December 24, 2022
Alina (0:00:28):
Namaste. Namaste Sraddhalu.
Sraddhalu (0:00:31):
Namaste.
Alina (0:00:32):
And Merry Christmas to everyone who is celebrating today this very special celebration. So today as it is Christmas, we will have a pause on our ongoing theme for this very special session. And we will invite Sraddhalu to give his talk on the Christmas and the festival of light. We will continue the theme of the developing our capacities of learning and understanding from next week.
So we kindly invite you to address questions on our topic of today or on the next topic. It can be addressed in our YouTube chat box or by sending an email at our email address integralstudies.in[at]gmail.com. So I kindly invite Sraddhalu to start the session.
Sraddhalu (0:01:35):
Yes. Namaste and a very happy Christmas to all of you. As we are on the eve of the special occasion, I thought it to appropriate to dwell a little bit on the deeper sense of this day.
The Mother referred to it as ‘La Fête De La Lumière’ in French, which would translate as ‘The Festival of the Light’, literal translation. And there are several observations that she made with regard to this. I will just read from a couple of them first before we enter the theme proper. In one of the sessions in the Agenda where she is greeting Satprem, this is on 1971, she starts with, in French of course, translated:
“Good morning! It’s the festival of Light: Christmas is the festival of the return of the Light – it’s much older than Christianity! – when the days were beginning to grow longer.”
That is just passing observation that she makes. And elsewhere she was asked: Why is it that in the Ashram we celebrate Christmas? Because in most cases you will find people consider Christmas as the birth of Christ and as a Christian festival so in a letter which was written to the Mother by one of the children I believe she was asked:
“Why do we celebrate Christmas here?”
And Mother’s observation in the response: “Long before the Christian religion made December 25th the day of Christ’s birth, this day was the festival of the return of the sun, the Day of Light. It is this very ancient symbol of the rebirth of the Light that we wish to celebrate here.”
Very interesting. Even the phrasing “ancient symbol of … rebirth of the Light” and it is “the festival of the return of the sun, the Day of Light”. We will have occasion to elaborate this, upon this a little more- what it means, and how it works.
So, in, particularly in the West and in countries which are largely Christian, the preparation for Christmas as birth of Jesus the Christ is often associated with the month of December itself, and so sometimes even the whole month begins a certain mood. And in most cases, though on a very superficial level the entire festival has been reduced to exchanging gifts and holiday seasons and eating, meeting with family and things like that. Particularly in the European tradition, it's the time when the family comes together which otherwise might not be the case, and inevitably it becomes the most important day because everyone tries to come together.
In that sense, there is a sense of closeness, of intimacy, of unity, and the sense of light of course is not so strong but it is incidental. You will find in some of the Mother's messages also, she brings these two aspects together. We will read from those towards the end of our session.
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But in the process, in modern times, there has been a reduction to a degree that even in the United States almost now 15 years ago, they replaced the word Christmas and turned it into holiday season. So they will say ‘happy holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’, which was a bit of a loss when they did that.
But in fact the tradition itself goes back to a much earlier period, goes back in fact to something which was prevalent many-many thousands of years ago, of which the full knowledge was largely lost later on. It relates to some of the more occult phenomena of which we will have some discussion now.
But you will see this tradition is, was considered important enough or this event was considered important enough that everywhere in what we may call ‘the ancient world’, everywhere there is an observation of this.
You'll find it in the Druidic tradition, the Celtic tradition, Egyptian tradition, South American traditions and of course in the eastern conditions, both in India and in China. In the most overt form of it, we see that there is the shifting of the sun's direction. So, if you consider from the north to the south, there is a movement of the sun which takes place across the seasons. And at some point, when the sun is in the southernmost point, the entire zodiac, the entire sky is literally tilting as the sun moves due to the particular inclination of the earth.
But at the point where the sun is in the southernmost, we find that the nights had been becoming longer and at that point, there is a reversal and you have on the 21st of December currently the longest night, the shortest day, but from 21st onwards there is a pushback, and the days start becoming longer, the nights becoming shorter.
It passes once again through the centre point where there is the equinox, both day and night are equal length, and then again it pushes, the light pushes on until the night becomes the shortest. And then again there is a reversal. So the longest day is currently 21st of June about. And then again there is a reversal. The darkness starts pushing back and the days become shorter, nights beginning to become longer, passing again through an equinox in September and finally reaching December where it turns again.
Now in the ancient world all the equinoxes were considered important as well as these two points where you have the extreme of either longest day or longest night. And today's archaeologists or even the modern mind which is largely reduced to a material level will nearly see it as an external symbol of the change of seasons.
But there is something far more profound, and in order to be able to understand that we have to: go deeper into the occult dimension of it, the symbolism of it, and its practical implication. It all boils down to something that takes place in the astral worlds, where what we are seeing physically as a shift in the relationship of day and night is literally, actually, a shift in the balance between the light and darkness.
You experience it as a pressure in the environment, in the quality of the light, and in the currents of energies of the light and darkness, in the astral world, especially when we are outside the physical body, this hits you.
And so, I want to dwell upon this a little bit, first starting with the idea that everything in the physical world is actually a symbol. It's an idea we have dwelt upon many times, but I will treat this as an independent discussion, so we will explore this a little more in depth. You see, from an atheistic point of view, everything psychological is a product of the physical. Your brain produces thoughts. And so, reality is seen from bottom upward. This is real, that is matter is real, and then everything else is as if constructed on top in layers. In the atheistic viewpoint, our thought, our expectation, our mind constructs the image of God.
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So you conceive of God, of the Divine, in whatever way your mind could conceive of an ideal of whatever kind.
In the biblical tradition, you have the very opposite statement where it is said that God made man in his own image. Now it is actually not Christian, it goes back to pre-Christian tradition. But the idea is from above whatever was there projects itself and the human is the image of the Divine. Now it does not mean literally that God has two eyes and two ears and two arms and so on. This is where we make a mistake from the atheistic and materialistic point of view. We understand that in a very superficial way.
In the original Kabbalah tradition from which this phrasing actually comes, the deeper knowledge is still held where even the image of the human body is a symbol of divine principles, powers, workings, relationships of forces. And so the conception of God or from which the human being is an image, that thing itself is seen through certain kinds of symbols. And so the human body is literally a perfect representation, symbolically though, and each of our eyes would represent specific powers, and even, I believe, they go quite in depth in the mathematics of it. God is masculine of course in their tradition, in the Judaism and so his beard has so many hairs, I don't remember the number exactly, and the number of hairs has a symbol also.
So in the, in the Kabbalah tradition, it's pushed to another extreme where the symbolism is again reduced in some sense to a mentalised form. The reality of course is much more profound. And it is in the yogic tradition that we discover this, in, which is the only tradition still alive that retains its full spiritual origin without losing itself too much in the symbolism. And the whole, the idea of course here is, that the, not just the human being but the entire universe is an expression of the Divine and therefore a symbol of the Divine.
And in this, the whole reality is flipped, inverted, from the atheistic viewpoint that the reality is above and there is a successive series of reduction, phenomenal reduction. While you know the atheistic viewpoint constructs from below with matter as the starting point, it constructs phenomena. Here there is a reduction in phenomena. Yes, it is not really a construction, it is a reductionism, all the way down to the material which is the, well, the most reduced.
In the modern science perspective of quantum physics, we come to this surprising discovery that the whole universe seems to be some kind of a simulation, and it's unreal or seems to be unreal, and there's a truth to it.
The truth is that it is a simulation. Implied though is that there's a reality behind of which it is a simulation or which, in which the simulation takes place. And that they don't touch, they are afraid to touch that. But it aligns very closely to the yogic view, but the reality is above, the simulation is below. This is the point. Or in the more ascetic traditions of the world, the world becomes illusory, at least this material world becomes illusory, and the reality therefore is somewhere above, far away, otherworldly.
But the common feature in all these is this top-down perspective of reality. And we have to really learn to shift our thinking top-down and in fact our experience even we have to learn to begin to live top-down. You see, the training of our physical life and education has been to identify with the body and to conceive of our emotions and mind as emergent. In a sense it aligns to our childhood experience in some parts where we are required to identify with the body to gain control over it.
But the deeper truth is this top-down reality where we have to learn to identify much more with the mind, but also more deeply with something higher, deeper, and from there experience mind, life and body.
We are spirit which has a mind, which has life-energies, which has a physical body and we have to literally reverse ourselves and then begin to experience the world from this perspective and then only we can really appreciate the sense of how things really are.
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From a, from this top-down perspective therefore our psychological experiences are often more true, more real than our physical or even we may say that our psychological experiences are the origin of our physical experiences.
Uh, I have given this example many times that often it is in dream state that we get our first glimpse of this reality, where in dream state often you experience things far more vividly, stronger emotions, much more intense perceptions, even colours and senses are much more rich and so on.
There we get a glimpse. But the light itself and our experience of light is top-down. In reality, all experience of light is of a higher grade of reality and the physical experience of light is representative, degenerated, reduced reflection of that experience of light.
And I am going to dwell upon this a little more later as we come along. But just to set this as a preparation for us to appreciate:
All this now acquires a tremendous importance when we step out of the physical body in our subtle body, and this is particularly at the time when we leave the physical body, at time of ‘death’ as we call it, that we find ourselves freed from the physical body and at that point the nature of the environment, the atmosphere of ‘the astral world’, as they call it in the theosophical system, that hits us with full intensity.
When you are in the physical body, that is still influencing you, but the physical body is such a dulling influence that it reduces all of that influence down to at least one thousandth without exaggerating, at least one thousandth, maybe much less. And so the result is, when in the environing astral space, there is a brilliant intensity of light. In your physical body through your physical senses, not only you do not see that light, but it reflects in your mind in some sense and gives you a sense of brightness of mood. So you say, today I am feeling somewhat bright. You see.
You are using a vocabulary of light without actually perceiving the nature of that actual light. When that light is very strong, for example, in the aura, in the aura again you will find intensely a very strong light, brilliance. You are not conscious, others are not physically conscious, but they look at you and say, oh you look very bright today. In fact you are registering on some deeper level the sense of that brilliance, brightness and giving to it a certain trans, translation in a more superficial layer without realising why you're doing it.
Because it's as if some deeper perception has glimpsed it, and that perception is inaccessible to us, from there it reflects in our mind. But the result is in that domain that light is so much more vivid has immediately a massive consequence. The sense of that light is literally as if two extremes in a struggle, a tension of the light and darkness. So experienced in the astral world, you feel it as a current, a current or a tendency pushing you towards light or pushing you towards darkness.
And this becomes extremely important when you are thrown into that state or that space with no other reference. Without any effort on your part, are you being pushed towards light or are you being pushed towards darkness? So the current now becomes very important. Because like a boat on a river you are being swept helplessly, especially when you are not conscious, and this is the reason why the play of this current is considered to be of great value when people transition, when they leave their body. The worlds top-down are experienced in terms of light as brighter as you go up and darker as you come down.
(0:20:12):
So in practice this means that when there is a current of increasing light, it's a movement pushing you upward towards higher worlds. When it is a current towards darkness, then it is experienced as a push pulling you downwards towards, well, darker states or darker realms. Now this is a literal experience, it is not figurative, it is not, well, it is a symbol in the physical world, but there it is the reality.
So if you were to be thrown into that state, let's say just out of the body, you are not yet conscious that you have left the body and you are perhaps still in some kind of a daze. If there is a current that is pushing you to light, towards darkness there will be a tendency for you to feel a little more dim, dull or what in physical world we would experience as a tendency to depression.
If at that point there is a current that is pushing you towards light, then you will feel yourself gradually becoming more and more bright, happy, cheerful, joyous, optimistic and so on. And that's why this current is so important, because when you are helpless, when you are unconscious, unaware, that is the default tendency. So if you look at it this way now, the physical play of length of day and night and the push of the seasons is a physical symbol of this trend of the currents in the astral worlds.
So what happens in practice? During the time when the days are growing longer, the light is pushing against darkness and winning over it. During the time when the darkness, the nights, are growing longer, the darkness is pushing over light and winning over it. So in practice, and this is a very great practical value, if you had to leave your body, then you would wait normally until this tide changes. Just as if you have to launch a ship, you would wait until the tide changes and now the sea begins to pull you in the direction you want to travel and that is when you launch the ship. You don't launch the ship at low tide, you launch it at high tide, isn't it?
So something of this is, as a symbol, is real experience in the astral world, in the astral body at the time of leaving the body. And, therefore, we find in the Mahabharata which is now 5000-year old event, Bhishma, who is one of the very great demigods, literally he is the son of Ganga and has a special gift that he can choose when he will leave his body. So in the middle of the war, he has been shot with so many arrows that he would normally die. But since he has the choice, he stays, chooses to wait, of course in great pain because the body is, well, practically broken, but he chooses to wait until this date of crossing of the 21st of December, when the tides in the subtle world shift and then only he leaves his body.
In the Sanskrit vocabulary, this date is called ‘Uttarayana’, literally translated as going towards north or rising towards north, that's how we would translate it, but the sun's movement. But if you look at it in terms of current, it is also the current rising now towards what north would represent in this case, the increasing of light.
So he waits for Uttarayana, and only when the auspicious day has come, then he chooses to leave his body. And this somehow is so deeply impressed in the whole civilisation. In over 5000 years at least, this event of Mahabharata is so important that it has literally formed the unity of the Indian civilisational space and the spiritual map of India, but also into this, this incident has such a great value that practically everybody who knows the Mahabharata, who has heard the story, knows of the importance of this day but without this deeper understanding of why, what does it matter.
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But this truth in fact was known across the world in all of what I have referred to as the ‘ancient world’.
When I was in my first visit to Ireland, I was taken to this place called Newgrange, which is just a hill with a little cave inside. And going into the cave is extremely difficult, you have to go through narrow passage and bend down. And once you cross through that passage, you come into this large space of the cave where there are multiple rooms and then the central room which is just in front is aligned and stones have been arranged through that narrow passage of the cave such that exactly on the 21st of December as the Sun rises the sunlight will come straight through in one beam and rest on a patch on the ground for a few minutes.
I believe the timing also is considered important but they didn't have specifics of what time it is. And then they said to us that the, when people died, their bones would be placed in that spot, waiting for the 21st of December, when the sun's light would come, literally if you see in visual terms, the sun's light literally like a hand coming through the hole of the cave and lifting the bones and taking them away.
Symbolically, physically represented. In the Egyptian tradition you have the same thing, rays of the sun as hands, drawn as hands, sometimes holding the symbol of life, Ankh, or giving knowledge, or whatever it is. But the same idea, literally the hand lifts and takes away the person into the higher worlds. So the idea was when somebody passed on, if it was before the 21st of December, then the bones of that person representing of course their consciousness physically placed in that location on that auspicious day as the tide turns, the sun takes them into the higher worlds.
You see it is something so important that in the ancient world everywhere you find this symbolism and equivalent ceremonies and ideas because it had a practical import. When nearly 300 years after the date of Christ's birth, [no date, no day] (0:27:50) is actually known.
In the Bible whatever description exists suggests that it was sometime in March or April that he was born, but since there was no exact date and there was no particular celebration of Christ's birth, it was a, the Roman Emperor in the Roman Empire which had made Christianity its official religion, they decided they had to have a meeting to decide on the birth of Christ. So they had four options and they picked Christmas which was already an existing festival for this festival of light. And they picked it because of course it was a major festival, it was the time people came together and so on, but it also fitted the symbol which in Christianity Christ would represent a new light, a new awakening, a new birth, and so on, and so it fitted that.
Why 25th of December? Because there has been a shift in dates from that time to now because of the precession of the equinox but also in between some three, two or three hundred years ago in the European calendar they eliminated 15 days to set right the astronomical misalignment and so on. But, well, somehow it falls now on 25th, but the idea is still the same, the change in this rhythm. From the spiritual point of view though, we have to now look deeper.
All this, remember, in the ancient days, the whole focus was on optimising the rhythms, the alignment with nature and the rhythms of nature. From a spiritual point of view, we have a far greater freedom because after all, the light of the sun, even though physically represented, the light of the sun is the light of the Divine Light, the Divine Truth, which is the origin of all and permeates all the worlds, less or more overtly, but covertly, secretly, all is Self, all is supported by light of the Self.
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And so when it comes to this question of people who have left their body and the tides in the subtle worlds, we can invoke the light. You do not need these external symbols and external rituals. In fact, the truth of most of the rituals which are performed after somebody's passing, in the ceremonies and all that, is precisely to assist in changing the environment of the person who has passed.
So as it used to be, and I will explain why it has changed today, as it used to be, when you are now suddenly out of the body, you are somewhat lost, you don't know what to do, it takes a while for the external, let's say, emotional attachments to dissolve and fade away, that you are more free to move on, and at that point, if there is a tide which is negative, you are struggling with it, because you are helpless. The mood of the environment hits you at least a thousandfold more intensely than when in the physical body, isn't it?
So it hits you with a certain intensity, that’s when the rituals done are intended to change the atmosphere. Of course today that knowledge is gone. People do it somewhat mechanically. But still it has an effect. If you have ever been to some of the rituals associated with the Yajna where they light a fire and they perform certain invocations, when you see the light, the light of the fire lit, the invocations made, there is a mantric power, there is a certain sense of intensification of light in that space.
If you come into that space with a dull mood, you will find yourself somehow lifted. If you are conscious in the subtler ranges, you will actually feel the light permeating that whole space and brilliant intensity sometimes, depending on how conscious the invocation is or how intense it is. And this is the idea behind it.
Literally at that point, if you were in the subtle body, this intensification of light in the environment would act, would be felt like a current that pushes you upward, you’ll feel yourself lifted, you will feel yourself rising and drawn up into subtler gradations of the worlds, even the astral worlds in which you are.
In the Tibetan tradition, similar idea, but much more instructional, they literally talk to the person and tell him, oh you are now going through this phase, then that phase, and these are the hells, these are the heavens, through which you pass, and so on, move on to the highest. In practice, this may, the specifics of what is spoken may not register on the person at all. But the mood of the people, their concentration, their intention and the mood they create, that creates the current. So having said this now from a purely spiritual point of view, two things are important:
The mood you create in that space and especially if you are close to the person who has passed on, then the mood that you hold in relation to them, when you are unhappy, depressed, their link with you pulls them, conveys so to say the influence of unhappiness and depression. When you create an atmosphere within yourself and around you, especially in the environment, of peace, calm, and if possible a turn to light in aspiration, then it creates a similar mood and lifts them. Remember at least a thousandfold amplification of whatever you feel, the person now feels and is lifted and assisted and helped in that transition. And so, you can set the mood first.
And then if into that you bring a prayerful state and invoke the divine light, you invoke the Divine Presence, then it's like a beam of light literally from above that comes down, descends, fills the space and lifts the person and carries them through as if in the form of a tunnel, a passage opened. Literally it is experienced as a passage, as a rising draft of current lifting into light.
If I may use an analogy, you may have seen birds flying, particularly eagles or kites, they soar, they rarely flap their wings, they soar and they try to catch an updraft. They come to a patch where the ground was open, bare, and so the sunlight has heated it, and there is a warm current rising. They come into the updraft and then keep circling over it and rise rapidly with no effort on their part. Something like that. Literally it is felt as a rising current of light lifts you, takes you into the higher worlds.
And this you can do. You do not need any formal rituals. Just the state of consciousness and the mood that you hold in the environment and invoking the light and the divine presence in concentration, in prayer. If into this, there is a degree of, I will use the word, ‘sensitivity’, it doesn't have to be occult knowledge, but a sensitivity of the field, you can actually as you invoke, lift and assist the transition.
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Now all this was true even in the past, but the knowledge given to the masses was for people who were not ready for even making this concentrated effort. So today the things are different. I would say most of us, at least people who have a certain inclination, are not only conscious but have this capacity. But there's something more, something even more important which has taken place.
You will recall the Mother's description of one of the objectives of her life. She lists ten objectives, and one of the objectives, she says, is to create a passage from the lowest to the higher worlds and create a guardian of light who will assist in making that transition. And she created this, we do not know the exact date when she did this, but it is obviously in the period after she has come to Sri Aurobindo, so perhaps it is in the 1920s. She built this passage.
And you will see, subsequently all of the near-death experiences around the world, across cultures, across traditions, they all describe a point of transition having left the body as if they are pulled into a tunnel and come out on the other side in a realm of light and met by a being of light. So according to their religious beliefs, they will identify that being of light with the founder of their religion and so on.
But in fact this being is not tied to any particular religion. The passage itself is available and is as if given to all at the point of transition. The only thing which could come in the way is your own dullness or narrowness or clouding. If at the time of the passing you are in a state of dark depression, even though that light is available, you may not be able to catch it. And so it takes very little effort, even if you may be in a bad condition, the circumstances of people around you having a slight aspiration invoking the light is enough to be able to create this upward draft that changes your mood, lifts you and helps you in the passage rapidly without going through all those intermediate gradations which are listed in such great detail in the Tibetan tradition. It's as if you're bypassing all that in this current, in this passage, in this tunnel that takes you straight to the free light above.
So as I said things have changed today, and yet we on this side can make a difference to those who have passed on. If you are on the other side you can equally remember, hold your poise of aspiration, remember the Divine Mother, the Divine in whatever way you know, in whatever symbol, form, name and simply turn in a quiet aspiration within, and you will find not only this passage is present but all the help is given to you, you are lifted, taken through to the other side.
So, I am placing in context the practical value of this date as it used to be in the past and in the new current circumstance and especially from a spiritual point of view. But it's not just this date, it is then the period from this point on where the light is pushing against the darkness until the point of the next equinox where there is the rapid growth of light. And so, it is a propitious period for all kinds of upward movements in the rhythms of nature.
So when you make no particular effort, there is this upward movement that tends to carry you into positive, more lit, more bright states. Tends. But you can of course create your own environment which completely insulates you from the general trend in nature negatively or you can build your own environment positively which is completely independent of the tides within nature.
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Remember the objective of this was only the tides of nature. You can create an environment in you, around you, in your environment of home and workspace where there is this constant upward rising current of light and of aspiration, and then it doesn't matter what the day is.
So from a spiritual point of view, it is in this direction that we must make our efforts: creating an environment of rising aspiration and rising current towards always progress, towards greater light, greater consciousness. So this is the first broad sense of the day, the transition, rhythms and then its spiritual import.
But then I also want to dwell a little bit on the sense of this light. What does it really mean? What is it?
Because we saw that there is a higher light and that physical light, I said, is actually a reflection of this. We will see that there are in fact many gradations of light, but the most material light is the light that you shine with a torch and you say, ah so now I have a beam of light. Isn’t it? And it lights up a physical space.
But if you analyse the experience, the beam of light lights up, let's say, my hand. From the hand the light reflects, goes into my eyes, through a lens, hits the iris which is only a light sensitive skin as this even your skin externally sensitive to light, but that is highly sensitive to light inside. But what does the skin do?
Like your physical skin converts that light into signals which are electric, and then there's your optic nerve which takes the electric signals to the brain to the centres of sight. So now you no more have light, you are only seeing, well, electric signals. Isn't it?
But the centre in the brain which has to do with your sight is also processing electric signals. At what point is there perception of light? Think about it.
In fact nowhere in this whole passage is there perception of light. There is only translation, translation, translation. From what you claim to be light in the physical world, which converts to chemicals’ processes in your, in your eyes’ skin which converts to electrical signals, which is then processed inside cells again with chemical-electrical combinations.
When are you seeing light? In fact, you don't. Not in the physical world at least.
When finally your brain converts this or passes this on to your subtle body, it is in your subtle body that this pattern is finally converted into the perception where you say, ah I see a light.
The sense of sight, the sense of vision, the sense of clear perception, is taking place in the subtle body and not in the gross body. The gross body is only translating. Now after explaining all this you might still not be too convinced, so I will give to it a still further dimension of evidence that in fact it is a mental experience.
Because you in your same biology could be told under hypnosis that the colour red is now going to be seen by you as green. You look at it, it's the same light rays, the same chemical reaction, the same electrical signals, the same processing in the brain, but at some point, as it hits your mind-awareness, the red becomes green, and you'll say, hha I'm seeing green.
Not only that you will see it as green, you will experience green, the effect of green on you. So one of the things we see is: bright red colour has the effect of raising your pulse rate and pushing up your energies and exciting you a little bit; blue has a sense of cooling, soothing, relaxing. If you are told now, this is blue colour, you will actually experience the soothing effect of blue. Which means, literally, the effect is in the mental body and not in the physical body.
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From the mental body, the colour has its effect into your biological body. And we can flip it just like that by post-hypnotic suggestion, with no change in the biology, which is evidence that the actual perception of colour and therefore of light is taking place in the mental body and not in the physical body. I hope, this is convincing enough as evidence. Okay.
So once you recognise that in fact, the experience of light is primarily taking place in the subtle body, the physical is only a translating machinery, then we can begin to appreciate the full sense of the value of light. When we said, in the mental body or in the mind you are seeing the light, it is the part of the mind that leans into the biology and plugs into the physical brain and the nervous system in which there is the first perception of the light.
So we may say, yes, it is close enough to the physical. So this will be the mental-physical or the physical mind. It's in this layer, between these two, that the first perception of light takes place in us, but still in the subtle body. A still higher grade of that perception takes place in the vital body, and there the experience is a little different. When you let's say wake up from sleep, there's a point where at the moment of waking you feel a little bit dull, then gradually you become brighter. This is taking place largely in the mind. You become clearer. And so it's like a lighting up within the mental consciousness.
But there is a grade in between which is in the vital, emotional, as it leans to the physical body, where your body feels dull and heavy and almost non-existent. And into this body gradually an awareness comes and grows, and you say, ah now I have become conscious of my body. And at that point if you are conscious of the process you can amplify the consciousness. Literally hold your hand, and do this now as an experiment, feel the awareness in your hand, and from the point where you can feel it as an awareness permeating the full substance of your hand, catch that awareness and gently intensify it, amplify it, feel as if the hand becoming more conscious or the awareness in the hand becoming intensified, brighter, more intense and then intensify it a little more.
Literally at that point you will notice in your mind's awareness there is a kind of a sense of a brightening. Notice this.
So you went through a layer which was almost a vital-awareness light, which became almost a mental-awareness light. Just notice this shift. You can actually do it in your whole body, you can do it for a part of the body, you can do it in a place where there is an illness amplifying with your awareness, light. But you could also invoke a higher light which would have a far greater effect. So we have this sense now of gradations of so to say illumination or quality of awareness. And increasing light is always increasing awareness or experienced as that.
So in the mind purely, there is a similar equivalent experience of light, where you say, I have an idea. It is brightening. In comic strips, you will find the sense of an idea is often with a bubble with a bulb that comes ON. Interesting, isn't it?
Why do we associate bulb, lamp, with idea? We are translating subjectively what we experience into an objective symbolic term in the comic strip. It is the most natural symbol, you will not be able to find another symbol for representing the dawning or illumination of an idea, other than a lamp lit up. Interesting!
Even in the language we use ‘dawning’, light dawns. When we were children, the way you would criticise a child who was a little slow to catch an idea, they would say, ‘tube light’. Why?
Because in those days, the tube light would, once you switched on, it would wait a few seconds and then blink, flash-flash, and then finally catch, ah, now you got it. So repeated attempts finally getting. But still the idea of light.
(0:50:17):
In fact, in the mental body, the idea awakening in you is literally light revealing, discovering, this links-in with what we have been discussing the last few sessions about learning. The knowledge was there hidden, covered up, therefore in darkness. The light revealed, discovered, uncovered, what was already there, and now you see, and you know. And this is the nature of mental knowledge or awakening of light in the mind.
So it is first of all associated with increasing of awareness itself. You are more conscious, you are brighter, illuminated in your awareness. You say your mind is clearer, you can think clearly, it’s as if a grey smoke of, like, a mist has been cleared by the sunlight which has removed the mist.
You see the physical experience of mist covering and sunlight driving out the mist is a symbol of the reality in these worlds. Literally in your subtle body when you are free of the gross physical body, you experience the light removing the cloud, and the cloud is this covering, is this darkening influence. You see the Vedic Rishis used this symbolism. It’s a, it's a far more profound. The problem is when you turn it into these words of symbol, we lose the point. In their view, the physical world is a representation of the subtler grades in a dulled, reduced, formed structure, so binding in form what is otherwise a free truth and there experienced as the flow of forces, powers, currents, experiences which are things in themselves, now each thing gets bound in form in the physical world. So the physical world is a representation, literally a translation of those experiences.
But obviously once you have reduced it into form, these things have their, they work by different processes. They have their own laws or rhythms in the biology of nature or in the materiality of nature. But over there they are much more fluid, much more direct. And so your consciousness turning to become aware lights up and your mind becomes clearer, brighter, freer.
If you catch this idea, you'll find you can choose to no more be a victim of your moods, of your emotions, of your environment. You come into a space where there's a dullness, heaviness, darkness, you can choose to light up within you and then either hold it within you or extend it into your environment, lift all into a brighter, cheerful mood. And you can feel suddenly the mood shifts, and people don't realise why.
But it's possible for one person to make that shift in a whole environment.
This is what happens also when you're helping somebody who's a bit depressed, you can identify with their depression and share in it, or you can hold your poise of a greater light and communicate it with or without words, and after a while the person suddenly feels lifted up and cleared from their heaviness and pessimism, and they say, oh now I feel much better.
But it was actually the light filling them which changed, words were only a vehicle. So this state of light in mind and then the illumination of the mind, of idea in mind, is a first point of contact with also the intuitive consciousness. So we will come to this perhaps later when we discuss the true sense of learning in our discussions on education, but you will see all learning is associated with this discovering this perception and with it a joy, ah-ha I got it.
Joy. Delight, ‘de’-‘light’. I don't know the etymology of the word ‘delight’, but you see there's a ‘light’ in ‘delight’. But in fact all these are rays from the Sachchidananda. The Chit is the consciousness which is light. Chit-Shakti is the force in the consciousness which translates as heat. And the Ananda, the delight, is this little sparkle that comes each time there is this flash of light. And the Sat is the thing itself, the idea, the content, the substance of like a spark from a fire which flashes into your head, in your mind, and lifts.
Think about it. These are realities of those domains which are dulled because we are reducing everything to a very dense substance of the biology form.
(0:55:49):
But in that state, in that grade within you, this is the reality of it. So, we have spoken of physical light, vital light, mental light, and as I said, this clarity of mind is a state of removal of the grey mist, in which the light is there, you see, in a misty day, you can still have sun light, but it's diffused, it covers more than it reveals. This state has to go.
We use this vocabulary naturally. When our mind is dull, we say, my head is foggy or my thoughts or my mind is foggy. Literally it is a grey fog there. And somebody with a greater light can just, swoop, wipe it off. And suddenly your mind becomes clear. But if you have not developed within you that state of clarity, then gradually the fog returns. Someone can keep removing, but you have to make that effort finally to build the state.
This now prepares us for the intuitive light, of which the mind-light or the thought-light is a tiny, let's say, a sparkle. So the intuitive light has a different character. First of all, what it lights up, it is the light it brings, it is the experience of the light, and so, not only you know but you become ‘ahh I have changed in my state’. All of us have had experiences like this, but you'll have to think about, recall when it happened.
Sometimes, well, I will use the analogy of here in the Ashram, we go to the Samadhi, you sit down to concentrate, you come away and your whole mood is shifted, you are literally like a different person, something has changed in you. This is what people had when they went to meet the Mother, she would sometimes bless with a physical touch or sometimes just look, and there was a ray and poof, everything changed.
Your state changes literally in the quality of who you are. So the nature of the intuitive light is that it is substance of the experience, the experience is the light, so what comes into you is what you become, you not only know but you are it. Unlike mind in which you know by a thought which is not yet you, here you are it.
And so the intuitive light has a very special feature that it fundamentally changes your sense of ‘I’ and automatically what you are and what you know now spontaneously acts as action. You see in the mental light I have got an idea, I should do this, but from idea to doing there is a gap. But in the intuitive light, I know what I am and I become it. The action flows spontaneously, effortlessly. It's a different grade of experience of light. And still it has a limitation.
So it has a force of action, because what you know you automatically become, you automatically act out without needing to make any effort. But still there is a limitation that it is limited, it is finite. So as a force or even as a knowledge, it is a piece. It acts. It does. In what it does, it is smooth and effortless.
And so it is that which in the more modern vocabulary of management or sports even, they will use the phrase of saying ‘being in the zone’, and the character of being in the zone is that, well, it just happens. So the gymnast, you do the gymnastic, the action happens, I didn't do it, it happened, my body flowed, I didn't do anything.
Or when you're taking up a task, an assignment which you have to accomplish in your hierarchy of, well, management and responsibilities, it gets done somehow, it was so smooth, I made no effort practically and things just fell into place, it happened.
That's the kind of experience you have when there is this intuitive light and flow.
(1:00:19):
I remember this incident which unfortunately has not been put on record sufficiently. When the government of India had faced this huge problem in Bangladesh, there was a massacre taking place, because India had been partitioned and a few years down there was an East, East Pakistan and a West Pakistan, East Pakistan was what was later became Bangladesh and West Pakistan was dominating East Pakistan, they didn't like them, they were not the same people, these were Bengalis, those were Punjabis, and whatever, and so there was a big massacre taking place, people were in distress, and all the time it was impacting in India, at that time, the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had, was in touch with the Mother.
She asked through an intermediary what is to be done?
And one of the options they had was to enter Bangladesh and free up the country from West Pakistan and leaving behind nothing. [She says,] (1:01:29) India is the only country which has done that, actually gone in, freed up, and come out, and left nothing behind to control.
This is very different from what you see among the other global powers. And at that time the Mother's advice was, immediately you have to go and do it. And they couldn't do it for various reasons, it was not the right season, it took a few more months to do.
But there were a lot of difficulties and the person who was the go-between was one colonel in the army and through him the messages were going back and forth. And at some point the Mother sent blessing packets through him. These reached the top brass in the Indian army and they observed that, from the point that the blessing packet came in their hands, literally all the problems melted, things just flowed, smooth.
And Mother's advice was not to go in a head-on army attack but to bypass the border and go straight to Dhaka. Which is what they did, and it is on record that this was, they said, it was the most smooth military intervention with the minimum loss of lives. I give this as an example because you see here through the transfer of a physical symbol as the blessing packet, the force, of course not bound to the symbol but in this case connected, the force which was a light had this immediate effect on the physical circumstances on the, around the person holding this physical symbol.
Anybody with the sensitivity at that time could have seen or felt in the blessing packet the light, the power, the force, and its immediate effect in circumstances to clarify. So, you see, we are used to translating too much in symbolism, it's like a light is cutting a passage. But in the subtle world, that's what it is doing, it is pushing out the darkness, cutting a passage and clearing the way for the action, for the force, for the things to flow.
You see…In physical terms, it is translated through circumstances changing, but in the occult world, in the subtle worlds, it is literally cutting a passage and removing the darkness, clearing the way, and there is the aspect of what we will use as the heat or the force which comes with the light.
And this is of course higher than the intuitive. The intuitive is limited. But it is the same thing. Intuition is a finite. And that would still be a greater force. In this case, because of the Mother's action it was a higher supramental force working through whatever degree of self-limitation. And so this brings us now to the pure illumination which is spiritual and this is what the Mother transmitted in that case which is not limited, which is not finite, so its characteristics are, first of all it is a consciousness of unity which is indivisible. Therefore when it acts, it can take a dozen, a hundred, a thousand different pieces, and it is equally aligned and infused in all of them and therefore brings spontaneously harmony and alignment in all those things where it touches or influences.
(1:05:35):
And so where there was conflict, chaos, struggle, difficulty, tension, suddenly you find a smooth flow and working. And it is indivisible. So, even where there was compulsion of collision, it realigns them, and they become complementary. What is very fascinating to see, on a lower level, sometimes your force is in deep tension. The greater the tension, the greater the power held in the force. Okay?
But nothing is happening, because they're in a gridlock. But you build-build, push hard-hard-hard. Imagine the power that is being held in the tension. What a waste. If now the same thing is put in alignment, now they become complementary forces, kphook, the full power is released. So there is a deep insight here:
The greater the problem, the greater the potential not only of breakthrough but of a forward movement, if this correction is made from collision to, from contradiction to alignment, complementarity. And this is done by the spiritual force. Now these pieces may resist, they may oppose, but depending on the degree of the spiritual force and the height of it and the scope of it, it may find eventually nothing can oppose it, so there may be an eventuality of time gap, eventually it will happen. But if these pieces accept, it can happen very quickly.
So this is one of the special features of the spiritual force and light, and as a result it is also purifying, and being essentially infinite, potentially depending on the vehicle, depending on the transmission, etc., potentially what it can accomplish is unlimited in scope and therefore quite, it can be quite a miraculous intervention. It has also the characteristic that, wherever it fills, it brings consciousness, and it awakes not only awareness, quality of higher awareness, but also the delight, the beatitude which is characteristic of the Sachchidananda, so something of that, however diluted, limited is, it fills you. The mind awakening and aha-idea itself a very tiny, literally a little spark of this huge fire.
And so, the spiritual light in a sense is in its origin the Sachchidananda, again within that you can use vocabulary of, you know, “overmental”, “supramental” or even gradations. That's to me not so important right now. Just recognising that it is finally light of Sachchidananda to whatever degree, gradation, doesn't matter. And here we recognise finally the true nature of light.
All light, essentially, is light of Sachchidananda.
All consciousness is consciousness of Sachchidananda.
All delight is delight of Sachchidananda.
All existence is the Sat of Sachchidananda.
Existence-consciousness-bliss.
And consciousness is light of consciousness and force of consciousness.
All emerges from there through degrees of self-reduction, reflection, concealment, etc., so you have your top-down universe. Since all is formed of that, it is that which ultimately can reshape all, cast all. But it is also the essential truth of all, and therefore everything from below yearns towards that. And this is the true sense of light, light of Sachchidananda, light of consciousness, of delight of existence of the Divine.
Therefore you see in the biblical tradition this very interesting phrase, it is described as if all was darkness and the darkness did not even comprehend itself and then God said let there be light and there was light. So it is a very profound articulation or rather it is an articulation of a very profound truth which somehow in the translation, you know, it's gone down through at least four languages of translation, the full import of this has been lost completely.
(1:10:12):
But the deeper truth of this is, when the Divine chooses to know itself, so the darkness is the unknowable, all is unknowable, unmanifest, is the darkness of the unmanifest, the Divine choosing to know itself, and there is this illumination of the knowledge as the Sachchidananda.
So, Sachchidananda is the way the Divine knows itself. And so you see there is a profound symbolism in the whole narration, completely lost in the, in time and through translations. So this, finally we come to the truth of light is this:
All is light, spiritual light, light of Sachchidananda.
But if this is the reality underlying all things, it is also the reality underlying ourselves. Isn't it? So just as we did a vertical, let's say, ascension of gradations of light, there is a horizontal interiorising, let's say, of gradations of consciousness, which eventually lead us to the centre of pure consciousness that is us.
And that is where we discover the centre of our consciousness is also light, light of soul, being of soul, substance of soul. In a sense we are like the spark of the Sachchidananda entered into even the material consciousness, entered into the worlds through all these gradations where there is only reduction and diffusion and diffraction and concealment of the higher light forming the worlds, the pure Sachchidananda puts out a spark that goes in as pure Sachchidananda and becomes a nucleus around which this material begins to gather and form an individuality. And our deepest soul, the psychic being, is this spark of Sachchidananda. And therefore it is the one thing that knows that, but also is us, or we may say, the part of us that knows that. Think about it.
So right here in this environment, not only there is a higher light which can of course filter through or which can be invoked, which can cut through all the worlds to form this clear passage, lifting everything or influencing, filling everything. But at the same time within us, at the very deepest centre is this same presence, light, power, delight, but in a reduced, miniaturised, limited working.
Therefore it does not have the same power of action as above, where it is infinite in its action, here it is individualised, limited, but it still has the same eventual compulsion, inevitability of action, and of course the delight. And working through all these layers of so many gradations of consciousness, it is organising itself, it is organising its knowledge, its force, its delight, to manifest and create here an expression of its true character, the truth, the Sat, the reality that it is, behind all these layers that we experience ourselves to be made of, and therefore naturally also the symbol of our soul is like a flame.
So we represent our state of deep intimacy of communion by lighting a flame. Isn't it? You go into a sacred space, place of worship, the natural thing is to light a flame because it represents your aspiration lit up. And what does the flame do? It lights up the space, reveals the deity, brings the heat and warmth and joy and so naturally as a symbol also in these occasions of festival, and Christmas as festival of light that the Mother uses the phrase is “the lighting of lamps”.
Diwali, lighting of lamps.
New Year, lighting of lamps.
These are the natural symbols for us representing the coming forward of that which is the truth within us in a small part, in a symbol again.
Agni, the flame as it is in symbol, is the divine Will working within us, and it is this light of this psychic being which is this Agni, the heat and light of the soul is the divine Will working, illuminating through the light and heating or compelling through the heat which is the Will aspect.
(1:15:21):
So the, in the psychic being, the two are one, as in the intuitive consciousness, knowledge and will are unified. But as from there they infuse into our nature, they tend to be more and more specialised or divided and that's where in the surface parts we have a conflict, I know what to do but I can't do it. But as you go in, what you know is what you are and what you become, and they're aligned.
The same truth which we saw in the rising movement is there present within us here now in our current state of being, only behind the veil. And so it is from there that there is the constant pressure, and if I may use the vocabulary we used earlier of the upward current, there is an in-to-out outward current from the soul's influence acting upon our nature. Sometimes that current is strong, sometimes it is weak, sometimes it is asleep. But the moment it stirs a little bit, there is a gentle draft, gentle push, and that influence from inside out is what shapes our nature and awakens into it all of the higher ideals, aspirations, ideas, hopes, dreams, fantasies even sometimes of the beautiful and the perfect and the immortal and so on. Isn't it?
The true love, the true joy, the true bliss, the reality, the truth, all these things, the permanence, all these things are coming because of the outflow of a gentle draft of this influence, which is a light, but because it goes through layers and layers of concealment, reflecting through, we do not always receive it on the surface obviously as a light, more like an influence, like a gentle nudge, push. But the more we choose to turn inward, the more its influence tends to grow. And the more we feel it as a gentle push and a lift, and it lifts our whole nature. And that is why also when there is a descent from above, it is more in the inner ranges that the descendent come in its purity and from an inside out that it can reach out when we don't receive consciously on the surface.
So I think this is the broad sense of light and our let’s say meditation on the theme of the true nature of light.
Humanity is going through a very difficult passage currently, something which Sri Aurobindo described in fact in one of his passages in Savitri and which was given by the Mother in fact as a message in 1967 on her birthday February 21st. And this was a time when she was already warning of the difficulties to come if humanity does not consent to change.
She said, it will be through crashing circumstances that the change will happen. Or I think it was the same year for the New Year message that she gave, the message that meant:
“Men, countries, continents! The choice is imperative! Truth or the abyss!” – This choice that we have to make.
And so it's around that period when she is not seeing the necessary response that she gave this on her birthday as a message. And these are lines from Savitri, Sri Aurobindo writes:
“When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast
And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp,
As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread
Of one who steps unseen into his house.”
So everywhere there is darkness growing, “corporeal mind”, that's your superficial little light of mental consciousness, catching a few glimpses here and there, that's all that's left. At that point, in that darkest night,
“As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread
Of one who steps unseen into his house.”
Whose house is this? Body, this world, of the Divine obviously. So, when he steps in:
“A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey,
A Power into mind’s inner chamber steal,
A charm and sweetness open life’s closed doors
And beauty conquer the resisting world,
The Truth-Light capture Nature by surprise,
A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss
And earth grow unexpectedly divine.”
(1:20:17):
So it's as if when darkness has pushed to the maximum, there's the pushback of the light, the tide changes, and all this happens.
Each line is very significant, you might want to dwell upon it. But it is the pushback of the light compelling. And so this is inevitable, eventually. If we do nothing, it will take longer, because,… but the light will inevitably push through eventually and break through. But we can choose, and this is where we have to choose, make the choice now. We can choose to exercise this or participate in this consciously now, as we are.
And that means, instead of allowing the suffocating external circumstances of these last few years where there is a lockdown, there is a suppression of liberties, there is a suppression of free thought and even control of the, what you are allowed to think and not think, and things will get worse, they will get darker, we can choose to push back against this increasing suffocation of the darkness, increasing fear and insecurity of the future.
If you do nothing, they will grow. But you can choose to push back, and for that the light is the lamp within you, and so you have to consciously turn, consciously turn towards your deepest aspiration, consciously call it out, call its influence and cherish its influence grow and seep in you. Do not allow any thought, emotion or suggestions which are contrary to it to enter or to extinguish it. And this starts by conscious discipline to weed out these influences, suggestions, thoughts, create within you a space in which you have the influence of the light as a constant gentle current from within outward and from below upward.
It's a cultivation. Tiny lamp. Well, you put protection to prevent the wind from blowing it, and then you feed it, feed the flame until it begins to grow more and more. And what do you feed it with? With yourself. Parts of you that you put in alignment with it are like sticks that fall into place in the hearth, and the flame grows as it catches fire, catches those sticks and lights them up with its light and heat.This is the first movement.
And the second movement is from here you turn to call the light from above, and we have to consciously call, because as I said the light is always there but if there is not the receptive base, well, it has to work to build the receptivity which takes much more time, but where you choose to open and receive, it can flow straight down, now, as you are, and then through you, in you, first it builds the stronger base, but through you it flows cutting channels of light, flowing literally like waters, liquid flowing, but of light and force, and: bringing things in alignment, changing circumstances, influencing situations, growing.
And as within us, each one of us, and in our environment, this glows across our individual points, there are links of light, influences that form, and bit by bit there is a wider and freer action.
Call the light, allow the inner influence of light to glow out, and these are the two movements which are within our reach as we are today, and against which nothing can oppose eventually.
This occasion of the turning of the tide, and following that Christmas and New Year, and so on, and other festivals, we have the Pongal in Tamil Nadu later, and various other festivals that follow in the months to come, well, all of these are occasions where external rhythms, alignments, shift. But if your inner alignment is strong, well, they will utilise the external circumstances and work through them.
(1:25:10):
And so this would be the broad sense of the theme for today: To consciously try to become receivers and containers for the divine Light and the Force and the Truth, as focal points, points of support for its action in the world; Sri Aurobindo uses a much more powerful phrase, “dynamo”, for the divine Power and the Truth and Light.
And the current tendency for difficulties to grow is actually a compulsion. It forces us to make that extra effort. Think of it in these terms. Don't think of them as opposing.
Think of them as assisting by building a pressure, compelling us to change, as Mother warned, through “crashing circumstances”.
Well, the “crashing circumstances” are all around you, make the effort now.
And the same power of the “crashing circumstances” will be lifted by the higher light and force and turned into a rapid change. And that's the deeper sense of these lines which are read where he says:
“… Truth-Light capture Nature by surprise,
A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss
And earth grow unexpectedly divine.”
It's as if the whole force of all that opposes is suddenly turned around and made a means for a rapid growth and change. And we can choose to participate. And by our choice we allow it to happen sooner rather than later.
There was one of the messages that Mother gave in the, on Christmas day incidentally, it was I think in 1972, she gave this message: “We want to show to the world that man can be a true servant of the Divine. Who will collaborate in all sincerity?” She underlines “in all sincerity”. It's interesting that she gave it on a Christmas day. And of course Mother gave to Christmas also that other dimension which is associated with the festival aspect, but if you see it in the deeper sense, it is a more material form of this deeper truth that we have been discussing.
So it's a prayer she wrote:
“Father Christmas,
I evoke you today!
Answer our call. Come bearing all your marvellous gifts. You are the great dispenser of worldly possessions; you are the untiring friend who hears every request and grants it generously. Give each one the material object he desires, and as for me, give me enough, give me much so that I may give largely to all.”
You see in this, she has brought it to that level of the worldly possessions, material objects, which is what the festival is superficially associated with. But if you see behind it, who is this Father Christmas? It is, well, the divine consciousness that comes bearing all the gifts. And if you go back to the Vedic symbolism, the gifts are the spiritual gifts that pour through. And the symbolism is perfect, except here in this message, reduced to an accessible level of people's wants and desires and material possessions, but the truth is still the same.
So I think it's a wonderful opportunity, utilising an external symbol, to also align ourselves to the deeper sense of purpose, deeper understanding of the light, deeper understanding of its action, not only from above but also from within, and then what we need to do to amplify it. I will skip the questions for now.
I think it would be a good point to pause and meditate upon, on Christmas Eve as it is on New Year's Eve which will be next time. On the eve, there's as if a preparation that we make so that what comes on that day we receive better and that was the sense of Mother herself taking the, playing the organ music sometimes on the midnight of the New Year.
Maybe we'll have occasion to speak of it next time. But the preparation is what makes possible the greater receptivity. And the call brings down the response immediately. So whatever we choose to ask for whether it is the material symbols of the gifts or the deeper spiritual truths that they represent, we can concentrate all together invoking:
for ourselves,
for our environment,
in our personal lives,
in our work,
in all those who are within our domain of influence,
and into all of the world,
in all humanity,
and all of the earth,
that this may be a point of turning of the tide,
that the light may begin to push back and begin to grow once again,
that it may conquer permanently all that was otherwise concealing it,
and that it may grow always, from now forever in our lives and upon earth.
Namaste.
Alina (1:32:00):
Namaste.