June 10, 2023
Alina (0:00:33):
Namaste. Namaste, Sraddhalu.
Sraddhalu (0:00:37):
Namaste. Happy to be with all of you.
Alina (0:00:41):
We are happy to continue Evenings with Sraddhalu, today's session #165. And we will be taking questions on practices. But first, we have a question that is regarding some controversial topics that we have covered last, last time. As usual, you may send your questions beforehand at our email ID: integralstudies.in[at]gmail.com, or you may send your questions during our conversation in the chat box.
And I will start with one uh, comment that Debbie sent last time: “On Evenings with Sraddhalu #164”, she mentions, “I found the information shared here so polarised. I've been, I've been watched over a hundred of Sraddhalu's videos and I'm finding this most recent run of videos and answers increasingly polarised from one viewpoint that casts a negative shade on others. I find his discussion of what he shares about the USA to be coming from what is in US would be considered a far-right agenda. I am not here to say what is right and what is wrong and I often listen to things that I don't agree with to see how I can stretch my perspective. I'm finding these questions and answer sessions are becoming more and more opinionated versus guiding people to seek a higher grade of truth within themselves. I know we are all doing the best, we can include Sraddhalu also, and I hope this post isn't erased. I just wanted to speak into my sadness at where this conversation has gone.”
Sraddhalu (0:02:43):
Okay. It's an important comment, and I thought it required clarification for two reasons. One, because Debbie says that she has been, she has watched nearly a hundred videos before and then she finds this a little off, different. And so when you find something unusual like this, not consistent, then it's important that we understand why. But also the issues she has raised perhaps could also represent others who have misunderstood certain points. And I knew when I took up this topic that there would be issues, there would be misunderstandings, but it was important.
So I want to address some of the, what seems to be, what I understand Debbie's problem, obviously without saying it in so many words, she is relating to the gender-related discussions that she is referring to in what has caused her some sadness and which she finds polarising and which she finds to be far-right agenda in the US. So uh, first of all I must clarify that nowhere in any of those discussions about the gender issues, have I ever criticised somebody for their sexual preferences! So whether someone is gay or LGBTQ or any of the variations that are there, I have never criticised the sexual preference of a person.
What I have done is to separate that from biology, psychology, and sexual preference. They are different things. So the first point was to bring clarity where there is confusion by separating these three very different issues. And what somebody has as their sexual preference, how they live in their private life, is none of my concern, and I do not judge a person based on that, unlike what she has referred to as the far-right agenda, which largely in the United States, but pretty much everywhere in the extremist religious circles of Christianity and Islam, the gay-people are considered to be abominations and are, under Islam I think you have a right to kill them instantly and under Christianity some similar things. That is far-right, or I would rather say, extremist religious viewpoints, and no way that comes into the picture of what I have been discussing. I have separated those issues. That's all. And to me that makes no difference at all what their sexual relations are.
(0:05:04):
I have, over the years, I have interactions, I have worked with people who were gay and of other sexual preferences, and I have always interacted with as I would with any other human being. For me it is not an issue at all. Some of them have been very refined, very beautiful human beings, sometimes with an active spiritual life, or a very creative artistic life, or whatever it is, and I always appreciate them for what they are. So, none of what I am saying ever aligns with these extremist religious agendas, and that would be a completely wrong understanding, though there may be a common point that those people also perhaps are against sexualisation of children, which was my primary thesis in these discussions:
Do not sexualise children because that is spiritually damaging! Again, I am not looking at it as, from a social point of view! There are actually cultures and religions by the way which allow for, even prescribe, sexual engagement with young people. Some cultures where it's even a norm. I consider them to be barbaric and harmful to the spiritual evolution of humanity! That's the stand I have taken! And I don't see here anywhere anything that is polarising or right-wing agenda.
But let me deal with these uh, points also. On the comment that there is a “polarised” viewpoint, the assumption is that one has to be always in the middle. If there are two poles, one has to always stay in the middle. You cannot stay in the middle of something which is clearly either truth or falsehood. There is no middle ground sometimes. And there you have to take a stance, and the stance is on the basis of some reference. Here for me, the reference has always been from the spiritual and evolutionary point of view. And from a spiritual and evolutionary point of view, certain things are wrong without exception, and there is no middle ground there. Sexualisation of children is a perversion which harms the psychic evolution and the psychic emergence.
There is no middle ground there! You cannot say, ‘Ha–yes, a little bit’! No! No sexualisation of children! Children have to grow allowing their psychic influence to come forward. And when the biology and psychology are ready, whatever line of sexual in relations they choose is irrelevant as long as it does not conflict with their spiritual evolution. Another example of what is wrong without exception is: ugliness, or vulgarity, masquerading as freedom of choice. And from a spiritual point of view again, it is completely unacceptable. It is a masquerade of a falsehood coming under, under the guise of a truth.
And so from the spiritual pole, if there is a polarisation, then I will say, “This series is meant to be a polarisation for the spiritual”. But if it is a polarisation of social or other agendas, that does not concern me at all! So one has to be very clear of what is, what we mean by poles or polarisations in this context.
In that sense again if I had to play with this term ‘fundamentalist’, I am one who is a ‘fundamentalist for the Self’, that is, I consider the spiritual Self to be fundamental to all reality, to all purpose of life, to all choices and decisions. In that sense you could call me a ‘fundamentalist’, because that is my fundamental. But it is very different from a religious fundamentalist who takes a book or a text written many thousand years ago as his fundamental which conflicts sometimes with very simple, rational and practical or even obviously true positions and because it is obsolete or because it uh, the meaning of those words have changed, or values of humanity have evolved. So these terms can be misused and so I need to make this clarification. Yes, perhaps if there is a polarity, it is the pole of the spiritual and evolutionary, and against that any kind of ugliness, any kind of vulgarity, any sexualisation of children is unacceptable and wrong. Of course in a different context, social or otherwise, I don't know, and I am not concerned with it.
Debbie also makes this comment: “I find his discussion of what he shares about the USA to be coming from what is in the US would be considered a far-right agenda.” “in the US”! I am, I am glad, you clarified that “in the US” it is “considered a far-right agenda”. So I will ask a simple question: If there is such a thing as a far-right, what is the far-left and who represents that? Why is it that the media only speaks of far-right and never speaks of far-left or even the plain-left? Because the media itself is complicit in a confusion that is being created.
And one of great mistakes which is coming through any kind of such discourse is to split anything between left and right. No. Reality is not about one line with a left and a right. Reality is multi-dimensional, multi-layered. So anytime you reduce it to left- and right-views, then you have, in the very taking of that position, lost the whole point. Or if you say, between left and right you have to be centre, then you get into another very dangerous situation because you are required always to adjust your centre when the left goes too far left or the right goes too far right, your centre is shifting. Is that centre based on anything real then or merely as a reference to these two poles which are themselves shifting and unstable?
(0:10:43):
I have mentioned this perhaps somewhat recently when we had this whole issue with the book that was written by somebody living in the Ashram, abusing Sri Aurobindo, sexualising him, calling him a madman, and so on. We had taken a position that this is unacceptable for somebody sitting in the Ashram to be doing. Anybody sitting elsewhere can write any junk they want, but to write a book against Sri Aurobindo, perverting him, sitting in the Ashram and declaring it as backed by the Ashram. That was our position! This is wrong, this is unacceptable. It is contrary, and it is doing great harm to Sri Aurobindo's work!
At that time there was a lady in Auroville, she took a, tried to take a middle position. The result was every few weeks her middle position was changing until she ended up where those people were because they had gone so far extreme to the, you may call, ‘left’. In relation to them I had been pushed far right when I had taken a very simple rational position that stayed exactly the same for 10 years, 20 years down, nothing has changed. But they went so far left, even declaring that it was their freedom of speech and right to freedom of speech to abuse Sri Aurobindo while sitting in the Ashram.
So I say: “To my viewpoint, yes, you have a freedom of speech, yes, but not in the Ashram of Sri Aurobindo to abuse Sri Aurobindo. For that you can step out, go elsewhere and abuse all you want, nobody is going to bother you. But if you are sitting here and abusing him, that is not acceptable because there are certain conventions of what the Ashram is meant for, you are harming the work.” So I would have ended up in a far-right position relative to them because they shifted left. And this lady who had taken a reasonably good position initially ended up saying what they were saying because they had gone so far left. So again to me, this whole business of left, right, centre, has pretty much no meaning. You have to look at things from a reference point: which is real, which is rational, and which is, I will say, reasonably stable or absolute. In fact, if you take these two poles left and right, is there a third pole, fourth pole because truth is multi-dimensional and multi-layered?
But there is an important uh, nuance in Debbie's observation, she says: “… what he shares about the US to be coming from what is in the US would be considered far-right …”
Yes, “in the US it's considered far-right”! You go to any other country, some countries will say: This is reasonable, this is our tradition going back uh, 2,000 years. Somebody else will say: This is our position.
So China, for example, the government of China took a very strong position about this sexualisation of children and they passed a law that anybody who attempted to sexualise children or to, they went so far as to say, to feminise the males, they could be arrested and put in jail, so no cinema, no uh, social media, no activity can be allowed to feminise males. Now this is going far more, I am not even discussing that, I am just saying, do not sexualise children! They have gone far more, yet nowhere in the media you have any criticism of the Chinese government! And what would that be called? That is far left! Isn't it? Because it is a communist party taking a position, or what is it? It is not even left, because the American left is different, American left wants to sexualise children, Chinese which is a left–party is against sexualisation of children.
There is no left, right here anymore. It's about taking a stance for what is considered to be values of a culture, or civilisation, or whatever context may be. So, and this is never discussed. To me this is very interesting. Why is it in the US, the media is so strongly criticising what they call ‘the extreme right’? I don't know. And to me it's not important. I'm looking at an issue irrespective of left, right, centre, and other uh, strange labels. Okay? So what China has particularly also banned is promotion of a gender dysphoria. And so, another place, another country, you will go to, they say simply: ‘Look, you can choose to be whatever you like sexually in your sexual relations but bathrooms are meant for biology’, and they define the bathrooms in terms of biology. Now this is common sense, it's not left, right, or centre, or any other ideology, it's common sense. Right?
(0:15:05):
So, to me that left, right, has no meaning, and I'm going to issues irrespective of those, and if somebody says, it corresponds to some viewpoint elsewhere in some other country, I don't know, I can't help it. Just because a country has an issue with a certain viewpoint, I cannot be changing what is obvious. A lot of this media is coming, a lot of this confusion is coming from the paid media's manipulative agendas. So you must understand, all over the world today, and it has been the case for a long time but it was gradually increasing, and for the last 20 years all over the world today, the media is entirely paid. Anybody who pays them can get their viewpoints and their agendas pushed through. And when it is done in a concerted way, it suddenly feels as if, ‘Oh, everybody is talking about it’. No, it is not true. It is key-people in the media, influencers, are being paid to speak about it, and it gives you the illusion that, that is now a collective viewpoint. No, it's not. Everybody thinks, it's a collective viewpoint. No, it's not. So one has to be very careful not to trust the media and do not make the media as a reference for what is now the collective-mind. People make that mistake and tend then to try to conform to to the influence that the media imposes.
And then there is this uh, comment that Debbie makes: “I … wanted to speak into my sadness at where this conversation has gone.” So my question would be: Why sadness? Was there an expectation that this did not fit? And in that case, was the expectation justified also?
Perhaps you may want to consider that. Perhaps one of the expectations, I don't know if it is your case or others may have similar expectations, that spirituality or a spiritual viewpoint should always represent a compromise because that is harmony, harmony is compromise, that's the falsehood of course, but that's how it is seen, and this would be true partly to an ascetic path, withdrawal of the, from the world, and so you compromise with whatever falsehood comes your way because anyway you don't want to engage with it either it's illusory or it's suffering or you have nothing to do with it.
But if you follow a path of an affirmative spirituality, if the Asuric force demands its right under whatever guise, of freedom, of choice, or, then you should be able to say what is true and if necessary push back against the falsehood. This is extremely important.
For example in the United States there is something called the Church of Satan which worships Satan, and their concept is, eventually if you go deep enough involves all kinds of blood rituals and other things. But they start with a very soft entry point, ‘Oh we are about rationality and about free choice’.
Free choice to do what? To follow your whims, to follow your desires, to follow your, your ego-will. That's an entry point. It's very seductive for young people. But what it leads to? Very slippery slope! Once they get into that, then there all kinds of things they do. They have got into the US, United States Navy because they are an officially registered religion. So under freedom of speech and freedom of religion values, something has come in which is actually a dark force and a perversion of values, which actually takes all the symbols of the spiritual and even some of the religious traditions, inverts them and now makes that a religion.
And they write under the freedom of religion. So you see, a framework of freedom can be misused, and one needs to be able to say where it is misused. Now we may not be able to stop it, but if you do not say it, then those who are in the middle who do not have their own discrimination or are confused may get pulled into something, and get hooked, and even damaged, and too late before they realise that they have been damaged. And therefore the need to state very clearly. And one of the great mistakes to, to, which leads to this kind of confusion is to say ‘Ha-yes, it's all the same’. No, it's not. And you need to say what is different, and why it's different, and whether there are dangers. You need to say it.
From the perspective of an affirmative spirituality, we have to recognise the reality that there is a gigantic battle of Asuric forces against the spiritual evolutionary forces. In the battle, there are passages where you have grey areas, but there are situations where there is no grey area. You are on the razor's edge, tilt a little bit and you are on the light, tilt a little bit and you slip into the darkness. You cannot say, ‘midpoint’. You cannot speak of compromise.
(0:20:07):
And we are pretty much very close to that edge today all over the world where you have to choose sides clearly. There is no in-between. There is no sitting on the fence. Again I have, perhaps, mentioned this recently: one of the persons in one of the centres in the, in Sri Aurobindo centres actually said to me at that point when we had this whole issue around the book abusing Sri Aurobindo, and the person said: ‘You know on this matter I choose to sit on the fence’. You cannot sit on the fence when Sri Aurobindo is abused and falsely. If you are genuinely make the mistake, you can criticise him all you want. But when you are perverting facts and abusing him for a mistake which he has not made, it is in fact the very opposite, when you are deliberately perverting his teaching and presenting that as academic, there is no fence-sitting here. You either say ‘This is wrong’ or if you say ‘I am a fence-sitter’, I will say nothing, then you are aligning yourself to that falsehood. And so this issue which I raised about sexualising children is one of those. There is no in-between. There is no fence-sitting. It's wrong. Period. And this is very different from someone's sexual preferences, that can be whatever they like as an adult. As a child, no! Very clear! Very simple!
So again, I would ask: Why this sense of sadness? Is it because the viewpoint is too radically different? In which case I am also commenting on this observation that you have made that uh, you often listen to things that you do not agree with to see how you can stretch your perspective. That is very good. I highly appreciate that, which is why I took up this question for a detailed discussion. But what often happens, and this is the case for all of us, we start life with a certain viewpoint, maybe it gets moulded a little bit, but there's a point where stretching your perspective is insufficient. You meet data which is so radical, so life-changing, often the very opposite of what you have looked at the world to be, that you have to actually break your position and take on the new position. And this happens. Inevitably this happens because reality is far-far more radically different and fascinating than you can imagine.
One example: just the recognition that there is life on other planets, some of who are, which are more evolved than us mentally, psychologically, occultly, spiritually, technologically, some of whom, and others who may be less evolved also but technologically more advanced who may come and want to harm also, both, and the fact that these lifeforms, beings, have been visiting the earth, interacting with human beings going back many thousand years, some have even been intervening in our biological and spiritual evolution, now just this fact is so, so shocking, so disruptive to our conventional viewpoint that there is a complete reversal that takes place, paradigm shift.
You cannot do this by small expansions. You'll actually have to suddenly shift and look at the whole situation of the earth from a very different perspective. And this happened in fact: just a few days ago that in the United States, in, one of the persons who was in the Congress committee for mmm, UFO-related phenomena came out with evidence that the United States government, secretly, militarily, has captured crashed flying saucers intact, with their inhabitants intact, going back many decades. And he offered proof of this to the Congress and he came out publicly saying ‘I've done this’. Now this should have been headlines across the world, because it so radically changes our viewpoint. And all we got was a little blip here and there, and it was all buried, and that’s, that's what tells you that the media is not your friend.
You also look at uh, Sri Aurobindo's position on this, I have mentioned before also: When he wrote to Sahana Devi, who asked, “Is it okay that I speak up when somebody abuses you or should I keep quiet?”. Sri Aurobindo says, in an ascetic path you would keep quiet, but here there is a truth to be realised, to be manifested, against which massive forces are organised. They are organised! You are not! And if you do not speak up, you're just giving them way. You have to speak up, you have to fight for what is right. And then Sri Aurobindo says: If the attack had been physical, it would have been obvious, and just because it is psychological does not make it any less dangerous. I am paraphrasing and summarising, but this was the point.
(0:25:01):
And so when I am, spoke about this sexualisation of children, it is extremely important to protect them! And we have to understand, this is part of an Asuric agenda to destroy the future of humanity. In order to be able to deal with this even, even to understand and not be confused by, you know, nice-sounding words that the Asuric forces will use, because they will fit into your mind, worldview, use your belief systems and terms to justify anything, as you know one can do with logic, you have to understand their methods of manipulation and then only you can be free from them.
One of the strategies, and this is one of many, is to lump a lot of issues under a common label. So for example, you use this label ‘right-wing’, or x-phobic, or ‘toxix-y’, or ‘conspiracy theory’. So UFOs, the existence of lifeforms elsewhere or even on earth visiting from other planets, is conspiracy theory. And the moment you have put under that label, that entire label is thrown out. And so this is one of the strategies you must understand and do not allow yourself to be tricked by labels.
Look at issues, shorn off labels, and if something is associated with whatever ‘phobic’, ‘wing’, ‘toxicity’, or ‘conspiracy’, well, separate it from those labels and look at it for what it is, look at the evidence, and then you will find viewpoints change. Ah, I will give a few examples in this case: When you say ‘right-wing’, it is interesting in the United States, the group that has most strongly stood against sexualisation of children has been often Christian groups, they are considered right-wing in the leftist media, but uh, the basis of it of course is Christianity. So it's interesting again to see, in the US, family-values have been held, protected, under the framework of Christianity.
Now in the same Christianity, there might be, not with all, but with a few, certain extremists’ beliefs where they literally follow to the word elements of the Bible or the church or the church teaching which have nothing to do with the Bible, many things possible, and so there you get sometimes extremists’ viewpoints mixed with sometimes very valuable truths and values. And so separate these, don't allow it to fall under one label. So again, I have interacted with people who come from that kind of culture and tradition, and some of them are such wonderful people, and then somewhere along the way, they have this little kink, which comes from a programming that comes either from the book or from the church or whatever other associated element of the religion. And that's it. But all the rest is so fine.
So, recognise that the right is protecting certain truths, equally the left are protecting certain truths, and whatever else, centrists, religions, or other traditions, each inevitably at some point or other have certain truths that they protect. And the moment you chop off pieces because ‘Ha, this is this’, ‘This is that label’, ‘That is that label’, you're left with pieces that don't fit. And you have to recognise, just because I say this ‘Protect the children’ does not mean I'm associating with the entire thing that comes with a group that might say the same thing. It does not mean, I'm associated with that group or that I subscribe to all their beliefs. So make that separation.
Here is a common component among all those who love children and it doesn't have to be bound to specific religions or other groups. So, also your comment about “becoming more and more opinionated versus guiding people to seek a higher grade of truth within themselves”. I think, you have misunderstood the point there. What I was always leading to was: first, disentangling the three levels of confusion; and second, I was always saying, “each one has to grow freely to realise their soul's deepest, highest and fullest potential”. Now there can be no greater non-opinionated potential for finding your own truth. But somehow this has not stuck in what you were listening to, or perhaps you got confused by the emotional distress that may have come from a misreading or misunderstanding of what I was saying.
So the attempt we should always have: Recognise first, truth is multi-layered and multi-dimensional, cannot reduce it to just viewpoints and labels. And we should always seek from wherever we are to widen out to the most complete truth and then prioritise. Now ‘polarise’ would be a wrong word, but ‘prioritise’ over the spiritual evolution and growth of consciousness. Now whatever truth you may find, it's a fact, there is a battle. The battle has certain very ugly elements, and it comes from the nature of the Asuric attack. We have not even touched some of those, how ugly it can be.
Just as a quick fact you should know, according to United Nations statistics, which is a very small part of the story, four million children are trafficked all over the world, every year. Four million! Most of whom don't survive. What are they trafficked for?
(0:30:22):
Sexual trafficking, organ trading, and child sacrifice. This is the reality. It gets far more ugly. I'm not going to touch that. But you have to be very clear that: Knowing this, what can you do for spiritual evolution? Protect your children! Protect yourself! Protect anybody that you can within your sphere of influence, but assist in the awakening. Knowing this fact is disturbing! Then what? Well, turn it upward. What can we do? Move forward. Do not get stuck with these issues because it's been going on for many centuries perhaps, around the world.
And you have to recognise. Go back all the time to the Aztecs, they used to sacrifice human beings and glorify the sacrifice. Yes, that has stopped, but the other things have continued, and across the world. So, always, look for the most complete perspective of truth and then turn to application for the growth of consciousness, for all, for yourself.
The only thing which will matter from, at a time when humanity is entering an increasing period of confusion and the subjective age is going to get far worse in the confusion, the only thing that matters is: Finding a deeper truth. And when you say ‘truth’, in relation to what? I am always pointing to the spiritual truth, the spiritual realisation, the deeper reality of the Self! And how to direct it? How to direct towards that for individual and collective growth? If at any point what you recognise, what you realise, puts you in conflict with some politically correct trends or fashions, then so be it. You may or may not choose to speak out openly, but you do not compromise just because it’s politically incorrect. Your vision has to look beyond the current and the fashionable because all these will pass.
What's the real will last, cling to that. And here I want to give a few examples from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother just to show how: if somebody wanted to attack, and I am sure this is going to happen, it's already happening as I said from within the Ashram itself, you wanted to attack Sri Aurobindo on his views of Indian culture, politics, partition of India, etc., you could easily label him ‘right-wing’, ‘Islamophobic’, ‘toxic masculine’, etc. Why? Because he has texts which speak of mankind!
Now I had a professor from one of the universities in India, she called me up, philosophy professor, she said to me: My students are asking me, why is Sri Aurobindo only talking about mankind and not about womankind? So I explained to them, she says, I explained to them, mankind includes womankind! But they don't accept, they don't agree, because mankind is man, woman is woman.
You see! And had I said this 30 years ago, you would have laughed. Today, it's a serious problem because the children have been indoctrinated to think in terms of man versus woman and not think of the collective reality. And this indoctrination comes up in these ways that when they read the word ‘mankind’, they have a problem, there is a reaction, as a, it is a programmed reaction.
I remember reading in the United States in one of those presidential events, instead of saying ‘Amen’, the woman said ‘A-women’. You know ‘Amen’ has a very different root, it has nothing to do with men. But the programming is so deep, there is a reaction to the word ‘men’, and so you have to twist and flip-in ‘women’.
Sri Aurobindo writes for example: “Man's true way out is to discover his soul and its self-force and instrumentation …”[1] So, why is he talking about man's way out? What about women?
Another example: “Mankind upon earth is one of the foremost self-expression of the universal Being in His cosmic self-unfolding; …”[2] Now if you are programmed to think, mankind is separate from womankind, ‘Oh Sri Aurobindo is toxic masculine, he is only talking about man as being a representation of the divine being, women are left out’!
You know, when I am saying this, it is not meant to be a joke, it is serious! I have had, I have been present for a meeting where a scholar from the CIIS, California Institute of Integral Studies, which was effectively started by Sri Aurobindo through Haridas Chaudhary, which has now been hijacked, as some of you would know, by completely leftist agenda, well, a scholar from that actually claimed this publicly in a discussion, in front of devotees of Sri Aurobindo, where this scholar said that ‘Sri Aurobindo had a problem with women and he was against Mother Nature, he was against feminine values’, etc., and there was a whole lot of junk which came in that way, ‘he was frustrated sexually’, all kinds of things.
(0:35:28):
And it was such a shock because I never expected something like that to come on Sri Aurobindo and then I realised, that is my first introduction to this kind of a distortion. But yes, this is not a joke, this is serious! I will give you another example of how Sri Aurobindo could be abused. So he writes in this sentence, and I will first give you the fragment of the sentence: “… ranging from the poverty of the Bushman and negroid to the rich cultures of Asia and Europe …”[3] Now straightaway “Bushman and negroid” has been placed at a lower level against the “rich cultures of Asia and Europe”. Now straightaway you will say, ‘Ah-yes he is racist’!
Look at the full sentence: “All mankind is one in its nature, physical, vital, emotional, mental and ever has been in spite of all differences of intellectual development ranging from the poverty of the Bushman and negroid to the rich cultures of Asia and Europe, and the whole race has, as the human totality, one destiny which it seeks …to approach”,[4] etc.
Now what he is describing here is the difference of “intellectual development” in the “poverty” of intellectual development of the “Bushman and negroid”. Now remember, he is writing this in 1900 and let us say ‘15 or ‘16. It is completely accurate description. -There is no intellectual training, development, or value system in those cultures at that time! Things have changed today. But the fact is, he was describing a range of groups that represented certain extremes from lower to higher. And when he said generally “rich cultures”, intellectually “rich cultures of Asia and Europe”, yes, it is a fact!
Now you don't find that even in the South Americas or North Americas in the Native American traditions, no, you don't find a rich intellectual tradition. What little was, what is there evidenced, in little evidence, is way back in the far past in the pyramids built, etc., which show extraordinary technology but completely wiped out. Now a statement of fact like this one can easily twist and pervert and say ‘Ah-yes racist’! And it's happening! It will happen! Again I give another example when he speaks of:
“The trend of the Jewish nation which gave us the severe ethical religion of the Old Testament,—crude, conventional and barbarous enough in the Mosaic law,” that is, the law of Moses, “but rising to undeniable heights of moral exaltation when to the Law were added the Prophets, and finally exceeding itself and blossoming into a fine flower of spirituality in Judaic Christianity, …”[5]
So he is showing you how what started from the Moses law of which was “crude, conventional” and barbaric enough, it grows with the prophets but then exceeds itself into a fine flower of spirituality, the prophets only giving morality, and then the spirituality comes. But even there he says, “Judaic Christianity” which is not the full Christianity which comes later. And so in the footnote he writes: “The epithet”, Judaic, “is needed, for European Christianity has been something different, even at its best of another temperament, Latinised, Graecised, Celticised or else only a rough Teutonic imitation of the old-world Hebraism.” [6]
Straightaway in just [laughing] one long sentence, he has gone through this whole arch and the splitting and branching out of Christianity itself. But if you see his description of the law of Moses, “crude, conventional … barbarous enough” and to say, to then blame him for whatever you could, I don't know, what phobic, x-phobic you could make, would be a perversion. So yes, distorted-, misunderstood-positions will happen still! They will be made!
And I hope, our discussion at this point would be enough to cut through those and prevent us from being seduced by those distortions.
Again one, [laughing] couple of more I want to share. Sri Aurobindo comments: “A personal God so acting would be a Jehovah-Moloch, a merciless and unrighteous demander of righteousness and mercy.” [7] So, he is putting “Jehovah-Moloch” together as “a merciless and unrighteous” deity. It's a fact! Again, historical fact! There is another passage where he refers to one of the religions which came up in India and says: crude religions such as this. So in the Ashram, [laughing] there was a bit of a hesitation and they edited his text to replace the word ‘crude’ by ‘simple’, because they were afraid of some reaction from the religionists.
Mother similarly says, “according to Theon,…Jehovah was the chief of the Asuras, the supreme Asura, the egoistic god who wanted to dominate everything and keep everything under his control.”[8]
(0:40:24):
Now again, you're taking a whole religious tradition and saying the very term that they recognised as god “was the chief of the Asuras”. You want to attack her for saying that? Or, would you say, ‘Here's an insight’? It explains why those religions which have derived from that have these, some of these barbaric traits and certain crude forms, to this day. And it's a choice you make. It disturbs you. It forces you to break out of a certain very simple comfort viewpoint, and maybe if you allow a shift and you make that paradigm shift, you can actually look back at human history and understand what really happened.
There was actually a phase where almost all over the world there was a very strong Asuric upsurgence which seized many groups, communities and cultures and even created religions. And subsequently there were many attempts to undo that and reverse that. But this understanding will not come unless you are able to recognise, ‘Ha-yes, some of these religions have their roots in certain Asuric ‘initiators’, let's say. So, I'm going somewhat in depth here because I want to place this whole thing into a larger context.
One could choose to stay silent on politically uncomfortable and politically incorrect positions and talk only of general principles. But then there's a serious danger of increased confusion because you misapply those general principles, which often comes up in these very loose talk, which goes like, ‘All religions are the same’, ‘All spiritual paths are the same’, ‘All viewpoints are equally valid’, ‘All practices lead to the same goal’.
Simple answer to all these: No! No! No! No! They are different! They have different goals, they have different processes, different methods, different practices can have very different outcomes, similar practices can have different outcomes based on the framework of belief, religion, or alignment of priority. And it is a, not so simple. And it is completely wrong to put them all on one platform. So if somebody takes a position saying, ‘No, this is wrong’, you say, ‘Ah-yes, but that sounds like the Pope who said “Yes” ’ after a lot of pressure on him, the Pope said, “Yes, all religions are, have their validity but Christianity is the only true faith’, ah, you sound like that!
No, I am saying something very different. I am not saying, there is a true faith and a false faith and…. I am saying, there are principles, there are processes, and we have to go down to their essential principles. Now if one does not go deep enough and look at what I'm saying, you could easily quote me and say, ‘Ha, this fellow is another right-wing Pope’ or whatever, ‘left-wing Pope’, I don't know what the Pope is called. But that's not it. I'm saying something very different. So my reason for going in depth in all this is to show what that difference is. Right now, which is one of those periods of great confusion, and it's going to get a little worse for a while. One has to choose sides with courage and state what is right, even if you face some pushback, again to the extent you are willing to take the pushback.
I made a choice to speak in, in spite of some risk of misunderstanding, which I also stated at that time, in spite of risk of attacks also. But the issue is so serious, because what is at stake is the future of our children, the future of humanity and their psychic values. We see so many young children, and I am, I am now old enough to have seen enough children from the time I was a child, when people said, ‘Oh, so and so has such great potential’, to see them as they went through their educational system and come out totally lost or sometimes perverted, their spiritual potential covered up or gone off-track. I've seen enough of that to say: “This should not be allowed, we have to protect, otherwise what happens to all these souls who come into this world with this great potential and then are just misled.”
And this is the reason why I chose to speak up on a matter which to me is extremely serious. No sexualisation of children! And separate these three things which are very different, do not confuse them, and pretty much most problems would become easily solved!
(0:45:00):
So when it comes to the question of truth, which is the whole point of uh, this discussion, whether you speak for what is true or not, Sri Aurobindo offers us three references, three tests of truth:
First is the test of reason: Did what I say make sense rationally? Forget politically correct statements. Was it rationally true? Was it rationally correct?
Second is intuition: Did it feel right to some deeper part that says ‘Yes, this resonates’?
And third is experience: And the experience could have many dimensions here, and I have as far as possible tried to give examples often drawing from my own experience or experiences of those who I would trust to show where these things can cause trouble.
And if you see the nature of the force that is coming in and the way it's working to warp humanity and aim straight at the children, especially the first six years when you're most impress, impressionable, but till the age of 12 even your individuality can be easily damaged. If you see that, if you know how it works, then you would be able to look through this and say, ‘Ha-yes, this we cannot avoid, we cannot keep quiet, we have to speak up’. I can share an experience I had. Not so nice. It was around that period, I think, it was around the time when this happened, uh, 2004, ‘5, I said, a lot of these things started getting into the media in a big way through cinema and then later with political backing from 2006, ‘7.
It was around that time, 2004-5, I had read a book which was Noam Chomsky's compilation, I mean, there were many authors and they were describing how education was being corrupted and how various systems of humanity were taken over. And I read that, I found it disturbing, but it was one of those paradigm-shift moments. I realised, this can't happen by chance, there has to be some organised institutional and forces backing it. And so I had just read that, it troubled me, I was still internalising, digesting it, and I went for an afternoon nap. I went to sleep, I woke up, but because this had been going on within me, I, as I woke up, my consciousness was turning to the source of where is this all coming from. And in that moment, because I was in between the worlds, the consciousness touched that thing, the darkness behind.
It's difficult to convey this, but it was so overwhelming, so overwhelming, the entire being began to sob uncontrollably. It was as if it took away all hope, all possibility, all light, just snuffed it all, just like that, that brief moment. And after that, it took me about 45 minutes to recover. I just called my mother and held her and wept and wept until the thing passed. And that was my first contact with that thing which is behind it all, and I realised what kind of a force, what kind of a power it had. And still, I said, ‘Okay, one experience’!
And then I met with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, he is a very senior spiritual head in the, one of the Sufi traditions of Irina Tweedie, and he is one of, somebody I respect very highly for his spiritual depth and realisation. We were discussing certain things, and we shared something interesting: Around 2003, we both said, ‘Ha-yes, that was an opportunity’, I was made to do something, he was made to do something around the same time. It was as if a last attempt to coordinate or bring collaboration among all the spiritual people and communities. And then he said, he's been seeing the darkness, the clouds, at a distance surrounding the world. And then from about 2010, he said, he's seeing the clouds entering and stuffing out all the points of light. That was his experience! And the point was, to me it corresponded with what I had also felt.
Not in that way, I had experienced it differently but the same point, the same experience. And so to me again: reason, intuition, and experience. What do you do then, if it fits all these? And then I've seen the evidence subsequently, and some of the evidence is very compelling. And you just take a position, you take a position of what needs to be done and take steps where required.
(0:50:03):
So I don't speak about this all the time, because it's too much for most people, but when it needs to be said, it needs to be said, and this was one of those circumstances. And I hope, what I've shared now will help bring clarity and not confusion. And also my position, my stance on this, very specific, I hope I have clarified. So when you look for your deeper truths, again, use these three references, but whatever you may experience, whatever you may discover, accept that as provisional, because it's a beginning. Eventually you must grow, wait for a greater completeness, and the fullness of the truth will be revealed, and sometimes it has a dark side.
For many years, for many years, till the age of 33 or so, I refused to look at the dark side until it whacked me and forced me to face it and say, ‘Okay, you have to face this, otherwise you don't have a full picture’. And so that also happens when you are seeking the full truth. I think, this is good enough as a full clarification of my position and what I was attempting to communicate. I hope, it helps you to understand better that I am not taking a stance criticising any sexual preferences, I'm very specific to this, I am not aligning with any right-wing views or groups which have their own mixtures of positions. What I am saying is very specific. If it is shared by somebody else because they believe in family values, all the better. But it is not a political position or a religious position.
Okay, [laughing] so. I think, we can go to the next question.
Alina (0:51:37):
We have a question from Rohan: “Please can you shed some light on yoga nidra?How is it different from meditation? How to practice yoga nidra, if at all it is different from other forms of dhyana?”
Sraddhalu (0:51:55):
So the question is about yoganidra as different from meditation and various forms of dhyana or meditation, if at all they are different. So just to get a sense of uh, what kind of material is out there, I did a search ‘yoganidra’ versus ‘meditation’, and I found many websites discussing, ‘Yoganidra does this’, ‘Meditation does that’. I am sure you will find many such. My viewpoint will be very different, because one of the things which I consider extremely important to get a real understanding is to be able to consciously break out of all preconceptions and boundaries, including all definitions which are specific or narrow to a tradition or a practice.
So what is yoganidra? Ha–yes, of course, there is this practice! What is meditation? Ha-yes, there is that practice, or that system, or that religion, or uh, yoga school. You take those boxes and compare them, you'll find something. You take a different box and compare them, you'll find something else. For me, the way is, break all boxes, go to the core of it! Then, of course, you say: What do you mean by yoganidra What do you mean by meditation? Because they are almost like large umbrellas with a very large overlap.
So, I'm going to put it this way: Depending on how you define yoga-nidra or even meditation, it can mean anything from relaxation to destressing, to some kind of hypnosis, therapeutic, or otherwise, or some kind of interiorisation, or some kind of healing, or some kind of deeper spiritual meditation, or even some kind of out-of-body experience. Now, if you go into the real uh, depth of the tradition itself, all these are included, not necessarily with great clarity, sometimes they are just blurred in one continuum. And depending on practitioners and the way they practice or their readiness, they may spontaneously pop into one or more of these kinds of experiences, not even intending to do it, or they may develop a whole system of practice for a specific outcome such as maybe out-of-body experience and then call that ‘yoganidra’.
So I don't know if I am helping you [laughing] or confusing you. What I would do is precisely to break the boxes. I am not speaking of what is yoganidra. I am not speaking of meditation. Or their differences. I am showing here a continuum of practices which could be put under the umbrella-term of ‘yoganidra’ or the umbrella-term of ‘meditation’. And all of these could somehow be fitted there because the terms themselves are so broad.
‘Yoganidra’ literally translated would be ‘yogic sleep’. What do you mean by that? Well, you could mean all of these, or any of these, or none of these.
What do you mean by ‘meditation’? It's a dwelling of the mind on some theme. Again, if the theme is spiritual, it would take a different direction. If the meditation is to solve a practical problem, it would take a different direction. If the meditation is to relax and destress, it would take a different direction.
(0:55:05):
So, they are umbrella-terms. What I would point is: There's in fact one more term which I will bring into this, ‘hypnosis’ or just relaxation. And all of these could kind of blur into each other because there is actually a continuum.
The common feature of all these,—relaxation, yoganidra, hypnosis, or meditation,—is that there is first of all a relaxation and then second some degree of interiorisation, your consciousness shifts inward. You may do nothing, just relax and daydream and you have a slight interiorisation. Yoganidra, you may make that more explicit, but again depending on the practices, you may focus on the body and not go deep enough, or you may end up in the inner part of the physical, but not in the inner vital or inner mind and may approach nowhere near the soul. Or, if that is the goal, in the yoganidra itself, you may disengage from the body totally and go into some state in the subtle body and then step out into an out-of-body experience. Or you could go deeper still and find your soul, and maybe that would be equivalent to a spiritual form of meditation.
So the common feature is this slight interiorisation. Then where you go with that, how you get to that, would be the difference between all of them. In relaxation, you could be leading it or someone else could be leading it. In yoganidra, you could lead it or someone else could lead it. In hypnosis, generally, somebody else leads it or you may do it by self-hypnosis method. But in all of these, generally speaking, and that's why we would limit to these terms, we enter in the inner regions closer to the surface and therefore rarely have a spiritual benefit.
Meditation, we generally associate with the spiritual practice. But again the bulk of what I find out there as meditation or under the classification of meditation is not very different from these, let's say slight interiorisations. To be able to go much deeper all the way in, to enter the domain of your soul's influence or to arise into a deeper or higher state of consciousness, to go above the mind, to open out into a universal or infinite consciousness, and so on, would be the true purpose of the spiritual dimensions or purpose of meditation.
Hypnosis won't get you there. Relaxation alone is not enough. Yoganidra at best is an entry point. So I'm going to use the term ‘meditation’ deliberately, I'm saying after having broken the boxes, I will reserve the term meditation for those possibilities where you can go much deeper. It does not mean all who meditate go there. It does not mean all the practices that you find of meditation are intended to take you there. Many are just relaxation exercises. You go to some of these corporate meditation programmes, it's just relaxation and destressing, ohoo, they call it ‘meditation’. That's all.
So I hope that helps to understand the difference [laughing] and does not confuse you more.
We'll go to the next question.
Alina (0:58:16):
Surya, she's addressing this comment: “I want to ask, how to do yoga? Sri Aurobindo's work on yoga seems a little too difficult or demanding for a person in her early 20’s like me. I do understand that “All life is Yoga”, but how can I integrate and offer myself better, for I perceive my limitations more and more vividly staring at me when I make an effort to raise myself above the circumstances that I am presented with? But the knot does break nevertheless, not by my effort but by her Grace. How to go from consciousness to consciousness as Mother says? It would be helpful if you could shed light on this.”
Sraddhalu (0:59:08):
Mhhm. Yes, actually there are several elements to the question: First is: “how to do yoga?”. I will suggest that you go back to the evening series and watch from number, I think, 82 onwards through about a 100 or even a little more. The reason being: I have actually dealt with these step by step in a graded way, sometimes taking questions as a starting point; going in-depth first in the difference between Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga and other systems, and particularly this distinction between an affirmative yoga and a ascetic yoga; and then distinguishing between what makes for a sunlit path within the Integral Yoga; and then gradually building to certain forms of initial practice, including meditation; and then going to the structure, sevenfold structure, of the Integral Yoga itself.
(1:00:10):
So I would suggest that you go through those. It will take a little while perhaps for you to go in, in detail because each of those sessions is a little over an hour. But it would be the most comprehensive answer I could give when you say “How to do yoga?”, particularly Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga.
And then you have said that: “Sri Aurobindo's works on yoga seem a little too difficult or demanding for a person in her 20’s like me.” Yes, perhaps “too … demanding” if you really want to understand the full picture. But if you want to put it into practice, it is not at all demanding. One of the simplest things you could do as an initial stage of preparation in the Yoga itself is you look up this text by the Mother called “The Four Austerities and the Four Liberations”[9]where she speaks of: the tapasya of knowledge, the tapasya of power, the tapasya of beauty, and the tapasya of love.
You’ll see, these correspond to our four members, so to say: mind for knowledge; the vital being for the power; physical consciousness for the form, beauty; and the soul, the psychic being, as the centre for love. Well, the tapasya of all four is like, if you do it together as a combined tapasya of your whole being, but a quick warning: what she presents there, extremely applied and practical, very simple. But if you really want to do it, it's extremely difficult. Why? Because it demands from you certain things which you may not be ready to compromise, it's only because of that. It's not difficult to do. It's difficult if you want to compromise.
So for example, one of the things for the tapasya of knowledge, you want your mind to become a vehicle of the divine truth. Do not speak a lie. If you speak lies, well, you cannot, because each time you speak a lie, in order to speak a lie you must believe the lie, you have to warp your mind, you will not be able to make it a transparent instrument for the divine truth. So, so on, for other things. Now you may not be ready to do that, because, ‘Well, the circumstances of life, I am not willing to compromise in my twenties, I need to speak a few white lies. So it's not difficult to do. It might be difficult to practice only because it demands something.
But what I would suggest there: When you read the whole thing, pick from it the five easiest things that you can do. Maybe you can't lie, you cannot speak the truth and not lie, okay, avoid that. But something else you can do. Very well, start with that. Or someone else may say, ‘Okay, I will do it as a strategy, I won't lie, but when I have something inconvenient to say, I will say, “Look, I'd rather not discuss it” ’. Find a way to avoid lying. And you take that as the easier thing to do, whatever, it doesn't matter. Start with five or six little things that you can find easy to do and just start doing them.
And as you start doing them, you'll find a lot of things begin to fall into place, pieces within your consciousness begin to align to your central aspiration. So it's a kind of a preparatory stage for organising, but the framework itself she offers as a practice is a very comprehensive framework. But it's a framework of purification, preparation, that makes you capable of that [gesturing upwards] opening. If meanwhile there is also an opening taking place and you have the descent of the Divine Shakti, the rest of it may begin to happen automatically.
Otherwise, in any case, if you are going to watch those videos with some detailed discussion,—practices, forms, and goals, objectives, etc.,—are very clearly outlined and always I have done it with a practical intention, so it's not a theory, what you can start with right now. And so, I will simply say: Start with what is easiest. And framework of “All life is Yoga” means, everything is taken up in it. But that's not enough. What do you do with what's taken up? And that you'll find to be not difficult at all.
The next part of the question is: How do you “integrate and offer” yourself better? The integration will take place in this way: When everything you do, you relate to some central aspiration, where is that central aspiration? It may be different. For someone it’s in the mind, for someone else it is in the heart and emotions, or someone else it is a very practical ideal or some work they do. Whatever that reference currently is, relate everything to that. Let that be as deep and high as you can and relate everything to that. That’s the starting point for the integration, that is your temporary reference for your soul and the soul's aspiration.
(1:04:53):
And so as this begins to happen, because this is a turning to the Divine, automatically all that aligns to it will begin also to relate to the Divine. The simplest and easiest way to start!
Now, what does it mean to refer all to it? Well, every decision you take. You pause, become conscious of this, in relation to this what do you choose? Every action you do before you initiate it, become conscious of this, and then from here initiate the action. And at the completion of the action, come back to this reference and make a conscious offering ‘Here, all this I have done is for [gesturing above] this’. During the action you may be lost, it doesn't matter. Before and after you will relink. And in this way automatically the integration and offering will take place very simply.
And you see, you become conscious, you said, you become conscious of your limitations vividly when you make an effort, yes, because the reality is, we are all so messed up. That's our starting point, so limited, so clouded, so mixed, so, everything you could criticise about. But all of us are like that, there is no difference at all. But that's our starting point, so don't criticise or blame yourself.
One of the things that happens as the light shines more and more, it reveals all the, well, dark patches or the confused patches. And just because it revealed, it doesn't mean, you become now a bad fellow. It's just now you become conscious, ‘Ha– yes, this is here’.
Okay, it was always there. The fact that the light has revealed it is a sign that the light is beginning to, well, deal with it, dissolve it, change it, transform it. So you should celebrate, ‘Ha-yes, one more thing which has come into the light and now it will be dissolved, I know it will happen because it was brought to light by her, not by me’. And so if you take it in that way, it will actually go faster. If you say, ‘Oh-no, I am realising vividly my limitations, oh, I am so incapable’, then you sink, you don’t, you have to use that opportunity to grow rather.
And as you say, yes the knot breaks nevertheless, but it will break more easily when you say, ‘Ha– yes, here is another knot ready to be dissolved’, you won't need to break them. It's when you cover it and say, ‘Ho-no, what a horrible thing!’, then it needs to be broken because you cling to it. You open and say, ‘Here, I give it to be dissolved, it's not mine anyway, it was just there’. It's junk that is our starting point, so. Then the next question, which is a separate issue, is: “How to go from consciousness to consciousness …?” Yes, that is very important. To be able to shift states of consciousness.
Now I will give an analogy first. If you look at your emotions, you realise that your emotions are fluctuating all the time. Just as an exercise, do this for a few days, you keep a little note if you like, paper or on your mobile phone, your note. Every hour you pause, put a beep, you pause and look at your state, thoughts, emotions, actions, motivations, disruptions, orientations, exteriorisations, interiorisation, whatever, just make a short note. I knew a couple who actually started writing on the wall like a graph every hour, state of consciousness higher or lower. It's not the best, because your high or low may not necessarily be high and low, sometimes what you call ‘low’ may be an awakening, but it's actually a step forward. So just a brief description of in which you're noting what's happening. And then you look back over the week.
You'll be surprised at how much the states fluctuate and how. But also in the act of observing, you'll be surprised at how conscious you have become and with it, automatically, a shift has taken place, with no other effort on your part, just bringing that into your awareness. And then you'll notice, let's say: your emotions shifted, now you're in a low emotion, now you're in a clearer emotion, now you're in a confused state, now you have a clarity of mind.
Just noticing, as it happens, you'll say, ‘Oh, I don't want to slip into this again’ and you'll shift slightly from this confusion of emotions to clarity of emotions, from confusion of thought to clarity of thought, Just like that, you'll shift by choice. Observe this and then consciously make the choice. All this can happen within days. It's actually that fast. You do it for a few weeks, great!
Now you'll notice that in your state of consciousness there are also states which are not only clearer but also higher and lower, wider or narrower, perspectives which are closed and narrow, self-interested or perspectives which are more embracing and including. Observe. And then after a while automatically from observation it will move to freedom of choice, ‘Ha-yes, now I'm sinking into this narrow phase, mmm, not useful’, consciously widen. That's it. You just did it. It's actually that simple.
(1:10:11):
So if I teach you a technique to go from consciousness to consciousness, you'll be busy with the technique. In the Integral Yoga, and this will be one of those discussions in that, from 82 onwards, when we speak of the direct method, you can actually become aware and shift: from low to high, from out to in, from narrow to wide, and then other states. Consciously you will be able to turn, and align, and deepen, until you touch something of the psychic influence, and literally a welling-up of its influence fills you.
Similarly you will be able to turn up, open to something, and receive a descent, but then gradually with it you will find, you can also rise into this clarity and light, touch something of the intuition, and then slowly settle back. Just like that! Shift of state by becoming familiar with the states.
For example, just with the body, if you notice your leg is shaking, and I say, ‘Hey, your leg is shaking’, ‘Oh’, you stop it. As long as you were unconscious of the leg shaking, you couldn't stop because you were unconscious. Someone made you conscious, you were able to stop it. I say, ‘Look, your shoulders are too tight, relax!’, ‘Oh, yes’, and you're able to relax, just the way you do. How do you do? What is your technique for relaxing shoulders? There's no technique. You just feel and relax. Exactly the same thing happens in the emotions, and in the mind, and then even in deeper and higher ranges. As you become familiar in awareness, you shift states, poises, perspectives, easily. So this would be the most direct way and elaboration of that when you read, when you listen to the session on the direct method and the general practice of the Integral Yoga itself.
We can go to the next question.
Alina (1:12:09):
Vigneshwar is writing: “In a recent session you mentioned that doing japa is not going to change who you are fundamentally. Now, even through a miracle that was not expected, that was very discouraging to hear. We've been told to chant Gayatri Mantra internally in order to prepare ourselves to receive wisdom. All that only to change ourselves, isn't it? How to understand this in the correct way?”
Sraddhalu (1:12:43):
Yes, I'm sorry for the frank talk! You see, this is also part of the discussion if you go back to that series, and I would recommend for you also to watch from number 82 onwards, where these things have been discussed in great detail about the methods and techniques.
You see, you have to understand what japa does. There are even people who have said, ‘Ha-yes, but Mother was doing japa of Om Namo Bhagavate, and so we will do japa’. Okay, sure, do it! The question is: Does it work? Does it give you the benefit you want? Does it actually help you grow in your consciousness?
And there are people who come back after 20, 30 years and say, ‘Well, not much has changed’. You must be very clear, the Mother used that particular japa for a certain period, for a very specific task. She was with the children in the Playground, they were watching a movie, it was a religious movie, I think, of Sant Gyaneshwar, and child saint, in any case, whoever it was, I don't know. And there was this chant of Om Nama Bhagavate Vasudevaya. And the Mother found that in her body, because she was working on the body consciousness of the cells, she found the cells responding to that chant immediately and rising with that chant and responding to it. And she said, ‘Oh, this is interesting’, and then she began to see if that chant could be used for assisting the cells to awaken. And it was because the physical consciousness is a mechanical consciousness that the mechanical rhythm was helpful, for that purpose.
Now you will not find anywhere else either Sri Aurobindo or the Mother doing any kind of mantra japa. Why? And yet you see what they achieved. It was not done by Japa. Why are you asked to do Japa? Well, because that's one of the methods among dozens of methods given in the yogic tradition to help you shift states of consciousness. It is given to those who are unable to shift consciously and the idea being that the repetition would have the effect of drawing a certain vibrational quality associated with the repetition to help you make a shift, or to invoke a specific power, or to gain a specific outcome.
All depends on what attitude and intention you do it with. So one of the key-points which will, which is there elaborated in that discussion.
You see the same mantra is used for 20 different outcomes, or two different mantras are used for the same outcome. What is their correlation?
(1:15:13):
It has nothing to do with the mantra, it has to do with your intention. So you have mentioned that, you were expect to, you were taught to chant Gayatri to prepare to receive wisdom! Well, I was taught the Gayatri Mantra in order to uh, call of a protection. Interesting. Somebody else has taught the Gayatri Mantra for some other outcome. Of course, I was also taught formally this thing about invoking the light, Sri Aurobindo's Gayatri invoking the light on the whole being, whereas the traditional Gayatri invoking the light in the mind only, etc.
You do it with that intention, and yes, you do feel a certain result. But now the question is: Is the mantra causing the light? Or, is your consciousness turning to open to the light, opening you, and the light then comes and enters? And you notice, sometimes you've barely started the mantra, but you've turned to the light and you feel the light already; you could stop the mantra, the light would continue. Or, you could simply concentrate and turn to the light, no mantra at all, and you would receive the light.
Do you need the mantra? No, you don't need it. Do you find it helpful? Okay, if it's helpful, go ahead. But now comes the next stage. When you want that [gesturing above] light, and you want that light to be higher and higher, more complete, and the intuition, when you want the intuition to now begin to fill your mind, the first requirement is for your mind to be absolutely silent. Any activity, any agitation, any expectation, even any bias, even in conception that the truth should be such and not otherwise, is warping the mirror and preventing the light, preventing the pure intuition. So, total stillness of mind!
And if you have got the habit of doing your japa, you are going to have a hard time now to stop your mind from this mechanical restlessness that comes with the japa. I saw people in the Ashram, some people had got into this thing that, it's one of those very weird religious types where they would say, ‘Only through japa of Mother's name can you attain to transformation’. Somebody says that. I don't know who. And then, they all start doing that. And so they go mama-mama-mama-mama-mama. Their lips are going [gesturing moving lips without sound] mama-mama-mama-mama-mama. Their mind is everywhere, they are thinking other things, but lips are going! What use does it have? Well, if it helps you, fine. If it doesn't, move on.
So this restlessness is not helpful at all if your goal is to reach something higher. And therefore, yes, please, if the mantra helps you, go ahead. But use the mantra as a starting point. As quickly as possible let the movement of the mantra fade and concentrate on the sense of the experience that the mantra leads to, and enter the experience, and then deepen into it in the stillness and silence of the Self where no mantra is needed, and you can gain to whatever it is you seek. And you may have used the mantra as an entrypoint, and to which I will even say, even that you can now discard.
If you have touched the experience, now use the experience itself as your reference, drop all else. For a person who cannot hold attention at all, and you find this in the corporate world, full of them, they are full of these types who don't have the basic capacity or training to quiet the mind, well, you give a mantra! ‘Ho, repeating the mantra, for the, for the first time my mind was filled with activity which was not the restless dispersal, it was concentrated but active’, because they can't hold a still mind, so you are active but in a narrow concentration, ‘I felt relief!’. ‘And maybe if the mantra was invoking peace, I get some kind of quietness also.’ So you see, the mantra has a great utility for a mind which is totally untrained and undeveloped.
But having got to a certain degree of training and development and the touch of experience, as quickly as possible shed these secondary means, go directly to the experience! That was my point in saying that mantra in itself will not give you the change, it will only keep you going. A mantra becomes an end in itself. If you are counting mantras, you count 10,000 times, you are busy counting, and you are busy thinking: When will it finish? How much time do I have? Where is your mind? Not on the experience! If instead I said, forget 10,000, forget 100, forget 10, forget 5, just do once with full attention, and now you put your full awareness on the thing which you seek, and then speak or think the mantra, your attention is what got you there, not the mantra.
(1:20:04):
So use mantra as a crutch if it helps you. But my suggestion would be, if you are capable of getting to that state of concentration directly, drop the crutch. There is one more situation though: When the mantra would be extremely helpful? So I want to switch to this question of Vani. Can we go to that straight?
Alina (1:20:31):
Straight to Vani's question, yes? “My question is regarding the training of senses. Pratyahara is one of the uh, in Pratyahara, in one of the evening series, you have explained that actually there are two steps: with withdrawing of the senses; and the turning inward. How can we train for the second step? In the Essays on the Gita, book chapter on the sacrifice, it is given: ‘Some offer their senses into the fires of control, others offer the objects of sense into the fires of sense, and others offer all the actions of the sense and all the actions of the vital force into the fire of the Yoga of self-control kindled by knowledge.’[10] -Could you please elaborate on this as a practice? After being unwell for several, for over a week”, she is saying, “my mind was distracted and also very dull. How can one train senses to be inwardly concentrated and mind remain one-pointed even during illnesses?”
Sraddhalu (1:21:59):
Okay. So actually it is in reference to this last part, the third question really that I was relating to when I said, the use of japa in such a case. What happens during illness is that your consciousness is pulled into the body and the dullness of the body. If you have the capacity, you can of course separate from the body, Mother even gives this as a potential practice, you separate from the body and from your subtle body you turn to your physical body and invoke and infuse energy into it for its healing. But, well, most of us have not yet got to that point, but you must learn to do it in any case, and it's not difficult to do.
But while you're at it, your body being so dull, pulls you down, at that time even your higher aspiration fades because for most of us the aspiration is in the higher ranges of the mind, even those who have a devotional aspiration, it belongs to the domain of the mental body, it’s, the devotion is in the, where the emotions connect to the mental body. And so with the dulling of the body, all these things suddenly become as if pulled down, you look at the world and everything feels heavy, and all the spiritual ideals fade away, and so on. It's very difficult at that point to hold attention or to recall even your aspiration depending on what the condition is.
At that time, repetition of the name or a mantra becomes the body's way, so to say, of beginning the process of relinking. And, so you understand the value of the mantra or such physical means. They are useful. There are times when they are necessary, or even there one can avoid because one can do it by kind of a direct concentration in the body itself, but they can be a great aid. If you see in Savitri, the only time in the whole journey of Ashwapati, when “the saviour Name” comes to his lips, when he goes deep into the subconscious and the darkness is so suffocating, it will almost as if extinguishes consciousness, that's when he repeats “the saviour Name”. And because the physical vibration, the physical consciousness, involved in the repetition, that becomes the link point to the inner and higher.
So I wanted to link the mantra-question to this. So how can you “train senses to be inwardly concentrated and mind remain one-pointed … during illness”? Well, by doing it. But make small steps. Recognise that the tiredness is what dulls. So gather your energies in one part which is least affected by the dullness of the illness, and then in that small little concentrated part you turn in aspiration. Don't try to bring the full intensity that you had before. Just this small, it’s like the tip of the flame awakening and opening like a lamp, and then perhaps bit by bit from there it may spread into the rest of you.
The second question here was from the Bhagavad Gita: How, what does it mean to offer your senses into the fire of control, and the object of the senses into the fire of the senses, and offer all the actions of the senses and all the actions of the vital force into the fire of “Yoga of self-control”? Basically these are, you can say, three-layered process, and they are all part of this uh, “Yoga of knowledge” in the Bhagavad Gita. One of the key-elements of the “Yoga of knowledge” is this complete mastery and control of everything by the consciousness. And so this describes that process.
(1:25:35):
Normal human being is largely pulled by the senses: ‘Ohaa, there is something so interesting, wow, fascinating’. You are stuck! You have forgotten yourself. I was standing outside one of the buildings near the Ashram and looking up at the tree, it was a cotton tree, and I was trying to, looking at something to do with the cotton and the way it was, and I kept staring. After a while, people who were passing by stopped and began to look because ‘It must be something very interesting that I'm staring at’ so they began to look, not seeing anything interesting they passed on eventually.
What happened there? The senses catch. Pull the mind And everything gets pulled. And forgotten! It's so easy, literally. I don't know if you've seen people playing with a cat or a dog with a laser pointer, you do this red point and the cat starts jumping all over the place chasing it, it cannot control itself. Well, our mind is like that. Whatever attraction comes and sometimes chains of associations, we are jumping all over the place.
So you bring it into control. So: the object of the senses, the sense itself, and then the lifeforce which is guiding all this, all these eventually have to be aligned and brought under the influence of some central agency, in this case the conscious mind, conscious will, and so on. That in a nutshell is what that text refers to.
In a sense, it's afar a kind of a integration and centreing of consciousness. Again, to what? Well, ideally the centre of your aspiration, whatever that may be, your deepest, highest, station that you can access right now, link everything there. But the exercise itself as it is described is largely mind-driven. You could do the same thing with the heart's opening and the same thing with the consecration of the work that you do also, before starting the work, ending with the work.
I have touched upon it just a while back, you get the idea. But all of this is still a turn outward. So your first question is: What is this “turning inward”? So I described the movement: first of all you are all out there looking all around, you are not even conscious of you, you pull your awareness back, ‘Oh, this is me’, to the point where you forget everything else. Just this. [gesturing heart]
And then: What is the sense of me? What is the truth of me? From where does this deeper aspiration come? From where does this love for the Divine Mother come? From where does this awareness and sense of existing come? You could use any of these as a starting point, depending on the Jnana-aspect or Bhakti-aspect or Karma-aspect, doesn't matter. And then you as if turn-in to the awareness of this. [gesturing psychic]
The easiest is of course with the devotion and love that you feel for the Divine Mother. As you become very quiet, you feel this movement welling up from deep within. When you become aware of it, it has already come to the surface and open out like a stream coming out from a cave. Catch that. And then as if you drift-in deeper to the source of it. You feel it welling up from deeper inside, ‘Oh’, you drift deeper. And after a while it feels as if you can't go deeper. You wait there. And after a while you feel as if something is still deeper from where it wells up, ‘Oh, you are there’. You drift deeper. Each time you grow aware that there is a still deeper layer, you drift, let yourself drift actually, effortlessly. And that's this inward movement. When continued for a while, and with a basic concentration you can continue quite a bit, you come to a state in which you are as if completely lost to the world. And there is a quiet, deep, calm, or joy, love, Presence, and you stay there, and it feels so good, you don't want to come out.
But then you observe, as you eventually begin to come out, there is actually a gap between this state and your normal state, there is actually a passage of return, there is a time taken, there is a gap in the state of consciousness, and then you will actually use a vocabulary ‘That feels outside, this feels inside’. And you will be able to learn to shift between these two poises, then we go deeper, and deeper, and so on. And a similar exercise can be done also in an upward movement.
(1:30:15):
So your question will be more complete if we take up the question also not only turning inward but turning upward. There is a similar poise of a mind-awareness that is very clear, and you will say high in clarity, and then a dulling and a lowering. And again you will find, you can rise up to this poise and move back and forth, and you notice how you shift in your day. But there is a point from here sometimes you feel, ‘Ha-yes, I can go a little higher’, ‘Ha-yes’, there is greater clarity, lightness, freedom, even a kind of light, stillness, wideness. And then a little more. And there's a point where automatically your eyes begin to turn, and your consciousness, your eyes begin to close and your consciousness turns inward, deepens, because there's a correspondence between depth and height.
All of this, I've described the method, I've described the process, it's actually very simple, take small steps but persist, and you will find very quickly how this thing will happen. I want to, it's time for us to close, I want to take a quick look at the chat box also, and some of these we will take up next time.
Akhilesh has asked: “Worshipping a God, Lakshmi Narasimha, with mantra japa, what effect on consciousness, chakra system, and other aspects of the person?”
Like I said, it's not so much the form of the worship that you do, rather the intention which you hold which makes all the difference. So, if that is your natural Ishta Devata, your form of deity which is beloved to your heart, fine, take whatever form is closest to your heart where you can freely open spontaneously with love, with joy. That's all that matters. The specific forms don't matter.
A lot of the mantra japa, etc., which is taught in certain yogic traditions has more value in the occult practices where the sheer repetition builds a certain vital energy around it, and then the mantra acts like a lever to trigger that vital energy for a vital outcome, and that's actually in the domain of the occult, not so important spiritually. So, for people who want to gain powers, and so on, that becomes useful. Similarly, taking specific deities for specific tasks, for specific outcomes, is more in the domain of the occult, and largely, I'm sorry if this may hurt a few, largely it operates at the level of the vital energies. It's not spiritual.
Spirituality, by definition, would be in relation to the Self, and in the Self all aspects of the Divine are included already. So the moment you need to find focus on a specific aspect for specific outcome, you can be sure, it is not really deepening into spirituality but engaging with occult, I will say, benefits or results. Spiritually not so helpful, doesn't change your consciousness fundamentally as I said.
Chendok is asking, he is writing a thesis on shamanic practices and rituals pertaining to music: “Can you throw light upon it?”
It's a theme in itself, but I will say, just because in context of what we have already discussed, bulk of the shamanic practices aim at again the vital worlds or worlds very close to the physical. And the music then is often of a certain type, rhythmic, mechanical, repetitive, sometimes having nuances, but, and then speeding up, intensifying, becoming either louder or faster and creating a state of excitation or excitation with exhaustion. That combination is very much valued. So they go on for hours and hours late into the night and dancing-dancing until the nervous system is pushed to the brink. But sometimes using certain substances they keep it heightened and intensified, the energy is still there, but it is brought to the edge. And at that point you are exhausted, so all the lower parts as if drop off, but you are excited so as if the subtle, vital parts are awake, and that's the point where your biology drops, your life-energy acts, and you link into the vital world, so to say. You plug-in into that world by sheer exhaustion-and-excitation combination.
And bulk of the music is aiming at that kind of outcome, if I get the hang of what you mean by shamanic practices, so, and the nature of the dance and all that, since the goal is just to get there, spiritually not very useful. Again as a method even to enter the vital world, to me, it's kind of primitive. But it's accessible to everyone. So as a method, it's okay.
What would be a superior method, even from an occult point of view? Well, you shift your awareness into the vital level, disengage from the gross-physical body, literally shifting-in, opening out to the vital, and then sensing!
(1:35:28):
If you have separated sufficiently from the gross-physical, your physical body will be in a state of semi-trance or sleep-like state, you are free, at that point you can step out of the body.
You know, remember the Mother, when she was in the boat and there was a storm, she was told by her teacher to go and stop the storm. So she goes to her room in the boat, steps out of the body, and she sees all these little beings dancing, vital beings dancing in a frenzy, she brings down peace and infuses the peace until they all become calm, she comes back to her body, comes out on the boat, and the storm has stopped, and there's just quiet windless day. So this would be the, well, sophisticated method, I would even say, a borderline spiritual method of doing it, but it's not yet spiritual, it's still an occult method, but it is closer to the spiritual approach, that is a direct method rather than doing indirectly through such processes.
I hope that is helpful. Yes. So, RG has a question: “Does opening of chakras limit the consciousness?”
–No, it’s suppose to free the consciousness. It’s the closed chakras or half-closed chakras which are limiting the consciousness. So the intention in opening chakras is that, in their opening, the link between the subtle body and the gross body is now broadened, widened, but still through the chakra. That is about as much as it can do.
So you have access to things of the subtle world and the subtle-body capacities or experiences are now accessible while you are in the physical body. So in such a case, you could, for example, with the opening of the third-eye chakra, without needing to do this inward process, you could kind of open your third eye and see the things of the subtle worlds, because you are embodied in the physical without needing to separate from the physical you have access to that perception. It is a bit messy. For people who have it tend to have it happen by various methods, it creates a very unbalanced state because you cannot distinguish what is physical and what is subtle.
But more importantly, the experiences of the vital world and the subtle world are reduced to the domain of registration of the physical body, so everything is reduced to shapes and colours of the body. Even though you are seeing a wider range of colours, it’s reduced to form because you are in the world of form. Whereas when you go out into the subtle body and experience directly, you register in terms of the subtle-body consciousness, so the registration is more complete, more true, than if you simply open a chakra and are plugged into the body and have access to things, you see things, you don't know what it means, you see something going by, you see something flying, you see some shapes. What does it mean? ‘I don't know’. But when you are in the consciousness, you experience it, you know what it is, and if you have the intuitivisation by then, then you understand also what's behind it.
So I don't know if that helps, I don't know the cause of RG's question, but chakra opening even in ascending order is actually extremely risky. I would ask you to review what we have discussed about the Integral Yoga practice. In the Integral Yoga, we do not focus on chakras, there is a descent and an opening top-down. The chakra opening. as I said. is a very narrow opening. The goal of the Integral Yoga is the complete transformation of the entire consciousness. So nowhere in Sri Aurobindo's writings you will find him discussing opening of chakras, except in passing he makes reference, Oh-yes that's that very highly valued knowledge from the tantras. That's it. No other interest.
Why? Because the goal is an opening of the entire domain of consciousness, an entire grade of consciousness and its divinisation, chakra is only the focal point of that grade. So just as an analogy, if you say, well, your brain is the focal point for the mental consciousness, so you will trigger the brain, and you think your intelligence will grow or you will open to the mental world. Maybe a little bit in a narrow way. But if you are conscious, your mental body itself encompasses the whole body, it is equally in the feet as in the head, it is just in the biology, this is [gesturing brain] the focal point, so if you become aware of your entire mental body and open the whole of your mental body to the higher intuition or whatever, what you have is far greater than a narrow opening of the chakra only.
(1:40:10):
So chakra opening is okay, it's good, but it's no use for transformation. Whereas the intention of opening an entire domain of consciousness incidentally also opens the chakra, because that's the focal point, but you never even focussed on it. So there's a very important difference between the, let’s say, tantric methods and chakra opening versus the general approach in the Integral Yoga which is for the opening of an entire, of all the domains of consciousness, not just their focal points, and their opening and their transformation.
And so all these are very important distinctions to, to make, and one should not confuse the methods and the goals. See, very often we come with a baggage from various traditions and then you read Sri Aurobindo, you interpret it in terms of the baggage that you have: ‘But why isn't he talking about chakras? Okay, I will do my chakra meditation along with this!’ No, that's kind of a waste of your time. If you had done directly what was needed to get to know your psychic being and open to the higher intuition, you would have a thousand times more benefit for the same effort given.
And it would be a lasting, wide, free, liberation of consciousness, steps to transformation! And you would have spent years opening a single chakra, to what end? Just a little bit is like a keyhole you've cut in a wall, you're looking through it and get overwhelmed by the light that comes. Mmhhm, not very useful! Okay, so. Yes, Anupam makes this interesting observation, and I will close with this very interesting description:
You know when Kapali Sastriar, who had already gone very far in the spiritual path, and he read Sri Aurobindo the first time, he was so awestruck, so overwhelmed, he kept reading the Arya, it was a journal coming out every month, Sri Aurobindo's writings at that time. He would read every night again and again until the next issue came. Well, the first occasion that he had of meeting Sri Aurobindo through an appointment that was made, he saw this extra resplendent Being. But he went up the stairs to go to the, to meet Sri Aurobindo, and as he was climbing up, in the approach to Sri Aurobindo, physically his chakras began to open just like that, the lotuses beginning to bloom and open out.
Now he had already the necessary training and readiness, but it shows you how the sheer Power and Presence of Sri Aurobindo was so intense that for one who is ready, it just opened all the centres of consciousness, just like that. And that is really the, the intensity that each one of us should eventually be able to contain of the Divine Presence! Sri Aurobindo uses this phrase that we should become “dynamos” for the spiritual light and power. We are still a way away from that!
But it shows you that, and Sri Aurobindo what he was doing his sadhana for barely 5 years at that point, it shows you the power of the sadhana, the rapidity of the growth possible in the approach and method of the Integral Yoga, and the goal set which is so complete, so large, that anything you may gain by secondary and partial practices is kind of a waste of time. So we should be very clear about what it is we seek in the spiritual path. And even if you think, you are following Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga, be very clear whether what you are doing is a mixture of your own, let's say, past baggages with things you have read here and there, or are you really doing it the way he recommends for you to put this into practice.
We had a few more questions which we will keep for next time. And I want to also make a general announcement that on 14th of June we have Pandit-ji's birthday, and as you know is a tradition, every morning, every birthday morning at 6 am we have a prayer session which will be webcast live. You are welcome to participate with the session or watch it after, it will be kept ON for 24 hours about, let's see. And I think, that's a good enough point for us to pause on the practices.
I've covered many things, very rapidly. But if you come to the essence of it all is the urgency of the time before us. The battle between the light and dark is also at an intensity because the breakthrough is so close. The new world is about to be born. The light, the power, the presence of the new world are at our gates, on the brink, pushing, and it is the pressure of that push which is creating also this crisis, revolt, reaction, agitation, and so on, in humanity.
(1:45:24):
So it is an extraordinary opportunity! If we can consciously align ourselves entirely, totally, to the Divine and the goal and purpose for which we are born, then we have the full power of this new consciousness present to help us to make the breakthrough and move forward. For some of us, if the work requires, the responsibility requires, we also engage with others in a larger field of life. If it is not the case for you, don't worry, concentrate on what you need to do. As you grow in consciousness, the Divine will work through you in your circumstances. So let's hold our aspiration in this: invoking the new consciousness to fill us and work through us and organise itself in us, as offering ourselves as ready, conscious, willing, joyous instruments for the Divine Consciousness, for the Divine Light, for the Divine Power, for the Divine Love.
Namaste.
Alina (1:46:57):
Namaste. Thank you.
[1] [CWSA, 21 & 22, p. 1095]
[2] [CWSA, 25, p. 66]
[3] [CWSA, 25, p. 66]
[4] [CWSA, 25, p. 66]
[5] [CWSA, 25, p. 94]
[6] [CWSA, 25, p. 94, Footnote 1]
[7] [CWSA, 13, p. 389]
[8] [CWM, 10, pp. 92–93]
[9] [CWM, 12, p. 48]
[10] [CWSA, 19, p. 121]