EWS #138 Advice for Students and Parents – IV + Q&A

19 Nov 2022

Alina (0:00:24):

Namaste.

Good evening everyone.

Namaste Sraddhalu.

Sraddhalu (0:00:29):
Namaste. Happy to be with all of you.

Alina (0:00:33):
We are happy to continue today our series, Part IV, on “Advice for students & Parents”.

We received some questions from some students and parents and Sraddhalu will be answering today.

So we also kindly ask you to write your questions in the chat box or you can write your questions beforehand at our email id: integralstudies.in[at]gmail.com.

We will answer some questions on some important topic: stress during the exams.

Mahadevan is addressing this question: In the natural development of things, stress improves performance unless it is a debilitating nature. In peace, no stress and far greater capability is built. What do you think of this statement?

Sraddhalu (0:01:41):
Yes, there is an important point there that under stress sometimes performance can improve, but in a state of no stress perhaps the improvement can be greater.

But I'll put all this within the context of:

when it is helpful,

when it is not,

what are the conditions that make it helpful or not.

And for this we will go back to those three words which we have discussed quite extensively earlier in particularly one discussion titled “The Three Modes of Nature”, and these are the three terms:

tamas, that is inertia;

rajas, that is kinesis, movement, activity;

and sattva, which is balance and harmony.

Everything in nature is as if a combination of these three tendencies. Nature builds matter itself and all processes by various combinations of these three things.

So you will see in the yoga tradition, in the Ayurvedic tradition which has to do with health and food and practically all traditions in India, eventually these three terms will keep popping in because they are so fundamental to the very character of all constructed nature. Nature replicates qualities of pure consciousness of the soul using combinations of these three.

And so if you can modulate these three, you can practically create anything or modify anything in nature.

So this is part of the larger discussion which we already had before.

But now we put this in this context of stress and its relation to performance.

So in a human being typically we have these three things in various blends which make for distinctive personalities but also because we have three bodies, the physical, the vital, and the mental, each of these three bodies has predominantly one of these tendencies.

So the physical bodies, well, predominantly of the nature of inertia, the vital body, life force, is predominantly of the nature of kinesis, and the mind is naturally of the temperament of balance and harmony.

So we will say ‘tamasic’ for the body, ‘rajasic’ for the vitality, emotions, and ‘sattvic’ for the mind, but that's the broad tendency of those grades of consciousness.

Within your human biology, psychology and in these bodies, some of these tendencies may predominate.

For example, there may be a person whose physical body has a very strong character of rajas, drive and compelling force while the body biology may have inertia as its basis, because of the strong influence of the vital nature in the body itself you may find a strong character of rajas.

Similarly somebody may have in the vital nature a tendency for inertia so he's always depleted, tired, under the weather or equivalent in the mind which instead of being sattvic by nature could become tamasic or rajasic. That being the case when a person has a natural tendency for inertia, to have to make effort needs a push, and very often the stress is that push or rather you experience stress because of the push.

(0:05:31)

So, I am going to describe a certain phase in India which was just before what they called ‘the liberalisation of the economy’ sometime let's say early 90’s, before that the economy was so heavily controlled under the Nahrurovian communist socialist model that you had no scope of freedom, everything was controlled, and enormous corruption top-down. So people had no compulsion to make effort. There was always insufficiency, so tendency to scramble. And everything was set. No change. No improvement. No growth.

India had one model of cars which was government-controlled manufacture. And then they came out with a Mark II and a Mark III and a Mark IV. And my friends would say, see that's a Mark IV and that's a Mark II. And it looked exactly the same to me. So I asked: What's the difference? They stared for a while, they had trouble also. Finally they said, you see on the headlight, there is this little nudge there, that's a Mark IV.

So in that condition of enormous inertia imposed on the country, suddenly with liberalisation came this surge with freedom, desire, greed, and there were people who were very upset about it.

But that phase of excitation, potential of desire and wanting more became the driver for growth for a society which had been held repressed for so long.

And then you saw in villages where people had very comfortable, easy, stable, stagnant lives, suddenly the push of desire and people were upset that now advertising was creeping in and waking up desire in people.

But what you saw in that transition was from a society that was pushed into inertia, a first attempt to transition through rajas for which desire was the driver and then from there eventually there would be the balance. Once you have satisfied the desire sufficiently, you say, okay this doesn't really satisfy, I try another and try another, and finally you either exhaust the drive or you say, well, none of these are going to satisfy, there is something else, and you rise to a more sattvic balance and harmony.

So in India we are somewhat in that transition. It takes typically at least a generation to make some of these transitions.

Now I'm speaking of course very generally in the masses. There were individuals and they're always exceptional. That's a different story.

But my point is from inertia you need the kick to transition through a rajasic phase in your evolution where your capacity to act, to become dynamic and active is trained but of course initially it is unbalanced, it is excessive, it is exaggerated, desire-driven and so on, and then from there you are ready to mature into a sattvic consciousness.

If you do not pass through the rajasic phase, then the sattvic balance, harmony can very easily slip into the tamasic, and you cannot distinguish the two quite so well.

So this phase of the rajasic transition is critical.

And so what you can say is for a temperament which is primarily in inertia, the stress, the challenge of desire, the promise of reward, the threat of punishment, all of these can combine to give the necessary push through a rajasic phase where the kinetic aspect is gradually awakened.

Once that comes into its own, you do not need the reward and punishment or carrot and stick, and you are ready to mature into a harmonious balance where stillness becomes quietude and not inertia and kinesis becomes dynamism, force without excitation and imbalance. And the sattvic character becomes a source of light which illuminates and brings the right perception and direction.

So for a tamasic nature, the reward, punishment, promise, threat, desire, greed, provocations are all helpful to move through the rajasic phase which helps to overcome inertia and sometimes those types need it.

(0:10:10)

For a more Rajasic nature which is already excitable there's already enthusiasm and excitation to do something more, the temperament enjoys the challenge and the excitement, sometimes it lives for it, and when there is no excitation, there's no challenge, it feels bored or it tends to lapse into inertia or look for a problem that it will have to create in order to create excitation in his life. Many people who live in the emotional vital, although having a mind but we live in the emotional vital, they tend to have this tendency. If life at home is too simple, too boring, they will create a quarrel. They'll find a problem over which to start worrying. And it may be so trivial when you look at it objectively, but they will break their sleep over it until it is replaced by a bigger problem. But they need something to keep that sense of excitement. For such a type, for a rajasik type, the stress of competition, exam, the promise of reward or the fear of loss of something can be a nudge to be able to make that extra effort and could be helpful.

For the Sattvic type which is already quite calm, clear, organised, the stress can be a disturbance because it tends to break the balance and the harmony. It clouds the mind, it clouds the perception. And so for them it becomes a training now how to maintain the sattvic character under stress and not lose it.

And so you can see how the stress acts differently for these three types. If used properly, it can be a help. If overdone, the tamasic nature falls back and says, this is impossible, I will never get anything worthwhile, I give up, I would rather step out of the competition. Because it sees no hope.

The rajasic, when overdone, tends to break down and becomes obsessive etc.

The sattvic similarly may have difficulties of a different kind. When you push the competition too much, they say, ha this life is not for me. And they will shift out and say, okay, those who want to scramble can scramble, I will make do with something which is less.

Now in the context, all this was a general discussion you can apply to any kind of competition, you can apply to the scramble in the reward system of promotion in a job for example or any kind of competition otherwise or just the craving to have more in life to have greater comforts or wealth etc.

But when it comes specifically to the domain of school, studies and examinations where the large component is mental, at that point, a sattvic basis is superior because the mental knowledge needs a sattvic purity.

Knowledge in itself is difficult to hold in purity or exercise in purity when disturbed or distorted by restlessness or by inertia.

Because mind is temperamentally of a sattvic character or at least a purified mind, and knowledge requires that.

If the same school competition was for gymnastics, athletics or some games where the primary drive is kinesis with physical skill, then you don't need that sattvic character, a rajasic character will excel.

So, coming to the school academic space, sattvic character will excel even under exam stress.

But for everybody to have developed a sattvic character would be more advantageous. And if they do that, they would not need too much of this exam stress push.

Similarly, coming to the more physical types of competitions, where the rajasic character is required, if it can be done in a friendly match rather than a desperate match, the performance is better, the learning is better and so on.

So, sattvic influence always is more helpful for growth and learning.

So I'm putting in context the statements of Mahadevan. So ideally, for a tamasic, rajasic nature, the push of stress can be helpful. For a sattvic, it may not be so much. But for all of them, if they can bring themselves into a quietude of clarity, of balance and harmony overall in their entire consciousness, all learning can be enormously accelerated.

Now all this is still largely in the domain of academic and teenage learning. Once you come into the more adult space, the nature of learning itself is of a superior kind. You want deeper insight, you want perception, you want to be able to manage situations where the demands are perhaps have no precedent for you. There the poise of sattva, balance, harmony, peace, non-stress allows you to reach out to a higher knowledge, a higher inspiration or deeper inner guidance or insight. You need that sattvic balance to be able to access those things which will make the real difference.

(0:15:45)

And therefore the point that in peace and no stress a far greater capability can be built.

In the same way, if you were learning a skill which is purely material, let's say you want to learn to play a musical instrument, if you get into it with excitement, with tension, with competition, maybe all it would do is give you energy to try more. But the skill itself wouldn't be acquired. In order to acquire the skill, you'll have to put yourself into a state of complete stillness all the way down to the most material part of your body, nerves, muscles and then be able to move a single finger with full awareness, in full stillness and concentration.

And that's how you're going to develop skill by infusing consciousness, infusing mind into the body, into the nerves, cells, tissues, muscles, making them more conscious and infusing coordination within them. And that's the only way you will rapidly learn.

And so therefore we understand now why that state is, can give you far greater capability.

And so training children from childhood to be able to put themselves consciously into this state of complete clarity, calm, balance, equality, relaxed, even when externally there is a pressure of stress. You train them to be able to do this from the beginning, and you will find they can overcome any kind of stress.

So for example a child who has had this basic training, you are asked to do a performance let's say of a theatre programme or just give a speech, and the auditorium is full, most children will start shaking, feel tension, they have notes which they have carried and the notes will slip from their hands or they memorise something and at that moment suddenly it blanks out. All those problems happen.

But if you have trained in this, then you can actually disengage, withdraw, concentrate on the thing which you are carrying and with complete days of calm, clarity be able to articulate. And you will, may need to do that two or three times to get the full grip on that skill, but the skill itself will be the key, and it will allow you to make a very rapid progress and very rapid learning.

I think we can go to the next question.

Alina (0:18:26):
Mahadev is addressing: Maybe Mother can reveal question paper if the call is made in unbearable pain. Just joking.

Sraddhalu (0:18:37):
Yes, it was a comment in the chat box last time that under exam stress, if the call is made in unbearable pain, then the Divine Mother could reveal the question paper itself.

And although said in joke, the point I wanted to highlight because this is what the question points to, is that in fact, yes, you do have and you can have the help even to the extent of revealing to you the insight of the questions that the exam paper would require you to answer.

We know personally, I've heard from many people and many of you have yourself experienced or heard from others, examples where a child feels totally unprepared, maybe the night before opens the textbook, turns certain pages, the eyes fall on certain things, and they go and it's exactly those questions in the exam or even sometimes in dream state you find yourself being shown something and you wake up and those questions are in the exam.

And you have no other explanation except to say, oh it was some kind of luck or intuition or gift or guidance.

But the reality is this:

And the point which he made, if the call is made in unbearable pain, then you will get that help.

It's not about the pain. It’s not about the fact that it is unbearable.

(0:20:04)

It is the fact that in the unbearable pain you make an exclusive focus in your concentration. You've not prepared at all. You know that it's not possible. In desperation you open the textbook and turn pages, and there's a state there which is not your normal state. There is a kind of a one-pointedness of the focus, and an exclusive focus, and an entire focus. And at that point, it creates the ideal condition for the intuition to reflect.

Remember those two keywords which I keep referring to:

an entire self-giving; and

an exclusive self-giving.

And it's a state of one-pointed full concentration, which is not only helpful for opening to the inner and higher ranges of consciousness, it is also the best state, when calm, to receive the intuition or any higher guidance or insight.

And so when somebody is in unbearable pain and you make the call, it's as if the whole world has failed me, I have nothing left except this one, and please help me, and the total sense of self-giving in desperation in a one-pointed call, that's when you have made the link because of the state of concentration.

So you do not need to reach that point of unbearable pain, you only have to put yourself in that one-pointed concentration, and you will receive the same help.

So again, training oneself to be able to enter that state and hold that state, which is like a basic foundation for development of intuition, [but] (0:21:42) training yourself for that makes it possible for you to access help when in situation of stress whenever that may be in life.

And that's why the prior training is so important.

You see, Mother gave a lot of importance even in meditation to the spontaneity of the experience that comes and to allow it to carry you.

And Champaklalji once asked Sri Aurobindo:

When the force comes, when the experience comes, anyway I will have it, isn't it? So why should I sit and meditate every day?

Sri Aurobindo's response was this, that by regular concentration you are building the receptive base, so that when it comes, you have the capacity to receive. Otherwise if you have not built up that base, even if it comes, there's only so much that you could absorb.

Or in this case of the stress of life and the challenge when there's a crisis, you reach out to call, but you have not developed the capacity to make that one-pointed concentration nor to hold what is received, and so, although the help is given, you are not able to make full use of it.

So I wanted to, although it is, comment was made in jest, I wanted to point out the truth of it.

And the lesson for us, which is, prepare yourself by regular practice, by deepening the relationship with the inner and higher of your own inner and higher consciousness or with the divine, so that not only is it a general influence gradually growing in your daily life but when the situation demands, when there is a crisis, you are able to then receive more fully, more completely with a special concentration as needed to overcome.

I think this would cover the two questions of exam stress.

We can go to the next.

Alina (0:23:35):
We have some questions on food and learning.

Meenal is writing: Does food really matter in mental and spiritual strength of the person?

And Vijayanthi: In Srimad Bhagavad Gita, three types of food are mentioned. Please elaborate on correlation between ageing and these three types of food. And also, on: Why in traditional spiritual practices, onion, garlic, non-veg food are asked to be avoided? And how this issue is taken care of or tackled in Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga?

Sraddhalu (0:24:17):
Yes.

Vijayanthi's question has been waiting for a few months already and so it combined well with Meenal's: regarding food and its influence on the mind, and on the spiritual strength, on ageing, in this case as well as traditional practices.

I'm linking it to our overall discussion for students and parents, because this is very important in the children's lives.

While the body is growing, the body is made of the food that you eat. So what food you eat is what becomes the tissue eventually. And the tissue that you build during your growth phase is going to stay largely in the overall structure and character and tendencies and habits, is going to stay throughout your life.

(0:25:12)

And therefore the foods you eat in your early years especially till the age of 21 where the biology itself as if consolidates its overall development is critical. And by food I will generally say, everything that goes into you, because there are some things which you don't necessarily eat for the sake of food but which go into you anyway and they have their effect.

So I'm going to make this question a little bit broad and then also go to the specific aspects of what has been asked.

First of all, staying with Meenal's question: Does food really matter in mental and spiritual strength of the person?

As long as you are incarnated, that is, identified with the physical body, all your other gradations of consciousness including the subtler gradations of bodies, all of them are identified, fixed in the gross physical body. What happens to the gross physical body influences everything else.

Now for example, in a person in whose gross physical body there is a nervous defect which is affecting the normal working of the brain or nervous system let's say which makes for some aberrations in behaviour or in ability to exercise action. Such a person when he separates from the gross body and is in dream state will not have those aberrations because the aberration is in the biology. But when that same mind in the mental body which is free of this aberration comes and rejoins into the physical body, again one becomes susceptible, because, well, all the bodies are identified together in this very special circumstance of incarnation in the physical world. That's why this body is so important. It unifies all the gradations of consciousness into a single working that if you can develop fully would impact all those levels simultaneously, or the full potential of all those levels can be incarnated in a single plane which cannot be done on other levels. Each level can develop its potential on its own level. Here is where all the levels can develop all of their potentials in a single substance.

So it is something quite extraordinary.

I have touched upon this point in various ways over various discussions.

But being in the body with all the problems we have is still one of the greatest gifts and potentialities for our evolution as such as you will not get anywhere else. However more beautiful those worlds may be, what you can do here in spite of the difficulties is so much greater and therefore the statement: that even the gods need to take birth upon earth or rather in the physical body if they want to truly evolve.

So that being said, yes, food does matter or rather does influence, because all that affects the physical body influences all other levels as long as you are incarnated in the body.

If you separate, no, it will not.

If you do join, yes, it will.

So having said that:

What is the kind of influence and what can we do?

To what extent is that an influence and / or compulsion?

If your mental body is now sufficiently developed, it reverses the relationship with the physical body.

Where earlier the mind was as if emergent from the body and so dependent on it, once the mind comes into its own, the first thing it does in its evolution, it turns around, seizes the body consciousness and begins to shape it into the mind's terms.

Now something interesting happens.

You trigger the body, it affects the mind, but the mind can then override that effect and even push back against that body and change the body’s reaction.

And this is where life becomes really interesting.

As long as you don't have this reversal, you are pretty much a barbarian. If your mind is just barely emergent, you are a savage.

If you have, your mind is emergent but still largely dependent, you are a barbarian.

When the mind comes into its own and turns around and begins now to modify the physical body, that's when you are, in the Vedic vocabulary, ‘Manishi’, a mental being, otherwise you're a physical being largely, isn't it?

So being a mental being now, well, your mental values can predominate and even override, modify the biology values.

(0:30:02)

So again coming back to the question:

Yes, food can affect the mind.

But mind can override the food effects.

How much?

Depends on your mind's development, its overall control and influence over the biology, depends on the kind of food that came in and the degree of the provocation it offers and so on.

For example, there are certain situations where a fully developed, let's say, mental being with a very strong mastery over the biology can override the pain.

So you want to go through a surgery, the mind can simply will it, make that part of the body numb or make itself immune to the pain of that body and you can do a full surgery without any pain. Or there is pain, but you are unaffected.

As you know, this is the case with Ramana Maharshi when he had the cancer on his elbow, the doctor wanted to operate, he said, okay, go ahead. And they said, we want to use anaesthetic. He said, no, not needed. So without anaesthesia they did a full surgical removal of the tumour. And somebody asked Maharshi: Maharshi, aren't you suffering? And his response: There is pain but no suffering.

So profound.

The pain is a biological response.

The suffering is a psychological response.

You see.

So you can choose to not suffer and still allow that surgery to take place.

When Sri Aurobindo had his accident, and of course, that particular pain, the fracture of the thigh bone, is the single most painful fracture one can ever have in the human body, and he said, it took him a few minutes before he could shift it back to the level of the Ananda.

You see in the physical consciousness he had established the Sachchidananda, all sensations were now perceived directly as contact of Sachchidananda. But when this pain came, it was so intense, he said, it took him a few moments before he could bring it to that level and bring back the balance of the Sachchidananda.

Later when the doctors were doing what they had to do, his leg was on the hard plaster and so on, of course the pain is there. He was asked that: Isn't there pain? And then his simple comment was: One can be above pain.

So the pain is there on this level, you can shift your level of consciousness, and then you don't have pain. You can shift it back to the biology, and you say: Yes, the pain is there, but I don't have pain.

Interesting.

All this is to show you that while on the biological level there may be extreme provocations depending on your, the relationship set by the higher development you can push back, and even to the extent that you can make yourself immune to certain kinds of mild kinds of poisons.

Where somebody taking this would be inebriated or lose consciousness, you can choose to will yourself not to lose consciousness.

And that part is not so difficult in fact to a certain degree. The question is really one of training and asserting your mental will and consciousness.

So, does it affect the spiritual strength?

Again, in the level of consciousness depending on how evolved it is and how much it is dependent on the biology or the relationship has been reversed, it will influence.

But it need not, and the spiritual can push back, free itself, modify itself, even liberate itself from that provocation or turn that which would have been a negative provocation into a positive support and so on.

But all this is, requires work, it does not happen automatically.

So applying this now to the common mass of humanity, yes, food can make a big difference to the mind. It can even influence the spiritual capacity, sensitivity and so on.

Therefore, the importance traditionally given to the kind of food that you eat when you are developing the mind or when you are seeking a spiritual development.

And I will still come back to the context of the Integral Yoga later, first let's understand how this influences.

We have already discussed the three modes of nature:

inertia, tamas;

kinesis, rajas;

balance, harmony, sattva.

So food is of these three types as referred to by Vijayanthi in the Bhagavad Gita, Shri Krishna speaks of these three kinds of food and naturally the influence, the three bodies with these three types of influence.

Now remember as a student you want to amplify the sattvic.

So Sri Aurobindo puts it this way in his writings on education. You want to remove the tamas, the inertia, in your childhood training, remove completely. The rajas, kinesis, you want to bring into stability and control. That it should not become a restless agitation, controlled to be able to be directed as needed. And the sattva, balance, light, illumination, you want to increase and amplify as much as possible.

(0:35:37)

So in your student life phase this is going to be the highest priority. Obviously then to the extent possible you would modify the food also. Except, there's another problem, if you go only with sattvic food, the gross physical body may not get the necessary nutrients for the dense parts of the bone construction which often are associated with foods that have tamasic content or the vitality of the life force will not get the necessary let’s say  amplification which might come with certain kinds of rajasic foods and so on.

So you understand in nature these three tendencies are there for a reason. Their balance is critical, not the one one suppressing or overriding the other.

Of course, in the mind you want to amplify sattva. And that sattvic character you want to bring into the life force, where you want to amplify and bring control in the life energies. And all that you want to bring into the physical body, where you want to bring a calm, stability, free of inertia, but a stable base. And that would be the ideal formation.

Now food would help, they are not the only thing.

Activity is extremely important. So the games you play, you can't play only sattvic games, you have to also play games which demand from you the rajasic push. And the games themselves as an activity of kinesis would help free the body from the tamas, inertia. And so all activities which tended towards this shift would be good, and food would be a support.

But again remember it's a balance which has to match also the temperament of the person.

So the best reference is observe what effect a food has. For a certain rajasic type, they even need the rajasic kick. Or your body has got so habituated to a little bit of chilli let's say as a rajasic kick that without it you slide into inertia, so you adjust to the habitual nature or you modify the habit gradually over time and so on.

All these foods have a nutritional content which may be also a mix of these things.

So apply common sense once you understand these principles.

In the Indian civilisational attempt and this is going back a few thousand years of the civilisational effort, the attempt was to use this knowledge to maximise the potential for growth in every way and especially towards the spiritual but along the lines of your natural temperament, your swabhava, temperament, swadharma, innate truth of being.

And so, you will recall the discussion on the four temperaments, largely the four soul powers, for a man who seeks knowledge, amplifying the sattvic content would be more valuable. But for a man who seeks the drive of leadership, adventure, power, force, the chivalry, nobility of power, the rajasic component would be important. And therefore for a seeker of knowledge they discouraged meat but for a seeker of power and strength meat was acceptable. Even it was part of the culture for a king to be trained in the art of self-control under stress even when he has to kill an animal for example, so they would go for the hunt in the forest and the intention was not to to pander to that rajasic impulse but to bring control and mastery during the state of stress of the chase, of the seizing and so on.

In the more, in the third character of the harmony, balance, exchange, interchange, the businessman, the conditions were more relaxed, you could take pretty much everything and for the worker, the skilled craftsman, it didn't matter too much whatever worked according to their nature and temperament.

But for those who are trying to push beyond the certain boundary, the food could be a help. This was one of the principles used in the civilisational values.

Therefore we see that meat is allowed, well, for those who need it, but it is forbidden for those in whom it could cause trouble, and it's for you to choose what is your temperament and your priority, isn't it?

(0:40:33)

I've seen people in whom the body itself as a biological habit needs the meat and when they suddenly stop the meat there's a dramatic drop in their overall life force as well as nutritional balance and all that, it takes the body a while, sometimes a few years to get back that balance because they've already formed the habit over a few decades.

So be conscious of these things.

The point is rather to observe the benefit or the limitations and then make choices and build new rhythms and habits.

So particularly now I come to the part where Vijayanthi asks about traditional spiritual practices: onion, garlic and non-veg foods were to be avoided or outright forbidden.

Especially in the more ascetic traditions where the goal was remember withdrawal from life and for withdrawal purpose make yourself more and more sattvic, more and more refined until all the gross tendencies which bind you to life to desire, to nature would be weakened enough that you can pull out.

And what's the biggest compulsion that drives you or binds you is, well, desire, need, craving of all kinds. And anything which amplifies passions or desires would be avoided, these include onion, garlic and non-vegetarian foods, which can have that effect.

On the other hand, if you look at what nature has put in onion and garlic, very strong, I don't know the terms used in modern medicine, but very strong molecules which help to purify the blood, strengthen the heart and make yourself capable of greater dynamism, even heal, overcome illnesses. Why? Because it amplifies that rajasic quality in the parts of the biology function which relate to rajas which includes the heart and the blood obviously because that's the life force being pumped out. So from a purely health perspective these could be extremely helpful.

Now if you are taking one of those very ascetic practices, then you would obviously avoid these things.

From the perspective of the Integral Yoga, I would simply say, observe the effect it has. If you find that your reason for taking these is merely greed or habit, well, work upon that greed. You need to be free of greed. If it's merely habit, either it may not matter or you may choose to moderate it or you may choose to amplify it because you need it for reasons of health.

Observe.

Utilise.

Nature has given all these things to you as a gift. Make right use. Isn't it?

So there is use as well as disuse and then there is abuse.

So the ascetic spirituality goals were very specific and they don't apply to all of us.

And in the Integral Yoga especially, the attempt to refine, to make more sattvic or to stabilise and bring balance and control in the rajas and to dissolve the tamas is done in a completely different way.

It is done from a top-down or inside-out influence where:

the tamas itself is now replaced by deep peace;

the rajas becomes pure tapas, concentrated energy; and

the sattva becomes literally a flooding of light into the whole being and consciousness from above ideally. It could even be a mental light as a start and that's good already.

The result is these influences now override nature's three gunas, three modes and replace them by higher working of consciousness. Replacing them, it's as if you are effectively free from those compulsions that come through the food or to the extent that you have replaced them, you are free.

At least it is in this direction that we have to move by a top-down, inside-out influence to override these things and then you can draw the best of them or manage without them entirely if so the condition requires.

For a long time when Sri Aurobindo first came to Pondicherry there was not enough money and the only food he had was rice with salt and that was it, and he ate that, never complaining, and then later the other things came, people came who were also making food and things like that. Then at a later stage when there were certain types of food that he liked, and so they would make it for him. But if they didn't, it was fine. It's just that he made observations, in certain cases even taught them how to make it in a certain way and how to bring the special quality into the taste of the food and so on, because all of these are part of the enjoyment and delight of the world, Isn't it?

(0:45:28)

The soul is here not for withdrawal but for participation and the goal of participation is possession and delight.

All this is for the habitation of the Lord in the Isha Upanishad.

And Sri Aurobindo says, what's the point of habitation?

Possession and delight.

But by the rule of the divine life which is without desire, without claim of ownership, that's when you can truly enjoy without being bound in the enjoyment.

And so, this quick summary gives you the broad approach.

I want to use this occasion since we are discussing food to also link it to something I had briefly touched upon last time and amplify on it.

You will recall I had spoken about those special plastics which are called ‘PFAS’ or polyfluoroalkyl substances, which are called ‘forever chemicals’. They go into the system, in nature, water, air, soil, and your body permanently. In a sense, they never degrade. They never break down. That's why they're so valuable. You coat things with them to make them last. But they're extremely toxic to your endocrine system, hormonal system, and the cellular functioning, and all kinds of cancers and other problems. We briefly looked at that.

What I forgot to mention is that it is this PFAS which is also used in non-stick Teflon coated cooking vessels. So one of the things I'm sure all of you have in at home is a non-stick cooking vessel which is promoted, well, it does not stick. What's the benefit? Well you can wash it more easily or you can scrape the food from the vessel more easily without it sticking except this coating is so sensitive and so thin that you have to now use wooden spoons or soft plastic spoons. If you use metal, it can scratch and the thin coating being cut that plastic the PFAS which is used there is now released into the food, making it toxic.

Isn't it?

Why would you risk a coating that can scratch even with a slight excessive push of your wooden spoon and poison yourself in the process?

Why would you do that?

Any common-sense thinking would say, I would rather scrape my metal vessel than put this plastic coating with the risk of being poisoned and getting tumours or cancers or endocrine disruption or hormonal disruptions, isn't it?

But when the media pushes you, oh non-stick it's convenient, and it suddenly becomes fashionable, we stop thinking, like sheep.

And that's why it's so important for us to educate ourselves to think and train yourself to think and to question.

So your non-stick Teflon coating, I'm going to look at an article again which describes a study which says, that it's called: One Small Crack on a Teflon Pan Can Release Thousands of Plastic Particles.

So they made a study.

If you scrape with a wooden spoon, a tiny crack, okay, one tiny crack in that coating, the broken coating, I'm quoting, “could cause as many as 2.3 million tiny particles to be released during meal preparation” in “30 seconds of cooking time” from the “ruptured … Teflon surface”, and that tiny crack is so small you cannot see it.

When you put it for wash and you scrape it while washing, the scraping will also make tiny cracks.

And the variety of health issues I've already spoken of, so I'm not going to repeat that.

“2.3 million” particles of that plastic released in “30 seconds of cooking”, because of one tiny scratch.

Can you understand why in the last 20 years which is about the time let's say when nonstick cooking has come in a very big way at least in India, maybe elsewhere earlier, but combined with those have been also other kinds of health problems which have suddenly shot up[?] (0:50:02)

But it’s not the only source, it’s not the only cause.

There are others.

(0:50:05)

Aluminium vessels, for example, which have been around for some time, well more than 100 years, have been linked to Parkinson's, dementia, etc. in the brain, where they found people who have brain degeneration have larger content of aluminium in the brain, which is supposedly coming from the aluminium vessels in the food, because you're scraping.

So the safest vessel is steel or iron. A normal cast iron, very simple iron. And now it's again coming back into popularity, people make vessels with that. You can scrape all you want and all that will happen is the iron will come into your food which is, well, good for you anyway.

But equally at the same time we have other sources of this food going in.

Lead in the petrol which was added, price raised to make your engines more efficient which you breathe in and goes into your lungs, it goes into your bloodstream and lead in the bloodstream then attaches itself to your nervous system and dulls the nervous system working effectively dropping your IQ by several points.

So when your children go on the road and are exposed to fumes from vehicles which have lead, it's affecting their IQ. During the formative stage of the body particularly, the lead goes in and stays, it doesn't come out. The body doesn't know how to remove it.

And the same for many other chemicals which once they go in the body does not know how to remove them.

DDT which was so common in India, banned in the US but produced in the US and sold in India. It goes into the body and the body cannot distinguish between fat and DDT and it accumulates them.

Oils which we use for cooking similarly have effects.

Soya oil, hydrogenated vegetable oil and then, [asking others: What’s that other type?] very commonly used oil which is used almost everywhere in India today. Any commercial fried food that you buy has this content of oil which is, I forget the name now, it’s largely imported from Indonesia or Malaysia.

Alina (0:52:20):

Palm, palm tree oil.

Sraddhalu (0:52:22):

Palm oil. That's right. Palm oil. It's one of the worst because of the overall degeneration that it can cause in the biology.

But soy oil has been found to be so damaging, it leads to brain degeneration.

And in the United States, soy oil is the single most common oil used in everything from French fries to all your fast foods and in every manufactured food, soy oil is there because it's cheap. And that comes from GMO modified soya and it leads to brain degeneration.

If you see some of the studies, they're so alarming and the media completely covers it up. And you wonder why it's not replaced.

There was, I remember about now maybe eight years ago, I'd seen a study that came out saying Triclosan is a chemical used because it kills bacteria. It used to be used in soaps, toothpaste, any kind of wash used on the hands and then they found that it was extremely damaging to the endocrine system, affecting hormonal systems, and because you were using it in your toothpaste it was going through the gums and the tongue, it was absorbed into the body bloodstream, and it was weakening the heart muscles leading to heart issues, and where the heart muscle would be able to pump fully normally, the muscle weakened, could not pump anymore normally.

Now all this is said shown in a study, immediately there is a decision taken now this should be removed because it was being put everywhere. You would have soaps which would be sold to you, toothpastes which would be sold to you saying ‘With Triclosan’ in large letters.

Now from the point the study came, they decided to remove it all and suddenly the media went silent for two and a half years until the entire stock of product full of Triclosan was used up by all of us and then they all came out with a modified new and improved formula for soap, hand wash and toothpaste. The same brand name. They called it ‘New and improved formula’. No one told you it was without Triclosan, except I found a few brands which said ‘No Triclosan’. All others simply said ‘New and improved formula’.

That's it.

They did not tell you that they made you take this poison for two and a half years so that they would not go at a loss before they replaced this dangerous poison.

And so what I'm also pointing out is you may not think you're eating it but the fact that you're using it in your toothpaste or washing with soap, as soap it's absorbed through the skin and especially the skin of the mouth is extremely porous.

There are certain medicines that you place on your tongue and within 10 seconds it changes your heart rate. Because it's absorbed, gone into the bloodstream, it's hit the heart and changed the heart behaviour.

(0:55:20)

Now imagine what happens when you take these chemicals, which additives which are there in your toothpaste or soaps that you apply or perfumes.

Nobody tests perfumes for the poisonous effect if that chemical goes inside your bloodstream except that when you spray the perfume you breathe it, it goes right through your mucosal skin and straight into the brain in the core of the brain.

Everything you smell is being absorbed and from here goes straight into the core of the brain and changes your mood and behaviour immediately.

Even now they say that if you scratch your nose too much inside you can create little lesions through which bacteria can get in and climb into your brain and cause problems. That's the level of sensitivity in the mucosal tissue and the rapidity of absorption.

Oh it comes on your skin, you apply the spray the perfume on your skin, it's absorbed, goes straight into your bloodstream.

And do you know what are all the chemicals that are put in these perfumes?

All of them are toxic, highly evaporative and therefore very quickly absorbed. There's another chemical I think it's called DMO which is supposed to be healthy for you. You can apply, you take a little drop and put it on your feet, the skin of your feet which is the thickest often for most of us. You apply it on the skin and it's absorbed through the skin and within seconds it enters your bloodstream and relaxes all the muscles of your body.

Or as an experiment you can take garlic, fresh garlic, crush it a little bit and apply it on the feet, rub it on the skin, and in a few seconds you will taste it in your mouth. It's gone into the bloodstream, appears on your taste buds and you can taste it.

All this is to tell you, your body is porous, you're eating all these things which you apply on the skin.

And I did not mention the shampoos which you apply. All of them have a chemical which is carcinogenic. You apply it on your head and it's absorbed through the head and of course it drips all over your body and it's absorbed everywhere. And there are people who use shampoo as a soap and it's absorbed everywhere.

This is just to tell you how careful you need to be especially for children with their growing bodies. Do not play around with them.

I will touch upon a few more things.

The oils we use, I have mentioned already.

So I would generally recommend for parents and for all of us as adults, use traditional oils, cold-pressed. You see the industrial processing of the oil actually heats the oil to such a degree in order to, well, separate it. Let's say you're extracting coconut oil. You heat this until the oil literally gets evaporated and then you cool it down again. Having passed through that level of heating, it's destroyed most of the nutritional content. And then, having heated it so much, it becomes rancid. Now when oil is rancid, if you take it, you, you are poisoned, your body throws up.

Here in the processing in the industry, for oil industry, you are making the oil rancid and then the rancid oil you pass through a filter to remove the rancid taste and then that's the oil that's being sold to you.

So any oil which has been manufactured by the normal industrial process of heating, passing through its rancid stage, I would highly recommend that you do not use. And what you should use is the oils which are cold-pressed, this was the traditional oils that we used to have. Use those. Those are safer. And stay with the traditional oils which are coconut, sesame, groundnut, mustard typically or ghee which comes in the traditional A2 cows which is made in the traditional way of Bilona, that is, you churn the curd, extract the butter and then melt the butter. What you buy as conventional ghee today is milk oil. They take the cream and melt the cream and that's sold to you as ghee that's not the same as the traditional ghee, and they've very different molecular structures. When they come from the A1 cow milk, then it has a, the effect in the blood of causing inflammations of various kinds. And finally the Bilona ghee if you can get A2 from grass-fed cows, not cows which have been fed with, you know the kind of stuff that's been given in the United States cows are fed protein which is from other dead cows, that is the tissue of the dead cows is churned and then made into a paste and then fed to them. And it's you're making the cows non-vegetarian in a food that their biology is not designed for and obviously everything else follows.

And this is the reason why India rarely had mad cow disease, whereas you saw that a lot in Europe, in the US, because the infected cows were now infecting the new cows who were made to eat dead cows and it was going into the brain.

(1:00:31)

Finally for little children the body is extremely sensitive because you're in a growth phase. Food colourings irritate the nerves. The irritation in the nerves reflects in an irritation in the mind and the mind starts getting distracted and the body starts getting restless and this child suddenly finds his mind flitting all over the place and the body constantly moving restlessly. And you call that ‘attention deficit hyperactive disorder’, ADHD. A large part of the ADHD symptoms are merely the result of irritation in the body and the nerves from food colourings, sugar and various other kinds of stimulants and chemicals which have gone into the body.

If you could purify the food and detox the body, generally most of these symptoms tend to fade out.

Sugar is another ADHD trigger.

Now all of these we have spoken in some detail in discussions which were almost two years ago. I believe many of you might not have seen those. Do go back. I am only summarising because we are talking about food and the influence especially for growing children.

Sugar is extremely harmful, creating all kinds of highs and restlessness. If it's a time for a child to sleep and you've given sugar, within let's say three or four hours before, most children won't be able to sleep. They get hyperactive immediately after taking in sugar. And the same thing when you give it to animals, you can see the same thing happening.

So, it's very strange and I've often thought about it, I grew up as a child being told and seeing it and having it in the textbook of children, here is a child, we give him a sweet.

There is a textbook, I was studying Tamil. And there is a song which is taught to the children. Where you say, oh little child, sweet little child, would you like a balloon or a sweet?

You're being told that as a child that's what you should want.

And so this, the sugar once it goes in has the effect of building a kind of a addiction. Yes, sugar actually has addictive tendency, the same as some people say, it is almost as strong as certain kinds of drugs, but the addiction triggers the craving.

Now I've seen this in myself. If I don't take sugar for days and days and days, where it's not there even in the taste, I don't crave it. But if I take once a sweet that has some content of sugar and it could even be fruit or with strong sugar such as in dates, within a few minutes there's a craving for more. And then for the next few days there'll be a tendency, a subtle slight craving. If I feed it, then it builds very quickly into a habit.

Very interesting.

If you don't give it at all, the body goes into a very different mode. It draws the sugars it needs from the food, from the fat and you don't crave at all. And none of the hyperactivity symptoms would be seen once this has been detoxified.

So remember sugar as well as other food additives, food colourings, nerve irritants, sugar-free, which many of you take because you have diabetes or you think it's more healthy, have been shown to be associated, linked to brain degeneration, including certain kinds of dementia and Parkinson's.

The only thing which I know of which has not been linked to negative effects is Stevia which is an extract from a plant in a tiny quantity. But simply avoid.

I have also seen additives in chocolates. Certain chocolates, they, because you say ‘smooth chocolate’ and they tell you it's made smooth by churning, no, it's made smooth by putting additives, when you take those types, you get freckles, immediately within, not immediately, within 2 days, 48 hours later you get these little boils, pimples. And I can go for months without pimples, I eat that brand of chocolate and I have pimples within 48 hours.

Interesting.

And not all brands of chocolates. Especially those which are the smooth type.

So I'll simply say, observe.

Observe what triggers response, sometimes there is a delayed effect in the response, observe and make a choice.

Don't trust what you're told.

For a long time, in, for years we were told, brown bread is better, whole wheat bread is better. But the way it was told to you was ‘brown bread’. So you could go to a shop and you said ‘brown bread’, they took the normal bread into which they put brown colour and sold it to you as brown bread. They didn't say it was whole wheat, they said it was brown bread.

So be careful what the vocabulary is, what the claims are, and don't trust the packaging labels. Many of them are very deceptive.

(1:05:30)

I think that largely covers what I wanted to say about food.

The one more thing, especially for children, is that thing which they have to give, I won't use the word, which you're required by law to inject at early stages of the child.

And I remember, I recall somebody in the United States who had told me, there were like 50 injections or 50 types of things which had to be injected, and they were available and you were under pressure. So I asked how many of these are actually legally required? I don't remember exactly, I was told some 15 or 20. Then I said go with the legal requirement, avoid all else. If you're in a country where the legal requirement itself is not strong, well, avoid all you can. Let the natural immunity of the child develop by exposure to nature, especially playing in fresh ground, soil, grass, sand, etc.

The contact with these things, with soil particularly, automatically builds immunity.

Just the contact.

And it's very interesting.

I'm quoting studies which have shown that, and your child will generally be far more healthy. If at all you have to give those things, then space them out. Let's say you're in the United States and you have whatever 15 or so which are legally required. The doctors will say okay you come tomorrow we will give five of them in one go.

No.

Space them out. Give one now, space out two weeks, another, space out two weeks, give another, well, as much as you can space out, so that the body has a time to remove.

So the poisons which come especially the adjuvants which are there to stimulate the immune system particularly are all poisons. Some of them are metallic, and they are often containing aluminium salts. And so it gives a chance for the body.

First the system is not overwhelmed and the body has the time to detoxify itself before the next lot comes. Again in a small dose the body cleans out. So at no point does it hit a high peak. When you merge several of them in one go, it hits a peak that the body feels overwhelmed and something breaks down in the overall system.

So all this I'm linking to children particularly because they have growing bodies, but the principle applies to all of us. What we take into our body does have an effect not only on the body's health, but ripples through all the subtler gradations of bodies. And even, this is something which we are told, I do not know how far the validation exists, there are certain chemicals, particularly fluoride, which affect the pineal gland or the pituitary gland and cause some kind of a hardening and caking which obviously affects your subtler perceptions.

The pineal gland particularly is the, well, biological basis or equivalent for the inner sight in the subtle body, the third eye. So even though if the biology may be damaged, the psychology could override, but to the extent we are bound in the biology, it will affect the psychological capacity. There will be kind of a dulling of the higher faculties.

So, coming back to the question of Meenal: Does food really matter in mental and spiritual, I’ll say, development not just strength?

Yes, it does influence. You have to be conscious, observe carefully, but it is not a compulsion. If you stay within the safe range of what nature gives you, to a great extent, by the opening to a higher power, capacity or development of the higher layers directly, you can reverse the balance and even neutralise the effect of the foods and therefore be immune to whatever normal fluctuations of foods may cause.

And this was the case in fact in the body of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. For many things you could, they could take those things and have no effect at all. Although they may notice that, ah yes, this has a certain influence, they could override it.

And it was the Mother who said to Dyuman-bhai, and Dyuman-bhai told this to us in an interview, he was taking certain fruits grown in the Ashram's gardens and giving it to the Mother. And then one day Mother told him, can you not bring the foods, can you not grow these without the poison in them?

So she was conscious that in the body as she ate there was this poisonous content which was coming from the pesticides and the various kinds of growth stimulants, but she could override. But she asked him, can you not do it without?

And he said okay, That started his whole mission for organic farming, and so on.

(1:10:26)

I think this broadly would cover everything.

More important:

Educate the children. Make them conscious of these things. Teach them to observe the effect of foods on their own bodies.

Yes, this food is tasty. Why? Because inside the food they have introduced monosodium glutamate or some such which triggers the craving. So, they actually put a chemical that makes you salivate continuously so that you will want to eat more and more.

Tell this to the children, have them observe.

Notice how certain foods you eat, you feel satiated, you're no more hungry.

Other foods you can eat all you want, stomach is full, but still you're craving more.

Observe.

And this is being done to you by chemicals.

You're being programmed in your behaviour which is affecting your health, is damaging your body.

There are studies which show, babies, let's say up to age one and a half, who were given what is called ‘milk powders’ as a replacement for the mother's milk, baby powders or baby foods, children who were given that for those initial one and a half years tend to have problems of obesity later in life.

The connection is disturbing.

That means what you ate and then stopped eating at the age of one and a half is continuing to influence your hormonal system 10 or 15 years later.

So anything which is packaged, manufactured, chemically added, avoid as far as possible.

And only today I saw the news item that said that the US FDA has given permission for replacing, for manufacture of artificial meat.

The description of the artificial meat is extremely disturbing when you look at what it is. It's actually, they call it ‘artificial chicken’ grown in the laboratory. But actually it has pork and beef mixed into it, genetically modified to grow as a slab of meat, so in a sense, it's like a cancerous growth, into which they have pumped huge quantities of antibiotics so that it does not get bacterial infections and other chemicals, I don't remember the names anymore, all of which are poisonous. And the company hopes to replace what is called ‘chicken’, ‘live chicken meat’ in foods by this lab-grown chicken, except it's not chicken, it's many more things.

And it's going to happen within a couple of years that they will start introducing tiny percentage into and it will all go into fast foods first. You won't know it because they won't tell you. Fast food doesn't have a label that says so much percentage of this or that. They just sell it to you right there, isn't it? They'll put it in a small percentage and then keep growing the percentage. 10 years down, it will be considered normal. Of course, we've been doing it for 10 years. What's the big deal? That's how the industry moves.

So be very careful: what you feed the children. And try as far as possible to give, and home cooked is not enough, your vessels, the oils you use, the additives, colours that you put, all these need to be watched. Minimise all the junk and go for what is most healthy.

It will not only give you a stable psychology, the restlessness of the nerve irritation will vanish, it will give a clear mind.

I point this out to many young children in their teenage who are struggling with passing through exams. They're struggling and very often the first thing I notice is there's a dullness and inertia in the mind. Ask them what kind of foods they eat and of course it goes typically with what comes with the fast food types of meals, and I point out that this is what can happen if you change the kind of food. So they go through a detox process and sometimes it's happened I've seen them a month or two later, and you can see the inertia is completely gone from the mind. And you ask them, they say, yes I'm doing very well, mind is clear, perceptions are well, memories better and so on.

So if you're serious about maximising the potential of the mind, especially in the growing years, because what you do then literally gets locked in into the biology. Then take care for the food and educate your children, explain them, let them read, show them the data and get them to observe the effect the food has and make choices.

(1:15:12)

You see, you can't help it, they will always come under pressure, peer pressure for junk foods. But when they make choices, they can tell them, okay, you know what, this is not the best, I'll take a small piece, and that's all, more I'll have something else, or mix the two. And you can get around with that without much difficulty.

But you have to make them conscious and teach them, give them the equipment to be able to manage peer pressure also.

And then for us, as adults, yes, it makes a big difference for the biological health at least. And to the extent possible if you can detox, a lot of health problems going away, your mind becomes clearer and your ability then to have refined perceptions also opens out. And this is something which you notice only when you go through a detox process that not only your mind is clearer, your receptivity of intuitions is easier.

When the intuition comes, there is less dullness to receive, but also there is greater fluidity for it’s, for it to flow and reveal itself more.

And once you have experienced that, then you begin to observe and then you make choices again with the food.

Onion and garlic won't matter there, interestingly.

Most of the damage is coming from the fast foods and the additives and other chemicals put in these fast foods, manufactured foods generally.

The same things when you make at home without the damaging oils, I've rarely found having that kind of dulling effect. But that's my experience.

Observe, learn, and make choices.

I think we have largely completed our time. There are a couple of questions, three more questions relating to the career focus, and I think that we can take up for next time. Don't you think? I'll take a quick look at the chat box for things I might have, that might have come up.

So Meenal is asking: Does non-vegetarian food weaken the spirit, some essential amino acids are not available in vegetarian diet?

Ha no, non-vegetarian food need not weaken the spirit.

I understand by ‘spirit’, you mean, the spiritual.

No, it need not.

We have good examples of saints, sages who ate non-vegetarian food and it did not affect their spiritual competence, experience in any way.

So the dulling effect of food will obviously have a dulling effect on your consciousness and thereby your concentration.

Okay?

Similarly, excitation coming from food will make your consciousness unstable and thereby your concentration will be fickle, tend to be.

But the access you have will not change. It is only your ability to reach that point through concentration, you'll have to struggle with the concentration, which is the mental part. It's not the spiritual part.

So, if you have already settled yourself sufficiently in the Self, you can eat all the meat you want, it's not going to take away the experience of the Self.

So, I'm going strictly by what I've understood the question to be.

It's not going to change the spiritual content of your experience or capacity.

This is very important to understand.

Because, well, the meat itself is formed of spirit as is everything else in the universe, isn't it?

The effect it can have is on the biology which may affect the mind which may affect your power of concentration but not the spiritual experience in itself.

Okay?

If you try to manifest now an experience or an insight through a biology which is now dulled or made unstable, again it may distort.

But it's not the meat in itself, it's the excitation.

And if you have been able to override the excitation consciously, you could take all the meat you want and have no problem at all.

So my point again coming is the meat itself is not the point, the state of consciousness is the point which you can take charge of and override and the meat would not affect. And the same would apply to all other kinds of food which might have any influence.

So about the essential amino acids available in meat, that's the theory, it's not true. The reality is yes, they say the body does not manufacture B12 for example and therefore many vegetarians have deficiency of B12, but not all. So it may come through milk and if it's a healthy milk all the better. But it can come through other ways. In the gut bacteria are bacteria which manufacture B12 and so if you have not damaged your gut bacteria balance through heavy antibiotics, then the food may not have B12 but the gut bacteria will manufacture B12 which your body will absorb, and the gut bacteria manufacture many things which are not there in your food and which the body still gets through them, so there's a symbiosis. You do not need to have non-vegetarian food for that.

(1:20:27)
Vijayanthi is saying, we should also think of the salt we are taking.

Yes, I've mentioned before that some decades ago the salt which used to be manufactured locally, everywhere people would take seawater, evaporate, and sell the salt was industrialised. And the excuse given was they had to put iodine because somewhere in some village there was iodine deficiency, now everybody has to take iodine.

The problem was many people had excess of iodine, had a reaction to iodine, they got sick because of the iodine in the factory-manufactured salt.

But what they did not tell you is that at the same time that they were putting iodine into the salt, they were also introducing the, the name slips my mind, the chemical which was, which causes this hardening of the pineal gland which is used in the waters in the United States extensively.

You see, in India, they kill the bacteria in water by pumping gas of chlorine, whereas in the United States, they dump the chemical into the water in large quantities, and supposedly, the chemical is fluoride, supposedly it is for strengthening the teeth.

Now if it is good for the teeth, then you put it in your toothpaste. You don't put it in drinking water which goes into your bloodstream.

Fluoride affects the psychology. It affects various things, behaviour patterns particularly, makes you more docile.

So every time they have problems with people's subservience, they increase the fluoride levels in the water. And this, by the way, was started by the Nazi rule, they found they could subjugate people by putting fluoride in water.

So yes, you have to be careful about the salt, because they introduced fluoride into the table salt in India, and this is under WHO guidance, I've seen the website where they describe which countries don't have it in water so you have to introduce through salts because it's good for the teeth by the way. And then they say, you should not put too much, if you have it in the water you can't already have it in the salt, because the combination of the two would be excessive and will create diseases.

You see, they're careful about that. But who's there to control?

So be aware, make careful choices.

That's all I will say.

Choose carefully.

Yes, meat eating has environmental consequences, certainly.

So I'm not looking at that at all.

The question was very specific to the psychological and spiritual influences.

Yes, it would be wonderful if animals were not killed so that human beings have to eat and survive. But well, be careful.

And toothpaste, if you can get toothpaste without fluoride, that will be better. Because anything that goes in the mouth, even if you spit it out or wash it out, a little bit is going to go in, but much more is absorbed through the skin of the inner mouth lining and the tongue. And it goes straight into the bloodstream, large dose of fluoride. Please choose toothpaste without fluoride and for your children.

Again, make them conscious. Don't just do it. Explain to them, this is what it is, show them the literature, let them take charge of their own lives, because when you are not there, they'll be looking after themselves for the new, well, kinds of poisons which will be coming all along as, as humanity experiments with these things.

Yes so, Mukta asks: Can you offer the food to the Divine Mother to help counter the effect of chemicals that are hard to escape from?

Yes, you can. You can invoke a higher force into the food. You should invoke. To the extent that your body is receptive to the force, it will get the resilience to minimise or even reverse the damage that the chemicals in the food may cause.

You see, your body is one of the most extraordinary instruments ever constructed. It's taken nature billions of years. And we don't fully appreciate how adaptable the body is.

(1:25:00)

There used to be case in India, they were called ‘Visakanyas’, they were called ‘women of poison’, and they were brought up from childhood with a tiny dose of poison introduced every day in their food. They would grow up into healthy women who would be daily taking a quantity of poison which would kill anybody. Their blood was poisonous. I believe there was equivalent things in Europe also. Now when the king had to kill for state reasons, kill somebody, they would send these poison women who would go and meet with that person, touch them or kiss them because the lips again are very absorbent, it's the tissue of the mouth. So kiss them and the contact was enough to transfer sufficient poison that the person would die, and these women were immune to it.

I'm giving this as an extreme example to show the extreme adaptability of the body, given tiny doses.

So everything that we have discussed which is poisonous, if given in sufficiently tiny doses over a very long time, the body could adapt.

Except, what has happened today is, we have now 20 different poisons, not in tiny doses but in exaggerated doses all at the same time and the body gets overwhelmed. It tries to detoxify itself. Its detoxification system gets overwhelmed, breaks down, and those are the first illnesses you have, and then as a chain reaction other things break down: you see kidneys’ failures typically, or arteries lining getting thick, etc. All these are the first signs that the body is unable to remove the poison faster than the rate at which they are being introduced.

So if there is a force which comes to purify, yes, the body can override, the spiritual force particularly, the power of the Self is immense. To the extent your body is receptive, it can override to a great extent, and even extreme poison can be neutralised.

The question is:

Is your body sufficiently conscious?

Is it sufficiently open and receptive to the divine force?

If it is, yes, it's already happening perhaps, but you can amplify it by invoking the force in the food and in the body.

But I dare say for the bulk of us, the body is not sufficiently conscious, it's not even sufficiently mentalised to be able to do this.

But if you can work on it, mentalise it, and then into the mentalised awareness, you bring in the aspiration and the receptivity, and the sensitivity built up, and all this is within our capacity for all of us, without exception, then yes, this would work, this would act to a great extent.

I'm going to end with one example of the healing that the Mother did and I will close with that.

But one last question from Deepanvitha:

At times these chemicals in the food have induced a sense of fear of cancer in me. I am afraid of this. What should be my attitude?

Fear attracts that which you fear.

So the best is never to allow fear to come, and the same with GMO foods.

As to the question from Rajesh:

Never allow fear to come.

First educate yourself, know that all this is happening.

Then make choices to minimise, to reduce, where you cannot, well, trust in your body or give to your body the conviction that you have within you what's needed to overcome.

But after you have taken steps to minimise and reduce, you can't say, oh my body will manage and I will let all the junk flow in.

No.

It will get overwhelmed.

So, act on both levels but without fear.

Recognise what it is, but remember your body is able to override, your body is able to detox, the body can even sometimes change what is poisonous and turn it into something healthy  if so needed, isn't it? That's what is done sometimes with those injections. They provoke in the body a reaction which makes the, which is suppose to at least make the body more immune.

So yes, the body is enormously adaptable, but respect the body and develop particularly the body consciousness. With that, the body will tell you, I eat this food and something is not okay. I would rather avoid it.

I remember as a child, now I've never had the chance to validate how it was, as a child two experiences. We would be travelling, let's say we were walking on the road going to the kindergarten, I think it was at that age, and the bus would go by and there would be the fumes and I would breathe the fumes and say, mhmm smells good. And then one day, the bus passed and the fumes, and it was nauseating. Something had changed. I could never get that smell good. You see, if you smell pure petrol, you open the tank and you have, it's not so bad. But in the fumes now, suddenly there was this hard, harsh, painful, dulling, strange smell. And I had to hold my breath. I believe that's around the time when they introduced leaded petrol in India. I would like to validate but I don't know. Or the body itself at some point developed aversion, detected the poisoning.

(1:30:37)

The same happened with sugar. So sugar would be distributed in the Ashram on the first of every month for those who were cooking at home. My Mother brings this little sack of sugar, and as kids immediately go and take a pinch, mhmm, sweet. Every first, that was one of the delights. One day I took that and suddenly it was severely bitter. And after that there was an aversion, which never totally went away. I don't know what happened. Obviously, something would have been introduced or the body had changed its relationship.

But if you start observing the body's response and the body is sufficiently mentalised, conscious, as you take the food or sometimes you look at it and you know, ah, I don't want. Or you're sick and your body craves something and you kind of in your mind scan all the foods you know and click, ah yes, that's the one, the body craves this. And you eat that and it cures you.

So you can make your body a conscious partner and help it to lead you and guide you and develop its own immunity in the process. If you've got the body to that point, it will not only tell you but it also develop the capacity to neutralise.

I will end with one story which I came across recently, and I will tell you names here because it's important to put it in on record. This is narrated to me by Vasanthi-ji, who was a very close friend of Shirin, who was a teacher of music and teacher of English language and so on. She had settled in the Ashram, again series of experiences before coming. And she has some coughing problems. She goes to the doctor, the doctor does an x-ray. And she is told she has severe tuberculosis, like severe. The whole lung is darkened, and it's seen, it's visible, the X-rays are there. Naturally, this is reported to the Mother, and this woman is very sick. Mother says, bring her to me. This woman is so sick, she can't get up and walk. She's taken on a stretcher. Two young boys in the Ashram, they carry the stretcher all the way to the Mother's room on the top floor. She asks Shirin to be placed in front of her on the stretcher, and she's held up, and Mother puts her hand above like this, and Vasanthi described how because she was trying to move away not to intrude but then Champaklal asked her to stay on and watch. It's as if Mother's form became enormous, large, and a tremendous power surged filling. I won't be able to say as beautifully as she did, but giving you the sum of it, the gist of it. And Mother's hand over, she went over her entire body, literally, slowly, inch by inch, scanned all across and then all the way back, slowly, healing her, infusing the force in her directly, no physical contact, direct spiritual force. Not vital force. Spiritual force. There's a difference, big difference. Pranic healing is largely vital force. So, she does this and then sends her back. In a short while, she's cured. Complete cure. So the doctor says, can't be, let's go and check again. So they do a X-ray. Lungs are completely clear. The doctor comes back and says, you know what? It was a mistake. You see, at that time when we took the X-ray, there was some dirt in the screen and so it came in and the dirt came and covered the lungs, so it was a medical mistake, we did a mistake in our diagnosis. She was always fine. And this was reported to the Mother. Imagine the stupidity of these human monkeys. Oh Mother, by the way, the doctor says, it was a mistake, she never had tuberculosis, ha ha.

Imagine what Mother would have thought.

Ungrateful humanity or stupid humanity.

I don't know what.

But the fact was, the cure was so total, so complete, that medically they could detect nothing wrong.

And it was done in a trice, well, in a few minutes.

(1:35:05)

This is the power of the spiritual force directly on the physical body, bypassing everything else, all it needed was that receptivity, throughout Shirin was in deep state of concentration receiving the full action of the force.

And Mother could have done this to others, she did to a few people.

I don't remember now the name, uh Nishikanto who had again had something in the lungs, and he was told that he would not survive. He asked to see the Mother. Mother came down. He was on a stretcher, and he called the Mother to come close and asked her to place her foot on his chest. She did that. She concentrated. He held her feet for a long time. Then she went. He had complete cure. He did not, he was supposed to go to the hospital from there. He refused to go. He said, I'm done, I'm cured. He lived for many years. He lived after that for 20, more than 25 years.

And Nishikanto would joke afterwards, “she put one foot on me and look at what happened, imagine if she had put two feet!”

Okay.

So this is to tell you what is possible by the direct action of the spiritual force.

And as practitioners or aspirants of the Integral Yoga, we have to build in our physical body this opening, aspiration and receptivity.

Of course, it is easiest to start in the mind and in the heart. From there into the life energies and from there into the physical body all the way down, down to the level of the cells, Sri Aurobindo says.

And at that point to the extent that the cells respond to the spiritual force directly, they effectively become immune to all of these limitations from external influences including physical influences and all the things that we have discussed.

But we have to work towards this. This should be our reference. And the reference finally is in the physical body that this has to be established.

Think about this.

Dwell on this.

Hold this in aspiration and start taking small steps in this direction.

The method is very simple.

Make your body more and more conscious, that is a mental infusion into it first. And meanwhile your mind is turning, your heart is turning to receive, and the mind then becomes the link point until eventually more and more the physical consciousness now begins to feel the touch of the presence, begins to aspire for the presence directly, no more needing the mentalized support and begins to now participate more and more directly in its relationship with the mind only as a bridge or a link.

And it's not difficult. This is well within the capacity for all of us. And we, if you seek, if you feel drawn to this, work on this and the results will be distinct and rapid depending on how much you commit to the effort itself.

We can take a moment to hold this in our aspiration.

Remember though, never fear.

Do what's necessary, take steps, do not fear.

Always the divine support is there with you.

Namaste.

Alina (1:39:24):

Namaste.