12 August 2023
Alina (0:00:25):
Namaste and good evening everyone. Namaste, Sraddhalu.
[To Sraddhalu] I think, you're muted.
Sraddhalu (0:00:36):
Yes, Namaste. Happy to be with all of you.
Alina (0:00:43)
Today we are continuing Evenings with Sraddhalu, Part – III, on childhood trauma. We will continue this theme as we receive more questions, and as usually you may send your questions during our conversation in the chat box or you may send beforehand at our email ID: integralstudies.in[at]gmail.com. I would start with three questions that we received on the topic of miscarriage, abortion and adoption.
- First question from Mamata: “I lost my child at eight months and a half, intra-uterine death, and the diagnosis was idiopathy. What might be the cause? Any bad karma on my side? This question is bothering me.”
- Another question from Dolan: “Could you discuss issues of miscarriage, adoption, abortion, children born in abusive homes, addiction environments, war situation and other vulnerable situations and how one can mitigate these early threatening scenarios to grow into nourishment, strength, resilience and spirituality? What can a mother do in such situations except pray when the outside environment is harsh?”
- And a last question from Vivek, from the chat box: “If you are struggling with healing yourself or struggling with significant behaviour challenges, please don't have kids, it takes a village to raise a child especially if parents are not in sync.”
Sraddhalu (0:02:46):
Mmhm. Yes. All three are important questions and they are interrelated, so we put them together. The first question from Mamata is about the death of the child while still in the womb and the medical diagnosis is idiopathy. And if you look at the etymology of this word, it's from the Greek root ‘idios’ which means ‘one's own’, ‘proper’, ‘particular’; ‘pathy’ is suffering, disease, etc.; so a disease which exists of its own. If you consider how skilfully medical science has learnt to deceive, well, itself, but others with words like this, ‘A disease that appears of its own’, and so we have named it ‘idiopathy’, and that's a ‘diagnosis’. In other words, ‘We show knowledge with technical terms which cover utter ignorance, we don't know why’.
So medically there is no, no cause. And so the question of course is: Is this something which is occult, a bad karma, or something done by the mother uh, and for which she would be responsible? Or, it could be even perhaps the child's karma?, etc. So these are typically the first reaction that we have from people who have some spiritual background and have some knowledge of the, at least the idea of karma. And unfortunately that can create all kinds of difficulties as in this case because somewhere one begins to blame oneself.
But you don't know. ‘Is it my fault?’ ‘Did I do something?’ And there is no way to know. And that's why it is best not to think in terms of karma. On a very practical level, if there was a very specific karma, let's say, which was very narrow, very specific in the particular form, generally it's not like that, these are very general tendencies, but suppose it was like that, there is no way for you to know, if it is the case. If it is, then you would end up blaming yourself. If it is not the case, you still end up worrying. And so, my general recommendation is not to think in terms of karmas. Accept that there was some cause. Preferably go with the more material causes first, where in spite of yourself there could be for example some defect in the development which is sensed by the biology itself, the body itself recognises ‘Something is not okay’ and decides to shut down, as happens internally within ourselves. When there is a genetic damage, and the body detects, the damage is too great for repair, it initiates a whole process of self-destruction within the cell, and this is happening all the time. That's how the body maintains itself.
(0:05:49):
But it can also happen in situations like this. Unfortunately, it is a, at a very late stage of the pregnancy, and therefore it is traumatic for the mother, it is, we don't know the details of the case, but it is also possible that if by then a soul had already found a point of entry that, and it wanted to come there but then discovers that the biology is not sufficient, or there is some damage, there is some distortion, and a choice is made from the soul's intervention that this is not maintainable.
Or, it can be that there could be environmental influences which would be the more material causes. There is so much poisoning in the food today. There is so much genetic intervention which have come from various things which were injected into people, which were designed to create inflammations, etc., even sometimes in the reproductive tissues, and all that. All of these factors are blending-in. The better thing to do is, always recognise, some biological cause, some internal correction mechanism; at best if there is an occult cause, a choice made that the body was defective, and that way you are completely free from this worry. Instead you can make a choice to move ahead. And if you decide to have a child again, move forward, make sure your body gets the necessary detox, makes it healthy, and move on.
The problem with the word ‘karma’ is that one can generalise it [to] no end. For example, the technical term actually in Sanskrit would be ‘prarabdha’: ‘pra’, before; ‘arabdha’, begun; something begun before which has its consequence now. And that is what the term actually, generally covers. So in a sense, everything is an outcome from so many influences, but doesn't mean you are responsible. And so the suggestion would be to avoid that line of thinking completely, instead say, ‘All right, even if there was such a thing, that's all cleared out, let's focus on what can be done’. Even if there was something, let's focus on how we can rise above it, be free of it, etc.
I want to read from a passage that the Mother records, well, it's from one of her conversations with Satprem, where she is describing and this was, we have to put it in context, Satprem himself, she had warned him, had a tendency to commit suicide, and she had seen that he had done this in the past, not once but multiple times, and she was fixed on freeing him from this tendency once and for all. Because the problem, she explains and it's a long passage, she explains how once that tendency has formed, it tends to come back again and again, and the tendency to want to escape as the problems grow comes back stronger each time, and because having done it once you want to do it again and again, and it creates a formation. And in some of the occult traditions, she says, they even say, it is impossible to escape.
I read from that where she says: “… each time, the conditions become more difficult, each time it requires a still greater effort. And people who know this say, ‘You cannot get out!’ ”—and—“In fact, it is this kind of desire to escape which pushes you into more foolish things that result in a still greater accumulation of difficulty.” Now having said all this, she, in this context, she says: “But if the soul has had but one call, but one contact with the Grace, then in your next life”,—that is, after having committed that suicide,—”in your next life you are put in the conditions, once, whereby everything can be swept away at one stroke. And at this present moment on earth, you cannot imagine the number of people I have met – that is, the number of souls – who had reached out towards this possibility with such an intensity – and they have all found themselves on my path.”
(0:10:02):
She explains how certain “courage” is needed to break through, or “sometimes a true love is enough” to be able to break through, and so on. But the “habit of fleeing” and “instead”, she says, “just this, a faith in the Grace, or an awareness of the Grace, or the intensity of the call, or else naturally the response – the response, the thing that opens, that breaks – the response to this marvelous love of the Grace”.
All that she is explaining. And then she says: “How many times do they come to tell me, ‘I want to die, I want to flee, I want to die.’ – I say, ‘But die, then, die to yourself! No one is asking you to let your ego survive! Die to yourself since you want to die! Have that courage, the true courage, to die to your egoism.’ ”
Now she says: “But because it is karma”,—because you have built up this habit,—”one must, one must do something oneself. Karma is the construction of the ego; the ego must do something, everything cannot be done for it …”,—that is,—”this is the thing: karma is the result of the ego’s actions, and only when the ego abdicates is the karma dissolved. One can help it along, one can assist it, give it strength, bestow courage upon it, but the ego must then make use of it.”
“So this is what I saw for you: …” She is telling Satprem. You see, this is also first a glimpse into the Mother's perception in people, and when she dealt with them, the kind of things that she took into account when making a simple decision.
She says: “… this is what I saw for you: that the crystallization of this karma occurred during a life in India in which you were put in the presence of the possibility of liberation and … I don’t know the details; I don’t know the material facts at all. … I saw you there, …, taller than you are now, in an Indian body, north Indian, … there was a hardness in the being, the hardness born of a kind of despair mixed with rebellion, incomprehension and an ego that resists.”
And so, she describes what she saw. And then she says, how there were occasions in the life where she saw the opportunity to be free from this tendency and how she helped along. And, again I’ll read a few portions, because it is so fascinating and gives a glimpse of her.
So, he goes to, I think, it was Sri Lanka to meet some tantric, he was fascinated with Tantrics.
Mother says: “As soon as you had left, and since I was following you, I saw that nothing of the kind was going to happen”,—to you,—“but rather something very superficial … And when I received your letters and saw that you were in difficulty, I did something.” So she describes how she is following him as he is journeying, and she is literally registering everything that is happening. And she describes how Banaras is a place where you can have “occult experiences” more easily, and so on, and how: “These are Graces. Graces, because it is the destiny of the country, it has been so throughout”—so—“its history …” And she says, “…the spiritual aspiration develops very strongly and spontaneously as soon as one lands in India.”
So, she follows, she sees what’s happening, she intervenes where necessary. And then she makes this very interesting observation, when sometimes there are such difficulties, she says: “Generally, when the hour has come for a karma to be overcome and absorbed in the Grace, the image or the knowledge or the experience of the exact facts that are the origin of the karma come to me, and I can then perform … the cleansing action.” – It's very interesting. When there is the readiness on that side, it comes, and then she intervenes, and just that, “cleansing action”, everything is absorbed, dissolved, gone.
So.. [laughing] It's very insightful of her interaction with people but also of her capacity to intervene in this way to free somebody. And all this I am putting in the context of this question of the karma, and even if there is something in the soul's problem or in the heredity or whatever it is, we have to make the choice to let it all go, open to the Mother, and if you can give the whole thing to her, you can be freed in this way. The problem she points to, Satprem in that case when she is having this conversation, she says, “You are not yet ready for it”. He was not yet ready, and she said, it was the binding in the ego which was preventing this: freeing from the tendency.
(0:15:05):
So coming back to Mamata's question, I would recommend:
Forget all this! Do not think in terms of karma! If you feel,—and sometimes one may intuitively feel that there is something,—well, take it all up and give it up, give it away to the Divine Mother. Literally you take all that thing out of you, bind, bundle it up,—it's no more inside you, every last vestige of what you may feel, take it out, bundle it up,—and then give it once and for all. And when you give it totally, there is nothing that remains in you even as a memory. Give it entirely. That's it. It's no more yours. And the Mother intervenes, the Divine Consciousness which builds the universe intervenes to dissolve. And it's a tiny ripple in the universe, it's so easy to dissolve.
The only reason it cannot be done is because we cling to it. So do not think in such terms. If you do feel something, well, expel it from your consciousness completely by giving it up to her so that nothing remains of it. If you need to understand, consider that there was some defect, either your body or the soul recognised something is not functional, well, this time you ensure, if you go for another child, ensure that it is done correctly as best as you can from your side. And that's it. Do not worry about the rest.
The second question from Dolan is covering several elements: miscarriage, abortion, and adoption, and then covering children born in abusive homes:
Some of this we have already covered last time and the time before, so I would highly recommend for those who are hearing this for the first time to watch the first two sessions of this topic because that will give the background where now we can just focus on a few specifics of the question. So one is as far as miscarriage is concerned, it is a purely biological phenomenon essentially in the body. Unfortunately, the body itself has been compromised because of so many poisons in the environment, and so we have to take this into account. If possible, cleanse the body. If possible, prepare yourself psychologically also for a healthy birth, and so on. Do whatever you can.
But then, after that, comes the question of abortion. The Mother's general observation about this was that up to a certain stage, before the soul has actually connected with the body or before the lifeforce in the body has acquired a certain individuality even in formation, the abortion does not interfere in any way. But if there has come a late-turn stage where a soul has come in or uh, individuality of the lifeforce has taken on a certain sufficient force, then that would be harmful in some way. And still again when it comes to a question of the medical health of the mother, it is much more important for the mother to survive.
If you look back at a few centuries ago when it was almost a gamble, every childbirth was almost a gamble, you didn't know if the mother would survive or the child would survive or if both might or might not survive. Today the circumstances are so different that one can, where necessary, intervene to protect the mother because then life can continue, and so that is an extreme case where a medical intervention is necessary, or as some people choose when, if they find that the child has a major defect genetically, and so on. But keeping in mind this general principle, if something is detected early enough, then one need not worry too much.
The question of adoption is more complex. In most cases, there is already a trauma which has been, let's say, imposed on the child from the very fact that the child has now come to a stage where an adoption is required. Nevertheless, it is better for the child to be adopted in a healthy loving home than to not have that at all. So, the adoption is preferable where there is uh, there has been already some material loss and now the child does not have parents or no one to look after. But wherever possible if the original parents can keep the child and not put it for adoption, that would be preferable, because there is a natural affinity and binding, a lot of biological connections which are very deeply ingrained in the linkages that Nature builds, particularly in the smell and the flow of energetic exchange between the parents and the child that, just that separation is enough to create certain kinds of traumas.
(0:20:06):
Well, assuming you have been, as a child, say, through that passage and have gone through that, whatever difficulty comes through it, then you can still heal yourself, and it would require perhaps going back to certain deeper layers of your instinct. But if you consider the discussion we had in the first session on this topic, one can go back in consciousness to that and dissolve the knots there, or being in the more surface parts, open ourselves and invite the healing Love of the Divine Mother or influence of the Divine to enter but also to soak all the way down to the deepest layers where there might be some imprint of disturbance and dissolve and heal that. To the extent that we are able to open, even a little bit, the help can penetrate and eventually reach those layers also.
As far as addiction, abusive homes, etc., it can be complicated. As we already covered this last time, but I will summarise:
It can be that the soul chose for a specific reason and these were incidental, or when the soul came in, this was not the case, it happened accidentally subsequently. For example, the soul came to a family, and then there was an accident, and one of the parents or both died, as a result now, the soul is under, the child is under care of others which are abusive. So these were unavoidable, in the sense that they happened after the soul's choice, and, well, the soul can do what it can from the circumstance.
But similarly for addictive environments. But what we discussed last time also, in souls which are not so evolved, you come to the grade of vibration that corresponds to your current evolution, and sometimes these things are part of it.
And the same with war situations and other vulnerabilities, not always chosen by the soul, but having come into it, and the war starts after, well, one does what one can.
The question though more important for us is: How can you grow into nourishment, strength, resilience, and spirituality?
None of these things prevents you from growing. What they may do at first is that in the growth you find yourself anchored in some distortion in your nature, but the growth itself can go on. But the anchoring of that distortion eventually has to be faced and your very spiritual turn can be brought into effect to dissolve the knots. It is somebody who does not have a spiritual opening that will find themselves stuck, bound, in those tendencies. It is when you have a spiritual opening that all these can be more easily dissolved.
I have shared here perhaps some, maybe a year or two ago, it was in a conference we had in Africa, and it was a gathering of people from various religious and spiritual traditions, and there was one lady who was a social worker working with some of the most extreme cases of women damaged by war and put through the most agonising struggles, including rape and loss of home, and everything else. She was describing those examples, most extreme. They have lost everything, there is nothing left, not even their personal dignity.
And then she says: “What are you people doing talking about spirituality? Such a person needs something very basic, they don't need spirituality.”
And I made a response to that saying: “Precisely when you have lost everything, that your only support is the spiritual presence. The Divine Presence within you is the one thing that nobody can take away from you, and it is also the one thing that can heal everything. And therefore spirituality is the only solution. Of course you need to provide them with immediate shelter, support, and so on. Yes, please do that. But having done all that, the trauma is not going to go away for the rest of their life. They will remain damaged, or living in the past memory, and so on, unless there is that spiritual influence which alone can help them to overcome all this. So yes, surely do the biological and psychological and other support systems, but the spiritual support system will be the key to be able to be completely free from the trauma.”
And we had also exposure briefly to one, I will use the word ‘couple’, not in the sense of a marriage, but two people together, this was the case of a man, it was in South Africa, he was the one who bombed some nightclub, and one of the children who died there, young man who died there, his mother met this man; he had been jailed, he had come out of jail, the mother of the child that was lost met this man, and she met with the intention to have some kind of a dialogue for her own healing.
(0:25:26):
Now, you will see, there is no obvious spirituality here, but in the intention there was something which wanted to dissolve the knot, dissolve the sense of blame, or accusation. And just that intention is a spiritual intention, and she did that, it was healing for both. Eventually it was so effective that they went all over the world sharing their story together, and of course every time they shared it, it had a very strong dramatic element of emotions for people, but implied deeply was the spiritual content that nobody sees, they think it is only this social saying ‘I am sorry’ or recognising that you forgive somebody. It's not that which changes it, there is a deeper spiritual intent which made for this possible, otherwise a mere emotional exchange would not be enough to heal. It would only make them live the trauma more and more.
So, coming to Dolan's question, “What can a mother do in such situations except pray when the outside environment is harsh?”
You can do several things. Pray, yes, you must, and that in such a case would be a starting point, because you realise the circumstances and your strength do not match, circumstances are overwhelming, your strength is too weak, and this is when you can call for a help.
The prayer can be on two kinds: one, to help you to grow, to be strong, to overcome, to survive; and the second can be the prayer to intervene in the situation to change the circumstances. Both are needed. But subsequent to the prayer or paralleling the prayer even, should also be an action, an effort that you make. The passivity of a prayer would not be of help, it has to be an active engagement, you will start doing something to try to change the situation, either subsequent to the prayer or simultaneous with the prayer, and the result will be the help that comes will flow through the action that you make and produce the necessary miracles. It does not work if you pray and go back to sleep, because the action intervening needs an instrument. You may say, ‘I am not good enough as an instrument’, it doesn't matter, your incapacity is not relevant, your presence and the support that it can provide is relevant.
So Sri Aurobindo quotes from, one of the, from Adi Shankaracharya, he says the quoting from him that the Grace working can make the lame to climb the mountains. You may say, ‘I am lame’, but the Grace can infuse in you enough strength and capacity that you are able to claim the mountains, and you don’t know how you did it, because you didn’t do it, and yet, you needed to make the effort, you can’t say, ‘I am lame, therefore I am going to sit back and wait to be carried up’, mhm, that may not work. Sometimes it works also, but it needs an instrument eventually; If not you, then someone else has to do it for you. Why not the one who has the spiritual call who becomes available as the instrument? That can be far more effective than the one who does not have the call being used by the action indirectly.
And we hear this very often. Unfortunately, this is one of those distortions that comes from the ascetic spirituality and the stories associated with the ascetic spirituality where inevitably you are told a story: so and so prayed, and someone came and made the food, gave him the food, they did the thing. Someone did it. You sat back. And that's considered miracle. But when you do it and the help works through you, it's not so interesting from the ascetic point of view. But from the affirmative spirituality, from the Integral Yoga, this is far better.
So I would highly recommend that: Not except prayer, with prayer you start doing what you can, and it does not matter what you do, you do what you can, and through that somehow circumstances will begin to shift rapidly, and sometimes dramatically, and it's the same even with your own health, illness, or any such trauma that you may have. The fact that you make the effort allows the action now to amplify. You recall in the text we just read of the Mother where she says that because the ego was responsible for that karma or not, its effort is required, its participation is required, it’s, it cannot be done without that participation. So this is a good example of that also.
(0:30:15):
The allied comment which is from Vivek, because it appeared a couple of times in the chat box, he says: “If you are struggling with healing yourself or with behaviour challenges, don't have children because it takes a village to raise a child.”
Yes, that's true also that you would ideally want a village to raise a child, but look at the reality of today: In any city, you don't have that village, the village-unit has long ago broken. Worst still, you don’t even have the family-unit, the family unit is also broken in most cases, you don't have the grandparents, for example, which should have been a great help naturally. But that not being there, even you don't have sometimes the parents, both are working, and the child is in school, and with television, or a lot of other junk in between. So, if you took that guidance seriously, then pretty much 99% of humanity, or at least 95% of humanity would not have the necessary circumstances to be able to raise a child because you don't have the village support.
So very practically, yes, it would be wonderful if there was a village. But given that there is even a single parent. From the soul's point of view, if that parent can provide,—and again we are looking from the spiritual viewpoint,—if that one parent can provide the spiritual contact and nourishment to the child,—all the rest not being there,—it’s still worth it. So I will put it from the point of view of a soul that wants to incarnate which is sufficiently conscious of a spiritual sense of purpose: You find one parent that is worthwhile, sometimes it's a grandparent, even the parents are not good enough, the grandparent is what calls you, and you are there for that support, and that's more than enough, all the rest you can make do even or make up for it in other ways.
So, yes, while you have a point in what you say, practically we have to go beyond that ideal situation and look at the reality of things today. I think, for adoption there was one more example in, which is very unusual, and it's worth sharing here: This was a case in the Ashram, there was a lady who was very keen to have a child, and the Mother insisted, explaining to her that she had seen her dying of childbirth for many lives, and in this life also she saw that the person would die in the childbirth. It was a fact that the person had a weak biology. I don't know specifics, but what Mother saw was already clear enough that there was no way to bypass it because of the nature of the biology. And so the Mother insisted, again and again she had to tell her, “Do not! Do not! Do not”. And finally as a compromise, the Mother recommended that she adopt the child, or the woman wanted to adopt the child and the Mother said, “Okay”.
So it's interesting from the point of view of the other side of adoption that a parent who wants to have a child and cannot either conceive or has other issues and needing to adopt, and it can be healing for the parent in some way also, if the child did not have any other support, for both it can be a healing. But we must understand there will be some ingrained traumas and one would have to work around it and the means we've already seen before.
We can go to the next question.
Alina (0:33:56):
Neev: “I would like to ask about medical and psychiatric diagnosis. On one hand, getting a diagnosis for a problem may be a liberating relief. One realises that there are others in the same boat and there may be a common method or strategy that is tried and tested for dealing with this cluster of symptoms. In a way also it legitimises the problem and can open the way for understanding and support socially and medically. However, diagnosis may have the effect of confining one in the mental formation of the illness or disorder, thus limiting or sometimes even eliminating any hope of cure or freedom from it, especially if it is considered to be incurable from the western allopathic standpoint. There is some evidence in the mental health field that being labelled with a mental disorder after a single incidence of psychiatric distress in youth can be detrimental for outcomes later in life when compared to those who were supported but not given a diagnosis. I think, this ties it in with the subject of traumas. Many of the defects or trauma are currently labelled by the psychiatric field as bipolar disorder, borderline disorder, PTSD, etc. Could you shed light on this from the perspective of the Yoga and the soul's evolution? Is it different from sadhakas than for those in the slow yoga?”
Sraddhalu (0:35:54):
Mhum. It's a very interesting question, and I think, Neev has already given the important elements of the answer itself. What we find is, in the very fact of labelling in a diagnosis, you are as if slotted into a box. And if the labelling is associated with something considered incurable, then the formation is imposed on you in a way that binds you. And there is, he says, evidence to show that those who are not labelled in this way, they do better than those who are given a diagnosis with a labelling. On the other hand, when you're given some kind of a label, for you it's a relief that you say: ‘Ah-yes, there are others who are suffering with this, I'm not alone, and there might be some method I can try, and I look at what else, what has worked with others, can I try it with me?’ And he makes reference to, “for dealing with this cluster of symptoms”. Now this is something important I will come back to, I just want to point it out. And sometimes just making it legitimate gives you social support, and so on.
Now, yes, both of these things are true. But we have to also understand that a lot of the problems that come, especially with psychiatric diagnosis, medical diagnosis, of this kind for mental and psychological issues, the entire field of psychiatry today is very infantile, it stops at biological causes of psychological problems, it tends to want to reduce to biological causes when in fact the roots could be entirely in the psychological domain or even in the occult causes. And that's way beyond anything that exists in the current uh, western allopathic standpoint as you have used.
If you go to some of the ‘witchcraft’ or ‘medicine doctors’ of the tribal customs, often they are superior in their results in treating psychiatric and psychological cases than current allopathic psychology. And then of course they resort to medicines. The medicine itself is used almost blindly. It's like you have a headache, let's slam it with a hammer and the pain of the hammer would dull your headache. It's on that level that the psychiatric medicines act. The medicine itself numbs a part of the brain, as a result numbs the registration of emotions or thoughts of various kinds, but in that very numbing, you have unbalanced the working of the mind in the biology.
I am very careful with the ‘psychology’, with the vocabulary here. The mind has this multifaceted working embedded in the brain, biology, you have blocked one part, while over there it might be in somewhat balanced or slightly unbalanced, by blocking it here, you are trying to correct the balance, which may cause other side effects. So very interestingly, for example, with many of the psychiatric medicines, one of the side effects is suicidal tendencies or suicidal thoughts, and they don't understand why, and they say, ‘Ha, it's somehow its to do with the brain’. No. It's because what the thing did was, it suppressed a certain function of the brain to reduce some other symptoms, but in the process it suppressed some protective processes of the mind, which now opened you to suggestions from hostile forces.
So as we are normally, our physical brain and physical body, Mother says, its like a “fortress”, the dullness of the body itself binds and protects. So, when you are out of the body, for example, in a exteriorisation, projection in the vital body, you are attacked, what do you do? Well, you come back into the physical body, instinctively, automatically, and there you are protected. Exposed out, you might be vulnerable. Coming back, you are protected. So this is the great strength, power, gift, we will say of the dulling effect of the biology.
(0:40:07):
On the other hand, if in the biology there is some limitation, in the nervous system or some other function, or sometimes there has already been an entry of some energy that grips you, and I don't mean a full possession, just an energetic tendency which has gripped you somewhere and started warping your thinking, it pops up, it can often register in a biological process, and I explained this in the first discussion on the topic where I linked it also to gut bacteria:
That the bacteria itself being a condensation of energetic tendencies of the vital consciousness, they reflect in the bacterial culture in the gut bacteria, changing that can actually free you, or it can take a form also of parasites. So it can take various, there are various parasites that the human being can hold, it could be worms in the intestines or it can also be parasites that enter the skin, but any parasital entity being in the body brings with it a grade of consciousness associated with that creature and through that grade then an entry of these influences can happen. So for example, if you deworm a person, sometimes it can free them from psychological problems also. Interesting. But you have to understand this working of the higher grades, of vital grades, and the biology-links, and this working which is not yet anywhere near any degree of maturity in the existing western allopathic physician.
So, that being the case, uh, a lot of the so-called illnesses or the diagnostic terms used, are cluster of symptoms. And I am drawing on this phrase which you have drawn on. It is basically combinations of many symptoms which are then called ‘borderline personality disorder’ or some other kind of the five or six kinds of different disorders. If you look it up in the book that describes the, I forget the term now, DSM, the medical book which categorises all these, you will notice, across every decade or so they revise, they create new cluster, or they revise and shift clusters here and there or adjust the tendencies of various clusters. Basically, it says, let’s say, you take borderline personality disorder, there are four or five, if I recall, five or six symptoms, if any three are fulfilled, then you are called ‘borderline personality disorder’. Now, it could be, let’s say, we have five, the first three or it could be the last three or some combination of three, and as long as you have any of these three, we will call it. And it does not make sense at all.
The problem is, you are trying to give the name of a disease for something which is not a disease. Now the same thing if you approached from the Integral Yoga perspective, from the perspective of ‘integral psychology’, and I am using this phrase very deliberately because this phrase is copyrighted by some group in the United States as theirs, wrongly. But this is a phrase which has been used in the Ashram going back 50 years, before the founder of that group was born. So we have full right to use it, and they have wrongly copyrighted it. So in the integral psychology which Sri Aurobindo offers us, instead of creating this arbitrary cluster of symptoms and then calling it in an umbrella term, you look at this in terms of: the layers of consciousness, their functions, their tendencies, and the distortions in their functions.
Now what you find is fascinating. Let's say, purely in the physical body, and you may put multiple grades in the physical body; in the vital body and you put multiple grades or functions; and in the mental body, again multiple grades and functions. Now what you describe, let's say, for ‘borderline personality disorder’ or some other kind, if you map those six things and observe what it is, which part of your personality is working and what are the provocations for that, now one of the things you will see in borderline personality disorder for example is a certain narrowness in the vital consciousness and an instability associated with it. Now those two or three symptoms which are described actually map to just this one factor: narrow, weak vital, with an instability. This you can deal with yogically.
If you look at that, you have a behaviour patterns, you don't know how to deal with, you are busy trying to change your behaviour pattern when the problem is not a behaviour pattern, it's a problem of a grade of consciousness which is not sufficiently matured or stabilised or integrated. The approach should be totally differernt. Unfortunately, as the things are in the world of psychiatry, there are very few people that I know who actually work like this. And necessarily they would have to come from a background either of the yoga psychology or the integral psychology of Sri Aurobindo and with an understanding of how these things work. Yet, when they actually go into the work in the conventional framework of being legally authorised to deal with it, they have to turn it back into the vocabulary associated with that allopathic framework.
(0:45:46):
So you talk in those terms when talking to psychiatrists or when putting a report, but internally you have to translate it into essential yogic perspective and then treat from there. When you start treating in this way, you'll find rapid recoveries, sometimes miraculous. It's so simple. When you recognise ‘Oh, there's a weak vital, it's narrow, it's unstable, it's not integrated with the mind’, whatever it is, and now you start working on that, make the person conscious, ‘This is what you need to do’, suggest to them certain ways of dealing with it or improving this, and again it can come from multiple levels of intervention.
But if you are the patient, the fact that you are made conscious, ‘Oh, this is what it is! What do I need to do? This is what I need to change’, when you go to levels of consciousness and their tendencies, you can do very easily. If on the other hand, you are told, ‘Oh, you have this tendency of thinking like this and you have to change how you will think’, or ‘You have a tendency for an emotional reaction, you get upset easily, you take people uh, criticism too seriously, and you have to change that’, that seems so difficult. Isn't it?
So a much easier way, for example, in this case,—you take criticisms too seriously, you get emotionally upset easily,—well, what would you do from a yogic point of view? Well, become conscious of your emotions, bring peace, invoke the peace into this layer of consciousness. If you are unable to consciously isolate, the first step you would do is, stand back from your emotions and observe them in thought. And eventually stand back from your thoughts. Observe how emotions are giving rise to thoughts, and they are not original thoughts, they are emotional thoughts as distinct from pure thoughts which exist by themselves, not dependent of emotions.
Then, next you observe how the emotion gives rise to a thought, but you have another thought which is independent of emotion which is free and pure, and the two may coexist, and you make a choice to go with the other and not to stay with this. So it can be an internal process of observing and setting right, integrating, placing in right relation the different layers, or it could be combined with yogic processes of the invocation of peace or opening that part which is disturbed to the action of the light and force, etc. But just the fact that you become conscious and that you have this aspiration and ask for the help, already the process has begun.
And so the whole approach should be very different in such cases if you come from the background of a, as a sadhaka and from the Integral Yoga Psychology, from the integral psychology perspective. The labelling is still helpful in certain cases. For example, what is described as PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, was not taken into account seriously especially in the context of soldiers coming back from the battlefield. When a soldier is asked to shoot to kill, and when the person you are killing is unarmed or you know is innocent but you have been given an order to kill, and if you don't kill either you will get killed by the other side or by your own side because you refuse to take an order. It can be extremely traumatic because it goes against the grain of the psychic values. It creates a very strong reaction, shock, a separation, a split, in the consciousness.
You come back from that with this conflict, and for a long time it was treated as, ‘Oh, you are just being too sentimental about it, you had a duty, you did your duty’. The fact that you describe it now as PTSD, you had a post-trauma stress, and you recognise that it was traumatic, is helpful. But having put it in that box, unfortunately, then you put it in a very generic type of illness, or treat it with medicines, and that's not at all helpful.
(0:50:03):
So the first part which is helpful is the recognition that that was a trauma for having to kill somebody under order is traumatic and that it needs to be treated. But how you treat it now will be done in a completely different way, and not with medicine. So much of the immaturity of the Western allopathic psychiatry is coming from this attempt to relate everything to biological process and heal it by medicinal intervention. So instead you recognise that there are other levels of uh, causes, you can intervene on those other levels also, and you need to in many cases. And again it comes back to things we have already discussed in the first session of this topic. If you can come back to your deeper psychic values and the psychic influence and from there integrate, then you can heal all these very rapidly, and as I said, even very easily. So, I hope, this is good enough for Neev’s question.
“Is it different for those in the slow yoga?” Yes, necessarily. It will be different because they do not even make an effort to consciously change themselves, change their nature, or grow in consciousness uh, deliberately. Unfortunately, this is now part of the brainwash of modern education that: ‘You have a sickness, you go to a doctor! You have a fever, you go to the doctor and say, ‘I have a fever’ ’. And now it's taken to the mind level: ‘I feel depressed, I go to a doctor, and the doctor puts me in the therapy or gives me medicines.’ And unfortunately this is often more harmful. As I've said before, there are extreme cases where the medicine would be required just to dull the symptoms so that you can treat psychologically and at a deeper level. But those are exceptions. For the bulk of us, you should not be taking those medicines. You need to go to the root cause psychologically and correct there, and this is very easily done from the perspective of integral psychology.
We can go to the next question.
Alina (0:52:20):
Maurice is addressing this question: “I am very grateful for your talk on trauma healing. You said that in a spiritual approach it is not so difficult for the body to recover from trauma. Regular therapies on the other hand stress the impact of trauma on the body. They say, for example, that trauma causes changes in the brain which can be undone by techniques as MDR and others. Can you further comment on this?”
Sraddhalu (0:52:53):
Mhm-hm, yes. So the relationship between the physical body and the subtle body is two way. Each influences the other. The greater truth, and this is vocabulary Sri Aurobindo uses, is that the higher influences the lower. The lesser truth is that the lower influences the higher. So it's a fact that a change in the biology will affect the psychology. But it's also a fact that the change in the psychology will affect the biology. And between the two when there is a conflict, it is the higher which will override the lower.
So I have shared an example of dolphins. The dolphin brain, because the brain structure is reasonably well-known, we know what are the centres for emotions. And so this was an experiment actually done. The dolphin brain, they triggered the centre which is associated with anger. So through electrical probes that was triggered. Immediately, the dolphin expresses anger. And then they found, it expressed surprise that it was angry, and then it chose that it did not want to get angry and subdued the anger and stopped it. Subsequently they kept on provoking the brain centre of anger, and they could not get a response of anger anymore.
Now if a dolphin can do that, we can do that much more easily. In other words, if there is a biological trigger cause, whatever it may be, from chemicals in the blood or some external association, which is provoking anger, you can then override the anger and choose to not get angry. Now it may require a little bit of, well, training, which training ideally should have been given to us in our formal education at school-level from childhood. Right? Unfortunately that is not done because the whole education is largely a waste with just memorisation of facts, there is very little focus on developing your own capacities and powers of consciousness.
(0:55:02)
But let's assume you've had a little bit of exposure coming from your spiritual background. You should be able to override. Now there are provocations which are extremely harsh in the biology, rooted very close to the biology. In such cases, a biological support can be helpful, but in itself would not be a cure unless there is an attempt to cure from the psychological side. So the biological support needed only to minimise, reduce, the biological trigger so that the psychological side can now take over and lead to the healing.
I give another example. So some of the things used for trauma, for example, of late they are using certain kinds of drugs, including ketone, ketone I think, is the drug used[1]. When that is injected, one of the things it does, it blurs the sense boundary of individuality.
Now psychologically you could do that consciously, or rather put it in other terms, the reason why you have your PTSD problem, post-traumatic stress disorder, is the trauma is bound in the narrowness of your ego-consciousness. And this introduction of the ketone therapy[2] is blurring out the ego-sense, so to say, widening you and making you experience some sense of continuity with others, freeing you from a very narrow rigid ego-sense, and that seems to free you from the PTSD.
Now you could have done this purely from a psychological process, or if very deep rooted in the biology, you may use that as a support to kick start a process and then very quickly, even in one session, drop the ketone[3] and use that entrypoint to then dissolve the rigidity of your ego-sense. The problem though of intervention of biological terms is because it acts in a biology, it also weakens the biology. In other words, in your brain-mind interface, there was a sense of boundary, and nature through a certain balance of evolution has created a balance between these two. By the biological interventions having once weakened, that weakness might remain. And that is the problem with this therapy that if you overdo it, then after a point the person loses the sense of any individuality and is unable to differentiate between oneself and the continuum, which is again another problem.
So what I am showing you is, these things can have a basis, but the psychological intervention combined will make it more effective. Or there are other drugs they use sometimes for PTSD, which also are supposed to have helped. But what is interesting is, in the studies done, your intention combined with the drug gives you the effect; drug alone without intention does not give you the effect. In other words, it was your intention which did it, the drug only assisted by loosening just a little bit that very narrow rigidity of your physical consciousness, of your physical ego-sense. Understanding this, you can completely get rid of that indirect method and go straight to the psychological intervention.
I am just trying to see if this covers fully the question. So changes in the brain which can be undone by techniques. So one of the techniques used now is to stimulate parts of the brain associated with various emotions or traumas or sense of ego, these are typically the things they hit by electromagnetic stimulation or sometimes by uh, vibrations of ultrasonic uh, sound, basically making the brain cells vibrate, or combining with some kind of heating that is provoked again through electromagnetic inductions, and so on. Now all of these are really indirectly aiming at a psychological change, but without your wanting it, it will not make that change, it will rather cause more harm. With you wanting it, this is unnecessary, or at best a point of nudge, may be helpful or even not required. So I think, this should cover the question sufficiently. I hope, Morris is satisfied.
I will just quickly look at the chat box.
Blue Lotus Mom is asking: “Is there a series on what poisons we intake every day?”
Yes, I found one online which is, Instagram channel called “Food Babe”, if I recall right. And I found this lady to be extremely effective in what she is able to share. Vani Hari, and the Instagram link is thefoodbabe. And I would highly recommend because she actually shows you different products, what they contain, what those things do, and then gives you alternatives for products which don't have those poisons. Although it is largely US-based, but if you start looking at that, you will get a reasonably good idea of what to avoid and what alternatives you might find helpful.
BlueLotusMom is asking:
“There is a constant pressure of having a kid for single-child family in the US where there is very little human relationship. Does it have an effect on my daughter? Did the soul choose this?”
(1:00:52):
No, the soul chose you. Soul did not choose whether there would be a second child, sibling or not. But yes, if there is, if you are interested in having a second child, certainly it is helpful for the children to have some companion, but ideally it should be one of friendship and not of competition or conflict. So much would depend on also the quality of, invocation of the soul that comes. Sometimes it could be very different, you don't always have exactly what you want. But certainly it is helpful for a child to have friends or siblings. And if it is difficult in a society where the family unit is so fragmented, there's another way to do which is to create a kind of a local mom's club where you share spaces. Every week you should go to some space, different house, and have the children play together, bring games and activities, or have the moms organise activities that the children can do appropriate to their age, and things like that, and have variations for different kinds of activities. There are ways you can get around this, but you should try to do that. It's always healthy for a child to experience and observe other children, but also to see how other children handle the same kind of situations.
Now, being a single child, you are so used to being pampered that you start demanding, and you become insufferable because you are so used to having the parents rush to give you whatever you ask. You go to some other place and you see another child who is so adjusting, and you say, ‘Oh-yes, I can actually be like that’. You never thought about it. You never recognised that there was something wrong. So, there can be many interactions of this kind which will be helpful generally, so, I would recommend you do that.
Okay, so Mamta has given this very interesting feedback, she says: “It's a great relief for me”, that she underwent, “I underwent body detox and the second baby conceived naturally, and delivered a healthy child.”
I'm glad. Yes, and do let go of all these ideas of karma.
Pushya is asking: “Can you talk about childhood trauma and love relationship? Why we like those who are not good for us?”
This is actually coming from a distortion in one's nature that sometimes you are attracted to the very people who are harmful to you, and it comes from some distortion in your nature, sometimes it comes from a trauma from childhood. For example, in your formative years, if you have got used to an abusive parent or relative, dominating, you are so used to adapting to that dominating relationship that now separate from that, you seek out the same kind of a dominating relationship because, well, it takes care of the way you are already moulded, you never had a chance to undo that unhealthy moulding and form yourself.
I’ll give my example, not because of that, but I grew up in a space where I have never had to be out of the house really on my own. So the food comes from the community kitchen of the Dining Room or at best my mother is doing something at home which fills in for any lack, and so on. So it's only when I began to travel that I realised that food can be an issue and that perhaps I need to be able to prepare food on my own, so at some point I told my mother, ‘Okay, teach me a few basic things that I can make’. I learnt them, I never needed to use them, and I went back into that level of, let's say, comfort zone.
I don't need to, why should I bother? And the habit or that capacity itself kind of faded out. It creates a kind of a dependence and a kind of an adaptation: ‘I have to adjust wherever I go, whatever they give, I should be able to adjust to it’, which is all very good. But what was missing was the complimenting side of the training, which happened one day, and just like that.
(1:05:08):
I was in a city, and somehow circumstances worked out in such a way that I was not with somebody who had organised my travel, and so on, and I was suddenly left alone in a hotel room, and I didn't know where the food would come because that hotel didn't have food. I said, ‘Aha, this is an interesting experience now’, and so, I think, it was two and a half days that I had to organise everything. I went out, had to buy food. Of course I went for the minimalist intervention, but still. I said, ‘This is good training and I need to be able to manage this’. And it was, I was observing how, it was, so to say, drawing out aspects of personality which were otherwise subdued always, for years.
And so I decided I had to make a change there. Of course, I have not been able to work on it. Maybe I will at some point. But I'm just showing this as an example of how you are so adapted to a certain context around you that now you seek out that context. In this case, it was not seriously unhealthy, but when it is seriously unhealthy, then that can become a huge problem.
Because now what happens in the love relationship as Pushya says, you seek out an abusive partner, you seek out an excessively dominating relationship, where you can then live in your passive helpless state, or even if you have felt yourself victim, you feel yourself victim again, and that's your familiar zone. And so one of the things which is necessary if you've been through this kind of a distortion in childhood growth, you need to be able to find a space where you have a healthy nurturing environment and learn to build healthy relationships with others, just casual friends, acquaintances, workspace, or if in this case, love relationships.
So for Pushya, learn to have healthy relationships with women, if that's the issue you have, for example. How do you do that?
Well, in a space where you are interacting with women, you will learn to be nice and be caring and helpful without any complication of expectation or other things. Or if it's a woman, then in a space with men, learn to have healthy relationships and build a healthy relationship. In all these though, ideally you would have one person who could be a reference for you as an example, who can be a friend, with whom you can discuss or who can tell you, ‘Oh, that's not how you do, this is how you can do, this will be more helpful’. If you have that, and I would expect uh, such things can be done today through a therapist or coach or friend or various kinds, uh, you can very quickly recover.
And the reference would be simply this: In that interaction, before you act by instinct, you pause, step back, feel within you what is your deepest and highest and truest response,—whatever you feel at that time, don't worry if it's correct or wrong,—just try to access your deepest, highest or truest and then express that by deliberately avoiding the instinctive reaction. So you had an anger response, ‘No, my highest, truest, is not of anger, but I will respond differently’. You had a passivity response or feeling yourself as a victim, ‘No, I am not a victim, that's not my truth, I am a conscious soul in evolution, child of the Divine Mother, this is how I choose to respond, this is how I choose to relate’. You have to literally turn within yourself and draw out consciously deeper, higher and truer — let's say — influences, layers, parts, responses, patterns. They are all there! You may take support from somebody else, observing how others do it, and it's useful, but it's not always yours.
So I found for example for certain types of things, observing through cinema or television or even people in social occasions, certain things I could learn, but other things were so different from my value system, I didn't have a good example. And I give an example here. It's only recently I met somebody who has a very strong vitality and yet is able to exercise it without warping. Every example I've seen of a strong vitality, there was a tendency to warp or for the ego-sense to dominate or pervert. And so when I had, at one time tried to amplify the vitality, and I found it was creating aberration, the body could not contain, and it was distorting the personality, I stopped it and never bothered with it again. But I always see that as a lack. If not in this life, I'll have to do it in the next, so I might as well work on it a little bit. But I never got a good example externally. So effectively if the vitality grows, it is going to be very slow, and I have to find my own way. And only recently I met somebody and I said, ‘Ah, this person can be a good example for me to look at and say: ah-yes this is possible, it can be done in this way’.
(1:10:15):
Of course if you look at his own life, he has been through all kinds of distortions and has outgrown those by strong soul-influence. That, I said, ‘Ha-yes, that’s useful’.
So this is just to share a few uh, ways in which you can draw support from outside, but most importantly, introspect, draw out, but create a space where you can put into practice. You can't just have a new friend and now expect not to make mistakes, you will make mistakes and you don't want to do it there. So you enter a social space, interact with people where you can afford to make mistakes, learn, develop to have healthy relationships with people, there will come a point where you will say: ‘Ah-yes, now I can relate to almost anybody, naturally, frankly, with a purity and clarity without complication of strange reactions. Now I can relate to somebody with whom I want to build a healthy long-term romantic or other relationship.’ So I think that should be satisfying for Pushya.
And we can continue with the next question.
Alina (1:11:27):
Aryan, he addressed this question in the chat box: “I wake up at night recently screaming from fear but I cannot remember what is it that I'm afraid of no matter how much I try, this has started happening since I started my sadhana and meditation, could this be related? If so, how can I overcome this and know the source of this? Thank you.”
Sraddhalu (1:11:53):
Yes. Yes, it was not related, if it was not connected with the timing of the sadhana, I would have simply said that there may be some other traumas from the past you need to look at. But if it has started at the same time as you started the sadhana and meditation, there is one likely cause, and at this point I do not have enough information, but I will just point to this as a line of exploration: One of the things that happens when you start any kind of meditation or spiritual practice, you start becoming more conscious of yourself, inevitably, any practice, but especially if you take up some kind of a deeper form of meditation, then you start becoming conscious of your own internal layers.
On a very superficial level, and it's not deep at all, you start becoming conscious of the number of thoughts that happen in you, so you sit down, and you want to become quiet, and you notice now you have more thoughts, it's a common complaint people have, ‘The more I sit to quiet my thoughts, the more thoughts come’, no, the more you become conscious of the junk that's happening in your layers in the mind. Normally you are so lost on a superficial layer of your mind, with all the chaos behind, with your mind turned outward, that you are not conscious of that chaos behind, you are not even conscious that your thoughts actually have no logical sequence. Do this as an experiment.
Stop somebody at random and say: What were you thinking of? If you catch suddenly, momentarily the person will be lost, ‘Ha, huumm’, they don't remember, or after a while they will recall, ‘Well, I was thinking about this’. But it took a time. Okay, what were you thinking about this? ‘Mmhhm, let me see.’ It takes time. Why? Because actually ‘you’ ‘were’ ‘not thinking’, thoughts were flowing, and a chain of thoughts which is almost like a chain of associations with no clear logical sequence. This is the condition of the mind for the majority of humanity. Very few have trained the mind enough to actually have a series of logical sequential thoughts. But even if you get to that, that's only at a very superficial level.
The moment you start turning within, you discover, there's all this junk, which is always happening behind, and actually there are many layers of the junk,—thoughts, emotions, other imprints,—and all this is still part of your superficial nature. Behind this is the, let's say, curtain, screen. Behind which is the real subliminal domain, where there is enormously more, and literally you open out to the universe. But just this very superficial layer, there are so many layers in which so many things are happening. So the moment you start some basic practice, and especially when you start some kind of turning-in of meditation, you become aware of things there, and with it a kind of a linkage may form, or you awaken to things there, but the link is not yet formed, and the memory is lost on return to surface.
(1:15:11):
So it is very possible that because of this: in your sleep state, you are entering a zone where there is some kind of a distress, the shock of the distress wakes you up, but because of the lack of link, you have lost the memory of it. The correction for you in this case will be that before going to sleep, you choose the state of consciousness in which you go to sleep. If you have just watched a horror movie and you go to sleep, well, that's the grade you will go to, and you will come back with horror experiences, you will go into that domain of the lower vital world. Consciously shift grade, shift state, bring yourself into clarity. One of the easiest means to do which people find helpful is to read from Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, read a passage which is uplifting, it shifts your state of consciousness immediately with just a few lines. Dwell in that mood. Soak in the vibe. And then go to sleep with that and even put an intention that you will stay in this state of light and uplifted consciousness through the night. And any dreams will be of that grade. And I can assure you, this tendency for waking up with shouting or fear will completely dissolve. It's happening because you're going into some lower grade, and the awareness or the partial linkage of that grade has formed because of your meditation or sadhana, but not yet formed enough that the memory returns, but you are wandering there. Well, you will shift now levels, and everything should be resolved easily.
You can go to the next question.
Alina (1:17:01):
Shantha: “Difficult to surrender without feeling Mother's Love, inferiority complex in practical life, what to do?”
Sraddhalu (1:17:12):
Yes. Surrender without feeling the Mother's Love: Yes, perhaps that would be one difficulty, and the simple solution to that would be, feel your love for the Mother, and that you already have. Isn’t it? So, let that love carry you and give you. Know then that the love that you feel, that you experience, is actually coming from her in you, awakening in you as yours. There is a very interesting observation that the Mother makes regarding love that we feel. She says: “It is not the love that others feel for you that makes you happy, it is the love that you feel for others that makes you happy”.
So, just for continuing: Take an example, somebody comes and tells you, let's say, 10 people come and tell you, ‘Now we love you totally’, and they start demanding things. What do you say? ‘Please stop bothering me, you are a pest’. But on the contrary, when you feel love for somebody, you want to chase them and become a pest for them, isn't it? Because you are happy to be a pest. Not intentionally. But the love that you feel makes you happy, not the love that others feel for you. So then she says, “It is the love you feel that makes you happy, for the love that you feel is the love that you receive from the Divine who loves eternally and unfailingly”. Very interesting.
You feel love, because the love within you came from the Divine and flowed out from within you, it was not yours, but it of course got reduced to your capacity, it got warped, distorted, and mixed with your tendencies. Nevertheless, at its source, at its essence, it's the love that came to you from the Divine, who loves eternally and unfailingly. So when you feel your love for the Divine Mother, for the Divine, know that this love is coming from her and filling you. Stay in that love. And with the love that you feel and which will now grow in gratitude, because you will know that it is her love that is awakening in you, it goes back to its source and there naturally, effortlessly, in the love that you feel for her, you open and give yourself. And that's the surrender. Nothing more.
And it can take various forms externally in life, that you realise that everything you do, let's start with generally, first your life itself, your life exists for what? To feel this love for her in whatever you do, because if that's the natural line for you through the heart's opening in love, then in whatever you do you say, ‘Well, my life is there for receiving her love and giving it back to her in whatever happens’. And whatever the circumstances, you may not like the people, you may not like the situation, but you will say, ‘The love from my heart will always go to her, independent of this, I'm just grateful to be her child’. That's it.
(1:20:41):
Later you will extend this, because you will realise the Divine is not just, Divine Mother is not just above, she is also in all things. And so you look at the beauty of a flower, and the beauty is an expression of her love, of her bliss, of her ananda. When you see a bird singing with joy, well, you hear the bird singing with joy, ‘Ah-yes, this also is the joy of the Divine playing in the heart of the bird’.
Now more difficult: You look at these perhaps nasty human beings, perhaps you see some nice human beings also and you say, ‘Ah-yes’. but the nasty human beings also that you will see, and sometimes you may have too many of them, you realise that the mask distorts, but deep within their heart is the same flow of love, which is what makes them want to live, which is what makes them want to assert even in their nastiness. It's only that, that love is clouded and covered in so many layers of perversion that what comes through is a perversion. But the wanting to live, the wanting to conquer, the wanting to assert, the wanting to do things, is all coming from the fact that somewhere within you have this which comes from the Divine, now lost. And then it depends again on your relationship and responsibility with them. If you can recognise this, you may even be able to relate to them now no more in fear or anger or hatred, but in a kind of a soft compassion that says: 'Oh what a pity! If only they could feel the true joy of the love that they receive instead of all this perversion and manipulation and anger! And when you relax like this and feel this towards them, you can actually say, ‘I extend my love to the Divine Mother seated deep within who is covered up in all this confusion, and I direct my love to that core within’.
I am not sure if the video is going through right now, I'll just wait till..
Yes, okay. Did I miss anything? Was the video cut, Alina?
[Alina] For me, yes, but I am not sure.
[Sraddhalu] How long? How long was it cut?
[Alina] It was just a few seconds.
[Sraddhalu]
Okay. So, I said, if you can now recognise the deep within in their core is also the Divine Mother's love and Presence, you can relate to that and say, ‘That Presence of the Divine Mother I will always turn with love which is now to everything and in everything whatever may be the external form and distortion and perversion of the individual’.
And if you can do that, you will find you can meet those people without any reaction within you, and it will change the relationship. It may even change their response. Or, if it does not, it doesn't matter to you, you will be happy. You will find, when you are angry with someone, you are miserable. But you don't need to be, that's not you truly, you can choose to not be angry, you may still act with force, you may still act with violence where necessary, where someone is attacking you, you have to defend yourself even with force and violence. But within you, it will not be from hatred, you will always be able to be free of that, or if momentarily there is a neutrality or even an anger, it is momentary, it passes, you are then free from that cloud, irrespective of it. But it does not prevent you from taking the necessary action as required there. But this will come naturally subsequently. Work on these first two stages first.
(1:24:28):
But there is another aspect which Shantha has also referred to, “the inferiority complex in practical life”. It may come because, and it often happens with people, when from childhood you've been told, ‘Oh, you're not good enough’. At some point you accept, you believe it, and then it becomes a habit. So we go back to the first discussion, and I'll ask you to review that from this point of view. The inferiority you have in relation to what? I'm sure we can find enough people who are more capable than each one of us in whatever skill we choose in the world. You'll always find somebody. Do you need to feel inferior because of that? You don't need to, isn't it? Because there's always someone who's better than you in something or other eventually, inevitably. And so what? What does it matter? If you met them, maybe a hundred years ago, you might find that you are better than them. Will it make a difference?
My point is: The sense of comparison and the sense of values of wanting to compare with somebody being more or less is actually pointless. Instead, your self-worth, innate self-worth now should be by an internal turn. Ask yourself your true worth in relation to the Divine Mother, the soul-values within you. Feel this life is precious. You are uniquely a child of the Divine Mother, and there is nobody out there, in the whole universe who is uniquely this you that you are, and like a flower which is budding, blooming gradually, your petals are also growing. If you tell yourself, you are always a bud, you can choose to have the illusion.
But look back at what you were and what you are today, you have grown, and now you can choose to grow consciously. You look back and recognise that there were those belief systems which were blocking you, preventing you from blooming consciously. That was then. Today is different. You are now in a conscious path of sadhana and in a conscious relation with the Divine, and now you will choose to bloom and develop consciously. Take up activities which you find enjoyable and helpful to you and play with it, not to excel, not to perform, not to pass exams and tests, but just for the joy of it, as children do. Children grow by playing and for the joy of the play. Start playing and enjoying. And all these different things. Write a poem. ‘Oh, I am not a poet.’ You don't need to be a poet, you can still write a poem. Question is: Will you enjoy writing it? If you do, go ahead, enjoy it.
So I am not saying play an instrument because maybe you don't have a musical instrument. But if you can, if you have a musical instrument, play it also. Enjoy it. Sing a song, enjoy it. You say, ‘I don't have a voice’. No, you are not here to perform in a competition. You are here to enjoy the singing. Do you enjoy the song and the act of singing and expressing yourself freely, without hesitation, without fear? And the joy of that expression is what will strengthen you, and feed you, and grow.
I am going to come to something very important here, and it is going to be in a bit of a symbolic language of the Veda. What is it that is the soul's nourishment? The Sacchidananda, touch of Sacchidananda, truth-consciousness-bliss, reflected in human terms and reduced to, let's say, more material forms. This takes the three words we have used before: truth, Satyam; Shivam, the, the auspicious; Sundaram, the beautiful. Enjoy these. And what is interesting is, and this is the Soma of the Veda, the wine of the Veda, poured into your cup which strengthens you, it strengthens you. As the joy grows in you, you feel strength. You notice, you feel weak when you are unhappy, you feel strong when you have joy. Isn't it? So when you do something for the joy of it, you will find yourself growing in strength, growing in nourishment. And very quickly this distortion of the inferiority complex will dissolve. But start today, right now after this, do something which you will do for the joy of doing, it doesn't matter what.
And then every day you will do a little bit of something or other, and maybe two things, or three things, if you have the time, if you have the luxury, many more things. Learn something new. But always remember, you are doing it for the joy of doing and not to pass exams, not to compete, not to compare. And with the growth of the joy in you will be the growth of the strength and with it the growth of the capacity and completely the sense of inferiority will dissolve. But it will be on the basis of this recognition that you are unique. There is nobody in the whole universe, and there will never be anybody who will be truly as wonderfully unique as you are. And in relation to the Divine Mother, there is nobody else so special as you, her child, uniquely as each child is to her uniquely special. But you are uniquely. Dwell in that, enjoy that relationship and then play, play with it.
Sraddhalu (1:30:44):
I think, we will use this as a good point to pause and review the discussion. Next time we will take up a different theme perhaps, still overall on the line of the education-related but no more about trauma but a few more questions which relate to children, learning and growth, and we will hopefully close with that next time.
We are, remember, spirit, Sacchidananda, in our essence and therefore that is the most precious nourishment. In whichever way that represents or in whichever way we meet it in life, that is how you are going to nourish yourself and grow in the soul's values.
And as the soul-values grow, all else in your personality blooms and flowers because that is your core. It doesn't matter if you're not conscious of your psychic being directly, you're conscious of its influence and its values in you, that's your starting point. Let that grow, let that bloom, let that be nourished. And the one relationship which is most nourishing is the contact with the Divine, with the Divine Mother, with the Divine Love, with the Divine joy, with the Divine strength, peace, whatever way you may feel it. You go into nature, you feel this vast presence, conscious, utterly conscious. And maybe it's not the highest Divine consciousness, but to whatever extent it is represented in the beauty and the vastness of nature, and perhaps in the silence and the peace you feel, well, you absorb that.
You look out of your window and look at the sky, you go to the terrace and look at the sky, at night, in daytime, watch the vast blue sky and a cloud passing by, watch the birds flying. If you are close to nature, enjoy this in nature. And if you can enter this poise of consciousness, you can look at the whole city and still perceive the same Presence that you would see in the forest or in the mountains. Either way, dwell on this Presence, open yourself to her, and let yourself be nourished by her. Literally in the Veda, we are described as a child being suckled by the Divine Mother, by the bliss that she pours into us as we drink her milk of delight. And this is the nature of our life-experience and the journey of our soul in life.
We can concentrate on this for a moment.
Namaste.
Alina (1:33:50):
Namaste.
[1] The reference is to "Ketamine Therapy" (and not "Ketone therapy")
[2] Ketamine Therapy.
[3] Ketamine