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 The story of Vamberto Morais, an MD from Recife,
state of Pernambuco, who went to England to learn how to
better look into minds as a psychiatrist and got to see so deeply
and so far ahead into souls that he ended up as
an internationally recognized spiritual master.
By Wilson Velloso
Although he said in public that "I should make it clear that I am no guru,"
Dr. Vamberto Morais discovered that people who listened to him and to his teachings could
not be stopped when pouring esteem on him and, very much against his wishes, admired and
revered him as a Venerable Master—which is the meaning of the Hindi term guru.
Morais was too modest, too respectful of his Indian teachers, the Swamis and Sris he
came to know and work with, that he had to reject the notion of him being placed on the
same footing with them while he searched for more elusive and profound truths. He felt
that there was no reason for such honor, as he didn't deserve it.
The puzzle here was how and why Morais, a scion of an ancient and illustrious family of
sugar mill barons of Pernambuco, in Northeastern Brazil, born, bred, and reared in
the Roman Catholic faith and tradition, an honor and award-winning student all his life,
including in the medical school of Recife, a medical doctor at 22, had come to a clean
break with the Church of Rome, to the point of criticizing harshly Pope John Paul II for
his most conservative utterances. But no wonder that Vamberto, thus turned into a topic of
discussion and controversy among friends who considered him a convert to agnosticism,
pursued the path he had picked.
However, it would be too simplistic to attribute his abandonment of an old faith solely
to the influence of his elder brother Gilberto, as the story goes. The fact was that, from
an early age Morais had been a thinker, a reasoner, and a seeker who took pride in
arriving at his own conclusions and decisions.
In addition to everything else, his change had not been sudden. His mutation involved
much more than a flash realization of the meaning of the age-old Spanish saying: Yo no
creo en brujas, pero que las hay, hay! (I don't believe in witches, but they certainly
exist!) It went much further than that.
When he was in São Paulo, during his residency in psychiatry, he heard about a
scholarship being offered by the British Council to a Brazilian MD desirous of doing
post-graduate work in London. Entirely on his own, Morais applied for the grant, passed
the required test with flying colors and in 1946 traveled to England.
In London he got to know a human and professional environment completely different from
the one he was familiar with in his country. He marveled at the stamina and the spirit of
the survivors of the Blitzkrieg, walking in still darkened streets among bombed
buildings and around bomb craters. He also shared with the British the rigors of a
disciplined clothing and food rationing that sometimes allowed each person an egg per
week, sometimes none. In spite of all that, or because of it, he walked into the swing of
things and fell in love with England, no matter how broken, broke, impoverished, but
holding on to her centuries-old spirit.
He went to practice in the aging, renowned Maudsley Hospital in Camberwell, South
London. And, faithful to the letter of a commitment that was part and parcel of his
scholarship, there he worked with mental patients and did psychoanalysis for five years.
Morais believed in what he was doing, and he did it well. So well that he was invited
to give talks on psychology and psychiatry by the Brazilian short-wave service of the
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). He also decided that he ought to take advantage of
living in such a great center of learning: and study more, much more.
But then in 1956 he was approached by the Federal University of Pernambuco to teach
English and English Literature. He went back and for seven months lectured in Recife.
While in Brazil he had the good fortune of meeting his future wife. On the other hand,
however, he soon realized that the structure of University courses, and the contents of
its curricula could be vastly improved. He agitated for meaningful changes but soon
realized that there was no political will to undertake any improvement.
He lost patience with the rigid and sterile bureaucratic approach of everything in
Brazil, as installed by the legacy of Getúlio Vargas of "create difficulties to sell
facilities". Morais decided to go back to London. It was obvious that he was much
happier in England with the ample climate of academic freedom, open discussion, give and
take, and the general climate of liberty. It was a milieu in which he felt much easier to
indulge his innate restless search and expand his humanitarianism.
So he returned to the BBC where he had worked before as a free lancer. He did all sorts
of jobs he was intellectually equipped to do. He reviewed books, wrote programs, adapted
stage plays for radio, produced and directed them, often acted in them. He originated a
number of programs at the BBC, including a series of Sunday London Chronicles, which
lasted for many years.
He also thought frequently of Maria de Lourdes, Lourdinha, the young
schoolteacher he had met in Recife. It was obvious that she had made a deep impression on
Vamberto. For almost two years he corresponded occasionally with her and pondered the pros
and cons of his bachelorhood. At lost last, he decided to take the plunge and wrote
Lourdinha proposing marriage.
The chosen lady felt that the unexpected offer of his was quite unusual and took her
sweet time to respond with a yes. But there was a problem. Her family insisted on a
Catholic wedding while Morais clung to his well-known anticlericalism. Negotiations and
arrangements were delicate and complicated. A compromise was reached at last for the good
of all concerned. In addition to a civil marriage, a church wedding was celebrated in
Recife with a male friend standing in as the bridegroom's proxy. The real bridegroom
stayed in London.
The Morais only met as man and wife when Lourdinha set foot in the United Kingdom in
December 1958. Typically, marriage did not deter Morais in his decision to pursue his
studies. He decided to learn Classical Greek and otherwise prepare to enroll at the
University of London. He dived into Ancient History and became a scholar on the subject.
As he worked for his Ph.D., he devoted attention to the different Christian approaches
between the Roman and the Greek Orthodox churches. He also accepted a full time job with
the BBC.
That notwithstanding, once more he was persuaded to give Brazil and Pernambuco another
chance of drafting a learned man and professor of history, even if for him it meant
putting his doctorate work on hold. In addition to his regular classes, Morais gave
lectures and wrote two books, Women's Emancipation and his celebrated Short
History of Anti-Semitism, which was later printed in America. (Years later, it also
won the José Veríssimo award of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.)
But, if anything, political conditions in Brazil had worsened a great deal. There were
increasingly more believable rumors of a military movement, a coup d'état against
the fragile, vulnerable, and inexperienced newly-found Brazilian democracy. Lourdinha was
expecting. Vamberto was increasingly unhappier with a number of unfilled promises and with
the possibility of getting unwittingly involved in the political turmoil. Their daughter
Ariadne was born in Recife on September 29, 1962.
Every day, political clouds grew darker in Brazil and on the small hours of April 1,
1964, the feared coup was staged. The President was toppled and an army general took over.
The movement, since then known as the "Fool's Day Revolution," shut down its own
iron curtain. Soon after that, Morais—who simply hated the very thought of his
daughter growing up in a dictatorship—left for England. He would only see his wife
and daughter again when they arrived in England in January 1965.
That was the year when he was first attracted to the British Teilhard de Chardin
Society. No doubt he had read Julian Huxley's assessment of Chardin's "threefold
synthesis" as presented in the introduction to Chardin's The Phenomenon of
Man. "The synthesis of the material and physical world with the world of mind and
spirit; the synthesis of the past with the future; and the synthesis of variety with
unity, of the many with the one." For Morais, devoting his mind and heart to the
pursuit of such a goal would become a lifetime passion.
The first fruit of his enterprise as an active broadcaster was to take to the
microphone Brazilian personalities willing to talk freely about freedom at all levels.
Whatever Dom Hélder Câmara, the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, said about the murders
and tortures of political prisoners in Brazil by the "revolutionary police," and
the innumerable violations of human rights incensed the Brazilian brass. The public
testimony of the Archbishop and other personalities, broadcast by the BBC, was branded as
"Communist slander." To the Brazilian military, Dom Hélder Câmara was just
"The Red Archbishop." But the BBC Brazilian listeners knew it better. They had
become familiar with the Corporation's commitment to truth. And they could see what was
happening in their country before their very eyes.
As a matter of fact, the highlight of this very proper and discreet "defamation
drive," as the Brazilian military and their sycophants dubbed it, included a radio
adaptation of Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman. It was a rerun featuring Vladimir
Herzog, a Brazilian former member of the BBC staff, as the leading man. The occasion was a
tribute to Herzog who—a few years after his stint at the BBC in London—had died
in São Paulo in very suspicious circumstances, most likely as a result of torture in a
jail of the Second Army. Herzog, a well-known journalist and broadcaster, had been charged
by the Brazilian as a "dangerous subversive." The military ran a self-serving
perfunctory bureaucratic procedure and claimed that "Vlad" had hanged himself in
prison. That was the unsupported, unchallenged official "finding" of the case. A
thorough, above-board and unbiased investigation was never carried out.
Morais was distressed by the Herzog case and vowed to work for a world in which
Chardin's threefold synthesis might be a reality. A world of freedom in union,
justice, understanding, compassion, goodwill, peace. At the Chardin Society he heard about
the yoga masters who were gaining lots of disciples and converts in England. He simply had
to know and began to read voraciously about yoga as a philosophy, not only a collection of
useful body exercises which—if carried to extremes—might develop into mere
contortionism. He reasoned that yoga had to be something more, and soon found out.
.
He learned that the word yoga comes from the Sanskrit verb yud, meaning to link,
unite, connect, commune. It is an important Indo-European term, from which derived the
Latin verb iugare—to fast, bind, join, conjoin, couple, even to marry (in all
its figurative senses); and the noun iugum, meaning a yoke that allows a carriage
to be pulled, or a traverse beam to help a person (or animals) to carry loads. Actually,
our English word yoke comes from iugum., which has several figurative meanings.
It is quite easy to imagine how yoga, meaning union, linkage, drawing together was
applied to the synthesis and the synchronization of body and spirit. Full Yoga is not a
mere system of gymnastics with excellent results for the disciplined practitioner but also
a discipline for the mind and, through it, for the spirit. It is union with reality and
the attainment of a deep flow, which helps the individual to guide and control his
emotions and thoughts, free himself of anxiety and depression.
Morais had many teachers both in books and in person. He also recognized that good
nutrition and fast were basic elements of holistic medicine, the medicine that deals with
whole human beings, not only with carriers of disease.
He saw the need for discipline to develop the mind and attain the wished for serenity.
He discovered that for many people the discipline of regular prayer gave them calm and
repose. Of course, he argued, not the prayer which is a mere request for favors,
privileges and may be taken as a way to get rewards from praising the deity.
"A few years ago," Morais wrote, " I felt that I had gained a new light
and a new understanding of the concept and the practice for a good spiritual shape,
as a result of what I was doing and of what I could see around me. Suddenly I realized
that I had gone on a fascinating journey of discovery."
As a passionate and devout yogi, he felt he was called and duty-bound to share
his knowledge and went on teaching yoga and lecturing on its benefits. He joined several
yoga groups such as the Patanjali Centre for Classical Yoga and the Satchidananda
Wholistic Trust. He also made contact with others thinkers who believed that the communion
inherent in yoga applied equally well to the most schools of Western Christianity.
His solid anticlericalism of younger days gave way, in an almost imperceptible manner,
to the search for answers. How does the mind work? What is a moral conscience? What is and
where is the interface between mind and spirit? What is the ultimate role of human beings
on the planet? Is there a place where the spirit survives after death?
More and more leaders with millions of followers were looking around and at each other
and seeing that—when observed with goodwill and in depth—the Oriental and
Western religions had much in common. That seemed to be the thought of William Blake and
of Rainer Maria Rilke and, more recently, of Thomas Merton, the Cistercian monk who became
famous for his one-man campaign against the Vietnam War. Merton struggled for peace at
last. Not the peace that is just a pause in a war, but the constructive, pervading,
all-encompassing, durable peace with which humankind dreams.
Brother Patrick Hart OCSO, a former Merton secretary, has mentioned that in his
autobiography the Dalai Lama remarks that Merton was the first Christian who managed to
"introduce him to the beauties of Christianity," during the three-hour meeting
he had met with Merton in Bangkok and "got to most sincerely appreciate one another
at a very profound level of empathy."
When the Dalai Lama was honored at the Lambeth Palace, the official residence of
Archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Anglican Church, the Brazilian guru was specially
invited and introduced to the Buddhist leader. Pope John Paul II has also been quoted, in
reference to the Dalai Lama, that "there is much more that unites us than that
separates us."
It was thus that the centuries-old Yogic connection between body and mind expanded
marvelously into the exploration of common ground between faiths. Morais could comfortably
join the British InterFaith Society. It was not, as Lourdes Morais pointed out, a
"conversion back to Catholicism but reaching toward a faith free of the barriers and
the limitations of any one religion."
He was deeply faithful to yoga, meditated three times a day and continued as a
scrupulous vegetarian. He visited ashrams in India. When he visited Brazil he
organized yoga retreats and talked friends and co-religionists to participate. He got to
admire greatly the work of the youthful and progressive Brazilian clergy, inspired on the
so-called "Theology of Liberation."
Morais had achieved such a level of spirituality that he loved to share with others,
giving courses, writing magazine articles, cooperating with the Alan Babington Group. In a
way, he felt like Socrates, the "everlasting student" who "never stops
learning and keeps forever his ability to wonder."
An indefatigable man of action, he was much more than a theoretician. He practiced what
the Theravada Buddhists call Metta or loving kindness, both in his private
live and his public activities. He supported energetically the campaign for a more just,
humane, and rational treatment of several nations of Amazon Indians, Yanomanos, Macushis,
and Tiriós—a drive that made waves all over the world. He also denounced the
dastardly exploitation of Brazilian rural workers by a few international corporations that
were "developing" as pastures thousands of square miles of virgin forests of the
Mato Grosso (Big Woods), keeping them in bondage as virtual slaves, and subjecting them to
subhuman conditions of living and work.
Vamberto Morais died August 2000, felled by a cerebral hemorrhage while swimming in the
sea in Recife, his birthplace. He was 78 years old. Death came while he was in the middle
of one of his many cherished projects: he had advertised in London libraries for people of
like mind and scholarship to gather in a group and together brush up their New Testament
Greek and to discuss its meanings.
In the newsletter of the Westminster InterFaith Society, his great friend Sister
Elisabeth wrote: "Lourdes, his wife, and Ariadne, his daughter, should know how
greatly InterFaith pilgrims will miss Vamberto's visible company along the road.
Thankfully, we know that the visible is not the whole picture."
He would be shocked with the present day development of yoga study and teaching in the
U.S. For millions of Americans, it has now become trendy to do yoga as a kind of
competitive sport, entertainment, or a passing fad . So for business promoters, yoga is
only another gold lode to be mined. Morais most probably would trust that the truth and
the light that have been shining from the East for thousands of years shall eventually
prevail everywhere.
Books by Vamberto Morais
Women's Emancipation (in Portuguese), Porto Alegre RS Brazil, 1968
A Short History of Anti-Semitism (Port), José Veríssimo Award of the Brazilian
Academy of Letters, 1971. The European Book Diffusion, publishers, São Paulo, 1972.
A Short History of Anti-Semitism (in English), W.W.Norton & Co., New York
1976.
The Contribution of Yoga to Modern Life (in English), contributed as a chapter
of The Nature of Religious Man by D. B. Fry, the Octagon Press, London, 1982.
The Mystery of Jesus (Port.), IBRASA publishers, São Paulo, 1990.
Meditation Through Yoga (Port), IBRASA publishers, São Paulo, 1991.
The First Christian Community and the Religion of the Future (Port), IBRASA
publishers, São Paulo, 1992.
The Meaning of Life (Port). IBRASA publishers, São Paulo, 1993.
The Religion of the Third Millenium (Port), IBRASA publishers, São Paulo, 1995.
Parables for Our Time (Port), IBRASA publishers, São Paulo, 1997.
The Light At The End Of The Tunnel—The Transcendence of Death (Port),
IBRASA publishers, São Paulo, 1998.
The Return of the Goddess (Port)—being printed.
Wilson Velloso is a veteran Jack of all trades who has practiced
several of them in Brazil—where he was born of Spanish parentage—Argentina, the
UK, and Canada. He is an American citizen by choice since 1955, was chief of press at the
Organization of American States in Washington DC and has been writing on and off for Brazzil
since 1995. He can be reached, sometimes, at vewilson@3oaks.com
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