5 Nov, 2022
Sraddhalu (0:00:23):
Namaste and welcome to our series Evenings with Sraddhalu.
Last time we took up an important question from a student from India of how to take some of the major decisions regarding her career, specifically as a UPSC aspirant, and what are the things to be taken care of from a spiritual perspective.
Although the question itself was very specific, we have taken the opportunity to take a very broad view which would apply to everybody, all students, irrespective of their particular career path, and irrespective of age if possible, to the extent possible, which may also be relevant to all of us who are students of life and in the school of life and the Integral Yoga, where every day, every moment even sometimes could be a learning experience.
So, by taking such a very broad approach, the hope is that the discussion here would be useful in listening to again and again, perhaps over several years. When you listen to it after two years, having gone through certain experiences or being at different kind of crossroads, you may still find it relevant, and perhaps 20 years later, you may still find it relevant differently, other aspects which initially at the age of 22 which is the age of the student might not have been so prominent now would become perhaps much more prominent, and so on.
So this would be the benefit of this broad approach.
In our discussion last time, we had highlighted at first:
some of the things to undo as damage from the current educational system;
the reduction of yourself to a number;
the false values of pass versused fail, success versus failure; and
recognising that life is not like that, life is about growth and learning;
and that's all there is, there is no such thing as failure.
Let's say you missed or failed at a particular effort or an opportunity, well, you're going to have to keep on going. It doesn't end there. And the opportunity may come if not in this form, in other forms.
Have you grown?
That is all that will matter.
And if you had not had that challenge, you would never have recognised the need for that growth. You would not have faced the challenge even that would make you grow. And so everything has to be reviewed from a completely different point, from a deprogramming of these false values.
And I am repeating this, although it was covered in depth last time, because for all of us as adults, we are still heavily influenced, programmed with these false values.
An essential outcome of this would be never fear making mistakes.
Making mistakes is, I would even say, an essential part of growth and learning.
Sri Aurobindo points to this, without the freedom to make mistakes you cannot have any real growth, and he puts this in the context of the spiritual life in the Ashram.
So the freedom to make mistakes should be there even as a part of our, let's say, space of learning whether in school or in the big school of life.
The concept of competition although useful has been so severely distorted and we have to reframe it into a competition with ourselves. The reference is only what you were, what you are, to what you have to become and the growth that you will make. You look at others for inspiration. So, external competition is now turned into inspirational value.
There was a question in the chat box last time: What should be one's attitude towards competitive exams?
Now, this is very specific to the exam structure, which recognising its limitations we also accept that it is there. It is a let us say one of those realities you have to accept until the system changes sufficiently and as a necessary evil in the current social framework and economic framework.
(0:05:00)
What should be the attitude towards competitive exams?
Well, look at these merely as the gateway to a greater opportunity.
How you perform is not your life goal. It's only an intermediate goal for the larger goal for which you have to prepare.
So while you may dedicate yourself entirely for these kinds of exams, typically you spend an entire year with no other diversion, no other distraction, day and night focused on these things just to get very high marks on the exam. You may end up doing that if you so choose because you want to aim at that particular opportunity that it gives you. But knowing full well that at the end of the day who you are, what you are and the broad base you have is what will matter after you cross that gate.
Once you have crossed that gate of the paper that the exam gives you and the entry that the paper gives you, after that nobody questions your paper. What you will do will depend entirely on who you are not only for further studies, but even for your life experiences.
For example, consider what was your class V exam result, your class VI exam result, your class X exam result.
Does it even matter?
Maybe you will say the later paper superseded that. Very good.
What comes after your last paper is your real-life experience. Sometimes that is assimilated in your biodata, which is more valuable than your exam pass marks even, isn't it?
So from an employer's point of view, at best the exam result is a way of filtering out from my 10,000 applications to reduce it to 20 applications that I can personally interview or whatever the number of applications. The exam results are only an initial filter to make it convenient for your employer to be able to meet you personally and assess you as you are as a person finally.
Keep that in mind.
And so yes, you may still play with the game of the competitive exams because it is a choice you make for a career path or a specific entry. Keep in mind this larger purpose.
I highlighted also last time the need to widen, heighten, diversifying your experiences, skills, experiences, capacities, exposures to various kinds of things and integrating it all. And we tried to put it in context of the four soul powers and your nature's powers and skills and capacities. And looking at the two, I gave a few examples also and at least till the age of 25 try to make as wide a growth of diversity of experiences and capacities as possible. Depending on your personality you may have a narrow focus or a complex multifaceted need. Bring your focus to joy of learning, not career, and if you have aptitudes developed then, if you have limitations, well, overcome them.
And in the choice of career, accept that you may have a complex zigzag path if your nature is complex and your needs are more rich.
And finally, we settled on the most important part of this preparation, which is developing a healthy individuality and the formation of the healthy ego centre, and for that we made the clear distinction between egoism and ego, selfishness, self-centeredness versus individuality, and we dwelt extensively on what the Mother had to say about this, about preparing an individual unit that you can then offer to the Divine.
We paused at that point and from there I will continue so to say.
I wanted to further develop on the aspect of the individuality which I will come to towards the end of today's discussion by taking the opportunity that we are starting fresh to take up some other preparatory facets of our journey or which give context to priorities in our journey.
The most important thing you will find as the let’s say years or decades unfold with a very rapid pace of change with what we call ‘disruptive technologies’, many of the earlier ways of doing things or things which were important have, are going to face, fade out.
One of the very big things is artificial intelligence where anything that you can train a person to do you can train a computer to do much faster and more efficiently without needing sleep by the way.
So there was a time when in an assembly line plant where they would let's say manufacture cars in an assembly line, pretty much everything could be automated except the painting. Because the painting involved a skill with this little spray can that you have and with a very special skill to get an evenness and a shine and so on for different shapes of complex parts. And they said this can never replace a human, a human being can never be replaced by a machine for this purpose.
(0:10:31)
In fact, with the advance of AI, you've eliminated the human being here also.
So anything where you can be trained will not matter so much eventually.
What will matter is that which you can bring which AI cannot bring and that is your creative intelligence.
I don't use just the word ‘intelligence’, it's ‘creative intelligence’, which means you are able to perceive beyond a mere superficial sense-mind intelligence, beyond a mere repetition of the past intelligence. All of these are easy to put into AI.
The creative intelligence is able to perceive behind, not as a sum total of past but almost touching upon an intuitive capacity.
So develop the creative intelligence if you really want to go far in your career path irrespective of what that career may be. Whether it is UPSC, whether it is as an artist, whether it is a filmmaker, whether it is a writer, a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer, the creative intelligence will be your key to take your career potential to its highest, which implies development of intuition of course, even at a rudimentary level.
And I would suggest that you review the discussions we have had in the past on the development of the intelligence. I think we had several sessions upon this with practical applied exercises, review that, put some of it into practice.
If you start now, you will see rapidly within a few years, the faculty will begin to shine, so to say. It will tend to kick in spontaneously even when you do not consciously seek it out. And your innate genius potential will begin to glow out. It's not difficult and it is a huge benefit.
If with that you can combine a training of the intellect where you question everything, even your exam where you're asked not to question just learn by rote:
Is there a better way of doing it?
Is there a different approach?
And everywhere you question to find a superior, better, deeper insight and just that exercise of your intelligence will work thereafter automatically.
Once you've enjoyed this, remember, joy of learning is your single most powerful motivation, once you've enjoyed this, the joy that it gives you the learning growth of this kind of thing, it will happen automatically. It will be working at the backdrop so to say at an automatic level combining now with the intuition, and it will be an amazing experience.
You would also want, although the UPSC would be one of the obvious platforms for this, you would want rich exposure to language, to culture, but irrespective of your career path.
You see, the world is heading towards a kind of universalisation, the most prominent trend in the world today, some of it not by human choice, but even in human choice, is this kind of an exposure to everything, rich, wide, complex, all humanity becoming your family.
Behind that is actually nature's push. Nature has decided to universalise, widen it out.
And this Mother spoke of in the 1960s when nature decided to collaborate, Mother Nature decided to collaborate in this supramental transformation that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were working for. And Mother gave a message at that point because it was such an important event. She said to Mother Nature, that you have decided to collaborate, and then I quote this part where she says: and there is no end to the wonders of this collaboration.
And we will see many interesting things, many changes, some not always obviously positive, even in plants, in flowers, in the possibilities of richness and flexibility and diversity that will, that are already happening but which will increase dramatically.
So exposure to language.
If you're watching movies, well, expose yourself to different cultures, different linguistic flavours with translation. It's one of the easiest ways to pick up a language or the nuance or the mood, the rhythm of the language, sometimes cultural values.
(0:15:10)
But in this be very careful.
Distrust the mainstream media for reasons we have already discussed.
It is not your friend, it is entirely controlled by interests that want to control you, your thoughts, your behaviours and what you buy obviously. They want to reduce you from an independent individual to a dependent automaton, robot, who will do whatever you are programmed to do.
I have mentioned this recently that in one of these world economic forums, their key let's say thinker came out with the statement that human beings are hackable and rather than struggling with the future we hack the human beings, get human beings to behave the way we want and create a kind of a global unity and peace, which is of course based on a controlled humanity.
The very opposite of what Sri Aurobindo describes as the universality.
It is the deep state reducing the world to a global state, one world government, which will suffocate evolution.
But the mainstream media is already under its control. So distrust, especially when you find mainstream media pushing certain stories to you in your news feed, they are feeding you, literally. Ask: Why is it they are pushing this? Be wary of entertainment and entertainment media agendas. There again, there is an agenda to shape your behaviour, to normalise sometimes perversions, to habituate you to certain patterns of behaviour and thinking.
One of the most important things they do, every time they want to programme you for a certain behaviour pattern, they make a movie around it. And in the movie, it's shown as something everybody does. Although nobody is doing it in the world, when you see it once, and if you've seen it multiple times, those patterns seep deep into you, and you want to or you are pulled to, you are compelled to normalise it in yourself or when you see others doing. You say, yes, of course, we saw it in the movie.
And the same with music, music videos, they have keywords, it's like a mantra, but with a perversion, meant to programme you to certain patterns of behaviour.
So be very wary of these to the extent possible. If you have to watch, keep this filter of automatically refusing that which is contrary to your soul values.
That's why the individualisation is so important and your alignment to your soul values.
But that's not enough.
When you listen to music while studying, so cinema shows you doing this, it's one of the worst ways to or the best ways to break your concentration, make your shallow, your consciousness shallow.
Remove all distractions, build a one-pointed focus of concentration.
Swami Vivekananda said that the value of a human being is in his power of concentration.
All of the greatest people who have achieved anything of value had tremendous powers of concentration.
Build your power of concentration for which you must consciously remove all these distractions and get into a one-pointed state at will as rapidly as possible and then consciously be able to disengage and enter a new focus of concentration.
Disengage, enter a new focus of concentration.
Later you will develop the faculty of multiple concentration that you are able to hold, although you are focused on one thing at a time, the other things that you have been focusing on are held, not lost, and even their interrelation held in your consciousness simultaneously.
So in a sense you are focused on multiple things even if your primary attention is on one thing at a moment.
So all this would be common base for everything that you do.
I spoke of the trend of universalisation.
We have to understand what it is, because nature is pushing you. You may not be conscious but within you this urge comes up. You can't help it.
But one of the side effects is that in the automatons or the less conscious human beings are simply pulled and pushed, the universalisation comes at the cost of depth, because that's the only way you can do it, isn't it? You don't have enough time. And since the interest nature is pushing in you is towards widening, you lose interest in depth, or it's too tiring, too difficult to focus in depth. But if you are conscious and you are sufficiently individualised, you realise, oh yes, nature is pushing in this, she does not want it at the cost of depth. So you will have to compensate with depth consciously with your effort for which she will give you the support.
(0:20:12)
But in the general mass, since the focus is on universalisation, well you have to make that initial effort to compensate for it.
Do make that effort.
Otherwise, the universalisation will become superficial as you see it in the masses, it will even be de-individualising in its universality. That means it's as if the individuality of each one of us is thinned out, blurred and then you have a mass behaviour and you call that ‘universalisation’. That's not nature's intent. But that's what we may end up with, particularly when combined with these other agendas of the globalist forces.
So you must consciously learn to adapt to different types of human beings, to different situations, to different cultural, well, demands, values, contradictions, without losing your individuality.
That's why the development of individuality is going to be our refrain again and again.
But this individuality should be rich enough to be able to face all these and adapt to those situations.
Work on it consciously.
The moment you are conscious, bit by bit you will find it’s, you will find the way.
So you aim for universalisation as well as depth and a healthy balance of both.
In this, social media may play a significant role if you choose to engage on the social media level because with that automatically you reach out to a very wide number of people of diverse backgrounds but superficially. You never get to know any of them in depth but still the exposure would be useful.
And so if you do not allow it to become your master, social media is a bad master, good servant, you can make use of it for some growth.
But if you find yourself sucked into it, if you find yourself with the phone beeping every few seconds, breaking your focus, cut it off. Or set it for a fixed time. Every morning you will focus on your first priority. Having done that, when you are tired, you cannot focus on anything else, you may open your social media and quickly look at what's relevant, what needs response, what doesn't.
Do not engage.
Be very clear of what is your goal in entering in social media. Do not get sucked into its agendas.
You see the social media system is designed to hook your attention. It's designed to control you and pull you into continuous engagement, losing all else. Why? Because they make more money. Very simple. And then of course behind that are other forces.
So control it, limit it with a very strict engagement.
And if you like you can even tell people, I don't want to engage too much in social media just for basic communications.
Do not start the day with social media, that would be the worst thing, you'll get sucked into it, lose your focus.
End the day if you like with social media or use a break in between.
So learn to master your relationship with social media, tame the horse so to say, if you engage with it at all.
Consciously build a foundation in refined and elevating experiences from all cultures. That means for example you aim at music, well, look at the classical music, classical arts, because they aimed at refinement, depth, richness and so on. What lifts your consciousness? ‘Superficial soul’ we will say. But what lifts it, refines and develops it?
But we need not degrade the other types of arts, let's say, or music and dance.
Mother wanted to break away from the rigidity of the classical forms, to create new forms for the art and music, painting, and other creative expressions which would be suitable for the new consciousness. And she said, for the new consciousness you need to build new forms, it needs new vehicles. So she encouraged that work in the Ashram, you will see that in so much of what was done.
And so we have to be looking out for that also.
The reference only is this:
Does it refine and lift your consciousness individually and collectively?
If it degrades, if it weakens, if it distorts, shun those. But look for these, even encourage the new, and I would even say, for your own growth, expose yourself to some of these forms.
(0:25:14)
The journey forward, you are 22 now, as you go further with your career focus, eventually there will be the instincts which will come in. There will be the need for companionship, perhaps the need to raise a family, have children. These in a sense are demanding full time while your career demands full time and you will have to find a way to balance these two. It was convenient in the past when human life organisations were different that one of the couple used to look after home and children and another looked after job and earning money. Today because of the distorted economic structure, both parents have to work, which is not healthy at all. Nevertheless, you recognise the truth of the earlier mode that you need to give your children full attention if you really want to nurture them in a healthy way with love. It is also demanding as well as fulfilling on you.
Is it a strong impulse in you? You will have to consider that also as you go along in your journey.
What would be the choices you make?
Well, be conscious. Be conscious of what are the implications if you choose to have both career and family, find your healthy balance. It is possible, although difficult. And if your partner is equally invested, things can be easier.
Allied to this would be the question of human relationships: What is the form of companionship?
And so for that I would suggest, if you have not already seen, review the extensive discussion we already had on this topic in the evening series number 17 to 24, where you have, we have a whole discussion on human relationships, love, sex, marriage, celibacy and in context of the Integral Yoga particularly. You will find those extremely helpful, that is the series number 17 to 24. There are 8 of these episodes which we have discussed in great detail. I won't repeat those. Review those, it will give you a perspective and a reference.
I would also suggest strongly that you look the evening series number 74 to 77, which was on the theme of education and teenage issues covering all kinds of problems relating to peer pressure, alcohol, smoking, drugs, casual sex. All of these come through peer pressure today in a very strong way. And if you do not cede to these pressures, you are even ostracised and made to feel irrelevant or inferior.
Perhaps those discussions would be helpful, review those.
I won't go into that now. But all of these will help you to find the right balance in this choice of family, children, companionship and career.
You will also face a similar issue with relation to your parents. You might find your parents are supportive or they're conflicting in the choices that you make. If you're supportive, you are lucky. If you find it conflicting, then you have an opportunity there either from a, for an early exposure to complex human behaviour patterns and finding solutions, or it will require you to strengthen yourself in certain ways.
If you have faced conflict and unfortunately this is increasingly the case because society itself is degenerating in its values so even parents have gone through difficult childhoods, don't know how to express themselves with their own children or because they are damaged in some way, damaged their relationship with the children, if you have one of those difficult situations at home, and I find this actually in large numbers today, the proportions are growing at an alarming rate, then very likely because of this pressure of damaging influences, you have developed hard borders, hard corners or hard coverings as a protective way.
Because in our early stage of childhood as we grow we are very vulnerable and when something damaging comes as an influence the only way is to protect yourself by hardening.
Now that you have come into age as your own individual, as an adult, you will have to undo that hardening.
But for that you have to become conscious of where you have been hardened.
(0:30:03)
Simply look at the influences which you found uncomfortable or painful in your growing years. Recognise what was your compensatory mechanism for those pressures. And now review whether you need to undo this, what is its place today.
If you say, I am still vulnerable because of that damage, you can't stay like that. You will have to build those strengths. Learn to relate in a healthy way to people or those circumstances which used to be painful for you.
Even from a spiritual point of view, sometimes you may have created protective shields which later you have to learn to undo.
I'll share my personal experience. It was around the age of five, that spontaneously something of the inner being came forward, looked at the future and made a decision here. And it was centred around the Ashram main building in the Ashram community. And it was as if it put these blinders, even in thought, I would refuse to think any other possibility. So the thought itself was held in blinders. Much later, this took place in the late 20s, I was required, I was not even conscious of these blinders and I was not conscious how it was limiting my thought patterns and my understanding of the world. So, it had to be broken apart literally and I didn't know why. It was a painful passage but then I realised it was the Grace which was breaking it. I didn't understand until it was broken then I realised, ah that's what it is.
But hopefully you don't have to do that if you can consciously recognise that there are such things you have built up sometimes by an inner choice, sometimes by an external compulsion. As You grow in age, in maturity, in capacity, you will have to review these again and again, for which you have to face the fact that, ha yes, during this phase I suffered, I struggled and I created these protective barriers to cope and now I don't need those barriers, and work upon it consciously.
So you will have to rebuild your relationships, even with your parents, as you grow into adulthood and find a new basis.
There is this saying in India in Sanskrit which I don't need to quote but it says, at each age you have a different relationship with your children. And it tells to parents, once they come into their own as adults, treat your children as friends, not as your children.
So this is advice for parents but it is also advice for us as children to be able to find and set the right boundaries. You have to take decisions sometimes and even include the possibility to make mistakes. Take their advice, but then make your choices consciously based on a deeper and higher reference for which they are your friends. They are not your enemies, they are not your parents anymore, they are well-meaning friends. And you may also as you go along develop a sense of responsibility towards them because increasingly with age you become the parent and they become the children and that may extend to larger joint families, relatives, eventually to a larger society. And depending on your career path and the nature of your inner maturity, eventually it may even extend to humanity as a whole as your family.
I'm giving you the full broad track of where the path could go. It may stop at any point, it may happen at late age, it may happen at an early age, doesn't matter. Once you know this as a reference you will know what to do.
We are also entering a full-blown subjective age.
Initially and in the mass of humanity, there will be a huge false subjectivism. Everywhere almost in all your friends, among your friends, your relatives, your peer groups, anybody who is not in a conscious path of self-culturing and growth, you will find a false subjectivism rampant.
Rampant false subjectivism means, if you have a deeper, truer subjectivism, you will have to, well, adjust to those. You can't tell everybody, hey, this is not the best way, or this is too superficial, or this is false. They're not ready, they're not even interested in a deeper subjectivism.
So one of the things you will have to do is first find your own true centre so that you have at least a more stable stronger base in the subjectivism of the spirit and then understand the false subjectivism and learn to manage them without getting disturbed. Otherwise you will suddenly find you do not fit in a world which is, well, somewhat crazy and becoming more crazy, it seems.
(0:35:27)
If you understand that this is a false subjectivism, then through those engagements you can assist even to bring those people into a deeper, truer direction at least of their subjectivism. Sometimes it can be done through interactions, sometimes it can be done by example, sometimes it is done by influence. But for that you must already have a deeper root and you must understand why this is happening and be able to manage it.
It's a skill you will develop.
And this is happening, as I said, it's full-blown subjective age right now. Reason, logic, rationality have suddenly been deprecated in the collective and the more so because of the mainstream media and cinema highlighting the false subjectivism and promoting it even.
So it makes things somewhat difficult to appreciate and yet you have to understand this is what it is and understand where that distortion comes in their false subjectivism, what is the truth behind, and find ways to manage it.
Coming now to the specific theme of the UPSC exam that you are preparing for and that as I said could lead to many different kinds of positions in the civil services and in a country like India especially, it has some very interesting implications. Although so much of what we have discussed will be common to all things and also for the UPSC, but this particularly has one extraordinary implication.
Whatever you may do finally you will have an administrative role that would influence millions, the lives of millions.
You see in India a single city can have what 15 million people, some of the major cities, or at the very least what we call ‘small towns’ are typically half a million or a quarter million people, and we call that a ‘small town’.
So, if you have an administrative role, a small decision, small error, small distortion impacts the lives of millions.
It's a huge responsibility, it is also a huge opportunity.
If you have a role, whether you are in the foreign services or the Indian services, you will be meeting extreme diversity. Foreign service of course, different cultures, but if you are within India, you will still meet equally rich diversity. You see, India is an exceptional country because the diversity within India is at least the same as the diversity in the world. Actually, it is slightly more. Diversity in languages, human types, values, you will find them all. Depending on your postings, you will find yourself exposed to all this.
If you are in the foreign services of course you have that in any case.
If you have enriched yourself during your Indian exposure, the world will be easy for you. Interesting. You have greater power than elected politicians. You can even influence them and their decisions by how you manage your relationships with them. And if you can bring higher values, higher references, growth-oriented policies which have depth not superficial growth, you can make a huge difference for millions of people in every decision that you take and sometimes with implications that last for decades.
So prepare yourself for this role.
You see, as students, we look at the current crop of politicians, administrators and people in power or influence and criticise them for not using it the right way. When you are given the same power, how would you do it differently? Of course, as a child, you look at them, you don't understand what are their compulsions. But when those compulsions come upon you, you might find yourself being as overwhelmed.
One of the biggest mistakes or one of the biggest limitations you might find is suddenly you alone are responsible and the consequences of a mistake are so terrible that you don't want to take a chance, you choose the safe way. Or, if along the journey to get to where you are in that position of power, you have taken steps of compromise where you can now be blackmailed. That's when you get promoted of course.
Then coming to that position you have no choice, you have to follow the framework of the blackmailed system, the distorted perverted values.
You don't have a choice.
(0:40:25)
So if you choose to take a career path where you do not compromise, you will face more difficulties. But when you end up in a position of power, you will be able to do good because it is true, because it is right without compromise. And it is worth the trouble, because it is such a fulfilling thing that for the career that you chose, it is fulfilling that you did what was right and not that you compromised, isn't it?
So prepare for the role, so that when power comes into your hands, you are equipped enough.
How do you do that?
Well, we have had discussions on wealth and power the last few sessions. But much more important: get your broad foundation, which is the framework of the Integral Yoga, the six aspects of the Yoga, review those, put them into practice in very tiny steps. You don't have to be committing yourself totally, but commit yourself to making small progress in the broad direction set and using the means available.
And perhaps the commitment you might make to it might be barely 15 or 20 minutes a day in concentrated effort. For the rest, it will be an attitudinal commitment. Every time you take a decision, well, you will refer to the deeper things for example.
Every time you sit down to study for your exams or to prepare for an interview or take a decision or a job, well, you're going to put these as your reference for what you do, how you do and how you handle that situation, the choices you make.
So it's not difficult to put these things into practice, but review those and apply them.
And then after 5 or 10 years, again you will review, because you will have changed so much, you will be a different person, again you will review and maybe a different set of priorities, approaches and forms of practice.
I'll come to something which is the most essential form towards the end. As a result, your journey now will become this widening journey, full wide growth, rich, and at some point there will be a narrowing.
Here I am going to share with you this picture of the sketch that the Mother made. I have spoken about it before in one of the earlier sessions. This is a sketch she made when it was her great grandson who asked her: Mother what is Yoga?
So she drew this, first the circle she drew below, then the square above and then she said, this circle is you, the square above is the Divine. And then she drew the zigzag pattern slowly widening out, and this is life, the journey of life, and then again narrowing until it reaches the square. And then she drew the straight line from circle to square and said, this is Yoga.
Very simple to a child.
I think, he must have been 10 years old or something.
But this image actually is very profound, it is a multi-dimensional truth which has been represented in this very simple sketch.
So in a sense you will see, of course what she has said applies, life you see widen, broaden yourself, and then there is a narrowing to the focus.
But you can view this as multiple lives. Each line is one life.
So each life you go on broadening and at some point you come into sufficiently individualised and awakened consciousness that says, ah yes, I want to fulfil this. And then the further lives tend to become more and more focused on the spiritual growth while everything else is still there of course, but the soul's focus is broadening first to say: What is this wonderful world? I want to enjoy every experience here.
So it goes on broadening, once it has matured enough now it says, ah yes, now I must unify all this with the divine, and across lives it unifies.
At the same time, the same sketch applies to your this current life, where you are widening, you come into your own in a kind of an individuality, but not yet sufficiently mature, and then you hit a kind of a maturity here, not yet the broadest, you hit a kind of a maturity, you see this very thick lines, the thick gaps, you have come into an individuality of some kind and then you grow within that individuality.
Now generally some of these rhythms have a timeline which is instinctive and programmed into your consciousness, into your biology even sometimes.
(0:45:14)
So you see for example, you hit puberty post age of 11-12 typically. So we say 12 years is your first phase of growth. Then you hit puberty. Now you may get premature exposure to puberty because of chemicals in our hormones, in the food, but your biology is not ready for it, your psychology is not ready for it. Around the age of 12 is when the actual development of psychology and biology align for the puberty development. Which culminates with age 21 where you have an individualisation sufficiently stable in the biology that allows a psychological individualisation which happens around 24.
Interesting.
Multiple of 12.
And at that point you are really capable of taking conscious career path. And if you have taken before that, then you are very likely pushed by circumstances rather than a conscious choice.
But still that's when you begin to explore and widen your life experience and you come into a kind of a turn where the widening starts narrowing. And this happens typically, well, in my experience or in my observation, I would say, limiting it to that, around the age of 32-33, where you begin to question: Well, I have done so much, now what?
Because actually what has happened internally in the life force push of nature, there has been a slight weakening. Suddenly you realise you can't just do everything and not have to face consequences. You see earlier your body would regenerate, you could fall, even break a bone and regenerate rapidly. Now you find suddenly the body is somehow not so confident of itself. The life force is already weakening. Hormonal levels are dropping slightly. And at that point you begin to ask: What am I doing? What do I really-really want?
So you come to a kind of a decision, and certain priorities kick in.
If the inner being has now said, all right enough of this widening now I need to prioritise, it pushes forward, and generally that happens in 32-33. And especially for those who have a higher mission in this life, if it has not happened by that time, you often miss the opportunity. It means the covering was too rigid, and afterwards to break through the covering is also much more painful, it may still happen, but it's painful. This goes on until about let's say 36, 45, there again around 42, certain shifts happen in the biology. A hardening begins. That's when automatically your eyesight becomes a little stiff, rigid and so on.
I don't have to touch that.
Mother gives other dates 60 and then 80, and then at 80, she says, now you're really mature and you know how to live life. And that might happen somewhere here, and then you're able to really consciously focus.
But my point is this widening happens in your current life and then the narrowing. The narrowing does not mean the diversity is lost, it means narrowing of focus but with the continuing broadening of the diversity of experience if so required in life opportunities. Otherwise it doesn't interest you anymore to diversify too much, you just choose to narrow. But with that narrowing is also ageing.
You see in the biology development, this narrowing is always associated with rigidity, lack of flexibility and ageing.
So if you, like I said, this is a multi-dimensional model, it operates on so many levels.
In your spiritual journey equally you go through a similar phase, and I leave it to you as an exercise to dwell upon what that would be like.
The fact that this is a square is very significant because the square is, as Mother said, the cube rather is the symbol of the supermind, and so it is towards that that the whole journey goes.
The straight line now is our soul's journey, even when the outer nature may diversify. I am taking the symbol again as I said on many levels. So as you enrich your experience, your soul is always, if awake or at least its influence prominent, your soul says, ah yes, all this I am integrating around my individuality which is evolving. So the soul's journey is still straight and while the nature development is enriching, widening and then later the focus, it does not interfere with the soul's straight path if this has been from the beginning your focus and conscious effort, and that's why we are going to come to this now as the single most important thing.
From the soul's point of view, there are two things that will matter.
Well, coming back to the picture, your soul and the divine and then the relationship between these two will be defined by the extent to which you know yourself and the extent to which you know the divine. That relationship will happen automatically. So getting to know these two and deepening that relationship will be single greatest priority and irrespective of the career path because this is common to everyone, isn't it? And it's the real fulfilment of your life's purpose why you took birth.
While all this happens and without compromising the nature's development, external development, in fact, the soul will be fulfilled when it integrates in this way and can express in all these activities its values, even as it learns from all these activities for its growth.
(0:50:48)
For the soul, the expression of the divine characteristics that it is in a sense is its purpose, isn't it? To bring the divine into the world, to manifest, to express itself creatively and so none of this will be compromised.
How will this happen?
So first know this, and know this.
For some of us the inner is felt almost as a deep aspiration, influence, or love for the Divine Mother, I refer to as one of the easiest points on which you can begin to know the deeper. It's still not the deepest, but it is your beginning.
For some, the inward is difficult and the outer is more easy. In which case you focus on this, the divinity first as your primary focus. It could start in the mind's conceptualisation, it could start in the heart's relationship of devotional self-giving. ‘Bhakti’ is the superior word. Or the consecrated work that you do: I do this for That.
But in all these, the concept of the divine also could start with lesser gradations. You could for example dedicate yourself to an ideal. Now a lot of people who are innately anti-spiritual and anti-religious even to the point of non-believers still have a deep spiritual life without calling it ‘spiritual’ because they commit themselves to an ideal.
Somebody says, I want justice in the world, I want to bring beauty in the world, and committing yourself truly to that and with the idea of that being already somewhat refined, it's a spiritual ideal and the spiritual life therefore to whatever limited extent.
So put yourself in service to an ideal that is greater than yourself.
Take an ideal that to you has a practical value, as with some of these examples.
Knowledge could be an ideal in itself also, or love, or service to others. Just committing yourself to service to others to make people more comfortable, reduce their suffering, make them more happy. Of course you can't but, at least you can reduce suffering with comforts to some extent.
Whatever the form, but commit yourself to an ideal that is greater than yourself. And the fact that you commit to that greater ideal opens you to something higher, even if it's not the highest, but that's your gateway to the highest. And in time as you mature, the gateway deepens, broadens until it approaches more and more that aspect, the divine as that aspect.
Something slightly higher you may take, dedicating yourself to the service of Mother India as incarnation of the Divine Mother, or if your nationality is different, I am broadening this discussion, to your country's soul in whatever way you might know it.
In most cases the soul of the country is feminine, it is not a masculine form. And very often what you have in the fatherland-concept or the masculine form of the representation of the national identity is very often the ego of the nation, not the soul of the nation.
Interesting.
So try genuinely, deliberately to focus on the whatever is your conception of the soul of your country, your nation where you are, citizen or country of birth or which with, which you feel as your Mother country and commit yourself to her or commit yourself to Mother Earth as the Mother of all these nations or going deeper further beyond that to the Divine Mother as the Mother of the universe and therefore Mother of earth, Mother of all these nations, Mother of all of us humanity who are all equally her children.
(0:55:15)
Any one of these, it doesn't matter which, as long as it is an ideal that is greater than yourself.
And what is interesting is, when you aim for an ideal of your personal satisfaction, you reach the satisfaction, and then what? Now you are empty. You feel disappointed. But when you aim at something much greater, you rarely reach because it is greater than yourself, but in the process you have the satisfaction of each step because of the results you can see and feel but also yourself growing with each step and while there's no point where you can say, now it is done, because the goal being so large, at each step you have the experience of ‘wow so satisfying so fulfilling, and each time more because it never stops with your own limitations.
So this will make your whole journey not only so much more fulfilling, something else happens which is even more interesting.
The power of that now to which you are concentrating upon, the power of that which is greater than yourself, greater than your power, begins to fill you, to support you and to lift you.
So now suddenly you are no more climbing and growing with your strength but with the support of something greater which also now actively assists in lifting you. Because you are available as an instrument, you made yourself consciously available, and it is looking for instruments at every moment, isn't it?
So the result is you receive greater strength, knowledge, resilience against whatever may be contrary to your deeper aspiration and protection against attacks because everywhere in life you will be attacked. You do good, you will be attacked. You do bad, you will be attacked eventually. Takes longer but right now that's the balance. That's reversing. When it reverses, when you do bad, you will be attacked quickly, when you do good, the attack may come later.
The balance is tilting. So trust that by the time you enter full blown life perhaps things would be different. Irrespective you are always attacked because that's the nature of evolution. And the nature of the attack is to point to your limitation and your weakness. So we don't treat it as a big problem. We use it for growth.
But even when there is the attack, you will find the constant protection that the ideal gives to you, even as it fills you with an inner strength that allows you to push through difficult passages and the knowledge and the strength to navigate and to fulfil. Comes from the ideal. And therefore the higher the ideal, the more complete and the more comprehensive all these are within you.
But too high may make it too abstract for your current evolution.
There will come a point where you will know everything as expression of the Divine Mother and all these even nations and powers all as aspects of her and every human being as her child and every race as a specialised form in which she incarnates specific qualities, every nation, ethnic group as representing certain specialisations or aspects and potentialities. And humanity as a whole you will see as her, well, incarnate body and even all of nature with all animals eventually perhaps.
But I am just pointing to these as possible experience you might have later. Right now start with what is for you most natural, most living and most inspiring and cling to that inspiration and its source. And all the rest will be given to you literally.
There is a very interesting observation the Mother made in connection with the way she was working in the world. She said, she would go out into those higher realms, and it's difficult to describe, and so she has to use analogies. Every human being and their potentialities and relationships are felt energetically, let's say, or in the alignments of opportunities. And then she said, she would bring them together, link this, push that, place this here, put that there for the outcomes that would happen as a result.
And she said, it's like arranging numbers, but it's not numbers. And see in numbers you get that glimpse. This has an affinity, 2 has affinity with 4, 6 and 8, isn't it? But 4 has special affinity with 8, not with 6.
(1:00:07)
So there as if these complex relationships, interrelations based on our nature and our soul aspirations, and she would bring them in alignment.
And the result would be that from that level where the alignment takes place, it ripples through the circumstances, through the mental, vital down to the physical and ‘click’ these people meet, those things come in touch and things start happening.
That's how the influence is given from those higher realms. And something of that will begin to happen automatically because you are aligned to that ideal, and the ideal’s purpose in manifesting itself acts more and more directly, powerfully, through you as a vehicle, and so things begin to fall into place around you spontaneously, effortlessly, opportunities come your way, help is given to you, warnings are given, guidance is given in ways that are, can be so amazing.
I will give just one example, that I was writing an article, this is going back 20 years ago, I was writing an article on homoeopathy, and there was a kind of an intuition that there is something which has to do with the structure of water and there is a scientific study which backs this.
And at that time the Internet was still very, let's say, preliminary, although it was there, I couldn't find things. I happened to be, it was now, it's more than 20, 25 years ago, I happened to be travelling, I was in Cyprus of all places, which is a very small country really, very-very small, it's like almost a village in India. Ok? And you can drive from one end to the other in two hours. My host takes me to a bookstore or she happens to be buying something and so there's a bookstore, she takes me in.
I would never think about a bookstore when I'm travelling, and that's such a narrow small country that a bookstore would not have anything very rich and diverse. It would be the most populist content. I go there, I am looking through books because I enjoy, knowledge is, you know, the gold. I look around and my right hand suddenly goes to a book. I have not even seen what book it is. It pulls it out. And my eyes have not yet glanced at it, but the hands open, and it opens on a page, and on that page was a precise description of the scientific research on the structure of the crystalline structure of water etc exactly what I needed for writing that article which I was about to write I don't know two weeks down or three weeks down.
To find it in Cyprus, in a bookstore that I walk into by chance, and the hand picking it out, and the page opening.
It's impossible.
Could never have even intended or asked for it.
And it happened.
I'm just giving this as an example because it is so out of the way.
But things like that begin to happen because you are aligned to an ideal which says, it wants to act, it wants to manifest, it aligns things.
Or as you grow in consciousness, you realise it is a conscious ideal, and you say, she and the Divine Mother or an aspect of the Divine Mother actively works to assist in this way.
Now comes: having made this alignment, you as a vehicle cannot remain coarse because the action needed is also more demanding, and so you need to consciously cultivate yourself.
So self-cultivation in relation to that ideal, refinement, alignment to your subtler sensitivities, again using reference of that ideal, or remember for those who start with the inner first, refinement, self-cultivation, alignment to your subtler sensitivities in relation to your deeper soul influence and values.
Hopefully by now you will have both, the inner as well as the higher.
And as the two begin to grow in influence, the link between the two and the relation between the two begins to form, so to say materialise, a link forms automatically, and around that link like a spine, the whole body of your personality begins to form.
Now you see I am describing this whole picture in a very different way.
This is your body, personality, the soul and the divine, and the rich development of your faculties and powers in service to the divine as it grows and the personality develops and unfolds.
So there will be these two aspects:
first, conscious of these two; and then
the refinement of yourself always in relation to these two grow.
That means you will deliberately, consciously organise everything around your deepest and highest aspiration and eventually around the psychic being or the centre of its influence that you can access.
(1:05:15)
And when I say, organise everything, literally everything, starting with what you receive and ending with what you put out.
Everything.
So every experience that comes into you, this is your reference for the value of the experience.
Sometimes it seems to be a trivial experience but when you put it in relation to the deeper or the higher, suddenly you find, I can draw out of it so much more, so much more growth, so much more joy, so much more fulfilment, otherwise it would have just passed as, oh interesting, ah it is, excited, and then it's gone. But there is so much more that can come.
Everything you put in relation to this.
Now initially you can't do this constantly.
You will do it at the end of the day.
So at the end of the day you will put yourself in alignment with your soul aspiration, presence, and the divine or the higher focus, purpose. And then you will review the whole day in a very broad sweep. Don't go into details. Just the sense of, oh what was this, what was that. Little things will stand out perhaps. Okay. And all these now from this point of view you will see what was its value. How did it help you in your growth, in your evolution, in your enrichment, learning, experience, strengthening, whatever.
Similarly, you will begin the day with this, align to your aspiration, soul, and the ideal, and divine, whatever form. Once made, you turn from there to the day of what you want to do in terms of action. The engagements you will have, the people you will meet, the things you have to achieve, the targets you have to accomplish, the outcomes that are required if so required, or whatever it is, the surprises that may come your way which you are not, you have not anticipated. Everything. And what you are going to do.
So from this centre, from this alignment, you will engage with life. And this will be your reference, the spine.
So again, reviewing this picture, this is your life experiences, along the spine.
Everything has value.
Some things are on the left of the spine, some things are on the right of the spine.
Again symbolically.
Interesting.
Some things you receive, some things you put out.
And this is the whirl of life circumstances.
And you could have been lost in the whirl and spread out and lose yourself, lose focus, because there are contradictory pulls and pushes. Each extreme pulls you in different directions, you could tear and burst. But because you have the spinal column, the most diverse and extreme influences organise themselves around the central spine and everything is possible. The whirlwind of life now has the center line, the ‘eye of the storm’, we say, where you have perfect calm, perfect stillness, and everything whirls around this centre.
The result is you are unshaken, you are unmoving in the centre, because everything whirls around you. And you can equally face any contradictory influence or compulsion, whichever direction it is, because you are directionless without bias.
You see, the opposite situation will give you the value of this.
When you are on the edge of your personality, a whirl kick comes, you get swayed, another kick comes, you get swayed, you're swung and broken, shattered, because you're on the surface. And the stronger the storm, the more quickly you're broken.
You come to the centre of the whirl, it can be as intense as it wants, it can double in 100 times larger, the centre is unchanged, you never swing, you never shake.
So obviously you need to come as close to the centre as possible.
When you are off-centre, you do get affected.
The more off-centre you are, the more you are affected.
And so when you are affected, what do you do?
The first thing you do, take a deep breath, slow down, disengage and centre yourself. Realign to your deeper core as deep as you can and the higher ideal as high as you can, that is relevant and get back to the central spine.
Come back to the centre, and suddenly now you find the whole storm is evenly whirling around you, and you can wield it, you can direct it, you can shape it, you can calm it or intensify it or direct as you want, because you are unmoving, unshaken, unaffected.
(1:10:06)
Obviously, in its foundation, this central column will be the Self, because the Self is:
you, and
the Divine.
And the two are identical in the Self.
And the psychic being is your individualised, this circle below, the centre below.
And that then is the cosmic aspect of the Self.
But it's still one Self. So there's no contradiction ever.
The closer you come to that, the easier everything becomes.
But you'll still have to cultivate, refine, align to your subtle sensitivities, because your nature is not.
Your nature is this, all these layers around, which need to be aligned and prepared and made suitable vehicles for this.
And all this you will find in the Integral Yoga discussions.
So organise everything, now you understand the meaning of ‘everything’, everything around your deepest and highest aspiration, around your psychic being and your highest ideal recognising that they are really aligned, they are one and two aspects of the same one, and everything will include, all experiences that come as well as all actions that flow out and everything.
For this therefore daily concentration, meditation, whatever name you give to it on the presence within, and ideal above, and the alignment of these two beginning of the day, end of the day, as brief as three minutes one minute if you have no time that day, but if you can, longer, five or ten minutes, where you can deepen sufficiently, stabilise and centre yourself sufficiently meaningfully, whatever time it may take for you and then with the conscious intent and aspiration at least, that this influence should fill everything in the day. At the end of the day, review and put everything in relation to these things and if you like complete with offering all that happened and letting it go. It's over, it's done. What I need to take is now integrated and you move forward fresh into the next day or go to sleep fresh, free from the burden of the day.
If possible, now during the day, multiple times you may briefly centre yourself, concentrate and align to the influence that is within you, you don't have to concentrate fully.
So I'm going to eat, I will pause, centre myself, recall my aspiration, my devotion, my gratitude, the presence of the divine, the ideal ‘Why am I here?’, engage.
Now this whole thing can take 2 or 3 seconds, sometimes half a second. It's a state of concentration.
When you are fully concentrated, you get it in half a second, and then you may choose to stay. That's a different thing. You may choose to stay for half a minute if you enjoy it.
But just the brief moment of realignment and then re-engagement will help you to, well, it will shift the whole basis of the interaction.
Where you would have lost your cool, you find yourself centred, calm and able to seize on the situation.
Where you would have been confused because of contradictory influences, you will have a deep reference and innate to that reference the intuitive influence which will give you the insight and guidance, strength, etc., as needed.
So many brief points of contact if you can, however brief they may be, but starting with one concentration in the beginning, one in the end, with this intention.
And you see, how the practice can be made so simple.
But you see also how it is this spinal column around which everything else will unfold, inevitably.
I think, with that I would complete, because the question was: What would be the guidance from a spiritual point of view?
I think I have looked at a very rich, diverse, even multifaceted, superficial aspects including, in relation to the spiritual, but now centrally on the spiritual.
And so I would complete with one single more point.
All of this is taking place in an unfoldment in space and time. That's the soul's journey. Soul that transcends space-time, enters space-time and then journeys in space-time as we adventure. It is, I would say, a fragment or part of Sachchidananda, world is body of Sachchidananda.
This is the underlying truth, whatever may be the appearance.
And therefore for the soul, the journey of life irrespective of the external struggles and tensions and even pain and suffering, for the soul, it is a journey of discovery of itself, and its powers that will grow, but also of itself as the one, the all, the divine and its manifestation growing. And therefore from the soul's point of view, it is always a journey of delight and discovery, self-discovery, internal and external is always self-discovery.
(1:15:24)
So when you have this spinal column of alignment, this becomes possible. To the extent that you have this alignment, this possibility becomes more and more natural, effortless, spontaneous, complete, more and more complete in the joy and the delight.
And so I will complete with this one statement:
Enjoy the steps of the journey, because every step is a step of self-discovery. From the soul's point of view, there is no suffering. Superficially, you may have parts which will suffer, but when you align to the deeper, you will find from there it is, ah yes, important lesson learnt, important discovery made, new growth, new possibilities.
Move forward.
And as the influence of the soul becomes more direct, you will feel the sense of permanence, the sense of immortality, and you know that ultimately nothing can affect you. Yes, superficially you can be harmed, yes biologically you can be harmed, psychologically you can be harmed, mentally you can get a few knocks. Essentially, ultimately nothing can harm you, nothing can take away this immortality and the word I would use is more than ‘resilience’, ‘immutability’, the sense of, to be immune to any failure or harm or damage. ‘Immunity’ would be the word, yes.
And when you are utterly immune, you are afraid of nothing.
Again superficially you might have fears, but from this centre it will fill with a support where the fear would be very superficial.
And as you enjoy the journey and these things from the deeper soul, psychic qualities, begin to fill, every day should become a joy of new opportunities and new discoveries, external, internal, world, self, both as aspects of Sachchidananda of the Divine.
Now this may not happen immediately, but this is the direction in which you will be growing over the days, weeks, months, years. Certain days you will have it very vivid, certain days it may not be so strong.
Doesn't matter.
But it’s there somewhere at the back, and because of that the value of life itself changes, and all experiences. The value changes. Your primary reference is fundamentally different.
So take these small steps.
Start.
Keep this big picture.
I would suggest, you can review this a few years down, and suddenly things which now may not be so relevant will become more relevant and so on, because we have actually covered, I think, pretty good ground.
I am going to take a moment now to look at the chat box and see if there is something of, that we could immediately take up. Otherwise, keep in mind I do look at the questions and I will include them eventually later.
Yes, there is a question from Aditya about discipline and routine and strengthening will, overcoming inertia.
This is going to be a very important part of your self-culturing and training. Because you cannot culture yourself if you are constantly, well, swept away by whims and fancies of your own nature’s limitations.
So, one of the critical aspects of self-culturing is this ability to override your own, well, inertia and the tendency to be scattered and losing focus.
For which initially there will be a repeated effort to pull yourself back with the willpower, strengthening of the willpower, and for this a discipline and routine is a great help because it makes it easier.
There will come a time when you won't need the discipline and routine, and you can do whatever you decide to do whenever you decide to do. But initially it is a great help to keep a discipline and routine which you may fine-tune once in a while.
And that's why I said, in the example I gave of social media, if you want to engage, well, keep it later, you start with the discipline of not looking at anything else with your most important work of the day which you start with. Later when you have the consciousness which is tired and dissipated, you can look at activities which can be done in a state that is dissipated. And you will insist on this.
(1:20:16)
So for developing the discipline and willpower:
If you try to do everything in one go, often it is overwhelming, your will is not strong enough. Take up something which is very small, for which you have no excuse. When I took this up as an active exercise, what I did was my morning cup of milk. Having drunk, I will go and wash it, wipe it and place it. My Mother will say, no-no, don't waste your time, you go and do your work, I'm going to wash the other vessels anyway.
No.
The goal is my discipline, my willpower.
So I do that. And remember, in doing this, you can do, if you do it really fast in 5 or 10 seconds even. So the days you are relaxed, you do it consciously. The days you are not relaxed, you are tense, you have work, you are late, you glug your drink, wash, wipe, put, run off. So 3 seconds, 4 seconds? Even if you've done it badly, you did it.
So cling to it, something really small you cling to it where there's no excuse.
But if you've forgotten, let's say today I really was distracted, I forgot to do it, the moment I remember I will do it. So I've gone to work, I'm sitting in office, I'll take a cup, drink a sip of water, wash, wipe, keep. Do it at that moment when you remember.
So on some level on the physical consciousness where you have the greatest resistance of inertia, you're imprinting this, there is no escape. If you have not done it now, you will do it later. If you want to be hard with yourself, you do it twice. If you have forgotten, you do it two times over when you have more free time.
I remembered it at work, I took a sip of water, wash, wipe, again take another sip of water, wash, wipe.
It's kind of a punishment, but it's not really intended as a punishment, as a way of pushing back against the inertia.
Or you come home and do it, do it once. My point is do it once, it's good enough. But if you need to, if you're really desperate to push hard, well, do it twice, do it three times. But don't overdo, then there's a reaction.
You want to train your consciousness not cause a reaction in it.
And when you take something very small, you build it, what happens is your muscles grow. This is the example the Mother gives when she speaks of training of the willpower. Willpower is like muscles, the more you use the stronger it grows.
So when you want to build your muscles what do you do? You take a weight and you pump. It's boring but you're doing it with that intention. But you don't take a 100-kilo weight. You take a 1-kilo weight and pump a 100 times. And you have the benefit of a hundred. And maybe a few months down you can lift your 100 kilo just like that.
It's the same with the willpower. You take something small and persist-persist and automatically within a week or two you will find on other little things you start doing it right. And then maybe a month or two down you find on the bigger things now it's working and your willpower is automatically grown starting with something so small.
And then of course the routine, set your routine and follow the routine.
My temperament is not very comfortable with too many routines. I get, I feel suffocated. But certain things like the physical exercise, I have to force the routine. Initially you have a struggle for a few days, then once it kicks in, the body enjoys.
You see the resistance is in the body inertia.
You overcome that, especially with physical things, you stick to a routine, things become much more easy.
The same would apply also for intellectual study where the physical body's support is required for concentration. Stick to a routine, it is a great help.
What would be the ideal routine for learning and acquiring knowledge, etc., I will take up as a separate theme later as we enter deeper into the practices in education or learning skills.
But right now, just this is to highlight the importance of routine.
I am just scanning through, so I might miss some things important. There are many important questions I can see, but I think this is good enough for us immediately. We will look at the other questions. Don't worry, sometimes they may come a month or two later also, but I try to put them together theme wise.
So right now we are somewhat on a roll with regard to education so perhaps next time also I might do that. What I might do is during the week I might start putting up certain videos of talks given which were part of a teacher training programme done many years ago. And if you have the time I would suggest for you to see those first so that when we have the discussion I could take some of those themes covered without repeating those things but going deeper into them and including some of these questions as part of them and that might be a more useful way of focusing on education.
(1:25:25)
There are already several questions with regard to issues in school. So some of these I might take up next time. But broadly we will move more and more into the educational sphere in terms of these questions for ourselves as adults as well as for children, as parents looking to your children as well as students looking to your own studies. So all three things we will try to blend into these broad discussions.
We can take a moment to dwell upon the full import of this little drawing of the Mother and how it can, how important it is for our lives. And as you see, it applies as a student and as adults and in so many other levels, isn't it? Of your personality, your nature, your life purpose, your journey across lives, all these are encapsulated in this very simple, beautiful, profound drawing.
We are here, we are also here and we are journeying to ourselves that is why it is ‘self-realisation’, that is why it is ‘self-fulfilment’. And in a sense we are already there, and the journey is only the integration, and always each step is a step of delight and bliss.
Remember, Mother made this observation, the universe was created so that we can have the delight of union as distinct from delight of identity. We are already in identity at some deeper level. But the union has all this enriched, look at it now as facets, aspects, steps of delight. And we will enjoy each step of our journey.
We can take a moment to concentrate in aspiration on this as well as in alignment for what, how we want to put this into practice in our aspiration.
To all of us here who are children of the Divine Mother, Namaste to everyone.