January 28, 2023
Sraddhalu (0:00:35):
Namaste and welcome to Evenings with Sraddhalu. We have so far been covering various aspects of themes around education. And at this point we will perhaps enter in a more direct way on the whole approach to ‘Raising and Educating Children’, if possible, beginning with the very first stages of that education; and then as we go along growing towards issues which are more specific to a later age; and as we have always done, we would try to link the specifics of the more superficial context of a child and a parent or teacher to a more general context of any learning experience and teaching experience or nurturing experience; wherever possible, going to first principles and especially the spiritual foundations and principles.
So this is just to give a broad sense of how we will try to approach this whole theme. We have a few questions which will be the starting point for us. The first question comes from a lady who says, “I want very much to have a child but my husband is against having children. Many have told me that there are so many children on this planet, why do you want to add one more? Others have said, why do you want to bring a child into this terrible condition of the world? But I feel the need to have a child.” So, her question: Should I sublimate it and give myself to caring for other children?
This question is very important because I hear similar phrases or arguments that many young people tend to repeat. The fact that it comes from many sources suggests to me at least that some of it is not really their ideas, it is coming in through the media. Of late, especially in the last 10 years, where you see this swing in the media, in cinema, television series and especially in very large international platforms, almost every series, every movie, you will find a very strong anti-child message. In some of them, they actually show you the hero disliking children, and children are treated as pests.
Even in something which is a very clearly child-centric series such as Young Sheldon, for those who might have seen it, his young sister goes to look after a child and comes away with this almost vomiting, pukey sensation and says, I hate these children, and she's full of dirt on her body, and she says, never again with such force. And this is a 12-year old, 10-year old girl. If you have any direct experience of real life, that's not how it works. Inevitably, everywhere, young girls looking at a baby will immediately be drawn and start cooing and playing with the child.
Why does a television series represent something so contrary to real, reality or to real life?
And this is because it's part of the collective programming which you find now taking very strange forms. And so I want to bring this into awareness and I'm relating it to the question which has come, that many suggestions are being implanted which are completely contrary to our deepest instincts.
(0:05:12):
And some of these instincts, while we do, will deprecate the word ‘instinct’, some of these instincts are actually very valuable and precious. Many have their roots even in spiritual truths. And so, ideally one would take the instinct and raise it to its higher possibility. And that is the direction in which the questioner is also taking it: Should I sublimate my instinct to have a child and care for other children and thus fulfil the instinct but not myself having a child? So specific to this question is the sense that she feels strongly to have a child. Some women don't. Some do.
And especially for those who do, perhaps it is important for them to fulfil the instinct. And so I will put this in two, perhaps, complementing aspects in the response.
The first is to consider her need and why it is that in her immediate environment that includes her husband does not want a child. And then whether there is an alignment.
As it turned out in this particular case, there was practically no, no alignment between the young lady and her husband. And it seemed quite clear that they were in very different direction, and she was conscious of that. So in such a case, I would say, well, it does not matter too much what the husband thinks and you should follow what feels right for you. But one would still want to see:
What are the circumstances?
Or what is it that is, is it merely an avoidance?
Is it just an inconvenience?
Or a fear of parenting, how will I manage those responsibilities?
And this was actually, this will actually come up again in the second question, but really the point is, we feel ourselves so unprepared for something so new for which we have had absolutely no training. And there is no one who teaches you how to, how you can raise a child.
But when you look in nature, and it is the same instinct, perhaps at a less conscious level, you find the animals not only perfectly able to go through the entire complex process including building a nest, protect, giving birth to the child, protecting, even the cutting of the umbilical cord, and so on, whatever is required, nobody has taught the animal, bird or other mammal, and yet they go through it. As human beings we should be able to do far better than them. Isn't it?
So if it is a fear of the unknown or of responsibility, then we can set it aside and trust in a deeper instinct and if we are human and with a spiritual dimension, then even a higher intuition and guidance. The other aspect to the question would be: What purpose would it serve?
And there are these two arguments against having children, the first being, so many people on the planet why do you want to add one more? To that I would say, the number in itself is not a problem. Our earth is actually capable of easily supporting double the population of what is currently there. The problem is not the number.
If we organise ourselves sufficiently well, we can be completely free of wastefulness without destroying the environment or poisoning the environment and we can hold easily and nurture double the population that is presently there, easily. With half the population or even one-tenth of the population we could still poison the earth, perhaps at a less rapid pace but nevertheless given ten times the duration you would have the same pollution and destruction of the environment.
So the issue of environmental destruction is not related to population, it is only related to how we handle our, the gifts that nature gives us, what we call, ‘resources’ and the things we create and the way we build them or recycle, reuse, or even in the very act of production, create things which are biodegradable and carefully cycle-through in harmony with nature. And this is very much doable. All the technologies already exist. It does not cost more.
(0:10:10):
What you see today is an artificial distortion, even a perversion of the truth of things, so that should not be an issue, number, purely. What is an issue in the number, is the quality of people. And I mean by ‘quality’ in the consciousness to the degree to which they are awake or asleep, to which they choose to aspire for higher possibilities or they choose to sink in low-grade, instinct-driven, coarser-instinct-driven values.
See as human beings we are primarily mental beings. We are mental beings who incarnate in a physical-vital body and as souls holding of course the mental consciousness as our primary level, grade, of experience. And Sri Aurobindo explains that the power of the intellect does not, cannot exist for itself. When it starts trying to justify itself, very quickly it finds, it can justify any position, any argument, spin any statement, any situation, any way to fulfil any conclusion.
Therefore, recognising that it is capable of this, if it is honest, it becomes agnostic. It says: I cannot know what is true, therefore I choose to disbelieve everything or hold my judgment without without accepting anything. Sri Aurobindo points out, the intellect therefore can only be fulfilled if it serves some other source of, we will use the word ‘truth’, but if it is higher it is a truth, if it is lower it is not quite a truth, but still, what to it seems true.
So in practice what happens, the intellect has to either turn down to the truth of the senses, which are lies mostly, because what the senses show you is not the reality, the reality is something far different of which the senses perceive only a distorted, limited, reflected part, or the same intellect has to turn upward to something higher, perception of an ideal perhaps, which to the mind seems, wow that would be so wonderful, but to the same mind it seems, I don't think it's ever possible, it's impossible to do this, considering the circumstances; but if the circumstances were different, if everybody was kind, gentle, caring, refined, awake, whatever words you use, then perhaps that ideal which I glimpse should be possible; and maybe if we assemble the right kind of people, we could form a community where we could live by those ideals.
Of course, by the time you do that, all the other problems start, because we are not just that, we are so much more, which is of a lower grade also. Recognising this, still, the mind can choose to pursue that instead of the lesser. In the current education, in the current value system that the media, cinema and news are highlighting, it is this indulgence in the lower, instinctive, crude instinctive impulses.
See, in itself instinct is not bad, it is the coarse instinct, the crude instinct, were taught to indulge in those rather than turn to the higher. And this, I started with this example, how in cinema, and it happened around the year 2000, let's say, ‘6 onwards or ‘4, ‘5, ‘6 onwards. That time is very interesting, and there's a good reason to understand how and why that happened.
All the large production houses of cinema, which had so far been making a lot of money on these very idealistic, heroistic, heroic characters such as Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Catwoman, whatever, people who committed themselves selflessly to helping others, to saving the world, to realising some ideal and always at great personal loss which inspired children to say: yes, I want to be heroic like this.
All these characters which had so far helped perhaps the children, inspired them, were turned around and perverted, and suddenly you had the same Superman going into a crisis, losing his cool, getting upset, getting angry in a violent revolt and destroying everything, and then these heroes fighting each other. Meanwhile, sneakily, the anti-hero, the one who is doing the bad thing, is presented as a victim of circumstances. And being bad is presented as being good. And the bad people always win, and the good people always lose. And this whole swing has taken place.
(0:15:35):
Why am I pointing to this? Because only yesterday I heard from somebody, one of the teachers, children speaking to her, of course some of them have now got into the habit of self-mutilation, cutting their body to cause pain and they say, ‘my mind is in such pain that I need to’, one of the arguments was, ‘my mind is in such pain I need to bring my body to the same level of pain’
And another child, these are real cases, another child said, ‘the pain in the hand relieves me of the stress in my mind’. And somebody else says: I am watching keenly in all the films I see, it's the bad people who always win and they are always driven, and I am trying to force myself, form myself to be a bad person who is driven. This was very disturbing for me to hear, but I am aware that this has been happening for a while already because of that influence of cinema.
And I am pointing to this because there is an intention to take your children in that direction which you have to actively counter. In the same line of twisting and perverting values, we find that the old cinema has been pushed back, all the idealism has been removed and replaced by this kind of a very distorted, egoistic, self-centric victimhood, and so on, as if you want the children to grow up with that mindset, which becomes easy then to manipulate and utilise, and that's part of the larger, we have discussed this before the controlling state of the world what Sri Aurobindo described as the “World-State”, one world government, we have referred to as a deep state or cabal, which is even more insidious, which wants to reduce human population to a level which is just of cattle, which is easily controllable and so the education has been successively perverted to this end.
All this I will come back to the main issue of the question. So the question is not so much about how many people there are, but what values they live by. And it does not even matter what is their current level of evolution. What matters is what they aspire towards, because that is what they will grow to be. If you look at current evolution a thousand years ago, we will say, aaah they were quite primitive. And maybe you go back a little more, you would say, they were more primitive. If you go back a little more, you will say, they were quite sophisticated. And yet there were parts which were primitive. As today, there are parts in us which are sophisticated, parts which are primitive. Maybe 200 years or a thousand years from now, people will look back and laugh at our silliness and say, they were so primitive. So where you are is irrelevant.
Which direction you grow towards is the most important thing. And this principle if you catch, all the rest of our discussion you will see is really centred around this: direction of growth. Set the direction, and all the rest is taken care of.
So coming back to this part of this question: There are so many people on the planet, why do you want to add one more?
Number doesn't matter. If the mass of humanity especially is lost in this let's say downward turn, all the more reason if you can nurture a child in a space where this upward turn is supported. Isn't it? Because those are, who are doing it already are not able to do it. If you feel that higher, deeper aspiration, and I am addressing it to people who will listen to this who would have already some deeper, higher ideal or aspiration otherwise this would not be interesting for them, then I would simply ask, if a higher soul, mature, refined, aspiring, looks to the earth and says, ‘Where can I find a vehicle, body-mind complex, and an environment that will be nurturing to my aspiration, where can I find this?’, do you think in the environment you see that enough?
And if you have it within your environment, within your heart and in your aspiration, would this, would this not be much more valuable to such souls? So the condition of numbers in the world is irrelevant. It is in the balance whether we have more who are aspiring or more who are sinking.
(0:20:26)
To the second argument which is given: Why do you want to bring a child into this terrible condition into the world?
What has made it terrible? Again, the downward turn of values.
What would make it beautiful? Well, the upward turn of values.
It's just a turn. Your consciousness may not change. You change the direction, eventually consciousness will follow in that direction. In fact, what is happening today, this is something the Mother described in the nineteen, early ‘60s, She said, humanity is splitting into two groups: one which is rising; and one which is sinking.
We have touched upon this many times before, but I remind you in this context. So, in the part that is rising, how many environmental supportive spaces are there for a higher soul to incarnate? In the part which is sinking, there is lots. How many do you find in the part which is rising? Not too many. Isn't it?
Most parents that I know of, and they would represent already a certain group that's looking for something higher for their children, most parents that I know of are struggling to find a school-environment that would be nurturing to this higher aspiration. So difficult to find, everywhere in the world. And they're all too busy looking at class performance in exam results, not about the nurturing of the higher values.
And the few which are, are too full and are difficult to replicate. Why are they difficult to replicate? Because there are not enough teachers who are willing to commit to higher values in spite of not getting higher pay. Now it's possible to create higher values with higher pay also. But as I am pointing out, at first this is difficult, until it builds up a certain momentum. But, there is not enough of the teachers. And then there are the parents who on one side will say ‘I want my child to have the best values’ on the other side ‘but what if they don't get the same training as those other children, will they be at a disadvantage?’, the lack of discrimination, training, deeper understanding, whatever reason you may give, in the parents who wanting the best for the child would push them deliberately, knowingly into the rat race thinking that will equip them for the life ‘although I want them to be happy, creative, etc’.
So there is this contradiction. And inevitably I have seen so many schools which are trying to bring a different value in education so they get rid of exams, some of them, the parents say: But how will my child survive in a world that demands exams if he is not trained to run the rat race from the beginning?
And so at the very least, they will say: Last two years of your school, please introduce the exams. The moment you have done that, in the year before, you have to train them for the last year's training which will set their life's direction with the big exam, so train that exam. Now to prepare for this, you train for another level of exam. It seeps backward. Once you make that perversion, you seep back all the way.
You eliminate that exam totally, the parents pull out the children before they reach the last few years and push them into a regular school to be trained for exam systems and for the right race of life. So you have a problem: parents are not ready; insufficiency of teachers willing to commit or they have other priorities of which they don't want to compromise; and so for the children, not enough school spaces, not enough parental spaces, not enough of the opportunities required.
So to this young lady I will say: Well, if you feel so drawn, if you feel that you are able to provide this, imagine how valuable it would be to the soul. So rather than saying, ‘Why do you want to bring a child into this terrible condition of the world?’, look at what a wonderful condition you could offer within this terrible condition of the world and how valuable it would be for the soul that wants to incarnate. Isn't it?
Of course, all depends on your commitment. So, coming back to this questioner, since she feels strongly she should have a child, I would say: Yes, you should then consider seriously, with this background now. And if you are willing to take this responsibility, then certainly it would be very valuable, very precious for an evolving soul, for an evolved soul, for a conscious soul, to be given such an opportunity.
I think this should cover the questioner's requirement. For the rest, it is a question of specifics and circumstances, economic or otherwise.
(0:25:44)
The next question builds on this, and it comes from Nitin, who says: “How do you raise a child when you know that you know nothing and are yourself starting on a conscious evolution?”
So here is a conscious parent, and you realise, I actually don't know anything, there is nobody teaching you. And on the other side, even if I understood, I am not myself sufficiently conscious and evolved, how am I going to help this child who is perhaps potentially more evolved or is seeking a more evolved space and I myself am not it?
The most important thing that you can do as a parent is the example you set, not necessarily in what you are able to do but what you aspire to do. I may be still this, well, humanised ape, but I aspire to something much higher. I make the effort to grow towards that. I fail, I rise. I fail, I grow a little bit. And I continue to make an effort. And even though there are circumstances in life where my best efforts do not quite work out, perhaps I realise I have lost my temper, I did a, I made a mistake, I got carried away. What do I do then next? I apologise, I make the corrections, I move forward, I ensure it does not happen. I make that effort. That is the best example of what you are do, of what you are. Not what you are at in terms of consciousness, but the character of the effort: that direction set; and the persistence in that direction.
How much you grow as a result is not the point, but the fact that you persist in the direction you have grown. That is the example for your child. And therefore, it does not matter that you are yourself starting a conscious evolution, wherever you are, the fact that you are pursuing a conscious evolution is the example you will give.
And what do you do about the fact that you know nothing? We will come to that shortly.
But what you know is this: that you can make an effort. And you persist. And that is the most precious gift of example that you can convey. So when we start knowing nothing especially on the aspect of raising a child: What can we do? How do we make an effort?
I took this example of the animals in nature. Consider how complex the whole actual birthing and raising of children is.
A bird, as I've given this example many times, when the season arrives, starts finding twigs, first large twigs, somehow with a beak, it's not even, you know, it's equivalent of one finger actually, the other is a supporting counter side, with one finger, you are able to lift a twig, arrange it on a branch and it falls. You put another and it falls. And the crow will not go and pick up a twig that has fallen. It will go and find a new one.
It's quite amazing to see. And then somehow it manages to build, I have never actually seen how they managed to build the first part, where they build a circle, which, in which the twigs are interlocked in a way that this base stays. Still not figured out how they manage that. And then upon that they build another layer and another.
Having made the first complex interwoven basket, into this now, the second layer comes of finer twigs. Into that a third layer of still finer grass, soft. And then something which I cannot understand where they get it, they get something which is almost cottony, from nature somewhere, and pad it, into which now this bird is going to lay an egg, not knowing in advance that it is going to lay an egg, or that the egg is fragile, etc. And then it knows to sit on the egg and to keep it warm. Isn't it?
(0:30:34):
How does it know all that? Now if nature has programmed in a tiny bird with a tiny brain, all this precise instinct, consider how much more complex an instinct is given to us as humans. Trust in that.
And then from the point the egg bursts, the bird knows to feed, to put food into the mouth of the baby. And as the little baby birds open their mouth, the mother bird stuffs the worm, let's say, into its mouth. She knows to put it there. And she knows what it means to raise them. It's quite amazing.
If you actually get into the consciousness of the bird or the animal, it's perhaps more easy initially with larger animals, but you will find it's the same thing in the birds, they actually know. They know in a way that is not mentalised, but they know. They know what it is. I have seen this extraordinary case, particularly with some of the dogs that I have had contact with.
This mother dog, from the point she was pregnant, she was just sticking to her master. And at some point she gives birth. She is so protective of the babies. She knows what they are. They are herself, but they are also individuals. She is so protective, not allowing anyone to approach except her master, who is going to feed her and the children and look after them. And she knows exactly what everything means.
She, so the babies are put in a basket once they are little older, and she lifts the basket with her mouth, goes now to the others in the family of the humans, places the basket before them and starts talking to them and says, Wooh-wooh wooh-wooh woooh, see what a wonderful thing I have created.
It's amazing. She is fully conscious that this is, she has given birth, this is her creation, and she is so fulfilled with that, so proud of it. And all these are, we will say, human emotions. Isn't it? You see this so much rooted even in a dog which you don't consider capable of human intelligence.
And then bit by bit, there is a point where she starts pushing them out, nudging them, she goes away allowing them their independence, helping them grow independent, and so on, which is what's possible.
In a human being you have hands, you have speech, so the interaction is far more complex. But the instinct is fully set. And if you read a textbook of dogs or for human beings, at so many days this starts happening, at so many weeks this happens, at so many months this happens. Now in the womb, you can say, yes I can understand because there it's almost an automatic biological process, but subsequently the psychological stages of growth are also so amazing and so precise, sometimes down to the day, it kicks the instinct, kicks-in.
And so, without your knowing it formally by reading a book, within you as a parent, the same instinct kicks-in, that kicks-in aligned with the child, and they are synchronised. Now if we were still, well, actually as we are half animals already, so I was going to say ‘if we were still half animal’, but we are already half animal.
Those instincts are still rooted in us. They get clouded, they get confused with the reasoning power, with the things you have read, you have learnt, which maybe has been taught by traditions or religions, and so the problem comes because: I have been told this is good or this is bad, I don't feel like it, tet I will try to impose it.
Or you build your own false conceptions: I have seen children, oh they have already starting to compete in kindergarten, my baby is barely a year old, I have to prepare him for kindergarten, get him ready for the competition.
Now this is not coming from the instinct. This is coming from a false value system which you are placing overriding the instinct. This is the problem of being half animal. If we were full animal, it would be taken care of. We are half animal, the other half though is following false values from outside.
If instead it turned within or turned up to higher values or intuitions, then the lower instinct and the higher intuitions would be perfectly aligned, and even the lower instincts might be lifted into their higher truths. And so for those who have a spiritual inclination and aspiration, this would be the effort. And I would even say, consciously let go of the false values.
(0:35:33):
How do you know a value is false? It doesn't feel right: I know what my child needs, but in my purity, not in my ‘I want my child to be better than that child so I have to start pushing him now’, that's not your purity, that's your distortion already.
It's a very interesting thing though, nature, as if instinctively, or programmes the mother and even the father, pushing them towards this poise of purity. In the actual phase, when a mother enters the poise of pregnancy, there is a huge shift that takes place in the biology, within days.
I believe, if I remember right, certain hormones shoot up like two to three hundred times their normal levels, triggering of[f] (0:36:30) signals all over the body, the entire biology-base in the mother begins to shift and change, reshape itself, the bone structure, the muscular structure, the tissue structure, now to be able to carry this large child the hips actually widen out and open out in a certain way, actually a shift from skeletal structure through to the rest of the tissue, and during that whole process the stomach actually at some point becomes so hard which is completely abnormal to the normal state of the human tissue, all this is happening in such a complex way, literally you become a different person biologically.
Within that there are other signals all the way through to the mental consciousness, all of them are kicking in. Fortunately, it is instinctive. If we tried to do it, we could not. It is because the requirement is so complex. Literally, you are picked up and reshaped to become a different person, from the biology through to the psychology.
I heard this once from, described by somebody I mentioned last time, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and I mentioned her as an extraordinary lady, I think, she had almost five or six children, if I remember right, at least four or five anyway, and she said, when she first had her child, she was living in the mental consciousness fully, she said, I am looking at this whole thing and said ‘I am not interested in this’. And she was busy in her work. And then somewhere down, don't remember, two and a half, three months down, she said: ‘suddenly my mind was as if seized and turned, and then I felt this child within me is the single most important thing in the world, I lost all interest in everything else, all my interest was turned only to this child.’ And as she is explaining this, she now explains her thinking of course: haa the hormones have kicked in, the hormones are making me do this. Maybe.
Maybe it's more than just the hormones of which the hormones are the result. Whatever. There is a whole complex programming all the way from the biolog[ic] (0:38:38) physical body through the subtle bodies, gradations, vital body and mental body. Literally your mind is being reshaped to turn like this to make this the single most important thing in your life. All your instincts are being rewired. Suddenly now you feel vulnerable and you automatically create or seek a protective space.
So this bird which is pregnant is looking for a space that feels protective. Now if you think about what that means: How do I know what is protective? You feel it. The instinct feels it, and it will find somehow a corner, a little hole, a little nest, a hole in the tree or as I saw here in our little garden, there was a pot with a plant with thorns growing like that. It found a passage between the thorny shoots, a passage that appeared like an entry point that made it like a cave. On all directions it was thorny protection except one direction which was the entrance. Well, it went in and built its nest and created this whole complex structure, gave birth to those babies, and so on, and at some point, I saw subsequently five birds going and living in that, until some of them eventually will get pregnant and find their own space.
How? Because you feel protected. Not a thinking. It is an instinct.
(0:40:08):
So all this is happening inside, the instincts are kicking in and being totally reshaped. The same woman who would have said, I can conquer the world, now goes ‘swoop, I need to be protected’ and finds its nesting protective state. An equivalent shift is taking place in the father.
So there is an interesting thing which is observed among some men, not all. So a lot of this has to do with the empathy as well as the refinement in consciousness. There are many men who feel the pains of birthing of their wives. And if that is felt, they can feel equally, even they feel the cramping sensations because of an identification. But that means they can feel many more things that they are not conscious of. And again at an instinctive level, there is an automatic protective need where now the male takes the protective poise to protect the female and the child.
In the animals you see this happen, without them knowing what it is they are going to be doing or why they are doing it, they just feel the protective instinct, and they do. Observe this. It's all there within us equally, in our half animal part, but also that it represents and connects to a higher intuitive parts if we can make that link. Observe this, observe the shifts, allow it to guide you, and you will find everything is taken care of, you are taught.
I am going to use it, I am going to restate this in a different way which will be useful for the later part of the discussion: You are being taught by whom? You can say nature, you can say instinct. I will put it another way, I will say, you are being taught by the child which is now growing within you. The child has so to say shaped you, awakened you, brought you into consciousness of its needs.
When you start thinking of it this way, now you can see the progression subsequent to birth. Very obvious, very simple. The child will teach you. So from this point as Barbara Marx Hubbard said, well, the hormones kicked in, she knew this was the most important thing, the whole patterns changed. From the father's side equally an equivalent shift takes place, and the family unit now completely changes its balance.
In a prior discussion, I have given this example of certain animals where they mate for life, and it's fascinating to see how this bond between the parents works.
If you are interested more in this, I would suggest for you to look at the Evenings with Sraddhalu series, part number 17 to 24, where I discuss human relationships, human sexuality, and so on.
So one of the key-things there I describe is, how nature creates these bonds between two beings. And once the bond is made, there is actually a very complex, rich, multi-level connection between the mother and the father, and to the extent that the bond is actively nurtured, the communication is quite strong. And again the child's needs are being transferred to the father equally as the mother. It is fascinating how nature has made this.
And so, you see among penguins, there is the, I think there it is reverse, the penguin, the father sits on the eggs and the mother goes and brings the food, comes back and finds its mate among thousands of penguins. Not by sound, you can't hear the sound, they are all shouting, screaming at the same time. It feels the link, the pull, the call, comes, identifies, knows. Of course at the level of spell, the final recognition, but before that it's the subtle link that brings you together.
And all this is being centred around the child that's growing. Automatically we find within the mother all the senses are now enormously amplified, particularly the sense of smell. Fascinating! Actually this goes much deeper. In the selection of the mate, the mate, the mother has an automatic, let's say, genetic test tool built into her body. Again it's fascinating how nature works. How for example in a thousand penguins would you know that the other is a sibling or not? So nature does not want mating between siblings. She wants genetic diversity.
So it is so done that the smell and especially when the mother is ovulating, the smell-sensation is hugely amplified and other senses naturally and she senses through the smell at a level which is pheromones, so subliminal, subconscious.
They will say, but pheromones are not just physical objects, they are not just rigid molecules, they are living smells. Okay? So it is actually not biology only, it is also at a level of the subtle-physical that the smell sensation is happening.
(0:45:18)
So in that refined exaggerated increase of smell, it is the subtle senses which kick in, and you smell as if and feel comfortable with a partner that is a genetic match, you feel uncomfortable when the partner is not a genetic match, and the turn-ON of interest is related to that. Where there is a strong genetic match, the interest turns ON, the psychological interest turns ON. With strong mismatch, let's say a sibling, then the interest changes and you say, you feel automatically sisterly, brotherly, and so on. Fascinating!
So there is an automatic selection to find the best match. Interestingly, if you take the hormonal pills which prevent the normal ovulation cycle, this instinct is completely reversed. You are now drawn to the genetic mismatch and find uninteresting the better genetic match. There is actually a reversal of this.
So women who are on the pill will tend not naturally through the instinct of smell to pick the wrong partner. And so often what is happening today, because we have messed around at this level, when they actually choose to have a child, and the, you remove the influence of the pill, you find a mismatch. Interesting.
So this is just, and this is all part of current studies of biology which have shown us all this. We can understand how complex nature is and when you mess around, you have all kinds of unintended psychosocial, including biological, consequences. But I am coming to the fact of the smell-increase during pregnancy now.
Suddenly the senses are enormously amplified, and most things which the same woman was using comfortably earlier even was drawn to them now are felt as repulsive, too intense. What does that mean?
Now one of the common examples you will find, the women will stop using the soaps, perfumes and washing powders for clothes, and so on, and they will go for things without smell. There is an anecdote around this example: In the United States there was a young girl who was receiving promotionals from a store that she was going to, I think it was Target, and she was getting promotions. Suddenly she got promotionals, she was still 17, she started getting promotionals for baby objects and things required during pregnancy. Her father was incensed, he sued the company for saying, an underage girl you are sending this kind of promotional.
So they looked at their machine, it is all happening automatically with their AI, Artificial Intelligence. They looked at their Artificial Intelligence, it had detected a pattern of buying, where earlier she would be buying a certain brand of soaps, which is all being monitored today everything you buy. And suddenly she switched to the no-smell types, she stopped using perfumes. And this is the pattern which represented, I think, third or fourth month in the pregnancy. So based on that pattern the AI anticipated the next stage of the pattern which is buying baby clothes and baby things and began to promote those.
Now this less, this incident has many lessons for us. One of the lessons is that our human behaviour is so predictable that the AI actually knows how you think, and how you will think, and how you will respond to various kinds of triggers and provocations and can totally manipulate you.
This is one of the very dangerous passages we are going through, and because AI is ubiquitous can act simultaneously and distinctly uniquely to each one of us through our mobile phones with the feeds of news information and other suggestions and promotions they can totally hack, manipulate us.
And this is something proudly stated in the World Economic Forum which is quite insidious, I think, in saying that human beings are hackable, they say, we don't need God, we don't need soul, as long as you can be hacked, we will hack you. And they're saying it openly. So it's an elite which is hacking the, well, the cattle, the animals, who choose to remain animals and not grow out of it. Isn't it? It's always our choice.
So this is one of the lessons which you find from the, this incident, the predictability. But the other interesting thing is that the girl herself, perhaps she was conscious, no one in her family knew. But the pattern of behaviour was so precise and so timed that in all, each one of us, the instinct kicks in to do what is right, what is needed for the pregnancy.
Now I'm going to put this in a certain different direction, bring a different dimension, you will, I have not found it in research, but I do believe at some point, we will validate this. But this is purely from a different insight.
(0:50:33):
The reason why women with this heightened sensitivity reject the soaps and perfumes and washing powders with strong smells, because in this intensified state of the sensory amplification, nature is trying to protect the body of the mother and the child in particular from any kind of poisoning. Because the foetus in formation is so vulnerable, what little poison comes in now is going to damage the basic framework of biology- psychology-basis for life. Because this is the foundation on which all the rest of the growth will take place.
So nature automatically amplifies the need for purity and purification in every possible way. By amplifying the senses which actually for us we are capable of the same sensitivity as dogs and we have lost it, but nature forces us to now further amplify to recover what we had, what we still have potentially. And in dogs perhaps it gets amplified that much more. I don't know.
And what is it that these senses are trying to do is to sniff out the way it detected the right match of the genetic match of the mate by built-in genetic test and filter:
What is the nutritional match?
What is safe?
What is dangerous?
What is poison?
And instinctively the poison feels repulsive and the nutritional match feels attractive. And all of the modern soaps, perfumes, washing powders, etc., are full of poisonous chemicals upon which they have put poisonous perfumes to attract us to buy that product and bind us even by association and by programming to that.
You see all of us have as if built almost by habit an affinity with the smell that is associated with the washing powder that is used for our clothes. You take out fresh clothes and there is a smell that comes which is the chemicals put in the washing powder which is now yours, familiar from childhood. You switch washing powder, you feel uncomfortable. Of course if you persist after a few weeks or months, you adapt to this smell. And this is how those companies control you and ensure your loyalty to their brand by controlling the smell distinctness.
Unfortunately, not only the washing powder has poisons, but the perfume itself is poisonous. You take a perfume spray, bulk of the chemicals in the perfume are poisonous, and by combination of certain poisons, they have imitated certain flower smells. I am going to put it in another way now:
I recall as a child, certain perfumes I found extremely harsh, painful almost. If you try to go into the perfume, you will find, ha there is something very soft, gentle and then there is this very coarse, crude, harsh, almost sharp layers, hurting. And I believe this, that the soft part is the part which is not so harmful and those harsh, sharp-edged sensation is the harmful part which actually harms you on many levels, because any perfume you apply on the skin, you apply on your clothes, even when you breathe-in, finally it's going through the nasal tissue which goes straight to the brain by the way.
Be extremely careful about including even the things which will say, now releasing which is called a ‘nasal vaccine’. Things you put in the nose through the mucosal lining goes straight through into the brain, it's just 2 centimetres behind, and the nerves, rich connection of nerves, the things travel through the nervous system.
Even they have found, people who scratch their nose inside, leaves microcracks through which viruses can enter, travel straight into the brain. It can lead to brain infections. That's how close and how fragile this barrier is. You take a strong smell, there are people who spray a perfume and breathe, most dangerous poisons are going straight through and then going into the brain. If you looked at the names of the chemicals that are put in those and then consider the side effects if you take those in high dose, then you will get an idea of how dangerous those are.
(0:55:13):
Now all this is to say, when the woman switches out of all those smelly soaps and perfumes and washing powders, it's because in that heightened state of pregnancy, she knows this is dangerous poison and avoids it like plague.
Now she goes for the soaps which have no smell, because that feels right, except here's the catch: because the companies know that a pregnant woman wants something without smell, they still have the same chemicals, the same poisons, they don't add the perfume, but they do add a chemical which suppresses your sensitivity of smell so that you feel it as if no smell.
How dangerous is that? So you are as if trying to block and bypass the natural instinct of this purification, self-preservation, for the child, and this is nature's investment in each one of us. Imagine how much nature, Mother Nature, has cared to build this very precious, pure base for our whole life journey so that it may become a conscious vehicle for incarnating the divine Presence.
That's why she is going to all this trouble to refine it and build as much as possible a pure and perfect vehicle, for which purpose now she has to purify the woman because finally the tissue is formed of her body and of her blood. So in the mother suddenly all these senses heightening is simultaneously accompanied by an instinct for something pure, beautiful, uplifting, nurturing, joyous, and I am going to use this word now, ‘psychic’.
Automatically, a pregnant woman, if you ask her, well, so she goes into this nesting phase, she wants to build the room for the baby, that's the nest she wants to create in the human consciousness:
What colour do you want? All of them would be pastel colours, tending towards pink, rose, mauve, violet. And I don't even know the names of the finer gradations in between. Notice, they all relate to the colours of the psychic. Interesting! Not a coincidence. And by this point perhaps the soul has not yet come in or perhaps it has.
In some cases a very mature soul may be present before conception and can preside over the whole process infusing influences into the womb, into the foetus, or it may come in at a later stage after a few months or even at the time of birth when it may connect.
And and yet within her this purification and this need for an almost psychic purity which is the purity needed for the soul now to come in and incarnate and connect. Isn't it?
That's the psychic being coming in, its aura, its presence, its purity, and within you therefore the readiness to receive that grade of purity. Without the psychic being feeling: Oh my god this is so coarse, it is suffocating, why would I want to come here? Instead it will say: Oh this is so nurturing, this is so deeply satisfying, I would love to be here. And so nature is building inside the mother this mood of all this. You see how wonderful this is. So, I'm always relating it back to this question: When you know that you know nothing and yourself starting on a conscious evolution, how do you raise a child?
Well, nature has already given in our half animal part everything needed and in our half human part also everything needed because we can now appreciate all this, why these instincts work in this way. Isn’t it?
That's part of the human mind appreciating the truth behind the instinct which then allows you to link to a still higher intuitive knowledge. So this amplification of all the senses, building a base of purity within the woman's body and then into the child's body: In this, there is something very critical. There is the placenta which separates the child-forming from the mother's body.
This is one of the most extraordinary tissues that nature has devised which allows only that which is most pure to pass through and anything which is not to be filtered out, well, as far as nature has been able to, based on her habit of the last, let's say, a few million billion years.
Unfortunately, recently we have created all these new chemicals that nature does not know about, or she didn't expect us to do it, or expecting it she did not have the chance or the habit to prepare the placenta to be filtering all this junk.
(1:00:17):
So, suddenly with our industrialisation, we have dumped so many poisons into the bloodstream stream of the earth, that is, the rivers, the oceans, the tissue, the soil of the earth, and the air, and all this is coming into the mother's body. So what is fascinating to see is, in the mother's body while all these biological shifts are taking place, psychological shifts are taking place, there is a huge detox process happening. This is one of the reasons why you have morning sickness.
From the point a mother is pregnant, you have in a very short time this sensation of morning vomiting, puking, ‘morning sickness’ it is called, and it goes for about a month or so, in which you feel the strong urge to vomit. What is the body trying to throw out? Something which is poisonous, and it's not always obvious how it manages to do it. Some of it might be a psychological purge, some of it is like a biological purge, but to me the perception is, there's much more which is coming out at a psychological level in that movement of puking.
You're throwing out something, biologically you see nothing, but in the subtle substance something is being thrown out. And in that act, you're relieved, you're freed, and things are being removed, until the actual thought process and emotions that a mother carries will always be beautiful, joyous, harmonious or at least tend towards that. And if there is something contrary coming from outside, she will feel a strong shrinking and a protective instinct to not let it invade her and especially the child.
So you see the same placenta-protection in the biology is replicated in the psychology, in the cocoon of your personal aura space, to not allow things to come in.
In the Indian tradition, and I suppose there might be something equivalent in the western tradition, but which is largely lost because of modern education, they would say, that when a woman is pregnant you have to protect her from all kinds of distress, aggression, violence, negative emotion, thoughts, not just as coming from outside but even as allowing to trigger within her.
The idea being as it is said, whatever she experiences is experienced by the child, and because it is in a formative phase, it becomes its nature or personality. So look at it this way: What is the child made of? – The substance of its mother's body, physically and psychologically. So psychological substance also is being accumulated, largely drawn from the mother's body, some of it drawn by the child even before incarnating, before entering the womb, but all this material is being gathered layer by layer, literally deposited.
And as you are depositing layer, let's say the woman has a tremendous anger, fear, craving, upset, whatever it is, that comes as a layer depositing, and then upon that other layers. And in the child formative psychology, biology, here's a layer, suddenly something which is out of harmony. Perhaps in time it is automatically dissolved, diluted, absorbed, expelled, I don't know what. Or it remains and becomes an irritant which later may have trouble also in the child's personality. Again, there's always, because the whole thing is being rebuilt again and again, there's enough time to expel, change, transform it, dissolve it. But if it is not done, very likely if the mother gets it during pregnancy, she's going to have it later also, that becomes the entrypoint for those vibrations and those tendencies later, which can take strong root later on into teenage or adult life, or not.
You have the freedom also. But this formative period is so valuable, so precious. You can understand this now. So the idea was, you have to be extremely protective and surround the woman in the most harmonious, the most beautiful, the most happy circumstances. Now you see nature was already trying to do that from inside-out, and the half human mind now can say: ah-yes, this is what it is, so let's help it. Into that you bring the intuitive knowledge which says: ah-yes, we must surround and infuse her with the spiritual presence and aspiration also, that when she holds that aspiration, the child grows in alignment to it, but also the soul that comes with that aspiration is drawn to this space. Isn't it?
Whereas the souls which are of a completely different vibe will not be drawn here, they would be drawn to their equivalent vibration, but the souls which are of similar vibe and aspiration would be drawn here.
(1:05:25):
The actual fact of selection of the space of birth is very largely a matter of affinity of consciousness, from what the psychic being or soul seeks to develop and what it is already developed in, the current vibrational, let’s say, maturity or grade of development, and what it is aspiring to develop and grow and experience, and here is a resonance with a similar vibe, and it finds itself drawn here.
In a more mature case, it may actually say, ‘well, this is the environment, but in that environment there are several possibilities, but this family I feel an affinity to, this one person I feel an affinity to’, sometimes it's a grandparent, sometimes it is one of the parents, sometimes it's an aunt, or it can be the mother.
Something it feels an affinity to it, where it feels, ‘ah, this is nourishing, this feels right, this is what I want’, and so it is drawn to that. And then there are beings whose job it is, so to say, to help you, to find the right place with, which resonates and then to help you in the transition to incarnate, and they as if accompany you into that entry.
So, if you take care to create this protective space around the mother, which instinctively nature is already trying to do and now you do consciously in the mind as well as in a more intuitive understanding, all this you are building, and the mother automatically finds herself totally centred, the whole life is now all about ‘my child growing within me’. What is fascinating is, that you find this even in the animals and the birds, an equivalent thing, maybe not as explicitly formulated in mind-form, but in the quality of consciousness it is there. This is so amazing to see.
So the dog which is for the first time pregnant has no idea because has not seen, has no idea such a thing can happen and yet she feels in her stomach, ‘ha there is this thing growing’. She feels it. And automatically she avoids anything touching her stomach. Or the bird for that matter.
And automatically, she (with) her heightened senses of smells, she starts selecting food, she starts craving things which now her second body needs, because [it’s] (1:08:00) her body and yet it's another, and she feels it. There's an otherness and yet identity. ‘It's my body, yet another’, and that's the feeling. In the human being, now more complex, ‘my child’. But at the instinct level, ‘it's myself, and yet the other that is myself’.
And so when the body feels something missing in this heightened state, the smell. And remember, smell is not just biology, not just molecules, it is subtle-physical substance, smell is one of those senses which in us already transcends biology and touches gradations of the subtle-physical, you smell. That's how dogs can smell at a distance, that's how they can follow the scent of a person who's gone several days ago. There's nothing of the molecules left, it is something higher.
And so, in this heightened sense, she senses, ‘ah here is the food that I need’. She looks at the food, she smells the food and says, ‘I need this’. And if you did a biology test and molecular test, you'll say ‘ah-yes, this matches’. It's amazing how nature does it. So trust that instinct. Understand what it is doing. And it is giving you already the right filters as well as the corrections.
So again you are told, at least in India, used to be, I don't know if it still survives as a transmission across generations, most of the continuities of family have now broken, so when parents are independent, they read those books which are largely written from the west, Dr. Spock, something, books, I don’t know what that is, but they read those, and they don't have always this deeper dimension, they go much more on the biology-basis, and so on, which is at least better than nothing.
But I say, don't stop with the book. Step back. Take those as a starting point. Trust the instinct. Try to feel what this instinct, intuition, is telling you, or the child is telling you. And one of the forms it comes is ‘I crave this food’, and as if the memory of the food comes if you already are familiar with the food that is, even if you are not familiar with it, it is very interesting, you crave as if in memory of a quality of a smell or taste, but you don't know what would be like that.
And if you went to a restaurant, you would catch something equivalent and close and will say, ‘this’, or you look at a menu and you say ‘this’.
(1:10:36):
It's amazing, how from a molecular requirement in the bloodstream is translated into a smell-, taste-perception, into an object which perhaps you've never tasted or smelt and yet you recognise, and this is showing you that there is something much deeper, a deeper grade of knowledge operating.
Trust that knowledge within you.
And so they will say in the Indian tradition that if the mother craves something, you give it to her, make sure she has no craving, because if she craves and a crave, craving is left as a lack, the child will get that lack.
Now that's partly true. So there's a psychological side that: I am craving, I am lacking. Well, the child gets the instinctive habit of ‘I don't have enough, I need to get more’. Maybe it stays, maybe it gets dissolved, but quite possibly it will stay if it was strong in the mother. But the deeper truth of it is, the craving represents a lack in the nourishment, and by fulfilling it, you are balancing out the missing content in the nourishment.
And by nourishment, again I am very clear, it is not just biological, there is also psychological substance and a spiritual content. So this mother will feel like reading more of this kind of book, or listening to that type of thing, or listening to this music, or whatever it is that is the appropriate nourishment that she feels. Now there's a more mental side which one can bring in, where you can say: my child should have exposure to all the best fine.
And I know of a case of a mother who did this: for one week she listened to one particular raga, a particular let's say pattern or mood of music, with some of the best instrumentals, vocals, and whatever was the standard of classical music that she considered the best, next one week it would be another, next one week it would be another, as an intentional way of exposing the child to all these vibrations, which were obviously meant to be refining as well as educating at the same time.
So, here is a dimension which is not possible to the animals but is possible to human beings because we have this half mind upon the half animal part in which we can say: What can I do to assist this nourishment?
Remember, it is not biological, it is psychological nourishment and learning, and then a psychic nourishment, and a spiritual nourishment, of vibrational quality and consciousness that you would also want to nourish your child with. Now instinctively the mother is only in a single-pointed obsession of ‘what is good for my child’ here, in the surface part. But if the consciousness is not sufficiently refined or it’s not made aware, it stops with the superficial good. If it is made aware and there is a deeper, higher, intuitive or refined opening, then all that nourishment you would want for your child also. Isn't it?
So if you observe that instinct and allow it to fulfil itself in a more complete way, then you have all this possibility that you could participate in. And this is, as an influence that comes from inside, through the instinctive base, let’s say, or through the child's need, is one of the most powerful drivers of the entire journey of that initial, I will use the word, ‘raising of the child or education of the child’ led primarily by his presence within you, Isn't it?, and all the rest that nature has built around it, but then the truth of it which is greater than the instinct of nature which is also present that you can consciously attune to and participate in.
Inherently it is error free. If you follow the pure instinct, it's error free. But remember, as I gave the example, they put things in the chemicals to cover up the detection that this is poison by suppressing your sensitivity of smell, so you can play around. But if left to itself and to a base that it is familiar with in the development of our past evolution, it is effectively error free.
So since we have learnt to cover up here, we also have a mind which has done it, this mind has also the ability now to cut-through and correct for those errors. And if instinct can be error-free in a narrow track, the intuition on a wider track can be error-free in a much more comprehensive way.
(1:15:23):
So look at it this way: As a spiritual aspirant, in your higher parts you open to an intuition, in your lower parts the same principle of the intuition is operating in a, instinctive grade. What is the difference between instinct and intuition?
Sri Aurobindo explains it in this very precise manner: In the instinct, the impulse comes first and the knowledge is concealed or follows. In the intuition, the knowledge comes first, the impulse is either concealed or follows. In both, there is the knowledge and the impulse, which in the highest, in the supramental, they are one, knowledge and will are one.
But as we get into the mind, these become two different things. But in the intuition, the will follows the knowledge. In the instinct, the knowledge follows or is hidden behind the will. So the bird does without knowing consciously, and yet there is an implicit knowledge ‘it's necessary’, knows, feels, but in an implicit way. In the human being, we have both, and we have the mind as the bridge between these two, in which both will and knowledge can coexist separately as powers.
If you can consciously align to the intuition but also respect the instinct from below, you can actually create a link in the mind between these two. Spiritually, it's an occasion also. Isn't it? It can be a extraordinary spiritual practice for unifying these two. In the grades of consciousness that you are not aware of, which are semi-conscious or subconscious, so going into the vital, lifeforce, even lower grades of emotions, biology, and so on, naturally that is instinct, because you can't make it conscious.
In the higher grades, more intuitive yet again, perhaps superconscious, but here is this link which is in your mind where the two are bridged, and the infusion of the above into the lower can amplify, brighten, make clear, awaken the lower instinct and link them to their higher principles in the intuition. And so the whole experience can be raised in an extraordinary way, effectively error-free, in spite of whatever circumstances are thrown at you.
So even if you have done, for example, the cover-up of the sensitivity through that, let's say, poisonous soap, in using it, in touching it, there will be the intuitive touch which will say ‘I somehow don't like this’, and you will go for something else which feels less unsafe or more true.
And so in this way you learn to trust the instinct, the intuition, and with your mind consciously participating, and you know what you need to do, effectively error free. This does not happen to a woman normally, does not happen to a man normally, but in that state where there is a pregnancy, it's an extraordinary opportunity where it can happen easily. Amazing. Isn't it?
So as an opportunity for those at least who are in a spiritual aspiration, it's quite an extraordinary occasion. But you will see, because nature has to have this in a woman, because only the woman can give birth, the implication is that, in the rest of her life, even when she is not pregnant, the potential is held, which is what appears in what they call ‘woman's instinct’. It's a refinement held as a potential which becomes now explicit in the state of pregnancy but which is already held underlying, and if you can consciously build upon it, you can develop it in a different way, in the same way perhaps even without needing to be pregnant. The thing is there. And this is one big difference in the advantage that a woman has over man.
There's an interesting talk of the Mother where she explains this. She's talking to the women in Japan, so it's woman to woman, she says certain things which most men will not fully be able to appreciate and only a woman can understand. And she says this to the women that, as women we have a different kind of a way of knowing, a feel, a certain intuitive feel which is present which is not natural to men, of course the intuition is there, but the way it works is different. In the woman it's more earthy, more based in the body. In the men it is much more mentalised, less based in the body. And in part it comes from this difference in the biology.
(1:20:14):
So we'll have occasion to discuss also the biological and psychological distinctions between men and women in a subsequent discussion. But here you get a, one of these examples here. And the way the woman receives the intuition even is felt much more in the body, whereas in the man it is not felt as much in the body. With a little effort he can incarnate and bring that intuitive touch all the way into the physical consciousness, if he works upon it.
Equally in the woman though if she does not work upon it, this bringing into the body-physical tends to lose the refined originating quality of the purity of the intuition and often mixes it with an emotional-sentimental content, which she then calls ‘intuition’. And then we can call it a ‘vital intuition’ or a reflection of the intuition in the vital. But already there it has got distorted, limited and personalised. But because it feels right, she can then, now distorted, justify it, because it feels right, and still, and then go into error.
And so just as a man has to make a conscious effort to incarnate that stream all the way down to the physical, she has to make a conscious effort to rise to perceive that intuition in the higher mental grade, where it is more pure and refined without the distortion that comes with the emotional-sentimental content and then the dulling in the biology.
In a sense, both have to make their effort with a different starting point to integrate the intuition across these levels. It's the starting point that's different.
Now if people live without any conscious effort in a, in a spiritual aspiration or even an effort without needing a spiritual aspiration, just to want to develop this, the partnership of the male and the female complements. He has that, she has that, and if they work together with a common purpose, it becomes complementary.
If they do not work together, then it becomes opposing, and you have the male says ‘I don't understand women’, the women says ‘I don't understand men’, and an opportunity lost. But if you're working on yourself consciously and your goal is an integral development and you want to practise an integral yoga, not only in name, ‘oh-yeah, it's integral yoga’, no, you want to do it integrally, then you take up integrally, consciously within you in all the parts, that's when you're doing it integrally. Then it does not matter what your starting point is. Each has its benefits and limitations. You work to build, integrate, across all the levels. You don't need to be pregnant for that, you can be doing it all the time in your life.
But I am just highlighting how because nature needs to amplify this dramatically in the woman, she has it much more close to the surface in that layer which is bio-emotional, much stronger there, and therefore there is an immediate distinction in the qualitative reception of intuitions between men and women.
So Mother makes this in passing observation when she says, women receive differently, and you have to learn to follow your way of the intuition, not try to imitate the men's way of intuition. That was her point in that part of the discussion. But once you understand how it works, it's all a starting point that you have to complete anyway.
Effectively now, you have an access to a knowledge which is almost practically error-free, that you can now build upon and allow the growth of the child to take place within you, utilising all that's required for its nourishment and growth. And if by then you have a child‘s consciousness, not always infused in the foetus but supporting from outside with a link formed, which is often the case for a more mature soul, and through that you will feel in the child, in the womb, in the foetus or in the participating, accompanying consciousness of the being that is incarnating, the need for this. And these can be psychological, spiritual needs. And you will feel drawn to do this, to do that, to expose yourself to this or that.
And sometimes quite unusual, a woman who has never done this now finds herself doing this automatically, which is nourishing for her, actually for the child. So just as you are giving to the child, so to say, layer by layer all that you are, the child also with its aspiration can share with you and participate and direct your aspiration and your growth. There can be a mutual evolutionary support, if the incarnating being is more conscious, more awake.
And as I said, if the harmony between both parents is there and the link strong, then both parents share in this, differently of course. But all three share in something which is a very powerful, nurturing, growing experience.
(1:25:17):
So, so far I have taken only Nithin's question at its first level of just pregnancy, which will lead eventually to childbirth. And I'll just touch upon it in this way, saying even in the act of birthing, you can consciously make it as a consecration as you bring a soul, being, into the world, this is the gift only a woman can have, you consciously bring into the world.
And Mother comments on this, she says, the supramental being also will have to be born from a woman. Right? So there's an extraordinary potential there.
You can consciously even in the birth consecrate the child in the very first entry as he makes the entry into the world. And if the child's consciousness is also sufficiently developed and the mother's sufficiently developed and aligned, it can be an extraordinary experience, even a spiritual experience.
And so, next time we will build upon this in the whole nurturing of the newborn baby,
how do you go,
what are the stages,
what are the things happening,
the dynamics between the parents and child and the relatives,
and how the instinct works,
and the deeper intuitive truths,
and so on, the way we have looked at this, but we will look at all that next time.
But in conclusion, what I want to point here is that motherhood, parenting or nurturing a child as a teacher can be raised to a sacred responsibility and a sacred experience and made a part of your spiritual aspiration and spiritual life. Whether you choose to do that or not, well, it's for you to choose. Having made a choice to what extent, to what degree you commit to it, again is for you to do.
But I think here I have laid out kind of a broad framework of what is possible potentially and lots of nuances of this. And you could think about it. I have touched upon each of these things. One could elaborate on each of these further. But as I said, if you follow the deeper intuitive and instinctive alignments, the knowledge unfolds. And sometimes very rich, detailed, precise knowledge can come through and you will know ‘ah, my child needs this’. You will know exactly, just like that, as if it's the thought of your child that is awakened within your thought. And you'll know ‘it's not my thought, it's my child's call or thought or aspiration’, you'll feel the distinction, because being within you, it's still a different quality which is rising.
And so all these things, this very rich base of experience that is possible. And I've just laid, I can only say, as a first frame in which you can appreciate and understand the richness and the possibilities.
Uh so coming to Nitin's question: ‘How to raise a child when you know that you are, that you know nothing and you are yourself starting on a conscious evolution?’ – The child is teaching you. And the Divine Mother from above and Mother Nature from below is also helping you and teaching you. And all you need to do is hold your aspiration, remain clear and free from preconceptions, allow this teaching, learning, growing experience to guide, flow with it, trusting a deeper intuition, and if you have sufficiently purified yourself, it's quite easy. You are carried. And you learn to trust. And you will be surprised how precise that help and guidance is.
To the earlier question which that young lady had asked: ‘Why would you want to bring a child into this world? And about the number of people’: It doesn't matter. Numbers don't matter. Condition of the world doesn't matter. The space you create in which a conscious soul can incarnate will perhaps assist in changing the circumstances of the world. And a few children with a consciousness, a few parents with a refined consciousness and aspiration, a small community with people like this, could change the destiny of the world.
Sri Aurobindo's observations: Numbers never matter. It's the quality of consciousness, even in a few, which can make an impact on the whole. Well, it's for such a possibility that the Mother created Auroville, intended to be a township of 50,000 people eventually. But even if you take 20,000 as an intermediary, we are far from that and in the quality of our intentions and aspirations, very far from this. Most people who came much later have slipped more into the hippie community lifestyle. Those who came earlier with a spiritual aspiration, well, they have aged and now are almost in a minority, so we are in a very strange situation.
(1:30:29):
I would only simply say, build your Auroville space, build your Integral Yoga space, wherever you are, in the community you are in, in your family. Maybe you are a grandparent, and you can assist your parents, your children's children, your grandchildren and your children in their parenting and perhaps be the linkpoint that the soul actually incarnates for.
Actually I know of cases where that has happened for a grandmother, and that's it, because she had the spiritual, and the soul wanted that. His parents were incidental. So maybe you can assist, and it doesn't matter who you are, where you are. The environment you create and the way you radiate those possibilities is going to help in this. So that's it, as a first step to the answer to both of these questions.
Next time we will say what, we will discuss what happens subsequently in the nurturing and growth. So in this way, I hope, over a few sessions now in this series to cover various stages of the growth and explore the psycho-spiritual development along with the biological and psychological development.
In closing: Consider the difficulties your mothers, your parents went through. But more than anything for me, I look at it this way:
The Divine Mother, who is trying to create for us this receptive base, for which she needs to use biological instruments of the parents, which she is nurturing you, she is caring you, not just during the biological phase in the womb, but subsequently in your growth now as an adult, where you are still a child of the Divine Mother, in her womb, in the cocoon which is surrounding you, of your aura, that's the womb so to say, in which you are a cradle, a womb for the supramental being to emerge, that she is nurturing and nourishing.
And all your life-experience is what you are drawing into this womb of a psycho-spiritual shell, the placenta which is “circumconscient”, to use Sri Aurobindo’s vocabulary, the environing consciousness, through which you experience the universe and the world, but through which you have to grow to nourish, but now you as a conscious being you choose your nourishment.
Build the base. Work on yourself consciously. And she can only give you the support, and what you ask, she will nourish you. You say, ‘Mother I would need this, I crave this’, she gives you the help. So, think of yourself now as a child growing in evolution, but as a seed, as a foetus, so to say, a prototype of the supramental being, first step in that evolution. Isn't it, which she is nourishing you. And so because she nourishes you, the certainty of the result is there. How much time? Well, as rapidly as you can grow.
It's an interesting way of looking at it. But then it immediately places you in right relation with the Divine Mother. Your psychic being is the seed, out of which this supramental being has to manifest, emerge and materialise, literally, using these vehicles as intermediate stages, steps, ways, through which to manifest.
And then in between you might have the occasion to assist another soul to take birth with this background perhaps, or not, or nurture in a different way, doesn't matter. We can take a moment to dwell on this and perhaps meditate on this theme.
<silence>
Namaste.