12 Nov 2022
Alina (0:00:27):
Namaste.
Namaste Sraddhalu.
Sraddhalu (0:00:30):
Namaste.
Alina (0:00:33):
Today we will continue Evenings with Sraddhalu, and he will be giving some answers and guidance for the students.
We will take some questions that we received from some students and Sraddhalu will talk about some problems of the student life.
As usual, during our conversation, you may freely ask questions in our chat box on YouTube or you may send beforehand your questions at our email id: integralstudies.in[at]gmail.com.
We have some questions on discipline, willpower, concentration and learning.
Aditya is asking:
Please share a few tips on adhering to a disciplined routine and how to strengthen my will. I need to urgently ward off inertia. I wish I would work on this earlier.
Mani is asking:
Could you speak on willpower? Thank you.
Sraddhalu (0:01:45):
Yes.
In the first of these three discussions on questions on ‘from student life’, we had already touched upon specific exercise for developing strengthening willpower in the questions of that day. That is in EWS #135, I think. So I will not repeat that: the exercise for willpower.
But generally, I am connecting this to the Aditya's comment on warding of inertia and the need for discipline.
This word ‘discipline’ is much misunderstood in a large part because of the way the teachers use it when speaking to students and as parents. Please keep in mind that all these questions, although they relate largely are, are coming from student life, we will broaden them to touch on our adult life, both in the, as students of the journey of life itself, as well as as parents, teachers, friends, of students.
So I'm going to always broaden the scope while addressing also the specifics for student life.
This aspect of discipline, I recall most of our teachers would use this phrase equivalent to the word ‘obedience’. They will say so-and-so child is ‘indisciplined’, meaning not obedient. And somehow within us as children you see these are new words. Nobody I'm sure has ever told you what the word ‘discipline’ means as it is for most of our words of vocabulary especially in our maternal language and we hear those words from childhood in context and we presume a meaning.
And then later if there's a particular need to make precise, you look up a dictionary, which is very rarely done.
So the sense of discipline we have always associated subliminally is with obedience. And implied in that association is that unless somebody kicks me, I will not be disciplined. Or on the other hand, because of the habit of childhood, when somebody kicks me to force me to do, and I obey that [as] (0:04:10) discipline, but I struggle with the revolt against the pressure to force me to do.
And so implied in the discipline is this rebellious aspect which also grows with the strength of discipline.
And I'm pointing to all these, they are very subtle influences and very deeply impressed within us, subconscious even in most cases, and you have to somehow introspect and recognise these false associations and consciously dissolve them and change what this word or this idea means for you.
Remove the link with obedience and discipline.
If you are obedient, you are not necessarily disciplined. Obedience can be a good way of training the capacity for discipline. But if it is accompanied with rebellion against obedience, then your discipline will be itself damaged with a rebellious content implied in the discipline itself. It will be self-defeating in a way.
(0:05:12)
Essentially, discipline comes when you are able to do what you choose to do. No external force, no external pressure. Of course, external circumstances may require an outcome or an action from you. And then you may choose to do it. But you don't do because of the external pressure. You do because you choose to do. And so we have to bring back this sense of underlying free choice associated with discipline and the free choice taken from a certain poise of clarity if possible even from a certain opening to an ideal, some higher principle to which we relate from which it emerges which then automatically draws on the power of that principle which we have discussed before.
And so because I want to do, I choose to do.
Now there's a catch to this, sometimes you may get come under pressure, you will want to rebel against pressure, and then you may choose not to do because of the impulse of rebellion. That's not very helpful because your reference has to be higher than you.
But in principle, discipline will be when you can do because you decided to do.
So adhering to a disciplined routine, when you start attempting to adhere, because you chose, you realise, you are not one person, you have so many parts. And the parts within you most resistant to what you have chosen are often in the emotions and what you have chosen is often in the mind.
So ultimately a large part of the problem of discipline boils down to lack of integration between the mind and the vital, life energy as we can say, or emotions in the bridging between mind and life energies.
So your mind knows, the spirit is willing, as they say, and then the life force says, ah but today I'm tired, I am depressed, I would rather do something else which is more interesting, and then the mind can impose.
In childhood very likely, coming to Aditya's question when he says that I wish I had done this earlier, very likely you have done it during your school years where you had to study, grind away at sometimes meaningless, very boring study, which you did often.
So why didn't that strengthen your discipline?
Because it was done with so much rebellion, so much distress that it didn't really help you develop the capacity for discipline.
So what you're doing today, if you continue to repeat the student years where the mind imposed, forced the body, forced the life energies, dragged them along kicking, screaming, resisting, whatever, without integrating, you did your part. But the moment the exams were over and the compulsion for that discipline was gone, you revolted against it or even you threw away what you had gained, which is generally the case even with the knowledge component.
This cannot be repeated in later life because in time the vital and the physical begin to grow stronger than the mental. That is to say, the capacity of rebellion in the vital is much stronger than your mind can impose by willpower.
In practice, as the years pass, your body will tend to drag down the mind, or your life energies will weaken, and with it your mind will be dragged down and weaken also. So this is to say that you cannot continue to batter down the vital, you have to at some point learn to integrate and draw in the vital, get it to join with enthusiasm, and that means making this first fundamental correction, it's not in a rebellious state that discipline is going to happen, it will come because the whole of you integrated wants to do.
So rather than willing, pushing, struggling which is probably what Aditya's difficulty is, start by integrating. If you can for the thing you have to do whether you like it or not sometimes, try to find something in the activity that you would enjoy. Focus on that. Try to bring something of the joy of your emotions or enthusiasm. If nothing else, you say, okay, this is going to be supremely boring but I'm going to do it as a consecration, as part of a practice of a dedication or consecrated work in the spirit of the Karma Yoga, and then the joy comes because of the offering and the relation to the divine that you bring into it although you know the work is supremely boring. And so you will find something positive, align the enthusiasm of your energies, emotions, and then the mind and the vital and to the extent possible the physical also, aligning, now you find you are able to do.
(0:10:52)
So really the problem of discipline now becomes not whipping and compelling yourself somehow beating yourself into action but of integrating into a joyous alignment. And then you will find the whole thing becomes very easy. This effort itself will have to initially come from the mind which is the part that says, hey I need to correct this.
If this enthusiastic alignment can be slowly infused into the vital, then 80% of the problem is gone.
Inertia again primarily comes from the physical consciousness where a similar effort to align and gently nudge, gently carry, will be very effective.
Always when dealing with some part in you that resists, instead of compelling by force, which you may have to do occasionally, that's fine, those exceptions, it is far more effective when you gently cajole, gently nudge, and allow those parts to habituate, align, shape, integrate, until now it becomes smooth.
Fighting against resistance to try to overcome will never work in the long run, short term okay, not long run.
So this is as regards Aditya's and Mani's questions: will power will grow as a result of the persistence, in this case the discipline that you may take up, and that's why as a result the strengthening of the will, will take place.
And equally strengthening of the willpower would involve a kind of an integration which would strengthen the discipline and so on.
These two together with a powerful concentration, and you can do anything.
It takes small steps. Refer to the exercise for developing willpower. Use it again in small steps, little things, and you will find it not difficult to integrate and overcome.
We can go to the next question.
Alina (0:12:52):
Aditya is writing: How to stay concentrated for long periods of time, of study time?
Sraddhalu (0:13:04):
Mmhm.
Alina (0:13:06):
And Narayan is writing: With so many things to learn and with the lack of time, how can one learn to soak in knowledge effectively and also retain them with a clear memory?
Sraddhalu (0:13:19):
Yes.
So obviously both of these require concentration, in any kind of learning, [in] (0:13:24) any kind of study, the power of concentration will be your key.
When you are able to hold concentration, first when you are able to enter concentration, then hold.
So, concentration is the gathering of all your awareness into a single one-pointed focus.
The mistake people make is to try to gather on a point without having first withdrawn from the other things which into which you are plugged.
And this is something you are not even conscious of.
Are you aware that right now within your mind there are perhaps half a dozen things which are pulling you?
After this discussion I have to do that, I have to call up someone, I have to prepare for X appointment, I have to make this presentation, I have to remember to do that tomorrow, and after five days I have this very important event that I have to be preparing for, all these are at the back of your mind and they're pulling.
Each.
As they pull, they also suck energy.
So your mind's energy is largely dissipated in numerous unconnected directions. And now when in this frontal part of your mind you are trying to gather to focus, all these threads are pulling back and you are pulling against them. This is the reason why you attain a focus and then you get tired because the state of focus is a pulling against everything else that is pulling back. That's why you're tired. If all those threads could be brought to a single point with nothing pulling you, you'd be so immersed that you would not even realise, oh an hour has passed and without strain.
(0:15:13)
So in the yoga tradition in classical yoga as they call it ‘Patanjali Yoga Sutras’, you have this keyword ‘Pratyahara’, gathering, interiorising so to say, all the “threads” of awareness, this is a phrase that Mother uses, your threads each of these ideas, things, responsibilities, thoughts, and compulsions are like threads pulling you and scattering your awareness.
So if you pull back, they resist because, hey, I'm important, you can't forget me.
So in your own subconscious part, you're saying, I shouldn't forget that, so I keep it.
One way to get rid of this difficulty is you write down. If you think you'll forget, take a little piece of paper and write down all the things you don't want to forget. Now you have permission. You tell those parts, yes you're important, I won't forget you, and then let go. And withdraw the threads of awareness, this initial step of Pratyahara, if done, your next step of concentration becomes enormously easier.
You're not constantly in a state of stress to maintain the state of concentration.
So write down, acknowledge the value of those things which demand your attention, and now say, okay now I bring all attention here.
First simply gather before you plunge in, simply gather.
When you feel you are able to hold the gathered state without anything, any other thread pulling you, then you turn to the thing and plunge-plunge-plunge.
If at any point you find yourself repeatedly pulled:
What thread is this?
What's the thing that's bothering me?
Ha, I write it down and say, yes you're important but now let me go.
Pull back, withdraw that thread.
So when all the threads have been gathered, you are, you can be easily one-pointed. So then you are able to plunge deep.
But you don't have the habit now of staying concentrated or in a one-pointed state. So the habit will form by doing. Like willpower, concentration will grow by doing. But if you have done these initial two steps, then this state of immersion becomes very easy. And there will come a point very quickly, and I say very quickly, within a few days, weeks, depending on how much your current capacity is, but not more than a month typically, You will find the state of concentration is refreshing and the state of dispersal is tiring. Where earlier dispersal was rest and concentration was tiring, this has been reversed. In fact, this reversal is the natural state, because everything in the universe is built on the power of tapas, concentration.
And so to be concentrated is in fact the more natural state than to be dispersed. And this will happen quickly.
But practice.
At first there will be short periods of concentration. You may find some part of your mind tires because that part is still not used to, especially if there is a content which involves strain to understand, to absorb, assimilate.
So, I link this to the long periods of study time as well as Narayan's question about soaking in knowledge effectively, rapidly, retaining with clear memory, etc.
So, we come into this part of the study: concentrate for long periods of study time is different from other time.
You can be concentrated in reading a novel for example and really immerse yourself. It's easy.
Why is it study that is difficult compared to novels?
Then you realise, in study there is a process of new learning. Something is happening within you. There's an activity of absorption, rearrangement, assimilation which interestingly cannot be done in one continuous long period.
The natural rhythm of learning is different.
That means, you will still be concentrated in the long period but you will not be studying all the time.
So, watch carefully this.
So, much of this I will be elaborating on in some of the videos that I'm going to put up on education. I have not yet been able to do that.
The brain itself learns in a three-step process.
You study something new which involves thinking, introspecting, absorbing, assimilating and after a while you can't take more, you've got too much, it feels as if your brain is full.
(0:20:09)
Actually your mind is much more elastic.
When you free your mind from the brain, you can take it far more, 100 times more, even before you need the assimilative phase. But here in the physical brain, okay now I'm full, I can't do more. So you take a break.
But the break is only from that absorption phase.
Now you go into assimilation phase. What you have taken, you dwell upon it.
The keywords Sri Aurobindo refers to in Synthesis of Yoga, drawing on the yoga tradition is “manan” and “chintan”:
dwelling in mind, and then
‘meditating’ would be the correct term, thinking about what you have understood.
So in the first, you just dwell. You don't do anything. You just hold, ah, that's so interesting, so many things, wow. And you just hold it. There's no special activity. Your mind may gently wander, shift viewpoints, it may happen of its own, you do nothing particular. But you hold, all this. That's the dwelling. A kind of a fusing, a kind of identification which is beginning to form. It becomes in you, you become in it, and there is a merging.
In the thinking part you say, wow, this has so many implications, that is links to this, oh these are similar. So there's an activity which also you can dwell on. So the concentration continues but not on the acquisition phase but the assimilative phase.
Now in the brain literally this can be seen in an MRI scan. In the initial acquisition phase, the knowledge goes into the temporary memory, and then during the processing it is going into the permanent memory.
Now what is interesting we see in the MRI scan when you are reading, studying, it goes into temporary memory. You stop the reading, studying, that's when the assimilative phase starts, when it goes into permanent memory.
So the child stops and says, no more, I'm fed up, and it daydreams, or gets up and walks around, wants to eat something, chat with a friend, or little children will come to parents and say, I'm fed up with this, it's so boring. That's when the real stuff is happening.
Or to put, to give a more healthy turn, go and play in the garden.
What does it mean, play in the garden?
You may sit, just enjoy nature, soak in the feel-good beauty, joy, if you have that luxury. Otherwise, sit with a plant. If you have a pet, sit with your pet, do nothing, but in your mind a part stays open to all that you have absorbed and that's when this assimilative phase is happening.
If you do not allow the assimilative phase, you cannot not only not take in more, you can read all you want, nothing will stay.
But if at that time you say, okay I'm fed up with this, I close the book, I take up another study, you've made a huge mistake.
Because now the new reading, the new study that comes, goes and replaces the material in your temporary memory.
Even there is another study that shows, you switch rooms and you're as if switching states internally in the physical brain:
So, here is my study desk, studyroom, I go out now, and in the brain there's a switch, oh, I'm in a different mode, there I have a different activity.
So depending on what you do in the different activity, this assimilative phase may continue or not, but the brain has actually switched states.
So ideally you would stay right there, maybe close the book, or what I recommend is you keep the book open, drift through the pages, wander around, look at the overall picture, get a sense of what the whole thing is about, not focusing on details, not trying to remember, observe, notice, allow things to emerge.
If you want to do a very specific exercise, and this is useful much more for students who need to, well, prepare for an exam.
So, let's say, you've just studied one chapter, and your chapter consists of, well, let's say 20 paragraphs or sections, each of which consists of several sentences.
Look at what this sentence says. Mostly modern textbooks have short sentences. Look at what this, and this, and this. But then now look at the totality of the paragraph and look at the structure of all these sentences or the sub-ideas into a larger idea. Get a sense of it.
If you like as an exercise when you need to remember to cram up for exams, you have a notebook where you write down the key-ideas in that paragraph as a single sentence, summarised, short, you don’t have to be detailed.
(0:25:10)
Basically little pieces you now join into the cluster that the paragraph represents.
Do that for each of the 20 paragraphs.
Now you review the whole thing again. As you look at the text pages, you turn, you know, this para says this, that para is this, this, this. You're looking at a kind of a meta level of ideas. You turn the pages and you look at the broad drift of logic going through these paragraphs.
Now remember, I'm talking of students cramming for exams, but the same practice you could do with Sri Aurobindo's Life Divine and with huge benefits.
So, well, sometimes one paragraph is half a page. So you might need to break that further. Sometimes a sentence itself is made of so many sub-sentences.
So you first look at each of those fragments, then look at their combination: how this whole sentence has five different ideas or components making one large idea.
So normally what in the textbook would be one chapter becomes a paragraph in Sri Aurobindo’s writings.
So, with the same idea, same practice.
So you've gathered:
each sentence you kind of summarise in your understanding, and then
each paragraph you summarise, and then
across the paragraphs you see the drift of ideas, logic, sequence, interrelation.
Sometimes Sri Aurobindo will describe something in great detail and in the next paragraph he will say something like “similarly” and then say something in three sentences.
Now “similarly” in three sentences, that means those three sentences have to be applied to all that you have read in the previous paragraph.
It's an exercise of mind.
“Similarly” for everything out there which was a one-page para, in three sentences he has given for something else.
So each, for these three sentences, you have to now map on what is similar here and go through that whole thing. And you'll find in these three sentences he has given the equivalent of an entire paragraph of that previous page applied to a different thing.
So this kind of an exercise you may do, dwell upon, see the broad trend of logic and development of thought, and then you will see the entire paragraph you can hold as a single perception.
In French you have the word ‘aperçu’, literally translated as perception, a glimpse of reality. In The Life Divine it will be a “glimpse of the universe”. In your textbook it will be a broad topic that is now covered and closed.
In doing this, going through these meta levels, in your mind the fragments have been integrated and joined and slowly formed into a whole single experience. If you have done this reasonably well, you will find everything stays effortlessly.
Because now it's not 200 different fragments that you have to remember but it's one thing that you hold. And in that one thing, the fragments are interrelated. So it's like a chain or if I may use the example of a garden, a garland, the thread that ties 200 flowers, you pick up one flower and all the other flowers which are joined are tied to it.
So if you think you forgot one thing, you go to the thing which you remember and from there the chain links you to what you forgot.
Effortlessly.
Interesting.
So as an exercise:
Follow a process like this in your study. And remember after the first assimilative phase, you will pause and go through the absorption phase. Now you will dwell on it. Look at this and say, wow what a wonderful idea, what fantastic implications. How it changes my value of things, my perception, when you are studying Life Divine. Or with your textbook, oh yes, this-this, it makes so much sense now, I would have written it like this, that would make more sense logically. Maybe you'll improve upon the textbook in your mind.
Or do nothing, simply sit quiet.
So there was a study in Gujarat University where, this is going back now 25 years, and I'd read the, I had heard the people who did the study they said: we make the children sit down between classes and chant OM, during the break from one period to the next, chant OM for two minutes and then go to the next class. The result was that they dramatically increased retention, which of course they attributed to the OM-chanting. But I say, without, without meaning to be disrespectful:
You could do anything, even sit quietly and silence your mind, or repeat any calming chant, you would have got similar effect. It's not so much the OM. It's the fact that you have become quiet instead of active and allowed this temporary memory to settle, integrate and assimilate to become in the permanent.
(0:30:13)
Now, here's the catch:
If at that time you say, all right, I'm bored with this textbook, I pick up the next to study, this goes and erases all that is in the temporary memory before it had a chance to go into your permanent memory. The result is all that effort done before is washed out.
Now in a typical classroom in schools and colleges, universities, this is what happens. The children are sitting, teacher comes, there's an activity on the blackboard, teacher goes, next teacher comes after one period and erases what was on the previous blackboard and starts afresh with the new subject. Effectively in the child's mind there has been an erasure of everything from the first period even as the second starts because there was no assimilative phase.
And if you see a child coming home from school after three-four-five periods of study, you ask them: What did you study today? They will only remember the last period. For everything else they have to reopen the book because it's gone, it's washed out.
Because of the sheer stupidity of the modern education system which does not understand the psychology of learning and completely does it wrong, we lose so much time and suffer so much.
So when it comes back to long periods of study time, yes your total period may be long, but it must be cut up into short phases of concentrated absorption and then assimilation.
At the end of the assimilation, automatically you will find, and I have already given examples of that, you will say, ah, but this, and that, and that, your mind will pick up insights and draw upon it.
If it's a child who has just come home with enthusiasm of having learned something, he will say, you know what we studied in school today, and he will want to tell you.
So the instinct within us is, when we have truly learned something, we need to express not only appreciation but what we learnt in our own words.
So this is the third step for the brain: absorption, assimilation, summarisation or re-expression or articulation in your own way as your learnt knowledge.
You see, unless it is yours expressed in your own way, it's not learnt, you learnt, memorised and repeated without understanding.
But when you've understood and then you re-express in your own way, that is by heart, truly, not superficially.
So the third phase where you will write short notes if you like or write key implications.
If it's in a classroom setting with teacher-student relation, you would ask the students:
What do you think about this?
What for you was interesting?
What are the implications of that?
So come out with some creative insights, but for yourself summarising, putting in your own words, making notes in the way you have understood and articulating will fix it.
Completing this you will find now your brain actually feels free. You can now go into the next part of the study and it's available, your temporary memory is not clogged up.
So in your long period of study time, you'll have this three-step phase, three-step process many times over.
Ideally in a typical classroom, we would go through a three-step process in a single session with a single teacher even, multiple times if needed.
So once you understand this, and you've developed your power of concentration reasonably, and you apply the three-step process, you'll find very quickly you can learn, absorb, and it will be held in this very organised, structured, hierarchical way: in a single giant thought, multiple ideas and within each of those multiple ideas, smaller thoughts and so on.
And this is how also in time, especially when you do this with reading of The Life Divine, you will develop or amplify the powers of your mind and lift your mind from its narrow small operation of thinking to a larger operation which will be what Sri Aurobindo calls the “higher mind”.
So there are, remember in our study of Sri Aurobindo describing how to develop intuition, there were four steps. The fourth step, which I've never too much elaborated upon because it gets quite technical, and most people don't even bother or don't want to. The fourth step is literally this:
Through the activity of learning, you basically push the boundaries, amplify, enlarge, make more complete, more deep, until you exceed the limitations of your mind's working and widen out. And your small mind, small thought power grows into larger mind, larger thought power. And if combined with the first three steps, which are:
silencing the mind, and then
referring to the inner knowledge, and then
shifting the centre of thinking,
when combined with all these, not only are you opening to intuition, but also you're opening to the intermediate stages of the higher mind and the illumined mind and so on, through the activity of study.
Very important.
very powerful.
(0:35:32)
As I mentioned before, I had once planned a course for leading people through such kind of a learning system to actually build the power of the mind and amplify.
So I think this gives a reasonably good practical application for Aditya as well as Narayanan's question. But to Narayanan's question about lack of time and soaking in, well, do this thoroughly and especially when focusing on not informational but insightful knowledge. See informational you learn by heart, it has no value. Insight shapes your mind, widens it especially when you're learning things which literally go through, oh wow that's an interesting, wow I didn't think of that. Those kinds of insights that shape you, there particularly you will find your capacity grows.
But I'll throw-in one more reference.
When learning, which senses are you using?
Some of us are more visual.
Some more auditory.
Some more tactile.
Broadly, these are three types in which we register an experience.
So, the visual types: as I am reading, I will create images.
The auditory types: as I am reading, I will hear the words and get the nuance of what I catch in the sense of the sound of the words itself.
And the tactile type will need to touch and feel and experience with their senses otherwise it's too abstract: I need to do it, put it into practice, then I say, ah yes now I get it.
Of course we have all three within all of us. But which is your primary entry point to capture knowledge?
In fact these three correspond to three specific sub-powers of the intuitive mind also, but that's a larger discussion.
So which of these?
Observe and leverage that.
If you're visual, create images and images themselves will become larger and more complex with the higher mind faculties.
If you are more auditory, sometimes you need to hear. And so rather than reading, you may want to hear a recording, which sometimes you find more helpful, which leaves your mind free rather than keeping your eyes busy. The visual types won't like to hear.
And the tactile types you need to note down, write and that's what translates and fixes into your consciousness.
These three grades also correspond to the, in a sense loosely, to the thought mind, emotional mind and physical mind.
It's interesting.
If you have done all three, then you have actually tapped into all three layers.
But all this is to say, observe your primary modality of learning and utilise it, leverage it to your advantage by doing the necessary things relevant to that kind, that mode of learning.
And especially if you're reading, train yourself to read faster. There are courses for what is called ‘speed reading’. You don't need to go through a course, just two or three little exercises, sometimes just the intention for your eyes to read faster, you will read very fast and observe if you're enunciating.
I've spoken about this in some of the earlier discussions going back a year or two. Many people [as] (0:39:01) from childhood you were taught to enunciate when you read. If you're enunciating, your mind’s speed is slowed down to your biology vocalisation speed. Stop enunciating. Read purely from thought mind, and then your eyes can go like this, lines literally, and then there will come a point where you will look at an entire line in one go, and then later there can come a point where you'll scan the lines like that.
It's amazing.
And it's all of us are capable of this.
That's why I said I was so tempted to create a course which will lead people through this.
But all of us are capable of actually going like this.
Initially, you do this in the language which is for you your maternal tongue, or the one which is for you the most easy to read. In my case, although the mother's tongue is Marati, but my natural language is the English because that's how I grew up into it. So in English I can read so much faster.
(0:40:02)
So train yourself, that way you can go through a very large content rapidly, and if you have worked on those other powers, as you read through, in your mind it will get structured, assimilated, organised. You will pause, internalise, relate to, reconnect with other knowledge that you have, and it will settle in, and you say, ha okay, and then you go on to the next, and you will retain.
So here the focus is not so much on words, not on memory, not on verbal memory, but on idea memory or rather experiential memory, which is the real memory finally.
Verbal memory is the superficial layer of memory.
These are deeper layers which are permanent. They stay within for life.
So I think this is broad enough as an entry point. One could go much more, but then I would be actually doing the course.
Alina (0:40:54):
Yeah, maybe next time we can take up this technique which is called ‘photo reading’.
Sraddhalu (0:40:56):
Uh ha.
Alina (0:41:01)
So, it's exactly like this, you scan exactly with the fingers. Of course, they teach you the whole technique by getting into a higher state of mind, moving the centre of your awareness above the head, and there's a whole course which I paid quite a lot of money for exactly how to scan and do clutters of ideas and …
Sraddhalu (0:41:22):
Did it work for you? Did it work for you?
Alina (0:41:24):
Yes, because it gave me an idea how to study better and how to scan from the beginning because people said: How do you know if a book is what you're looking for? For they teach you how to scan for it, see first if it's, if it’s, if it’s for you or maybe you can just drop it in a few seconds after you are able to scan through.
Sraddhalu (0:41:51):
Mmhm. Okay.
So, that reminds me before we move to the next question, it reminds me there was a lady who had come, an American, she had come to our office in the Ashram where the books are laid out, Panditji's books, and she pulled out a pendulum from her pocket and began to hold it over each book, waiting for the pendulum to tell her by the rotation or movement whether she, that book was for her. I thought that was the most foolish way to do it. You are relying on some kind of subconscious resonance which will be temporary, superficial, of the moment.
Let's say you're stressed right now with a certain idea. Well, your pendulum will give you a response relating to your current state, not to some deeper need. Of course, you might also occasionally get some deeper need if you were quiet enough and asked that question: What would be valuable for my life? And then you might get something which is so deep that you will find you don't understand it. Because it's for a life, remember, you're going to read it 40 years from now and still find it useful. So, the pendulum is not the way to go.
And what you mentioned, literally, you pick up the book, turn a few pages, your eyes fall on some words, some ideas, some images, and something clicks or something, you say, oh, this is nice, but. After you browse through two or three, it's obvious which you need or which calls to you. Sometimes the title will show you also, but often just touching the book opening and flipping pages you may get the hint.
Alina (0:43:18):
We have another question: How to be enthusiastic and avoid fear of competitive exams?
I remember myself all these emotions rising inside when you had to do an exam or especially to speak in public.
Sraddhalu (0:43:36):
Yes.
Again going back to the first of our these three on the series number EWS #135, we had looked at some of the corrections we need to make. Review that.
The, one of the corrections is that the exam is going to define you or define your life.
No.
It will not.
Put exam in right context.
But the questioner is asking: How to be enthusiastic and avoid fear?
You see.
It's something very strange that the disgust we have or the fear we have, even sometimes hatred, for these competitive exams is so great that almost you have to create artificially some kind of an enthusiasm or liking.
Now, still you may use it.
You say, all right, here's an opportunity for me to test myself. Against who? Myself. That's it.
So, you have to, in a sense, reprogramme your mind, the context of the exam, place it in a different context first. Stop thinking of it as something for your life. Even to some extent, you can say: What's the worst that will happen if I don't do too well? Fine. I will sit again and do it, it's not a disaster, just as a way to free yourself from the tension although you may be stressed about that idea but you have to let it go, you're not going to die, nothing is going to happen, your life is not going to change.
(0:45:07)
So first you put in context:
you're going to compete against yourself; and
you will do your best irrespective of what comes.
Whether you'll come first, second or last depends not on how well you perform but on how well others perform. Right? So if you go to a kindergarten and sit for an entrance exam, you will come first. You go to a Ph.D. course of quantum physics, and you'll probably come last.
It's not how well you did, it's how well others did that will decide your ranking.
So your ranking has no meaning. It's a measure of your performance or their performance in relating, in relation to yours.
No meaning. Not in your control. Let it go.
So you might have to go through a process like this of reshaping, rearranging the context of the exam. The outcome is not in your hands irrespective of how well you do, forget it.
Now concentrate on getting through it the way you would want in competition with yourself based on the practice sessions you did.
Now very often children say this that during practice session I do so well but when I go to the exam, the stress kills me.
Well, if you do this correction internally, you will find it won't affect you. You will still be doing the way you are doing your practice sessions, maybe with a little bit of extra attention.
But implied in this question itself is something more serious.
Where does this fear of the exam come?
And although we have touched upon it before, I am going to amplify on this in a different angle now.
The fear is:
you are being rated in the let's say eyes of the world;
people will like me or dislike me;
people give me success or life will give me success or failure;
etc.
This whole binary thing which we have discussed before.
But in relation to the world.
No. It's not in relation to the world.
The only thing is in relation to yourself as relating to what you used to do in the past and what you will do today. And maybe tomorrow you'll do better or worse. It doesn't matter.
So you have to consciously de-link all these wrong associations and a large part of the fear will be reduced. There will be a kind of a slight tension which comes from anything which is, which demands extra effort, but that's manageable, and it is not such a big deal.
Enthusiasm will come when you are competing to prove to yourself that you can do better than what you did last time. And that's all. But first you must let go of these wrong things, then you can bring this enthusiastic aspect and say, okay, let's see how will I do.
One of the things which I chose to do because our School allowed it, I said to my mother: Would you rather I get the prize at the end of the year or I do whatever I want to do? And she said, no, it's fine, you can do what you like.
So I used to find that most of the homework that the teachers gave and based on which you basically got the prize, because in class you're doing nothing, you're passive, and this is not always, this with the bad teachers, so based on your homework you get an award I stopped bothering with the homework which was pointless, silly, and instead I spend that time to really learn a lot of things. And so I grew rapidly. I was typically two years ahead of my class in most things, and the class was boring, it was a waste of time. I waited to get out of class to study on my own and catch up with it and do my stuff.
And I found actually all the children were capable of this. It was not any exceptional capacity. It's just they had adapted to the slow pace of the boring, pointless activity or were attached to doing the homework to get a prize and so on.
So I benefited enormously in my capacity to learn, but I lost out on one thing which came from that slight competitive thing that it was no more interesting for me to compete. Competition did not have the, the push that was needed for me to make that extra effort, at least that kind of competition. I still did it when we had to, but otherwise it didn't matter to me.
So you, you lost on a skill which is otherwise useful in a competitive society. But to me it's not such a big deal. The capacity to learn having developed in any situation in life and especially with disruptive technologies, you'll find you can learn and adapt quickly and make do with the circumstances which have changed around you. So this is far more valuable, the self-competition in a sense or capacity to learn, to grow, to improve yourself.
We go to the next question.
Alina (0:50:16):
In our student life, we are sensitive to many things, among them are hormonal problems, fear, and anxieties, and career pressure, how can we find harmony in that with spiritual life?
Sraddhalu (0:50:34):
I want to also connect this with, because there was a reference to hormonal problems, I want to connect this to another question which we received from [Sri Valli] (0:50:42) which came on the email just earlier where she says:
Most youngsters are detected with autoimmune diseases as in the case with young girls having polycystic ovarian syndrome and other hormonal related imbalances. What could be causing this manifestation? How can we reverse it? And then she says that in her opinion, it's because of the emotional health of students being damaged by the competitive institutions. And she finds that their heart grows dry because of the competitive stress.
So like I said before, the competition in itself is not a problem, it is when you make that competition absolute that all this stress happens. Yes, it does destabilise you emotionally. Yes, emotions will destabilise hormonally because hormones are the physical densification of the emotional layers.
But that's not the prime reason for the hormonal distress.
You see, we had competitive stresses before also, but these hormonal problems are all in a relatively recent phase of last 20–30 years, primarily. And all these are coming in a large part from poisons in the environment and in the food.
I want to actually read from a couple of headlines that I came across only this morning. This is from euronews.com which has all three headlines. One is: toxic levels of forever chemicals. These are chemicals known as PFAS, PFAS as it is said. There's a technical term: polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS I will say. They are “forever chemicals” because they are not natural chemicals. They are special kinds of plastic forms which are permanent. They don't break down on their own. You can throw them in nature, they will stay long-long-long time, and even sunlight, they are resistant to sunlight and other processes.
So toxic levels of these PFAS, “forever chemicals”, are found in human breast milk in levels which are astonishingly dangerous.
So this was a study showing that it was, that these PFAS were found in the rainwater. They had gone into ecosystems such as Antarctica and in industrial cities, and this was a study done in France.
In the river, the quantum of these chemicals was some 30,000 times higher than before the industrial portion in the river.
And these are, I am reading, "They're chronic, systemic toxicants … they produce diseases that” don’t “show up until” later age. They have “been linked to decreased immunity, hormone disruption”, thyroid disruption, “elevated” levels of “cholesterol … serious health problems”, several kinds of cancer, “kidney cancer”, and so on, “breast cancer, prostate cancer, and bladder cancer".
And once they go into the system, in the water or air, they never come out.
Worse, once they go into the water, they get into your body, again, they never come out. They cross the placental barrier and go into the child, and this is the barrier which is one of the most sacrosanct in nature’s design, they go into the child while the foetus is forming, and then again through the breast milk, which again is a very specialised filtration nature makes, and all this is going into the foetal blood before the child is born with tendency for cancer and other kind of serious endocrine hormonal disruptions.
There is more, I don’t need to go into this.
And all this once in the system stays and recycles and continues recycles.
And this is in a country like France where which has, which has such tight controls, imagine what happens in India, where it is far-far-far worse.
Like I have mentioned before, in Pondicherry, 30 years ago, there was a study that said: human breast milk had higher-level concentration of DDT than permissible, and of course all these endocrine disruptors and hormone disruptors are operating on the children today.
(0:55:11)
There's another headline which says: brain inflammation caused by the chemicals in the air.
And there's another headline which says: alarming level of chemicals found in male urine samples. Of course, the male urine samples, they were looking for why there has been such a reduction in fertility in males, where the actual fertility has dropped more than half within a span of a few decades, all because of these chemicals. Looking for which chemicals it was, they discovered these “alarming” levels of a cocktail of bisphenols, dioxins and phthalates, paracetamols and some of the most dangerous chemicals which are up to 100 times higher than what is considered safe in the urine after it has passed through the filtration of the body.
Now imagine how much toxin is in the body just from our current lifestyle and the foods we eat.
Just today we had some food which was packed in this little what looks like aluminium plastic bonding which is what I was convinced it was initially and then looking more closely I discovered in fact it is plastic with aluminised paint inside. And the paint is inside, on the side where the food will come. And so the food is scraping against it. And what you eat has particles of this aluminised paint powder with all the other chemicals being eaten directly because someone thought to pack in something that looked to them safe or pretty.
And it's shocking.
It's deeply distressing, disturbing.
When you look at the reality of what's happening and no effort by the powers that be to do anything to correct it or efforts at best superficial.
Why?
And that goes into a larger agenda where at a higher level of the control system in society they want to reduce human fertility, they want people to be poisoned, they want sicknesses to grow because that's how they make money through the pharma industry and so on and it's a very perverse agenda.
But all this is now concentrating into the children and what used to be serious illnesses which were so rare have now become so common that I'm surprised nobody even raises this question and asks: What can we do or how can we prevent it?
You should know that all these illnesses are so to say artificial. They are not natural limitations of the body. They are artificially induced sicknesses from poisons, toxins taken in.
And this particular thing, the, the PFAS, I was surprised reading this article. It is there in dental floss. So you take a little string to brush your teeth and it is coated with a chemical that's now going to go into your body because anything in the teeth is going to be eaten eventually and it's going to poison you.
Shouldn't it be a crime to coat material that you will clean the teeth with to coat it with a poison?
It should be a crime.
And yet there's nobody standing up for these things. Look at all the drama that they will make for carbon dioxide which is a byproduct of natural processes. The drama that they will make for utterly trivial things on so many other kinds of issues, none of which affect your health and long-term survival. Nobody is standing up for these things. Think about why, and then you will begin to understand what happens behind the scenes.
Because the moment somebody comes up raises these issues, there are forces which will remove them from the media access, you will not hear about them anymore or they will buy them out and suppress them or deflect their agenda and push it into a different direction.
Who are these powers? What are the enormous funds and resources they have?
And then you begin to understand the game.
How will it ever be overcome?
Only by people waking up, and we have to be the, well, pioneers in that effort, but it means also that you have to deliberately choose to not take packaged foods or anything that comes packed.
One of the worst ways of getting these PFAs into your bloodstream is, I'm told, popcorn that comes in sachets that you, that you make at home, so they give a little sachet, you pour it into a, something to heat, and it becomes popcorn. Those have very high concentrations of all these chemicals.
Anything that comes packed.
If you buy fresh foods, make it yourself, you are less likely to have these things. But your fresh foods have been fed with water which had all these chemicals. So there's no escape but there is reduction possible. And then things you can do to detoxify and strengthen your health.
(1:00:05)
But I'm just putting this in context to the autoimmune diseases.
Yes, the stress of exam will matter. At best, it is a trigger or rather at worst, it is a trigger. But bulk of these sicknesses are coming from other sources and the stress amplifies and makes worse, starts the chain reaction, which would have happened 20 years from now, it starts it today because of the high stress level, but the sickness would have followed anyway eventually if not now then later with age.
So I'm putting this in context:
Yes, hormonal problems do exist, but there have been other biological reasons also, and of course the emotions aid or trigger fear, anxiety, career pressure.
How do you find harmony with spiritual life?
I will reverse the question:
When you have no other solution left, spiritual life is the only way, only thing left, which they cannot take away from you. Isn't it?
I was in a conference in Africa once, it was an inter-religious meet, and there were some activists who had been working for women's issues among the very poor. And this was from one of the countries which is one of the most abused, where literally some 50% of the population has faced rape or other kinds of extreme violence. And these activists were giving us an example. One of these activists said:
We went to a village which had just been destroyed and burnt and people had been raped, butchered and so on. One of those artificially funded wars where the multinationals fund the war, get people off and then take the resources which are underground. And then that lady said: How can you talk about spirituality when we are facing such extremes?
And my response to that was precisely this: When everything has been taken away from you what do you have left? the only thing which nobody can take away from you is the spirit within.
Isn't it?
And by the spirit I mean the deeper spiritual reality that you are.
Because everything on the surface has been literally torn out of you. And when you are left with this, giving a more extreme example than what students face but, when you're left with nothing, that's the only thing which nobody can take away from you and therefore that becomes the natural foundation on which you can rebuild everything.
Whatever may happen, however extreme the external damage, it is always the inner soul, spirit influence, that will rebuild inside out.
Equally whatever the extreme of external damage from illnesses including psychological illnesses, the ultimate healing will be from an inside out from the oneness which enters the multiplicity to bring it all once again into harmony.
The most powerful healing is this inside-out influence.
Externally, what can a doctor do?
You have a cut, they can stitch it together.
They cannot unify.
The unifying principle is from inside-out.
The doctors can assist to support that the wound doesn't break up again and again while the inside-out process heals and joins.
So finally it will always be the spirit which will give you the means to handle all those problems, to heal the damage they cause and eventually to master the situation to become master of those problems irrespective of the scale and scope of the problems. Because that is infinite, external problems cannot be infinite. That being infinite can overcome everything.
So I've taken it way out from the student's life where of course there's a lot of harm, but if spirit is the solution or is the foundation for correction of those extremes, it is also the foundation here.
So how can we find harmony in those problems in that with the spiritual life?
By recognising that the spiritual life is not your external religious ritualistic life, the spiritual life is the recovery of who you truly are at first in a kind of an intuitivised field or by an alignment to your deeper aspiration and then later by reference to that or the bringing of its influence into your current struggles, difficulties and problems, a quiet, deep, calm and peace that begins to fill you inside out, which although on the surface there may be disruptions does not let you be swept away on a deeper level.
(1:05:09)
From there now, with this influence further expanding, extending, it allows you to remain calm even when there are disruptions externally.
Or into that peace, the light that fills gives you insight, gives you clarity. Where there is confusion from the smoke and chaos outside, the light cuts through and shows you for what it is, helps you put in context, helps you put in right relation, helps you find the insight to correct and overcome.
And then from that deep peace and light, the power that gradually fills in the peace and light. The power that as it grows gives you the strength to stand firm and eventually to override and overcome.
And into that or behind that still, the deep delight and the joy. And as that fills and grows, you'll say, ah, here's another big challenge, oh, wow, that's a really big challenge, let me see how I can ride this out, how I can resolve this.
And the kind of an unvarying poise of joy in spite of the most extreme difficulties on the surface.
Now I'm not saying, all children can do that now.
But recognise that this is the true place of the spiritual, as the seed, as the centre around which everything has to fall in place, or from which you will have the capacity to overcome whatever the difficulties.
And in the context of children I will say, start early.
Give them the tools, give them the means to refer to this as early as possible which means you as parents you create that climate where they grow up, where they begin to value, and then as they grow, you refer to this more and more which means you must of course yourself practise it, so it's demanding for you.
And so they learn to refer, and slowly the entire personality forms around this core.
Ideally in the school itself you would create an environment where this would be nourished.
And so it is demanding from us as parents, as teachers, as adults, as captains of society, wherever we have responsibility to create spaces where this would be the foundation around which children can grow.
But not only for children, I would say, this is true equally for us as adults.
And so I broaden the question: But how do you find harmony in that with spiritual life?
I will say, rather find the spirit within to find harmony in that.
And if you can make this inside-out shift, even a little bit, in the child's reference and values, you'll find they will manage their journey in spite of whatever difficulties they have.
Of course, meanwhile, we will make efforts to reduce all these fears, anxieties, career pressures. But a little bit they will face in any case, because that's the nature of life. But to make it damaging, that part we can remove which also we should work for.
To be able to do that, again You need this deeper spiritual foundation to give you the strength and clarity on how to proceed, what to do and then to persist in spite of all the negative signals that you see around.
Think, that should cover the point.
Alina (1:08:43):
We have of another few questions which I will, maybe we will link them together.
Sraddhalu (1:08:54):
Yes.
Alina (1:08:55):
How to seek blessing or how to communicate with the Mother whenever feeling low or having anxiety, especially during exams? is the question of my daughter who is in the 10th standard at present.
How can we surrender our studies to the Divine Mother?
Where is the Mother in all this competitive chaos and insecurity and fear which it gives birth?
Sraddhalu (1:09:23):
You did not read the names of the questioners.
Alina (1:09:26):
Yeah.
Sraddhalu (1:09:27):
Meenal
Alina (1:09:28):
Meenal, Dracula and Anugraha.
Sraddhalu (1:09:32):
Yes.
Alina (1:09:33):
Okay.
Sraddhalu (1:09:34):
So to Meenal's question: How to seek blessings or how to communicate with the Mother whenever feeling low or having anxiety, especially during exams?
From a 10th standard student, that means 15 years old about.
You notice in the question itself something that whenever feeling low or having exam anxiety, how to communicate with Mother and seek blessings.
So you find naturally, as children or as adults, we turn to the divine when we have difficulty that we are unable to resolve.
(1:10:13)
We rarely turn when we are happy, isn't it?
So in a difficulty state, in anxiety, to be able to make that contact is very difficult, because you are not yourself, you're lost.
When you are calm, clear or when you are happy or content, it's much easier to open and receive. Start there. Start with the positive state, start with the states where you are clear, calm, and that's where you develop and build the relationship which then extends into that state when you come under pressure and anxiety.
And if you've already built it, then you will not be overwhelmed by the pressure and anxiety because you have the basis.
You can't say, now that I have a problem, I will start building the basis, it’s on, you are already on shaky ground.
So build on firm foundation, and you will never reach the shaky state. That would be the best answer in the long run.
In the short term, well, okay, since you have not worked on this and now you have suddenly an exam tomorrow, you are in stress, well, okay, make an effort to concentrate, to articulate, if nothing else, with words, with the heart, mind, whatever you can, and then focus, do as well as you can with your current capacity.
But really the long-term solution is to build that relationship first so that this state itself would never arise in this manner.
I'm going to spin the question around because it's coming from the Mother of that child and I will say: Why is it your child has to call in time of that distress the Mother's help?
That means she has already exhausted all her existing resources because she is remembering only in distress.
So all her existing resources are exhausted, including you as parent.
Now if you deeply introspect, you'll notice, quite a large part of the exam stress in your child is coming because of you, the way you have built up the pressure for that exam and the value that it has.
You are giving her the stress for which now she has no one left in the whole world, even including you as mother, so she has to turn to the Mother beyond.
And there you have failed.
I'm sorry, I'm putting it very sharply, bluntly.
But this would apply to a whole lot of parents, or 90% of the parents.
Look, what do parents do when the child is heading for the exam, especially when it's 10th standard and boards where literally you're going to define your life career and direction and so on. What do you do as parents?
Your career exam is coming. Your boards are coming. Don't do anything. Don't look at anything. Stop everything else. Why are you wasting time? Your boards are this year. Oh my God! Your boards, your boards, your boards. You have built up this whole drama of anxiety. You are anxious and are imposing that anxiety on your child.
Isn't it?
Why?
Of course, because you love your child. So, you want the best for them, for which you want them to suffer as much as possible, so that they may have the best.
You see the contradiction.
But what could you do?
Okay my child, don't worry. You have your boards but don't worry.
If you said that, you would feel guilty, because you will think your child is not going to make an effort.
In part, it's true.
Because you've already damaged the values.
It should have gone way back from class I onwards where you become very clear:
Your exams are not defining who you are. Who you are is a wonderful child who will do wonderful things irrespective of what happens with the exams.
And this should be the message from the beginning. But then you say, the exams are important, you need to get good marks because that's how you go into the next class and you get whatever paper you need to give you the opportunity to do what you want.
But what you want to do and what you will do has nothing to do with the exams.
This has to be there from the beginning.
And especially when you are helping them prepare for exams, you will never show anxiety. You will even take it as an opportunity as a play. Okay, we have an exam coming. Let's see how well we can do this time. You're not competing with others, you're competing with yourself.
You'll have to see it in this way and enthuse with optimism:
Let's see how well we do. What help do you need from me? Okay, board exams are critical because that paper is very important in the long run or in the short term for your entries into whatever institution you want to go. So, you'll have to pay more attention. Tell me what I can do to help you.
(1:15:18)
Instead of you getting anxiety and pushing it, you become cool first.
But all this needs a prior preparation and already a shaping of values.
Well, having come already to where you are, your child is already 10th standard, start to change now. Explain all this to your child and say:
You have all my support, tell me what I can do, I will not stress you out. But if you need attention, if you need no distraction, I will do my part. Feel free to tell me. If you need support, if you need a break, I will provide you the help whatever you need.
Remove the anxiety from you first.
And tell the child:
Whatever happens in your final numbers, you are still this wonderful precious child.
That's it.
And you will do well, irrespective.
And this is true. It's not an exaggeration. It's true.
In spite of whatever you get, you'll find your way to whatever you want to do, if you decide to do it, that is.
So, I think, you need to review as a parent. You need to review your role and then start making the change now so that by the time your child reaches whatever the 12th standard which are I suppose the most dangerous for them. You have already reshaped this relationship and the stress levels are minimised.
And some stress in any competition is good, but it's not a stress in which you're going to collapse from or being this extreme anxiety and fear. It's a bit like a stage fright. When you go up on stage in front of people, wow.
But then you learn to manage it, and that's part of the skill-training of life.
And there are ways again to train for that. It would be too long a discussion to go into that, but know that there are ways you can train for that kind of stress which is a healthy stress.
Dracula's question is: How can we surrender our studies to the Divine Mother?
Again, I would ask: Why do you want to do that?
You see, very often we follow a catchphrase of an idea, oh, if I surrender studies to the Divine Mother, then, what will happen?
That's what you are looking for.
Surrender to Divine Mother or calling for Mother's help is for a specific outcome that you want.
What is it that you want?
First, recognise: so, surrender our studies, finally I will get good marks maybe, or I'll be free of my stress, I'll be happy, I'll be able to sleep properly, right now I can't even sleep because of stress.
Observe what it is you're asking, asking for, and ask for that. Turn your attention to building that directly. Not in an abstraction, oh I will surrender, then something will happen magically, but I don't even know what it is I want.
That's not going to be very helpful.
So a surrender is not of your studies, surrender can be of your effort or of yourself or of the outcome of your efforts, those things you can do.
But again, for what?
Be clear about it and then you can align yourself in this movement of giving to any of these that works.
I've left the answer deliberately vague, because you can see how it can apply in so many different ways. Once you're clear, the rest becomes easier.
So again when, to Meenal's child's question about how to seek blessings or how to communicate with Mother when feeling low or having anxiety during exams:
What is it that you want from the Mother?
Ask for that.
First be clear what you want and then you ask for that.
And very interesting when you look at very little children, they will say something like, please make sure my mother doesn't stop loving me if I do badly in the exam.
You see where the child's value is?
And now you as parent are responsible for this. Are you willing to change? The bigger responsibility is you because you can change. isn't it?
And the last question was from Anugraha: Where is the Mother in all this competitive chaos insecurity and fear which it gives birth?
She is within you, where she always was except you never bothered to look for her except when you had your competitive chaos then you said, okay I need help, where is She?
Isn’t it?
In a way, in a way, that's why we have difficulties in life.
But let me immediately put that in context:
You see, the universe is growing, within us there are parts or the whole which is not growing, and as the universe grows it puts pressure for these parts to grow. To the extent they don't grow and there's resistance, they feel crushed, broken, eventually they break. That's the pain and struggle and suffering that you're going through. The parts which have stopped growing. And when that reaches an extreme and no other method helps you that's when you say, ah, Where's the ultimate help? And you ask for it.
What happens in the ultimate help?
The act of opening to that higher help makes this part open out from its limitations. Either it is crushed or it opens out and becomes more plastic and begins to change to keep up with the change of the universe.
(1:20:43)
So it's not like that it's coming as a punishment. That's why I said, I will put in context.
But it's true that you have problems because you do not open or you do not grow or in the parts where you do not grow that's where the problems come not as punishment but as, but as inevitable compulsion of change because the universe is growing and you are not or those parts are not.
So, where is the Mother?
Where is the divine presence?
Always within you.
And from within it is always this very gentle push forward to grow, to grow, to grow. And had you kept aligned with it from the beginning or in those parts, you would never experience the struggle. Because those parts would continue to grow with that gentle push of the divine will rising, pushing, growing. Agni within us. Isn't it?
We are lifted by that aspiration.
If we were entirely, utterly conscious down to the cells, even within the cells, there would be this constant evolutionary growth because of the aspiration rising. And we would always be in alignment, in sync with the circumstances, or even ahead of the circumstances creating greater harmonies, influencing an entire environment and the larger evolution.
But we are not. We are not conscious. We are often closed. We are dull.
And there's only a central part within us which is somewhat conscious or at best reflecting that aspiration which is within you, of which you are not conscious, but it is conscious of you. So it comes back to the point I made earlier:
In your healthy state, in your balanced and calm state, build that relationship. Align as much of you as possible with that central aspiration. To the extent it is aligned, even where the difficulties come because of insufficient growth, the push of the difficulty will intensify the influence of the aspiration and the action of the Grace make you conscious, ah, this part needs to grow, and you will make the change needed and the problem will go.
The problem is the pressure of push against resistance to not grow.
The moment you open and grow, the push of circumstances is an aid to you, helps you grow, isn't it?
So an external help and an inner help.
Where you do not follow the inner help and you do not grow, the external help becomes the pressure and cause for pain.
Where you are conscious and awake and do grow, the external help is a support and the inner leads already and sometimes is ahead of the external.
So I think that would be good enough for Anugraha's question.
I would still wanted to make a comment on an aside to this person who has taken the name ‘Dracula’: How can we surrender our studies to the Mother?
What made you choose ‘Dracula’?
Think about it.
In the mainstream media, entertainment media, there is now a fashion trend to make the dark attractive and to deprecate the light, to make evil and perversion somehow fashionable and the good and the right to be stale and boring, and it's done deliberately by deliberately warping the way these are represented. And if you recognise the warping, then you see behind what is the agenda and where it's leading you.
So I wonder why you would want to take ‘Dracula’? What is it that you're associating with ‘Dracula’?
But look more deeply, don't go with the superficial appearances.
You see there are so many TV serials now which show people killing at the drop of a hat and then, oh yes, so and so died. It's trivialising something which is so serious. And in a child who's watched enough movies of killing, somehow you're numbed to what it means.
(1:25:04)
Or you play video games where you kill, you take a machinegun and ggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, 20 people killed.
Each of those is a parent to children, is a child to parents, has dependents, there's been a huge effort of struggle in the soul's evolution to build a certain capacity, a personality, a growth and is perhaps just doing a job somewhere for some greater objective that they would like to serve or grow towards, and here a bullet comes plop.
Oh they were on the bad side, so it doesn't matter.
You see, there's been a kind of a numbing.
And ‘Dracula’ also, what it represents actually, what it does, if you look at it, while the cinema may make it even attractive as a, as a role, or make Dracula appear to be a victim, what's behind it is somebody who sucks other people's blood, other people's energies and kills them for its own need of some kind of a crude-coarse lust.
When you see it in these terms, you say, how, how ugly.
But the cinema made it attractive, made it somehow fashionable.
So, I would suggest, you review that and perhaps change that term. And if, if through it, you have been attracted to horror movies, make the correction to withdraw from it, because these things go very deep inside at a subconscious level. And they begin to shape you and get into you as fears and anxiety patterns, which are now rooted at an early age as a child, which pop up later in life, and you don't know where they came from, but you ate them, so to say, as seeds, psychological seeds that warped you, built up fears and negative associations at an early age.
So just take this as a pointer and review that and see if you can find a term that better expresses your deeper and higher aspiration and make that your pen name in the social media.
Okay.
So I think we have already reached one and a half hours and we'll have to keep the other questions for another time.
‘Reviewing’ is much of what we have looked at and now applying it to all of us whatever be our age.
The time to build your relationship with the Divine Mother is when you are capable of it. You're open, calm, receptive with reasonably conscious sense of the aspiration within you, that's when you spend some time to deepen, to open and include as much of you as you can.
When this is sufficiently integrated, the difficulties will not come or what ‘the difficulties come’ as will not be seen as difficulties because of the constant help and the capacity to align and adjust and grow.
If difficulties come, and especially when they are of the type which are crushing something in you, you say, ah yes, now this part is demanding to be changed, demanding to grow, and you will take it with a different spirit.
You will not be overwhelmed if this alignment is sufficiently made.
And this is what we must all aim towards.
Not wait for a crisis, to, then ask for help.
Of course, you will still do that.
But if you have build this foundation, the help at that point will bring you into this state of calm and poise that you're used to being in. It will be far more effective.
So especially for those of us who have a conscious spiritual aspiration, this should be our primary effort for which dedicate some time, even if it is five minutes every day in deepening this relation and making it more complete in all the parts of your nature and especially going as close as you can to your central aspiration as deep as you can and then from there realigning the whole of your personality around that centre.
And then we have discussed so many tools for learning, methods, rhythms of learning. Use all these to grow, to learn, acquire knowledge.
If you have already worked on quieting the mind and opening it to the higher intuition, then all these things will be enormously amplified. And then in a single lifetime you can literally, in external skills and knowledge, learn the equivalent of ten lifetimes worth without exaggeration.
It's surprising, and I often look at it this way: if today's consciousness and capacity you had when you were young, imagine how much more you'd have been able to do. At that time, well, you did what you could and you built up to this capacity. But this capacity if you could have then, when your biology and mind are still in the formative stages, you can learn so much more, isn't it?
But you can still do that today irrespective of the age, the only difficulty you have is a certain rigidity that comes from the biological rigidity in which creeps into the emotions and mind. If you can consciously work on making the body more conscious and plastic, conscious-plastic, focus on this much, through asanas, through exercise, through stretches, through infusion of awareness, whatever method, it will ripple through all those other layers, and your mind and heart will become as young as you were in your teenage or as plastic and receptive and capable of growth without exaggeration again, because these in substance are already like that, they don't age, the only ageing is in the biology, and through it the influence of that ageing on the mind and life force.
So work on this and then through that interface allow the youth or in some part of your mind-consciousness, disengage from the body to be able to recover its youth, plasticity, that's what it is, and widen, absorb, receive and then infuse into the body. And the body will receive and become the repository, the base of stability for what the other layers of consciousness can open towards.
This would be the approach in the school of life for those of us who are in the spiritual path, irrespective of age.
We'll take a moment to concentrate and recall the three-step process:
absorption,
assimilation, and then
re-expression.
So we will stay in a quiet assimilation, and the expression of it will be the turning into life in the state of aspiration to want to put it into practice.
Namaste.
Alina (1:32:43):
Namaste.