EWS #163 Third Gender and Other Questions + Q&A

May 27, 2023

Alina (0:00:24):
Namaste, welcome to our continuing series Evenings with Sraddhalu. Namaste, Sraddhalu.

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

Alina (0:00:34):
Today we will continue this series, and we will be taking some questions that derived from our previous talks, and I will start reading some questions, but just as a reminder, you may send your questions during our conversation in the chat box or send it at our email integralstudies.in[at]gmail.com.

I will read Amicus’ question: “In my attempt to be concise that I was not precise enough in articulating my question”. So just as I mentioned, he was addressing some questions that we read two sessions ago:

“I specifically chose the word ‘third gender’ as a reference to western anthropology from which the term originates. For better or worse, they use it as a placeholder for (outsider)”, in parentheses. “It describes a category or various categories of people in several pre-modern societies across the globe who filled a role that was not conventionally male or female, but that was sometimes reversed, sometimes somewhere in between, and sometimes both simultaneously. The third gender here is not about gender dysphoria”, in parenthesis, “(although the transgender agenda will co-opt these traditions) but above many variations of masculinity and femininity, and the way society has accepted and integrated them into communal life. Sometimes these cultures, especially in a more tribal context, recognised these individuals as intermediaries between the physical and the subtle planes and gave them special ritualistic functions. You still see in this way hijaras will bless newly weds for fertility, but in Africa and Native America they were even oracular and shamanic. In other words, they had a role and a function that only they could fulfil and had a recognised place in community. They weren't trapped in the wrong body, but unique expressions of specific qualities and recognised as such.”

And he included some articles, and I was also thinking about the angels because when you look at them you can't distinguish, or in sculptures or paintings, it's very difficult to, to understand if he would be a female or a male.

Sraddhalu (0:03:46):

Right. Yes, it's an important question and, I think, I've got the point to which Amicus is raising. If you recall in the very first discussion that we had about the origin of this whole dual aspect of what we eventually call ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’ and then in the biology ‘male’ and ‘female’, we saw these as aspects of consciousness but one consciousness. And therefore I had pointed out in that very first discussion, that must be now five sessions ago, that the angelic beings as you see them painted, especially in the European art, often they are shown to be not obviously male or female, they seem as if to blend the, let's say, something of both. And the suggestion there of course is, in fact it's a very clear and precise description of the experience of those beings of the higher worlds, that they do not have an obvious male-female biological distinction as we have it in the physical world. In fact, that whole thing with the organs is totally irrelevant, unnecessary, and therefore doesn't exist in the higher worlds. And of course, form being fluid, you can change your body shape to produce any organ, any shape.

The distinguishing quality is the psychological quality, which you could say leans more to masculine or feminine, and so on. Or even within one being, it can draw upon this aspect or that more or less, or as required. And of course the Divine is infinite potential, infinite qualities. There you do not see even this bias between, as if two mixes of qualities. So I will set aside the angelic aspect, but this example which Amicus raises is important to touch, and he answers it in a way also when he says “in several pre-modern societies” around the globe, we find this so-called  ‘third gender’, which is like ‘an other’, not male or female, and of course societies accept them. But then in some societies, we see they are given special ritualistic functions as well as sometimes intermediary oracular or shamanic functions. That’s extremely rare, but, yes, that also exists.

And I want to comment on this generally. You notice in the very description that it is only in pre-modern societies. You do not find this special role in modern societies, and there is a reason why. When you go back to these very tribal, very, let's say, undeveloped cultures, uncivilised cultures, and it is not a judgment, it is just a description of the refinement, civilisation is finally a refinement, when you go back to these, you find the primary drives, primary motivations being extremely physical, material, survival-based, desire-based, and if we had to look at from the point of view of the human being, physical and vital needs barely touching upon the mental.

And therefore what we see also in what comes in the occultism or what passes as their spirituality which is not spiritual in most cases, but what is occultism, we will call it ‘shamanic’ is more accurate, is an entry into the subtle worlds of those grades, not even of the domains of the mental or much less the spiritual, again, in most cases with a few exceptions.

And it is in these that we find the meaning for this thing. And I will first read from a passage that the Mother translated. Now there's a whole series of texts which come in, in the category in the volume called Words of Long Ago, where Mother narrates past stories from various traditions and things like that. Among them there is a collection of translations which she has taken from various traditions and then made commentaries on those translations. I think part of her work was as if to draw the best from the past which would be useful for the future and also to show certain universal common principles among them.

So this one is titled “Sympathy”. We do not know the exact text, source of the text, but it is probably a Sanskrit text because she describes how Duryodhana, and this is the translation: “Duryodhana, the famous warrior, fell on the plain of Kurukshetra and his friends were so full of grief that when he lay on the ground and died, all nature seemed in disorder. Headless creatures with many arms and legs danced dreadful dances over the earth; in lakes and wells the water was turned to blood; rivers flowed upstream instead of downstream; women looked like men, and men like women.”

And then Mother comments: “Here the poet teaches us that the suffering undergone by one being spreads throughout a wide, wide world.” And so on. I don't read the rest. But you see the nature of that description, and this is going back 2,000 years, 2500, when the text at least officially is suppose to have been put in writing, but the event itself goes back 5000 years which is being described.

But the way the poet describes the sadness that, it's as if the whole world has gone wrong and upside down in the way it's described: beings with “many arms and legs” doing “dreadful dances”, water turning to blood, uh, rivers flowing upstream, men like, women who look like men, men who look like women. Now the whole, inherent to this is the reversal of the all values, the reversal of that which is nature, the reversal of that which is life-giving, and this perversion therefore becomes life-destroying.

And you will find almost every tradition, wherever there is an attempt to rise beyond the immediate uh, low-grade physical-vital values into any mental qualities, mental values, you will find that this inversion or reversal, etc., is looked down upon. But when you fall back to certain tribal customs where the access was to those very low-grade beings and low-grade worlds, then those inversions are actually used to appease certain deities, powers and forces of those grades. And this is where you would want that.

(0:10:27):

So you have in many tribal customs, dances where you have dreadful dances or water, blood being poured instead of water, the reversal of values, symbols being turned upside down, and with that men look like women, women look like men, or in the extreme, as if to fix this materially, it involves uh, mutilation of the biological organs as if to fix this distortion or perversion more correctly. So it is as if values are reversed.

And in the reversal of values, you are tapping into a whole domain of beings who feast upon those reversal of values or who live by those inverted values. And therefore you appease them or you enter in relation and invoke them. And this is the reason why in most of, even today, low-grade occultism or satanic practices and such, you will find these kinds of symbolisms, which would include also blood sacrifices and human sacrifices, and so on.

Again, you look back at that period in the Central and South Americas, where not so much as far as I am aware in the North America's but in the central and south where there was human sacrifice. You find again the same thing where it may be given an exalted state by a culture, but what is exalted is perverse. A human being willingly gives himself thinking he is being given to the gods, and while he is alive, they will cut him open and draw out the beating heart and offer it. To who? Which gods? The problem with the word ‘gods’ is you have not defined the gradation that it relates to, and these are extremely low-grade gods.

So all of these I am putting in the same category, and this is why you will find these in pre-modern societies but not in any modern value system where automatically this perversion is filtered out because it is seen by the mind to be an inversion of values. And so when they did, when such people were given these intermediate roles between worlds or ritualistic functions, it was primarily to tap into these beings or forces of that grade.

You will not find such things in the Veda for example, nor in any of the Vedic rituals, nor in any of the temples, or any of the modern rituals of any religion or temples. In fact, in the modern form, even in the west, when you see, there is something called the ‘black mass’, where they will take the church ritual, which is actually pre-church, it goes back to Druidic rituals, which were incorporated in the church with some kind of filtration to remove what was considered to be cruder or of a lower grade of axis. But you take those very symbols, and they invert it, they invert the cross, they do the reverse of what would be done in the church ritual, and that is called the ‘black mass’. And it is done to invoke what? Precisely the hostile, anti-divine beings, and so on. So I don't need to go too much into that, but you see here the role that this, these principles would have to play, and why they would be present in those cultures or in those rituals.

But this inversion particularly of the masculine and feminine or the male and female or particularly the mutilation of the body, from the soul's point of view, from the evolutionary point of view, is a perversion, it is an assault on the soul's values and completely contrary to the higher possibilities of evolution. And therefore, you find these washed out in time.

And as he points out, they remain only in some of these pre-modern societies which have not yet, so to say, transcended that stage. But even in the modern society, in the values by which we live, any refined person, the first reaction when you see that is a kind of a shrinking. Even I will perhaps put myself in a little bit of trouble by saying this, if you see people who cover their bodies with tattoos, the first response of a refined artistic sense is a kind of a withdrawal, a shrinking. Yes, the tattoos may sometimes be beautiful forms, beautiful pictures, and yet something in you says, ‘But’, and you feel that it's not quite the right thing because you feel in the body, in the form of the body itself, something sacred.

(0:15:04):

And even though you may imprint on your body a sacred image, the act of fixing it in that way and the manner in which the tattoo comes, sometimes you feel something, ‘No, it's not quite, it doesn't feel right’.

So I put these together in the same category to show, the place of this so-called ‘third gender’. But finally, if you look at it very objectively, biologically, it's not a third gender. It's just the two genders or one of them with mutilation. Mutilation does not make for a new gender, and mutilation may make for an otherness, or society may find them uh, uncomfortable, or society may include them because uh, it wants to not break out, and so you find what was, what he has also described as societies accepted and integrated them into communal life, the example given of hijras in India.

You'll see this actually goes back to a certain period when the kings were, it was acceptable for the kings to have many wives. Some of it had to do with the fact that these were alliances with neighbouring kingdoms. So the fact that a daughter of one king was married to the son of another king made for a relationship which would hold, especially if they had a child, then it is as if these two kingdoms find a poise, a point of unity around which we can avoid war.

So, a king often would have many wives from many kingdoms around, and so the problem was of course he is not treating them all with the same interest or with the same attention and they needed to be so to say kept in protection or isolation, and you didn't want men protecting them who might impregnate them because one of the key-factors in that period was protecting the lineage of the king. And you could not afford to have even a doubt that the child was not the king's because the kings represented at least during that earlier period a greater stage of development or potential or strength or intelligence or whatever. And so what they did was they allowed this mutilation of men who would then be there to protect the harem, but because they were mutilated it was sure that there would not be any chance of, well, wrong fertilisation.

So in a sense the community itself grew around such needs. But when you look at the need itself, you can see there, a kind of a perversion. But you might say, it was acceptable during a certain phase, today it’s not. But as a result the community itself existing then had to be accepted because it was playing a role in that framework of society and therefore it was integrated in various ways. And then euphemistically somehow you say, ‘Ha, it is a good luck’. So sometimes when something falls and breaks from your hand, someone will say, ‘Ha-yes, it is a sign that it is good luck’. It's a euphemistic way of turning what seems to be negative into a positive, and things like that.

I think, that should cover what I have to say about this, and I am looking at it purely from the spiritual and evolutionary point of view. From a social point of view, as I said, at various levels of development of society, these things can have a place or not. But as you can see, the fact that it has not survived is a sign that it has not a place in the future.

But the attempt by certain groups to revive or to raise this kind of a inversion or perversion of values and promote it, you will see all of those groups belong precisely to those who access the lower-grade satanic and other kind of ritualistic functions for whatever cause or interest that they may have. Maybe we may touch upon this later as part of some other discussion. But I think with this, I want to conclude with, Amicus sent several links to articles, so I just opened the very first one and I want to compare something about that.

So just as an example, what happens here, the article is titled “Gender, Variability and Third Gender”, and I am reading from it. And it starts with some of the most compelling evidence against a strong biological determination of gender roles comes from anthropologists. And so it describes: “Margaret Mead (1935) was one of the first anthropologists to study cultural differences in gender. In New Guinea she found three tribes …” Again it has to go back to that pre-civilisational stage. Okay? And there, three tribes whose gender role differs.

In the first, “Arapesh”, “both sexes were gentle and nurturing. Both women and men spent much time with their children in a loving way and exhibited what we would normally call maternal behavior … different gender roles did not exist, and in fact, both sexes conformed to what Americans would normally call the female gender role.” Now mark this very interesting bias. Then she goes to the next one:

“… the Mundugumor. Here both men and women were fierce, competitive, and violent. Both sexes seemed to almost dislike children and often physically punished them … gender roles … did not exist, … both sexes conformed to what we Americans would normally call the male gender role.”

And then finally in the third tribe, uh, where:

“… gender roles did exist. One … was … dominant, efficient, assertive one and showed leadership in tribal affairs, while the other sex liked to dress up in frilly clothes, wear makeup, and even giggle a lot.” And “Mead found” the “gender roles similar to those found in the United States, but with a … twist” that the “women were the dominant” and “men were the ones wearing frilly clothes and makeup”.

(0:20:49):

Now this of course created a lot of controversy, there are even people who have questioned whether she has even exaggerated and tried to fit it into an agenda, and other such researchers will show similar variations. Then of course they come to the, in India the hijras and various other such to say that these are special, they are sacred, they are neither man or woman. But you see, again it is a distortion of the truth.

The fact is, there is a fundamental bias in the very perception, let's say, of Margaret Mead where she describes the role of men as “fierce”, “competitive”, “violent”, disliking children, and “physically” punishing them.  Now to me this is so disturbing that masculinity is defined by the fact that you dislike children and punish them and you are violent, coarse, fierce, crude! And that's not the sign of masculinity! Now if you look at the origin of the whole feminine and masculine, there is nothing there of this kind! And so what you have to recognise:

These are barbaric cultures, they are emerging out of barbarism, and of course in different parts of the world, the emergence may have different biases across genders, but the fact is there were always two genders. Whatever roles they played were still two distinct roles.

And where in the first case, the Arapesh community, they were both gentle and nurturing, they all spent equally loving time in what would be called “maternal behavior”, “what Americans would normally call … female gender role”. And again I will question, even in America this would not be considered normal that this is female role only. You will see men who are just as caring, as uh, affectionate and yet masculine in their caring and affection and women equally caring and affection or taking leadership roles and yet women in their feminine way as leadership role.

So the whole problem comes from an attempt to have warped the concept of masculine and feminine into certain extremes which obviously was the bias in Margaret Mead's mind which may be specific to the American culture in which she grew or the part of America where she grew, where this was a distortion. And so her distortion she is now as if projecting onto the rest of the world and valuing them in terms of her limitations.

And so what I want to point here is just because there are academic papers published and academic discussions taking place does not mean they have any real objectivity or even factual basis. They are extremely biased, they often have very profound agendas, and maybe I will touch upon this a little bit that it will explain why this whole thing has come up in such a dramatic way all of a sudden. You see in academia, one of the goals in the whole attempt to, well, live up to the academic objectives is: get funding and publish papers, become famous, and be recognised as an authority. Now you cannot be famous or recognised as an authority unless you have published enough papers which you cannot do without plenty of funding. And you are going to live as an academic, you need the funding to live, someone has to pay you for doing what you do. You can't be just teaching because you also have to become famous for which you have to publish papers and so on.

The, the trick is this: As you go up the chain of the academic, let's say, hierarchy, you come to the controllers of academia. These are the people who decide where the funding will go. They set the rules of who can get funding and who will not get funding. And often in the rules itself they put the bias: ‘If you do not satisfy these conditions, you cannot even apply for funding’.

(0:25:00):

So what's the game there? What happened suddenly? And this is, I think, going back now 12 or 13 years, around 2008, 2010, I'm not sure the exact date. All the funders of the awards for novels, for cinema, for fiction, for theatre, all the awards put their criteria and the criteria became something like this: ‘Unless you have a significant character who plays either a gay or a lesbian role, and who has a significant role because of their gay or lesbian character in the outcome of the story narration, we will not even consider your story, cinema, theatre, etc., for the award.’

Now just changing that one rule, immediately all the writers began to incorporate these roles into their stories. And just like that overnight, across the world, for all those writers who are chasing the award, who are chasing fame, who are chasing funding, this happened. Suddenly, all these stories had this, all the cinema and theatre had to have these roles. Otherwise, you'll not even get accepted for applying to get an award. You'll be rejected straight away on first step.

Then they did something else, which is also something strange, which most people don't know about, there is something called an ‘ESG Score’, which is an ‘Environmental, Social and Governance Score’, which apparently was promoted by the United Nations, and every multinational company who needs certain benefits from the government or from banks or for certain funding sources needs to provide their ESG Score. Now the Score is calculated by independent groups but the criteria has been defined by international authority, and the criteria requires that you must have so many, uhm, I don't know what they call it, gay, lesbian, trans, LGBTQ, etc., in your director's levels or senior levels of authority and power.

Now this has, always this kind of thing where you impose a hiring system, we see in India the same thing, wherever reservations were made based on criteria which were not performance, which were not representative of excellence, but because of some births or some other criteria which do not have any value when it comes to the evolutionary purpose, there we find the fall in standards and then the hijacking of agendas.

And this is what has happened also in the corporate spaces. If you want to apply for a loan to a bank and the bank says ‘What is your ESG Score?’, then you better start now fitting the criteria that will give you a high ESG Score, which means now straight away at the high levels of directors or governance structures, you have to bring in people who may not yet be competent by a basis of experience or capacity, but only because they belong to an LGBTQ category, and they come in, and then of course they start pushing a different agenda, because they are not there for the right reasons. And they may not have competence, and everybody has to bend over backwards to be nice to them because otherwise you will drop out of your ESG Scores.

Now I am explaining this because uh, you have to understand why suddenly you see this sort of thing happening. So recently in the United States, there was a beer company which decided to promote as their brand, somebody who was a gay person and immediately drew a strong flock, target which is a very large, low-cost distribution platform around the United States. For children's clothes, that is, kindergarten children, they began to have clothes which were promoting sexuality, and the queer agendas, and things like that, and with labels placing them just in front, stating their sexuality at kindergarten children.

And the person who they hired to do this is a known self-declared satanist who designs clothes that says ‘Satan loves pronouns’, for example. He is openly stating his satanic agenda and target of all people, if they had to hire a gay to do a gay-design, of all people picks a satanist, publicly, declared satanist. And you have to ask yourself: Why? If you don't understand this, you will not understand what is happening today in the world, because there is an agenda, the agenda is controlled from the top by changing the very definitions which allow you to grow financially, to get awards, to get fame.

By controlling those markers, they are effectively influencing the whole society or at least the part of society which is desperate for recognition and funds, which is in the current context quite a large part. And this is how it works.

(0:30:20):

It starts right from the top, and the people there, and we cannot take names because many of them are unknown, faceless, if you do your research, you will find out uh, some names, etc., and some of them quite openly speak of their goals, some don't, some do it very quietly behind the scenes using front, fronts. But all this is to show that there is an agenda to tap into your children and to pervert them as early as possible because: that's an age when they do not have a discrimination; that's the age when they soak in all that what is given to them without thinking because they consider this normal; that's the age when they look up to the parents, they look up to the teachers, they look up to anyone in society as their heroes and want to emulate; and that's when you are hit to sexualise and pervert them, and that's when you cover the psychic influence early on, the children grow into something without realising it into a perversion that is very difficult to undo. It leads to enormous damage.

Now there have been questions about how to reverse the damage which may have happened in early childhood, and we will be taking that up shortly in one of the next two sessions. But I am just putting all this in context. And you see the inherent biases even in Margaret Mead's research and then the discussions which follow, and what happens generally is, in academia they layer things. So one person has made a statement, and they will build upon it, nobody bothers to read the papers, nobody dares question, because now it is accepted in academia, and so on.

So I think, this is broad enough as an explanation for the place of these third category or outsiders in pre-modern societies across the globe but also what it represents from an evolutionary point of view and why this is coming up in a strong way again because there's a part of humanity or a large part of humanity that, you know, there's a controlling part of humanity that wants to push a large part of humanity down and then there is a part of humanity that wants to rise, and we have to choose which side we will take. Mother makes this very strong description of humanity which refuses to evolve. She says, that they will, Nature will as if reabsorb them like the animals who refuse to change. Re-absorb! She uses the word “abolished”, “extinguished”, from the evolutionary passage.

So there's as if right now there is this rising movement in humanity, and there is a part that chooses to rise, and a part that refuses and falls back, and then a gap forms. And there are forces which want to push down and prevent the rise. And we have to understand, this is a battleground today. Be very careful for yourself, make your children conscious and protect them. We can go to the next question.

Alina (0:33:17):

Mani sent a letter and we made it a bit smaller, so he wrote: “In part one on the masculine and feminine…”

Sraddhalu (0:33:27):

Can we do one thing? I'll put Mani's question last. Can we go to the next one then because then we'll continue this topic? Woman artist!

Alina (0:33:36):
We will take this woman's artist?

Sraddhalu (0:33:39):

Yes-please!

Alina (0:33:41):

What is your view on transgender…

Sraddhalu (0:33:46):

No, skip that, skip that, we have put a cross there! Yeah!

Alina:

…

Sraddhalu (0:33:52):

 ‘Can too much’!

Alina (0:33:53):

“Can too much of attention on sex change, hormonal and other treatments bring you in contact with vital and occult worlds and be harmful to the children?”

Sraddhalu (0:34:04):
Yes. So she had a question earlier which we just skipped which had to do with the transgender which we have already discussed so I didn't want to go back. But this point of the question is important:

‘Can too much of attention on sex change, hormonal and other treatments bring you in contact with vital and occult worlds and be harmful to the children?’ Yes, that is the whole point of the agenda and that's why we have to be so careful. First, as a child, you do not yet have, you are not considered responsible enough to pass a vote, you are not yet considered responsible enough to make certain critical life-choices up to the age of 18, let's say. And yet at a kindergarten age, a child is told ‘You can choose your gender and based on the choice you make, you can choose to get yourself injected with chemicals that will castrate you for life or go for surgery that will mutilate you for life irreversibly’.

(0:35:05):

And this is completely unacceptable in any civilised society. The values being pushed through are barbaric values, they are pervert values, they come from perverted interests. And we have to stand very firmly about it. We can tell the child, ‘Whatever it is, or we can tell the agents of this kind of an influence, ‘Till the child is an adult, you do not sexualise them, you do not interfere with their healthy growth, once they are old enough, they will choose what they like on their own, they are free to, but until such time, we have to protect’.

But the question specifically is about opening to vital and occult worlds. It can come from many sources. One of the most common is the use of drugs. And this is extremely dangerous because it straightaway just drops the natural boundaries which protect us from the level of consciousness at which we are living, which is typically physical, vital and a little bit of mental, and suddenly the barriers removed, you are exposed to the vital worlds. And then depending on the plant, depending on the drugs used, you are accessing the lower vital, higher vital or something in between, but always close to the physical world. And the result is, you are exposed to these beings.

And because it was done by the mechanism of a drug, you have no way to protect yourself or close the gates. Let's say for example, by some method that you had, you opened the gate into the vital world, and you saw something beautiful, you say, ‘Ha-yes I would like to see more’; you saw something ugly, well, what would you do? You shut the gate, except that the gate opened was using this thing which went into your bloodstream, and until it is washed out of your bloodstream, you cannot close the gate, you are helpless.

And with an open gate those beings can enter you. And this is one of the biggest dangers of opening to drugs. I know of many cases where having been once exposed to one of these very low-grade beings and being attacked under the state of uh, those substances, the person never recovered, or the thing which he got in entered his consciousness, took a hook, and the hook stayed permanently for life. And these are extremely dangerous.

Fortunately, most people are reasonably strong in their boundaries that even though this barrier is removed and something attacks you, let's say a few weeks, a few months, sometimes a few years later, at least you might have healed enough. But those whose boundaries are very weak, they can get damaged and scarred for life. That is one.

If you bring in the hormonal changes and sex changes, again the impulse behind that is to damage them, and especially with the hormonal drugs for example, when there is the sudden movement, sudden changes, there is a huge confusion that is created, the formative period itself is destabilised. Once that destabilisation takes place, the person is, as if, open to all kinds of suggestions because the layers did not form in a healthy way. And if behind that there was already a power or force of an occult kind, then it uses those vulnerable moments to gain an entry.

The fact for example that, children are, and, and it is very disturbing to say this even, there are in New York State City and in California and certain places, they have what is called ‘Family Friendly Transgender Bars’. So, children, kindergarten age, are taken by parents, and then there is transvestite who is doing some drag show, very garish, ugly, sexual, provocative, now here is a vibration where all the different energies of a very low kind are attracted, people are normally wallowing in those kinds of energies and those feelings and sentiments, and the child is being exposed to that. Yes, they can get in, because the child is vulnerable. And it is a similar thing if you take them to a party where there is very low grade of vibration, where things are happening of a very low kind which attract forces, well, the child will get under those influences. He may not realise it because he is vulnerable, the force gets in, he gets a high, and then he is reminded of that high, and that is what he attaches himself to, and that habit may stay into adulthood.

This is the time when you must most carefully protect the psychic growing, nurturing influence. Let that be the first criteria. And anything which is contrary to the psychic must be avoided, you must protect in the most, exaggerated way if possible, until they are old enough. And the child may claim, ‘Uh, you did not expose me to the real world’. ‘Well, for your own good.’ ‘Now that you are strong enough, you can explore all that ugliness if you want, without being damaged by it, easily at least.’ And so we have to be very careful.

(0:40:08):

Ideally, it would be the sign of a refined society that the whole of society makes this choice to protect the children and to lift and refine values. Today, it’s the sign of a collapse of civilisation in a large part of humanity that there is a turning to these lower values and an active promotion of these and especially aiming at children. I mentioned last time that even this is happening now through Disney cinema which we used to trust as children's movies, and they have started getting into an agenda of a very crude and coarse kind, very dangerous for the children. So yes, it is harmful for children at an occult level.

We go to the next part of the question.

Alina (0:40:54):
“Your views on the increased hype about having to have a boy-girlfriend's kissing and sexual attraction, etc., from a very young age, early teens, pre-teens, even encouraged in schools, teenage movies, novels, social media forums, friends and peers, especially in many developed countries.” And then she makes some more notes: “Sometimes it becomes an issue of put-downs, status and/or popularity with peer dynamics and social pressure. How to insulate your kids till they grow more mentally and emotionally mature from this pressure and popular trend that tends to focus on and promote such as necessary and healthy part of growing? How to also bully-proof, make them resilient in difficult situations of peer pressure and/or negativity and difficult classroom situations of aggressive insulting teachers especially when social influences affect the young age sensitivity and vulnerability so deeply?”

Sraddhalu (0:42:22):
Mmhm. Yes, it's the continuation of what we have been discussing. This whole hype which she is referring to about children having to live to certain sexual practices or uh, activities which would be perhaps in the domain of a more developed adult-life is part of that agenda to sexualise children very early on, and I have mentioned this before, so I won't repeat.

But this being an agenda, you cannot be silent, you have to counter that propaganda, you have to push forward what is your agenda. If you don't push, then your children will get swamped by this confusion. Ideally, what you will do is, you will tap into the innate knowledge of the children. If the child has not yet been corrupted, something inside already knows and it feels this as crude, ugly, garish, repulsive, it feels the vibes, it sees a form, it sees an action, it feels the ugliness. So if your early years you have provided a nurturing environment where the psychic influence can be, so to say, nourished, the first contact with anything which is contrary, they will feel ‘Ha, something is wrong’, and then you point this out, you say:

‘Look! These are values which are contrary to you, contrary to your deepest truth, contrary to your highest aspiration, these are values which are perverse. And, yes, there are activities which belong to an adult-life, and when you become old enough where this will be a part of your life, then, well, you will have your relationships, if you choose to have a family, you will have your children, you will, etc., but when that happens, you will be ready for it, when that happens, at this point your body is growing, you have to protect what you are growing and the values by which you grow.’

Now even if you had girlfriend, boyfriend, sexual attraction, kissing, yes, these are there. In what way? What value? Is the girlfriend-boyfriend thing uh, an attempt at domination of peer values, ‘I am so great because I have so many girlfriends, boyfriends’? So this has become in the social media already a reference point: ‘I have 20 followers, you have only 5?’.

‘No, I am…’, I don't even know the reality today. They boast about 300 followers, and they are building followers. So something similar comes, they don't even know what it means. And then: ‘Have you kissed?’ ‘No.’ ‘Are you still a virgin?’ ‘Oh!’ And these are the things where they are imitating cinema. So, first of all, if we could correct it on that level of the propaganda that comes through cinema, let's assume we are not able to, give them the discrimination.

(0:45:09):

You will see all this in cinema. If you feel uncomfortable, it's not for you. Don't believe just because it is, you are shown young people doing, it does not mean young people actually do it. I have gone in various contexts in American universities. I felt the vibes, the atmosphere, I looked at the children, none of them, none of them had anything of what you are shown in Hollywood cinema of children of that age.

If you look at Hollywood cinema of the children of that age, you would think, that's all they do, girlfriend-boyfriend, kissing and premarital sex. You look at the real ones, they are busy, they are, many of them are very innocent and very clear and pure, and they would find that detestable. But they will look at that and say: ‘Oh, aren't we, are we supposed to be doing that? I'm not doing it! …something must be wrong with me.’

You tell them: ‘Nothing is wrong with you, you are the normal one, that's the abnormal one, don't follow that, you have to follow what is true for you.’ You have to tell them that! Tell them to distrust cinema and media and the examples shown. Tell them: ‘There is an agenda to pervert you sexually, so do not follow that’.

When they do come to an age, when they begin to feel the sexual attraction, or they begin to want to experiment, that’s, you will have to explain to them the importance of conservation of the lifeforce: That these are acts in which the lifeforce is thrown out, the same lifeforce which is helping you grow in intelligence and strength and health of your body, immunity. So conserve as much as you can.

Yes, there will be attractions, etc., well, keep them within check, don't get carried away by it. As you grow, you will learn to develop healthy relationships, and eventually you will find the right person with whom you will have a long-term relationship and family. But right now don't get swayed by this. Remember these things happen to everybody. And you can give your own experience: ‘I felt these things at this age and then I held back and until I met’, well, your the other parent of the children ‘when I felt, yes, he was the right person’ or ‘she was the right person, and I made a choice, but by then my body had grown, my intelligence had grown.’ And so on.

You have to speak and explain all this. But it starts by tapping what they already know and then putting the context of the circumstances. It's not done by preaching, it's not done by threatening, it is done by explaining and understanding. Children want to understand, and when you can explain correctly, they get it.

Ah, and it’s so in the part of the question about “insulate” them “till they grow … mentally and emotionally mature”, yes, part of it is this. There's an example I was, I had long back in Bombay when I was speaking to some of the parents and teachers. One of the parents shared this example:

Because all the other children were going to discotheques, so the daughter of this parent wanted to go. And so the parent was reasonably confident because she had been, the child had been brought up with certain values, she said, ‘Okay, I will take you’. She took her to this discotheque and she said, ‘Now you can do what you like, I'll be here, I'll be drinking my lemonade, and when you finish, you can come, and we will go back home’.

So after a while, this girl wanders around and she comes to her mother and she says, ‘Mummy, this place is smelling, it's noisy, and it's horrible, I would rather go home’. And mummy brings her home. And that's it. That illusion was broken. If she had said ‘No-don't, no-don't, no-don't’, when others are going, she would have come under peer pressure, and etc.

But this could work only because you have already given her the necessary refinement and sensitivity before. So be very careful. Your responsibility starts early on. If you have done that right, and if you have taken the small steps of explaining and protecting, even protecting may involve exposing them briefly under controlled circumstances and allowing them to make a choice and then move on.

But especially discriminate between what they know is right and peer pressure. This includes, by the way, speaking to them about peer pressure and even telling them not to fall for it, that people may say, they may laugh at you, you can ridicule them back and say, ‘Oh you are the one, you have not even protected your virginity, you have just sold yourself, you are, you, you have no values’. You can turn it around. One of the boys who was struggling with this, I said to him: “They have formed a club of people who are just going around drinking alcohol and having drugs. Why don't you form a club of people who have different values, who say, ‘We are the ones who want a healthy life and a healthy mind, and we will not take drugs, we will not drink alcohol’ and be proud of it and form a group, a peer group, and put pressure back on them: ‘That's inferior, that's retrograde, you're damaging your intelligence, your IQ is dropping.” And it's a fact. The moment people take to alcohol, you'll find their grades dropping, straight away. Point it out!

And so these are forms in which you may counter. And so bullyproof kids in this way would be partly through that forming-groups if you can, and if you have like-minded parents who share these values, the children together, if they are friends, things can be done.

But you have also asked about “negativity” and “aggressive and insulting teachers”. Ideally, especially for younger children, such teachers should not be teaching at that age group. If you see the example in the Ashram, I have shared before, the Mother chose very carefully the teachers, captains, for the younger children especially. And it is very interesting, I saw this also for the very young children, even the teachers and captains were chosen by the height, that they were closer to the children's height. And there was not too much difference, the children could look almost like peers, whereas if you brought somebody who was very tall, who is double the height, the child has to look up like this, it is not always comfortable.

(0:50:58):

The sensitivity was so amazing in the Mother’s selection. And ideally, a society would protect children with these values. So I am also pointing to these problems as the sign of the decline in societal values. I have seen many videos where parents have raised these issues in the teacher-parent meetings, and the governance system has rejected them, bypassed them, it shows an insularity, and then you would rather want to change the school. If you don't find a school, you go with the best among the bad ones, but ideally find a school which shares these values. And I would, I would confidently say that 80% of the parents are struggling the same values that you are struggling with, the same problems, and if you can all combine, if you can organise yourself, one can push back against those agendas.

We can go to the next question.

[To Alina] Unmute!

Alina (0:52:05):

From the same person: “This is in reference to your talks on masculinity and feminism and your interesting spiritual perspectives. If you can please elaborate more on overcoming those natural instincts for women about the need for protection, possession, safety, needing to talk about emotions to release their hold. I know you mentioned psycho-spiritual direction and keeping an inner centre, many times, in deep pain. The presence in the heart and above came spontaneously with pressure and that had a healing effect and deep centralisation that felt so safe, deep and grounded; but don't feel the same intensity always in normal states, unless sometimes in deep meditation when the mind is unruffled. Also the deep conditioning of family systems, dependency of woman, first on father, elder brother, then husband, and then son: if there is consciousness, these can help, but in fear, patriarchal dominance systems, and unconsciousness, they can have a suppressing effect, leading to stunning, err, stunting in the emergence of growth of individuality.

It kind of feels these instincts are very deep-rooted, based on a very fundamental need in biology that keeps acting out in subtle ways, like many times in lower chakras, like Muladhara-region, and also comes in many ways in dreams, sleep, like embedded in a deep subconsciousness which is hard to overcome. Even if one tries to be aware when awake, efforts keep getting destroyed in these dreams when one feel the capture and hold of these instincts, needs, fears, so strongly and repeatedly that nullify all our outer efforts.

When praying for the Force, it feels, they come sometimes and touch the above region's head and sometimes if the mind is not clouded, but below that region nothing is felt, as though there is a huge unresponsiveness in these lower vital regions and below the navel. And so these instincts keep acting up in various forms and subtle ways in the outer life and prevent clearer decisions, clarity in perceptions, relationships unless by some sudden deep insight, clarity, or love sweeps in, to erase the muddiness for a while before they again begin. The psycho-spiritual ways doesn’t seem to  enter lower regions. Or even when these emotions overwhelmed and can't step back or feel the centrality enough, as through the pool outside is very strong that muddles clarity and like one has to fight hard for backing out to pull the consciousness upwards. Or is it a less development in emotional individuality that is unable to hold all emotions in one place, or strangle out from their strong grip, and instead look at them from a witness standpoint and respond with clarity? If so, how to grow that individuality? Not sure if all this explanation makes sense, but I'm trying. So if you can talk a bit more elaborately on the subtleties of these difficulties and ways to rise above them, it feels like a fight against physical and emotional biology that is deeply ingrained, so a very defeatist game.”

Sraddhalu (0:56:49):
I've kept the whole question pretty much as it was because so many things have been touched which I think would be common for many people, and although many of these questions are slanted to the specifics of instincts for women exactly the same problem exists for instincts for men, with different instincts perhaps, but the issues are exactly the same. And I want to point to this last sentence where she writes: “it feels like a fight against physical and emotional biology that is deeply ingrained”, so it feels like a “defeatist game”.

There is your key! The roots are in the physical and emotional biology. Well, emotional-biology means still touching the biology, the physical basis. And if you really want to get free there, well, then you must tap the physical consciousness. How? Exercise, suppling exercises, making the body more conscious, making it uh, more expressive, creative, uh, etc. So the very things which have been described as the things you have, let's say, I'm just looking, throwing a few keywords: “natural instincts for women”, the “need for”: “protection”, “possession”, “safety”, “need to talk about emotions to release their hold”.

Okay. What would you, what would make you feel less vulnerable and more protected physically? Well, the experience that you can protect yourself. How would you do that? By activities in which you gain that confidence. What would make you feel safe? Well, in experiences of physical activities in which you develop the capacity or the experience that ‘Ah, any situation, whatever the danger, I can feel safe’. How would you do that? Well, here is the physical training programme! So I am of course tempted to look back at the physical training programme that the Mother organised in the Ashram for the young children, where all the boys and girls equally go through all these activities.

Now let's say for example, she is, the woman is an artist, so let's say, in your training at an earlier age or even now, I don’t know your age, even now if you did, as an exercise, boxing, wrestling, Judo, and uh, sword fighting, maybe archery, maybe horse riding, and the result of that activity would be, you would come down and you will feel ‘Ahh, there's practically nothing in the world that I need fear’, because you've experienced the strength and the capacity and the energetic capacity to push against any threat, or you experience the fear when an antagonist is coming towards you and you have been able to fight back in a very controlled and organised system and yet the ability to fight back and overcome your fear, and it's done only by doing, in those controlled circumstances.

So the solution is actually very simple. To all of this which you have been describing which is much more on a physical-emotional level and biology-based, well, act on the biology-level to give yourself those experiences.

(1:00:04):

Now I will extend this much more. You go trekking, you get tired, you overcome your tiredness. You get thirsty and hungry, you learn to overcome your thirst and your hunger. You deal with problems where you have to work as a team to protect each other, help each other, or you are alone now in the trek, however briefly, and you learn to deal with that situation. You have to cross a gap, a ravine, jump over a gap, you overcome the fears. Well, that's an extreme. Let's do that in a more controlled environment. You go to the swimming pool and jump from the 3-meter board, and then from the 5-meter board, and you are overcoming exactly the same fears.

So there are many ways in which one could expose the body, emotion-mind complex, but a lot of this is in biology-emotion complex, that you would expose yourself to those circumstances of threat, danger, safety, etc., and overcome. Because it's a controlled environment, it's easy to do. But having done that multiple times in multiple variations of it, you will come away without fear for the world. And if something remains, it will be purely at a mental-emotional level, because that you have not yet tapped here, or something of it even that may go away, depending on your case.

If that remains again there, there are certain exercises you could do, for example, in a situation of theatre. So if you had a comprehensive education which addressed the physical-emotional domain, and then the mental-vital, and the mental-physical domains and gave it the necessary base of rich experience, most of these natural instincts, both for women and men, would be regulated, directed, controlled, refined, sublimated and liberated perhaps, depending on cases and the nature of the activities you did. It’s not difficult. This is the point I'm making.

But if it was done very early on, the change would be for life. Now that you have this, let's say, a difficulty, start those activities. Start with simple things. Start with what is very easy for you. If you have children who are going for swimming, diving, well, you join them, or, you start doing what they are doing. And take small steps to overcome.

I've perhaps shared an example here. In the Ashram School we had a boy who came from Bombay and he came in very late, so he came in maybe at the age of 12 or 13 which was the limit they don't take normally people after the age of 12. So he was already formed. And one of the formative influences in him was extreme fear of water, because from the childhood he had been told that an astrologer had looked at his chart and said, ‘He will die in water’. So anytime he saw water, he began to shiver and scream and shout because he thought he will die. And in our School, it was compulsory to swim. So I remember seeing him carefully, somebody would almost push him, nudge him. Eventually he learned to come to the swimming pool deck and stand in a corner far away from the water. Eventually he came and sat near the water. It took a few months. Eventually he learned to step into the water. Two years down, he became swimming champ for his age group, and I think by the time he completed his education, he was one of the top swimmers in the Ashram. Amazing!

Now he will never drown. [laughing] You can throw him in water in the middle of the ocean, and he won't drown. But you see that programming which was there till the age of 12, 13, whatever it was, he managed to overcome it precisely by doing it. And after that I can say that, that whatever that was, that formation, nothing of it remains. So even what we have as natural instincts are really formations finally, and we need to overcome those.

I take another example, and because I want to broaden the scope also. Men have similar issues. A lot of young boys, healthy young men, not young boys, okay, healthy young men, have a emotional issues, they do not know how to relate to women, especially if they have grown up in uh, schools where boys’ schools only. So I remember once I had gone to Delhi, I had a lecture in a girls' school, and I was going with two young men who had grown up only in boys' school. As we entered the college campus, they began to shake a little bit, they said, ‘It feels weird, it's a girls' school, we can feel the girls' vibes, we don't know what to do, we are a bit lost’.

They were full adults, full-grown adults. I had no such problem. And I looked at it, I looked at that problem, and eventually I've had to help others who went through similar situations. The problem was they had never had a chance to interact in a healthy way with women. And it does not have to be romantic or otherwise, just, just because it is a woman, and there is a qualitative difference of energy, they get rattled because they don't know what to do with it.

(1:05:06):

And so, first thing I say is: “Well, learn to have healthy relationships, go somewhere where you will have people working together, join a team, and just learn to be friends and interact on a day-to-day work-domain responsibilities. And once you learn to have healthy relationships, then if there are other interests you have and even if you seek a romantic interest, that will build on it. But unless you do that, you will never get it. It won't happen by reading. Reading books may prepare you for the exercise of going there and doing it, but eventually you have to do it.” And so uh, this is again an instinctive issue, and it touches very deeply.

Men have a lot of problems when it comes to that whole aspect of relating in a healthy way, and just as women have those issues. So unless you start doing it, you will never learn. And if you create a healthy environment in the school, outside school, in activities where you are given the responsibilities, and healthy interactions, all this can be very quickly overcome.  You have also mentioned this “deep conditioning of family systems, dependency of women, first on father, elder brother, then husband, and then son”, etc., and then you have said “in fear, patriarchal dominant systems, and unconsciousness, they can have a suppressing effect, leading to … stunting in the emergence of growth of individuality”.

Well, it's not so much about patriarchy, today it's somehow become, as I said, because of this agenda to blame patriarchy for everything. No, it happens equally in matriarchy. I know of a case where a boy, full-grown adult, age 30 or so, was afraid to step out of the house alone and walk to the corner to buy food or vegetables and come home. He could not walk alone. He had to be accompanied by his mother. And she was not particularly dominant. She had just been somehow overprotective in a certain way, he had some phobia perhaps in early childhood, and they just played along instead of helping him outgrow it until he grew into adulthood with that same fear.

So it can happen anywhere, and in this what you have described as a patriarchal dominant systems, it came because of this, because there was a need to protect women at a certain age, at a certain stage of development in society. You look at India for example, and I'm sure there's equivalent everywhere in the world, during a certain period when you could have the armies, Mughal invaders, literally ride into yours, your town, grab the girls who were underage and take them away, because they had been programmed that this was the right thing to do, and it was, whatever, allowed under whatever law that they followed.

Now what do you do then? You protect the girls. You raise them up being, ‘Be very careful, this can happen, you may be stolen, you may be’ whatever, protect them, and so they grow up in this fear, and of course the individuality is stunted. Now what happens one generation down, maybe those things have gone, now India is free, this is unlikely to happen, and that habit continues down the generation, that becomes the type, you have to reverse that. And that reversal is also happening, and it's happening quite fast.

But you have to understand where it came from. It came out of goodwill, out of genuine fear sometimes, now you have to undo the fear. How? Precisely by doing, giving yourself that sense of the safety, creating a space where that fear is no more needed. I give an example, in Gujarat going back 20 years, 24 years perhaps, when there was the, in a big city like Ahmedabad, a girl could not walk alone after 8 p.m. on the road, there would be attacks, there would be problems, there would be thefts, rapes, whatever. When Modi became Chief Minister, he cleaned out the whole city, not just the city of Ahmedabad, the whole of the Gujarat state. And then during the festivals, three years down, it took barely three years, during the festivals, girls would be out till midnight for dances and things, come home walking alone, fully dressed in their garb of Garba and all those things, without fear.

It took three years to clean society, but once done, this was the reality of society. The fear was a genuine thing but artificially imposed, you remove that imposition, people want to bounce back to their freedom. So yes, the stunting effect on individuality is there when this imposition is there, but if you can organise yourself, push back, remove the causes, first recognise the causes, then remove them, and allow this flowering of individuality, it can be done very quickly within the family, within the society, but especially when you are dealing with collective spaces, you have to do, you have to deal with the uh, challenge around. Sometimes it needs a correction top-down, so then you need to influence the leadership at the top and correct it top-down. Otherwise, you go into spaces where it is relatively safe, and there you develop that healthy freedom, individuality, courage, and so on.

(1:10:21):

So even this dependency of women on father, elder brother, husband, son, is a remnant of that. It's no more a requirement today. And you do not need to fight hard, you just have to demonstrate your capacity to be, uh, well, to take care of yourself, to protect yourself. Ideally, I would want every child, boys and girls, of a certain age to go through basic training of self-defence from childhood, let’s say, from age 12 onwards. And having had that, uh, you have, not only you have the self-confidence, your parents have the self-confidence also. Isn't it? So, you have to build society, well, I would say, rebuild society or newbuild society on these foundations, and this would be part of the objectives of an integral education.

So the rest, a comment about the “fundamental need in biology” which acts in a “subtle ways … in dreams” and “sleep” because it's “embedded” in the subconscious.

Yes, that always is the case when something is removed from the conscious mind, it goes into the subconscious, and then it pops up in the dream, and then it's removed from the dream, and then it pops up occasionally, and eventually it goes out completely. So any change will always be top-down. Recognise this.

If you are free here [gesturing above head] and it pops up in dream, it's a good sign, that means, you've made good progress. Now persist. And then it goes out from the dream, that's when you know, ‘Okay, now it's going out from the subconscious also’. And then you may have occasional relapses, don't worry about that, persist, and then it goes away. But all this will start by doing things in your conscious space, in your conscious environment.

So I will suggest this to all of you who have this concern:

Take up some kind of martial arts, basic practices of self-defence. There are now things which are taught on the Internet. On the YouTube you have people teaching these for free. So form little groups, clubs, where some of you who share similar interests or concerns practice together, because some of these you need to practice together. If you can, join a class where you will meet others, and there are other more healthy social interactions that you will develop. But it does not need to cost money, that's my point. It can be done in various ways at no cost even. But then take up other forms where courage is built up, such as jumping from a height, from, into the swimming pool, diving, swimming, diving underwater. Many people have fear when they go underwater and swim. Well, you will overcome these in a healthy way with small exposures, and so on. The same with other types of more sporty activities. And that also will seep into your subconscious, you will find yourself doing those things in dream, and then you know you are completely free of those fears. Isn't it?

And then one last point which she makes about how the Force comes down from above into the region of head and heart, if the mind is not clouded, but below that region nothing is felt.  And she says, again “The psycho-spiritual ways doesn’t seem to  enter lower regions … even when these emotions overwhelmed and can't step back or feel the centrality enough”.

So when you do this, especially those of you who have been following the practices such as the descent of the consciousness or the descent of the peace or the descent of the Mother's force, you must recognise that there is a part which is ready and receptive and open more than others, especially in the upper parts, and up to there you will find spontaneously, rapidly, the descent, and then below that you may find, for some people it's up to here [gesturing below the eye-level], some people up to the head, neck, sometimes up to the chest and then it doesn't seem to go further or what follows is very thin initially. At that point you have to consciously extend it.

What you feel descending, become aware of it, and consciously intend it, so to say, nudge it, extend it, push it, part by part, into those parts which are not yet open or receptive. Gradually, very gently, softly, you feel it, and as if push it, nudge it, until those parts are also equally full. Maybe you don’t feel the same density the first time, but the second time it gets more dense, the third time it gets more dense. And as you persist in this way, very quickly those parts now begin to receive and their knot begins to dissolve. This is the single-most rapid way in which you can dissolve any kind of knot.

And yet initially, because it's happening top-down, it may not reach the most material part of it, and that's where some of these exercises which I have recommended, activities, will complete it. But this having been done, those would be very easy, and the two will combine. The fact that you have done those exercises, now the force will go all the way down to the most material.

(1:15:11):

An indirect way to do this would be to take up asanas or aerobic activities, exercises, but done with this intention consciously that you are awakening body-consciousness as you do. If you are jogging while listening to music, you are not putting consciousness in the body. If you are doing asanas while daydreaming, you are doing a stretch and holding it while your mind is elsewhere, you are not changing the consciousness. But if you put consciousness and stretch to make conscious and then in that awareness, awake an aspiration and receive the force, the light, the peace, the Presence, then it will have this transforming effect.

So, any combination of these, ideally all of these, or whatever works for you, would be enough, and you will find very rapidly, all these things will change.

I would like to go to the next question, Blue Lotus Mom.

Alina (1:16:07):
In Evenings 155, you mentioned a brief…

Sraddhalu(1:16:14):
No, not that, the next, the next, the next, Blue Lotus Mom.

Alina (1:16:18):
Blue Lotus Mom: “How do we prevent our kids from early sexual exposure? My daughter, six years old, came and asked, if her friend is a boy and can wear a pink. I had to tell, it's up to his choice. Here in US there's so much gender exposure. She says, she's a girl and her friend is a boy. Fortunately, my daughter loves to play with cars and trucks, prefer to play with the boys, and feels boy stuff is more fun, but lately she has been preferring girl-teachers than men-teachers.”

Sraddhalu (1:17:00):
[laughing] Very sweet! So first of all when a girl plays with boy stuff or a boy plays with girl stuff, it does not mean anything as the, well, gender brigade would like you to believe. No, they are not of a different gender. No, they are not going to change the sexual orientation. No, they do not have a biology or psychology distortion or gender dysphoria. It's just an interest of faculties being activated. That's all.

And if you understand that nature wants to develop all the faculties, then uh, just allow them. Whatever interests them, observe which faculties are being triggered. Now for example, when the daughter plays with the cars and trucks of the boys, she finds it interesting, it's more interesting, more fun, what is she looking at? And look at how she approaches it, and it will be slightly different from the way the boys do it. She’ll have a different sense of priorities, she’ll have a different uh, quality in the nature of the play. Just observe. Very interesting. It's very educative. And then as you continue, you will find again the interest shifts, they take on different forms, they absorb new things. Freely, allow them. There's no problem. So as far as this is concerned, no issue.

But now comes the aspect of now linking it to gender: so this is boy's stuff, that is girl's stuff, or can you wear, can the boy wear pink? You can say, it is his choice, but it's not just about choice. You have to point out, it’s not just about choice, it's about aesthetics: which looks better, which feels right, which looks more beautiful, which looks more elegant, which feels more beautiful, which feels more elegant. So you must give it a direction which is evolutionary. You see, if you just say, ‘It's choice’, then fooling around with any junk is also choice. You make choices for what? For an evolutionary upwards turn. You must always bring it to that.

So in this case, it starts with the refinement of the soul’s sensitivities to whatever extent one feels that influence. But then:

Does it help you to grow?

Does it make the world more beautiful?

Does it make your life more beautiful, more worthwhile?

So you have to identify the characteristics which evolution turns towards: growth in knowledge; growth in strength; growth in beauty; growth in goodwill, love, affection, collaboration, harmony. And I put that last deliberately, because often in the nature of growth of harmony, you suppress knowledge, you suppress strength, that will lead to destruction of harmony. If you do not have true wisdom, you do not have strength, you cannot protect the love.

And so, you have to highlight these thing: Does it help you to grow in any of these qualities? Does it make you feel elevated? Does it make you feel more beautiful, more complete, more refined, more sensitive, ‘Yes, that's fine’.

And for the boy the same. If he likes to wear the pink because it expresses a greater beauty or aesthetics, that's fine. But if he's doing it because others are doing it or because he saw it in a cinema and he feels it ugly, no, he should not do it. So, the reference should be this always.

(1:20:19):
And yes, they will use this, the, you see the gender exposure is strong and now it's happening all over the world, it's happening in India also, but you have to be careful: not to give it the sexual orientation. You say, ‘Yes, that's girl, that's boy’, and then if they start speaking of trans and all that, you say: ‘No, you have a, you, what you are does not change, you cannot just fantasise yourself to be something else and then just because someone is going to say, ‘Ha, that's nice’, does not mean you have changed, be yourself first, be truly yourself. And truly yourself means, try to feel as deeply as you can what is true within you. Live by that, do not compromise that, what that is, you don't worry about others’ say, you live by that but as deep as you can. And if you find two things within you which are contradictory, try to feel which is more true, which is more deep, and you can use the reference which will be more lasting.’

Now there are things which come up: ‘I am hungry, so I will eat whatever is in front of me, it will pass. But if I do something now which will stay with me for the next 10 years, that is a greater truth. Be careful what you choose there. Protect those things which are more essential values.’ So yes, gender awareness, you can't avoid. But what does it mean? You have to define that very clearly. And even if people say, ‘Ah-yes, there are so many different kinds of genders and all that’, you say: ‘No, what you are is you, uniquely. Don't try to follow what others do or what others believe or what others pretend to be. While the teachers may say, ‘You can identify as anything’, no, you're not here to identify as anything, you're here to be yourself.’

You need to say this. You see, there's actually, it might sound very strange but these are actual facts: There are people who said, they identified, an adult, identifying as a baby, or somebody who said, ‘I identify as a handicapped person’ and then chopped his arm to match his identification. These are all perversions and superficial distortions. There's a mental problem, you say in those cases, isn't it? So, ‘Identifying with something on a whim or fancy is not your purpose, being truly who you are’. You must say this.

And then at some point, when they do come across the sexual influences, you have to explain to them: ‘Look, these things do have a place in life, but right now your body is not ready for it, your body needs to grow, it must become strong, you will wait for the right time when these things will have their place.’ And you must explain in these terms. So don’t leave it to just choice, give a higher reference upon which you base yourself for the choices that you make.

And so, I think, with this I am going to close for today. There are now several questions which have been pending, uh, many of them are quite diverse, and I don’t want to wait to put them into certain categories. So probably the next time we will simply cover many of the pending questions and then I want to come to that big issue which we have been holding off for a while: What happens if in our own growth of education we have been for whatever reason some part of us has been damaged because of a damaging influence in the education or sometimes from a trauma which came in spite of a good education? And that question is, is pending because it is a very serious one and especially today, many of the children today are exposed to things prematurely and they do come out damaged even if they have been exposed to certain kinds of vices in childhood before the body is strong enough it does leave a damage and you will have to do something to reverse it. Can we do it? And what can we do? That will be the question later on.

But in between we will take up many of these questions which I wanted to, which we will cover next time. But one thing I wanted to close with, maybe we could do, go back to Alina, the question from Mani.

Alina (1:24:24):
Mani

Sraddhalu (1:24:25):

I'll keep that for the last.

Alina (1:24:27):

“  ’Masculine and feminine’, in Part I of the series, you mentioned that in the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna describes six gradations of relationship between soul and nature, one, witness; second, upholder; third, sanctioner; fourth, knower; fifth, controller; sixth, enjoyer. I'm currently reading and exploring Thoughts on the Gita by M.P. Pandit. Last night I was reading where he said, “Through relations we develop our approach to God”. Could you please elucidate further on enjoyment? M.P. Pandit referred to the impassive enjoyment of the impersonal Self. I take it that there is enjoyment there too, on all levels there is enjoyment just as there is direct enjoyment of the Lord and the soul partaking in that enjoyment  as it realises itself as a portion of the Lord through self-surrender and adoration. Is all this enjoyment, Ananda, the joy of a conscious being as it becomes?”

(1:25:52):

And after some break: “However, since then, I have further read in M.P. Pandit's book Thoughts on the Gita and he has answered my question about enjoyment most beautifully. I should have known, he would get to this, feeling blessed, nonetheless for the teaching. So no need for an answer now, I will have more patience for next time.”

Sraddhalu (1:26:20):
[laughing] Yes. Well, the question was about, is everything, on “All these relationships of soul and nature really an aspect of enjoyment?”.

So I kept the question, and I will, since he does not need it anymore, but still I will build on this a little bit. And it will be a good theme to end on.

You see, Sri Aurobindo gives a very different sense of purpose to the spirituality because the spirituality is affirmative and not ascetic, not a withdrawal from the world. So he goes back to the very roots of the cosmos, to the very roots of creation and finds at the root all this is founded in the delight, in the bliss, in the Ananda of the Divine and everything that manifests originates in the bliss. This was the fundamental difference from his poise versus Paul Richard who came with a different poise who said, it came from the divine will or creative impulse. Sri Aurobindo says, no, the origin is in the bliss.

And so I will read from Sri Aurobindo, there is in his Thoughts and Glimpses where he says, and I won't read the whole, just these few lines, he says: “The meeting of man and God must always mean a penetration and entry of the divine into the human and a self-immergence of man in the Divinity. But that immergence is not in the nature of an annihilation.” You don't just dissolve and cease to be.  “Extinction is not the fulfilment of all this search and passion, …” You see, the whole of our life is a search and passion eventually. You see! Even when we are looking for searching in people or through people, we are actually searching That not realising. So, “Extinction” cannot be “the fulfilment of all this search and passion, suffering and rapture. The game would never have been begun if that were to be its ending.”

So, what's the point of this game? He explains: “Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God.” And he continues. So those who are interested, please read the whole text.

And then Mother reads from this, and somebody asks her, this is in the questions and answers: “How can one “learn of pure delight”?

And then the Mother explains what to do, first, and second, and then after that the third step, so three steps she describes. “First” she says: “First of all, to begin with, one must through an attentive observation grow aware that desires and the satisfaction of desires give only a vague, uncertain pleasure, mixed, fugitive and altogether unsatisfactory. That is usually the starting-point.” So you see, “desires” and then you have “satisfaction of desires”, okay, it gives you something, but doesn't last: first step.

“Then, if one is a reasonable being, one must learn to discern what is desire and refrain from doing anything that may satisfy one’s desires. One must reject them without trying to satisfy them. And so the first result is exactly one of the very first observations stated by the Buddha in his teaching: there is an infinitely greater delight in conquering and eliminating a desire than in satisfying it. Every sincere and steadfast seeker will realise after some time, sooner or later, at times very soon, that this is an absolute truth, and that the delight felt in overcoming a desire is incomparably higher than the small pleasure, so fleeting and mixed, which may be found in the satisfaction of his desires.” This is “the second step”

(1:30:19):

Now before we go to the third step, I want to put a context. This description is not just for all of us, it's equally for the children. You may use different vocabulary to explain. So you will explain to them, especially in this subjective age where everyone is told ‘Do what you like, follow your heart, follow your impulse, follow your desire’.

No. You observe that, yes, you can satisfy your desire, today you can buy anything, do anything pretty much uh, with the increase overall in the wealth that we find, children can literally demand from their parents mobile phone every few years, and they gift to them.

But very early on, observe: that yes, you have a desire, but what's the point of just satisfying it? Is there something else you could do which will be more worthwhile?

And then, observe, and for children it's about postponing their desire. ‘I'd like to eat ice cream.’ ‘Okay, we will do that when it's lunch time, we will eat ice cream when it's lunch time, not now.’ So you teach them to postpone the desire, postpone the gratification, postpone the satisfaction, and this is how they begin to acquire basic control over those impulses. And that once acquired, throughout life you can say: ‘Okay, I would like to do that, well, do I need to do it now? I can hold off, I will do it when I get the chance or when it is the right time for it.’ This is going to be very important in the basic education. Then we come to the third step.

Still with children you can tell them: ‘Overcoming is also giving you more satisfaction. Observe. You felt like beating up that guy, but you held back, overcame your anger impulse and came out stronger. Notice how much more satisfaction it gave you, how much growth it gave you.’ So these as they grow older you will do. But that's still step 2.

 

Step 3:

“Naturally, with this continuous discipline, in a very short time the desires will keep their distance and will no longer bother you. So you will be free to enter a little more deeply into your being and open yourself in an aspiration to… the Giver of Delight, the divine Element, the divine Grace. And if this is done with a sincere self-giving—something that gives itself, offers itself and expects nothing in exchange for its offering …”

So you just, you have this joy of giving, ‘I belong, I belong to the Divine, to the Mother, to the love, to the Divine Grace’. “expects nothing in exchange for its offering—one will feel that kind of sweet warmth, comfortable, intimate, radiant, which fills the heart and is the herald of Delight.” So the true delight will follow that, that’s just the beginning, it’s preparing you for the true delight. And then she says:   “After this, the path is easy.”

[laughing] Very interesting. Very simple actually. But notice the three steps.

First: simply observe that satisfaction of desire is “uncertain pleasure”, “vague”, “mixed”, “fugitive”, “unsatisfactory”. Ho, it comes back, or it demands something new, it's unending.

Second step: you learn to postpone, you learn to put the desire in its right place, you learn to overcome the desire even, as needed. And with that you find a much greater delight which comes from that overcoming, much greater than the pleasure of the satisfaction. So here you begin to distinguish pleasure and the deeper higher satisfaction of a joy, delight, fulfilment, etc., and that's lasting. This is momentary, superficial.

And then comes a third discipline where you enter a little more deeply into yourself, open yourself in an aspiration to “the Giver of Delight, the divine Element, the divine Grace”.

So the three ways she articulates it, whichever you find more easy, observe what the three mean for you, pick that which is easier for you and the “self-giving” to that, and with that you begin to feel that “sweet warmth, comfortable, intimate, radiant, which fills the heart and is the herald of Delight” And “After this, the path is easy”.

One more thing I will read from Sri Aurobindo regarding this and we will complete with this for today. This is from The Life Divine, where the same, similar passage in the chapter called “Delight of Existence: The Solution”. So there's a previous chapter “The Problem” and now “The Solution”. And here he says: “Delight is existence, Delight is the secret of creation, Delight is the root of birth, Delight is the cause of remaining in existence, Delight is the end of birth and that into which creation ceases. “From Ananda” says the Upanishad “all existences are born, by Ananda they remain in being and increase,”, all evolution is also by Ananda, “to Ananda they depart.” ”

And so, this phrase, it, it resounds “Delight is the secret of creation”. And again in the previous text which we read, where Sri Aurobindo says: “Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God.”

But do read in Thoughts and Glimpses, he explains how the whole world started with delight, is sustained by delight and fulfils itself in delight.

And this is, should be our masterkey. And this deeper sense of purpose, this deeper sense of delight as a reference, eventually we will also inculcate by experience to the children and give them a deeper and higher reference by which they can organise and lead their lives also. I think, we’ll end on this note. There were several questions in the chat box which I will take up next time.

Let’s take a moment to concentrate on this aspiration.

Namaste.

Alina (1:37:03):
Namaste.