EWS #135: Advice for Students + QA

October 29, 2022

Alina (0:00:28):

Namaste and good evening everyone.

Namaste Sraddhalu.

Sraddhalu (0:00:33):
Namaste.

Alina (0:00:37):
Today we are streaming live online a new series with our title “Advice for Students”. So Sraddhalu will be giving some wonderful guidelines, and we invite you all to address questions in the chat box on our YouTube channel. You may also send your question beforehand at our email id integralstudies.in[at]gmail.com.

I will be addressing a question from a student from India: What advice would you give to students? I myself am 22 years old and going to make some major decisions regarding my career. Specifically, I am a UPSC aspirant diplomat. What are the things I will need to take care of from a spiritual perspective?

Even myself, I encountered many difficulties in choosing my own career and then later on I had to drop, take up on something else because there were too much influence at that time and I couldn't get a proper advice although I was consulting with a psychologist, he couldn’t still open or touch or be a proper or give a proper guidance for myself. I still regret to this day that I didn't follow up what I felt but I was in a way influenced by others.

Sraddhalu (0:02:25):
Yes, I think, if you look at the number of students who have to make that decision across the world, I would even say, every day millions of people are going through that kind of a struggle to find their sense of, let's say, direction, purpose, form of activity, career path, etc. The question though is very general first and then it gets very specific and I'm going to take the opportunity to make a base which is as broad as possible and then particularise as required as we discuss specific aspects of it for this student who has, who considers, who is an aspirant to be a diplomat for the UPSC, which is the Union Public Service Commission, India's central agency for, which conducts exams for the civil services to take positions in the administrative services, police services, foreign services or revenue services and so on, even defence services. And they cover broadly 23 different civil services.

The common theme of course in all these is that you come into positions of responsibility, governance and so on but with specialised aspects.

So I'm going to first approach the whole question generally and then narrow down to things which would be specific to this.

Since the questioner is already 22 years old, that's generally a point where you have come into a first experience of adulthood. You may have just completed what would be considered minimum of studies and now you start making choices for specialisations or career paths.

Although my general advice, even for students younger, as well as at this age, first would be:

Do not narrow yourself.

At least till the age of 25, try to build as broad a base as possible, as diverse and rich experience as possible.

So let's go back to a younger child: You are perhaps before the age of 10, before the age of 15, before the age of 21, broadly to make categories. You have much more time. You can afford to play around, you can afford to experiment, you have time to waste. As you cross 21, you have less and less time to waste and then as you enter real life, everything is so precious that the opportunities for random experimentation or free play of experimentation with different kinds of learning and experience become less and less because specialisation becomes almost inevitable.

(0:05:20):

So as early as possible, I would encourage, parents also, to their children, but the children themselves to take up as many possibilities of experience, and activities, skills, capacities as you can. Each will nourish and develop a specific aspect of your skill set, of your personality, of the faculties of your mind, of your vital even of your physical body consciousness, integrating some of these.

So for example learning to play a musical instrument. You notice how from finger control to the emotional content, to rhythms and then to the mental aspect of the, let's say, the theory of music, but also the underlying structure of music which has a semi-mathematical component, but the reading of music which is written, the ability to listen to a piece of music and then play it out, it involves a translation in the mind, in the mental consciousness, and then from there opening through intuition to an inspired piece of music that you might play through a single instrument.

All these could be developed in a specialised way and integrated.

Once done, let's say, in this path, a channel through music, that path would be available to all other faculties in your personality, and it could take so many other forms because you have integrated four layers of consciousness with a certain richness, you can widen it or link it to other specialised let's say vertical linkages and in this way make a broad rich base of your overall instrument.

This I would highly recommend to begin with.

In doing these, remember, your goal is not to make a career out of it. I would even go so far as to say, play one instrument, a different instrument for a month. If you enjoy it, extend it for two or three months. And then when you feel that's enough, switch to something else, a different activity even. Take up theatre, take up gymnastics, any kinds of activities, some programming on the computer, basic programming skills, anything which challenges and opens out a certain skill set, faculties of your consciousness.

And so by the time you have reached 21, you already have a reasonably broad base. Already at the time of, at that age, you don't have too much scope for fooling around, which includes just doing things for the heck of it, which allows you to make mistakes and have no particular purpose except for the fun.

But already at 21 you have to now become more serious.

Still at this age I would recommend, make as broad, as diverse an exposure as possible.

In this particular case, as the questioner is also thinking of something which might involve diplomatic services, develop your skills for learning languages. Now this is an innate capacity some people have.

I used to see in my childhood, there were people in my class who could just pick up languages. Somehow it never interested me. Even attempting to do it, I felt a huge resistance, as if a block, and I envied them. What is interesting is much later in life, once certain other blocks, let's say certain blocks were removed and certain parts were integrated in the consciousness, that thing opened up. And it opened up in a very different way. And I wish today, I had the time, I would want to learn three or more languages just because I would enjoy doing it and just because it would be interesting to switch between the mind working in this language and the mind working in that language and go across them. And I cannot do that today because of lack of time.

But that faculty had it been open then, there would have been so much more time in between which one could have used or the same faculty would be used for other kinds of capacities and skill development.

So my point here is from the age of 21, 22 even, continue to broaden as much as you can your base of skills and experiences and capacities as much as you can despite the responsibilities and time challenges you may have with further studies.

I can imagine that to prepare for a UPSC exam, you have to really give all your time. And yet, if you did that, the enrichment that it would create in your personality would make your preparation for UPSC exam much more easy and complete.

So those who simply pass from exam to exam often end up with a very narrow personality. And the challenge of the exam itself, they are unable to navigate or have to struggle a lot.

(0:10:28):

The moment you've created a broad base, you could still do your exams, but you will find you don't have to struggle because those faculties are, are much more rich. The exam is too narrow for you. In fact, it seems meaningless because you are already broader than the focus of the exam and then the exam can be a breeze.

Much more important is what happens after the exam. The exam at best is your first point of entry. How do you manage the situation in life itself? If you have a rich broad base, you are able to live your life, take up the real challenges of life.

So, now I am going to make a few other indications and then we will continue this line of development.

One of the first things you will have to do now, let's say you are at the age of 22 and subsequently when you complete even what you will prepare now for the UPSC exam, first thing undo the damage that the educational system has imprinted into you.

And I will point to a few key-factors. One of the most damaging aspects of the educational programming is that it teaches you that everything can be reduced to a number including yourself.

I am a 95 percentile pass, who are you 94% to dare to speak to me? See you have reduced people, yourself even, to a number.

A rich, diverse, multifaceted personality cannot be reduced to a single number even if you accept the principle that one aspect of your personality could be put into a numerical measure. The rest cannot be or would be in different directions and their combination cannot be merged. Isn't it?

So this idea and it's deeply set in you from childhood that you have to pass an exam and there's a number you have to cross and by number you value each other or you are valued by your parents, friends, relatives according to the number that you have hit, and that's so damaging.

Dissolving this false idea, you look at each person as a multifaceted, multi-dimensional being or a flower with multiple petals. You may be right now valued by only one petal for your exam purposes but life will look at your whole, all the petals and their integration as a totality of the flower. And you have to consciously start looking at people in this way.

Especially if you're going to be in a position of administrative responsibilities, you may be put in contact with a person, let's say, who everyone will say, oh this fellow is useless, he is good for nothing. No, there's no such thing.

Everybody is good for something. And if you can look deeply into a person, you can find their right place. You can tap their even powers that they are themselves not conscious of, motivations, deep set values, and draw them out.

For example, this guy may be a good for nothing, but when I look into him, I see, he has such deep idealism or loyalty. He will never betray a trust. That's his strength. How can we draw that? How can we leverage that now to develop other faculties and capacities within him?

But to be able to assess that, to perceive that, you must have something of that capacity within you. Then you can recognise it in others.

So the more rich you become, the more you are able to perceive deeply in others, and then you are able to identify and draw out a certain capacity and then use it to further draw out other aspects and so on.

Consciously train yourself to value yourself in terms of all those things which the exam does not care about but you can look at and say, these are valuable.

But you don't have enough life experience yet to be able to recognise how valuable those things are going to be in life.

For example someone who has internal integrity, it is such a valuable gift for life.

When somebody wants to hire you, let's say, you may be a hundred percent pass in your exam but if there's no integrity no one's going to trust you or you will always be under pressure of various kinds. If you have integrity even if your pass is 80%, I don't know what the bad numbers are because fortunately I was not in that system, but if you have integrity, all the rest will fall into place somehow.

(0:15:02):

So you will deconstruct, undo this idea of numerical limitation, look at the full diversity and fullness of a person.

Second damage of the educational system that you will have to reverse and undo is this black and white of pass versus fail. You see, you are taught from childhood, did you pass the exam? Ophew, oh no, I failed it. Now I have to redo the whole year. What a stupid thing by the way? Because you miss certain marks, you have to sit through all those boring meaningless lessons which anyway didn't interest you at. What will you gain? Why not simply work upon that weak point, fix it, and get through even if you had to go through an exam system? But the system does not allow for the all that, you have to sit through the whole year or whatever the variations that are currently present but implied is this pass versus fail duality.

This seeps into your life and makes you now afraid to fail in life. I have to take a decision. What if I make a mistake? I will fail. I'll fail in life. It's bad enough that I might have failed in my 10th standard exam. I almost failed and I'm really scared of it. And in life if I fail, what happens? It's a huge unknown. It's like this black hole that you will fall into. This fail creates this fear.

And success, you passed or you had success, is this world of light somehow that you will be celebrated as someone wonderful irrespective of what you are as a person.

So this division and binary cut of life and values needs to be dissolved.

The reason is when you actually enter real life, you're never given an exam. Every challenge that comes your way does not have behind it a rule book guiding you with a correct answer or a wrong answer. Precisely, it's a challenge because there are no known answers, right? If you consult 20 people, all of them successful in life, you might get 20 different kinds of advice. And you have to choose finally what works for you.

So life is not about exams.

The moment you get into life, exams are pointless. They were only, let's say, your key to open a gate. Once you're through the gate, now you're meeting the whole world as it is. There's no exams there.

There's a way of looking at every step in life as exams is wrong.

Life is only about growth and learning. There's no examination. There's no pass or fail. There's no success or failure. There's only growth and learning. And both are always positive, even if the experience is negative.

Let's say you made a decision and the consequences of the decisions had more negative outcomes than positive outcomes by your values to someone else those might be positive outcomes. Okay? So for you it might be more negative than positive and you say, oh, this was a failure.

No, you just had more negative outcomes.

And if you had done the other thing, maybe you might have had other negative outcomes you don't know about.

Sometimes situations in life are such, whatever you choose you have negative outcomes in any case. In the balance you try to choose something which has less of negative or more of free choices later on, and these things are not measurable. These are strategic decisions. Some of them involving benefits five years down when right now you may go through difficulties and struggles but their benefits five years down may be far greater.

And so, you cannot metricise these things.

The life is only about growth and learning. There is no such thing as failure or success. Whatever may happen, if there is majority negative, as it may appear to you now, it's still learning and growth. Next time in that same situation, you will be a different person. If you have not been through this, you would be the same person. You would not have grown.

So start thinking of life opportunities in terms of growth and learning. No more, dissolve these two words, of pass and fail or success and failure. They have no meaning at all. And it's so that the moment you have grown this much, the next challenge that will come will meet exactly your current development, because life doesn't waste opportunities. It does not give you a challenge that you are already capable of. It would be pointless, right?

So it always gives you something which now matches your current level of growth precisely to help you grow one more step.

Now when you start thinking in these terms, you will meet every opportunity as a learning experience and a growth. Even if sometimes the learning experiences are expensive in terms of time, in terms of resources, in terms of reputation, whatever it is, but you grew through it and you learnt a lot through it.

(0:20:12):

And look at it this way: every experience is only an opportunity for growth and learning, how can you maximise the growth and learning here? That's all that matters.

Consequent to this comes the third correction that you have to make from the programming of the educational system:

Do not fear making mistakes because this whole business of success, failure, pass-fail, is that you are always afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes or what seems to be mistakes are inevitable, unavoidable, even necessary.

Now imagine, you are exploring, just as an analogy, you are exploring a terrain which is unexplored, no one knows what's where, you are building the maps. Unless you go everywhere, how will you make the map? Even if you stay far away and observe from a distance, you do not know whether the ground there is thin, whether it is strong, whether it is sandy or rocky until you actually reach there, isn't it? Until you test what is below, until you dig a hole, until perhaps you slip and fall into a hole, you won't know that, oh this part is so slippery. And sometimes when you fall into a hole, you'll discover a whole hidden cave system that you would have never seen from outside.

Some of the greatest discoveries have come because of so-called mistakes, Isn't it?

So in a sense, the unexpected, the breakthrough of a boundary is equivalent to a mistake. Isn't it? Even a mistake is really a breaking out to an unexpected zone which is therefore a growth because it was unexpected now it has become known to you.

You will never know the parameters, the limitations, the boundaries of your knowledge, of your strength, your skill, your capacity unless you are tested to the limit and you break at the limit.

I'll say, oh I am capable of this, until in doing I slip or I tire or I get a knock and I say, oh that's my limitation, now I need to work upon it. Not having experienced it you would have the blind illusion of having a capacity when actually it was not so refined, not so developed, not strong, not complete, whatever it was the limitation.

And the mistake, the problem, the failure, is what helps you to grow now and become come out stronger.

So the idea that you can do something without making mistakes is wrong. It would mean that you're doing nothing of value. You're staying in the safe zone where millions of people have wandered and you're staying within the boundary of the wanderers of those million meaninglessly.

The moment you want to exceed, develop, grow, you have to cross that boundary and you are going to make at some point meet something which will be unexpected and would pass technically as a mistake.

So, I am going to say, a mistake is essential to learning and is essential for breakthroughs and especially if you are going to have growth which is extremely rapid, you are going to have lots of mistakes.

Very often as you grow, you will anticipate, ah now I'm going to head into a danger zone of mistakes, you'll be more attentive and prevent it becoming a big mistake. The moment it swings in the wrong way, you make corrections and so on, but nevertheless you'll have to go through that.

And if depending on your temperament you will observe other people's mistakes and learn from them without yourself needing to make them and yet you will trip at some point without which you would never grow in any case, so you may minimise mistakes by learning from others but still you'll have to make your own experiments at some point to break through for the new things you have to bring into yourself or in the world, isn't it?

So do not fear making mistakes.

Do not consider mistakes as an issue, as a problem.

Treat it as a process of learning and growth and take it in your stride.

There are interesting quotations from some scientists who were asked, oh you tried to do this so many times. Supposedly Edison was asked, you tried a thousand times to make a light bulb. He said, yes I found a thousand ways how it does not work.

Maybe it's true, maybe it's not.

I personally don't think much about it.

Tesla was, you know, not a very great fan of Edison. He thought Edison was a bit stupid and Tesla said, to have to make a thousand mistakes, that means you're not smart. Tesla's method was to be able to bypass this by going deep inside into insights and theory so that you don't make unnecessary mistakes, and so that's part of our learning also, Isn't it?

(0:25:18):

So this is another thing you will unlearn:

The fear of mistakes: there's no such thing, there is only opportunities for learning and growth, and that's part of it.

Fourth, you've been brought up to think that everything is all about competition.

And in a competition what happens at the end of it, after a thousand people have competed? One person is first, oh yeah how wonderful, and somebody is second and third, they get their special awards, the rest don't count, they get nothing, right? Or it is called a ‘consolation prize’. Okay, you're going to cry, let me console you by giving you a little prize that says, okay I'm consoling you, that's what the prize says, right? It says ‘consolation prize’. That fellow is first, second, third, you, okay, I console you. You see, how ridiculous it sounds. And for the rest, I don't even bother to console, they don't matter.

It's actually a statement, it's very shocking, I will not name the person, but I know the name of the man, this is going back some 20 years. There was a meeting of let's say the committee which was heading the whole educational system in India, in one of the, I think, CBSE, and in that meeting, somebody asked: How do you explain this high rate of dropouts?

You see, in India at that time at least, I don't know what's now, up to the standard, up to the age of 10, there used to be a very large number of dropouts of children, especially in the villages. So this committee was asked: How do you explain that? Or what are you going to do about it?

And this man actually said publicly, he said: those children don't matter.

Wow.

What a perversion?

You've been taught because of this model of competition that everyone is going to be put in a serial sequence. Like I said, that does not fit actually. It's that numerical reduction. But there's a competition somehow to scramble up the ladder. So you have a ladder now with so many rungs and you're going to pull yourself up to a higher rung by pushing somebody else down. That's the interesting thing about these rungs. If you go up, someone else gets down. Right?

So it's a scramble.

There was a joke. You you can apply to any community but it used to be said of Indians that when this fisherman would catch crabs he would put them in a bin and leave the bin open. And so someone asked, how is it you don't have to cover them, they might escape?

He said, no don't worry, they're Indian crabs, the moment one tries to climb up the others will pull it down.

Okay, it's a joke. Okay, it was partly true. But it was true because of this competitive fake artificial system imposed in which you had to scramble up and if somebody started scrambling, you had to scramble up to get above him and therefore pull him down indirectly.

And that was programmed by the British in India under the Macaulay system which is intended to reduce India into, quote, “a nation of clerks”.

So undo this competitive idea.

The truth is we are each one of us like rays, the rays of the sun, from a common centre. Each ray has a distinct unique direction, no two rays will ever collide. Each can go all the way to infinity and together all of us complement each other to make the totality of the light. This is the reality.

And along the way, yes, because we are living in a consciousness which is fragmented and disconnected from the source, our rays might collide but only momentarily. And in the collision we can learn from each other, we can either hit each other or embrace each other and then go our ways. That's our choice.

So you meet somebody which is challenging to you in a certain situation which has a competitive situation, you can say, wow this person has such a capacity I too should develop and be like that, at least that part which I appreciate I can gain and learn from them, isn't it?

So your collision, competitive, is not about a destructive competition but a kind of a mutual help, mutual support, inspiration, collaborative competition is possible. At least in your consciousness you have to think in these terms. Others may or may not, doesn't matter.

So it's a reality that out there in your career you're going to face competitive situations where you have to scramble. But do not fear the competition. Look at it in this way that there is a unique place that you have already in every circumstance and there's nothing that can take that away from you, what you are. Whether you will fit inside this workspace or not you will try your best, if you don't, well, it did not work out, you will find other spaces or you will create your own spaces, isn't it?

(0:30:21):

Or if you find yourself pushed into a niche that is not quite yours, you will use that as a learning opportunity until you get a chance to expand into a space that is more suitable for your aspiration or your capabilities.

And so the idea of competition itself becomes for you less important and you look at those circumstances rather as challenges and inspirations or as a challenge, it helps you make that extra effort to overcome which you might not have done without that challenge.

So we have for example in the Ashram School the Mother was very clear she did not want exams for this reason because people cheat, they reduce themselves to numbers and so on.

And yet we have something called ‘Competition Season’ in the Physical Education Department. And in the more academic studies we have something which we call ‘tests’, not exams.

So in a test, ha you go through these question, you test yourself, and you may get a measure: Okay how many did you get right? But there's nobody, ho he's first, second or third, you just got so many right, you got so many wrong, that's about it.

Or in the competitions which we have for the Physical Education Programmes, let's say, you have a run, a hundred-metre run, and it's a full-fledged competition like the Olympics, and someone's going to come first, someone second and third. Yes it's there, but that's it. You came first, here's your measure. And when the measure is put up on the board, it's compared with your last-year measure.

So what matters is not so much whether you came first, second, third, but how you did in relation to your last year's performance? Did you grow? Did you improve? And of course that reward is given because it acts also as an aid or a motivation to make that one extra bit of effort, but as you grow older, somehow those things don't matter. Do I even remember what did I do at that time? No, I wouldn't. It wouldn't matter.

And the same happens to you today, when you are 22 plus, as you go further in life, somehow that won't matter so much.

If you are competing, and the truth of competition is that you compete with yourself. Every time you take a step, you make an effort. It is in relation to what you feel you were capable of or what you have done before and make that a little bit extra.

And as a result of all these, there is an automatic damage or distortion from the educational system which is to keep you narrow, to keep you specialised, to keep you shallow and limited to that which is required to pass an exam.

You see the way the exam system works is every child now thinks: What do I have to do to pass the exam? And you work backward.

So in order to pass the exam:

I only need to know these things by heart,

I don't actually need to be able to do that, right?

Okay, I'm not going to waste time on that.

I don't need to be a good person.

I don't need to be, have integrity.

I don't need to have skills.

I don't even need to speak,

I just have to write.

So, hordes of children pass first level exam without a basic skill of expression, of clarity of thought in speech. Or you ask them to stand in front of 20 people and they start shaking. But if you leave them alone with a paper and pencil, they can fill out your exam paper and vomit out whatever they learned by heart for the last few months.

You see the kind of a narrowing it has made to your personality.

And we have to consciously undo this damage.

Deliberately, consciously widen yourself.

Meaning, look at all the faculties, all the possibilities, all the skills, all the kinds of experience that you could play with, not necessarily excel, play with, widen yourself.

Play musical instrument, do gymnastics, play some physical games, play some mental games, learn a new language, sing a song, learn a dance, maybe play three different kinds of instruments, one strings, one air flute and something which is like keyboard. Doesn’t matter?

Learn to play table tennis. Have you tried juggling balls? Can you juggle with three balls, four balls? Why not? It's skill of your fingers linking through your nerves through steadiness of emotions, steadiness of sight, hand-eye coordination and the sense mind, all integrated at a very rudimentary level when you first get the thing. Then from there you could make it more complex, more interesting with further challenges and you will bring in other faculties or other parts of your consciousness and integrate them, refine and enrich and develop them.

Right?

(0:35:29)

So widening, heightening: that is intensifying, raising to their apex, to their peak. Maybe you won't do that with all of them but with some at least where you particularly enjoy, where you feel there is a possibility.

So look at it this way: your personality came with let's say a base, I'm going to use now a picture which is: from a centre many different directions of rays. Okay?

Some rays are partially developed but you feel they can go much more, some rays are already hitting boundaries. Observe. Some rays you have never even attempted, you have not even touched, you don't even know what you can do, isn't it?

So pick up, play, push.

And when you hit a boundary, you try to break through the boundary. Where you don't hit a boundary, push as far as you can until you hit a boundary.

That's how you will get to know yourself.

So there's this widening and then pushing boundaries will be the heightening to raise.

Diversifying as far as possible.

Refining a skill.

And integrating it all.

Okay?

So all this you need to do.

And now we'll link it from a spiritual point of view to the four soul powers and then the various facets and capacities of your nature’s powers and skills and capacities.

All these consciously try to unfold, draw out, develop, refine, integrate and so on to whatever degree, play freely. You don't even need to think too much. If you just follow, given the fact that we don't have too much time in a human life, just follow whatever comes your way even and you can do a lot. And then whatever draws your curiosity, What about this? Let me try. For a few weeks I'm going to play this instrument, get the rudimentaries of it.

The advantage today is that you have automatically access freely to all the online training programmes for free, unlike days when you had to go to a library, you had to find a teacher who would be willing to sit with you, all those days are gone. Even if you want to get into very advanced physics, you have the MIT physics courses which are available online, you don't get a certificate but you can learn all you want. You can still get a certificate by paying money and passing through an exam but you may or may not choose to do that.

But there's no limit to learning potentially because of this access that we have today. And there are some extraordinary training programmes for various kinds of knowledge which so far exceed the current standard of education in schools that I even wonder why people don't bring those programmes into the schools themselves.

There is something called the Khan Academy which is supposed to be very good, I've never really looked at it. There's another which is called Brilliant for Mathematics, Physics and other concepts, which uses visualisations and other forms which are amazing, extraordinary. And it allows you to rapidly grasp concepts and then work, build upon them and so on. There are many others like this. Some of the best teachers of the world have put their material online and you do not need to depend on anybody else for your learning. Ok?

You may or may not get the exam paper. If you want the paper, do it. If you think it's useful for your career, do it. But don't aim for that. Aim for the learning and growth.

Now all this is to undo the damage from the existing, let's say, training framework that you have gone through.

And so I again summarise this by saying, till the age of 25 at least, push the growth to diversity of experiences, capacities, pushing of the boundaries and so on.

Some personalities are more innately rich, multifaceted. Others are more simple with less diversity but a greater integrity generally. Some are still in a developmental phase even of the personality, doesn't matter. Wherever you are from that point, you push one step further. If you have a rich personality, then necessarily 25, age 25 is not even enough. So at that point, you've already perhaps touched upon careers, entered careers, and even there I will say, where possible, take career opportunities which will give you rich experience, go through a range of kinds of experience where you develop those facets of your capabilities.

(0:40:07):

Now, since the student has specifically mentioned the UPSC aspirant as a diplomat, even if it were otherwise in the UPSC framework, linguistic skills, administrative skills, Deep thought and insight, deeper understanding of history and the ability to apply the lessons of history to current circumstances in order to take decisions, people skills, managing people will be one of the most important capacities you have. If you have that, all the rest you could fill in. Even if you don't have it you will find the people who will fill what you don't have and you will manage them in a way and get everything done.

So all these are not taught in schools.

I don't know if you have even, well, at least the people managing skills are not taught in schools. The other things to some degree but really not in this form of application the way I described it, isn't it? And a lot of it you might do on your own or you might find some exceptional sources and certainly I'm sure there are others who have worked upon these in this way.

So especially if you have a rich personality you may take longer, many more years to fully develop different facets of life experience.

And then something very interesting happens. As this becomes more and more complete you'll find automatically a new rhythm will begin and a kind of a focus beginning to narrow. On a rich wide base, the priority of your interest may take a form that is more and more focused. So, it is not a narrow specialisation. It will still be on a rich base. All these things will be integrated, but in an action which will have consequences also sometimes, which will be rich, but the form may be apparently very narrow and so it will happen automatically. Until then, until that starts happening, broaden your base as much as you can.

Especially when you take up these different kinds of experiences or learning, the aspect of doing it for the joy of learning and growth is very important.

One of the things which the exam system has programmed you to do is to even hate what you have to do, hate learning, because it's made such a tedium and pointless and meaningless and shallow. And so somewhere inside there is this association of learning with struggle, pain, suffering, distress, when in fact the deepest truth of our being is all learning gives us joy, all growth gives us joy, isn't it?

And so bring back that aspect of the joy of learning and growth.

One of the things in the Ashram School when the Mother removed the exams and removed those kinds of pressures, many people would comment, they would say: But how will children study? What is their motivation? How do you motivate them? Implied is that the only way to motivate a child is to punish, reward, you know, the carrot and stick to push the donkey. And without that, they would not do anything, that they would sit idle and not want to learn.

And the Mother's observation was, and she actually gave a prayer, which had to be repeated by all the children of the School every day. Of course, it was never done. I know there was only one teacher who would make the children repeat every day. And she was considered to be a little erratic. But the prayer went something like this:

It is not for our family, it is not for job, It is not to get a diploma that we study. We study to learn, to know and for the joy that it gives us.

Something like that.

This is a very interesting point. Mother put directly the focus, the prime motivator is the joy of learning. And if that we have inculcated early on in children, you actually have to do nothing. You can step back and the child will self-motivate all the way through. We make the teaching supremely boring and then try to kick them into learning and motivate them.

All false.

The first suppression of the joy of learning was the falsehood and then the artificial means of motivating children to get an award, to get a cup, to get a paper is false.

The truth is the innate joy of learning. Recover that.

(0:45:02):

Now from the, the feel of the questioner it feels as if you already have something of it but since it's been beaten down you must consciously recover this and you do whatever you do including these diversities of experiences for the joy of learning not thinking of career opportunities.

Okay?

Uh as you grow, I've already mentioned this but it's an important point, you have aptitudes. So you automatically flow in the line of aptitudes. And then you have limitations. Alina mentioned earlier, she said, went to a career counsellor. Unfortunately, they do that even today everywhere in India, at least, that there's somebody who's like a specialist. He looks at your exam results and says: you should do this and not that; your maths is good, you should go in a science career; you were good with this, here's the numbers, you should go into economics; oh, you are good with languages, you should go into this.

So, what they do is basically look at certain aptitudes and bridge it to the nearest point of job opportunity.

The soul's choice may be quite different sometimes. The soul's choice may not be in the line of your aptitude but opportunity to grow in something which is not your primary aptitude.

Inevitably when you have what they call ‘child prodigies’, this child plays chess, that one plays music, okay make a career out of it.

Sometimes that is the line of the soul's development, very often it's not.

When it is not, you can force them and at some point it's as if that power withdraws because now the child wants to develop, the soul wants to develop a different direction and integrate with what was already done in the past.

So rather than looking at it in this very superficial career pathway, especially up to a certain age, look at it this way:

Where you have aptitudes, refine. Where you have limitations, break the boundaries. Overcome those limitations. Whether you choose to pursue that or not is not important. The fact that you could overcome is important. Even if you overcome a little bit, that's important. And the joy of overcoming is so great that in life whenever you will face boundaries, you'll say, why? Why should I be unable to do this? Here. And you overcome. And it'll give you great joy.

So these are the kinds of things we would want to inculcate. And if it's not been inculcated, you will take charge and start working on yourself in these ways. So when it comes to choice of career now, I'm going to give a broad, let's say, reference.

You remember we have already discussed this many times before, of the four soul powers. There is a broad turn of your temperament where one of these tends to dominate. That's your starting point. It's not that you have to now take a job that fits that. In fact in any job structure all four powers would be involved.

So you could take a job which is completely outside your domain but in it find a function which represents your domain. Isn't it?

Notice that.

So there are two ways of approaching this.

One is simply to follow your nature's, well, habitual pattern. I like to be, I'm comfortable when I'm interacting with people. So you move into human resource type activity.

The other is to look at the soul powers.

Sometimes the two are not obviously aligned and you need to make an effort to look deeper to assess what is the soul power.

I'll give an example here, there was a child at the age of two she had come to our house for some function, I think it was my teacher M.P. Pandit’s birthday, she came in and while the parents were busy with their thing this two-year-old child is, sees the slippers that all the people have kept there, we come out from that meeting, and we see she has rearranged all the slippers neatly in a straight line and beautifully. Wow. You could catch that straightaway. Here's something, it's a soul quality. And it's clear if the child's growth is not damaged that this quality is going to continue to come forward, bloom, blossom. What form it will take in the nature? We couldn't say at that point perhaps, because it's still unformed, the nature is unformed. But the soul quality was very distinct. And if it could fill into the mind, then in mind she could have developed that kind of clarity of arrangement of ideas or beauty of expression. If it was through the vital, it could have taken an artistic turn or she would have been an interior decorator or if she was writing then she would be writing beautiful stories. You see, it could take so many different directions. You can put her in any space, as long as that quality is strong, she will bring that kind of harmony and beauty and order into that space.

(0:50:20):

So the soul quality and then the nature tendencies and forms. These two you have to assess and then see which of these, of course the soul quality will predominate, but in which combination would this work out broadly.

There are in the more complex types of personality you don't go straight. One facet developed, then another facet developed, then another facet developed, and then something totally different where all these things are integrated. That also happens.

So you cannot give a simple career path. You will actually encourage them to go through phases in their career development.

So again, I'm placing all this for our young student. Don't limit yourself to a simple career path. Of course, if it's obvious and you know you want to go as a diplomat, that's already a base that's rich enough, you could do a lot of things there. So that may be a simple career path. But know that the form it takes may be far more rich and complex. And you could easily flow into many variations and phases within that, isn't it?

So when it comes to career choices, if the person who is guiding has a deeper insight, they can pick out these tendencies and suggest steps forward, not simply based on your exam paper. It would rather be based on:

What do you like to do?

Which kind of space do you enjoy to be in?

Where do you feel most fulfilled?

Now in most cases, children who go through the exam system have not even considered, have not become conscious of these tendencies within them. They're so damaged. Ideally I would start observing these things much earlier and nourish those qualities so that by the time they come into their own where they have to take a decision there was sufficiently rich base that they can say, ah yes this I like much more.

So recently I had occasion to meet a child who said I want to change the kind of music people listen to. I said, yes, you can easily do that. You can create your own blog where you give, suggest different kinds of music that you think that people would be interested in. She said, no, I want to create the music that I would like them to listen to. You see, it took a different turn completely. There was a strong turn to want to help others and help raise and refine young children, give them direction, give them sense of purpose, she already has that in her, although right now it has a very narrow form apparently. She is still young. As she moves into that, you will see this capacity or this need to want to help others that will come forward strongly. It will develop in a more richer form. She may take up the position as an educator, for example, or go into some kind of an NGO-type intervention where she would reach out to the more neglected children and help them. It could take many forms. It doesn't matter what form it is. And I would recommend for her through the years to actually switch between experiences of all these types. Start giving classes to young children who are younger than you. And as you grow older start helping others in your classes. Okay, here it was specific to music, so maybe with music. And if you're going to play music, build a rich base of various instruments. Get a feel of the different styles or patterns or kinds of music, different aspects of the, even the playing of music.

You see, you don't just go into singing or playing an instrument. You play also the drums, and the instruments, and the voice, and the conduction, or the merging of these, get into music editing on the computer where you merge various tracks and find a way to blend, many things you could do. Do it all. However briefly, get an exposure. That way, whatever the actual role you may play tomorrow, you know how all these things fit in and you are able to converge and unify these different facets. As a result, whatever you may do as a specialised form will smoothly integrate with all these things which are needed to make that form complete. Even though you may not be master of all, you would know enough that you would be able to integrate.

So, in choice of career, we would look at these things and then set a broad direction, explore what gives deeper nourishment and satisfaction and encourage that and then allow it to find its own specific kinds of forms.

In some cases, the specific form won't matter if the broad content and qualities is clear enough.

(0:55:06):

You see the, there's a very important observation in the Bhagavad Gita that Shri Krishna makes when he speaks of different kinds of temperament, swabhava, and as a result the swadharma, the innate truth of your being, he says, it is more useful to have failed in following your own temperament than to have succeeded in following somebody else’s line of truth. Why? Because there in following the fake one, you would be moving from fake to fake, and the underlying satisfaction would never be there. Whereas when you are pursuing a line which is fulfilling your own deeper aspiration and your nature and your deeper needs, even if you seem to fail in apparent outcomes, each step would involve a growth and a joy in your line of development. It becomes self-fulfilling, self-satisfying and inevitably you will reach whatever it is that you need to, irrespective of whether that outcome is valued by others as successful or not.

It's interesting.

Remember the idea of success-failure is pointless.

That you have reached what you wish to be, that you are able to express and manifest that which is your innate being, truth or the higher that streams through, is the success from an evolutionary point of view, from a spiritual point of view, from your soul's sense of purpose.

And those who are successful off-track in a false track, in a fake replica of something else, successful in the eyes of society generally means you got a lot of money, you become a little famous, you have some power over others. Inside, you may feel completely empty, false, fake or even dry, fed up with life or bored with life or so identified with the false values that you don't even know who you are. And all this you see so commonly.

In some of the most successful film stars, you find depression and suicide, now becoming and more openly spoken about. Why? For this reason.

And so when you follow your innate track, the joy that it gives you, sometimes you don't know how to share with others because others wouldn't even understand but just the satisfaction of doing it is not only nourishing to your soul but in a sense in your life you have manifested something of a higher vibration of Sachchidananda, isn't it? Because you have fulfilled a deeper truth.

Sometimes I, because I enjoy computer programming and for me it has somehow become also means for the mind's expression in a certain way, so when I build a programme, sometimes there's a level of complexity of layers and parts. There's such a point that you're almost in a state of trance, you're linking things and forming the code. And it's like a piece of sculpture, a work of art. In the mental world, you would actually see it as a beautiful, rich- structured idea with like 10,000 different components perfectly arranged and aligned between each other. And it's such a deep satisfaction to create that and then to view that and then sometimes having done that you will never again use that code. But I would still go back, there's a little part here, it works, but there's a little part here, disharmony between these two parts and I will spend those extra 20 minutes to bring that code in alignment to make it perfect and say, ah, now it's complete. Even though I'm not going to use it again, it's complete. And I have to balance that with how much time I've wasted, perhaps. But the satisfaction of this sculpture. And the sad thing is I cannot show it to anybody. If we met in the mental world and I could present this, here is my sculpture, that would be one way. But in the physical world, unless somebody has the, let's say, the coding background and has the patience to go through a code which may never again be used just to appreciate the beauty of the structure, it's not going to be shared with people, but it’s being shared with reality, with the Divine. There has been a manifestation of something beautiful extraordinary, a piece, a fragment, maybe a reflected fragment of Sachchidananda, in the domain of mind linked to matter, and ah what a deep satisfaction I had! And it stops there, never again to be tasted by anybody, any other human or individual in the whole of totality of time and space, in that moment was a beautiful creation and it passes. It's as valuable as a sculptor having made a masterpiece and says, oh this is so beautiful, and perhaps people see it or there is one of those what Sri Aurobindo calls “an idiot hour” which comes and destroys the whole civilisation and all the masterpieces are gone, never to be seen again, and yet the truth of what was realised what was manifested is eternally present.

Right?

(1:00:19):

Okay, so this is just to give you a glimpse of that aspect: when you live for the fulfilment of your deeper aspiration, it may or may not be recognised, but it will always have its value for you and for the soul's journey and for the divine manifestation in the totality.

It may also have its consequences with wealth and fame and other forms that may or may not come, or you may choose to avoid those even though you have the skill of having those because you'd rather focus on creating your masterpieces than on the complex problems that come from publicising them.

So from my perspective, it does not matter. What matters is that which is the most fulfilling, isn't it?

So having brought about that clarity, the career path you may choose may also involve complexities, challenges and sometimes zigzags. What it leads to in terms of growth is what will matter in the deeper satisfaction of the soul's aspiration and your nature's richer and fuller development and integration with the soul.

Because when it is integrated, all that richness developed is going to stay with you and be a part of the larger evolution also of the collective, isn't it?

So remember there are two facets to evolution:

there is the individual evolution of the soul, and then

there's the collective evolution of the species consciousness or the group consciousness.

So certain things externally done may remain with the group even if the soul doesn't have it.

Sri Aurobindo makes this example in passing. He says, the tremendous vital that Napoleon had was not integrated with his soul. Therefore, in the next incarnation, he may not have that at all. But if he takes a body which has a strong vital, then he will know how to wield it because the capacity to wield to some degree has been absorbed but doesn't mean the strength of the vital will carry over. And yet the impact of Napoleon in the collective will stay. But for the soul's purpose what stays is something very limited.

So this is just to give you an insight into irrespective of what happens: what stays either within you individually or in the collective or a combination of both.

So your career path needs to be chosen on these deeper principles and sometimes involving even some exploration and trying out two or three variations freely without worrying too much.

So all this would be still very general.

And we come now to something else which would be one of perhaps one of the most general observations which would be for all but this is going to be somewhat complex as a discussion.

One of the objects of your life journey should have been for the education also but let's say you have got what you could from the education now you are on your own and you can do it the way you want, your education, for yourself.

One of the most important objectives of the education is to develop a healthy individuality and a organised, richly capable ego centre.

Now it may sound strange, but we will elaborate and we will draw upon the Mother's observations on this.

For which purpose we first make a distinction.

Ego and individuality are different from egoism and selfishness and self-centeredness, which is a distortion, a perversion.

Ego and individuality is a formation of the unit, the instrument that you are. And it has many levels, many grades and the integrations across these grades. All of this is required for a healthy, complete, effective, worthwhile, useful, instrument for service to the Divine in the world.

And the whole purpose of evolution in the beginning is to build this individuality, isn't it?

And so Mother gives a lot of importance to this.

She speaks of this ego-individualisation which is necessary before you can offer yourself as an instrument to the Divine.

Otherwise, her point is: What will you offer?

One of the examples she gives is: you have to build this capacity of the mind to be able to construct beautiful, rich, complex ideas. And then having reached that point, she says, you are required now to break it all in order to open your mind to the Divine.

But if you have not got to this point, what are you giving to the Divine as an instrument that the Divine can use to manifest rich, beautiful, complex ideas if you don't already have the capability?

(1:05:15):

Having developed the capability in a sense you turn yourself as a blank slate to be an instrument for the higher consciousness to work through you.

But first step is building the capability.

And so the famous observation of Sri Aurobindo: “Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar”.

But for most of us, and especially at that age, we are still in the “Ego was the helper”-phase. It's not yet the “bar” in a sense. Yes, egoism is the bar. But the ego formation is not yet completed.

So I'm going to focus upon this a little bit, and we will understand this in this way that you are building yourself and then later this or even simultaneously you are preparing to put this in relation increasingly to the divine consciousness which will then work and act through this now capable unit and instrument.

I'm going to read from the Mother where she speaks of this in great detail. Somebody asked her this question. First, the date is from questions and answers 28th July 1954 for those who want to read the whole, I will be skipping portions. Someone asks:

How can “one merge oneself one’s separative ego” in the Divine?

 

And Mother now replies:

 

“How can one dissolve, you mean dissolve in the Divine, and lose one’s ego?”

 

First, she answers the question and then she goes through the deeper issue.

 

“First of all, one must will it. And then one must aspire with great perseverance, and each time the ego shows itself, one must give it a little rap on the nose until it has received so many raps that it is tired of them and gives up the game.”

 

“But usually, instead of rapping it on the nose, one justifies its presence. Almost constantly, when it shows itself, one says, “After all, it is right.” And mostly one doesn’t even know that it is the ego, one thinks it is oneself. But the first condition is to find it essential not to have the ego any longer. One must really understand that one doesn’t want it. It is not so easy.”

 

I skip a few lines.

 

“The first method”-she says-“there are many stages”, the first method is “stop being selfish”.

 

And when people “stop being selfish”, it is, she says, they are, they “think they have made tremendous progress! But it’s”-actually-“a very small thing. … When one sees them thinking all the time”-the selfish people-“ When one sees them thinking all the time about themselves, referring everything to themselves, governed simply by their own little person, placing themselves in the centre of the universe and trying to organise the whole universe including God around themselves, as though that were the most important thing in the universe. If one could only see oneself objectively, you know, as one sees oneself in a mirror, … it is so grotesque!”

 

And she gives a few examples.

 

She says, there was a writing by Rabindranath Tagore, he describes, how a dog sitting on the mistress’s lap considers itself “the centre of the universe”!

 

And then she gives example: you know, when a little dog comes, it’s literally living for itself and thinks the whole universe is there to serve it.

 

Or, she gives the example of little child who comes into a room, and every body stops whatever they are doing and starts cooing and playing with the child, as if, he is “the centre of the universe”.

 

Now imagine a child grows up being constantly the centre of the universe of its parents and relatives and friends, it ends up believing, it’s the centre of the universe. And then suddenly, it enters school where everybody is centre of the universe, and he struggles with this.

 

Isn’t it?

In fact, this is a big problem presently for children who were born during the COVID lockdown period, they saw no one else other than their own immediate parents. They never had any social interaction. And there's actually studies which show that many of them have anything from 15 to 20% lower IQ because there was not enough stimulation and development of the faculties. But this is what happens even without the COVID lockdown when you live in a little bubble and you're isolated and even prevented from growing, and a lot of our educational system actually actively does that to suppress children.

(1:10:12):

So she gives some of these examples. But she says, for the adult human beings to look after or to care for the little child or the little dog, it says, is a kind of a “need to protect something that’s smaller than oneself”.

Okay?

“And this is one of the forms, one of the earliest forms of un-egoistic manifestation of the ego! It feels so comfortable when it can protect something, busy itself with something much smaller, much weaker than itself, which is almost at its mercy, almost—even entirely—at its mercy, which has no power to resist. And so one feels good and generous because one doesn’t crush it!”

It's a very interesting thing.

If you observe deeply, this is at the root of that impulse, that the ego feels the manifestation unegoistic benevolence.

And so, she says: “This is the first manifestation of generosity in the world”. But it's also quite ridiculous, she says.

“So there is a long, long, long way to go before merging one’s ego in the Divine.”

And then now she comes to the main point:

“Merge one’s ego in the Divine! But first, one can’t merge one’s ego in the Divine before becoming completely individualised. Do you know what it means to be completely individualised? Capable of resisting all outer influences?”

So a very interesting way she's defined what it means to be “completely individualised” that you should be “capable of resisting all outer influences”.

Now actually the influences that come upon us are so multifaceted, on so many levels, and so unconscious to us that we don't even know that almost all the time we are only repeating, articulating what came from outside into us, seized us and compelled us.

And so she speaks about this now, I'll read portions. She gives an example of a person who says that he was afraid to read books because each time that he would read books the characters of the books would get imprinted and he would begin to feel and think like those characters and lose himself.

And Mother comments:

“There are many more people than one would think who are like that. They read a book and while they are reading it they feel within themselves all kinds of emotions, thoughts, desires, intentions, plans, even ideals. They are simply just absorbed in the reading of the book. They are not even aware of it, because at least ninety-nine parts of an individual’s character are made of soft butter … but on which if one presses one’s thumb, an imprint is made.”

That means 99% of you is so malleable that a little bit of an influence from outside and it catches it and feels it as its own, I feel like this, not realising it was never yours.

And then she says:

“Now, everything is a “thumb”: an expressed thought, a sentence read, an object looked at, an observation of what someone else does, and of one’s neighbour’s will. And all these wills… you know, when one sees them they are all … like this, intermingled”-she crosses her fingers-“each one trying to get the uppermost and causing a kind of perpetual conflict within, … It goes in and out of people like that, you see, like electric currents. One is not at all aware of all this, and it is a perpetual conflict of all the wills which are trying to express themselves; and the strongest one will succeed. But as there are many of these and as one has to fight alone against a great number, it is not easy.”

“So one is tossed like a cork on the waves of the sea”, one does not want this, “the next day one wants that, at one moment one is pushed from this side, at another from that, now one lifts one’s face to the sky … now one” sinks “deep” into “a hole. And so this is the existence one has!”

What to do now about it?

She says:

“First one must become … conscious, well-knit, individualised being, who exists in himself, by himself, independently of all his surroundings, who can hear anything, read anything, see anything without changing. He receives from outside only what he wants to receive; he automatically refuses all that is not in conformity with his plan and nothing can leave an imprint on him unless he agrees to receive the imprint. Then one begins to become” an individual.

 

“begins to become” an individual.

 

“When one is an individuality, one can make an offering of it.”

 

“For, unless one possesses something, one cannot give it. First, one must be, and then afterwards one can give oneself.”

(1:15:39):

“So long as one does not exist, one can give nothing.”

You see when 99% of you is just formed of this soft butter, how do you say you exist? Isn’t it?

So:

“So long as one does not exist, one can give nothing. And for the separative ego to disappear, as you say, one must be able to give oneself entirely, totally without reservation. And to be able to give oneself, one must first exist. And to exist one must be individualised.”

So I skip a lot more, she speaks about how the physical body is of course the most rigid thing, and we complain that it's not plastic, it is not supple and fluid.

But it “was absolutely necessary”, because without this you could never have become individualised, you see.

So, I read a small portion:

“But this was absolutely necessary, for without this… if you simply went out of your body (most of you can’t do it because the vital being is hardly more individualised than the physical), if you came out of your body and went into the vital world, you would see that all things there intermingle, they are mixed, they divide; all kinds of vibrations, currents of forces come and go, struggle, try to destroy one another, take possession of each other, absorb each other, throw each other out… and so it goes on! … it is very difficult to find a real personality in all this. These are forces, movements, desires, vibrations.”

“There are individualities, there are personalities! But these are powers. People who are individualised in that world are either heroes or devils!”

Because now you have become a focal point for real independent action, not compulsion of stress or forces, you see. And that of course you would experience if you stepped out of your physical body in the vital body which she says you can't do because you're not sufficiently individualised. But let's say you can do that if you're individualised you can act, you become a focal point of action in a world where everything is sea of mixed forces. But if you can do that there, you can do that here.

And so in the physical world you become a focal point for action, in this case in the vital. Or if individualised in the mind, then in the mental, through thoughts, through influences, and then you can be a vehicle for a spiritual influence to articulate through the mind, through the vital and through the physical body itself, which is now sufficiently plastic and made open to be able to transmit and express those things.

So you see the rigidity of the physical body was a starting point to help you individualise those other levels, but the physical body itself must become more and more plastic to be able to express completely what comes from above while those other parts have to become more and more individualised and distinctive not necessarily narrow and rigid.

Individualised does not mean narrow and rigid. It can be quite flexible. But it means you are conscious of what is you and what is not you. And you are able to distinguish what comes from outside and what is already inside. And you are able to consciously allow selectively what to come in and what to refuse.

So the sense of a boundary, the awareness of what is within, the ability to engage with what is outside and to select what comes in or out consciously, that would be the sense of the individualisation.

Now think about this, the whole bulk of our evolutionary thrust from by nature has been to build this individuality, isn't it?

And of course nature has to go through a more complex process, even as she builds individuals she must weaken the individual to build family units, and as she builds family units she has to again weaken it to build tribal units, and so on but always so that there can be these distinct sense of units which can be focal points for distinctive action, isn't it?, for the full richness of the divine possibilities.

So, so far she has described the vital individualisation, and she says:

“And now, in the mind … If only you become conscious of your physical mind in itself… Some people have called it a public square, because everything comes there, goes across, passes, comes back…. All ideas go there, they enter at one place, leave by another, some are here, some there, and it is a public square, not very well organised, for usually ideas meet and knock into”-each other-“there are accidents of all kinds. But then one becomes aware: “What can I call my mind?” or “What is my mind?” “

(1:20:39):

See it, even people are not conscious when it is their idea or when they are repeating what has come into them from elsewhere.

In practice, you will find everybody who expresses an opinion about anything that's happening is repeating what they've read. And mostly what you've read in the media is false. Absolutely false.

So I used to do this experiment. It's part of a larger workshop-type interaction. Maybe we will do that online someday. But one of the things I asked them to pick an issue let's say right now there's the Ukraine war going on: What's your opinion? What's your view? What do you know?

Of course everybody throws their opinions.

Where did you get it from?

Based on what you read.

So in this case I'll point out: What you have read has only come from one side, did you read anything that came from the other side?

Probably not. Very likely not.

In that case, everything you have said is completely false for the simple reason that the reality was cut into half and only one side was dished out to you in a way that demonises the other side. And you never got a chance to know the other side, so all that you know is false. It's only if you knew what the other side had to say and then you found the conflict between the two viewpoints and then found your own or somebody helps you formulate an integration of these two different viewpoints that you can say you have some fragment of the truth, but when it is one-sided it is always false.

When you look at it this way how much of what you know is even a fragment of truth, the bulk of it can be thrown out as false. Yes, you may have factual details: oh, yes, so many bombings took place, so many people died. Even that may be false, because it's all propaganda.

But the opinion of ‘Why it happened?’, ‘Could it have been avoided?’, ‘What were the options?’, you don't know really.

The real story is completely hidden. And this is the case. And I just take that as a topical example, because it's going on right now. This would be the case for the bulk of the events that are happening and the news that you get today or even to do with the past as they say, the victor writes the history after a battle.

So what really happened? How much do we really know?

But if you did hear from both sides, you could build a consensus or a deeper understanding and insight, then you can say, this is my opinion. And that opinion will have value. And somebody else may come up with a different opinion from the same data, and then we could say, okay let's discuss our opinions and come to some greater understanding.

So this is all to say, the training of the mind itself is completely neglected by modern education which trains you only to parrot and repeat.

I'm going to go a little harsh on this, but look at it this way:

All through the formative years of your life till the age of 21 or 22 or whenever you completed your formal studies, you passed your exams, you got your awards and trophies and accolades as long as you memorised what you were taught to memorise and regurgitated. And if there was a component of creativity, it was a creative expression of what you had read that you had to justify creatively.

So by conforming to an existing belief system, information system, you got to where you are. And then the rest of your life you continue to repeat because that's your pattern of thinking and behaviour. What you hear in the news, in the media, you read, you see a headline, you've already formed an opinion based on that and repeating regurgitating as you were trained from childhood, never stopping to question: Is this even true? Could there be a different viewpoint? What is the other side of the story? We don't bother. We don't have the time or interest. But much more, it is a habit to regurgitate, to repeat what you've heard, and that's how we conform to collective behaviour.

If 20 people around me believe this or say this, I adjust to my own belief and statement to at least match them. Even if I was conflicting with them in the beginning, I come up with a kind of a via media to adjust to conform to my current peer group. And this is so deep-rooted in human beings.

(1:25:12):

Where is your mind? Where is your thought?

Could you even have the courage to say:

You know what? Since I have not heard the other side, I am not going to take a decision or judge this. Or I may even say it is suspicious to me that this side has denied me the viewpoints of the other side. And I am going to question therefore this side statement.

It takes courage, but it takes also a trained mind to stand back and choose your thoughts.

We were never trained for this in our education system.

So all this I'm going into some depth because this is part of the individualisation which you will have to work upon. I'm saying this not only for this student's question. 22 years is a great time to start, but also 30 years is a good time to start, 40 years is a good time to start, 80 years is a good time to start, doesn't matter what your age, start when you are and work upon this consciously developing your power of thought and your individualisation of the mind and lifeforce, vital energies, emotions and even the body consciousness which is almost like an unformed mass. The body consciousness itself can be awakened, integrated and made individualised. And if these individualisations that you work upon you integrate with the psychic aspiration within you to some degree, what you have individualised will stay with you into the next life and will actually continue as a starting point into the next. If you have not, maybe you have a very individualised vital or mental, not integrated, it breaks down with the discarding of the physical body because it was never integrated and cannot be absorbed or carried by the psychic. At best it has the, developed the skill, the capacity to individualise, that's about it, but it'll have to do that all over again next time. But if sufficiently individualised, that part which is individualised now is absorbed and becomes part of what we call the ‘psychic personality’, which is now growing across lives. And the next time you come, you already have it infused now into the new body, mind’s, life’s, substance. And already a base of individualisation ready.

You see, you will never lose the benefit of it, start now, irrespective of your age. But it's easier when you start younger when you are more plastic and you have also the leisure to play and you are not so deeply bound in the habit of your current patterns. Okay?

So I've digressed a little bit, I come back to the text of the Mother, but you see this is important to understand, to understand why this text is so important.

Now Mother says:

“One needs years of very attentive, very careful, very reasonable, very coherent work, organisation, selection, constructions, in order to succeed simply in forming, oh, simply this little thing, one’s own way of thinking!”

And that takes, she says, all this to form your own way of thinking.

“One believes one has one’s own way of thinking. Not at all. It depends totally upon the people one speaks with or the books one has read or on the mood one is in. It depends also on whether you have a good or bad digestion, …”

And it's not a joke, it's true.

Someone had a bad digestion, I'm in a foul mood, I look at the world and say, what a messy world this is. I've had a good digestion and I'm full of energy, I say, oh what a wonderful life. And the mood shifts based on that, and my opinion and thoughts everything shifts accordingly. I see the world as grey or bright.

“… it depends on whether you are shut up in a room without proper ventilation or whether you are in the open air; it depends on whether you have a beautiful landscape before you; it depends on whether there is sunshine or rain! You are not aware of it, but you think all kinds of things, completely different according to a heap of things which have nothing to do with you!”

It's quite a statement, but it's entirely true, and it just needs a little bit of introspection to recognise how true it is. And if you can't recognise that it's true, then your introspection is not complete. So do introspect, observe how this happens, observe how your moods and thoughts and beliefs and values shift, and you'll notice they're actually as fickle as she describes it. And then the moment you notice, you'll begin to make corrections.

Actually the ultimate correction is to first look what is true within you. Find the centre of truth around which now you can form an opinion. But at least you start observing.

(1:30:05):

And she continues:

“And for this to become a coordinated, coherent, logical thought, a long thorough work is necessary. And then, the best of the business is that when you have succeeded in making a beautiful, well-formed, very strong, very powerful mental construction, the first thing you will be told is, “You must break this so that you can unite with the Divine!” But so long as you haven’t made it, you cannot unite with the Divine because you have nothing to give to the Divine except a mass of things which are not yourself! One must first exist in order to be able to give oneself. I am repeating what I said a while ago.”

 

“Truly, in the present state of the world, the only thing one can give the Divine is one’s body. But that’s what one doesn’t give Him. Yes, one can try to consecrate one’s work! But still, here there are so many elements which are not true!”

And she says:

“You want to merge your body in the Divine, eh? Just try! How are you going to do this? You can merge your mind, you can merge your vital, you can fuse all your emotions, you can fuse all your aspirations, you can fuse all that, but your body —how are you going to do that? You are not going to melt it in a boiling-pot!”

 

And she laughs.

 

So, I skip this, for those of you who want to go deeper into this text.

And I come to another portion. It's a long one, she says:

“All this…”-what she had said-“All this… it is not in order to swamp you that I tell you all this. It is only in order to tell you that before speaking of merging one’s ego in the Divine, one must first know a little what one is. The ego is there. Its necessity is that you become conscious, independent beings, individualised—I mean in the sense of independent—that you may not be the public square where everything goes criss-cross! That you may exist in yourselves. That is why there is an ego. It is like that; that is why also there is a skin, like that… though truly, even physical forces pass through the skin. There is a vibration which goes a certain distance. But still, it’s the skin that prevents us from blending into one another. But everything else must be like that too.”-that is, in the vital and the mental.

Then after a silence she says:

Then:

 

“(After a silence)”-she says-“And then, later, one offers all this to the Divine. Years of work are needed. You must not only … become conscious of yourself, conscious in all details, but you must organise what you call “yourself” around the psychic centre, the divine centre of your being, so that it would make a single, coherent, fully conscious being. And as this divine centre is itself already consecrated (Mother makes a gesture of offering) entirely to the Divine, if everything is organised harmoniously around it, everything is consecrated to the Divine. And so, when the Divine thinks it proper, when the time has come, when the work of individualisation is complete, then the Divine gives you the permission to let your ego merge in Him, to live henceforward only for the Divine.”

 

“But it is the Divine who takes that decision. You must … have done all this work, become a conscious being, solely and exclusively centred around the Divine and governed by Him. And after all that, there is still an ego; because it is the ego which serves to make you an individual. But once this work is perfect, fully accomplished, then, at that moment, you may tell the Divine, “Here I am, I am ready. Do you want me?” And the Divine usually says, “Yes.” ”

 

Very interesting, because you have to see Mother's observations, very precise when she says: “And the Divine usually says, “Yes.” ”

Meaning, sometimes it can be a ‘no’, but the ‘no’ might be simply ‘well you need to work a little more to integrate’, that's why.

“All is over, everything is accomplished. And you become a real instrument for the Divine’s work. But first the instrument must be constructed.”

So I'm going to pause here. The text is a little longer. There are a few more points which I would like to touch upon also and which we will continue next time.

But all this, we will now close our discussion with this idea:

Ideally through the whole school education you would have been helped to develop this individualisation. Perhaps some of it has happened in spite of the education, perhaps some of it was aided by it if you had a reasonably good education then you're fortunate. Either way you have let's say a half-formed individuality. What you have to do now is continue this development. Make it more complete, more rich, more integrated, but as far as possible around the central aspiration within you. Link it there. Link all your thoughts, all your feelings, all your values, all your decisions, all your experiences to that reference. And so bit by bit it's as if all these disparate pieces are put in alignment and as they align to the centre they tend automatically to get integrated and formed and the individualisation happens rapidly, smoothly with less struggle because under that influence.

(1:36:00):

Now if you already find listening to a talk like this interesting, it means that part is already strong as an influence. But you must actively relate everything to it, even your thoughts, even the clarity of your thoughts, the clarity of formulation of your thoughts.

When you do it, at first you have the joy of doing it in itself. Fine, you're developing your mental capacities.

And then you link it to that in an aspiration, in a quiet awareness and say, I want to be able to express a higher truth. And so it aligns with your aspiration.

And when you express something, you expressed it let's say wonderfully, the joy of it you bring in alignment to this deeper aspiration and joy of your aspiration. Or when you express something, let it be as far as possible as if emergent from your central aspiration or from a higher ideal or perception or intuition or influence and the thought forms from there, or at least it's suffused with something of that light and touch.

In this way, through this linking the integration will happen almost automatically but also the refinement and development would happen more rapidly even as you develop the skills.

So let's say in a very mundane level you're learning to develop the finger skills to play an instrument. Before you start you align yourself to your aspiration and say I want my fingers to become conscious, I want to be able to express smoothly as a transparent instrument the most beautiful music or express whatever is the deeper truth within me flow through the fingers, now you focus on the instrument, you do your exercises, play, you may forget all this, at the end again you pause and say, ah yes, all this that I have done, all this skill that has been acquired reconnect, align it to this deeper purpose, ideal.

That's it. Just beginning and end. And then you may lose. Don't worry. The influence comes, the integration happens and you will see the rapidity with which you will pick up some of these things.

So all this I am going to put now as the larger goal of what you will do next, even as you prepare for your UPSC exams or other things, independent of what career you might take, what paths your life may follow through, but this will be the underlying strain that will be constant, the thread which will link everything that happens and hopefully with that aspiration and intention the individualisation will take place around a deeper or higher centre and automatically the preparation for this self giving to the Divine will be in readiness for its completion as and when.

So a few further points that I want to touch and which Mother has covered and then which I want to add in terms of what you can do which build upon this, we will take up next time.

But for now, simply hold this in your awareness as something all of us, whatever our age, whatever our circumstances in life, we all need to be able to do, and that is, increase this individualisation.

Remember it is one of the three requirements that Sri Aurobindo speaks of for you to be able to carry over the acquisition of this life and the consciousness developed now into the next so that you don't have to start from scratch again. One of these requirements is an individualisation especially centred around the psychic being.

And so when you work on this, it is extremely valuable because everything in your life that you will have brought into that individualisation and around the centre will in essence be carried over into the next and that is a huge advantage.

So, we'll take this as our quiet aspiration and in whatever way we are able to over the next few days, for the rest of the week at least, try to put this into practice, and we will continue this theme into the next session that we have.

For now we can concentrate on this aspiration and this intention.

Namaste.