December 3, 2022
Alina (0:00:24):
Namaste and welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu.
Namaste Sraddhalu.
Sraddhalu (0:00:33):
Namaste Alina. Namaste to all of you.
Alina (0:00:37):
Today we will continue on the same topic, on success in your career.
And we will be taking some questions that were addressed in our previous session. I will also address Sraddhalu one of the first questions of Karthik:
“Success in material life can be a spiritual failure, and failure in material life can be a spiritual success. Is it possible that both material and spiritual life can be simultaneously successful? Because somewhere one has to let go of too much mental clinging.”
This is the first question.
Sraddhalu (0:01:31):
Mmhm. Okay.
So this is continuing the theme which we had begun last time. And the theme was generally in the direction of focus for excellence and competence and success in career. And we had covered this in some detail with the initial question which was from Vaibhav taking into the context is desire and aspiration to become a competent lawyer.
We have followed broadly a path which was touched upon in our earlier discussions of the evening series number 135, 136 and 137 where we discussed what is it that is the aspiration of the soul and the soul quality as well as the temperament of your nature through which these qualities have to flow, so the four soul powers and the triple tendencies of your nature and then specific forms of those tendencies in your nature.
And I started by describing what is the overall sense of excellence in career. You see we all begin with a broad idea. Success or excellence, these are very generic terms, and when you look deeper into it, the true sense of it may vary from person to person. In fact, from a spiritual point of view, especially when we look at it from the soul's aspiration, the sense of excelling is completely different and sometimes very different for each person.
So in the discussion last time I had described a series of poises of what could mean, what excellence could mean for you:
It could be power, position, fame, promotion etc.
It could be a high salary.
It could be the capacity to overcome challenges and solve problems or client satisfaction, the joy of meeting and interacting with people, helping them.
It could be the affection and respect of colleagues or symbols, tokens of honours such as medals and certifications.
Or it could be just coming home with a clean conscience and feeling yourself in a whole life the certain moral and ethical cleanliness, purity and satisfaction that comes from that.
Or just being happy.
Or for many the work itself would be a support for the quality of family life and home life that you have and the children and family and your interactions with them.
And so I listed all of these in some detail.
And the point being all of these are legitimate depending on each person. What is for you, your most important criteria?
And we should not necessarily have to give to it a moral judgement, because what happens is as the soul grows, it goes through phases in which it passes through various kinds of experiences, developing certain facets and aspects, integrating them. And for this life for example it could be that the soul has a certain line of experience it wants to particularly develop to manifest qualities which can only come there.
(0:05:02):
You can see in all the examples that I gave one of these four soul qualities and sometimes blended with others predominant and in a single lifetime it could go through various phases. Very often it would happen that for some of us at least in the beginning it will be, I need to make lots of money. Once you've made enough, it's not lots yet. Once you've made enough, you say, ah but this is not giving me satisfaction and now that I have enough that insecurity which I had that is gone, and automatically a different layer of your needs comes forward and you say, now I really want satisfaction in what I do. And then perhaps having reached that something is fulfilled and you say, with all the satisfaction I have had in what I do, I'm not happy with just my satisfaction I want others to benefit, I want others to feel happy, and my joy will be in making others happy and satisfied. So the whole focus now shifts into the other.
So I tried to describe a wide range of these different, let’s say, facets but they could sequence in your own life.
And I'm putting this in some kind of a summary because although we dwelt on Vaibhav's example which was as a lawyer, for each one of us the principles in which we discussed this could be applied into your space, into your domain in your career form.
I also went into some detail with the sense of what it would mean for competence and especially in the theme of the competence of a lawyer and there I went through a whole range of possibilities. And I again want to point to this as an example for others in your own sphere of let us say specialisation or field of career, how you would do an internal introspection or analysis.
In the example of the, for a lawyer, I pointed out how excellence in the field of law might mean for you for example, knowing the constitution and case law and finding joy in discovering precedent and solving problems or in company law it could be the formalities, routines, joy in aligning fragments, organising, cleaning up and making perfect a certain arrangement of legal, let's say priorities and duties.
Or for somebody else, it could be the wish for persistence and fighting skill to gaining advantage by skill of procedure over somebody else or some situation, creating impressions, finding loopholes. It is almost like a warrior on the battlefield in a way, and that gives you the sense of excellence and fulfilment.
Somebody else it might be just a sense of position and authority as you have gone up the ladder and you have the respect of others and the authority that comes with your let's say background, and it may not always reflect incompetence but that's your sense of excellence.
For others it would be taking a large number of cases, having a large office which works in a big way.
Somebody else, it will be going in detail with each client and on each case on a personal level and caring for a specific outcome all the way through in the detail, and then of course you won't have large numbers.
Somebody else, it may take on even a moral or ethical fight of standing for the underdog making an effort to help others, and you may go out of your way to take difficult cases because the person has nobody else and they can't afford to pay an expensive lawyer, and so you go pro bono that is you do it for free, for somebody with minimal expenses being paid for, and that would give you the perhaps the satisfaction of having reached an excellence.
I also dwelt a little bit on the sense of justice and the Indian concept of justice being different from the European concept and justice is not blind and what are the, I pointed out, essential conflicts of interest in the legal system. I won't go into that. Some of it can be troubling because you do realise that the legal system is not at all clean and that's why one person aspiring to make a difference could make so much difference for the country not just in the field in which you act.
So going into those let's say less clear and perhaps more murky aspects of law as it is currently practised, and I believe it is pretty much the same case everywhere in the world, a little more, a little less, sometimes more overt, sometimes more covert. And that's the nature of the not only the legal space as it is today, but much more because of the general decline of values in society.
(0:10:22):
And this is where I want to link it to some other kinds of let’s say themes or career forms.
Recognising that pretty much everywhere in all fields, in all career types, there is an overall decline in society and the result being that you will always find some kind of corruption or distortion even sometimes perversions in the values that the field should be representing but somehow it does not. And for you to want to represent those values means you have to actually struggle and fight and face resistance in opposition and whether you'd be willing to do that or you might choose to find a balance of compromise just to be able to keep your mind free and your personal space of work clear and not have to go intrude into others value systems with which you might conflict and so on.
All these I am placing as variations. All are legitimate depending on your need, your current evolutionary priorities and sometimes the setting and circumstance in which you are.
Let's say going back 20 years to stand up against corruption meant severe suffering. Today, I am speaking of India now, there has been a change in the overall national mood and to stand up against corruption is even respectable and is supported by others in the system. It is still difficult, but at least there is a shift in the mood and the priorities.
So sometimes one has to recognise, according to the age one has to choose one's fights. It used to be said, in the Kali Yuga because it is the age of darkness, even if you fight for the truth you're not going to win and you know that you're not going to win and yet some may choose to fight just to uphold an ideal. Others may say, knowing that I won't win I will protect my little space and not extend the fight outside.
It all depends on your temperament, need and the soul powers and priorities even on a very practical level. If for you to speak the truth means your head getting chopped as used to be at some point, then you may choose to withhold to protect your head so that you can fight other battles which are perhaps reasonable to fight.
So, all this is perhaps broadening the scope, [this] (0:12:53) sphere a lot, but I hope it will help describe the principles of introspection that I followed by which anybody in their space, in their career can find out what is for you, the sense of priorities in the focus, in the sense of excellence and in the sense of competence.
And remember these would change as you grow, as you mature, as you fulfil some of these needs, other aspects would come forward. So do not bind yourself necessarily. You may find a common thread of the soul aspiration that will go through life and while external priorities may shift during the journey, a little bit of zigzag, but there will be still some core which will stay.
So as long as you stay aligned to your core soul aspiration forms, you will find you will have the deep satisfaction, the sense of excellence will be fulfilled, and you will grow in competence in time. By compromising on that you will rarely grow in competence, you will rarely have deep satisfaction, and so excellence itself might fade out or it may be a false sense of excellence that you chase.
So all these I'm bringing back to the soul values and your deepest aspiration, not necessarily morally bound in the sense that the sole aspiration might be for some, something which may allow you or require you to compromise on certain other areas which may not be on a priority.
So this is just to give a broad sense of the approach taken in our discussion last time.
And I want to continue this before coming to the specific question of Karthik by taking a few examples more of let us say a doctor, and again here as I mentioned last time, there is an essential conflict of interest because a doctor benefits when a patient is sick, by curing the patient your income actually drops.
(0:15:12):
There is a very interesting incident. I think, it is recorded in…
So I recall this from one of the Ashramites that we had interviewed and he was joking saying that such and such a doctor in the Ashram wrote to Sri Aurobindo saying, by divine grace, more and more patients are coming to me now.
But think about what it means.
You could say in a very benevolent way that the patients who would have gone to other doctors are coming to me.
So.
But in reality what it implies is more and more people are falling sick and need to come to me. But you can't say that is by divine grace.
So it's one of those things which is a conflict inherent to the profession itself. But taking that as it may be, a doctor who lives by the values of a doctor, and you have the hypocrite's oath which is there in the European tradition, we have an equivalent value system in India again aligned to the spiritual dharma principles.
A doctor can make such a huge difference in society because you can alleviate illness and suffering. And yet being trained as a doctor your swabhava, your temperament, might be completely different from what is required to interact with a patient on a one-to-one basis.
So I'm going to give again a whole range of variations that this could have.
One of these doctors let's say now finds great joy not in directly engaging with the patient but because his temperament is different, he enjoys building institutions, building this large business, the trade, the volume of impact that he makes. So, at the end of the day, he looks at, okay, in my hospital, I had one thousand patients pass through today and get benefited and treated, isn't it? So for him the joy is in building the business. You see this is the third type of the, third soul force which is predominant but on a large scale.
Somebody else may have that on a smaller scale. You see. It depends on the size of your vital, and that's why the soul power combining with nature and the three modes of nature.
Another doctor will enjoy the analytics of the diagnosis. There was a whole TV series which was made on this very skillful genius doctor and I think there are a couple more now who look at what seemed to be very ordinary symptoms and are able to cut through the appearance and find some unusual situation which everybody else missed. And the joy of that analytic and the diagnosis. Such a doctor will not be so interested in routine types of cases but would go into a kind of a specialisation where you would be able to make certain kinds of breakthroughs.
Another would be somebody who has the skill of the surgeon and the challenge of the diversity of the cases. You see there it is the craftsman skill, your hands finally which are able to do perfectly and cut through literally an illness and repair, stitch and join with precision like the skill of a craftsman and with the medical background that you have. But you see the entire form in which this is expressed is so different.
Somebody else as a doctor would enjoy the routine not want to have these challenging cases and rather focus on the change they make, so routine test, procedure, no challenges, no risk, often such a person might drift into a more technical aspect as a technician or taking care of cases, stay with the general practice and not going to specialisations and have satisfaction in that. And you see there the temperament is also very different, and the focus will generally shift to the quality of interaction with the patients.
Or it could be a smaller vital. So how many patients did I do today? That number is your satisfaction, but you are not too caring about how much time you spend with the patient or what they feel but the number. So it would be a mix of the characteristic of the third quality of the soul force but with a narrow vital and with mind which is more superficially oriented.
Somebody else might have deep concern for the patient, personal care, follow-up, providing psychological support, needing often a lot of time and energy, which means you have to have a very strong vital, it may be large or narrow does not matter, a strong vital that you give, and give, and give, and not be exhausted. And if you have that kind of vital, almost automatically you will find the satisfaction in lifting literally a patient's mood. Someone comes to see you, and it's even before they can speak, you have expressed affection, concern and on an energetic level lifted their mood slightly. And then later through their interaction you provide psychological care. It takes time, it takes energy. At the end of the day you may come back exhausted, but you'll have the satisfaction of that exhaustion because you gave so much more energetically.
(0:21:02):
You see these are very different forms. All of them would come under the same label ‘doctor’.
So you understand why the labelling is so superficial and is almost pointless. You have to look at the form in which it flows.
And then perhaps into all this there may be the spiritual dimension which would be relevant for all those at least listening to this, that you would want as far as possible to be an instrument for the healing force, for the divine force to act through you, for which purpose, it would align then with your spiritual aspiration, you would try and make an effort to be a conscious instrument invoking consciously the force to act through you.
I'm going to share here an example of this in the Ashram, in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram context, and he was a homoeopath, Dr. R. Ramachandran. And of course the allopaths trivialised homoeopathy, and Nirodbaran was one of the allopaths who trivialised it. And there was this very unusual case. This man used to have extraordinary results. He would cure people sometimes dramatically, sometimes with a single dose. And there is correspondence that he had with Sri Aurobindo. And in the correspondence he would sometimes write, today such and such a patient came and I prayed to you and I felt your force working, and he writes the time, 3.15 p.m. and so on. One letter exists in which he says, I prayed, I felt and received the force, but he did not put the time. And in the margin Sri Aurobindo writes the time. I don't know what it is exactly now, let's say 2.30 p.m, showing you that not only was this doctor conscious of the divine help, Sri Aurobindo was conscious of the call and he noted the time when he sent the help.
Then this is just to tell you that even when Sri Aurobindo is in the body, that kind of connection is so literal, physical even, and when you connect to the divine presence whether in his name or in whatever name that you know the divine, that response will be also instantaneous. If you feel it, you know that it is a conscious response, the divine is not automation, it is a conscious presence, isn't it, of love.
Even if you don't feel it, the response was still there.
But when you feel it, you can become a more conscious vehicle for it to flow.
So there's this one example which I will close the story with.
So Dr. Ramachandran now is approached by somebody from the French Consulate who is dying with an illness. I don't know the specifics. His doctors already announced that he will die within a few hours, and the priest has come and started making the prayers, and there's the last minute, the family calls Dr. Ramachandra. He comes to the patient who's lying flat on the bed, skin colour all gone. He studies the symptoms, takes out some medication, pops it into the mouth of the patient and then declares loudly, he says, in one hour either he will die or he will be completely cured. And that's it. His work done. He walks out. About an hour later, this patient suddenly feels very good, gets up and sits on his bed, seems to be cured. So they approach the doctor because you know according to allopathy you would say, now you go to bed rest for so many days. Ramachandra says, no, he's got cured, he can start his normal life, completely normal. And the patient gets up and starts functioning completely normal, that which had brought him on the brink of death has suddenly been overturned with this homoeopathic dose.
Nirodbaran now, an allopath with a very fixed idea of superiority of allopathy, starts writing letters to Sri Aurobindo saying, oh if homoeopathy is so effective, we should all abandon allopathy and turn to homoeopathy.
(0:25:39):
And Sri Aurobindo explains, there's a whole series of letters where he explains that, look it's not so simple, each system, each pathy, follows its own particular line or catches one line of nature's working and takes it to its limits, and there are many approaches one could take.
And this is very important element Sri Aurobindo brings there:
He says, for the healing there are three things required:
the instrument,
the instrumentation, and then
the factor ‘X’, factor ‘X’ being the spiritual.
So instrument is you as a doctor. Through you, well, the instrumentation is the medicine, the medicine is chosen and given according to your capacity, understanding, intelligence, training, experience, common sense etc., and that will be effective. With it when you combine with goodwill, you genuinely want your patient to get well, there's a certain force and life force and intention which also goes through. This is really the basis for the placebo effect which is in fact such a powerful medicine.
You see you are given a sugar pill and you are told this is medicine that will cure you. The person who gives it, if he has the conviction, well, the force of conviction comes into you. The person who receives, if he has the conviction, he opens to the force of help which then acts.
And as I have said before, in one of the studies, 80% of illnesses for which patients go to a doctor can be cured by placebo.
In fact, one has to wonder how much the competence of a doctor acts for these common cases.
And it's almost as if unnecessary.
And I'd heard a story. I'd heard a story. I don't know, I could never find full confirmation of it, but it was during one of the interviews that we did in the early days in the Ashram, somebody narrated the story and he himself was not sure, he had heard that in the very early days of the Ashram when medicines were not available, there was one particular medicine which was given for every case. Any illness? That was the medicine given. And then one day a conventionally trained doctor came and said, this is wrong, how can one medicine cure everything? At which point it was reported to the Mother and she said, okay now you give the regular medicines because the faith is broken.
Now this the story I've heard, perhaps there's some truth to it, maybe it's not in the form in which it is, but the principle would be valid.
So there's the instrument, the instrumentation, and then this factor X which can make for the miraculous results of the kind that you see in Dr. Ramchandra's results, and precisely because he would concentrate, invoke the help, consciously direct it to that outcome.
So again I'm bringing into the doctor's career and you could apply it equally to the lawyer's career and all other careers that you conceive of.
The spiritual dimension, again what form that will take?
The degree to which it would suffuse, the forms of the career itself will vary and may vary from day to day.
But since you have a spiritual aspiration to try to align it,
the work outside, and
the inner aspiration,
to be able to align these two, would be one of the things which will give you satisfaction. It may not give you necessarily the most complete career satisfaction, for this you have other things, but this will be one of the things which you will find which will bring joy and deeper quality of satisfaction. And in time that will grow and the external forms of satisfaction will become let's say containers for this deeper satisfaction to fill. And this would apply to all career forms.
I want to touch upon a few more career types not going so much in detail but just identifying how those, what those represent.
An engineer, and there are many types, you have the civil engineer, you have the electrical engineer, you have the electronic engineer, you have the software engineer, and now some other variations also coming in.
Inherently, engineering is one of those very fascinating domains where you have to meet head-on the nature of matter itself.
(0:30:21):
You as a mental being have to interface with matter and deal with the qualities as well as the limitations of hard matter, ‘dead matter’ you say, and be able to draw out from a resistant matter certain capacities, and then arrange those qualities in a way that there is a specific outcome.
It is, if you really go deep into the materials aspect of it, it can be so demanding, so challenging and also so satisfying when you are able to achieve it.
Let's say, you're given an engineering problem.
Construct a bridge.
You have all the standard formulae. Build a bridge. Yes, this is how it is. You could follow the standard procedures. And you have a bridge design, except when you go onsite, the ground is too soft and the bridge itself would not be able to be supported by the ground, for which now you have a whole complex problem which you could solve again with standard procedures.
Then you discover, the bridge is aligned in a certain direction with the river in a certain way that the wind flows along the water very strongly during the monsoons and when it flows strongly there are gusts and the gusts have the bridge oscillating and there is a natural resonance of the bridge oscillation which can make the bridge move so much that it can break.
Now you need to dampen the oscillation for which you have to find a whole new solution which maybe you may not find in textbooks or you may find some which you have to modify.
After all that is done, you discover the metal that you have has characteristics which are not of a standard kind and you're not getting a certain type of steel. So you have to provide additional supports.
And then further problem is given that you're going to have a train going not just cars, so for that you'll have other problems.
So in every detail you're required to go down-down-down all the way to the most material detail and find a resolution there which is not always obvious. And having found 20 different points of resolution, they don't fit together.
So find a systemic harmony between all these different 20.
It can be quite challenging.
Of course most people go with standard formulae, but the, and when you see some of these engineers speak of what they have to achieve, what they have to do, it is amazing, and today that goes down to product development.
You take a certain let's say a mobile phone, there's an engineering aspect to this, there's of course the electronic and the electrical which are different, and then there's a physical engineering and the materials used and the structure used.
And very interestingly let's say you have an antenna here which transmits the radio waves. The placement of the antenna and the position of your hand can have an interaction. You see your hand touching the antenna or coming close to it changes the impedance which changes the resonance of the antenna’s connection and its efficacy.
You have to take into account all these things.
This plastic covering has a modification on it, on the impedance also, because it changes the speed at which the radio waves pass through.
All kinds of things.
Internally you may have reflections because there is a metal casing, you may have resonance reflections of the electromagnetic fields.
You have two wires which go very close to each other, and there's a pulse in one wire, and when the pulse happens rapidly it induces current in the other which creates false phantom signals. You have to suppress those, etc.
Now the complexity when you go deep into it is so great that literally you're facing, mind is facing the resistance of matter as well as the infinite potential that matter has to offer, and you're grappling with matter directly, and it's fascinating. Fascinating is a field.
Even when you go into software engineering, you're not dealing with matter directly, but the material world, even mind entering the material world. Software is after all an organisation of mind but still in matter. One comma, one full stop missed in your coding, or little spelling mistake somewhere, and something does not work. And in a complex piece of code, to be able to find that is so difficult.
(0:35:06):
I have spoken about this before, but it's literally a work of art on one level as well as the challenge of meeting matter and the resistance of matter, the demand of matter.
Sri Aurobindo has a very interesting observation about this that he says, matter will not yield unless the spirit, spiritual consciousness, can match its demands and not compromise.
And as you go higher up, of course the greater the power, the greater the effective action of the power, the more it can meet matter.
And the last point where you have reached what he calls the “over mental consciousness” which effectively is on the brink of the supramental and for many that itself might seem like the supramental but, he says, even there when it meets matter it fails, because it's not yet the oneness of the Supermind, and you have to go all the way into the supramental consciousness and only that meeting matter, matter will yield.
And it's very interesting.
The, the whole way of articulation is very suggestive that it is as if matter is a choice to resist and to yield.
And this brings us to something very interesting and which again I will point to from a career point of view. If you are conscious of this, whenever you face the challenges in your career, yes you can ask for help from above, but you can also build a relationship with the material that your career deals with.
Let's say in this case of engineering, you have material that is resistant. You can build a relationship with that material.
With computers, if you are programming, you can build a relationship, and in time you will find cooperation coming from that space.
As a doctor you build a relationship with your tools, with your instruments, and then with even the illnesses, and then with patients of course.
And equally with lawyers, you will build relationships with the knowledge which is in those books and with the books themselves and what they represent and the force that they carry as well as your colleagues, your clients and the judges and the system itself, the space in which you go to fight your cases.
So, building a relationship with the entire space of your career is one of those aspects in which you will find the space begins to collaborate, it begins to assist and respond to you in some way. It even aligns itself to your needs and so on.
So this is the aspect of engineering which literally demands mastery of matter and again it can have a very spiritual dimension.
The same could be said of various other careers, an artist, musician, poet, artisan, craftsman, and you can see how these could articulate through other forms also.
In each of these in a sense there is a spiritual dimension which comes obviously with the higher creativity as well as there's a skill and mastery which comes with the relationship that you set with your tools, with your instruments and with the powers of expression and so on.
So now I'm drifting the whole discussion more and more into the spiritual potential that we have to find and perhaps increase in whatever the form of career.
In a sense, in principle, any career can be made a vehicle for your spiritual development. At the very least as a support and then perhaps at its most even a full fledged vehicle to express a higher potential. And for you spiritually is a growth in consciousness in every field in every way. Because of the nature of life, every piece in the universe eventually connects to the whole universe, isn't it?
Just to take an example, you take your mobile phone. There's copper wiring inside. The quality of copper, how much percentage of oxygen is in it can change the speed of electrical signals and the loss of electricity and the inductance and capacitance that the wiring has internally, etc. You may want to have the best quality of copper for which you have to literally go into the process of copper purification and mining and that would make for greater effectivity here.
See for those of you who are audiophiles that you enjoy very high quality music, there's something called ‘speaker wire,’ you have an amplifier which is high-end, you have a loudspeaker which is high-end and you have the wire which connects the two. Now you would normally say, oh just connect any wire, the wire is a wire, it just conducts electricity. No. There's something called ‘speaker wire’ which is low-oxygen wire, that is the copper itself is smelted and formed in an environment where there is low oxygen, and this copper conducts electricity with higher quality and the fine variations of signals of electricity are not dampened or distorted. And just changing the quality of wire changes the quality of music and the sound that you get. It's called ‘OFC’, oxygen free copper. It's more expensive.
(0:40:46):
Now I'm just giving an example of how a tiny detail could make a huge difference on the whole outcome and you might not be aware of how important it is, but it plugs. From that copper you would go into the whole world of copper processing, electric conduction, inductance, capacitance of long wires, and then you will find [either] (0:41:05) wire if it is one single piece will have greater distortion, but if you have 64 braids of wire entwined around each other and the braids entwined around braids that makes for higher speed of conduction with better quality of signal variation.
Now it goes into technical details so fine that you will say, oh this is beyond my competence. That’s where knowledge gets fragmented. You have specialists for every field.
But what I am pointing to is you could take your field and literally diversify into any direction of specialisation according to your interest, according to your nature, according to your soul aspiration and find fulfilment in that because that's the nature of life.
So in conclusion, in completing the discussion from last time:
become conscious of your priorities;
build around them, develop your concentration, willpower, persistence;
ask to be an instrument of the divine inspiration, guidance, potential, growth;
and turn to your career path, work space with this approach;
you will reach excellence;
you will reach deep satisfaction;
you will grow in competence in time, because of all these things being aligned;
and in the world you will make a huge difference whether in a small space or a large space, whether in a psychological space or a material space does not matter, that you will be an instrument for the light to act through you.
Now with this background when I look at Karthik's question, the answer should be obvious. The question was: Success in material life can be spiritual failure and failure in material life can also be accompanied by spiritual success, is it possible to have both material and spiritual life simultaneously successful?
And you have to let go of mental clinging sometimes, he says.
So yes, you can see it is possible.
It is possible if you align these two domains within you fully.
And I've just described broadly how such an alignment could begin. And of course as you proceed you will find your own challenges, you will find your own means of let's say refining those alignments, and in principle, yes, it should be possible to have the spiritual success and the material successfully aligned.
Of course your definition of that success would be very different now, isn't it?
The problem of misalignment comes because you defined material success in certain narrow terms and then spiritual success in other narrow terms, and they don't join.
But if you go back to the procedure we followed earlier and you redefine what it means for you the success in that career field, it will not be misaligned with your spiritual values and your spiritual sense of success and therefore things could work perfectly.
And this would have natural corollaries also of eventually if that is what you seek financial growth as well as fame if that is what you seek.
You see, putting it very simply, when you concentrate to do your best, you will reach a degree of excellence that automatically will pull around you in the universe the forces that seek that quality that you're able to express and within the resources that are needed to express it, isn't it? Although you may not have sought that in the first place, you might have it implied, yes I would like but that's not my priority right now.
So when you do your work as well as you can, automatically it pulls forces, it pulls energies and circumstances begin to align, and then again you have to make choices because those circumstances may put their own demands. If you want to continue with this, then these are the compromises you make or not, you make choices.
(0:45:20):
So yes it is possible, and I've just in that sense I think broadly answered Karthik's question.
But I'm interested in commenting on this observation he makes: somewhere one has to let go of mental clinging. And this was precisely the point of this exercise that your preconception of what is success or what is competence or what will be fulfilling for you, it's a construct that came from outside from programming of the environment and the educational system in particular and the media and its priorities. You see, the extent to which that programming goes into you is so deep that you're not even conscious. You think by instinct and you've already thought in the track of the programming.
Let's just give one more example here because it's something which just came my way this morning. You see when you look at many of these television shows there's an interview happening. The person being interviewed makes a comment. Let's say it's a controversial comment. Instantly the camera cuts to audience responses. Somebody shakes their head, somebody shows anger, upset, surprise. What you see interestingly is actually entirely fabricated. What really happens in the studio is the camera has been recording faces independently of what was actually being discussed. The editor rather the producer guiding the editor now combines these to create a certain impression and to make the show more interesting visually. They cut and paste. They even have the person being interviewed sitting afterwards, the interview is over now they say, we need you nodding, so they'll take shots of the person he's asked to stare at the person who's asking the questions and nod and make various responses of emotions which will be cut and pasted later at various points in the interview. Sometimes the questioner is asked to change the question later to make it more conflicting or interesting for the answer that the interviewee gave. So, the new question is recorded and then patched upon the answer that was given to create a stronger conflict and then combined with various kinds of audience responses. And by the way there's a big little bright light, the big-big bright light sitting up there which switches on applause. So whenever the producer decides this quality I need to enhance, they switch on the applause button and the audience is required to applaud or that is cut and pasted later, they're asked, okay, now please applaud we record the applause and we cut and paste later at the points where it is required.
So the entire exercise of watching a show is really a programming exercise to train you to respond the way that audience responded by conforming to the current status of value system of society. To this response the audience is shocked, you are supposed to be shocked. To that response the audience laughs, you as a viewer hear the laugh track and laugh and you go back and review if you really thought about it, hey but this is so painful I shouldn't be laughing at it. So in the interview the guy says, what did you do, the guy is asked, what did you do with it? Oh I just killed them. Ha ha ha ha, the audience laughs.
Now this is laid on, but you listening and with the mood and the light music in the background which is one of those subtle programming forms, you smile, and the response is programmed into you, or the reverse.
Trivialising very serious matters or exaggerating trivial matters to make them serious. This film actress wore that colour dress, oh how horrible! And a big deal is made about it. And somehow your mind is shaped to fit into those value systems.
So I'm just pointing to this because yes you have to let go of a lot of mental habits. Not just clinging but habitual forms and values and completely dissolving just recognise what is it that you truly-truly want. Isn't it? And that's what this whole exercise was about. That's why I gave so many examples to show you the diversity of what would be valuable to you. And I hope this will be helpful for many others in their own various other kinds of careers. And recognising that the value system in society may be generally in decline, but you making a difference will attract others who share those values and help them wake up also.
(0:50:07):
And I have, have had this very often coming up when speaking very plain, direct, I've had sometimes young students come up and say and the parents come and say, you know somewhere inside me always knew things were like this. Speaking of education, when I speak of the complete meaninglessness of the examination system and what are the things which should need to be highlighted, and the parents will come and say, yes I really, I believe this but it's the first time I have had someone articulate it. But it helps them. It reinforces and gives them a chance now to turn to their true values, change their priorities. And you you'll make a huge difference if you can live the values. Take small steps, don't worry, but the fact that you live it will make a huge impact on others. And across the world, it awakens, gives a vehicle for the higher spiritual forces now to begin to incarnate, to infuse, to manifest through you and in the space in which you act.
We can go to the next question.
Alina (0:51:19)
To the next question, Sraddhalu already elaborated, unless you still want to say something. Uma is writing: In life often career and honourable post is a great hindrance to spiritual lives.
Sraddhalu (0:51:37)
Yes.
Career and honourable post is a great hindrance to spiritual life.
That's her comment and question.
The reason in a way this has been answered but there's an angle which I want to highlight which is specific to this question. The reason is that you don't have enough time to give to both. If you commit yourself to developing your career that becomes a 24-hour commitment. You commit yourself to developing your spiritual life and I mean not just a religious basic routine of practices but a real concentrated attempt to refine and develop and grow in consciousness. Well, it needs energy, it needs time. And ideally the spiritual life commitment would become 24 hours.
You look at the example of Sri Aurobindo. And I will again say, not all of us are ready for that, and so recognise your level of readiness.
But the example of Sri Aurobindo when in the midst of his entire dedication for freeing India from colonial rule, he receives the Divine guidance to stop this now and dedicate himself entirely to the spiritual concentration. And he couldn't. And then he goes to jail. Rather he is jailed. And in jail he says to the Divine, but why did you do this, I was doing this work?
And then Sri Krishna tells him:
Do you recall a month ago, I asked you to leave all that work? And you didn't have it in you to break free of that attachment, so I broke the attachment for you.
And in jail he was given a 24-hour focus which was the deepening of the spiritual sadhana in complete isolation and from those distractions. And you can read his book. I would highly recommend for those of you who are interested, Tales of Prison Life, where he describes his experiences not only of the prison but also of the spiritual dimension though in a few pages, but you get a glimpse of the sharp turn and the rapidity of progress that begins. He doesn't document everything.
But after that he's guided to come to Pondicherry where you can see in the Record of Yoga the rapidity of progress. Now not all of us are ready for that, because there are different parts of our nature which need their own satisfaction and growth equally. Even for Sri Aurobindo it came at a certain stage in his life after having gone through so many other experiences.
So you realise that both of these demand full-time if you want to fully dedicate.
Of course you can't, and perhaps you're not ready for it.
So how much of the spiritual life that you're ready for can integrate with the career demand which may be 100% also. And it's a question of time now and of prioritisation.
If you go back to the earlier part of the discussion where I spoke of how the two could be woven together without necessarily conflicting, yes, you will still have conflicts because sometimes you will be asked to do things which may not comply or align with your spiritual values or aspirations and you may choose to take difficult decisions.
(0:55:02):
Still there will come a point where you will say, but I need to stay in this state of deep concentration which I can't when I am in the middle of work. For that you need isolated time. Observe what you need. And where you can, when you can, give it that special time.
So let's say, it could be weekends when you don't have to focus on the career and you have time for yourself. If you're not too exhausted at the end of the week, well you have a few hours or a day of concentration in which you can go deeper.
But then will be the challenge of attempting to integrate that into your daily life routine. Now this is the part where it is a challenge. Initially you will find a little bit of that creeps in into your let's say routine life or career life. You go to office and that concentration, that meditation, that state of exaltation a little bit and then you lose it. You go back and forth and back and forth. And each time perhaps a little more. And one day it happens, you're actually able to sustain it for an entire day. Wow! But you lose it the next.
Now here's the reference: if you could do it for one day, in principle you can do it every day. Go back and forth again, and again make small steps, small improvements until maybe you're able to sustain with less intensity two or three days, and so on.
The idea is to integrate the benefit of a specialised concentration which would come with what you would call your ‘spiritual life’ into the career life to whatever degree possible and then infuse and increase what is possible.
From the point of view of the Integral Yoga this would be far more important. Mother used to highlight this, she said, she preferred rather than having long periods of concentrated meditation, to have the meditation state or experience extended into your daily life that was more valuable.
So the routine that she gave at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram itself was the morning let's say, I think, it was 6 o'clock meditation, she would come to […] (0:57:30) the balcony, sometimes people would be present even half an hour before in concentration, in preparation, in receptivity, standing there, and then she would come and she would bring down a tremendous power and she would sweep through each, looking at each person momentarily. You felt immediately shifted in consciousness, lifted, exalted, deepened, whatever it is you needed at that moment infused into you.
And then the goal of this was now you carry this through the rest of the work during your day.
What was the work?
Well you could be going to the dairy, you could be working in the laundry, you could be going to the farms, you could be going to the engineering department, house construction department, as a teacher in the school or washing vessels in the dining room or going for your art, painting, stitching of a saree, embroidery, it could be anything.
Career form.
Right?
So I'm taking this as an example.
Sometimes there would be two or three Darshans during the day, in the earlier days, they would come second time, sometimes in the evening there would be a special meditation.
Take this principle: one concentrated focus in the morning and then extending it into the day. Extending at the points where it is more easy perhaps initially, at the start of the day perhaps initially, during the breaks perhaps or using the breaks to reconnect and so infusing bit by bit something of that aspiration, even the brief remembrance of it, of that state of the morning concentration is enough to shift your state and make a difference.
And you will notice, and I say this without exaggeration, within days of this effort you will notice something has shifted. At the very least, your automatic reactions to challenges, to conflicts, your automatic reactions will have undergone a change. They will no more be so mechanical, they will no more be so reactive. There will be a deeper equality which will begin to infuse deeper calm, quiet, perhaps a clarity of light, insight which may begin to come. It's for each one to see what form in which this first emerges. But you'll feel a change within days.
(1:00:14)
Persist.
And you will lose the persistence sometimes. Don't worry.
Restart. Persist in restarting.
Sometimes you forget. Restart. So the persistence here will be initially just in restarting.
At some point there will be a sufficient shift in your consciousness, in your outermost layers that it won't be such a great effort. And at that point, you'll find the persistence will be only of amplifying and pushing into detail.
If done in this way, you will be living the life that the sadhakas lived in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram with the difference that you are in a much more diluted environment where everything in the environment is opposing your effort. Whereas in the Ashram, well, the goal was to create an environment which would be supportive.
There is an intermediate environment that the Mother created which we know as Auroville, which is meant to be on the scale of a township but ideally with that kind of concentration that was built up at that time in the Ashram or at least tending towards that direction even.
Isn’t it?
So create your own little Auroville in your space. If there are others who share your values in your workspace, build links with them, have a short concentration in the workspace. If you are in charge of a team or of the workspace, you start the day with the team in the workspace with a short concentration. Explain to them the value of the concentration, whether they recognise it or not. Just the fact that you're together aligned in a quiet concentration, 30 seconds perhaps, might be enough to build deeper team bonds, deeper alignments, and the cohesiveness in the work and allow the group as a vehicle to receive a touch of the higher intuition.
So, if you have that freedom, well, work with your team. If the team is sceptical and even hostile to spirituality, do not use the spiritual words, but bring in the principles by saying, we are going to concentrate so that we work better and have a deeper internal alignment for the goals which we have to fulfil. Words to that effect, find something suitable that works for that mindset.
But you yourself aligning to the deeper force would bring in or even they themselves sometimes even the atheists have a spiritual opening by whatever words they may know the Presence, but it will make a huge difference.
So this would be, I think my general response of the conflict of time and energy required in what would otherwise be two very different fields requiring full time, and the bridging of these would align perfectly with the goals of the Integral Yoga which is to manifest in life, the spiritual transformation.
We can go to the next question. How much time do we have?
Alina (1:03:10):
If you want to take up the next question from Neetu.
Sraddhalu (1:03:15)
Yes, we will listen to that.
Alina (1:03:18)
How to bring balance between horizontal and vertical development in a lifelong learning process and as a student?
It’s a very good question.
Sraddhalu (1:03:32):
Yes, it’s a question about balance between horizontal and vertical development.
It is something we spoke of in our discussions in the last few sessions where I spoke of how there is the widening on a horizontal level, enriching of life and then a narrowing of focus in which that rich base is now put into action. So there's the horizontal expansion of our capacities and then the vertical development of our consciousness and especially for all those of us listening to this who consider ourselves lifelong learners and students of life, students of the spirit, isn't it?
So in the context of larger life, the horizontal and vertical development will have its phases, rhythms and cycles. Especially in the earlier years the horizontal development acquires greater prominence. Literally your biology is growing from a little baby this size to this huge human being with maybe ten times the volume. So in that literally physical horizontal growth, you also have your skill sets which are growing. The development of the mind would be one of those critical elements and harmonising it with the vital and the psychic aspiration and the physical skills.
So predominantly at that point, the energies of the biology are turned to the horizontal, and the vertical development is implied because these are layers of consciousness literally unfolding.
(1:05:09):
But once you've come into your own as an individual, the compulsion for the vertical is not so strong. The primary drivers of your compulsion are your desire instincts in a normal life let's say. And so as desire you are chasing things horizontally.
If you have a let's say deeper aspiration and then there's the vertical dimension that is also living for you, then that's when you feel this conflict of the horizontal drive and the vertical drive. You need to develop your life skills. You also need to grow in consciousness.
Linking it with our earlier discussion, the two need not conflict if we take the horizontal development itself as an enriching of the vertical.
It's a very interesting observation Sri Aurobindo makes. The whole of this physical universe need not have gone into this chaotic, conflicting, colliding, resisting, opposing play of forces. The whole universe could have bloomed like a flower very harmoniously, all the petals and layers opening out and reach to the full divine potential if not for those forces early on who chose to turn against the divine will and oppose this natural development and break at each step or oppose and resist and distort disfigure even the harmonious unfolding.
So why was that allowed?
I'll put it in two ways.
First is the divine consciousness is utter freedom and the freedom includes the freedom to go against its own freedom, isn’t it? Otherwise it wouldn't be true freedom. So the freedom to oppose freedom, the freedom to oppose even divinity, in other words, the freedom to go against the Divine and against the divine will is part of the totality of the divine freedom.
So if the creation represented the divine freedom without that component of the freedom of the ultimate utter freedom, then it would be an incomplete creation.
So the moment you have a complete creation, that includes and must include the freedom to oppose the divine will and these are those forces.
What benefit I'll come to because Sri Aurobindo describes that, I'll come to that shortly.
So this is one way in which you can look at this whole question of the, the freedom.
There's another way you can look at the freedom, the, of the question of this opposition of the forces is:
This is the answer Sri Aurobindo gives, that if there was this natural blooming, yes you would have a beautiful perfect seeming universe, but not as rich, not as diverse.
At each step of the forward movement vertically, the opposition that comes from these forces delays, slows down, introduces complexities by breaking, distorting, disfiguring, resisting, and so on; introduces complexities which need to be overcome in order for the vertical movement to grow.
Strength is one of those aspects particularly.
And so, there's a great richness built up horizontally because of this resistance.
Otherwise you see the universe would rapidly have grown into its highest spiritual potential vertically but not sufficiently rich horizontally. So this is the angle Sri Aurobindo brings in that the opposition actually has assisted or has compelled or was perhaps even helpful to, I won't say needed, but helpful to making for this rich horizontal development.
So let us take it in this way, that where you have an internal need for the horizontal development or where external challenges come and hit you and demand attention, you give it the due for the horizontal development while working for the development of the vertical, and at the very least it will strengthen the vertical potential. It will make more rich and more complete, and you take it as part of the vertical development rather than as an opposition to it.
So the fact that this problem comes up repeatedly means something is necessary, either have a weakness or there's a demand required for the higher working to build a stronger, more stable, more broad base so that later when the vertical development is more complete it will have a more solid base on which to stand.
(1:10:13):
In this way the two need not be seen in conflict, you see each assisting the other. The horizontal development makes more complete and makes, gives a broader base for the vertical development. The vertical development gives you higher potential and power which can be brought to fulfil the horizontal development more rapidly, more richly, more effectively, more joyously and so on.
So treat the two as complementary.
So we realise that as I said there are rhythms, some of these may be cyclic. When there is a rapid growth in any part, horizontal or vertical, there is a need for pause, there is a need of assimilation, integration of that rapid growth, and then there's a period of refinement, and then one repeats again the whole cycle of growth-assimilation-integration-refinement, growth-assimilation-integration-refinement and so on.
But when you see this let's say four steps of the cycle both horizontally and vertically, and there you realise how they work.
When the vertical needs assimilation, it is with the horizontal.
When the horizontal needs assimilation, it is with the vertical.
Or integration, isn't it?
So now you begin to see both as complementing each other so you have literally a vertical movement but widening at each step to make for a large grand superstructure of your consciousness, each supports the other and each makes easier in developing the other.
As a result though when we look at it this way and cyclically, it's as if you're compressing multiple lifetimes into a single lifetime.
The problem though is you have too much of a backlog, baggage of your past growth, challenges, problems, difficulties which leave their scars and prevent further growth. So when you take a new birth, you as if start afresh without those scars so that now you can make that further growth.
So the skill will be and this is especially for us those of us who feel the need to have this multiple lifetimes growth in this life itself, the skill will be to be able to empty the cup, to reset to zero all your preconceptions.
There is a very interesting incident Sri Aurobindo takes trouble to narrate. In his own sadhana, remember this is when he was in the intense phase, Record of Yoga sadhana, he was in the building that is now called the ‘Guest House’, he was still meeting people every day, his sadhana had come to a block. Somehow there was so much richness of experience, it was unable to progress. And one afternoon he is sitting there with his cup of tea and there was a sadhu who was supposed to be a bit of a crank walking on the road. Suddenly this sadhu is inspired. He enters this house, goes up the staircase to where Sri Aurobindo is sitting, walks up to him, takes the cup of tea, pours it upside down and places the cup again, turns around, walks out, goes down, goes away on his journey.
Sri Aurobindo says, it was the clue that he needed. And the clue was this: the cup had to be emptied so that now it could be refilled with something new. And so making those steps necessary, he, there was the necessary breakthrough and the progress in his sadhana.
So I'm pointing to this as an essential requirement for us if we seek multiple lifetimes of growth in this very single life, that means literally you have to let go of everything that has happened to you including all the associated likes and dislikes and fears, angers, hatreds, imprints including good things all the loves and affections and ties that bind you everything literally letting go, equally letting go the burden of the spiritual experiences and growth, I'm so full of all this, I have been doing this practice now for 20 years every day. Wonderful, but notice how it's blocked you. Literally letting go even of all that. Bearing yourself totally of everything like a newborn child standing before the Divine, before the Divine Mother with nothing at all and starting afresh.
Now it's not something you might do every day to this degree. But at certain times when you find in your life you've reached a certain boundary, limit, barrier, something is missing or something is not progressing, stop, pause, look back, let go of all that binds you to the past. Literally take a new birth at that point and start afresh.
(1:15:19):
In a sense this lockdown which happened during the Covid period was an occasion for some of us to have a kind of a partial reset. I'm not happy with the economic reset they're doing that is intended to harm but a psychological reset for those who had a spiritual life was helpful for them, for others it was traumatic. But you can do this consciously and it will happen once in a while.
But what you can do is a kind of a mini birth every day. And the best way to do that, and we will close with this, at the end of the day, review the day very rapidly, key-points, what you need to do for follow-up for future, lessons to be learnt, and then take the whole day and literally give it to the Divine Mother or let it fade out into the past. Nothing left. Including all the conflicts, including all the adulations, including everything. Let it all go. Bare yourself entirely, only that which is essential remains in terms of consciousness, not in terms of memories or forms, and open yourself to the Divine Mother and say, here I am, I give myself to you, shape me as you choose, and go to sleep with that. You wake up in the morning like a newborn baby literally in consciousness. At best you have tasks to continue from yesterday, you have your notes for that but nothing to do with the people and the interactions and the conflicts and dislikes or even the praise and adulations. All that wonderful as it was, it's another lifetime. Now I start afresh. And when you go with this attitude, you meet the same people with whom maybe you had a conflict, you are free of the conflict.
Whether they remember or not, doesn’t matter. When you are free of it, they will be influenced by your freedom. But you will feel yourself free and light and fresh, able to act without that resistance and stickiness and rigidity that comes from the past, hangover.
So, in this concentration of the night, first you assess, then you let go, then let it fade out and give yourself and do a hand over entirely to the Divine Mother like a child in her lap, in her arms and go to sleep with that, and that's like a mini new birth, every day.
And every morning you wake up fresh like a newborn child, you've just come into this world, oh what a beautiful world. Hand over yourself to the Divine that you may be transformed and reshaped and take new birth in a small step, in a small way every day.
And then occasionally you will have the more radical changes which will also come, and they will happen, they'll be given to you.
If you're doing this regularly, there's a kind of a psychological youth which will begin to grow in you and it will reflect even in your biological youth in some way.
And in this way you'll find every day can be like a mini lifetime. And eventually every few weeks or months or whenever you go through radical changes, it will be like a new birth and a new life beginning all over again. And this is possible for each one of us.
So start today, this evening, perhaps every day a little bit and a little bit. And trust that you will be carried. The Mother had given this as a reference. She said, when people come to meet her, many of them would put forward their best front, the rest would be hidden and they would come packaged for a pretty appearance. And she said, that doesn't help because I have to go through that resistance and that artificial structure to the things which need to be worked upon. She said, she preferred that you came as newborn children, bared, here I am with everything. You don't have to specify or focus on anything particular. If you want to, you may, but you don't need to, just here I am, everything all included, nothing hidden, bared to her light. And she soaks you with her light and shapes you and changes you. The rapidity of growth you will experience with this very simple practice is amazing, it's astounding, because literally you're given a new birth, each time there is that infusion.
So begin today, let every day be a small new birth. Then our career as well as our spiritual life will easily align and every circumstance of external life will become either an assistance to the spiritual growth or a means for the spiritual growth to fulfil itself and to master the circumstances.
I think we will close with this holding this as our aspiration.
Namaste.
Alina (1:20:56)
Namaste.
Thank you.