of true spirituality is continuously experiencing the Light/Christ/Spirit, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient and infinite.

Jayaweera also points out that throughout history, while organised religions have generally been  divisive and have soaked the earth with blood, spirituality has been essentially a unifying force, sustained by Peace and Joy, and able to absorb contradiction without conflict. Over the centuries, it has never been aggressive in propagating itself, and has never resorted to arms or duplicity for winning adherents.

Jayaweera emphasises that spirituality is neither a religion nor a doctrine. Rather, it is the fruitage of living constantly in the presence of the Christ, acknowledging Him in all things, and allowing Him to use us as instruments for His glory. Spirituality is the outcome of allowing one's "self" or ego, to die on the Cross, daily, as admonished by Apostle Paul.

Spirituality is neither a concept nor a theology, but an experiential reality, evidenced by a continuous demonstration of love, joy and peace, of patience, forgiveness and tolerance, of kindness and humility, of equanimity and temperance, and not least by wisdom and a sense of inner power. Spirituality is living on the inner plane and allowing the Christ within to externalise into the world’s experience, rather than living only at the level of the empirical world. In short, spirituality mirrors the image and likeness of the Christ, as He appears in and through individual human beings as well as through external structures as well – religious, political, economic and social. Paul expresses it this way:

 “… one God … who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:6) – the totality being the Kingdom of God manifest on earth as in heaven.

He does concede, however, that regardless of their lack of spiritual content, organised religions have played a crucial role in the evolution of human societies. They have imparted cohesion and ballast to societies, and have been in that respect on a par with other social structures like the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the schooling system and the mass media for stitching the social fabric together and holding it in place. He also believes that organised religions have been vehicles for transmitting the Light from one generation to another, so that individuals who are smitten by Spirit can seize on it, however faint and obscured it may be, and fan it into a conflagration.

As Jayaweera sees it, one of the problems with organised religions has been that they all claim to be the "only true religion" and in the scramble to prove their claim, have proceeded to devastate, kill and obliterate each other, violating thereby two of their central values, namely "thou shall not kill" and the commitment to "the Peace that passes all understanding".

He says that organised religions are often more concerned with adding to their numbers than with seeking to transform lives. Spirituality, on the other hand, is more concerned with demonstrating through the lives of all individuals, regardless of religious affiliation, the Kingdom values of Love, Joy and Peace.

Jayaweera cites chapter 4 of John’s Gospel in proof of his claim that Spirituality, rather than organised religion, will be the way forward. Addressing the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus said:

“ Believe me woman, the time is coming, and it has already come, when we will worship the Father neither on this mountain, nor in the Temple, ............a time is coming when true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and  in Truth, for God is Spirit” (John 4:21, 23).

Jayaweera also cites the prophet Joel (Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17-18 &21) further to strengthen his hypothesis that spirituality is the forthcoming reality, rather than religion. Speaking through Joel, God says: 

“And afterwards, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days…... And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved.” (Joel 2:28-32)

He also cites Jeremiah further to support his faith in the inevitability of a spiritual new order:

“This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after that time, declares the LORD. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbour … because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest .... For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:33-34).

Jayaweera believes that under the onslaught of secularism, the scientific enterprise and  the burgeoning intellectual culture, organised religion will decay and disintegrate and be replaced by spirituality, when men and women will come to know God directly and intimately, without dogma, rituals, hierarchy and schism.

He also sees a time when spirituality and the quantum interpretation of the world will  merge and the dualistic understanding of reality will end.

Regardless of his option for spirituality over organised religion, Jayaweera does worship regularly in his village Anglican church in Kent, England, along with his family, and is a Minister of the Chalice within it (a Minister of the Chalice is someone who has been appointed by the local Bishop to administer the consecrated wine – the blood of Jesus – at the Communion Table). He says that he values this office highly because it enables him to demonstrate how spirituality can convert what, in the eyes of many, is only a ritual, into a living spiritual experience. On the other hand, although he worships in an Anglican church he does not consider himself as belonging to any denomination, but only to the Risen Christ.

According to Jayaweera, while true spirituality does not require liturgies and rituals for its expression, it can transmute them into profound spiritual experiences. He cites the Eucharist as a powerful example: while many believers may participate in the Eucharist mechanically and for conformity's sake, spirituality imparts to it another dimension and converts it into a daily encounter with the living Christ. Spirituality can therefore transmute rituals and liturgies, which in and of themselves may be devoid of spiritual content, into vibrant instruments of the Most High, pulsating with power.

While he emphasises inner spirituality as being the driving motor and the end of all true religion, Jayaweera is quite emphatic that an inner spirituality that does not express itself outwardly as fellowship and community is no spirituality at all. He does not see spirituality as an escape from the world, or necessarily as an option for the monastery, although monasteries, ashrams and retreat houses can indeed serve as powerful engines of the Spirit. Rather, he sees spirituality as a springboard from which to engage with the world.

However, engagement with the world will not be for legitimising it or for serving as its agent, but for transforming it from within, not superficially as politicians and economists seek to do, but in its depths. Therefore, a Spirit-driven person will always renounce and condemn anything that divides people, whether the division be ethnic, cultural, economic, political, social or personal. A person imbued with inner spirituality can never be a "nationalist” or even a "patriot" because they are both predicated upon division and opposition, upon preferment and attachment, but he will always identify himself only with all humanity. 

Basically, a Spirit-driven person will take the whole of creation for his habitat and all of humanity for his or her family. While they will carry a passport of the country in which they were born or of the country they have adopted as their home, and will discharge dutifully all the responsibilities that attach to citizenship on earth and submit to its laws, they will always remain citizens only of the Spirit's Kingdom, acknowledging only the Christ as their ultimate heavenly sovereign, to whom alone they will bend their knees and owe their allegiance.

Chapter 13

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Concerning nationalism and patriotism

Based on the view upheld by all religious masters and mystics that Ego is an illusion, lacking substance and reality, Jayaweera has developed a coherent view about nationalism and patriotism.

Both nationalism and patriotism, he says, are merely extensions of the primary illusion/error of Ego, and are therefore equally erroneous and productive of evil.

He defines nationalism as an emotional and often aggressive attachment to one's own culture, and patriotism as an even stronger and more aggressive emotional attachment to the land of one's birth. In both instances they exclude rather than include, and therefore produce conflict and violence.

Jayaweera opines that at a personal level, lacking substance, and being in separation from God, Ego is always insecure and therefore prone to fear and dread, and as a result  generates envy, greed, aggression and conflict. Like a broken branch which, being separated from its parent trunk, inevitably withers and dies, Ego being separated from its parent "I AM" also inevitably produces disease, decay and death. Furthermore, Ego seeks compensation for its sense of insecurity by masking itself with pride and aggression. Being separated from its source and therefore insecure, Ego is prone to feelings of hurt, which in turn come out as feelings of antagonism and the desire for revenge.

Nationalism and patriotism, being extensions of Ego, manifest the same negative effects, but on a vaster scale. On a national or ethnic level, Ego generates deep feelings of insecurity and inferiority, compensatory attachments and excessive pride, violent hates and incurable resentments, and not least persistent conflict and violence on a horrendous scale. All of that stemming from the seminal error of Ego.

Jayaweera points out that nationalism and patriotism have caused the shedding of more blood, and the evisceration of more human beings and the destruction of more homesteads, cities and whole communities than any other single factor in human history, except perhaps, organised religion! 

He claims therefore, that both nationalism and patriotism are remnants of primitivism. He recalls that it was from caves that primitive human beings began their long and arduous climb up the ladder of civilisation. When they dwelt within their rock caves, they defended their habitat with sticks and stones and developed a great emotional attachment to their particular way of doing things – which was culture – and an equally strong emotional attachment to their rock caves – which was patriotism.

Jayaweera points out, that over the millennia, despite humanity’s claim to be civilised and despite the enormous strides made in the ability to control nature, human beings are still cave dwellers. All that has changed is the size of the cave and the weapons used to defend it. Then, people lived in holes cut into a rock face; today, they live in mansions and high rise buildings. Then they defended their caves with sticks and stones but today they defend them with nuclear missiles and supersonic warplanes. What hasn't changed, however, is the cave mentality and human beings continue to live within the caves of their mind.

Jayaweera says that as long as humanity continues to be locked within its ego cave, human beings will remain savages and their true history has yet to begin. To that extent, humanity is still in its pre-historic phase.

However, there is hope. Jayaweera says that the Death and Resurrection of Jesus provides people with an exit strategy from the caves of personal, national and territorial ego. First, however, its Truth has to be comprehended, appropriated and embedded deep in people’s consciousness, beyond denominations and religions. Then we will see homo sapiens replaced by homo resurrectus, and the Kingdom established on earth.

Chapter 14

Jayaweera's writings and publications

Most of Jayaweera’s secular writings before 1989 pertain to communication. Among his better known works in communication are  the following:

New Communication Technologies and Third World Cultures –  in the UNESCO publication Cultures,. Paris. 1986

Some Tentative Thoughts on Communication Theory – in Media Asia. AMIC. Singapore. 1986

The Political Economy of the Communication Revolution. AMIC. Singapore. 1986

Rethinking Development Communication – as editor. AMIC. Singapore. 1987

The New Economics of Information – co-authored with Prof Tom Stonier and Prof James Robertson; published by the New Economics Foundation. London. 1989

Continuity and Change in Indian Culture – A communication Paradigm. ISPCK. New Delhi. 1989

Folk Media and Development Communication – Myths and Realities. ISPCK. New Delhi. 1991

Although still relevant from the point of view of the secular world, Jayaweera confesses that from the perspective of his present life, all the writings set out above are just a load of rubbish, not worth the paper on which they are printed. 

His publications also include:

The Paradox of Jesus Christ – published by Pragna. 2001

The Role of the Churches in the Ethnic Conflict – published by Marga Institute. 2001

Since his retirement in 1995, Jayaweera has been writing articles on the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka regularly, espousing justice and righteousness for observance by both sides of the conflict, and has also appeared on several BBC programmes, principally on Newsnight, speaking on the same issue.

Also, since his retirement, he has published the following books on his experiences of the ethnic conflict in Jaffna and on the first JVP uprising in Vavuniya:

Jaffna: Exorcising the Past and Holding the Vision. An autobiographical reflection on the ethnic conflict by Neville Jayaweera, Government Agent of Jaffna 1963-1966. Ravaya Publishers, Sri Lanka. 2014. (Awarded the prize for best memoirs in 2014 by the Sri Lanka Cultural Ministry)

The Vavuniya Diaries (Recollecting the first JVP uprising 1971) by Neville Jayaweera, Government Agent of Vavuniya Administrative District 1970-1973). Ravaya Publishers, Sri Lanka. 2017.

The vast bulk of his writings since 1995 relate to spiritual and religious themes. These are in the process of being uploaded onto his website and are freely available to read: http://www.nevillejayaweera.com

Some portions of this autobiography have been published as a series of memoirs in the Sunday Island newspaper in Sri Lanka.

The two reasons that prompted him finally to write his autobiography is, firstly, to show how, even when he was embedded in the world, he was constantly caught in the struggle between the Yogi and the Commissar, a fundamentally spiritual contradiction which the novelist Arthur Koestler expressed through a powerful metaphor; and secondly, to illustrate the vast gulf that separates his former life, which was rooted in the world, from the life that he is living now in Christ.

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The website of Neville Jayaweera:  http://www.nevillejayaweera.com

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