5 August 2023
Alina (0:00:36):
Namaste. And welcome back to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Namaste.
Sraddhalu (0:0:42):
Namaste. Happy to be with all of you, after a gap of one month.
Alina (0:00:48):
We are happy to continue this series, and today we will continue “Healing Childhood Trauma, Part II”. And we will be taking some more questions that we received from our viewers. And as usually you may post your question during our conversation in the chat box on YouTube, or you might send your emails with the questions at our email ID: integralstudies.in [at] gmail.com.
We had a few questions that we answered last time to Hanel but we didn't give enough attention in particularly to the fifth question, so I would be repeating this question: “Is it even a good idea to bring children to the world through a physical body and a personality who has already been damaged by traumatising memories that could be transmitted to the coming soul through the genetic and energetical transfer?”
Sraddhalu (0:01:56):
Yes. Before I take up the question, I want to bring back the context, because it has been a little over a month since we had our session, which we had titled “Healing Childhood Trauma”, and I would highly recommend for those who have not seen it yet, to first see that before continuing with this. There, we had gone to the very root of the whole question of trauma and the healing process, generalising it at its most essential, recognising that our very initial emergence out of ignorance and inconscience has a trauma. And we can call it ‘an original trauma’ if you want to call it that.
But inevitably therefore, because of the nature of our startingpoint, inevitably all of us, without exception, would have some things or other, we may not label them ‘traumas’, we may not consider them to be extremes, but we have issues, we have damages, we have little knocks and problems and distortions of all kinds, and the most crude and the most obvious and the most prominent of these distortions is the egoistic focal point which is again inevitable and even necessary as a first stage of our emergence from the ignorance. So we looked at how we should not slip into any cycle of guilt, blame, criticism, shame, etc.
Rather we went to the essential characteristics of what a trauma might be and described, particularly, the sticky part with childhood trauma is that it gets it, it warps through layers as the layers are forming. And one of the very important concepts which we highlighted, and there were a few others also, which are very different from the conventional approach in psychotherapy or other kinds of therapies, is that the actual cause and the time from childhood or even past-incarnation traumas are not important to heal them. When people want to take you back into recalling the memory or even into past-life regressions, even if they are not real, even if they are fake, the memory is being fake, the point is, you are actually indirectly going back to the layer where the distortion came. But that's an indirect process.
The yogic process, and this was the primary character of this approach, is to go straight to the level of consciousness, the layer of consciousness, the part of your nature where the distortion is there, and from there, make the shift. And so, you do not need to go back in time; you do not need to go into specifics of causes. It's even better that you've forgotten all the causes so that you can actually deal with the correction without the lag and, well, trauma of the memory of the cause which itself becomes an end in itself.
I just give an example here, since you've all seen the interview with Mark Auburn which was subtitled in English, one of the things, which is, he, he has a fascinating life,—and I hope we'll have a session separately to discuss more of things which he has discussed,—but one of the things which came with the recall of so many past lives was that he had the trauma of all those lives now hanging on to him.
(0:05:22):
Now imagine what happens where you're born, well, reasonably fresh as most of us are, we have the problems of this life, that's good enough, that's already overwhelming, upon that, you go back maybe a dozen, 20, 30 lifetimes, maybe not all, but at least the one which you recall, and in each of those lifetimes, you had traumas relevant to that life, or to that time, or to that evolutionary stage, or to that period of human evolution. And all those now begin to come in your memory, and with the memory of it, of course, the emotion, and all the responses, reactions, even tendencies, addictive tendencies, all these come back and tend to overwhelm you.
So he describes how he actually went through a couple of decades of intense struggle because of the trauma that came from the memories of the traumas of those lives. So all this is to say that, the fact that you have forgotten is actually a great gift, and if in this life also you can forget the specific causes, you are actually free of a whole problem, but you still have to heal; for which, and we discussed this last time: how we go to the layer where it is formed,
what are the kinds of distortions, and what are the different means by which we can fix them,
and step by step through the yogic psycho-spiritual processes we reformulated how that process could be applied.
And essentially the key-idea there was that: We are Divine in essence, in principle, in being; and all that we are, all that we deserve, all that we should express freely when not distorted is the character of divinity, of all goodness, all harmony, all beauty, all love, and so on. Anything which is not that is not Divine. To come back to that as your root, as your base, as your essence, as your starting point, is critical. So I would like you to go back for those of you who need to apply it now in your own healing of some kind, of whatever the issue might be, review that talk a couple of times because we went through it in very rich detail very rapidly. In fact, if you elaborated each of those points a little bit, it would be a complete book in itself. But this is the fundamental shift we have to bring about. And upon that, then all those processes, layers, and the corrective means, and small steps every little day, small steps, was the overall approach we took. And we discussed methods of freeing from the past memory of the traumas where those memories do exist; and then methods of freeing from the existing current habit-patterns that they have created or which are hanging on, even though the cause is now forgotten. And all that should be put into practice, internalise it, make the shifts necessary.
And very likely, if you're able to make certain fundamental shifts, even though your life may go through, well, difficulties, challenges, and traumas, as they come, they will not stick, they will pass, they will fall-off like water, and you will be able to, so to say, regenerate, recover rapidly, or move forward as if with a new birth much more easily by making those fundamental shifts. So the scope of that discussion is much larger. Hanael’s question actually was, as we saw framed in five:
The first: “What can we do for ourselves if the damage is already done?” And this was largely covered in great depth last time.
The second question was: “What can we do to prevent the transmission of our traumas to the next generation?” Well, it was partly answered in that question in the very fact first of healing yourself but also of becoming conscious. Even though you may not have fully healed, the fact that you're aware of certain tendencies and habit-patterns, you're able to automatically correct for it and compensate for it at least when you're interacting with people. And to the extent that you're able to fully free from the trauma eventually, it will not matter anymore. And this, remember, it's again an important phrase, an important idea last time, was that from the soul's point of view, all these traumas are on a very superficial level of your nature, from the soul’s point of view, therefore they are trivial. And the soul-influence,—the spiritual-influence combining with the soul-influence,—can heal anything rapidly, dramatically, ‘miraculously’ as we would say. There's nothing which cannot be healed because these are so superficial compared to the nature of the soul and its depth.
(0:10:03)
Now the third question was: “What can we do to help these children who are already damaged?” Well, you have the same means which you have put into practice which you can now assist, but they may need a little bit of hand-holding because they may not be able to do those introspections on their own, and you can assist them in that process once you catch the overall approach.
And the fourth question was:
“Is there hope for people like us to struggle to get rid of unwanted behaviours, and you are still sincere in the growth of human consciousness?” Yes, of course. And that was the whole, if you have, once you have got that what we have discussed, absolutely there is nothing which cannot be healed. There is nothing which the life can throw at you, the universe can through at you, which cannot be entirely, totally dissolved, and you capable of rebuilding, taking a new birth all over again, because that is the nature of your psychic being, that is the nature of who you actually are. And so we have covered these four questions last time although not elaborated in this way.
But the fifth question remains and this was also something which had come from many others at various times: “Is it a good idea to bring children into the world through a body and personality which may have already been damaged in some way, because you might pass this on psychologically as also energetically and perhaps to some extent in the genetic and epigenetic, transfers?”
As is seen, for example, in rats, so there's an example, experiment done in the lab where you put rats through stress. Typically they use electric shocks and some, in this case they also did some denial of food, so they went through a period when they did not have enough food. And then everything was brought back to normal. The rats lived a normal comfortable life long enough and then they had children. The children, they found, had the epigenetic stress markers of the trauma of their parents, and then it went to the grandchildren, they still had the stress markers. Now as far as I'm aware, the experiment concluded with the grandchildren, but this shows you something very interesting, because this would apply equally to human beings, that we do inherit some of these traumas.
But this is the big difference between the rats and us: As far as the rats are concerned, they're primarily biological beings with the mind and emotions. We are primarily mental beings with emotions and biology. “Primarily”, I say, because as we are in a current stage of human evolution, but the truth of it is, we are essentially spiritual beings who have a mind, emotion and body. So to the extent you are able to go back to that, you can heal everything. To the extent that you are still in the primarily mental beings, you can heal a lot. And we discussed the processes last time.
Although we are not directly conscious of the psychic being, we are not directly conscious of the spiritual forces and powers which belong to us in our own higher ranges, we can open to them and receive their influences. and preparing a certain receptive base, allow those to act through the little efforts we make to make for that kind of a complete freedom. So that being the case, even if you have been through a problem and you've healed yourself reasonably well, it will not transmit into the children.
Assuming though that you have not fully healed yourself, you are partially healed, the very fact that, she says, we are trying to make an effort to grow spiritually means that you have already overcome a lot. But let's say, you have not yet overcome fully, and then you have children. The difference between rats and human beings is precisely this: That the child, especially if you are a conscious aspiring mother or father, your child also will probably be a more conscious soul and will bring a stronger soul-imprint which will override the genetic, epigenetic influence, and the environmental influence.
Now if the child is not such, if the soul is not so much mature, is not so much evolved, and is still at a level which is largely instinctive, in that case, it would inherit whatever the biology provides, largely, and not have a strong-enough imprint to modify. In such a case, yes, you will pass on certain things. But my point is: Precisely because you are conscious and you are aspiring even for yourself, inevitably, you will call a higher and more evolved soul, and a higher evolved soul will want to come through you.
So, the problem you are raising is only applicable to human beings who are not in a conscious spiritual journey, who themselves live in an instinctive and very crude-, coarse-thinking-animal stage of evolution, and they have children by reasonably mechanical, instinctive animal-drive of procreation, and then provide also vehicles which are of a level that correspond to the kind of consciousness and soul that might be drawn to such a space. So it would not matter for them.
(0:15:21):
They are damaged, but there's nothing new they could do if they were not yet damaged, because they are already living on a grade which is so coarse. And from the soul's point of view, we have to understand,—and this will come to this discussion perhaps later,—the soul that aspires to take birth is drawn to the quality of consciousness that corresponds to its current evolution and the line of evolution that it seeks. So if you are already in an aspiring mode, if you're already making work, working on yourself, you're going to draw a soul that is going to be able to largely override whatever little may come from the biological and other energetic transfers.
More so,—I will say,—in the very act of helping to raise a child and you as a conscious person, that whole process itself might be healing. Because in a sense, a parent, both mother and father, when they love their children and watch them grow, they share in the child's growth. In a sense, this is also what happens with grandparents when they watch their grandchildren grow. There's a kind of a resonance, you receive the freshness, and you feel young in the very nature of that process. And therefore, yes, the answer to uh, the question, yes, it is a good idea, if you are so inspired or feel the need for having a child and raising children, and this is something we discussed much in greater detail a couple of months ago.
But I think, in the context of how it is different from rats, and also how it is different for you who are in a spiritual path, the answer becomes very simple and very clear.
I think, we can go to the next question which is from Mihika.
Alina (0:17:19):
Question, uh, she has two questions, so we will go with the first one: “On dealing with childhood trauma manifested in adults, due to the nature of my work, I often encounter circumstances where I need to deal with adults who have faced childhood trauma which has damaged them at deep levels. Often, even in their 40’s, these people seems to be stuck in the cycle of the patterns that their trauma created many years ago, feeling unworthy, unlucky, redundant. This causes their light to also get diminished over time. How can adults undo their childhood trauma, especially if the damage is severe enough to make them lose inherent faith in the Divine or spirituality?”
Sraddhalu (0:18:19):
So this, largely the question has been covered in our discussion last time, but there are these two points which she particularly highlights: the diminution of the light; an they have lost faith in the Divine or in the spiritual. In such a case, how can you help?
And particularly this is from the context of you trying to help somebody else. If it is for yourself, you have lost faith, or you find your light is dimmed, well, you go through the process which we have already discussed. And when you want to help somebody else, then the question is a little more complex. First, does the person really want to be healed? Do they really want to recover what they have lost? Depending on the situation, you may or may not uh, spend too much time or effort.
Sometimes it happens that the person is not, but you are responsible for them, and so you still have to do your part whether they are interested in awakening and recovering or not. So you can do that by lightly, so to say, teasing, provoking, touching the things which would trigger the awakening. So let's say, it's somebody who's part of your close family-member. Look for the core-deep within somewhere where there was, in the past, and still is now covered up, the affinity, the familiarity, the memory, of the Divine influence, the Divine Presence.
Now I've seen cases where they had it in childhood, as they grew into adulthood, the personality covered up, they lost their way literally, and you can still reach back to that. There are examples I can share where, as a result of certain kinds of interactions, I've had people come and say, ‘This made me recall something which I had forgotten which used to be my normal state in my childhood, and now it's come back as a living force’. The thing is, it was never gone, it was always inside covered-up. And what you did in that, during that interaction, momentarily cleared the way for that which was waiting to emerge to briefly peep, and that was all. So the point to recognise- if ever they had it already, and they have now lost it, it's never really lost, it is waiting, it's only the layers formed which prevent its emergence.
(0:20:53):
And now depending on the kind of interaction you may have with them, you may bring about or create a space or help them come into a state in which all those layers which are now separating are subdued and gives a chance for that to come forward. You could use indirect methods, including going back to activities they did, or states they experienced, or memories of childhood, and so on, those would be indirect methods. You don't need to do that, because the thing is real today, just covered-up.
A lot of it though would also happen in your transmission of your own living, I will say, faith, conviction, experience, Presence, the fact that you live it, and you are in the space where they open to you, and you have this interaction,—I understand from Mihika that she does some of these retreats for several days of various kinds with young people, so,—when you have them with you for a few days, you have an opportunity to create a space and expose them to certain influences which allows this to be awakened as if by a kind of a transmission or we will say ‘infection’: If you can infect with negative thoughts, influences or suggestions, you can equally infect with positive ones.
But more than anything else, when they feel this, the first point of contact, something stirs deep within, they don't know yet what it is, but if you have them two or three days, it's possible that during that time, because of the kind of space and interactions that you have created, it allows something of that deeper to come forward and even fully emerge. It may go back, if they go back to their old life; but once having come forward, again things might change.
So my point is: Whatever the nature of the damage, if that was once there, it can never go away, it can only be covered-up, or as we will say in the yoga tradition, it recedes. It recedes because of the coverings, but it's alive, it's waiting for its chance. You create the space, circumstance, or the infectious influence, that allows its emergence, and that would be the easiest way to move forward. But draw also upon the discussion last time to put in practice means by which you can help them to heal and get free of the traumas.
We can go to the next question.
Alina (0:23:24):
On contradiction in parenting values and lowering the moral of a child born with a weakness in mental or physical capacity: “What does one do in a case where one of the parents is sensitive enough to understand the needs of the child, but the other partner is not and continues to rely on the shallow and popular scientific researches that come out and contradict each other every few weeks?
Similarly, what is a way that contradictions can be resolved in a daily upbringing of a child within the family unit? For example, a parent consistently screaming at the child for being useless just because of their own inability to score well in an exam, or even in a case where the child is born with the weakness in any capacity and the other parent trying to shield the child: this is a common phenomena that often causes the fate of even the more sensitive parent to wither away in time, especially where verbal abuse is constant. How can we prevent this from happening?”
[to Sraddhalu] I think you're muted.
Sraddhalu (0:24:52):
Yes-yes.
‘How do you prevent it’ is a difficult question because: Do the parents really want to change? And you are trying to change them, you are trying to save the child. It's not going to work easily. But let's look at the situation from two, two perspectives: one is, from what can be done in any case to help the child; and the other is, what needs to be done to help the parent who has a problem. So what we see in this whole discussion and this example given, what she is referring to: first is, contradictory parenting values; and the second is, the morale and effect on the child who has limitations.
So as far as the ‘contradictory parenting values’ is concerned, the other parent who has a problem, who is misbehaving, has a problem of trauma, has an injury, needs to go through healing. So first, you would focus on healing that. If it turns out that the person does not want to heal, you could first have a discussion: ‘Look, this is not acceptable. Would you like that done to you?’ There are ways. Or, you give the example of somebody, probably if the person has a boss who's doing it to him or had a parent who's doing it to him: ‘Do you like that? ‘Does it help you? ‘Does it boost your morale? ‘Or, does it make you depleted and lose faith in your capacity?’ So you can take a few examples, go through a discussion.
If it turns out that the person is actually not only, incapable but refusing to change, then for the sake of the child, I would actually recommend that you separate as parents, so that you can provide a more healthy, nurturing environment and then have partially the exposure to the damaging influence but that can be largely overcome when the child experiences what it's like to be in a healthy space and then in an unhealthy space. I would highly recommend, you separate.
Where the—and it's good for you also not just for the child, even for you it is damaging to be exposed to something so extreme, but where the—other parent is actually well-meaning, does not know better, then you can go through a process of discussion exposing the person to different approach of knowledge and practice. And if the person already has a spiritual turn to life and is actually interested in a spiritual life, then one can do so much more. But it would still require initially to go through a phase where you make the person conscious of their blind spots. Very likely if this kind of behaviour is happening from somebody who already has a spiritual life, they have some trauma and blind spots where they are unable to see. So you would go through a slow process of helping them, set it right, while still working with the child independently.
What you would do with a child is to explain to the child that these things happen, and explain. You have to treat the child now almost like a uh, mature adult in explaining some of these things by saying that: ‘Observe this person, he or she has been damaged in her childhood or in his office space, or whatever the circumstance, and this is how it's working on him, and he tends to throw out that energy of frustration on whoever is next to him. Unfortunately sometimes it comes on you and me, but we have to understand that, and here are ways you can deal with it, here are ways you can help this parent’, or’ relative’, whatever the case.
You'll actually have to explain this and engage the child's participation to the extent possible according to the age. Since there's no specifics of the age, I'm assuming uh, we also have older children, but as they grow older, you will be able to engage their participation. If they're still too young, then all you can do is provide the necessary protective space in which the child feels to that extent isolated from the negative vibes and familiar with the positive vibes. Just this as a protective space and experience is enough to help the child rapidly overcome or at least grow up with minimum damage.
But the aspect of the question also: ‘Is that the more sensitive parents wither away in time when the verbal abuse is constant?’
In that case, I would highly recommend you consider separation. Sometimes this is not possible because of economic or other social reasons. I think, the condition of the world today is very different. We have legal support where the separation is required because of abuse and socially also the support is far stronger from your own parents as well as society in such cases. And it's important to speak out, why it was, the separation, was necessary, where necessary with the people to whom you have to take help from. So if you for example, you rely on your own parents to make the separation, explain to them what is happening and the need for the separation. But where you find yourself withering and as a result your own spiritual growth blocked because of the abusive character of the partnership, the partnership has to end.
(0:30:03):
The only thing which might hold you back is that you've been so damaged that you're afraid, you have no more self-confidence left, that can be corrected by suitable support of friends and parents. Or, you're attached to something in the other person, it could be wealth or it could be a power aspect.
So I'm taking the case where it's typically a woman in this case, cannot break away because she will lose the financial stability and material comfort and often what happens is, such a strong person and she feels inherently weak in relation to that strong person and feels, if she goes away separately she will not have the strength, this is the person providing the sense of strength and stability. And that's an error. We have discussed this before in partnerships on, especially in the discussions on the masculine and feminine: draw strength from others, build your support base and take the strong, firm decision for yourself and for your children to protect in such a case.Otherwise, let's hope that in most cases one can actually engage in conversation and assist the other partner to heal and work with the child.
We can go to the next question.
Alina (0:31:20):
We have a group of questions on past karmas and suffering from birth, so I will be reading all of them, and we hope Sraddhalu will give an answer, a common answer.
Suresh is addressing this question: “It is said that the soul learns from all experiences, including bodily pain. How does the crushing experience of humiliation help the soul grow and evolve? Mother has often said that all experiences help in the soul's evolution, they somehow enrich the soul, even painful experiences, like accidents, enrich the soul. With pain, one can say, ‘It makes the psychic being stronger’, but how does the crushing experience of the humiliation help in the psychic being's evolution? What is it about this experience that enriches the soul? I am at a loss to understand. Even pain I may understand, but how does humiliation help at all in spiritual growth?’
Dolan is asking: “Any souls, why many souls, including developed ones, or souls with strong spiritual inclinations sometimes choose such harsh environments of abandonment, wounding, and abusive environments, and experiences of neglect and pain, in their early lives? What light and learning are they trying to bring to the world and to themselves through these battlefields right from inception?”
Dhruval—if I pronounce correctly: “Why the Divine has allowed this or is it just incidence?’
Banchal, Bupendra: “My daughter was born with cataract by birth. What can be the reason for this?”
And under the nickname of “Running Lawyer”: “Perhaps the title of the video can be amended. This is about freeing oneself from karma.”
Sraddhalu (0:34:05):
Yes, so we have a several questions actually all in the same line, and there is also a comment in the chat box from Chendok, who says that: “What kind of impact does culture play in child's development or is it only karmic consequences and heredity?”
So, we'll put all this together. First, recognise three influences: there is the hereditary influence, environmental influence, and then the influence brought by the soul itself. And Sri Aurobindo is very clear on this: where the three contradict, the soul can override both the others, assuming the soul is reasonably developed and mature. If it is not, well, in any case there's not much that it can bring in, so only environment and heredity would matter. But why would a soul choose an environment of suffering, pain? And particularly Suresh's question is not so much about pain, it's about humiliation: and what would that be an issue, why would that be an issue? It is something that we should look at, it's a very interesting point.
In one of the little talks of the Mother, it’s a, it comes as a little booklet which is,, I forget the title now, uh, she ends the talk by saying: “Verily in utter humiliation lies the greatest glory”.
And somebody translating it made a correction: in the, ‘Verily in the utter humility lies the greatest glory’. Mother said: “No, it's not humility, I mean, humiliation.” I think, it's called The Supreme Discovery, the name of that talk. Mother said, “No, it is in humiliation lies the greatest glory.” So straightaway as far as Suresh's question is concerned, I'm giving an answer from the Mother, of course, she's not elaborated too much in that place, but there are other places where she has elaborated.
But I want to take the full question now,, and also widen it a little bit including the aspects of pain. First, we must understand, the soul's perspective is actually very different from our personality perspective. Our personality perspective is extremely limited, shallow, and bound to the ego-value system which is flawed because we feel ourselves born with the body, and ending with the body, and formed by the body, and our limited circumstances. Step back in contrast to the soul-consciousness, you experience yourself immortal, you experience yourself backed by an infinite potential of the Divine creativity.
You turn to the whole world, and you see it as this gigantic playground of unending learning, and surprise, and growth, and opportunity for evolution,—unendingly into eternity,—and there is nothing out there that can harm you, or destroy you, or essentially, fundamentally, limit you, or rather anything that comes to harm, destroy, or limit is just a challenge like a hurdle that you have to jump over, or a barrier that you have to break, or some problem that you have to find skillful means to overcome, or some growth that you have to develop in order to be free of that limitation.
So there is nothing at all in the universe, and no experience, however extreme from the human surface-point of view, that for the soul is anything negative except those experiences which cut it off from the Divine influence or in some way harm its evolutionary purpose. Now in the extremes of challenges, the soul might say ‘Ah, this is too big, I don't want to take it now, but eventually I will, once I grow mature enough to be able to deal with that’.
So, first you have to understand this difference in approach and perspective from the soul's viewpoint. There is in fact a very interesting passage in Savitri, where Sri Aurobindo describes this, and I would like to read from that to really give the full satisfaction of uh, the answer to this, these questions all coming together.
When the Queen Mother, Satyavan’s mother[1], tells Narad, who has just revealed that Satyavan is going to die in one year, she says:
But why all this suffering?
Why, why do we choose this kind of a fate even?
Or, is it not a choice at all?
So, Narad answers like this,—I will read a few lines and skip portions:
“O mortal who complainst of death and fate,
Accuse none of the harms thyself hast called;”
So, don't say, ‘Oh God is putting me through suffering’, you have asked for this, don't blame others.
“This troubled world thou hast chosen for thy home,
Thou art thyself the author of thy pain.”
How is this possible? Okay, so he answers this, and now he tells you the full story of how you chose:
“Once in the immortal boundlessness of Self,
In a vast of Truth and Consciousness and Light
The soul looked out from its felicity.”
Now, this is very important, these two lines: This is our soul's state before we have come, before we have entered the experience of birth. This is who we are; this is our home, this is our destiny. This is the inevitability of our fulfilment in life.
“… in the immortal boundlessness of Self,
In a vast of Truth and Consciousness and Light…” – The soul lives in its felicity; it looked out from its felicity; it's living in felicity all the time in the bliss.
(0:40:05):
So: we were there, all of us; we do go there; we can go there; even in deep sleep-states, we can actually touch those poises, Sacchidananda, and so on.
So it looks out from there:
“It felt the Spirit’s interminable bliss,
It knew itself deathless, timeless, spaceless, one,
It saw the Eternal, lived in the Infinite.”
Now all this is our state when we recover our soul's consciousness, here, in life, in body, in world. Okay? So all this is available to us with a little bit of effort.
“Then, curious of a shadow thrown by Truth,
It strained towards some otherness of self,
It was drawn to an unknown Face peering through night.
It sensed a negative infinity,
A void supernal whose immense excess
Imitating God and everlasting Time
Offered a ground for Nature’s adverse birth
And Matter’s rigid hard unconsciousness
Harbouring the brilliance of a transient soul”[2]
So it leans out and sees this “negative” possibility, a complete reversal of all that it has, and: ‘Wow, it's possible to have this matter, “hard unconsciousness”, and into that as a soul I may appear as a point of light momentarily in a transience, as if I'm born with body, and die with body, and experience all these things which are the very opposite of my state and freedom: ‘Knowing that I'm utterly free and nothing can damage me, I can enter the most dangerous such experiences and experience it as an adventure., Isn't it?
So, what happens next? All this. So he says:
“A Mind arose that stared at Nothingness” – ‘Wow, the experience of nothingness and all the opposites of all that it has.’ And it is:
“As one drawn by the grandeur of the Void
The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss:” – ‘Wow, this is so fascinating! So fascinating! What about this? What about this?’ And as you focus on it, you deepen-deepen and plunge, it leans towards the “Abyss”.
“It longed for the adventure of Ignorance
And the marvel and surprise of the Unknown
And the endless possibility that lurked
In the womb of Chaos and in Nothing’s gulf
Or looked from the unfathomed eyes of Chance.”
-‘See! Look at all this! And ‘Wow, what an extraordinary thing!’. Imagine this is what we do when we go to any kind of adventure, or any kind of an adventure film, or, any kind of a adventure theme park, ‘What surprises around the corner next?’.
“It tired of its unchanging happiness,
It turned away from immortality:
It was drawn to hazard’s call and danger’s charm,”
Now look at all these words: “hazard”, “danger”, “pain”, “pathos”, “peril”, “bare escape”, “wounded”, “ruin”, “crash”, “pity”, “gamble”, “ambiguous … Fate”, “extinction”, all these words are going to appear. But from the soul's perspective watch how he describes these, these words, and it's always the soul's vision. So:
“It was drawn to hazard’s call and danger’s charm,
It yearned to the pathos of grief, the drama of pain,
Perdition’s peril, the wounded bare escape,
The music of ruin and its glamour and crash,”
Like you're going to watch a movie which has all this dramatic effect, but you know, you're free, you'll never be damaged.
“The savour of pity and the gamble of love
The passion and the ambiguous face of Fate.
A world of hard endeavour and difficult toil,
And battle on extinction’s perilous verge,”
– Always you're on the brink of being snuffed out, and you have to somehow survive and recover and rebuild.
“A clash of forces, a vast incertitude,
The joy of creation out of Nothingness,”
– You literally take birth in a desert and build from it a palace or an empire, or a beautiful painting, or a poem of immortality, expressing that here, in “Nothingness”.
“… joy of creation out of Nothingness,
Strange meetings on the roads of Ignorance
And the companionship of half-known souls”
– ‘That's familiar, but I don't remember!’
“Or the solitary greatness and lonely force
Of a separate being conquering its world,”[3]
You have no friend, nobody, everyone abandons you, you're all alone, and you build that “lonely force” and conquer your world. It's an adventure! What an extraordinary thing to experience that, isn't it? Then, what happens? All this is drawn to, the soul is drawn to, all this: “Called it from its too safe eternity.” And the soul is leaning into all this, ‘Wow! Wow!’
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“A huge descent began, a giant fall:
For what the spirit sees, creates a truth
And what the soul imagines is made a world.”
– So this is true first from the totality of the Divine Consciousness where we are one–Self with all that is, all is One.
From there, this turn of experience. And into that, each of us individually as a soul has its own line of evolution within this experience.
“A Thought that leaped from the Timeless can become,
Indicator of cosmic consequence
And the itinerary of the gods,
A cyclic movement in eternal Time.”
-So when the soul says, ‘Yes, I want to experience this’, all this starts unfolding now.
“Thus came, born from a blind tremendous choice,
This great perplexed and discontented world,
This haunt of Ignorance, this home of Pain: (—”Pain” with a capital ‘P’—)
There are pitched desire’s tents, grief’s headquarters.”
And in all this, now to put in context:
“A vast disguise conceals the Eternal’s bliss.” -So all this is the disguise, behind is the “Eternal’s bliss”. And it is from that “Eternal’s bliss” that the choice is made to play out all these possibilities. If you reread those lines:
“Perdition’s peril, the wounded bare escape,
…
The savour of pity … the gamble of love”
Look back! Isn't this why you go to watch a thriller movie or a romantic movie or a drama movie? Right? Except in the safety of your home, or the theatre, or where you are safe, but through that experience, you feel you grow, you learn, you absorb something, except now this is happening in total 3D immersion, in the reality that is matter, and in a stage or a movie theatre or screen which is, well, not just 3D but 4D, infinite and eternal, and that's the nature of the trauma.
There cannot be something more fascinating, more attractive and more thrilling to the soul's aspiration. Now this background now will help you to understand so many more things. It's not just about the pain, it's not just about the humiliation, it's not just about the struggle, it's the soul's perspective of all these which is so fundamentally different. And what's happening right now in our lives, even as this surface personality is going through its pain, and struggle, and difficulties, and uncertainties, and fears, and whatever other problems and traumas, inside, in the soul consciousness, assuming the soul is reasonably awake, it says:
‘Wow, wow! What do I do now? How can I grow from this? ‘How can I overcome this? What an interesting challenge!’
In fact, Sri Aurobindo gives this example, he says, a soul that has had a life of full luxury of a king will actually say, ‘What's it like to have nothing?’ and choose to take birth in extreme poverty and extreme loss and from there build everything, if that its greatness; if that is not, you're just an opportunistic king because of birth but with no real capacity, you'll still say, ‘Ah-yes, this was worth it in contrast to that experience’. And what's next? At the end of that life you’ll say, ‘What do I want next?’. And literally you can choose, and this is your virtual reality experience for growth of the soul's consciousness.
So now coming to the specifics, painful experiences,—Suresh lists,—accidents, all these can enrich the soul. Mmhhm, not always accidents if they block the soul's evolution, that's not always good. In fact, that's never good. But if it is a soul's choice to leave because the personality is totally blocked, it may choose an accident to make a quick escape, quick exit. But..So painful experiences, yes; but the soul's value of them are different. It's not that the soul is seeking it. The soul is seeking opportunities for growth and sometimes complex and rich opportunities for growth- these may involve pain.
But it's not that the soul says, ‘Oh, here is pain, let me go and have pain’. No, that's not how it works. ‘Here is growth, and if the pain is there, fine, I will deal with that also.’ That will be one of the aspects of the challenge. And even from the point of view of a spiritual evolution, when the pain comes when you can't avoid it, can you actually rise above the pain? Yes, you can. Well, that's a skill to develop also. Isn't it?
So when Sri Aurobindo had the accident where his leg was broken, his thigh bone, which is the most painful, the most painful experience for human being. He actually says, initially he was living in a consciousness where all sensations, all experiences of everything was constantly inheld in the Sacchidananda consciousness and was a blissful turn, even in the physical body, including physical contact.
(0:50:46):
He could for example touch something hot or cold or get stung by a scorpion and experience the touch of the beloved and the bliss of the thrill of the contact. But he says, when this bone broke, the pain was so extreme, it took him a few minutes to be able to convert that experience to the level of the Sacchidananda consciousness. So, was it needed? No. It was an attack. Having happened, well, it pushed his mastery of the physical consciousness and its transformation to, used it to push it to a limit beyond which uh, he would not have gone except for an experience like this. But not that one seeks it; not that, that it's necessary.
So we have to understand, painful experiences, accidents: no, they don't enrich the soul in themselves, they are incidental to the process of the soul's growth and evolution. And so, in this context you understand the humiliation. The humiliation actually is very different from pain or accident and these types. Humiliation is a very superficial experience of the surface personality and its ego. Why were you humiliated? Because somewhere along the way you might have attempted something or claimed something which was fantasy or false, fake, put up an appearance which was fake, and suddenly now that is exposed, and you have the humiliation. It's actually the baring of what is real, what is true, against what was false. And the humiliation is a very superficial experience, and, and yet, it is so important for us, because we are deceiving ourselves all the time.
Again you recall that aphorism of Sri Aurobindo,—and I'm paraphrasing now,—where he says: ‘The lover, Sri Krishna, my beloved, tore at my clothes of uh, vices, and I was happy to let them go. But when he tugged at my cloak of virtues, I was afraid and resisted, and it was not until he tore them off by force that I realised how I was deceiving myself.’ This is broadly the content of that aphorism.
So with our virtues, we clothe ourselves. To have the virtues torn is one of the most painful experiences for the human ego, surface personality. But for the soul, it is a huge liberation, because all the while the soul's influence penetrating through your personality is getting warped by this virtues, ‘I am so great, I am so wonderful, I am so nice, I am so kind, I am so’, whatever it is. ‘How dare you do this? I am so upset because you are like this.’ No. All these are fake, false, distortions. But we start with that, so no need to criticise yourself. But when that thing is torn by force, and it's not given to everybody, but when it is given, it is such a huge relief from the soul's point of view.
I remember, because I think it's a good occasion to share that kind of an experience, maybe I've spoken of it a couple of times before, I went through a kind of a crisis in life at a certain stage, where I discovered that I had been deceiving myself, and it hit me hard.
You continue to deceive yourself until eventually you can't, and that hits you really hard. And that's when you are shocked, and you, what do you do now? Now if you're on the spiritual path, you want to deal with it. So one of the things which I came through was: ‘Okay, this is not acceptable. I can deceive others. Well, sometimes you have to. I don't have a choice. But I will never deceive myself. Even if I have to deceive somebody else, even if I have to tell a lie where I feel ‘no’, but I have no other means available that I can figure out, I will still be conscious ‘Here I am lying and this is not wrong; this is wrong, there has to be a better way’, at least I will not fool myself.’
And of course, you can't fool the Divine! As long as you try to fool yourself, you're blocking yourself from the Divine. If you try to fool the Divine, you're only fooling yourself. These two are really connected. So I went through this crisis, and I started the process of introspection: ‘What else is there that I have been deceiving myself with?’
(0:55:03)
I started this process of, I will say, violently, violently introspecting: What about this? This? This? And every thought, every emotion, every action was put through this intense scrutiny. Even as I'm being nice to X, behind is this suggestion of a thought that says, ‘This benefits me’. As I'm being nastiest to somebody, ‘This is the personal interest, self-interest’. And I said, ‘I have to be 100% in transparency with myself’.
And what happened was, very disturbing initially, because suddenly you realise that all this which was so nice and sweet on the surface is full of this clutter and junk in layers within you. So it was like ripping open literally: ripping open one layer, ripping open another layer, ‘What's more?’. So I went through this long process, it lasted about a year or two I think, but it was very painful. Sometimes my body would shake just having to face this, ‘[gesturing fear, shock, troubled breathing] Hhaah, Oh my god, this!’. But eventually, eventually all this began the process of integration.
But what I discovered: There were four layers of self-deception broadly speaking:
The first layer is one where, you say, ‘Oh, it's so nice’ or you say something, ‘Yes, surely’, and you are conscious that very likely it won't happen or you're being just polite, so you're conscious that it's just a superficial, it's a ‘white lie’, you say.
Next layer: behind, you're not conscious that you're lying or you're deceiving others or yourself. In this second layer, you find all kinds of motivations and interests which are largely your own, which form your, let's say, secret motives for making you behave in certain ways; bearing that was extremely difficult at that point, it was creating this shaking reaction.
But then the third layer was most fascinating. Behind all this, where is this coming from? And it went back to something which I can describe as seeds. So in this soil of my nature, let's say, I find these seed-tendencies, and they are in seed form, they have not sprouted. And what was fascinating was anything that I saw in somebody else and especially if it caused a reaction in me, ‘Oh, that fellow he is such a jealous, liar, this, that, whatever, petty, narrow-minded, anything that bothered me, I found had its corresponding tendency in me. If it was not there as a strong tendency, I could see it and say ‘Ha-yes, okay it's like that’, but it doesn't bother me. So using this as a reference I was able to go deep enough until I discovered literally every single thing that I can find in somebody and criticise in somebody is there in seed form within me. The only difference between someone else and me is, in me these seeds have sprouted, in them those seeds have sprouted. That's the only difference. But any seed I can find in any, any tendency I can find in anyone is already present within me as a seed.
At that point I came to this realisation of the, let’s say, common substance of human nature, the common part of it, that we are all the same substance, the same tendencies, the same human nature. The difference is only which seeds have sprouted and which directions are our fears, likes, attractions, etc. That's all. At that point, one of the things which happened was, I realised, I can never again criticise anybody. And this is the case. It has been so since then. I've never again, I cannot see anything in anyone where I will say, ‘Ah, this is’ as a criticism. As an observation, ‘Yes, there's this tendency, I know, I know it's hard, I've had it, It was there in me, if not in this life, in some other life, doesn't matter’. But it's all there in all of us.
So there's a kind of a very deep, uh, I would say, compassion, empathy of some kind, where whatever you have, whatever somebody else has, uh, you just say, ‘Well, that's it, we have to deal with it, What can we do?’, and you empathise, and you help, you support, if you can, or not, and that's it. Sometimes you're thankful that ‘Okay, in my case it has not sprouted to that extent, that's about it’. But you can never criticise somebody. That was layer three of self-deception.
Comes layer four: And that was the most fascinating. It's like literally a layer was torn open, and I had as if opened a septic tank. Poof, the stench! Not physically obviously, in psychological terms. The stench of all the filth that could ever be possible, imaginable, is in that grade of, substance of our human nature, literally. And those seeds are nothing compared to this.
(1:00:01)
This literally, anything can happen, everything is there, in the, the worst you could imagine, it's all there in the very substance and the nature and material of that substance, which is ‘Aaahh’. And I looked at this and I said, ‘We're going to transform all this into divinity? I can't do. It's impossible’. It, it seemed to be so deep even. Impossible!
And that's when I realised, ‘All this illusion that I'm making an effort, yes, you can make an effort, it's good, it's even necessary, but that's not going to change this, it's only That which can change this’- changes the whole nature and your understanding of the sadhana. Of course if you're aiming for that, otherwise, other things, a lot can be done with your effort, all this is to share with you a perspective which more closely aligns with the soul's viewpoint. It looks at all this human nature, all the substance and says, ‘Okay, here's the adventure’.
And humiliation: And this was the reason why I shared this in great detail, that was the last stage of humiliation where having gone through this, it was literally as if internally I was broken. It took a while to heal because things torn like this. This is not the good way to do. But, well, this is the only way I could at that point. So having gone through all this, there's a period, literally my whole being is bleeding from all the tearing, and there's a period of slowly settling in. All this is happening, and nobody knew, I'm going through this severe crisis, occasionally people would comment or see, and I would say ‘I'm going through some crisis’.
And there's this mask, appearance, and then came another crisis, just after that, where I had done, created some software which I thought was great, and as it was released, there was an intuition which said, ‘Ha, now there's going to be an attack and it'll be withdrawn’. I said, ‘How can it be? I've not made any mistake, I double-checked my software, no, it's all clean, no bugs’. It did get withdrawn, because somebody wrongly represented to the people in authority that I had claimed to be author of Sri Aurobindo's books.
The software I had written was, I had put: Copyright Sri Aurobindo Ashram, written by Sraddhalu Ranade. I claim to have written the software, it was very simple. But then this came, and it was, the software was pulled out. I said, ‘It was so painful because my image in the community! I walked into the group activities, and people would look at me, and look away, and strange things. And I had been so sensitive until then about people's opinion of me. All that was just being crushed and crushed. And I was clinging to something. I didn't know what. I was in a state of tension, literally.
And I'm sharing this, because I hope, it will be of help to many to not have to go through this process, and clinging to this literally and clinging to my image, my public image, which is being torn out, and there was a point, I remember the date also vividly, it was 15th of December, and clinging, and I'm tired of clinging, and finally I say, ‘I can't do it anymore, I'm exhausted, I can't do, and I let go in inability to cling, and I could feel, it was being drawn, literally torn away. And the moment I let go, and then it was removed, I was free of public image and need to hold a public image.
And then suddenly I realise, ‘My God, now I'm totally free, I can do what I want, because it does not matter what people think, I'm actually free to be myself’. And just that sense of freedom as it emerged like that, just freely, it was that last layer which was blocking it, the whole thing freed itself out, and then I turned to the Mother, ‘I realise, it was being torn, I was conscious it was being torn, I didn't understand why, but when it was torn finally, and I was given this release’, I realise, this is what she was leading me to, and I began to laugh. It was so strange, I begin to laugh. And I said: ‘What a release! ‘What a freedom! And thank you for this!’. All the pain that I went through before this humiliating removal of my self-deception layers; “crushing experience of humiliation” is what Suresh has referred to.
But if you cling to it, you don't get it. It's when you allow it to be taken, torn-off, that you realise the freedom that is behind it. I'm sharing this because hopefully when you dwell on it in yourself you may or if you have to go through that kind of a difficulty you won't make the mistake of clinging. You can't help it, that's the nature of the ego-sense, but when it's finally torn-off, it's such a relief, such a relief, its a great joy and freedom. And for the first time I realised, it does not matter what people say, what people think, what people do, I'm free to do and be what I have to be truly. Truly!
This was accompanied by some other experience also, which also I've shared, but maybe it is worth sharing here to complete this. It was at that point when I was going through this very intense struggle. It was literally as if the.. And I knew, this was being done to me. So it was happening at a time when, when it started, I had already committed to certain lectures, it was in some other city, I had to speak to a thousand children. And I wake up that morning, and I'm looking at the life ahead of me, and I say, ‘My God, what will I say to them? The only thing I know,—because I can't speak from theory, I can only speak from what I know, the only thing I know,—is life is not worth living, it's so painful. And I say, ‘Okay, I just trust’.
(1:05:50):
So I go to the hall, and there are three steps, one, two, three, and I take the third step, I'm on the stage, till then I'm this empty shell, pointless, meaningless, hollow, all the spiritual experience has been pulled out. And suddenly everything pours in, from above like in a jar, Shloop! I'm back to what I used to be before this crisis, with full experience of whatever it was. And I go and sit in front of those students, and I share whatever it is, it was wonderful. And I come away now full, and of course claiming “I am full, and I have to keep this”, and I take the three steps, one, two, three, and I come on the ground, Shloop, it sucked out.
All that was there given as an experience, as a foundation, as spiritual experience, by my teacher, by, everything, was given to me. But the ego-sense growing up in it, with it, had seized upon it and said, ‘This is me’. And it had this wrong identification, false identification, or even claim, and it is that which was pulled out. And for nearly two years, it was hammered away, literally, hammering, to infuse this: ‘You are nothing without the Spirit, you are just empty shell, empty bowl, empty container, nothing without that; it's only That which makes everything worthwhile’.
This, you know you can in theory, the mind will understand, the emotions perhaps, the body needed to have it, this hammered into the body. And during that period, for those two years, literally, every night I would wake up, at an exact time, literally I wake up and look at the time, it's exactly that time, and I experience this painful hammering in the chest, painful hammering, literally, I could do nothing. Sometimes I would take a photograph of the Mother and cling to it and just cry. I had nothing.
Why? Why? Why? And I knew, it was given to me. I knew, the experiences were pulled out. I knew, this Presence was pulled out. Why? I would stand before the Mother's photo, because some part knows, I stand before her looking down, ‘I know you're doing it, I know it's necessary, I don't understand why, please free me’. But I bare myself, here. [gesturing heart and above-head] So it was a very painful passage, but extremely rapid, that's why painful. Something which might be done over the span of a couple of decades perhaps was crushed, squeezed into two years.
And I'm standing before her, say, ‘I don't want to exist, I don't want to be, dissolve me, dissolve me’, opening myself entirely. And of course I know, you know, in a pain sometimes the thought comes, ‘Ho, you commit suicide!’. No. It doesn't change anything. Because I know, this is not a physical issue, it's a psychological state, I will be in the same state, out of the body. Nothing. The only thing which can free me from the pain is to cease to exist. So at that time we could go to Sri Aurobindo's Room, every opportunity, I would go there and stand and say, “Dissolve me, I don't want to exist”. So I go to this point where finally after everything is dissolved, it comes to this stage where something remains! I let go everything,—None of this is mine! None of this is mine!—and then there is a point that remains which is saying ‘None of this is mine!’, What do I do with this? I don't know how to dissolve this, I would be stuck at that.
So it built up over a certain time. And then it came to this very interesting phase when I'm sitting on my terrace looking at this [gesturing above], and there's as if the scene,—or you know it happens in a slight shift in consciousness and you open out to this experience,—I'm literally seeing 10,000 years, cycles and cycles of civilisations appearing and disappearing. No trace of them left, after another thousand years. Nothing. And nothing has changed, human nature is exactly the same as it was, 10,000 years later. And I had already had this experience of those four layers of deception, looking at this [gesturing above].
So, what? And my question at that point was always: What do I do? Because I don't know, I don't want to exist, and I don't know what to do.
(1:10:00)
So.. And I'm watching this. So it, life, is pointless, Mhm. So I wait. It passes, after a while, all this vanishes, and there was just this massive emptiness,—eh, you would call it in the direction of the ‘Nirvanic kind of experience’,—massive emptiness. Nothing! Nothing! Nothing exists! Nothing worthwhile! Just empty. It lasted a couple of days.
And I'm sitting there, and I'm saying, “Okay, so what? What do I do?” And then comes a very interesting thing: Above this emptiness, this massive power, Presence, Force that we would call ‘the Divine’, looming over now emerges or descends rather. It's so massive that if it were to reveal itself or release itself, it would shatter this whole universe. Such is that tremendous infinite power, Presence. And I didn't have the experience of all this, but I could feel, it was all there, waiting to release. It's holding itself back, it can only release itself in tiny trickles, because the universe couldn't bear.
So, “Ha-okay, that makes sense, there's some meaning to it. Okay. So maybe over time, maybe in a few million years, it will trickle down. So what do I do?” Question still. I am looking at this and suddenly all this fades out and I see only two points of light: there is that [gesturing above] point which I call “the Mother”; and there is this [gesturing below] point which I call “me”. So two points of light. That’s the only thing that remains. And this [gesturing “me”-point] exists in relation to that [gesturing “Mother”-point]. So I don't have an independent existence; it's only in relation to that. So I'm looking at this.
“Okay. Okay. So what? What do I do?” That answers. That question is still not answered: “What do I do?” And then it emerged, it dawned literally, as an experiential perception: “You don't have to do anything, just have to be. And when you are, action will emerge spontaneously. It will happen, you can't help it. You don't have to do, you only be. But be truly in relation to that” [gesturing “Mother”-point],—as I saw this, this light exists only in relation to that,—“Be and the thing will happen, becoming will happen, you don't have to do”. That was such a huge relief, because the basis of all my questioning and the problem of “What do I do?” was: How do you take a decision? What do you do? Nothing. You just be, and when you are, automatically the action flows, emerges. Okay, so I've got an answer finally, and it makes sense; it feels, it is real now in all this context.
And then as I'm watching this, I observe, around this little point that I call “me” three veils, like a coatings, three layers of coating, which prevented me from being truly. Now it was perceived, but I understand the three layers would represent the three sheaths of our consciousness, of our nature, around the soul, which because of whatever their limitation tend to cover. But to become conscious through these three sheaths, to be truly yourself, and in being automatically action flows in your nature, you can't help it, you don't have to do it, it happens. And the more transparent, the more true, the more smooth, the more effortless, and I will even use the word ‘flawless’ precisely because it's not you doing, it's not your ego-sense, it's not a limited piece now claiming to be or claiming to do, or attempting to do, it's being truly, and something which is true just flowing or as in consequence rippling out, affecting, driving nature, whatever,—I'm putting words to what is otherwise just held as an experience.
So I looked at that, I, that was the end of that whole thing and soon after became this last, after this was the last vestige of that self-deception, or the public image which was torn out. But this really completed that phase of a, the struggle of introspection, and all that. And finally that last coating, uh, veil of a public image, that was torn, it was such a relief. It completed the whole thing. And I look back now, or even at that point looking back at those two years, I could not have done this on my own. The experience of literally what, that hammering of that..
So I have to complete this part. I described how for two, I would every night I would wake up, and for nearly two hours I would have this painful hammering. Later I found this text of the Mother, I had read it before, but I had forgotten, and after this I read again, and it suddenly made sense.
She says…She spoke about how the ego forms and uh, how it can be thinned out. And then he says, she says: The most difficult is the spiritual ego, that has to be broken by the hammer, “by the blows of hammer”, she says. The spiritual ego has to be broken by the blows of hammer. And I realised, Hhaa, that's what had been happening through that period, blows of hammer, literally breaking the spiritual ego, teaching the whole nature all the way down to the physical body: “You are nothing without the Divine Presence, Just a shell, just an empty vessel, just a base, support, substance, nothing without the Divine Presence, everything which gives meaning to life comes from the Divine Presence, all the capacities, all the things which bring joy, fulfilment, meaning, purpose, all comes from the Divine Presence.” But this had to be literally pushed all the way down to the most material part, and therefore the pain. If it was just in the mind, vital, it might not have been so painful.
(1:15:44):
So I'm sharing this in great detail for a reason, in part because it will help to understand some of these questions also from the soul's perspective, but also in another part to understand the place of these crushing experiences. Humiliation was a tiny part, it was crushing of the ego, and the spiritual ego particularly is the most painful.
And I, I will explain why it had to happen because I had all these experiences, not because of anything I did, because of my teacher, because of the gift from the Mother, because of the environment in which I grew, I had all these beautiful experiences which I have, I have spoken of this in my interview with Marc Auburn.
I said, I grew up with these things, and thinking that everyone has it. And it's only when I lost it, I realised, ‘Oh, this is what it means to be normal human being’. And during the time it was there, and I knew it was being given to me by my teacher, in the nature of your personality something identifies and claims it, ‘Ah, this is me, this is mine’, and as a result, it was very easy, and I can look back, and I was protected from it, it was very easy to go off-track and start exercising that claim, of this, [gesturing himself] and behaving as if it was yours.
And if not for this, fortunately I was protected till then, I'm sure I might have OFF and ON, but little things, but if not for this I would never have known what it is to be free of it, and the last part was the crushing of the ego and the spiritual ego particularly, eventually left me with this emptiness which led to those experiences of that vacancy, and all that. The result subsequently was, it took a few years to kind of reshape, reform the personality, but the big difference was, I never again had the, made the mistake of identifying with the ego-sense.
The ego reforms, you can't help it, it forms again, because it's like substance, it's even needed to have a focal point for action. But the moment it would get a little bit overdone, I say, “Ah, okay, it's too much, cool down, dim it’. It'll still catch you by surprise once in a while, but once you've broken out of it, it's difficult to get caught by its illusion. On the other hand, if I had not had this experience, I would never have known: What it is like to actually be free?
What does it mean to be ego-less? Does it, What is it, What's it like, experientially pushed down to the body-consciousness painfully.
So again, I'm pointing out. I am sharing this so that recognising this, these principles, these truths, one could draw on it without having to go through that painful passage. At the time it was happening, my teacher was not there. I had nobody whom I could ask. And even if they explained, I still would not understand here, [gesturing his sheaths] because you have to go through it to, to break free of it. So uh, yes, the crushing experience for the soul can be extremely useful if the goal is to crush the ego-sense or the falsehood or distortions or any false construction which all the time we build, if nothing else, to just make ourselves feel good and feel worthwhile.
So much of our, and I'm saying, just generally of human beings now, so much of our self-image is needed just to feel that ‘I am worthwhile’. And if suddenly you realise, you saw yourself for what you are, you realise, ‘My God, I am the most horrible, worthless, miserable thing that could be’, and you might think yourself worse than everybody else.But if you looked into others, you would find the same things equally as in you, and then you will come to the conclusion: ‘This human nature is the most worthless.’ That was that whole experience of going through those four layers.
But then when you see what is behind it, and what is trying to work to manifest through this nature, and the potential for its divinisation, because you know it is essentially divine, you know it is still this material which has been taken up as, well, starting point for something extraordinary to be built, now suddenly you realise: ‘Wow, my god, what an extraordinary adventure.’ A whole perspective shifts.
(1:20:05):
So, yes, the crushing experience—with or without humiliation—can be extremely liberating in the spiritual journey itself. And again, as I say, pain is not needed, but humiliation might be needed to help break. Pain is only when there is a part in you that resists a pressure for change, so all the pain I experienced was because there were layers where. So in the parts, I would open and say, ‘Here I am, work in me, change me, free me, dissolve me, I don't want to exist anymore, ha-uh, I am, let me be an automaton to your consciousness even, I don't want to be, even’, – all that was done by a superficial layer of personality like the tip of the iceberg, all the rest I'm not even conscious of, so it cannot be drawn into this exercise of wanting to open.
And when the pressure came on those parts to change, that's where the pain came. So you have to understand: The pain was not needed, but it was the consequence of parts which resisted the push and the pressure for change. Always in life, whenever you've pain, whether physical, emotional, mental, vital, spiritual if it that be, a pressure to change, and a refusal to change, and the squeezing point is the pain. If you can catch that point, become conscious, and the pain makes you conscious of that layer, that part in you or the tendency, and you consciously relax and open to the inner or higher influence and accept the kind of change that is required to deal with this present situation and participate in it -instantly the pain goes away. You may still struggle to get the new rhythm, but the pain itself goes.
So my point in explaining all this: Pain is not needed. Humiliation can be useful but it's not needed but will be a consequence of the fact that you, well, refuse to change or you refuse to, uh, you live by some false formations, but pain will always be resistance, and you can correct for it. So this is as far as Suresh's question goes. Dolan builds on the same idea: “Why many souls including developed ones uh, choose harsh environment of abandonment, wounding, abusing environments, experience of neglect and pain, in early lives? What light and learning are they trying to bring to the world or themselves through these battles?”
Well, especially the more evolved souls do not choose an environment from the point of view of comfort. They choose for a very specific reason which is intended for the line of development which they have chosen or for the particular means required for that development. I give an example here. Again I'm going to draw a little bit on the example of my conversation with Marc Auburn. So in the interaction with him, one of the things which is very obvious, his personality is extremely strong, extremely forceful and capable of tremendous abuse from, from outside.
And I said to him, because it was obvious, I said, “In this life you chose this kind of a body because of the nature of work you have to do”. And he was conscious, he said, “Yes, I chose my parents because of this particular grade of physical-vitality that they had, and only for that, nothing else, all the rest was junk that came as consequence of that choice, including the struggle he had to go through- religious indoctrination, and all those things, so, and other forms of distress that he might surely have gone through which he may not have spoken of.
“But what did you choose for?” Well, this was all in this case. Now in my case, for example, in this lifetime, I chose for a very specific quality of a strong spiritual aspiration of my mother. There was no particular interest in the other people around, but it was for my mother and in this environment of the Ashram. So, in fact, it so happened, when my mother was under pressure to leave the Ashram, because her husband wanted to go away, she made a choice to stay saying, ‘Well, I can't betray these children, they have been accepted by the Mother’. And the Mother actually said: “Had she gone away, this boy would have left his body because he has come here for my work.” Very specific. Very clear statement.
I don't know, in this personality, but at the soul-level perhaps that choice was clear enough and the child was young enough that, well, if it goes off that track, paab, quit the body, take on a new one, continue the work because of that focus. I'm giving examples here. There's another case, I know of a boy in the Ashram who grew up in the school, extremely talented, extremely uh, creative, artistic, and it was very clear, he was meant to be here, he had come for this purpose. And under pressure of family he was taken out, he was forced to marry. It was nice, the marriage was nice, there was no problem there. But at a very young age, within five years or so, he died.
(1:25:21):
And it's interesting that his mother came to me and she was crying after five years after that, saying that, ‘I am told by people that because I took him away from here that he left’. Of course, I consoled her, but it was clear, that was actually the reason. Can't say that of course to her. But it was the reason, because the soul found itself now in a suffocating environment, completely different from what it had come for, and it had come for a very specific purpose.
So all the more reason when the soul is reasonably uh, evolved and conscious of the sense of purpose, it chooses very precisely specifically certain things, and then all the rest that may come with it is, well, package deal, ‘I couldn't find a better place, this was the best’, and you deal with it.
So “wounding … abusive environments … neglect … pain”: If the soul is mature, it will use those to form, shape, its personality, influence and build a greater strength. If it's not mature enough, then what happens? The soul is actually drawn to the quality of consciousness that resonates with its current evolution. So now we come to a very important part. Uh, and I link it to Dhruval's question: “Why has the Divine allowed this?” Is it the soul who chooses or is it just incidental or is it karma as ‘Running Lawyer’ says?
No, it's much more complex. So, we'll look at the whole process of choice of how a soul chooses to take birth and where. The Mother describes it like this: First of all, it's at the end of the current life that you choose the broad lines of the next life. So, as the soul finishes this, it turns back,—and this is a common experience in all near-death experiences,—you see in a flash the whole journey of life, all the critical elements of learning and growth that the soul had, and it's the soul memory which you see in a flash, in a single moment, ‘flashback’ they call it, in the near-death experience. And then from that is the choice instantly made in the soul-consciousness: ‘Is my work done or is there more?’.
So in most cases of near-death experience, they say, ‘Ah-no, but there's something remaining’, and the person chooses to stay. It happens for example as an accident. You'll find these descriptions in those books on near-death experiences. This guy has a car crash. The car has crashed, there's a collision, and in that moment, it's like the soul-consciousness pops out, overriding the surface personality, so he remembers it, and in that moment of eternity, that's how you could describe it, flashback, choice made, ‘No, there's something to be done still’, flop, you come back, and the soul-influence at that point has seized the occasion, and somehow you survive. If at that moment, the choice was ‘Hha, done, work is done, nothing more left’, pop, you would have come back, collision, death.
So the choice made in this case, there is an intervention, in most cases, in some cases, miraculous intervention, no injury, in some cases there's some extreme damage, but the person recovers in spite of the damage, and continue, choice made. So the point I am trying to make is: The soul’s viewpoint in choosing is made at the point of death, you look back, ‘Okay, now ready to leave’, and when it's ready to leave, as it turns forward, it says, ‘What is it that's lacking in my growth? And this is now what I want’, literally at that moment of leaving that the choice is made.
And all the rest from that point on, in the withdrawal and in the period of rest in the psychic worlds, is one of assimilation of the past but with the turn to formulate the next line of birth. Now when this assimilation is complete and the soul is taking, making the choice now to take birth, it, so to say, wakes from its introverted trance and turns out once again to look at the world, ‘Ha, what's it? What’s it I want to do? What's the form it has to be?’, and it's looking for opportunities. Now if the soul is not very evolved and yet has a sense of purpose, there are beings whose job it is to assist you. So they come, they help you find the right place and bring you in contact with the child who's about to take birth or whatever the form may be in that case.
If the soul is sufficiently mature, as it turns to life, it sees at a distance, and this is Mother's description, at a distance as if in the world points of light which correspond to locations or vibrations of consciousness that correspond with your consciousness and your sense of purpose, and then one of them is as if more bright, more intense, and you find yourself drawn as if magnetically towards that, and then you come into the earth zone, earth environment, you're conscious of this, and then depending on the stage of child's development you may take birth either by identifying with the body in the womb or after birth or at birth, and so on.
(1:30:42):
But this description of points of light is fascinating, because it just happened now a few uh, weeks ago I met somebody in my travel. This is a lady who said to me. I asked: “Do you recall your past life?” She said, ‘No, I don't, but I recall the choice made in this life’. And then she described it like this: ‘I, I decided’,—she said,—’that there had to be a way to be conscious in the entry into the physical world, so I willed myself, and as I turned to life, I saw these points of light, and there were so many points of light, and one was glowing extra bright, and I found myself pulled to that.’ Perfect description! Then she says: ‘Afterwards I was in the womb, and it was very boring, so I kind of drifted in-and-out until the time of birth.’ And then she asks. And she says: ‘I don't remember previous, before that, what was, but from this point on where I decided, I had to remember, the memory is there.’ And then she asked: ‘Does it make sense? ‘Has anyone else spoken like this?’
I said: “This was a perfect description of what the Mother has described independently”. Fascinating.
So the point I'm getting to: The soul's choice made broadly along the lines of the life-experience it wants to choose, sometimes helped, and the criteria also could be different. Now it may choose a family because of that extreme poverty and it wants to build from scratch everything. But it will look, look for parents who will nurture the values that it wants in its growth. Or it may say, ‘All right, I don't get that, but whatever is the best compromise: I want a strong body for the hard work I have to do, but in poverty’. Or it may choose a quality of consciousness, it may choose a quality of aspiration, it may choose a particular line; it is drawn to an artistic life because it wants to manifest art, it takes birth in an artistic family, and so on.
Where it is not sufficiently developed, and this is the part where I'm saying, you need not worry too much, it is drawn merely to the equivalent vibration of its current evolution of consciousness and plunges headlong into a space irrespective of what it is, it corresponds to its current evolution and it will grow from there, and all the rest, harsh environment or not, or abandonment or not, or comfort, is irrelevant, there was no question of choice there, it was purely vibrational. I'm going to elaborate on this one a little bit, because it's something which, it’s difficult for us to understand because our human values are so uh, false.
I look at a politician, and they're wonderful people, and they're the most corrupt, the most horrible, the most inhuman people in that field; the field is one of extremes. And I'm looking at one of these types. You go into the person's consciousness, it is so yucky, it is so filthy, it is so dark, it is so perverted, the only thing it has is a very strong vital. Some of it could have been inherited, but from the soul's evolution point of view, it is so crude.
And such a person now, however powerful he might have been and influential as a tool for other forces, because he was in a power-place, in the next incarnation will end up in a zone or a space of consciousness currently of its evolution, it may not get a strong vital, but it will be of the same crudeness and darkness and coarseness of its current evolution. And then if the vital is weak, it will never become so powerful, it will not be a powerful politician because it didn't inherit a strong vital, but it will live in that gross-level of consciousness.
So: The choice of environment in a less-evolved: is purely in terms of equivalent state of consciousness. And environment: may be comfortable, may be uncomfortable, doesn't matter; it's consciousness terms. In a more evolved conscious uh, soul: choice; helped by beings; and then compromise on everything else.
So it's not that the Divine has allowed it. We go to Dhruval's question, we come back to what, what Sage Narad says to Ashwapati and the Queen Mother: ‘You have chosen it. You have chosen this world of this kind of an experience. You have chosen to enter into it for the growth through these experiences. And then in the nature of the choice that you made to go through that evolution, there is the self-loss and the self-forgetfulness and the emergence from that and with it sometimes incidental difficulties and problems, sometimes chosen difficulties and problems.’
(1:35:34):
So, to Panchal's observation that: “My daughter was born with cataract by birth, what can be the reason for that?” It could be one of those things incidental. It's not that the soul chose to have a defect in the body. In fact what happens in most cases when the soul has taken the body and it finds the body insufficient for the work that it wants, if it's a conscious soul, it will leave the body and find another. This is one of the reasons for the crib deaths, early childhood death. Or, it finds itself in the wrong place.
Now this is something which Mother spoke of. You remember, those ‘points of light’ when the soul is going [gesturing moving to earth]. She said, sometimes there are deceptive beings who create a fake point of attraction, a false imitation, and the soul is drawn and by mistake ends up in a wrong place, and then it realises after birth, ‘Oh, this is completely the opposite of what I wanted’, and poof it leaves. But in this case, as in the cataract, or some physical deficiency, it could be something which came from the environment; it came from the food which was taken by the parents; it could have been, in rare occasions uh, something which came with the karma of the soul; and sometimes even an injury in the subtle-body. Now these are rare cases, but that also can happen.
Purna Prema, Mother's granddaughter, was incidentally one of the royalties in the French Revolution who was guillotined, and she had still a mark on the neck from the shock which was registered by the psychic being, there was still a mark on the neck of that particular thing. We know of cases for example of rebirth which are documented medically, where the person recalls the life and actually describes in detail as a child, and he says: he was shot, and there was a point of entry of the bullet and the point of exit of the bullet of the previous life where he was shot and died, and the mark of those entry- and exit-points were still there on his physical body in this incarnation.
So sometimes there are traumas one may carry over in this way, because the content of the subtle-body was not fully dissolved, some of it was carried over including the trauma it had received because of the immediate short-term transition of birth. But if it had been fully dissolved, the soul could have also effectively got free of it. But this is just to say that there can be many reasons. Some of it could be carried over like this, some of it may be entirely environmental, and the soul says: ‘Okay, make do with it, because, well, my parents are so wonderful, I don't want to let go of this opportunity even if the biology is defective, we'll correct for it and, well, make the most of the opportunity’.
So that would be often the case as in what Panchal says. And for Running Lawyer’s observation: “All this is about freeing oneself from karma?”
No. Karma is a very tiny part of it. And freeing from karma is not the goal, as we have discussed many times before. Karma is incidental, it is a small part of the working of the universe. The greater truth is freedom of the soul. And everything we have spoken of has been about the freedom of the soul affirming over everything else. And you don't need to worry about freeing from karma, because karma is just, influences that you can utilise even for your growth. Why not? And where needed, the soul can dissolve the karma anyway, you don't need to free it by expending it by other means.
All those ideas come when you have, for example, in the Buddhist framework, you've thrown out soul and God, and the freedom then is gone, and the whole thing is left as machine, Karma becomes all-encompassing and overwhelming. Bring back the soul, bring back the Divine Consciousness, and their essential freedom, and the Divine Freedom to override everything; karma becomes one of many influences, including environmental influences, including genetic influences, they don't come to you from Karma, they come from, well, having been there. And so, we need not worry too much about karma, neither about freeing up from karma.
Rather, if you find, there is some compelling cause, compelling force, which is hanging on you, two choices: either the soul's influence, or the Divine intervention, Grace, can dissolve and remove it; or, you utilise it for your growth and say, ‘All right, this problem is, having come, let me see what I can do and make the most of it’. So, just to close this theme uh, for today, especially on the aspect of karma, there, there's this very interesting example, I've shared before, but worth repeating here.
(1:40:14):
There was a family which had some problem, and this person in the family was going through severe problems, and they consulted an astrologer who said ‘Oh, you've got this cycle and that cycle of planets’, and so on, so naturally as was in those days they reported it to the Mother. From the very next day all the problems vanished! And they didn't occur! They didn't occur! They didn't occur! Weeks! Months! At some point the family approached the Mother and said, ‘By the way ever since we told you this all the problems have gone’. And Mother said simply, “Yes, naturally, because I erased his karma”. Not “Took on myself”, it's not a mathematical equation. “I erased.” She intervened to erase! And that's it.
Now you can make the mistake of calling it back. So that comes to the next incident to share, and we will close with this. There was a person in the Ashram who had come, joined the Yoga, committed himself to the Yoga, received by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. And at some point his family put him under pressure to go back to his, well, native town and get some kind of a initiation by some, what they call ‘family guru’. Now these are little ordinary people pretty much with a little bit of religious temperament, and so on, sometimes they may have an occult power, and that's about it.
And he naturally asks, writes to Sri Aurobindo: “Do I have your permission to do this?”. Sri Aurobindo explained: “When you came to us, we have taken upon ourselves”,—“we” meaning he and the Mother,—”have taken upon ourselves the entire burden of your karma, if you go back and go through that initiation, you will take back the whole burden of that karma.” You see, initiation, a spiritual commitment, is not a trivial thing. It's not a joke. It's not a paper you sign and then forget. It's a commitment of the soul, and especially where it concerns,—again I don't mean trivial initiations where ‘You know, I got initiated by X, Y’,—where you have been received by one who embodies the Divine, after that to open yourself to an inferior influence is to pull back the whole mass of junk that is associated with that grade of consciousness.
I'll give you an analogy to understand. You have been pulled up from a certain grade of consciousness where that karma was acting on you. As long as you're above it, it doesn't affect you. You sink back into it, it affects you. So, not to worry too much about karma, especially when we dedicate ourselves to the Divine, commit ourselves to being entirely given to the Divine, to the Divine Mother, even if in parts you're not conscious, you're bound to other things, at least in the totality of your conscious being, you open, give yourself entirely, and exclusively. Entirety is important! Exclusivity is important! You give yourself to nothing else which may pull you back, or limit you, or bind you. And this state of entire self-giving and exclusive self-giving is your key. The more you are able to complete this, the more directly the action of the Shakti will take place in you and the change and transformation of your nature.
So I think, this is good enough to close on. We have been coming back to the overall theme “Healing of Childhood Trauma”, but put it now in the context of our spiritual journey: our origin in ignorance, and the trauma of that emergence, and the awakening from it, and the ego dissolution, and the awakening to a spiritual life, and so on. Call it ‘trauma’ if you like, or call it the ‘process of our awakening’. Having come to this place where we are today, where we seek consciously and open ourselves consciously to our higher spiritual potential, and we choose to give ourselves consciously, let nothing bind you to the past, let all the past go away, and choose to make a conscious new birth at this moment, or, at least on those special occasions of your birthday once a year, you say, ‘All right, all that has happened I let go now’, and take a new birth, physically,—not just mentally and vitally,—physically itself, use those occasions, or, if you can, right now.
And spiritually, of course, in your soul's consciousness, that is the normal way, at each moment to be new-formed, new-freshly, uh, new in your expression, draw upon that, become more of the nature of your soul, let its influence fill you, let the Divine Consciousness fill you and shape you.
(1:45:12):
And that's all that we need to focus upon, and life becomes a joy, irrespective of the challenges, irrespective of the squeeze you might have, the occasionally painful and humiliating or crushing experiences, everything is taken in the stride of the soul's evolution and used for the spiritual evolution to be accelerated enormously.
Trust in this. Align yourself to the higher and deeper truth. Do not seek for pain and struggle, but when it comes, use it for the growth or ask the Divine to intervene, to dissolve, if it's needed, or help, you make use of it, if needed. So, we'll hold ourselves in concentration on this. And the next session, we will continue the same topic with a few more questions and some from the chat box also.
For the moment, let’s concentrate in this aspiration.
Namaste.
[1] It is Savitri’s mother. The lines mentioned are from Savitri – Book VI, Canto II.
[2] [CWSA, 33&34, p. 454]
[3] [CWSA, 33&34, p. 455]