EWS #167 Healing Childhood Trauma – I + Q&A

24 June 2023

Alina (0:00:29):
Namaste. Namaste, Sraddhalu.

Sraddhalu (0:00:34):
Namaste. Happy to be with all of you.

Alina (0:00:36):

Welcome back to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu, 167 today. We will continue today with a new topic, a continuation of last time, “Healing Childhood Trauma”. As usually you may post your questions in our chat box during the conversation or you may send beforehand an email at our email ID: integralstudies.in[at]gmail.com. We have some questions that emerged from our last talk, and I will start with a very interesting letter we received from Hanel:

“My question relates to the many children who were born and raised in a damaging way that produces chronic insecurity. I was exposed to almost all of the mistakes and damaging situations that you explicitly advised to avoid during pregnancy, birth-giving and education of a child. As a 33-years old adult, I am still struggling with the side-effects of childhood traumas and heavy medication at an early age. However high is my desire to give myself entirely to the Divine Mother, I end up facing tremendous resistance within myself due to the traumatic memories and perverted reactions that became like an unwanted habit of the physical and mental body.

 

I am also consistently confronted with people who have a real aspiration to the Divine and want to raise their own children in a sane way but are still struggling to overcome the psycho-energetic effects of an abusive childhood while already raising the next generation. Repeated abuse, violence, rape, abandon, and so much more mistakes during early childhood lead to an adulthood when fear, anxiety, nightmares, compulsive reactions, addictions, auto-sabotage and other handicapping behaviours seem to become beyond our conscious control, especially when hard times and stressful situations appear in our life.

 

Even though these adults are conscious of the Divine Presence and Love and the existence of the psychic being, sometimes even with obvious spiritual experiences and abilities, they still struggle to find and keep the openness to the Divine Power.

1st Question: What can we do for ourselves if the damages are already done, sticking to us like unwanted dirt that we know as not being part of the real self?

2nd Question: What can we do to prevent the transmission of our own traumas to the next generation in order to protect them from reproducing the same behaviours?

3rd Question: What can we do to help all these children who are already damaged and psychologically handicapped but still want to release their true self, their psychic being?

4th Question: Is there a hope for people like us who struggle to get rid of unwanted behaviours and reactions while being sincere with our will for change and help the growth of the human consciousness?

5th Question:  Is it even a good idea to bring children to the world through a physical body and a personality who has already been damaged by traumatising memories that could be transmitted to the coming soul through genetic and energetical transfer?

I would highly appreciate your point on this issue as it could help millions of people who are facing high challenges in their own spiritual growth and their parenthood.”

Sraddhalu (0:05:03):
It's a very important question which has been very well-formulated, and I have, unfortunately the audio from Alina was sometimes broken, so I have copied and pasted the question in the chat box for those who may watch later, you may need to open the chat box and view it, or maybe I will paste it in the description of the video itself.

But the background to this is a recognition that one may have gone through all the things which should not be done and perhaps were done by your parents in their ignorance or whatever other compulsions or other circumstances beyond your control, and you grow up with all those, let's say, traumas. As a result, struggles, side-effects, medications, addictions,  abusive, energetic, other issues, fear, anxiety, nightmare, compulsive reactions, auto-sabotage, etc., which are distortions of the behaviour.

And although at a later stage in life one reads about, one knows, or even one experiences the Divine Presence, or one feels or knows the existence of the psychic being within, still this gap remains between the parts which have these issues and the parts which may experience or the moment when you have the experience, the moments when you have those experiences and in the long periods when you don't or in the parts where you don't.

So the five questions are extremely important.

[First]: What can you do for yourself, although you know that all this is not part of your real self?

Second:: What can you do to prevent transmission into the next generation?

And 3rd: How can you help children, other children, who have gone through similar damage or psychological handicap?

Fourth: How do you, is there any hope for getting rid of these unwanted behaviours and reactions and perhaps methods by which one could do that?

Fifth: Is it a good idea to bring children into the world when your own personality is damaged and you might end up transmitting something which is damaging?

So I am first going to take up the broad framework of the initial part of the question, which will be: What can we do for ourselves? And the question itself is very broad fortunately, so I don't need to broaden too much.  Unfortunately with a broad question also we need to have a much wider perspective with all possibilities, so one tends then to get a little bit in the abstraction, but I will try as far as possible to give examples also. Nevertheless, I want to go as if to the root of the whole matter. And remember, this will be always from the point of view of spiritual life, spiritual principles and the application of spiritual principles in our life and for this situation. It may not necessarily fit into some framework of formal therapy or medicine, etc.

It will also be extremely valuable for those of us who may not know of any obvious trauma that we might have gone through. Now many of us will believe that, that, ‘Oh, my childhood was okay, I am fine, I don't have a trauma’. And if you think about it deeply, you realise the most essential trauma is ignorance, it is which in the biblical tradition unfortunately has been enormously warped what they call the ‘original sin’ which is then tied to a story, but instead if you look at the true sense of it from a yogic point of view, the sin of our origin,—not of birth, it is not of sexuality, it is not of somebody doing something in a garden,—it is in the very emergence of our consciousness out of ignorance and inconscience. That's the original. And the word ‘sin’ if you replace by ‘ignorance’, the originating ignorance, the original ignorance, then there is a perfect alignment in that idea that we emerge out of ignorance and grow towards light. So, well, you can't help it. That's how it is. But it's not somebody's fault, it's not some, not even your fault It's just how things are in the evolution, we emerge from darkness.

So ignorance is the most essential trauma. The very fact that our consciousness is cut-off from the source, limited, bound and even bound in habits of Nature's evolutionary process is a trauma. Isn't it? So from that point of view, this spiritual evolution is the most essential healing. In fact, the emergence into the spiritual consciousness is the healing, is the emergence from that original trauma.

(0:10:13):

So irrespective of whether you consider you have had a trauma or not, this is what we will discuss will be applicable to all. And in a sense we will be following a roadmap that works for everybody and which is really the path and framework of our sadhana but now applied to very specific kinds of difficulties and circumstances.

In the question itself, we see a description of traumas which are quite explicit, although not elaborated, but the traumas are explicit, you know, you look back, ‘Ah-yes, this happened, that happened, I was put under such and such duress, these experiences which left, even today when I think about it, I have palpitations or fears or reactions or angers, etc.’, so these I would call ‘explicit traumas’,—you know it.

But there are also what I will call, I am not a trained therapist, so I don't know the vocabulary used, maybe the concept exists, maybe it doesn't, I don't know, I would call it ‘silent traumas’:

We are not even conscious that we underwent something which has fundamentally distorted some of our values, some element, part, tendency in our personality, and we don't even know that it's a trauma. And often the most intense, the most extreme tend to be like that because we tend to very quickly cover-up that thing which happened and normalise it, or forget it. And sometimes it can be quite trivial from an adult point of view but for a child it could still be traumatic.

I remember, somebody who was in the Ashram School and for certain reason had to leave, and when he left, some of his collection had to be left behind, and he had made some newspaper cuttings and pasted them in a book, and when it was left behind eventually it was discarded. And when I met him some 15 or 20 years later, he was still asking about that: ‘Do you know what happened to that?’. And it was traumatic for him, that loss. Somehow it represented an effort or a something precious to him, lost, and it's as if for years he continued to struggle with that sense of loss. Now from an adult point of view, it may seem so trivial. From within the child's experience though, the thing can be very different. You may feel something precious which to an adult may mean nothing, and for you it may be so precious that the sudden removal of it creates immense insecurities.

And so it may be a trauma which you may even have forgotten, but it has left an imprint and later you find in adult life, you have difficulty letting go of things, even trivial things, although you know they don't value anything but that habit or that fear or that trauma of having lost something precious is now warping your behaviour in ways that you are not conscious. Or it can be something very casual and normal to an age. Let's say, there is a famine, there is insufficient food or food has to be distributed in a particular way because there is not enough and so priority is given to X, one of your siblings, but not to you, and that stays in your mind: ‘I am somehow less important’ ‘I am somehow subserv.., I have to be subservient to’ whatever that relation was, and so on. And these can warp behaviour all the way into adulthood not realising from where it comes from.

Or, a very subtle-kind of silent trauma, because it's part of a civilisational value or a cultural value or a religious lineage, you may not even realise it. Certain kinds of religious indoctrination particularly those which involve indoctrination of fear or guilt or sin or punishment by God, all of these can be extremely traumatic, and often the reaction to that trauma might be a complete rejection of the religion or the spirituality or the uh, viewing of spirituality itself from that frame of fear, guilt, sin, punishment, etc.

These are all traumas which are deep-rooted, because they happened early on in life and because they touched something so essential, so deep, to your sense of identity or your deeper values or the soul values. Now this is just to give a background of the sense of traumas that we are considering everything. And in the way we will look at the resolution, we need not always know the cause. It's enough if you know what the pattern today is, and you can start correcting. It's not necessary as in certain kinds of therapy they require you to go back and study your past or your parents’ past, and so on, uh, it actually does not matter finally. What matters is what effect it has left on you and what can you do to reverse or liberate from that effect. The actual triggers even don't matter.

(0:15:27):

There are very rare cases of certain traumas which can even pass on across lives. Especially if a life has been cut short by some injury or some unplanned death, unexpected death, or a betrayal of some deep kind, it can leave as if a wound which is on the psychic being's journey and aspiration, and that can carry into the next life in ways that again you may not be able to recognise, you may not be able to remember, and no therapy can extract, even past-life regression may or may not catch. The point is, you don’t need to go to the source of it. What matters today is the imprint that remains. And the imprint that remains particularly across lives can be so subtle and non-specific that even a recall of that event may or may not matter.

So, as we will see, the, the whole approach here will be somewhat different: We will look at: first, how these traumas distort the personality; and then what we can do to reverse it. So we realise that the pattern in which the trauma remains imprinted in you is very specific,  the distortion that it creates is very specific to your temperament of nature, even to your soul aspiration and soul type.

These are the two things, Nature and Soul, and their tendencies. So as an example, we take three children are playing, they climb on a tree, somehow the branch breaks, they fall. All three fell. Pretty much the same circumstances. But one child comes back from that event with a fear of going into nature, of going towards trees or forests. Another child comes away from that with a fear of heights. A third child comes away from that with a tremendous push of adventure, wanting to dominate and conquer, and go trekking, hiking uh, in nature, forest, overcome and conquer what seems out there to be something which might be fearful.

Now the exact same circumstances producing completely three different responses is only explained by understanding: how your internal, your nature, your soul, aspiration, etc., how they responded to this; or, rather how this imprint which part it hit or warped; or, also how the inner being used it to push forward a certain aspect of its agenda. So the point is, it's not so much what happened. What happened within you or the imprint it left is what matters. All three could go back to the tree-story, you don't need to, because the outcomes are so different. Isn't it? So you can see that the actual triggers are not so important.

Next, what we observe is, as a result of the trauma, whatever the original trigger might be, what's the nature of the imprint, what form it takes, is typically we could describe as three: either it creates an exaggerated form of avoidance; or, an exaggerated form of attraction, to something else, to the opposite, or even the same; or, an exaggerated form of insularity, ‘I don't care’, so you are numbing it out but in an exaggeration. Always the imprint is an exaggeration, but of these three kinds, essentially.

Now you could, within these, build many different variations. For example, you could say that you developed a habit of obsessive compulsive disorder, you keep on wiping or cleaning or repeating certain routines unnecessarily. You have just swept the floor, and then again you need to wipe it, and then again you need to wipe it. It is as if you are trying to remove a stain, but the stain is where? Somewhere within you, and you are objectifying it. But in all these you will see an exaggerated form of one of these things: avoidance, attraction, or insularity.

Or you will find a clinging to some representation of safety, which is again an exaggerated clinging, ‘By doing this I feel safe’, or some representation of freedom or escape, and it can lead to addictive forms also; addictions, where you feel in that addiction you are free from something else by an exclusive focus in a little narrow box of experience where you have an illusion of freedom.

(0:20:16):

So if you look back, essentially it's one of these three or sometimes a combination of these. So if you look at the essence of the psychology here, you deal with these three tendencies. That's all it comes to. And again, the cause is not important, the specific form of it is not important, the essential psychological tendency being these three or some combination is what you are going to look at. What then happens, especially if it's a childhood trauma, because it happened during a certain formative phase, there was let's say, a layer of petals beginning to open in your personality, tendencies, powers, qualities, faculties of consciousness, in one of the layers of consciousness, and as it's emergent, it's either nipped, switched,  torn-off, or violently assaulted, so shrunk, shrivelled, weak, or twisted, distorted. And as a result, the next layer that begins to open is similarly distorted or shrivelled or weaker, and so on, or sometimes it compensates by trying to fill a gap by an exaggerated growth, and so on. So, subsequent layers experience a warping.

Sometimes the warping is not always obvious; the link is not always obvious; but having gone to through two or three layers, now it's so well-concealed that you do not even know what it is or why it is, you do not know there's a distortion, and yet when it functions, others notice, ‘Oh, this guy has a peculiarity here, and we don't know why’. And you look at that particular layer and its distortion, you say, ‘I don't know why either’; you don't realise that it was an influence going back multiple layers.

So there's an, a very interesting example in the fairy tales in Europe, most of them come under Grimm's Fairy Tales, the name itself is not so nice, ‘Grimm's’, but, well, many of them are very grim, they are disturbing also, but they have sometimes very deep symbolism, and sometimes there's a lot of occult knowledge hidden into these tales, and I don't know why, maybe they were meant to pass on some kind of knowledge.

But one of these fairy tales is of “The Princess and the Pea”. So this prince is looking for the ideal princess, and he puts them all to a common test, he invites them to the palace, and they are, they sleep on a bed which has seven mattresses, and when this right princess comes, she says, she couldn't sleep at night. And why? And they look back and down through the seven layers of mattresses below, in the lowest, under the lowest was one little pea, and so the bump of that transmitted and made her uncomfortable. So sensitive was she, and that's, at least that's how the story is narrated. But actually it's a deeper truth. You see the ‘seven’ gives you a hint, ‘Hha, there's something happening there, some spiritual symbolism’.

So if you look at the princess in this case as the psychic being and the layers of personality, and the idea is: if there's a little bit of a twist somewhere, the psychic consciousness senses it and says, ‘Ah, something is not okay’. That's the sensitivity. It's the sensitivity or the purity of the soul-light which is what this points to, that it can detect even through many layers a tiny distortion. And so it is something of this that happens in the subsequent layers, a little distortion rippling through. And again, the hint obviously comes with the psychic which can detect, but not only detect but also set right. Or, what can happen is, a trauma which formed, even in late life, which is initially at the surface, because of its disturbance or the attempt to avoid or erase the memory of it, sinks rapidly and goes down into the subconscious, and there it stays as a knot, and then through the layers it ripples and distorts.

But irrespective, how it happened, this is what it is now: you have layers of distortion. The consequence from this, because you have a distortion in your personality, is that you tend to repeat. Sometimes, especially if something has happened to you in childhood, you don't know what it's like, you don't have a good example of how things should have been, so, whatever happened to you tends to be replicated, tends to be passed on. If you had a particularly severe childhood where people around you were very harsh, then you feel that, well, that's how you are supposed to be, that's how parents are supposed to be, and one tends to replicate that with one's own children or with others' children because that's the only model that you know.

(0:25:04):

And you'll see this interesting pattern often children who come from broken families, tend to have, to tend to replicate similar patterns. So you see the replication of a trauma, or an abuse, or a warped behaviour, on others around you, or on your own children, and then that tends to perpetuate as a pattern in a family. Common to all these, I'm describing just how the whole thing works, how the trauma works, common to all these is: persistence by habit. Now whether the habit is within you and within your lifetime, through layers, through the years, through stages of your development, or whether it's even a habit within the lineage of a family, which also can happen, because in this whole family you will find a certain tendency of unhappiness.

And why? And you'll see there's a pattern there, they're all passing on this kind of either stress or distortion of some kind, or even other unhealthy tendencies of addictions which also could be transmitted sometimes by just the consciousness and even in the heredity. So still heredity is habit, it's just in a longer term and by mechanism which is much more material. As a consequence eventually from the persistence of a habit is eventually the sense of helplessness, ‘That's how it's always been, it can never change’. -Loss of hope, loss of interest, loss of effort to try to change or to be free, because you're convinced, it can't be done, because it's too entrenched, you're seeing it down generations, or you're seeing within you through years, you don't even know what it's like to be different.

So if somebody has had as a result of whatever trauma, a habit of being unhappy, you look back and you say: ‘I don't know what it's like to be happy.’ ‘I've never really experienced true happiness.’ ‘I don't know what it's like to trust somebody.’

So its a very interesting experience I had once when I was talking to somebody who was in the royal family within India, not necessarily very famous, because sometimes those royalties had many children and children's children, and the centre were the eldest and then there were all these others who were like cousins not very important but still royal family, royal upbringing. And being interested in Sri Aurobindo's teaching there was some discussion about feeling the Love of the Mother, and then she said: ‘You know, I have absolutely no idea what that is like, because I never experienced my mother's love, I don't even know that a mother can be loving.’ Why? Because she was raised by the servants of the royal household, and somehow they did not give, they did not care, or they did not know how to give, I don't know what it was, but she had no idea what it meant. And I said: “But don't you feel that to children or your own children?” She said, ‘No, I don't know what it is, I don't even know what it feels like, I can't even imagine what it is’. Interesting.

Would you say, this is a trauma? Well, from a spiritual point of view, it was certainly something unhealthy, something lost, something now not known, but not known because it's covered up, something blocked in the heart, in the emotions, now a barrier, an insularity. But yes, there is this complete ignorance of what it could be or what it can be like, and therefore no idea even or hope or effort to make something better, ‘Oh, that's how it's always been, that's how it will always be’.

Or, on an extreme negation of this, not only loss of hope, interest or effort, but a guilt or a sense that you deserved what happened. And this is of course extremely difficult because now you say, ‘I deserve it and I cling to it therefore because I deserve to be punished, I deserve to suffer, I deserve to’, whatever. And you are now accepting that as your way to be and not only not hope but forget trying to break free, but you cling to this and say ‘I have to get more of this’. And that's one of the perversions that comes with the trauma.

So all this is first to set a framework of the traumas and their effects and purely from this point of view; and now looking at it from this point of view, how would we move forward for a corrective approach. Again, I will present this at an essential level, drawing upon a few examples as we go along, but it will be at an essential level, and depending on the situation you are at, you may pause on each of these points, see how you can internalise it, and then begin to make the shift. That would be the best way forward.

(0:30:12):

And then for each one it may represent differently in different forms, or for a particular kind of trauma or difficulty you have, it may take a specific form. But I will still first initially describe in these very essential terms with a few examples as we go along:

The first thing for the correction, the most important thing, is to recognise the truth of your divinity. At your deepest essential is the Divine Presence, is you as a Divine spark, being, in evolution. And the Divine is All-Truth, all-goodness, all-beauty, harmony, Love; anything which is, is not these, is not yours, is not you, is not Divine. Recognising this, none of what happened was needed or was deserved for you or was necessary for your growth.

This is extremely important to recognise. It happened, it was not deserving, it was not necessary, it was not required, for growth of any kind, it did not come as a punishment, none of these. If it has come, the only thing which will matter is: From this having happened, what use can we make for our growth? That's all that will matter. Because, Divine is all-goodness, all-harmony, all-Love, all-beauty, All-Truth; anything which is not truth, which is not goodness, which is not beauty, harmony, or Love, is not Divine and is not needed for you.

But we are in a world where everything is not Divine at least in appearances, so, and you get these things. But none of it was needed. But having come we will make use. So no distortion should be present in your life, is needed for your life; but if it is there, well, out of this we grow, we move forward. But no exceptions. Don't say, ‘Ah-yes, everything is Divine, but because I have this problem, I am somehow less, I deserved it’. No. Nothing. No exception. Everything has to be, the Divine has to be All-Truth, all-beauty, all-Love. We are Divine in our essence and move towards the Divine, and that is the only thing which is true, which is real, which is you. All else is secondary. Being there we will make use of it. Ideally we would be happy to have avoided it.

So this is very important to recognise. In this vision, you do not accept anything which is non-Divine, as needed or required, as essential, as you, as part of your growth. Anything which comes like that, you will make use of it, but you do not need it. Very important to make this. And for this, you may go through a whole introspective process to clear all this, separate yourself from this and your journey and your relationship with the Divine. None of this comes in between.

The second important idea, step, before we begin the corrective process is that you take small steps in this journey every day. Since you are going from this to That which is all-beauty, all-Love, All-Truth, all-harmony, every step, every day, will be one tiny step, and they are tiny steps. You don't expect to make one giant leap. And if you are happy with one little step, wonderful, that's all you need, you don't need to do more; you do not put a burden on yourself to have to change overnight to be able to overcome, to be able to become perfect. None of that. It's not possible. It's not reasonable. And it's not your concern.

If you are carried in a giant leap, that is because She carried you. But on your part, you will be satisfied with very small steps, but steadily, every day. So remember, we are in a domain of ignorance, and therefore,—which ignorance is fragmentation of truth, separation from the Divine, being cut-off into a narrow piece,—in the domain of ignorance, we begin somewhere. It doesn't matter where. And even if the beginning had a traumatic element, it doesn't matter. What matters is, from there we take small steps to the Divine each day. So this will be our perspective.

(0:35:13):

There is a very famous prayer from the Yoga tradition, most of you would know it:

From the unreal lead me to the real,—Asatoma Sadgamaya,

From the darkness or ignorance lead me to light or knowledge,—Tamaso Ma Jyotirgamaya,

From death and decay lead me to immortality,—Mrityorma Amritamgamaya.

Three statements. Very simple. Think about it. Internalise it. And one small step.

And so looking at this as a reference, you say: ‘Okay, what step can I take today?’ Small, however small, doesn't matter. ‘What step can I take today?’, ‘What step can I take now to move forward, towards the Divine, towards greater light, towards greater truth, towards permanence, the real, the immortal, the bliss?’ Small step. Doesn't matter how small it is, that's all you do. ‘If nothing else, it will be today I think of the Divine and smile.’ Small step made. Brilliant! Breakthrough! And that's all you aim for. Little things.

You never measure yourself in terms of anything you have read or any ideal or reference given to you, ‘Oh I have to reach this’. Yes, you have to reach this. ‘But how long?’ Doesn't matter. ‘Today what can I do?’ ‘Just one small step I made.’ That's all that matters.

So as a result of this perspective, small steps, etc., you are moving from this to That, you learn to leave behind your past, leave behind who you were before in each step that you take forward, and with each step you are as if taking a step forward in a new birth, in a new life, small-small-small. And naturally with that, because you are leaving behind your past, with that past comes the heredity, the habit, even the personality which you have or the personalities that you had, ‘Oh, when that trauma took place, it was maybe 30 years ago, what kind of a person was I then? And now I have grown so much, I am not the same person, it's like another life’, well, that fades into the past. Even you may say, even the body which underwent that is no more your body, you have grown so much, all your cells have been replaced. It's the past. So the sense of the past fading away as you grow forward in this small-steps-everyday journey. So all this is a framework.

These are two broad perspectives which lay a spiritual foundation for the healing on a spiritual basis. Without this you could not do the rest which needs to be done. If you have not done this, though the rest, some of it may match what you go through various therapies, but it won't be the same thing, it's not the therapies we are talking of. Be very careful not to transplant something you've read from a therapy or some pop psychology and say, ‘Ha-yes, this is similar to that’. No, it's not. Once you set this as a basis, everything is different. And none of this  is part of existing therapies, you see.

So, the next step now: You observe in yourself, ‘There is this pattern’. I will use the word ‘knot’ or a ‘pattern’. ‘Here is a pattern, here is a knot, it's popping up when certain things happen.’ Recognise. Observe and recognise knots, behaviour patterns. And it's happening within you. But it's not you! It's a part, it's a little piece. And even if you have a deeper perception, you say, ‘It tends to be mostly in the outer layers’. Even when it comes with strong, deep emotions, from the perspective of the soul, it's on the outer layers. Isn't it? The deepest that we are able to go in a typical deep emotional experience is still extremely superficial, its part of the most surface layer of personality. Just as an example, as an analogy, if you look at what happens during sleep, you have a dream, you wake up, the dream is fresh, from that point when you come to full awareness of the waking surface consciousness, you have forgotten the dream, and yet you were conscious when you woke up with the memory of the dream.

(0:40:02):

I've given this example before. You get up from bed, you remember the dream, you take a shower and come back, you've forgotten the dream. So when you got up and you were standing with the memory of the dream, you were quite awake, you were part of the outer surface, but already you lost that. That just shows you, in the surface personality are so many layers, and this is still the very superficial part of you, and the bulk of our traumas are held in these layers, however deep they may seem emotionally, because it feels so deep inside in the emotions, actually it's part of the surface layers of personality, the bulk of it. Very rarely, as I said, the trauma of the soul in its growth may leave an imprint, but those are very rare.

Anything which comes from an event of this life is, assume, in these surface layers, and therefore from the perspective of the soul, and even from the perspective of your entirety of personality, extremely superficial and therefore easy to set right. This, you must convince yourself of the truth of it: from the soul's point of view, very easy to set right.

But right now you're just becoming aware of the knots, so I said, recognise these knots, behaviour patterns, as little pieces in your layers of your outer nature; it's not even truly part of your inner nature, or antaḥkaraṇa.

Occasionally those knots may have kind of drifted inward as they say ‘subconscious’, but even that is very close to the surface. So from this point of view, you recognise, understand, ‘This is not me, does not belong to me, I do not deserve it, and it was not needed’. This separation is very important.

The more you are able to separate it, the more easy it will be to get free of it. As long as you say, ‘Oh, I deserved it, I needed it, it was important for me, it's my problem, it's the problem I've been carrying for the last 30 years’, you've so to say tied yourself to the luggage, baggage, of the past by clinging to it, by considering it yours and even as necessary for you. By making this separation, and over a few days, over a few weeks, the separation will become more and more distinct; you'll find, it will even begin to fizzle out, fade out, or drop-off of its own.

But if there's a knot, if there's a tendency, a persistence of the habit pattern, well, gradually the knot we will undo or dissolve. We'll come to how to, how to do that. But first, in this awareness, you bring it and then as if separate it, ‘It's there, okay’. The critical element here is going to be the equality which we will come to later.

So first, awareness of the knots. Next: Understanding, understanding how it works or, why it took, takes that form, what is it that you are trying to avoid or are attracted to or are insensitive to? Just observe. You will notice, whatever the pattern is, is an exaggeration or a distortion or a perversion of some underlying truth or principle. So because, let's say, something was taken away from you which was precious, you are hurt, you are pained, and now you are trying to cling to anything so as not to lose what is precious. Well, the underlying truth is that ‘The precious things we should not lose; and even if the external form or object is gone, what was essential to the precious, that I will never lose, I will keep’. Maybe that's an underlying truth.

If in childhood you were hurt, you were harmed in various ways, we need not go into it explicitly. Whatever it was, the underlying principle today or the reaction today is fear, rejection, or some kind of a block, and the underlying truth is that ‘Yes, I should be able to  defend myself, protect myself, from any such unreasonable harm’. That's the underlying principle or truth: to be able to defend; to be able to protect. And I recognise that, ‘Yes, but now the way I am doing it, the way I am putting out this barrier is exaggerated and distorted, or even perverted, reversed’.

So in some cases it happens because you have convinced yourself that you deserved to be abused, you actually seek out abusive relationships, not realising that's what you're doing. And you say, ‘Ah, no, I don't deserve this, it's a perversion, it's actually an inversion of a truth’.

What is the truth? ‘Well, I need to be able to choose, I need to be able to protect, I deserve something better, I deserve the Truth, the Divine, because I am That.’ Well, that's the relationship. You come back to that.

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And so understanding what is it, a distortion or an exaggeration or a perversion of, as an underlying principle, you see all the distorted forms you will need to restore to their right place, right form, right function. Again the specifics are not so important. You will undo this warping, distortion. That is all.

So, having become aware of those knots, you now enter into a kind of an understanding of it. And that makes it easier now to be able to get free, as we will come to. But first, before we move forward, if there can be a right understanding of things, there can also be a wrong understanding of things which is often the case if there has been some major trauma and your very ability to perceive rightly has been warped. Then often what we do is we, in trying to understand, we give ourselves a wrong understanding which then creates more complications. It worsens the distortion because you now try to impose or correct by further warping, a further layer of error.

So for example, I have often heard this from people when they will say,—eh-eh, often the sign will be like this, the question will be: How can I become more tolerant? How can I become more patient? How can I become more loving? How can I become more understanding, compassionate? Just like that, out of the blue, it's like a, some kind of a, abstract idea; and you could of course get into the abstraction of it, but uh, normally when I sense that there's something like this, I say: “Okay, but what’s, where is it coming from? What's the specific thing that you are, you feel you're not loving enough or compassionate or patient, or whatever, enough?”

And then it comes out, and I just give this as an example because it's so common, someone will say, ‘Ha, you know in my house I have this problem with X’,—typically some in-law or some other member of family,—’who is always asking me to do this but I don't have the patience to live up to their expectation, and, or, I don't, I get upset, I get angry, I get fed up, and so I lack patience or understanding or compassion’, etc. But when you look at the actual situation, somebody is actually abusing you, misusing you, pushing you to the limit just to harass, and you have kind of inverted the values and blamed yourself by saying ‘I am not patient enough, I should try to be more patient’.

And so, this is a wrong understanding. And it often takes this form: ‘I must change myself to become more tolerant because such and such a person is so aggressive towards me, I am not tolerant enough, I am not kind enough’. No. That is aggression. That is unacceptable. So a very simple correction there would be, or a test would be, ask yourself: ‘Would you do that to somebody?’ ‘No, I would not.’ Why? ‘Because it would hurt them so much.’ Okay. So placing, reversing the situation, you realise, ‘Oh, this is hurting another person, that means, the person who is doing it is intentionally or by habit or by their own damaged personality hurting you’. That's what it is finally. Isn't it?

So you don't need to become more tolerant. There's something else that you need to correct. So it's often the result of some kind of guilt or a habit of self-deprecation, which is the warp-distortion, within you. In such a case, if you tried to make yourself more humble, more patient, that would be worsening the problem, because you would be suppressing the truth of defending your boundaries, defending your healthy individuality. And as a result, you would be further trying to warp yourself in order to correct for a distortion. So, in such a case: first recognise what is the right understanding, and then, speak up; define the healthy boundaries; you can tell the person, ‘Look, I appreciate this, I am trying my best, these are my limits. But beyond these limits, you have no right to intrude into my space, or my time’, or whatever it is. What you say, what it is, depends on the circumstances. I'm just giving an example: defining the boundaries through communication,—whatever form it may take.

Or, another variation of this where you have a wrong understanding is a reverse of this example: where you blame somebody for a problem when it's not even their, their fault, so ‘I am a helpless victim, so and so is victimising me’, you have convinced yourself that the cause of your problem is somebody else, their behaviour, their routine, whatever, and you say, ‘I am a victim’. And perhaps if you observe carefully, the person may not even know that they are causing you hurt, or they may not actually be causing you hurt, it is your own imagination that is misreading it as a cause of hurt.

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So-often it happens, uh, especially when you are extremely sensitive, hypersensitive to nuances, you say, ‘Oh, so and so frowned at me. Oh my God, what did I do? Now I'm so unhappy’. This was a common thing with the Mother when people would write to Sri Aurobindo: ‘Today Mother frowned at me’, ‘Today she didn't smile at me’, ‘Today she was very serious’, ‘Have I done some wrong?’, ‘I'm feeling very guilty.’ Etc. But it’s a misreading. But it can extend quite a complex way, you can actually end up convincing yourself that all your problems are caused by X.

And again a very simple test: You reverse it. If you were doing that, same thing, would it cause a problem to others? And I mean here by ‘same thing’ means exactly in the external form. The person is cooking food every day, and there is a smell that comes, and you say, ‘I am so miserable because of that’, for example. And ‘If, if this person was removed, if somehow this went away, I would be the most happy person’. Well, if you're cooking food, smell spreads, and it hits somebody who's nearby, would you be deliberately intending to cause them harm? No, obviously. But if it's causing harm, then, ‘Fine, we can talk and sort it out’, but don't think that they're doing it deliberately.

So there's a lot of this also which happens, and the sense of a victimhood is itself one of the distortions, and that's the distortion you may need to correct. So a wrong understanding may create, attempt to set right things which actually cause more harm. So in all these cases, you need to be a more objective, you need to speak up, communicate to resolve things, and if you are not sure, take somebody else's view. Ask someone else objectively, ‘Do you think this is the problem? Do you think this is what it is?’, not just from your point of view, but let them see the full picture.

I remember, during my School years, as a student, I was one of those supersensitive, hypersensitive, and I actually consider [laughing] some of my childhood was traumatic with the teachers. Some of them would say things which would hurt immensely, and they may say the same thing to somebody else, and I can see it hurts the children but they take it in their stride, and I would go and brood over it for days together, and fear, and things like that. And at some point one of my friends said to me, many times he said, that ‘You're too sensitive, you're taking these things too seriously, they don't care, they're not concerned’. I said, ‘No-no but it is so and so, and she did this, he did this’, whatever. So, having grown up, I look back and I laugh at that.

But at that time, in that child's mentality, you're very sensitive, anything can be, seem to be trauma, but it's not intended by the other side. You need to take an objective view and not end up into a, sort of a victim-mode or -role. Now getting into right understanding,—not wrong understanding,—is part of the step. We now distinguish the cause from the effect. So observe: this happened which has caused in me or provoked in me this kind of response; that trauma, that abuse, that harsh word, that injury, led to this pattern today. Observe the two. And separate them.

The cause is over, it's gone into the past. If you are thinking about it and brooding on it, you are recreating it, you are re-triggering it, the cause is alive to you in the present because you brought it into the present.

You have to be able to separate: The rhythm of your, let's say, reaction, trauma-reaction, or not—yes, that's in the present. But the cause is gone, it's not present anymore, except in your mind and in your choosing to bring it back. You can say, ‘Ha-yes’, but it pops up. Yes, but when it pops up, what can you do about it? You can choose to catch it and wallow in it, or you can choose to catch it and say, ‘No, I don't want you’. That is your choice. So you make a conscious choice to separate the cause from the effect.

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Become conscious that the cause belongs in the past and has no place in your present or your future; and what is in the past eventually has to fade and will be forgotten as with all past lives, leaving only the content of the learning experience and the growth you have had from it. That's all you are going to be concerned with. So consciously let it fade out: ‘Yes it happened, Yes it hurt me, Yes the hurt is still there [gesturing heart]. But the trigger for the hurt, it's not here, it's gone.’ Let it go. If not, eventually Nature will snatch it away from you because you can't free yourself from it. How does she do that? By knocking you out from this body and making you take birth in another body where you have no more this memory. You see. Should you have to wait to have to take another birth to be free from the memory of this trauma? ‘Mmh, [deep-breathing] no, I would rather get on with that next-birth’s journey right here, now in this life.’ Isn’t it? So you make a choice. You make a choice to let go of the causes.

Yes, occasionally the causes are still present. In that case, you have to deal with it also. But in most cases of such trauma, looking back, you can no more say that, that thing is still there with you; and so, let it fade out. You make a choice to let it fade out. You make a choice to not brood on it.

This is very contrary to many of the forms of psychotherapy today being used, where they literally make you go back into it, and somehow drag it out, and even exaggerate it, and then blame everything on that. So, it is sometimes painful to see that kind of psychotherapy, where they will say, ‘Oh, your parents did this to you, therefore today you are an unhappy person, therefore today you have all these problems’. And you didn't even know that. They made you go back, and back, and dug out things which you had forgotten and say, ‘Now you see, that's, they are the cause of it’. No. It's not like that.

That's why it's not important to go back to the cause. Where the cause is there and is continuing to provoke, you have to let it fade out and let it go. Focus now on what's left,—only a habit of repetition of these symptoms,—and then you can dissolve it. Do not re-trigger it by recalling the cause which is no more present. And if the cause today is still present, then first make the separation, free yourself from that cause, and there are ways to do it today. We are fortunately in a reasonably civil society today with sufficient safeguards in law which is half-broken but still reasonably functions that you can break free from somebody who is traumatising you regularly. That's your choice. You have to take those steps, whatever the consequences. If you don't get free from the cause, you'll never be able to heal. You can't have somebody hacking away and injuring you continuously and then expect the injury to heal. So you make that separation in any case, and put that into the past, and let it fade out, and then you look at what needs to be done.

So having gone through all these steps, you look at the healing that needs to be done for this. As a continuation of this idea that there was a cause, so we make, there are two things you heal: one is you heal from the cause; one is you heal from the result, the distortion. So there are things which in letting go into the past, you need to also make a special effort to let go in healing that memory.

So if a person or a situation has caused, sometimes it's your own limitation which caused it, you recognise what it is; and then you have to choose to let it go [gesturing gentle separation] consciously; let it, be gone; let it be forgiven; let it be dissolved from your being. So in this movement of letting go, there are three layers on which it could attach, and sometimes, especially very traumatic things tend to have built up links on all three layers, so I'll put it in these terms: in the mind, in the heart, in the body.

Okay, so, in the mind, it's easy, you actually choose to let go, the way I have been describing it, ‘That's okay, that's in the past, I will not allow my mind to wander, I will not allow it to brood’.

But the brooding comes in the emotions. It comes up, grinds you, pulls at your heart strings. At that point, you have to deal with it in terms of the emotion letting go which is very different from the mind letting go. So in the emotion letting go, there are a couple of variations: One is of course you choose to build a sense of an equality, not to indulge in the emotions, not to wallow in them; not easy for most, for many people who are used to being emotional, but still that would be your way forward. But otherwise in the emotion then you can take an active poise, ‘Okay, I forgive and let go’, ‘Okay, I give love to you who have caused me so much distress and now with this love I say, goodbye’. So this is the heart's way of doing it.

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But when you send love in their direction, you may say, ‘I am sending love to them, oh that healed me’. Actually if you observe, it's not like that. What happens is, the, the love that you send helps to dissolve the knot that you had of attachment. They didn't need it. They don't even know that they've caused you trauma perhaps or if they did, they don't care. You sending love does not change them. It dissolves the knot by which you have tied yourself emotionally, energetically. So understand how the method works. Don't think that sending love unendingly to them is going to change them, your goal is not to change them; your goal is to get free from this and get free of the cause. So focus on this.

And the love is only the way to dissolve this entanglement, this energetic link, so, and you don't obsessively chase on the love also, the goal of the love is to dissolve, to let go, and be done, and that's it, ‘Done, don't come back, it's over, you've gone into my past, from the emotions, from the heart’.

And then remains in the body. The body's way of letting go is different, it's a dissolution of the physical memory. Literally for the body to let go is to feel as if ‘I am no more the same person’, so it's a kind of a new birth, a feeling of having taken birth, ‘My body is different, it's no more the same person, and I dissolve the physical memory of it’. Now generally, left to itself, the body will do that in time, you don't have to do much. But now you want to accelerate it, so there in the body-consciousness, if you can actually reach into the memory of that contact, the feeling, and consciously dissolve it and say, ‘Enough, let it go, let it sink into the past or dissolve into the universe’, it's no more mine, gone, dissolved. Literally to the body the feeling is one of having forgotten it.

I've shared before an experience I had where I, I had described an injury, a cut in my arm, which was there in kindergarten, and in the late 30’s that mark was still there, it was the wound, this, the, I forget the term, when it heals, the ‘scar mark’, and I said, ‘But the body has renewed itself, it's grown, all the muscle and tissue and cells are replaced. Why is that there still?’. And I came to the conclusion, it was because something in the body remembered it. So I made a conscious effort to dissolve in this way: just put an intention, ‘Dissolve, forget it, body is no more the same, let it fade out’. And then a couple of years down, one day I just remembered: ‘Oh, what happened to that? Where is it?’ And I looked at both my arms and I could not find that scar mark, and I couldn't remember which arm it was, interestingly. It's very interesting. The body had forgotten, and so it couldn't recall which arm it was, and that's when the scar vanished, because the new tissue replaced. That's it.

Otherwise it was the memory of the trauma as the new cells were growing, they were forming around the memory of the trauma creating the scar tissue. That's what happens to us when we say, our trauma of my childhood is still with me. Well, your personality is kind of rebuilding itself around this knot. And if you don't dissolve that knot, well, it's going to keep persisting in this way.

So in the physical consciousness, this dissolution has to be done in the physical memory of it. If you have done the first two steps of letting go in the mind, letting go in the heart, this becomes very easy, because it's natural for the body to let things go into the past, because it keeps rebuilding itself automatically. If you have not done it in the first two, then it persists here, and not because of the fault of the body, fault of the mind or emotions. So, be conscious about this and work consciously to let go. The cause itself has to be let go.

You'll notice something interesting: people who forget things of the past, they tend to be happier. [X] used to be a bit, full of, ‘I don't know, not very happy’, let's say, to put it mildly, they always had issues. And then with age something happened, either there was some degeneration in the physical memory, physical brain cells, somehow the memories of the past faded, and the person becomes childlike and always smiling and happy. And if you ask them things about the past, they'll say, ‘I don't remember now, it's all gone’, and they're so happy, childlike freedom, innocence, because they are no more tied to that past. This you do now consciously, without needing to degenerate or lose your brain cells.

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On the contrary, you will see those who live in the past, forgetting the present, not being able to enjoy the present, tend to be more unhappy, unless of course the thing they are remembering from the past is one of those soul-nourishing experiences, but that's rare. Mostly if you are brooding on the past, you just become this very cantankerous, unhappy, miserable person, and you make others miserable around you. So this I call ‘healing of the cause’, the letting go of the cause. Now what's left though, when the past is gone, the trigger is gone, is this distortion habit pattern.

You observe it's a habit. How do you change a habit? Well, you break the habit first. Isn't it? So, I'll use several words: You break the habit; You withhold the instinct for the habit to form;  You untwist the distortion in the habit and try to form a new rhythm, reshape the habit; You replace it by some other habit which is more positive, more healthy, more regenerative; You dissolve or remove the pattern of habit. Now they are all slight variations on what is done in getting free of that habit pattern, but essentially you recognise it is a habit, a tendency to repeat that you are dealing with.

Here, your effort will be important, essential in the beginning, but you, the result will not depend on your effort, but you still need to make the effort. The result will depend on something else intervening as we will see shortly, but your effort is needed for that intervention to be effective,—this is important to recognise.

So it's like you're saying, you're going to start digging a hole to dig a well to get to the water, but you don't have to be very strong to do it. If you dig the hole just enough that now let's say the rainwater can flow in and help and complete the digging, you've created a little puddle into which something else can flow and work. That's good enough. So but still your effort was needed to create that little puddle into which something could flow and work. And this, this is what I want to highlight. You should make that effort. Do not fear. Do not expect you to be capable of great efforts. You need only a small effort. So remember, you're changing a habit now.

In order to break a habit, you must first withhold, block, prevent its natural recurrence. What do you do there? Let's say, now each time that memory comes I get angry, or I experience fear, I experience distress, my pulse rate goes up, I become reactive, whatever. So now that thing comes, the memory comes, or the trigger comes, and I know this is going to happen, instead of indulging, I restrain the impulse, hold back. I feel the fear, but I am going to hold back, not show, not allow it to express itself, not allow it to take familiar forms. Restrain and hold. And then where this tension is there, again it is the surface part of your personality, you observe what is behind it.

Behind it is a part which is not experiencing the fear, reaction, distress, a layer which is reasonably, we can say, quiet or equal, unaffected, undisturbed. Become conscious of this layer. That's your starting point for a deeper equality. This may still be tensed, it may still be struggling, you don't identify with it. You identify with the thing behind which is undisturbed. Cling to this now. Now this practice initially may take a little while; it may take you a few weeks, a few months, or maybe a few days. You'll be surprised. Once you start doing, you'll be surprised how easily it happens.

Having experienced it reasonably, maybe you can't hold it, stabilising it may take a few weeks, but the first experience you can have within a day, without exaggeration. It's just everything in our education or in the therapeutic world is largely oriented the opposite direction. So in certain kinds of psychotherapy they will tell you, ‘Oh, you have this anger against X’, some poor fellow who's bothered you when you were a kid, you're still angry about it, the poor fellow has died, gone, taken rebirth again, he's no more in the picture, and you're miserable because you're remembering it.

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So the therapist will now say, ‘You are angry, let it out’. How? They give you a room which is full of padded uh, pillows, and you bang at it, scream, shout, etc. I was a little disappointed to see in Bangalore, one of these companies has made a anger-room, so you let out your frustration, let out your anger, and ‘Destress!’, that's what they say it is.

Cinema, they tell you this all the time, they show you this, the person is ‘Now shout’, ‘Uh, say it now’, ‘I hate that person’, ‘Say it louder’, ‘I hate that person’, and you make louder and louder until you exhaust yourself. And then you say, ‘How do you feel?’, ‘Ah-yes, now I feel relieved’. What do I feel relieved from? From exhaustion. But what did you just do? You made that behaviour pattern stronger, now when it, you recover some energy, and the trigger comes, you will shout, scream, get upset, louder and more intense. It's the very opposite of what should be done.

And Sri Aurobindo comments on this, the Mother comments on this, it's completely wrong psychology. And yet that's your official medical therapy, sadly. So we are using a yogic principle: Restrain the impulse, you want to break the habit. What do you do? Withhold the form. Even though the tension, the anger, the disturbance, may be there, but then observe, it's there in a layer, and there's a layer behind which, where it is not there. Become conscious of this. Shift to this and then cling to this. So the first shift will be easy, as I said, you can do it in a day, stabilising this may take a few days. Again, it depends on how much practice you have with a few yogic practices. If you are somewhat used to it, you will find very quickly, within days you can find this poise of equality.

Now initially, the equality will be more in the mind, your mind steps back from these emotions. Great! That's your starting point. As you hold the mind-equality, you'll find something in your emotions is still distressed, but it's superficial. And from your mind, it's as if you become quiet and then feel in the emotions the equivalent layer of quietness which is undisturbed. So it's as if the poise of mental equality, so to say, extends, infuses, or finds its equivalent grade in the emotional part until literally you come to a layer which is just behind this disturbance.

Observe. Hold this poise. Stay in it. Practice staying in that poise even when you don't have the traumatic response. So the key with training of equality, you don't try to build it when you get the trauma. You try to build it when you don't have the trauma, when it's easy to do, and then when the trauma comes, you can recover the equality easily because you've already practiced it, and then you hold, you stay, let the disturbance pass, and you're equal, you in that layer were unaffected, the disturbance reaction rose and fell like a wave. That's it.

If you at that point start analysing ‘Why is this wave coming?’, ‘What's it doing?’, ‘Oh, my god it's happening’, ‘This is happening now’, you fall into identification. You don't do that. You hold the equality: ‘Oh, there's this part which is not troubled’, ‘Oh, that wave is disturbing but this is not trouble’, ‘This is not trouble’, ‘This is so cool’, ‘This is quiet’, ‘This is relaxed, free’. You focus on this, not on that.

And you notice something fascinating which will happen very quickly: The more you focus on this, the less that has energy and it fades. Now what you did was you restrain the impulse of the habit, let's say, it was anger or reaction or disturbance, your pulse rate shooting, or symptoms of illness, whatever, you find all those things rapidly decline and weaken, because they are not being nourished by your attention, your attention is on the equality and the poise of equality.

Now into this, if you bring that spiritual opening from the equality to the inward or upward, that makes it complete.

But for now, I am just laying this as a foundation, later we will link it also. So from this mind-equality you move to what we may call ‘equality in the vital energies’. So: there is an excitation of energy which is rising, [deep-breathing] take a deep breath, become quiet, disengage, step back, and there is at the same grade of energy a poise which is equal, undisturbed. So, mind-equality aligns with vital equality, and then a little further down let it sink into feeling in the body-consciousness itself, a layer that is as a free, undisturbed, unchanged, despite this symptom rising and falling, that layer remains unchanged.

Simply observe. Don't worry if it does not get to concretise in the physical, just intend it, and try it. That effort which you do creates as if a groove, a passage, into which the Divine Force and Light will flow in, like I said, your job is not to dig the well all the way down to the water, it's to start making the hole into which then something else will come and complete the work. But this effort you make at least, to find that poise of the equality in the physical.

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If you've got to this point, you feel as if like a wide multi-layered backdrop of something which is undisturbed, even while the rest of you is disturbed. Stay in this, cling to this: This is you. That's not you, that's a wave, that's a disturbance, reaction, it will go away, and your goal is to get free of it.  This is you, cling to this, identify with it. And then if you can, depending on how far you are prepared to go in this, deepen the equality, lean back into it, until it becomes as if a deep, wide, equality, as if this equality leans back all the way into the silence and stillness of the Self, which is as vast as the universe or beyond the universe. So you use this as an entry point to lean back deeper, wider, calmer, solid, deep, intense,  Self, Peace. Conceive of it. But feel it. So however much you can do this or not, it doesn't matter, but this will be a great help if you can take it deeper.

From this poise of equality, that wave rising-falling, you reject as ‘not me’ and ‘not mine’. What is ‘me’? What is ‘mine’? This. So now you spend a few days, a few weeks, doesn't matter how long, till this becomes stable enough, and automatically without your effort now the influence of this equality will begin to fill and replace.

What is ‘me’? This. And this ‘me’ begins to flow and replace. That's it. You focus on deepening what is you and yours, ignoring what is not you and not yours. The rest automatically begins to happen.

So first step, I said, was: block, withhold, lean back into equality, make that you, your base.

Next, you will untwist or replace, now depending on the kind of knot it is, just the equality may be enough. If however there is some kind of a twisting, some kind of a distortion, the equality has freed you, but now you need to kind of correct it. You do need a response, but the response which you had was maybe some petty jealousy or some pattern which was a warping. ‘I don't want that.’ ‘What do I want?’ When you become very quiet, assuming a little bit of the equality is there, you don't need to have it perfect, just a little bit, you become quiet and you say: ‘What would I want to have as a response? What am I truly? What would I feel like happy-to-flow to become? You feel.

And then something in you says, ‘Yeah, I just want to say ‘Thanks’ ’, that's it, or ‘Just thanks but no thanks’, or ‘Nothing’, you just feel a bit of a compassion, and that's it, ‘let go, doesn't matter’. So whatever it is you feel is you and your response, you let that now slowly emerge, replacing the other response. So first comes this tendency to some kind of an anger. And then I said, ‘Oh, but, you know what, it doesn't matter, I really don't care, I don't even feel pity, it’s just, doesn't matter’. So what goes from you? This would align closer to what the Buddhist would call a Mettā. It's not a love, it's more like a compassion, so ‘Poor fellow, what a mess he's in’. That's it. It doesn't matter. Over. Done.

Or, depending on your nature, depending on the circumstance, depending on the relationship, you may feel even a deeper quality of compassion which tends towards a deeper, even a impersonal love, ‘Oh, poor fellow, how much he is suffering, I wish he could be free of it’. It's actually a deeper quality of the Mettā, of the and which tends towards what we would call ‘Love’, the ‘Divine Love’.

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So each time when this happens, you make a conscious effort to poise yourself deeper or higher within you, more truly you. And the response you want emerges from that slightly deeper, slightly higher, slightly more-truly-you poise. And you let it happen. And that's it. But how much time will you give to it? ‘Oh, just enough that this goes through, and that's it, the rest doesn't matter, I need to get on with my life, it doesn't interest me anymore.’

This emerging thing will be coming from something which is more truly you,—replacing that which was a reaction, not you,—and this is non-reaction, true action, more true action. And as a result, you find the old habit is untwisted or it fades and is replaced by the new which is true and fills and replaces under the influence of what is you, truly you, more truly you. So this would be the second stage of this change.

There is a third part now. Beyond this you could, you could actually stop and say, ‘Okay, I am reasonably healed, I can get on with my life’. But beyond this we want to complete. And especially for the more extreme kinds of trauma, the third step will be needed as a completion of the integration. In traumas which are very deep rooted or which are extremely uh, touched something of the core of the psychic aspiration and evolution, and often this happens with children who have been abused, and so on, there the gaps, the separations, are harsher. So while you may come to this point, you've still not integrated that part with the centre, and so the third stage will be this integration of the parts with your essential centre.

What you start doing now is anything that happens, including these responses and your new responses, choices you make, the relationships you have, the memory of that, and the circumstances around it, everything, you now putting, start placing in relation to a deeper centre within you, ideally the psychic being, but if not the psychic, the centre of your deepest and highest aspiration to the extent you can be conscious of it, [gesturing 3 relatings] relate to this, relate to this, relate to this, everything, not just that trauma issue.

You don't give exaggerated importance to the trauma issue, that's one of all the parts of your life and your nature. Link, relate, relate, any decision you have to make, you relate, come to this centre: From this poise, which feels, what feels right as a decision? From this poise, what is the right action as it feels? Maybe you make mistakes, maybe you have mixtures. Don't worry. Just the reference starts a purifying effect, because it puts those parts in relation to a truer centre and the influence from the truer centre now begins to extend into these parts and begins to transmute them.

The transmuting power within you is essentially the psychic influence. It entering anything softens, dissolves, purifies, renders true, sets right any twist or distortion, reveals what is mixed, what is distorted and sets right. It is the touchstone, the philosopher's stone, you know the thing which is used to test what is true, what is pure, but also to transform base metal into gold. That's the true sense of it, the psychic being, the psychic influence.

So by putting things in relation to this or its most obviously reachable as centre of aspiration, you started that process, you bring that in relation to this, but as a result, this begins to extend an influence, now this influence begin to take, will begin to take stronger poise and precedence.

So when you say, ‘I put this in relation to that’, you will actually be extending an influence. And so what happens from the centre as if something within you now begins to reach out, extend, and influence all the personality and begins to realign them to bring them around the centre. What earlier was a conflict, ‘This is my job responsibility’, ‘This is my family responsibility’, when you, and they conflict, if you do one, you lose the other; you bring both in alignment to this centre, and the right relation is found. And interestingly the right relation is not a static relation, it changes sometimes day to day. Today the work demands more attention, today the family demands more attention, but in this influence, you will find, they are no more contradictory, they are no more pulling you apart, they are actually two facets of a single relation with the world or single movement of self-expression.

And you will not feel them any more conflicting. And then you know that they have been, both these tendencies have been aligned or these roles have been aligned to the psychic influence.

It's very interesting to observe how that happens. And so as this influence comes, literally it puts things into harmony, aligns them naturally, and what was opposing, what was conflicting, what was tight-knot begins to melt under its influence, and I will use the word ‘Love’, the psychic love, and it's not an emotional love, it's this very quiet, still, deep, dissolving, purifying, Divine influence. Perhaps from the deepest point of view, this would be the true sense of the Buddhist concept of Mettā, and therefore you avoid the word ‘Love’, because it's not an emotional love, but not everyone knows it in that way, mostly it is a kind of a more superficial, moralistic compassion that people identify that with. But this would be the deeper sense of it.

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So there is this influence which grows, fills, aligns, heals. And once this starts, you'll find very quickly the memory of the trauma, the disturbance and the pattern that comes from the trauma and reactions, all begin to fizzle out rapidly. And sometimes even when the thing comes, you align more with the Presence within, and that thing fades out or becomes almost irrelevant. If you have come to this point already where you feel this as a living influence now, one of the things which can happen quite easily at that point is, you concentrate on this Presence and centre yourself in it more and more until there is a point where centreing in it, you forget everything else, and you are immersed, and you forget yourself.

This point is extremely important. You want true healing: as long as you are you and separate, something remains; when you are not, and there is only That, you forget yourself, lose yourself, in immersion with, with what is true and real, there is nothing left of the injury, of the separation, of the distortion, because there is no you. Lose yourself. And then when you emerge from it, you are as if emerging new born, ‘I am no more the same person’, and you let that flow and fill the rest of your personality. If you bring it to this point, there is nothing which will remain from the past, all will be healed entirely with no scar, literally.

Psychologically, the scars are easier to wipe. Even biologically, the scars go away under this influence, because nothing remains of the old. The psychic is ever fresh, ever new, ever growing, always the Divine, and therefore, what influence emerges from it, and all that merges in it and loses itself in it, is new formed, new born. This essentially is going to be your secret to be free of all traumas, all past distortions.

But observe this point of self-forgetfulness, learn then to consciously enter into it, maybe in a few, for a few minutes, for a few seconds, once a day, once in a few days, it doesn't matter. But when you do it, what comes out after that is no more the same person, it's a new born you. On the other side is: the cultivating of the complementary side, which is, cultivate all that grows and nourishes the psychic influence in your life and in your nature. So activities which contradict it, you begin to lose interest. Activities which nourish it, you begin to increase. And so, bit by bit, gradually everything begins to reform, rearrange, reprioritise. What matters?

Everything that nourishes the true you and allows this influence now to grow, to flow, to fill, and to express itself more and more in everything in life, bit by bit, it doesn't matter, but the priorities shift.

And with that again there will be an enormous healing-influence in all of your life, in all of your nature, in all of your relationships you will find a different quality coming up, and sometimes it can happen very objectively. It's as if when you are in this state of alignment, as you wander around, somebody who you may have considered your enemy, or somebody you hate, passes by in front and spontaneously from within you will be this smile, as if you are meeting a friend for the first time, and you will be surprised because a part will say, ‘Ah-yeah, but I am supposed to frown at this fellow, but it doesn't feel like worth it, I am just so happy as I am’, it just fades out.

(1:30:30)

And surprisingly they may also smile spontaneously. And then if they have the habit, they will say, ‘Uh-yeah, but I am supposed to frown’, and the smile will shift to a frown. But the first response would have been one of the joyous free smile because that's the truth which your true-truth, not truth as a superficial relative truth, but the soul-truth touched and evoked the truth. This word ‘truth’ unfortunately is very mixed in the subjective age now, everybody says ‘my truth’, ‘your truth’ in a very superficial way; we are talking of something much deeper and that evokes the deepest truth in the other, however momentarily. So observe this and then cultivate more and more your life around this.

So this is the integration of the parts around the essential centre which I will call as a, let’s say, ‘third step of healing the distortions within you’.

And to this, I add one more: fourth step,—uh, which is really at the end of it, the underlying principle behind it,—which is ‘calling for the help’. So far I have not spoken of that so much. Somehow it is implicit in the very approach we are taking, but still, now we make it explicit. The reason I have kept it for last is because all this initial is so to say building a base into which that can be effective. People make the mistake sometimes of, on saying or rather taking the form of this ‘calling for help’ as a first step, but without this requisite base, and the effect is not so much.

So for example you say: ‘Alright I have this trauma, I have this pain, I am miserable, I call for help, I call for help, I call for help, more-more, nothing is happening, and so many years I prayed and prayed and prayed, nothing is happening’. You see where it's going wrong:  It's just a further exaggeration of that whole emotional cycle, of wallowing, in that thing.  And that's why it's so important to have laid that first base which I've described as the: building of the equality by blocking, withholding, the trauma reaction; building a deep base of equality; and then, consciously replacing the wrong movements with the right movement that comes from a deeper, truer layer within you; and then, the integrating around this true centre.

Having done this, when you call for help, who's calling? A more true centre. Again, it need not be your psychic being, but just a poise which is closer to it or which represents it more closely. That's enough. But the one who calls is true; and it's not calling-calling and doing nothing here. And there's no receptive base, so no effect, even when the help comes, it struggles against your resistance. But because you've gone through the first three steps, the receptive base is set, the alignment is there, and now you turn to call, and immediately there's a response and an effect in the response, so you call for help from the Divine, from the Divine Mother, to infuse you and heal you with her Light, with her Force, with her Love, with her Peace, and this turning to invoke, to ask, you feel the response, you receive the response.

So I've described these stages earlier, so I'll summarise, I don't go too much in detail:

You have to open yourself, otherwise you don't receive the response. The first movement is an opening in an aspiration. Or, you can say, opening, and then aspiring, and calling, but it could be a single movement.

Second is what descends, what comes, you receive, you soak in, you accept, and the acceptance is most complete when you turn in that state of acceptance to give yourself, ‘Here, shape me, mould me, soak me, fill me, recast me’. You give yourself in the receiving, and that's when the action is most effective.

And then comes the stage where having felt this, you lose yourself into her, lose yourself into the Presence that fills, you identify yourself and lose in the point where you forget yourself,—there is only that,—again you come out of that state, you are newborn, and there is a miraculous change.

The experiences people have of a miraculous healing is done at this point. If you have reached this stage, you have the miraculous outcome in the part which has had this, losing of yourself in the immersion, in the identification.

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In the parts which are not, you still have a change but not that miraculous result. So if in the physical consciousness, for example, you could experience that identity and losing yourself, when you come out from it, physically, your tissue is as if newborn, and literally you can have at that point a complete dissolution even of cancerous nodes, it's just gone like that.

We know of cases they are called ‘spontaneous regression’. It's a label around which science hides its ignorance and says, ‘We don't understand, spontaneous regression happened’, signed off on the file, and that's it, you're out, you don't need to come to the hospital. What happened? Why did it happen? ‘Not our concern, it's spontaneous regression’, you see. Sometimes it's happened with dreams, sometimes it's happened from a spiritual experience, but essential to that is this: in the physical consciousness, the immersion and losing yourself.

So depending on where you are and your base of, let's say, practice, certain parts you will be able to immerse more easily, other parts will receive indirectly and more indirectly the effect, but still that's when you have the miraculous dissolution, recasting, rebirth and completely new-formed, literally as if overnight the trauma and its effects have just been taken out and dissolved, removed, replaced by something else, ‘I am free’, ‘Done’.

If you have worked on the first three steps, this fourth step, very easy. Sometimes you may end up, so to say, implicitly preparing the base of these three steps, and then this happens. Then you say: ‘Why did I have to wait for two years to get this result?’. ‘Ah–well, because you were going through the preparatory steps.’ But if you are doing it consciously, it can be done very rapidly. So in giving yourself, losing yourself, in identification with Her is the miraculous healing on return in proportion to the immersion and in the part in which the immersion took place.

And here we come to a very important insight, because the most powerful force in the universe is the Divine Love. And when you had this immersion, it was a sort of a dissolution in the Divine Love and especially in that aspect of the Mother's force and working is the most complete and the most rapid healing. Now in the more conventional forms of practice, therapy, or even in pop psychology, they will say, ‘Ha-yes, you know, you shouldn't be hard on yourself, love yourself, forgive yourself’, so they'll say, ‘Oh-yes, this horrible thing happened to me, now I forgive myself’. ‘But I didn't commit it, why should I be forgiving myself?’ It's a very strange thing. Or, you say, ‘I forgive you for the trauma you caused’. ‘I didn't cause you any trauma, it was your imagination.’

I'll give an example, a real case. Somebody, this was around the time when there was this controversy around that book which was abusing Sri Aurobindo, and because I had taken a stand, there was a propaganda against me, and there was a lady who had not written to me for years, suddenly sent me an email, ‘I always respected you in this way, and now because of this which you have done, I have lost a friend, and I have lost this, and I don't wish to have any contact with you’.

I saw the email and I said, ‘Okay, your choice’, I left it. About, uh, then I heard, she was sick. And then I got an email about 6 months, a year later, and she says, ‘I have forgiven you’.

I said, ‘Okay, first of all I didn't commit a crime, you blame me for a crime, now you have forgiven me for something which I have not done, doesn't matter’. I had a strong urge at that point to write to her and say, ‘Instead of trying to forgive me, try to forgive yourself, because you are causing yourself so much trauma by imagining all this fantasy and putting yourself in a mess’. I had felt that it was somehow not just this but that tendency in her was related to her sickness. But I didn't try it, I was too busy, and then she passed on.

But this whole idea of ‘Love yourself’, ‘Forgive yourself’, ‘Forgive others’, sometimes even when they are not at fault, behind that is this principle, this truth: When you love yourself, even there is an illness, they will say ‘Love the illness’, the principle is, your love, however tiny, however distorted, however humanly reduced, is like the tip or tailend of the Divine Love, and somehow indirectly and partially you are invoking Her Love in that act. When you love somebody, or put out love for somebody, or to dissolve your link to that, you are putting out that love, it's indirectly and partially something of the Divine Love which is reflected, diluted, that's acting to dissolve, which creates the effect.

So if you understand this principle, well, get free from these secondary and  reflected forms, open to the source and give yourself, and you have this.

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And if ideally in the part where you have the trauma, you have the injury, or the distortion, if in that part you can love Her, feel Her in that part, and give yourself to Her Love in that part, you have this radical, dramatic, miraculous healing and intervention. Love heals. It's the most powerful force to harmonise, unify, because it brings back to the oneness, embraces in oneness, transmutes and transforms in that oneness. Ideally you would do it in the whole being, but in whatever part you are able to access of your being, whatever you are able to do is already excellent.

Otherwise, for example, if the knot is in a part where I am not fully conscious of, maybe it's an illness in that part which I am not fully conscious of, another part which is more conscious opens to That and becomes an indirect link, like a passage, or a link, or a reflector, to what is received which then seeps and flows into this part which is more closed. So there's another part within you, generally, you're opening in the heart's devotion, love, or the mind's awareness consciously opening, which connects, infuses consciously, literally you feel it, and infuse it into this part where you have a knot, or calls a descent into this, a part within you or sometimes in another person also, or prays for an intervention.

So there are different degrees from a more essential to a more superficial form, but something becomes like a link indirectly, and you have the result and sometimes miraculous depending on the receptivity of the person and then what shows to flow at that moment. Effectively though, you're going back into the layer that formed, with your own consciousness indirectly, directly, and as if rebuilding from there in realignment to a harmonising principle into a new birth. So let's say, your flower bloomed with distorted petals, you now go back as if, and reform, and reflow again, now with a harmonised, more complete, healed petal. That's really what I mean by this movement of new birth.

If you see, the key is this: new forming under the influence of a unifying principle or consciousness; and from a deeper or higher poise. And this is really the process also of the Integral Yoga. In a sense, every few years you look back and you say, ‘Oh, I'm no more the person, I've outgrown that person, I don't even recognise that person of’, whatever, ‘5 years or 10 years ago’, except now in this tiny portion of your emotions or where the trauma is or even a physical illness, you are as if outgrowing in a few days or weeks, and that's the healing.

So I would like to point to a few more things, but, it’s, we have almost taken more time than we should have, but I think, I want to close the theme sufficiently with a completion on this. All this we have described is really internal, and in relation to the Divine, and the soul. What about external aids from outside you? And to what extent do you need them or can you use them?

So I want to touch upon these external aids, in a quick summary.

First, what can be of great help, especially in the initial stages before you found a sufficiently stable base within you around which this whole process can become now more rapid and effective, is what I will call “Sat-Sang”, company of good people.  And I am going to extend the term in an unusual way, because normally we apply this term only for spiritual company, but in a sense this is a spiritual journey even. So you go to a group like Alcoholics Anonymous, it's a kind of a Sat-Sang, here are others who share in your aspiration to get free from this addiction or this trauma or whatever, so uh, you are sharing with like-minded people with a similar aspiration and you find your aspiration is nourishing to each other.

So I would highly recommend, where you have access to such a space, to use that as a support, because in times when you are down, the group holds you; and when someone else is down, you are part of the group that holds them. It can be a huge difference. And it is a kind of a collective sadhana for a very limited purpose of healing, still.

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And I would highly recommend for you to take a look at the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-Steps Programme. You see, you can see on their website, it's just called “The Twelve Steps”. If you search the word, the keyword, the “The Twelve Steps”, and aa.org is the website, you'll find that text. It's very interesting. It was written by somebody who is obviously a sadhaka. Though he came from the religious framework, but still what he was inspired to share is very much yogic, and you'll find many common ideas with what we have been sharing.

Second external aid could be an effective counsellor or therapist. And I mean by “effective”, somebody who is looking at it from a spiritual perspective and does not make the mistake of going deeper to exaggerate the problem or dig it out needlessly. So that again you have to see what works and whether you can find such people around you. Most important thing which you would need actually from the counsellor or therapist is, if they have a deeper understanding like this, it would be a great help, or just affection, affectionate support and understanding.

Often that's enough to take care of half the problem and give you the support to continue to make that change. So, either it takes that form, or it can be friends who love and care. But you don't make the mistake to wallow in self-pity when you are with them. You must consciously observe, and if you look at the framework we have described: to be able to step back and find your base of equality and then do the steps necessary to be free of this, this pattern or habit or symptoms. And so you take their help for that.

Fourth; so I put: counsellor,  therapist and then friends as the third step. Fourth: physical exercise. And this is very interesting. When you do exercise, there are two things which happen: One is, your energies flow, and they're regenerated: what would have been a stagnating energy is exhausted, and fresh energy comes to replace it. It's interesting. What's happening actually at that level is, the energies of stagnation in which you would have wallowed have been thrown out, and a fresh energy comes, you can't wallow in it. But equivalent process happens biologically, your tissue breaks down and is replaced by fresh tissue that is built. So in a way, in that very process, the imprint of the sanskaras, the old habits, and the tendencies which were imprinted in the biology are as if thrown out, and you get a chance to recast, on a biological level, a replacement, a new birth, with new cells being built up. You catch the principle there.

The new cells being built up ideally don't have the old tendencies, and you'll find rapidly as you do this, the tendency, the habit, the force of the past fades out very quickly, if you do it the right way.

What would be the wrong way to do? ‘I'm doing my exercise, I am going to get free of my problem, this anger has to go away.’ And as you're doing your exercise, you're brooding over the thing which you want to get free of, then you're imprinting it into the new tissue. What you should be doing is the opposite. You concentrate either on the higher ideal or something beautiful or some creative tendency,—something which is not that,—something which you want should grow. So you put yourself in that state of optimism, beauty, harmony, order, love, joy, peacefulness, or immersion in aspiration, but things which you want to build for the future, you have to be aligned to that, and then you do the exercise with that to infuse that quality into your tissue. And you'll be surprised at how rapidly and how effectively this happens: in the tissue itself, the memory is replaced, if done with this right focus.

So especially for the more material traumas which you feel are deep-rooted in the biology which you are unable to access through the psychological process, well, you do what you can with the psychological process and you complement it by this external, physical process. And if you have done this well-enough, then it immediately acts through the body rapidly to dissolve from there the memory of the event as well as the habit of the reaction. So this would be the fourth.

Fifth would be medical aids. Now in the medical aids, I am putting three things:

First is supplements. Often in the biology, especially things which are deeply rooted in biology, you will find, the tendency for the body to be insufficiently nourished tends to leave it weak and vulnerable. So your nourishment you correct by supplementations of various kinds. And just that lift of energies you will find, it lifts you free from that grade, semi-conscious, subconscious, in which much of the junk is stored as habit. Rising out of it you will find, you can more easily change.

Second: gut bacteria. Infuse into your gut fresh, new variations of bacteria through yogurt, Kimchi and other semi-fermented things which trigger bacterial growth and gut regeneration, microbiome regeneration. This process can take typically six months to a year to fully complete. You have to keep persisting. Now you'd be surprised: Why is this fellow talking about gut bacteria? Very interesting thing.

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So first I give you the medical aspect of it. What they find is the kind of gut bacteria you have can actually affect your mental state, and your emotions, and your optimism, and your depressive tendencies, and even psychiatric symptoms including even uh, dissociative personality symptoms, that is, you know where you seem to have multiple personalities, and so on. All kinds of psychiatric extreme cases, they have been able to link to certain kinds of gut bacteria, either lack of them or infection of certain kinds. So you correct for the bacterial microbiome, and you find it affects everything including your mind's working and emotional states.

Now that's purely the biological evidence of medical science, but behind that is this psycho-spiritual truth of it. Actually, the bacteria, remember, if you like, you go back to two talks we had in the year 2000, I think, it was uploaded in March, about bacteria and viruses.^[1]

The Mother speaks of bacteria, and particularly viruses, as physical concretisations of vibrations which are vital-physical. So if you think of gut bacteria as that, what you find actually is in your physical consciousness a certain densification of psychological energies or states of consciousness materialised, which is what you call the ‘gut bacteria’ or ‘virus’.

Naturally it has an effect on your mind, because it's embedded in the body of a grade of consciousness that is plugged in, and it naturally affects that grade of consciousness in your awareness. So correction of gut bacteria has that effect, but equally the change in mood tends to create the equivalent grade of bacteria within you. Now where the mood-state is rooted in the biology, replacing the gut biome, microbiome, tends to make that change also. It's a two-way connection. So just taking healthy food, good supplementation, and regenerate your gut microbiome, and you will find a lot of things begin to change. That's a medical support on a physical level especially for things which are deep-rooted in the biology.

And to it, I add as third option is what we would call as ‘allopathic medication’ for psychiatric or other mood disorders, and all that, which I do not recommend except as a last resort, or in extreme cases it is the first resort when you need to restrain an impulse. Somebody has got really way off, unable to control himself, then you give that medication to help restrain the impulses so that now the real process of healing can begin. So these are extreme cases, I hope, nobody who's watching this has to resort to that sort of thing, but we understand where these kinds of interventions could be helpful.

Having said that, this was the fifth external aid; sixth and seventh I will complete.

The sixth is, engage in all forms of creative self-expression. What that means, you'll have to find, it could be anything from singing, painting, music, dancing, learning to play some new games, anything where you end up expressing yourself, ideally choosing a poise which is deeper and higher. Now what happens here: Where you have an old habit pattern, which is tied to that trauma, etc., you are now bringing in a new pattern from your deeper and higher ranges as a creative expression which now begins to fill these parts equally even as it fills other parts and begins to replace them. So it's a kind of an indirect aid to what you were doing more directly by the psychological process that we have already discussed; you could supplement that with this. So as you do creative activities, you paint. You don't paint the mood that you have, ‘Oh, I have this trauma, I was abused, so I'm going to paint all the dark images that come’. No. You paint that which is your hope, that which is your dream, that which is the life that you actually deserve, which represents your soul's aspiration. You paint that.

So as you do that on a physical level, you are articulating and externalising the soul-qualities through a movement, through an activity, and it embeds into the physical consciousness and forms new habits, new grooves, which replace the old. Very effective. And it can be done in all kinds of self-expression or creative self-expression, including playing games where you put forward something which is more representative of your nature, of your deeper truth.

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And finally, recast your whole life. Now I'm going to put this, it sounds a bit radical: Literally change everything in your life, you see, the equivalent of going on a holiday, you leave behind your life as it is and go and go into a new environment, new people, new activity, new learning, and you are as if newborn. You come back, and you slip into your old grooves and are bound in this. So in the extreme case, you say, ‘Okay, this is where it ends, I'm going to take a new birth’. So I am not saying do it just on an impulse, but if that is the requirement! Literally give out your house on a rent, lease whatever, shift to a new city, start a new life, make new friends, take a new, take up a new job, new activity, literally as if you say, ‘Okay, what is it that I would like my ideal life to be like? I'll let go of everything I'm doing now and start living that life’. So, recasting the whole life down to the details, including, ‘Okay, the clothes I have, let it all go start with fresh, new, new-me’.

But you see the principle behind, now you don't need to do it so materially, like I said, these are external aids. You can do the whole thing psychologically, but using an external crutch sometimes can be helpful because it gives you an objective reference. But you can't do that while not changing inside. If you do it as an expression of the inner change, it can be very effective. But you understand the principle: it's like taking a new birth; starting a new life; and you let go of the old. ‘Whatever happened, that trauma belonged to that personality, that's not me, I'm starting a new life.’

And sometimes it's helpful to make a kind of a symbolic transition where you let go of the past and start anew. So in many traditions, even religious traditions or certain cultures, they will take something that represents your past, burn it, or put it in the ocean, and say, ‘Now that's over, that person is gone, I'm the new person’, and so on. Again those are symbolic, as I said, you catch the principle, it can be effective.

So this, with this I complete the whole framework which I am uh, sharing here. If you look at the essential principles, and because it is held at such an essential level, you will find, you can apply to any circumstance, however mild or however extreme. Observe the structure of this, put it into practice in the way that is most natural, most easy for you, start with what is possible, and then let it grow into the deeper and higher possibilities which would complete the healing. I think, this is comprehensive enough.

Normally one would have wanted to split it into two pieces for time that it involved but, I feel, if you split it, then the continuity of the whole is lost. So, I am sorry for the longish presentation, but it was the only way to make it, hold it in a single go in a completeness. I have still been somewhat rapid, but I would recommend for those of you who really want to put this into practice deeply:

Review this a couple of times. Make notes. Note, what you would want to do to implement those suggestions. Start putting them into practice for a few days, for a few weeks, and then come back and hear the whole thing again, and then you'll catch certain elements, ‘Ah-yes, this I was missing, this I would like to do, this I can now add, I'm ready for this next stage to deepen this’, and so on. And you might want, depending on the circumstances, you might want to review this again after a month or so, and I think it will be extremely effective.

Catch the principle, put it in alignment, put it in practice, drawing upon the two things,—that Presence within you and the Divine Help,—taking the basic steps of the Integral Yoga process itself to disengage from the past and recast, reshape your whole nature and your personality and take a new birth. Whatever traumas belonged to our past lives don't bother us today; even the traumas of this life need not bother us if we take a new step and take a new birth.

Don't worry about the time. Remember the principle we spoke of: small steps. You make the small steps, She fills those steps with dramatic results. And so you are not dependent on your incapacity or your capacity. You are dependent on Her capacity but your little effort to allow Her capacity to act through your effort.

(2:00:18):

There are a few more questions which, so to say, continue this and will build on it, but we will take them up after a gap for about four weeks during which I will be traveling, so we will upload some other talks from other discussions which will be interesting, I can assure you! And what will come next perhaps will be subtitled. It will be probably in French with English subtitles, but it will be a fascinating. So you will have four weeks of a different kind of content, but we will continue this theme after that, and I will look at the questions which are in the chat box also as well as of several, of several which have come in the emails, so we will put it all together.

Okay, and that's it for now. We can take a moment to concentrate on this. You look at how this structure is really aligned to the Integral Yoga, and this is what we have to do every day ideally to take a new birth and grow into more truly what is the soul's potential, the soul's consciousness, and the Divine aspiration within us for the Divine manifestation. And that's how we outgrow the trauma of the ignorance from which we emerge and heal ourselves into the Divine Harmony and the Divine Love.

Namaste.

Allina (2:02:07):

Namaste.

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