EWS #156 Separation of Individuality + QA

March 25, 2023

Alina (0:00:28):
Namaste. Namaste, Sraddhalu.

Sraddhalu (0:00:31):

Namaste. Happy to be with all of you.

Alina (0:00:35):

We are happy to continue our series Evenings with Sraddhalu.  Today we have a new theme, “Separation of Individuality”, which is a continuation of our previous series. And firstly, Sraddhalu will give some introduction into this theme. And as usual, you may send questions during our conversation in the chat box, or you can send by email at our email ID integralstudies.in[at]gmail.com. After Sraddhalu will have this initial conversation, then maybe we will take some questions that we received from our viewers last time.

Sraddhalu (0:01:26):

Yes. The theme of individuality is what we have been dwelling upon these last few sessions as part of our larger discussion on education. Because eventually our goal in education is to assist the individual flowering to be complete. And we have already seen that there is a true individuality which is the psychic being and yet the psychic being has to act through these instruments of mind, life-energies, emotions, body, and the whole has to act as a single individual, you cannot have these different parts pulling and pushing in different directions and even contradicting the psychic being.

So the purpose of our education is the full healthy flowering of this complete true individual but with all its instruments, powers, faculties, layers, gradations of consciousness, etc. The discussion today will be more on the initial problem of nature; and the how that is done, solved by her; and how we assist that process in the education itself. And as before, we will take examples of children and through young-adult stage, but equally all that we discuss applies to all of us as adults because for most of us this formation of individuality as well as the development and integration of the individuality is still extremely crude and barely begun in a sense.

So from a yoga point of view, the whole Integral Yoga is also the completion of this individuality in its true sense. What that is, we will also see as we go along. First we recognise the problem that nature has, especially as it corresponds to the physical world. And I will distinguish between the other worlds and the physical world. You see, in the vital world, in the mental world, you can produce a form, even project a form out of yourself, a consciousness, an energy, an idea, just like that, by willing it. Because the substance is plastic. In fact, we are doing this all the time.

Mother was asked once: Mother, how, what is occultism? Or how do we practise occultism? And her answer was: ‘Every time you have a strong thought or a strong emotion, you are practising occultism’, because you're creating, projecting, things on those worlds which then go out and have their effect in the world.

But when you come to the physical world, mhm-hhummm it doesn't work! Why? Rigidity. This is the domain primarily of form. So in the vital and mental worlds you have form, but form is secondary to the primary characteristic of that world, which is energy or thought-awareness. Here, it is, primarily, world of form, inside which you have the energy, thought-awareness and various other powers. And because form is first, form overrides everything else. All those are secondary to it. So for example, if you produce a very strong thought formation, it will form in its grade, but it cannot influence the physical form directly or rather it will influence it but modify only slowly and to the extent that the physical consciousness yields because it's rigid.

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So you could have for example a strong thought formation and ten years down you find your body actually has that as an outcome, including illnesses or cures of illnesses. But it took you that much time. And we don't realise, by that time we have changed as a person and we say ‘Hey where did this come from?’ not realising that ten years ago the way you lived, the consciousness you had, the kind of thoughts and emotions you had, led to this illness, but it took that much time for it to materialise in the form. And you may say ‘But I don't think like that anymore’. But well, that's the consequence of that stage now appearing.

Now in the emergence of a new individual, exactly the same problem happens. In the mind world, vital world, for example, you can literally project a new thought, it takes on a form of itself, you can build a thought formation, you can build, will a vital formation, you can make it as big as you want, even extend it over an entire city or a nation or the world. And actually there are yogis as well as others, not always spiritual, who do that.

I remember reading a book, this was from some teacher in Cyprus who spoke of how at some point when Cyprus was invaded by Turkey, they had to abandon the city where they had grown, and they put a formation, every night they would go out of the body and build a formation that nobody should live here so that one day they could come back. I had occasion to meet him, much later, and I had read this in the book, and so somewhere I made a mention about it, and he was extremely embarrassed, he was almost apologetic. He said, ‘You know those days we were not so developed and it was completely wrong what we did’. But the result of it was that in fact to this day it remains a ghost town. That is, it is owned by the Turkish, nobody lives there. Nobody lives there, nobody wants to go there. You go there and you feel somehow uncomfortable, you move out eventually.

So formations like that can be built. A human being, an individual, can do that. It doesn't take much really. But equally spiritual formations can be built and they can be massive compared to your body. But you come to the physical world and you want to project out of your physical substance, you have a problem. It has to be smaller than you, first. Second, in projecting it you cannot be losing too much, otherwise you would break down. Third, if what you want to project is intended to become a human being, it must be as complex as you are. And here comes the biggest problem of Nature.

At a very simple level she solves it easily. You take a single-cell bacterium, it, after a point of pushing-pushing, it breaks out, forms two units, and each is complete. There is a duplication of the DNA, all of this we are taught in textbooks and around it a whole formation takes place. Of course if you go into the mechanics of it, that is still a miracle. It is not as simple as they show it in the video images saying, ‘Oh the DNA replicates itself and automatically material forms’. There's still a complexity, a huge complexity. Single cell is extremely complex, as complex as an entire city. And yet Nature is able to do that relatively easily so that you can actually see the new cell emergent almost the same size as the first or rapidly grows until the two are equal sized. Relatively easily done at a single-cell level.

Now the more this becomes complex, the more it's a combination of multiple cells and specialised cells, you cannot do this anymore because now the specialised cells are layered. So let's say, inside you have specialised cells, outside your specialised cells, the separation now involves complete breaking open. How do you do that without destroying what you have?

And so this is one of the most extraordinary achievements of Nature to be able to first form an egg, into which all the necessary material is put, and then the egg is put out as in the case of chicken you see, inside the actual being is tiny, biologically, until it grows using up the nutrition of the egg, and then breaks out into full-grown chicken, largely independent from the point of its birth even. Largely independent! Now that egg can take place inside the body and burst out when ready. So there are stages of the evolution. Finally though in the human being, you have this human being individual that takes birth. Now compare this with the horse.

(0:10:00):

The horse takes birth, the baby has just come out, the first time that it is actually able to extend its legs, and head, and even make sounds, it rests, it is exhausted, it rests for about 30 minutes to 45 minutes, and then it gets up and starts trotting. But the instinct of course, there is the umbilical, the physical umbilical has been cut by the mother, but the subtle-physical, the psychological umbilical is there, it holds the child close to the mother, so it trots around its own mother, goes round and round. Interesting! Like Ganesha going around his mother Parvati which is cosmic Nature. So, very interesting symbol! So, he goes around his mother, that's all it can do, that's her world. Gradually though, over the days, weeks, months, you will find this distance becoming a little more, and a little more, and a little more. Now we see two things very important here: the physical separation; and then the psychological separation.

At first, in the case of the horse, there is danger if it goes too far, it doesn't know the world yet, it is not able or strong enough to defend itself, it cannot run for long durations, it cannot perhaps yet digest all the grass, so it still feeds from its mother, that dependence is there, but increasingly as it becomes more independent and capable, it also starts wandering wider and greater distance. And there comes a process, and we will then map it to human beings.

The child wanders off and comes back, back to security, back home. Again wanders off, this time a little farther, comes back home. And it's a measure of its individuality and independence that it feels and the sense of safety it feels that it can go farther and not panic and come back feeling safe. Now according to one's nature, there are children who are born very independent, so they will always enter into danger zones, there are others who are more, let's say, protective, more sensitive, more vulnerable at least they feel, and they take longer to make the separation.

We don't worry about that now. We understand the process that there's a psychological separation that takes place with the individuality forming, which needs its own time for the psychological umbilical to gradually loosen up, that can't be cut abruptly. And this happens even in age, late age as adult human beings, when we get really, in severe distress, the first thing we turn to is the parents, generally the mother. There is a saying in Hindi in India where they say, I am loosely translating, ‘I will give you such a difficult time that I will make you remember your grandma’, (‘nani ya dilange’), that is, ‘make you recall your grandma’, that is when we have a severe crisis, instinctively we turn to that which represents for us our origin and home and security from birth or before birth, and so in this case it's mom or grandmom or some equivalent figure who represents that, and this can happen in late age.

So what I am showing you here is, there is a very slow process of thinning of the umbilical and it can stay very long. I have shared before this unusual experience: Pandit-ji's sister, Mitra-akka, younger sister, when she was, unfortunately, the last three years she was, she had a stroke and a partial paralysis, one of those days suddenly she began to say ‘I am feeling as if I am dying, I don't know what's happening’. And then a few hours down we got a message that her daughter had passed away. We didn't tell her. But the umbilical of a psychological level was still intact in some way that what her daughter was experiencing as a distress reflected in her consciousness, identically, literally. And her thing passed, immediately after that thing was over, the transition was made, she didn't have any more distress. And so all this is to explain the nature of this umbilical and also the process of separation.

Now again, going back to the biology and the form, because this is the biggest problem for Nature: If the child does not grow enough, now we separate the horse and the human, the horse grew enough that it could jog around, it could stand on its own legs; the human baby born cannot stand on its own legs. Why not?

(0:15:02)

If the horse could do it, human beings are supposed to be more evolved. Isn't it? Because Nature needed that additional nutrition, energy, capability, time, to build something else which the horse does not have, which the human has, which requires more time, more energy, more fine working, a lot of it has to do with the brain, nervous system, and finer gradations of substance and complexity of the human being. But yes, this she could, this could accelerate this further.

There are species in the whole wide universe, surely there are planets where also they grow faster or they grow longer, the gestation period could be more than nine months, they may come out more complete. But there is a practical problem. So if you spend more time in the womb, the body continues to grow, it cannot come out without severely damaging the mother. If it spends less time in the womb and comes out prematurely, then it has not developed enough independence of capacity to survive, perhaps, even, which is why the premature births need to be put in a kind of an artificial womb-like space to allow that period of completion of growth.

This timing is so precise in the human being that if a birth is delayed by more than a week or two, we already say ‘There is severe danger to the mother’. If it is premature by a week or two, we say that ‘It is a premature baby’ and needs more time somehow to catch up. Think about it. Why should it be so close? Because Nature is trying to combine two very different extremes: one is building enough strength and independence, which needs more time; the other is getting the baby out of the body so as not to damage the mother's body if it grows too much. These two collide and there is a fine point of balance with some variation. Now with the human being this means in practice that the baby is totally dependent in the early stages and builds its biological independence also quite slowly with it also the psychological independence very slowly.

Now if we could conceive of, and I believe what I am saying is correct, if we could conceive of a species of, let's say, extraterrestrial beings on some other planet where the gestation period is longer for whatever reason because it is more evolved biologically, let's say, then that phase after birth also probably is much longer, and the parental instinct of protection of the baby is perhaps also much stronger because the need is greater, the vulnerability is longer, and so on.

So what we are describing is now a level of principles where wherever you may go in the universe, you understand the principle and the rest is only variations. So, for Nature, finding this balance to push as much as possible into the womb stage but not too much as to damage the mother. This is the problem in the domain of biology and form. This would not be so if the biology itself becomes more plastic, more elastic. And so we can conceive of a future stage of humanity where perhaps the balance point would change.

And in the supramental body, it would not be the same anymore because you would not need to have this kind of a gestation period, one could literally see a replication of the bacterium where some consciousness, substance of the body, is as if projected out and becomes the basis for the formation of a full-grown individual. Think about it.

Why can't you be born full-grown? Well, because of form. You would break the mother's form if you were full-grown, because you are as tall as your mother at least. Right? So, but when this happens with substance which is malleable as with the supramentalised physical body, then the rules would be different, perhaps. Even then there might be a stage of small to large growth, etc. We don't need to speculate that.

But understand the problem of Nature, then you understand why this and then what you need to do as parents or teachers not only in the early years where the biological dependence is there, but in the later years when the psychological dependence is there, and then into adult years when the spiritual dependence is there. Isn't it? As we all are dependent on the Divine Mother! Isn't it? And exactly the same relationship! You can think of your link as with the Divine Mother as your umbilical, so to say, a spiritual umbilical. The principle does not change. You are part of something greater, emergent out of it as a smaller unit, intended to grow into fullness. That's what it is.

So we understand here first this problem, but the separation of individuality is not complete unless the second one becomes as independent as the first and becomes now capable of producing its own individuals. Isn't it? So here comes the interesting thing:

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There is a point where this individuality can be said to be now complete or reasonably complete biologically that it can take the next step, the psychological umbilical would still stay, the spiritual dependence is there. For the moment we will ignore all that. But if, before this completion stage is reached, let's say, for purpose of discussion, age 21, for some it's later, for some it's sooner, it doesn't matter, we say that age, before it is complete, if you now break that individuality to form a larger unit, to serve the family, to serve the tribe, to serve the nation, then this is incomplete.

On the other hand, if you cross that stage and continue to harden beyond a point, you have an individuality which becomes extremely self-centred and then unable to integrate into a larger collective. Now this problem we have to understand because Nature also intends not just these individuals but these individuals are, let's say, units for a larger collective body just as ourselves are units for this body, well, individuals as a family for example form a family unit, as a tribe we form a tribal unit, and so on. This is extremely important to understand because Nature has a collective objective equally as an individual objective.

She wants a collective manifestation embodying the Divine in a collective body, and that collective body eventually should expand to the size of the cosmos, the whole universe itself is your family let's say, or the container in which this play is to be worked out. Obviously, we are still far from the universality of the universe, a universality which is terrestrial would already be great, and we are not yet close to that, we are basically preparing for that.

Before that, we have a national individuality, a national identity. And so Sri Aurobindo speaks of this in some of his aphorisms, Thoughts and Aphorisms, and I will read from a few, you will get a sense of, you will get many insights, and these are of course very deep because they are aphorisms, but will get a drift of it. So Aphorism number 234, he says: “Altruism, duty, family, country, humanity are the prisons of the soul when they are not its instruments.” Interesting!  “humanity” is a prison. “country” is a prison. “family” is a prison. “Duty”. “Altruism”. One has to really dwell on each, there is so much there. But they are prisons when they are not instruments of the soul. If the soul is not the primary, let's say, focal point for these things, for the truth that they represent, then they become falsehood and they imprison. Who? The individual who is not soul. When the soul comes forward, then these things acquire their true sense.

Next, Aphorism 331: “God's world advances step by step fulfilling the lesser unit before it seriously attempts the larger. Affirm free nationality first, if thou wouldst ever bring the world to be one nation.” Very interesting. He is talking about, unless the individual, unless the nationality is first free, you cannot have world union. But this principle now we will extend to the earlier stages even, including family and individual. If you do not have a sufficiently free individual focus as a person, you cannot be a healthy member of family, healthy member of society, healthy member of nation or of the world or universality.

From a spiritual goal of a spiritual universality which we seek, you cannot have that unless you have a healthy individuality first. Think about it. And from this we will come to another of the aphorisms of Sri Aurobindo which we will take up later, where he says: “Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar.” So to form that individuality in the first stage, ego was necessary, and that's different from egoism, and then at some point now you cannot go further into universality because now ego stops you, “Ego is the bar” now, yet you needed to have that first stage for which ego is necessary.

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Then he speaks about how a nation is formed in number 332, I will skip that, we go to number 333, he says: “Nationality is a stride of the progressive God passing beyond the stage of the family; therefore the attachment to clan and tribe must weaken or perish before a nation can be born.” So again, an extraordinary insight. You understand the whole sweep of history and the formation of these larger units.

And you see why before nationality could be formed, there had to be the passage, first family, then clan, then tribe. But in order to reach nationality, you have to dissolve the clan and tribe. But family? What about that? So the next one, Aphorism 334, he says: “Family, nationality, humanity are Vishnu's three strides from an isolated to a collective unity. The first has been fulfilled,” that is, family, ”we yet strive for the perfection of the second,” which is nationality, “towards the third we are reaching out our hands and the pioneer work is already attempted.”, that is humanity! Pioneer work attempted, but we are still far. You see the very nature of the national, international affairs is: national egos versus national egos. And if you try to not be egoistic, immediately all the other nations will use you in a way to the detriment of the nation itself and to the larger collective of humanity. So, family, nationality, humanity are the three strides of Vishnu.

It's as if the Divine has chosen,- okay, this will be focus, next focus, next focus. And perhaps after this humanity, we may conceive of a cosmic, intergalactic identity. We are still far from that. But this, “three strides”: Family is to be protected, because it's the decision made at the evolutionary level by the divine consciousness.

So what you see interestingly is the individual, from here you break out of your narrowness and egoism into family which becomes a collective ego, this passes through sometimes very rapidly through the sense of clan and tribe. Mostly nowadays in the city we hardly experience this and yet your sense of community, sometimes they refer to it as ‘caste’, but it's not caste, it's community identity, and the community with which you grow, with which you interact, often those become the equivalent of clans and tribes. Those pass through in a superficial way and then out of that emerges the nationality. If you have not fulfilled this individual and family, you cannot have strong nationality. You break family, your nationality will not be healthy. Think about it. Just as if you break individuality, you cannot have a healthy family. Or you break nationality, you will not have healthy humanity. So we see here something which we now replicate the principle at the level of the individual in the school situation, and then in the family, and in our spiritual life.

So this child now growing in the school has to go through this very important principle he has taught us: If this individuality is not an instrument of the soul, then it becomes a prison. You see this very obviously, we have been discussing this already the last few times, so I won't repeat. But if your mind, your lifeforce, your physical body, are not aligned to the soul aspiration, as they form, as they individualise, they imprison the soul and the soul can suffocate, hence the critical importance of our psychic and spiritual education all the way through.

Now we are going to have a dedicated session maybe a few weeks down on how to introduce these things to children from early age and then all through adulthood, but right now I am just highlighting the importance of this. As that is let's say nourished, as the body grows, the lifeforce, energies, emotions mature, the mind begins to form and organise, they form under influence of these values, at least this influence, and they form with that largely as the reference and centre. If not, they end up suffocating the soul and they become prisons for the soul.

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A large part of humanity is damaged in this way. What to do about the damage? Again we'll have a dedicated discussion about this a couple of weeks, a few weeks down, but I am just setting these as indicators. Second, before a first step is fulfilled, you cannot take the next step. And therefore, the fulfilment of the individual, the fulfilment of each layer in the individual, each part in the individual, also must be recognised. You cannot switch, skip stages, you cannot forcibly hasten, you can speed up sometimes in certain layers, certain parts, but you still have to go through all those stages in between, however quickly.

Sometimes the equivalent of one year's growth could be compressed into a week. Yes, in some cases, for certain parts, for certain experiences, depending on their maturity and the soul personality's development. But otherwise largely there is a rhythm and a sequence. And therefore you will find all these general indicators, for example in the Montessori system they speak of three-year steps: first three years, next three years, next three years, and so on. And within that also they make detailed diagrams, but it does not map exactly to each child. You can say broadly this is a trend, but some do it sooner, some do it later. It doesn't matter. As a rule, as a parent, I will say, if you find your child is growing more slowly than others, don't worry, in itself, that is not a problem. The question is whether the growth is healthy and steady and joyous. If that is, the rest will take care of itself.

Very often, and especially this happens when children have certain parts more developed than others, there is a misalignment and it creates certain imbalances which make for trouble. I have spoken of, for example, autism where the inner life is more rich than the outer, and so, this does create a problem for certain aspects of the development of the outer. But recognise the principle: each stage needs to be fully completed before moving to the next, and what we do today which is the big mistake is to try to accelerate and artificially impose later stages.

For example, numbers, mathematics, the mathematical tables, you cannot have children at the age of 3 or 4, normally, dealing with them because these belong to a level of abstraction of mind. You have to go through certain experiences to familiarise with a sense of counting and then show easier ways to count or represent them objectively with numbers and the number relationships. That will follow naturally. This process you can speed up. But if you take something which comes later and place it in advance and say, ‘Here are numbers, these are numbers, learn by heart these tables’, not only it makes no sense, it creates the disgust, the revulsion and blocks further progress subsequently. But it's also tapping into a grade of development which is not yet ready, therefore the child struggles a lot, suffers a lot to force it, and having forced it, it has skipped intermediate stages’ development, which will lead to dyslexia and other imbalances.

So if you go through all the stages, you can enormously speed up. This is how you have many examples of genius. Sometimes the genius does it internally on their own without needing your educational system, otherwise, a healthy educational system would recognise all these steps, speed them up, as needed according to the child's capacity.

And literally at the age of 10, my teacher's teacher Kapali Sastriar had already read the Mahabharata, which is the world's longest poem by the way, there's no longer even in English, five times, in Sanskrit, understanding fully, well, whatever he could at that age, but at least the sense of the words, mostly understanding, maybe not the experiences which involved adult life, but still. How is that possible even? And it was not a big deal, in the family it was considered ‘that's good’. Maybe ‘five times’ was a little more than normal. But once? Mmhhm, doable for all. Why not? Yes, it's possible if, but if you have done it in this way without skipping the steps. So that's why understanding the steps is becoming so important. And then according to the child's capacity, you could go faster or slower, stay with the capacity, encourage the child to experience, and you will find things happen very smoothly. Next, in the formation of individuality, certain attachments have to weaken. This again we recognise from the principles we have read from the aphorisms.

(0:35:23):

So at some point, as the individuality comes into its own, the attachment to parents has to weaken. Isn’t it? And equally, the same person now will then eventually give birth to children, experience that attachment and then eventually weaken, because those children need to be independent. So now looking from the parent's side, looking at us as adults, you watch the children as they grow, this elastic umbilical, of psychological umbilical goes farther, comes back, but needs you less and less, and eventually there comes a time when they need you only in moments of crisis or even they find somebody else who is more helpful, more nourishing, sometimes, but still there's something unique to you which nobody can replace, and that happens.

But the need changes and the grade of the need changes. So as the child grows, you address and relate to them more and more as friends, as adults, mature. Don't treat them as children. I have seen parents sometimes treating a 30-year old, 40-year old as if they would a 10-year old, because they have not outgrown the habit of treating their children as children. Somehow they don't do that with the others, ‘Oh look, how much that person has grown’, ‘You are still a child’ somehow implied, you never outgrew, because, well, the parent has grown, the child is still that much, so many years younger, not realising they have become adult.

And so it's one of the challenges for a parent: you identify so much with the little stage of the child's growth, afterwards you do not understand they have grown and you do not tailor yourself to match their need and their stage of development. You have to do that consciously. It does not happen automatically for most people. We tend to be so attached emotionally on the early stage that we are not able to disengage.

There comes a time when actually your own child is a, as a full grown adult does something so extraordinary, you wonder: ‘Is this my child did I give birth to?’ You realise, no, that's not, that was more an incident, this is somebody who came with their own full grown capacity and now have a body. They needed this transition through your body to be able to acquire a body, that's about it. Interesting.

But can you recognise that sooner? If you are more conscious, recognise this child as a soul in evolution and perhaps even is more mature than your soul, and you may have much to learn from that child. Can you treat that child with that respect? Now what I am saying here is, all of us should be doing this with all our children, including as teachers in the school.

Look at every child as a soul in evolution. Understand that the initial stage of their development while in the form, of body, life force, mind, because of the nature of form and growth and the psychology of growth which we discussed earlier, there is a great dependence, but the being that is growing and the flowering that is possible can take this far more than even your capacity, potentially at least.

And treat the child with that respect. Conceive of even the potential that the child has. If you have the, if you perceive that potential in the child, well, then extend it in your conception.

Often we see that in little children, we say, ‘Ha this child can be quite unusual in this range, in this field, in this quality’, sometimes just goodness, it doesn't have to be a special skill, it's just a way of being, and you project that, that's what it can go to, you don't impose that, you don't interfere with their growth, but for yourself you project that and you say ‘Wow, this is the potential’, maybe in this lifetime, maybe in 10 lives, doesn't matter, and with the respect you would for that, you treat the child.

Think about it. Review. This is extremely important. Review. If you have children, if you are dealing with people younger than you even if they were your children, you gave them birth 20-30 years ago, look at them today with fresh eyes. Yes, perhaps there is an attachment that comes from that psychological umbilical, but see them as conscious souls in evolution. And what's your role now in nourishing, in assisting?

You still do that, but very likely at some stage you may find they might also nourish you more in other ways and be open to that. So there is a, this, there is a saying in Sanskrit that: at this age with children you have a right to hit them even because that's when you are dealing with instinctive behaviour; there is a stage when they, you give them only love; and then there is a stage when you treat them as your friends.

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Observe. Recognise. And know when to let go and not interfere. Now having understood this, we also observe on the three levels how this umbilical and the process of separation happens and what we could do in the act of, in the interaction with them as well as in the teaching. First thing you would do, you notice in the child is the strongest urge to be treated as an individual and even as an adult.

So I remember saying this when I was a child, and every child says it at some point, and all the adults laugh. And when they laughed, it made me question, ‘Oh why are they laughing?’, so I said something like, ‘When I was small, I did something like this’. And I must have been at that time 6 or 7 or 8, I don't know. So adults laugh. ‘Uh-oh’, you wonder, ‘Why are they laughing?’ because you don't feel, you can look back at that thing and say, ‘When I was small’, now I am not small. Right? For them you are always small.

When you are 12 years old, you may still again say, ‘When I was small’. When you are 20 years old, you will say, ‘When I was small’. You see, until you come into full-grown adulthood, which is totally independent, you can always look back and say, ‘When I was small’, and the other adults will laugh, because they still see you as small. But notice, inside is this you don't feel small, you feel, ‘I have grown, I am now full-grown adult, well, treat me with respect, which is due’. You feel that. You expect that somehow. Observe this and encourage this, nourish this. So when the child is now feeling more grown, give them the due responsibility and respect.

There are some families in India, and this is very strong with certain very refined cultures or family lineages, where they will refer to the child with a word of respect that you would to an adult. So for example in Gujarat, they will speak of, they will address the young child as so and so ‘bhai’, brother, and so and so ‘ben’, meaning, sister, but exactly the terms you would use for an adult: so and so brother, so and so sister. Interesting. You'll find that pretty much everywhere in some form or other wherever there has been some refinement in the families, not all seem to have it. But, why do you do that?

That's one way by which the cultures taught you to respect the children as an adult, as an individual, but it's not so much about words though that helps, it's about your sense of who they are in relation to you, soul in evolution. If you are in a deeper spiritual aspiration, conceive of your children as not yours, as children of the Divine Mother. Imagine if they were full-grown adults now, with far greater capacity than you, maybe wisdom, strength, beauty, love, skills of various kinds, and you look at them and say, ‘Oh what a wonderful being, children of the Divine Mother’.

Now just because they happen to pass through your, well, responsibility as a mother or a parent or teacher, you don't need to lose sight of this, all the more you have a greater responsibility because they are more vulnerable, you need to be more careful, and more respectful. So when you start treating the child first with the sense of responsibility that matches their sense of responsibility, it helps and encourages this process, so you can accelerate it without interfering or doing it artificially.

So when a child is watching you doing something keenly, he is learning. The first learning is through perception and the next learning is through action, doing it. Remember the three-stage process: you absorb, you assimilate, and then you express. Watch when their absorption stage is complete, they are assimilating, and invite them to join to help you, to participate, however small.

So if you're in the kitchen cutting vegetables, you don't give the knife, but you may give them the washing stage, for example. So first you show how it's done, or they've already observed, and you can say, ‘Would you like to help me?’. And you give a tiny bit, you don't overload them. Give the simplest things. So the skill in transferring responsibility or in helping a child develop a capacity, the skill from your side to accelerate learning is to always grow from success to success. You never give them something which they would fail at doing.

(0:45:25):

Remember the principle of faith. Now this goes back again to the Integral Yoga foundations, go back to the discussions from the evening series number 82 onwards to 95 where we have discussed the structure of the Integral Yoga and there we have discussed the importance of the faith: the innate faith, innate knowing, and this phrase Sri Aurobindo quotes from the Bhagavad Gita: “That which you are in your faith is what you become” (yo yach chhraddhaḥ sa eva sah),- that which is your faith innately that is what you are or that is what you become.

If the child experiences ‘Oh I missed, this was too difficult’, there is a hesitation, there is a loss of faith, and now you have to overcome this, a groove has been created of error and there will be a tendency to slip into groove. So always start with something well within their reach, easy, unless it is in the nature of the child to take up something more difficult and persist, in which case you allow that.

But you have to observe keenly and then allow them to explore, experiment, and always you provide positive encouragement. It need not be with words, it can simply be with an appreciation, with a look, with a gesture, with a smile, just with the affection glowing. And at the end perhaps when they have assisted, you complete the whole thing, depending on their age, you say, ‘That's a beautiful’ whatever ‘food you have made’, ‘we have made’, and maybe bit by bit you hand over, allow them to do more. The more dangerous things involving heat, flame, cutting, you may depending on their age withhold. And as they again grow older, they acquire more. The experience of having done, the self-confidence of the learning, now will rapidly ripple out.

Now, if you look at the Montessori system, this is actually being done with the children at a very young age. And most of the Montessori children will grow, by the age of five or six, they have sufficient individualisation, self-confidence, that they think they can learn pretty much anything out there, and in a graded way they are ready for it. Those who have not been through that kind of an early building of self-confidence at the age of 10 or 12 are still hesitant even to think that they might do. It's strange to see that. But that's the way the system damages you, because it’s from the childhood the class teacher only says ‘Sit down’, ‘Don't move’, Keep quiet’, ‘Don't think’, ‘Repeat after me’. What do you do? So if you have started this early, you've actually accelerated their growth, and their individualisation, in a healthy way.

So, first, more and more responsibility in the areas where they show interest. And you ask them to help you to begin with ‘Can you help me with this?’. It's an invitation. They can say ‘No thanks, I am not interested’. Fine. But you invite instead of ordering ‘Do this’, Do that’ which is not at all interesting. And then observing keenly, observe where they have difficulty, provide just the necessary help, and then back off the help, and so on. Start with areas of interest, then move to areas where there is less interest. Remember, till the age of 12, all learning has to be play, all play is some form of learning.

See how this would work. Having helped you, which is the focal point for their lives, you then extend it to helping others by you doing it first. What form it might take? In a form you might go and feed the animals, or in a city space it might be helping the neighbour, and they watch you and then they replicate. You have to set the example first. You cannot tell them, you help them. Now this is one of the very big mistakes I find parents making everywhere when they think they want to inculcate good values.

So, in India, for example, it's traditional to tell a child to bow down before the elders. So, here you are, parents, children walk in, into grandparents' house, and the parents will say, ‘Bow down before your grandparents’, and so because of the extreme harassment of their parents they will bend forward, swing their arms like an elephant a little bit and then back off, totally uninterested and as quickly as possible they stop doing it. It doesn't interest.

(0:50:20):

Watch this second option: Let’s say, the parents now go and bow down before their parents, show affection, greet with affection. You don't need to tell the child, the child will do it immediately. Interesting. So it often happens when sometimes a child is there with some parents and I meet them the first time, I will say ‘Namaste’ to the parents and then ‘Namaste’ to the child, equally, because lets say, equally souls in evolution, sometimes the child is more mature. Ok. The child will look in surprise, because they are not used to having an adult do ‘Namaste’ to them, they are being told to bow down, but!

And then the parents sometimes are surprised, they will look at the child and say, ‘Do Namaste’, which is okay, the child is still refusing. And I ask the parents: Did you do Namaste? ‘No, we did not!’ Do you do Namaste? ‘No, we don’t!’ How then can you ask the child to do? If you want the child to do something, you have to do it first, the child will follow, you won't need to tell him. And if you do it because you feel it, and it's not a mere social convention which is, which has lost its purpose, the child will feel it. Remember, in the early stage, the child is identifying with you and absorbing from your experience, you set the standard, you set the values, experience them, live by what is for you living truth, the child will follow. That's the best–most powerful transmission of values. It's very demanding! When I say to parents ‘You should do whatever you ask them to do’, they often have a panic.  Other things, so many other things, where they will say ‘My child is not regular’, ‘My child does not eat enough’, ‘My child does not … ’, I said, ‘You do it’! ‘No!’

‘My child does not sleep early!’ ‘Well, do you sleep early?’ ‘No!’ ‘Then how do you expect the child to …?’

You see the responsibility it puts is humongous, because it's so simple to tell a child ‘Do this!’ when you don't do it. And it's not going to work. There is something which we will call ‘the implicit curriculum’, I've mentioned it before, but it's worth repeating here, that: What is implied in what you do? Not so much what you say explicitly. So just take the example: Before you greet somebody with the ‘Namaste’ in the Indian context, let's say in the western context you would shake hands: How do you shake hands? Do you genuinely feel affection? Do you genuinely greet, genuinely greet with affection? When you say ‘Good morning’, do you feel it? Do you actually wish them a ‘Good morning’? And when you do that, the child will catch it. When you say it as a routine, ‘Hi, good morning’, it was just a mechanical thing, the child will probably drop it, or if they repeat, they will have just caught your mechanical style.

And this is one of the things we're seeing today, so many forms are breaking down, because they have lost innate content. If that innate content is found, the form has value. The soul of the form lost, the form will break down. We are in one of those great transitions where entire civilisations break down because they have lost their soul and then of course all forms, cultural forms, social forms, etc., breaking down because they have lost the soul. So review what you do, what you want the child to do, what are the values which mean something to you, start living by them as teachers and parents and then even if you don't have that role as teachers and parents, as an adult with a child.

When you greet somebody as an adult, do you tell them ‘What's your name?’ Or, do you first say, ‘My name is so and so, what is your name?’  That's the polite way to do! Right? To just say ‘What's your name?’ without introducing yourself is rude unless it's a, you are already well-known to them, and then it's different. Why would you do that to a child ‘What's your name?’, ‘What's your age?’ ? You would start by saying ‘My name is so and so, I am so many years old. What is your name? And what is your age?’.

And the child will happily respond. If you do not start with yourself and just say ‘What is your name?’, the child is extremely uncomfortable or may answer but out of politeness. Observe these things. And I am pointing this out because finally all these, these little corrections of bringing back the deeper sense is essential for the rebuilding of our civilisation. We have to understand: certain things from the past will break down; certain things will be regenerated, renewed; and certain things will be new-formed. All depends on the value of what is infused in the form, form in itself will break down.

(0:55:36):

In India particularly, we are passing through a very strange phase where the forms of the past have been breaking down, and new forms not yet built, many of the old forms now are being renewed in certain pockets. It's happening. But it's not yet found a solidity in the collective consciousness. And the same thing you will see in all over the world, in every culture, similar patterns. And the correction is this: Find the deeper truth value, make it a living truth, it will stay, otherwise it will fade.

So when you start doing, let's say we have taken this example of helping others, doing work, having the child participate, the focus for you always should be the joy of the work well-done. Sometimes there is a time deadline. Okay, we will do it also within the time. The fact of having done it within the time, again the joy of having done it, otherwise the joy of having done it well, and then reviewing all that we did: Next time how will we do differently? You think about it. You ask the child to describe also, ‘What do you think?’ . ‘I notice these things in the way I was doing, next time I'm going to make these corrections.’ So the child acquires the habit of: reviewing; and correcting and self-learning. But you have to set the standard.

As you widen the scope of responsibility, it will turn from immediate family in the house, let's say responsibilities in the house, to family members in the house, to parents, grandparents, siblings, other elders, and generally society. It will widen out. And that's how this healthy individuality that is forming will find its place in the healthy collective.

Unfortunately right now the collective is damaged. So we have to provide the children the necessary warnings: what to watch out for, where not to engage, where to withdraw, how to protect oneself as they grow older and need to engage with these things. I remember as a child, this must have been well before age 10, when we would walk to a, through a certain passage in the town going to the house, my mother would point out certain individuals and say: ‘Look at that, that's extremely dangerous, such people are extremely dangerous.’

And I remember, the scene is still vivid, there was this guy who was dressed in a strange way, like a French soldier, and then he would stand before a cow and stare into its eyes, and something. And my mother said: ‘Watch out! These people, they hypnotise, don’t look into their eyes, they will, through the eyes they hypnotise you!’ So I didn't know what is ‘hypnotised’, but we got the sense of, the meaning of what that is. And yes, there's a warning: ‘You do not connect with those even energetically’. And so you have to teach, you have to protect, give them the necessary tools: if ever this happens, this is what you do.

Another scene which I remember very distinctly because my mother, she was a single mother now with two children, so she is taking two children on the bicycle, and we come to the house, and she said at some point talking about something where there was some discussion of danger, she said: ‘If anybody attacks, I have this key’, and it was metal key of the house, ‘with this key I can whack them and defend myself.’ And I remember this. So the child looks at this, ‘Ha-yes, you have the tools’. Something automatically organises. All this is to put in context the individuality in relation to the collectivity as it is forming.

If society was more healthy, one needn't have worried about it. Today's circumstances are different, we have to protect. And much more now, this becomes important because of Internet and the kind of things that come through the media and the values. Tell the children: ‘There are values which are our values, higher values, real values, deeper values’, whatever terms you use. But they have to start inside-out again, family values, the values you have to demonstrate and then say, there are individuals who share or who have contrary values. Explain that there are gradations in values, higher and lower. There are people who are stuck in lower values. There are people who lose the higher values and fall into lower values, and we have to be very careful not to follow their example, learn from them what not to do.  This is how you will be able to show them.

(1:00:21):
There is a tendency today, […] (1:00:24) kind of a political correctness where everything is acceptable, everything is equally correct, all viewpoints are equally right. No. That is wrong. Subjectively, you have a right to think what you want to believe, what you want does not make it equally true. There are higher values, there are lesser values. But we understand, from a lesser one can grow to a higher. The growth is important. It's not where you are, it's the fact that you grew. So these things need to be said and children need to be protected.

Among them, one of the key-values which comes often with a family, with a lineage, and children are often born because they are attracted to certain things of that family. You will find sometimes grandparents or parents, if they have not lost the thread, will say, ‘In our family we always’, whatever, ‘do this’ or ‘don't do that’. Interesting. ‘We always keep our word.’ ‘We are never late.’ ‘We always respect our elders.’ Whatever form it is. Doesn't matter. ‘We always help our neighbours.’ ‘We always give in charity.’ Whatever it is as your family values it has to do with identity of the child. Remember, it's an individuality in this unit provide the best that this unit provides, and then the larger unit, the tribe, the clan, the tribe, the nation. Okay, clan, tribe are fading out, but still whatever remains of it which is good and healthy tune into that and then the nation values.

Coming specifically to India, Sri Aurobindo makes an observation that you cannot understand Indian culture unless you have read the Mahabharata. Now we don't all need to read, we can watch the TV serials, we can listen to the stories, even the cartoons, mmhhm, not so good, not so deep, but even that is something better than nothing, will give you some imprint, some sense of values and ideals which have formed the civilisational foundations, and if those are intact, that's a very good starting base on which to build to further, improve. And this needs to be said to the children also according to their age and readiness. We have to draw the best from the past, and then we have to build on it, and give the best to the future so that they can build on it. This idea has to be brought in, recognising what is the best. And maybe you can learn from everything. That's fine. But you draw the best from everything, not the rest of the forms.

I came across something very interesting this morning. It was a, one of these things circulated on the Internet that in Japan there was a baseball game, and the, when the baseball gets thrown so far it goes into the audience, the person who catches it can keep it as a souvenir, and these are often cherished when the games become famous. So the person who caught it, some lady, a neighbour asked to see and hold the ball, she passes it on, and the neighbour has another neighbour who wants to see it, and the ball goes all around the stadium, eventually comes back and is given back to the lady!

In most countries today, something which is valuable like this being passed on would have been stolen by somebody eventually because these are souvenirs, they are trophies, they are, they could be sold even. Here in Japan, it came back and was given back to the lady intact. And it says a lot about that culture and about the values. Sometimes it can be extremely restrictive, even suffocating, because it's too hierarchical, and yet something has been protected of great value.

You go in a taxi, you pay money for what is due, and if there is a sum a little bit more, you pay extra, he will, the driver will insist on giving you back even if it's a tiny sum, and if you say ‘No keep it, that's a tip’, they feel insulted, ‘No you don't tip me, I don't need a tip’, and they give it back. What does that mean with regard to values, with regard to money, with regard to identity? There are even families where the husbands come home late because they don't want the family to feel that they have not done enough work. It's somehow not up to standard if you have not worked hard enough. So they will finish office, spend time elsewhere doing something and then come home late just so that family feels ‘Ha-yes, I did enough work, now we are worthy of respect’. If you go see some of the Japanese cinema, particularly the older samurai and those, you will get a sense of where these values come from, and it goes back to a culture and civilisational values which are still intact, some of it are ossified, and that's where the suffocation comes.

(1:05:21):

So there will be changes. But if we can cling to the essentials, the forms can change. This we need to transmit to the children. So implicit values, there are cultural values, civilisational values, become aware of them. And in the curriculum, what I said ‘the implicit curriculum’ is what you do versus what you say or what you teach. When you say, ‘Greet your elders’, ‘Okay, I am going to do it just to show you but I didn't do it with feeling’, they know it's only for show, it's not with feeling. When you do that to your parents, do you feel it? They will catch that. If you don't feel it, they will catch that. When you look at society around you and criticise something, criticise someone, what is it you feel in the criticism they will catch that. Which is the reason why children catch swear words so easily from cinema, from television, or from your behaviour. Isn't it? You try to teach them good words, they don't get them, but these swear words they get very quickly. Why? Because there's a genuineness in your swearing, ‘I really hate this fellow so I swear’, that's caught. I put up a pretence ‘Oh you are so nice’, no, that's not caught, because it was fake.

So, understand the transmission is taking place on a deeper level, you have to be true to yourself. All this is to highlight also your responsibility as a parent and teacher, but the potential for you from a Yoga-point of view. Because all this which you want your child to have is what you also want yourself to have. Isn't it? Or at least to develop much more in capacity. Use that as an occasion.

One of the things which happens when you raise children is that children become a mirror of you. They so easily reflect what you are, what you do, what you say. You use a swear word in passing and the next moment your child repeats that swear word and you feel shame. You say, ‘Don't say that’, but I just said it, ‘Don't say that’. You are forced to correct yourself constantly because they are growing so rapidly, you are stuck in compared to them, you are frozen. And if you can catch this sense of rapid growth that they have and make the effort yourself with them, you can grow as rapidly as they can while they are growing. And it's a huge opportunity. Make the most of it. If you are a teacher, you get to repeat that for the same age group again and again, which may become monotonous, you may want to change your levels at some point also to force yourself to grow further. Or you may stay with the same, but each generation is different, each year is different, and you grow differently. Depends on you. Watch. Learn. Use this as an opportunity for making as rapid a growth as they have.

And finally, the key to this integration with a larger community is this comparison: Having set your base of values, innate values of you, individual, community, family-community-nation, compare now with others. Observe similarities. Observe differences. First build your base and then compare for similarities and differences. Now there are certain things we may say as civilisational values are even alien to a civilisation. You look at that and say: How strange! They, having grown in it, feel that as real and look at you and say: How strange! And then there are values which are universal. First look at the similarities and then look at these differences and then see how you can imbibe if there is something healthy about it, imbibe at least at a level of principle: What can we learn from that? How can we translate and integrate that principle, those values in our own way? Always it has to be modified to your own mould.

There are rarely exceptions where a child grows up inside a culture sharing those values and finding these alien. That also is possible, but they are much more rare, and sometimes the soul chooses this for a reason, and then it finds itself more aligned to that culture. Except for those cases which will be obvious to you, in most cases you have to assume that this is the root and those things are the branches from this root, so the comparison. And as the child grows older, perhaps the nature of your interaction has to become, as I said, more direct as an adult.

So you may respect the child as a soul in evolution when he is three years old, but you will still provide the support that the child needs. If your child is, let's say, exceptional in some capacities, excessively mature in certain ways, there are still other parts, emotional, which still need time to mature. Treat the child there as necessary, here as necessary, but eventually as they grow older, becoming more and more individualised, more obviously as an equal adult, but throughout, from childhood through this adulthood, you must be open, honest, transparent, and if possible increasingly more objective.

(1:10:51):
When you can be open, honest and transparent, the child will also grow with those values. It means now your child can tell you, ‘I did this’, and if it is honest, transparent, you don't have a right to punish them. You may have them face the consequences of something wrong done. But if they are transparent and open with you, you cannot punish. Now this goes into a larger discussion, perhaps, we will have a discussion around this maybe, or maybe we will, you will see through some videos which I will be putting up about discipline.

And, why children lie? Because to speak the truth triggers consequences that they are not ready to face, for example, punishment, anger, hatred, loss of respect, etc. Why do you lie to children? Think about it. Look back, when you needed, felt compelled to lie, to hide, and observe why it was, and then see what you could do, how could you convey this in a way that is genuine. And even if you feel you made a mistake, you should be able to say, ‘I made a mistake there’. If you can, if you are conscious of why, you explain why it happened, it is not to justify, it is to explain how it happened, ‘And what I am doing now to ensure it will not happen again’. This is the effort I will make. The child seeing you make this effort now internalises this principle.

But between you and child, if you can build this relationship which is open, transparent, honest, the child will grow to be also that way and alignment with the soul values and the psychic being will then be easy. Because every lie spoken is a veil placed before the psychic influence, covering it. Why? Because in speaking a lie, you cannot convince somebody of the lie unless you convince yourself. You can't be laughing and say, ‘Hey-hey-hey’, and tell a lie, because you are revealing that it's a lie. So you have to become very serious, pretend that it is true, convince yourself it is true, and then project forward the falsehood as if it is true, and in the process you form this layer which is deceptive. And each time you do this, another layer forms, and the layer does not go away. It does not go away because you do nothing to it. You built it with energy, with effort. How will it go away? What else did you build with that much effort? Notice, the effort you put to hide a lie is far more than to project a truth. Strange. Paradoxical. But that's how you build the layers.

Mother speaks of this in a way, and she says, it's not a punishment from the Divine, but it is an automatic outcome of lying so much that at some point those who lie too much they themselves forget what was true and they begin to believe the lie that they have spoken, because that was the effort to be able to convincingly lie you have to believe it, you get stuck in that. And she says, that's their greatest punishment. It's not intentionally as a Divine punishment. That's not how it works. But it's the consequence of their own process, but it is also the complete covering up and loss and disconnection of the psychic influence.

Every lie, every loss of honesty, transparency, and openness, is a covering, even if it's not an obvious lie. You have to deceive, you have to hide, you have to hold back, and that becomes now a warping, a twisting. Can we as adults, can we as children actually live by a completely transparent, honest consciousness? I think, I mentioned this a few sessions ago, where I said that if we could all read each ours minds and emotions, as we can do naturally in the subtle body, as in dream state for example, what would we need to hide from each other? And what would our civilisation be; what would be its values.

(1:15:21):

Imagine you meet another species of mental beings, humans, or whatever extraterrestrials, and they can read your mind through and through. Would you bother with trying to lie? Because they are a different species, you wouldn't have anything to be ashamed of. You would say, ‘Well, that's how I am, that's how we are human beings’. And they could read anyway. And when you lie, they can read through your lie anyway. No point. But we also as a species have to evolve to that stage where we can know each other like this, transparently. Can we begin with ourselves?

So sometimes I put it in these terms, because our society is not yet ready for a complete transparency. We have to withhold but that's different from lying or covering. Not speaking is a different thing. Not sharing is a different thing. So we have to hold, withhold certain things, but sometimes even you have to put up a certain appearance because that's required in the social context.

So I put it in these terms, I say: If necessary, feel free to deceive others but do not deceive yourself! You make a mistake, look at it and say, ‘Yes this is a mistake’. The moment you rush to justify, ‘Ah-yes, but I did this because mmhmm, okay, I got a nice idea, here I did it because of this’. You fooled yourself. They are not fooled. Or if they are, it's irrelevant to you. You just fooled yourself and covered up and hid from yourself the mistake you made and cut yourself off from the opportunity to correct it.

If you had said, ‘Ah-yes, it was a mistake’, next time you would change, immediately. The moment you justified it, and then after a lot of arguments and say, ‘Yes, it was a mistake, but’, you have prevented yourself from changing, and the ‘but’ is the force that prevents you. Instead, ‘Yes it is’, open it completely to yourself, completely, and if you open to yourself completely, you can open it to the Divine Mother and say ‘Here is this’. And the act of total opening allows an instantaneous action of the divine force, and an instantaneous, at least initiation of its dissolution. It starts immediately changing. Even you will feel in the act of opening totally, to Her, the weak… the thing weakens immediately. And the act of saying ‘Yes, but’ is to cover, to hide, and to prevent the change, you are hardening the knot. I'm putting all this in context of the discussion of children because they are the mirror which forces you to recognise this.  And in a sense, as adults, we are all children before the Divine Mother, the same principle applies. Can we be totally transparent to her who can anyway see through, right through you all your thoughts, emotions and ideas and even your deepest and highest and greatest potential? She can see everything. And here you're trying to deceive her about some pitiably superficial thing which from her point of view is even not important. Why would you waste so much energy and waste Her time?

I have shared, narrated, perhaps this incident many times before, but it's worth repeating. It was something which my teacher Pandit-ji shared with us…. So it was one of the sadhaks in the Ashram. He had done something which was very bad. I don't know what it is. But in his mind it was very bad. And he was going to meet Mother every day or every week. And ‘If I go, I know Mother will see it, and she will scold me, I will lose her respect’. So he sits down, concentrates, covers up the whole memory of this bad thing, hides it, pushes it behind, brings forward all his goodness, angelic appearance, and goes to Mother and ‘Oh it was so wonderful and I, Mother is just as sweet as ever’, and he comes away, ‘Hooph, I managed to, I managed to deceive her successfully, wow that was tough’. Second time, again he does all this, goes, and again successfully deceives her. Third time, fourth time, eventually, eventually he found the effort too much and the guilt was eating him up, ‘I'm deceiving the Mother’. Finally, he said, ‘Okay, I have to, I have to just tell her, however painful, however difficult’. So he goes to the Mother, with great shame he says to the Mother, ‘I am sorry, I have deceived you, I have done something very bad. And before he can say what it is, Mother says, ‘Oh yes, I know, the very first day that you came to me, it was peeping out from behind you’. Just like that, she saw it. But to her, it doesn’t change anything in her relationship with you. Rather it's sad, it's unfortunate that you have hidden it because then she cannot act on it directly to dissolve it.

(1:20:40):

So her general guideline was, she said, she preferred people not coming as little angels, but coming to her bared as they are. Again the analogy of a child, totally bared, free, open before the Divine, nothing to hide. And then she can work directly, dissolve, change, reshape, easily. You cover, put up a front, she has to work through, from behind, indirectly, slowly, and eventually it has to be dealt with, you are only postponing your own growth. Isn't it? So build this relationship with your children so that they don't have to do that. And of course teach them boundaries, tell them that we don't say all these things to everybody because not everybody will understand, but between us we should be completely transparent and respectful always.

So the question now is, when they do something wrong, and they will do things, they will push boundaries and make mistakes, and when they tell you, however wrong it may be, however harmful it may be, all you have to look at is, what are the consequences; what do we do to set it right.  But you do not scold, you do not chide, you do not create fear. You can feel upset and you can say, ‘I am very upset about it and I am going to discuss this, let me first cool down and then I will discuss this with you, but we need to set it right. What do we do to set it right? What can we do?’ . ‘If you've broken something, you go and repair it, pay for it, recover’, whatever it is. Set right whatever mistake was made. And if you've made a mistake of insulting someone, you tell them you're very sorry you did it, but you must be genuinely sorry. ‘Yes, but he first told me.’ Maybe. But was it right for you to say this? Could you have done something different? We review. Maybe there's no answer. But we review in a way which is objective. That's why I use this word, ‘open’, ‘transparent’, ‘honest’, ‘dialogue’, ‘objective’. And this must be the nature of our sharing. There are things you cannot explain to a child always, depending on their age. But you say, ‘There's this situation which is troubling me, but that's how it is’, you cannot do much, but if you want to do something, you can pray for this’. Leave it at that.

So from this individual separating comes also the phase where the individual is integrating with the collective. And as we have seen there are multiple gradations of collective, on each of these the child has to grow into and integrate. Now while we are speaking of children in this matter, I will say, most of us as adults have not properly integrated on all these levels. So review for yourself your integration with let's say immediate family.

And by family for me always the sense is larger than the biology. It's about those who are dependent, those who you care for, those who love you, or you love enough that they, if you feel them close and part of your family, that's the real sense. Biology is almost irrelevant here. Psychologically, spiritually, family. Integration there and then into, if you have clan, tribe, but generally society around you, and the sense of nation, the civilisational values, the cultural values, and the container that holds those values. Consider what are your relationships and then humanity as a whole. Beyond that to the Divine which is immanent in the universe, and the universe as a whole and the Divine in the universe. For some of us, if the spiritual aspiration and formation of the aspiration and integration has been strong enough, many of these intermediate layers may not hold much force anymore. ‘My family is, all those who share these values and this aspiration across cultures, nationalities.’ But observe, observe what is the sense of those units or boundaries for you and see how you relate to these. Becoming conscious you will know what to do to correct, to integrate. Very often we have multiple levels of responsibility and sometimes these may collide. If you go to the essence of these, you will find it's easy to align. If you stay with the form, then they collide often. ‘My family needs so much time from me every week. My family needs me to wash clothes of everybody.’ Maybe. But that's you have attached yourself to a form, it will collide with another form. But if the essence is the love and support that you provide, then whether you washed the clothes or not, whether you have time for this or not, this you can continue to provide. So always go back to essentials, rebuild forms. When the forms collide, it's a sign you need to review, come back to essentials, rebuild forms. And then you will find it easy to integrate all these multiple responsibilities.

(1:25:45):

In the final stage of the formation of the external individuality, I will say, the ego-individuality even, around the psychic being, may be sufficiently integrated or not, the final stage of it is the breaking of it, which is Nature's way of forcing the individual to integrate with the larger community. This often in teenage is the breaking from falling in love where somebody else's happiness is now more important than your own, and that's how you, nature builds the family unit. We have discussed this in great detail in a series of seven or eight discussions on human relationships and love and sexual relationships, etc., in the evening series, I think from number 17 onwards to 24. For those of you who are interested, go into that, I won't touch this angle much now.

But understand this: breaking of the ego is a necessary step, because initially the ego had to be built around which the individuality would form. When this construction is complete now, the ego has to break, to be replaced by the psychic, the true sense, at least its influence. If that influence is already strong, this breaking can be relatively smooth, not hard, not painful. If this influence is not strong and all you have is the hard shell of ego, then the breaking is often extremely painful. And in any case it is painful, more or less is not important. What do you do at that point? And that's when it's a time for stepping back, withdrawing, finding what is more essential to you and then rebuilding the sense of ‘I’, the sense of individuality, from a deeper, more essential level.

So if you do not have a strong enough psychic influence from the beginning, then you will find the ego-break forces you to review yourself, rebuild, reintegrate, again break, and again review, reintegrate, each time deeper and deeper. If you have by then already an active spiritual aspiration, influence, life, you turn consciously to the presence within, align as deeply as you can and then recast the priorities of your life. And again I am describing these in a vocabulary which applies to all of us at all ages. The breaking of the ego-sense will come in many ways in life.

Ultimately there is the, as you grow older, it comes in two forms. First is, okay, three forms we will say. First was the breaking which was at that sense ‘I’, now I am willing to give everything for someone else, or for family, or for my children, or whatever. That was first stage. But later comes the breaking of the sense of your incapacities and vices. And at some point you have to let go all that. Which is great. Now you are left only with your virtues. Now comes the most difficult part of the breaking, which is the breaking of the virtues and the ego of virtues: ‘I am so nice. I am so great. I do so much good, I help so many people, I am so capable in this or that, I am so loved, and I have this image of society which loves me so much.’ All this needs to break at some point.

If you are not ready for this breaking, you have missed the far greater joy of what has to follow. And this is often the most painful. You will recall from the aphorisms of Sri Aurobindo, where he says, in this case, Sri Krishna as the Divine Beloved, he says: “My lover tugged at my coat of sins and I was happy to let it go.” I am paraphrasing. “And then he tugged at my coat of virtues and I was afraid. And it was not until he tore it away by force that I realised how I had been deceiving myself.” Very interesting thing. When the cloak of virtues is torn away that you realise how you had been deceiving yourself. So what is this ‘yourself’ that you discover when your virtues are torn away? Interesting.

(1:29:57):
I am going to read from another little booklet of Sri Aurobindo which is called Thoughts and Glimpses which is different from Thoughts and Aphorisms, but this is also aphorisms, very-very profound, so the very first page of this is called “The Goal”, and it has five things that you have to overpass. The thing I am focussing on is that phrase I have used before: “Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar.” But really to appreciate this, you have see all the five things.

And so I am going to read the full text, it's a bit longish, but I think it will complete the discussion for today.

First he says:

“When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge. Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar.”

Next:

“When we have passed beyond willings, then we shall have Power. Effort was the helper; Effort is the bar.” Very profound. I am sorry, I have to go so rapidly. But maybe some other time. I would ask each one of you to dwell on these really deeper.

Third:

“When we have passed beyond enjoyings, then we shall have Bliss. Desire was the helper; Desire is the bar.”

Fourth:

“When we have passed beyond individualising, then we shall be real Persons. …” ‘P’-capital, “real Persons”. “… Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar.”

Fifth:

“When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man (Capital-’M).  The Animal was the helper; the Animal is the bar.” Amazing!

The profundity of it is so amazing. Its on so many levels at the same time. But the fifth one is about humanity, “the Man” is the manava, there is no equivalent English term, it’s not about male-female man, it is about manava, literal translation of the thinking being. So, as a species to become truly the thinking beings, to have passed beyond humanity, then we will be the true humanity, more than thinking.  So “The Animal was the helper; the Animal is the bar”. But before that is the individualising, before we come to the humanity, “When we have passed beyond individualising, then we shall be real Persons. Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar.” And this is the transition all of us have to be at to some degree or other.

So how do we do this? Come the next five sentences which look at all these five with what is to be done. So, first he says, remember first was “Knowledge”, then “Power”, then “Bliss”, then the “real Person” and then “the Man”, we will say ‘divine humanity’.

First “Knowledge”, what he says:

“Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal.”

Next for “Power”:

“Transform effort into an easy and sovereign overflowing of the soul strength. Let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy goal.”

“Transform effort into an easy and sovereign overflowing of the soul-strength; let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy goal.”

Third is about “Bliss”:

“Transform enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy; let all thyself be bliss. This is thy goal.”

And now comes the real individuality, the “real Person”:

“Transform the divided individual into the world-personality; let all thyself be the divine. This is thy goal.”

And finally about the divine humanity:

“Transform the Animal into the Driver of the herds; let all thyself be Krishna. This is thy goal.”

Now having read the five rapidly, I will still ask you to dwell on them on your own later, but we come to this: “Transform the divided individual into the world-personality; let all thyself be the divine.” And this is the way by which you will go beyond the stage of the helper-ego where now the ego has become a bar, instead of trying to individualise, you become the Person.

(1:35:07):

So, the vocabulary he uses is also very interesting: ”the divided individual into the world-personality”. We as an individual are made of so many pieces, transform this into the personality which is global, universal, world, which is natural to you when you are, let, “let all thyself be the divine”, which can be from the alignment to the psychic being, but through that into the Self and the oneness of all in the Self. This being the larger goal, our education and our interaction with the children in their individualising stage is to prepare a healthy base in which this process can be completed in this way whenever they are ready for it, whenever they so choose. So the breaking of the individual ego we have to see as a step towards transcendence of the limited ego. And the limited ego can be in the body consciousness, it can be in the emotional-vital consciousness, it can be in the mind egoism and the way of thinking itself being sufficiently individualised. But having individualised where the “Ego was the helper”, now ego is the bar as we turn to the psychic and the spiritual opening, where we become or rather we let all thyself be the Divine. “This is thy goal.”

You will recall a text we read from the Mother long back, several sessions ago, where she says: “One needs years of very a attentive, very careful, very reasonable, very coherent work, organisation, selection, constructions, in order to” simply, “in order to succeed simply in forming … one’s own way of thinking!” This is the individualisation of the mind. “And for this to become a coordinated, coherent, logical thought, a long thorough work is necessary. And then, the best of the business is that when you have succeeded in making a beautiful, well-formed, very strong, very powerful mental construction, the first thing you will be told is, “You must break this so that you can unite with the Divine!” But so long as you haven’t made it, you cannot unite with the Divine because you have nothing to give to the Divine except a mass of things which are not yourself!”

You can only give what yourself, so you have to organise everything around yourself to be able to give yourself. Right? So first, so she says: “One must first exist in order to be able to give oneself.” And this is the whole point of this individuality growing, and if we can as adults in the spiritual path begin to take these steps, we can assist those who are younger than us, even though spiritually they might be much mature, we don't know, we don't judge, but we give them the respect and the support and the nourishment. If we have trod the way, we can help them better. And this is the reason why every parent, every teacher and, well, every one of us have to be conscious spiritual practitioners, consciously on this path, if we really want to give the best to the children.

And at the same time, the child will give you their best, their rapid rate of growth will be shared with you and you will grow with them. This is the beauty of this gift of growing with the children. And that's why I say, you raise parenting, teaching, motherhood, as a sacred responsibility, make it a part of your spiritual journey and after the phase of initial identification, there will be the separation of various kinds, the right balance to be found, the stages of growth of their individuality, the breaking of individuality in preparation for higher ranges and transcendence towards world-personality from our initial divided personality.

And we are on the, all on the same path, equally the children as us. All are equally children of the Divine Mother. Isn't it? Think of it in this way. And so, I think we will complete our discussion around this formation of individuality, separation of individuality. But recognise, for most of us as adults, this has not been done in a healthy way yet. It's not yet complete. It's not yet integrated. And think of your life in these terms. Don't say your education is over. Don't think your individuality is completely formed.

And it is only when things around, within you, this divided individual, when only when things begin to align around some common centre, ideally the psychic being, but otherwise any centre closest where you feel its influence, in the mind, in the heart, until this begins to happen that everything organises around that, whatever sense of individuality you have is just superficial appearance and a self-deception. And it's only when the true centre comes forward as an influence at least and later as a direct truth of your being that you have the true individuality and with it the opening out from the psychic to the spiritual, the Self, when you have the world-individuality. By allowing yourself to open out to the Divine, giving yourself to the Divine, for which the first step of the ego formation was necessary in order to be able to give, for the Divine to form in you as a focal point of action.

(1:41:00):

So you see how the whole education, integral education, your role as teacher but also your role as a child, perfectly aligns with the goals of the Integral Yoga. And in a sense we have not completed our education yet, and they are preparing for the higher practice of the Integral Yoga, even as they build their more superficial layers of personality. Isn’t it? It's not really different. And we still have to develop so many layers and parts of our nature which have not been sufficiently developed or integrated. So the only difference between them and us, we have been here longer in the body so we have more experience in certain areas, that's about it. So consider yourself a child in the school of life, Divine Mother as your teacher, and ask for help when you need because she is there to help you, and open yourself more and more to her action in you so that she can assist this growth more rapidly.

There are several questions which we don't have time for today, we will take them up next time. And do leave them, do not delete them from the chat box or send on the email also. We will take up all these questions as a group next time, but I think with this we can, generally speaking, close the whole topic of development of individuality. And in this case now the focus was more on how the separation takes place and its integration in the larger layers of units.

Think of it from these, this point of view, what mother said: If you have not formed a sufficiently organised individuality, what can you give to the Divine? Because to re-read her sentence: “One must first exist in order to be able to give oneself.” Isn't it? And so, become conscious of that part within you where you know yourself to be truly, truly existing. And all else, superficial waves, but there is something which you feel as a centre, maybe you feel it deep within, where you know you exist, and that's the one thing which nobody can take away from you because you are it.

Turn your attention to that, and then deepen into that. Lean back into that. Drift deeper into that. Or feeling that somewhere deep within you, allow its influence to gently spread, to glow out, to fill you, and it's felt as a soft, very gentle influence- of Truth, of something real, which you know you are, and with it sometimes a sense of being forever. Let that fill you. Let all of your thoughts and emotions and actions refer to it more and more. Before you do something, ‘Should I do this or that?’, feel which feels better aligned to that and then make your choices.

Even if you are wrong in the form, you will be right in the direction, and the form will correct itself. And this is a daily work of self-cultivation, self-organisation around the centre, aligning everything to our true centre, to the true person. We can concentrate on this in our aspiration all together for a moment. Namaste.

Alina (1:45:28): Namaste.