EWS #7: World Situation, the Supramental Action

Feb 22, 2018

Topics:

Narad (00:00:44):

Good evening and welcome to our series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. We have discussed today the topic, remember the last two weeks, we have done the world situation and entered into the Supramental action. So we see today the media totally off balance, filling us with pictures of horror, terrorism, et cetera, and to the masses it seems that there is nothing else, but we know where do we begin with the supramental action.

Sraddhalu (00:01:49):

If we consider the nature of the supermind, it's the consciousness that bridges the oneness of the divine with the multiplicity of the divine. It's the consciousness which harmonises all opposites, all the extremes, every possible force, every possible intention, every possible perspective, every idea, every form, however contradictory in appearance is an aspect of this. In the very definition of the supermind, it's the oneness turning to the multiplicity, and so it is a force of harmony, first of all. And second, it is a force of unity. Actually, it could be the reverse. We wouldn't say unity first and harmony second, because harmony is a byproduct of the unity. But in our experience, we experience its impact first as a harmonising influence, which us to the unity behind

Narad (00:03:01):

You have used the word force twice.

Sraddhalu (00:03:06):

Because especially in the present situation, we see a collision of forces, a collision of interests, even when we have a collision of ideas, it is the force behind the ideas which are colliding. And if you were to remove this factor which can harmonise all this, then the way forward would be a kind of a flattening of humanity, making humanity uniform and thereby compelling, a flat narrow unity. And the problem would still remain because this flat, narrow unity would entail conflict with another humanity of another planet, which would be different and there would still be a collision. If you look at the big picture across space and across time, across the whole universe, there is nothing in the current evolution that can unify the extremes of lines of evolution and development across the universe except the supermind. There have been planets, there have been civilizations even on earth which have gone further than humanity of today, but they could go further by this kind of flattening and narrowing. The only way we can go further keeping our diversity, keeping the true freedom of the spirit is by this power which alone (and no other power can do that), which alone can unify the extremes of the multiplicity and the diversity.

And so if the supramental action was not brought upon the earth, you would've had another of those narrow forced unities or destructions of some kind inevitably. But because this has been brought, it opens the way for real unity, the likes of which has not been so far realised in the universe, and we can say this with a certain surety because when Sri Aurobindo was working on awakening the supramental consciousness in the body, or rather establishing it in the body, he found that there is no prior imprint of such an effort and that means in the universe because any evolutionary effort that has been made once, the effort made and the benefits realised anywhere in the universe would be naturally left as an imprint everywhere in the universe. So when he was working on the physical consciousness and awakening it to the supramental, he said, this has never been done before.

Narad (00:06:02):

Although the Vedic rishis had seen it, I'm understanding.

Sraddhalu (00:06:05):

These Vedic rishis had realised the supramental consciousness supramentalise the mind and even the vital but not the physical consciousness. This lacuna, if we may say or this limitation of that realisation is what Sri Aurobindo refers to as a fatal flaw in the vedic realisation. The result of which was that matter remained as something which could not integrate with spirit. And as long as even if it's a fine layer which is not integrated with the spirit, there's still a gap, a division which leads eventually to a split, which led to the Buddhist realisation and the Shankarite philosophy, the division of matter and spirit was inevitable. One can say that in the nature of evolution, the way the vedic rishis could take it only so far because humanity was only ready for that. And if we take it in that spirit, it makes a lot of sense that now the time has come for it to be taken to its logical conclusion, which means bringing it all the way into the physical consciousness.

So the imprint of the vedic realisation has defined the whole direction of human evolution, but it has not given it the power for this last completion into matter. It is for this that Sri Aurobindo came and this is the most significant part of their work. There were many things they had to do, but this is the most significant part of their work to establish the supramental consciousness into matter in the physical consciousness which would make possible divinisation of the physical life. Otherwise, the material world would remain always cut off from the possibility of perfection in a divine perfection. Now this being the case when Bindu says it has not been done before, it means nowhere in the universe, no other planet, no other civilization past or present, and you can conceive of millions of them, although they may have gone technologically ahead, although they may even have gone mentally and spiritually ahead, nowhere has this work been done to bring that supramental consciousness in matter. In other words, the full harmonisation of the diversity of natures has not been brought about at a physical level so far. And the means for bringing it about had not been so far realised. This was done in 1956 when the mother brought down the supramental consciousness and she pointed out it was the light and the consciousness but not the power. If the power had come down also, then of course its result would be visible immediately. But so far it has been working from behind the scenes to bring about, gradually a realignment of all these forces as I said. So the first thing we experience is developing harmony. Now I've had this experience. We were in Kashmir, I was with a group of people and there was a famous teacher of one of the traditions of Kashmir Shaivism and she said, ‘oh, you are from Sri Aurobindo Ashram’! And I still remember the scene because we were on this boat in the lake, in the Dal Lake and she's sitting across me and she says, I was very interested in Sri Aurobindo, but it didn't make sense to me because he says supramental force working on earth, but we see only increasing chaos. So where is the supramental force? And so that was her basis for her to turn away, or at least that's how she explained it to herself. The reasons might have been different. And this is a question many people have asked, why is it we see only increasing chaos? In fact, Sri Aurobindo describes this passage even of increasing chaos as two things. First, as a preparatory sign of something greater of a spiritual age dawning, but also has an inevitable consequence of the pressure of the supplemental force. So I'll just elaborate on both these ideas.

So one of the signs Sri Aurobindo describes of the coming spiritual age is a sudden increase in individuals who hold sway over large masses of humanity. So not just public figures, but extremely charismatic figures who build enormous followings, We see some of this today. On the crude extreme we have the television evangelicals on the other extreme, you have people even demonstrating exceptional capacities or powers or whatever which inspires a large number of people to follow them and all of these he doesn't explain in that conversation. This is from his evening talks, but he says sudden emergence of these would be a sign that we are now coming close to, and the age is, the supramental is imminent. This is typically a sign of the overmental consciousness and aspect, but which has a massive impact. And two of these groups or views will collide because they're so different, and yet within each of them you'll find something like a very convenient, happy harmony and even a kind, if they take it in that direction, a kind of a heavenly sort of arrangement of harmony or convenience, even a heavenly perception of a world on the earth organised in that group. But take two of these groups and they will not see eye to eye, In the life divine, this is a hundred years ago, Sri Aurobindo maps out these things and he explains that these communities will not see eye to eye for the simple reason that they each represent a specialisation of the one and do not have the thing which could harmonise these extremes. So literally every possible aspect or line of development in the universe begins to get represented in subgroups here on earth.

Narad (00:12:47):

At this moment.

Sraddhalu (00:12:48):

It's happening. It's the direction in which things are moving. Yes, yes. As a result, the extremes of opposition or difference of approaches become even more exaggerated because each organises itself to seem like the best, the ideal, and suddenly we have these exaggerated possibilities and forms. All of them don't fit into each other, and if you force them together, which is what is happening by the other action of the supramental to unify, to bring together. Everything is coming together, what we speak of as the global village is one of the results of the supramental action. Suddenly all these extremes are squeezed together and there's the stress of their difference being exaggerated. So the first impression is an increasing chaos or increasing conflict or attention of viewpoints, of interests, of powers, of forms and actions. So this is one side of it. The second side is because as this consciousness of unity presses down from above, well its action has to go through many gradations of consciousness. It squeezes those, compels change in those and each of those is unsettled for a while pressing down on the next. So one of the first results of this is as if the pressure of the vital world's being pushed down into the human realm under pressure of something from above, even when things of the higher begin to come down, it is first these distinctions of the overmental which would seize on humanity. And so the practical result is, and apparent exaggeration of chaos, confusion, especially in those who are not consciously aligned to the spirit or to the underlying unity within them. If humanity were to choose consciously, the centering in the soul or alignment with the divine or just alignment to their deeper aspiration, a lot of this would become simple. A lot of the confusion would fade out and there would be a spontaneous harmony which would lead you through this passage. In the absence of that, you have the exaggeration of chaos and confusion.

Narad (00:15:19):

You speak of the descending force. What about the emerging force in matter?

Sraddhalu (00:15:26):

Yes. The nature of evolution is that whenever something pushes down from above the thing on which it is pushing down also gives a pushback. And since the action here in this case is intended to go all the way to the material consciousness, there is a pushback from matter, which means at its crudest a pushback from inconscience. At its most sophisticated, it is the pushback from an ignorance, but a self-aware, conscious, intentional ignorance and the pushback again has the effect of making things seem more difficult than they actually are. It's as if the material conscious test says, I'm not going to move. When earlier it was reasonably acceptant to moving around a little bit, now it says, I oppose, and suddenly everything becomes as if heavier, harder, darker, more difficult. It seems so, and this is of course part of the discussion that the mother has, the physical consciousness will yield only when the supramental consciousness can demonstrate its capacity to overcome. Then it'll say, all right, to this I give in. Otherwise, it has given in up to a point to the life to mind in evolution. And so we have all these forms which have evolved and then after giving in for a while, it says, okay, now I'm the boss. I pull back and you have the breakdown of life forms. You have the pullback of the mind and its ideals and so on. It's only something above mind of the grade of the super mind which can compel matter and then force it to yield.

Narad (00:17:22):

What is nature's role in this when she has agreed to collaborate with the Mother?

Sraddhalu (00:17:30):

This is one of those critical transitions in evolution. When you try to speed up an evolutionary process, whom, what are you speeding up? The very consciousness, the being, the power which was leading evolution is what we call nature. And at its slowest, it is material nature, almost mechanical in appearance, but still it is a conscious power and you may speed up in small pockets and it's fine. She yields to that. But if you try to make a large shift, then either her acceptance is required or you will have the resistance which says, no, I'm not in a hurry. I do not want to go so fast. And there'll be a pushback again. So this is a critical question in the evolutionary process. If Mother Nature accepts to participate in this speeding up, accepts to participate in this particular aspect of the work, then things can suddenly move rapidly on a large scale. And mother made reference to this in the early sixties I think, that nature has accepted to collaborate and there is no end to the wonders of that collaboration, something like that she's written, which means that as this higher action proceeds nature instead of opposing or waiting passively to be pushed, will participate and assist in that change.

All of this still looks at a scheme of development which may take several thousand years. If we are speaking of the physical consciousness becoming divinised, it may take several thousand years and what happens meanwhile, will humanity even survive? So there is a much more urgent question. All this is fine to say we have squeezed a million years of supramental evolution into a thousand years on a collective scale, but even that will be survive it considering that this passage of confusion and collision, and it is on this, that Sri Aurobindo worked particularly in the last few years of his work in the body and he developed what he referred to as the mind of light. And this is a critical contribution to evolution in the universe. If not for this work, we would still be looking forward to a long passage at a collective level, at an individual level, of course one can go much faster. What he did there, he looked at the condition of the human mind, which is obviously because the nature of the mind is to divide and only understand through division. It's a tool of division. It cannot know the oneness of the divine. It can never be a vehicle for a divine life on earth. That being the case, he worked to create a link from the supramental consciousness to the physical consciousness and the physical mind in a way that the mind itself could find within it the power or awaken within it, the power to perceive and align with the unity. And it is this which he has described as the mind of light. It'll be an embodied mind in the physical consciousness, but able to perceive and align with the supramental consciousness in a way that it can be a fit vehicle for the divine life to be expressed in matter long before the supramentalization of the body takes place. And this is the saving grace in a sense for the evolution. It means that right here, right now in the immediate few decades, we can conceive of the emergence of the first signs, let's say, to put it very mildly, the first signs of a divine life on earth. In the way he formulates this, there are several chapters to this description. He describes that even the mind of light can undergo through gradations of evolution, even at its lowest as an embodied mental consciousness. When it becomes the mind of light, it'll be in alignment with the supermind and would be a fit vehicle for the oneness of the supermind to look through the limitation of the mental consciousness. And then this can evolve. It'll go through grades of higher mind, ilumined mind, intuitive mind, and so on. Within each of which it would be the mind of light growing until it embraces fully the supramental and becomes the link point for the supramental manifest.

Narad (00:22:34):

Let's take a quick break and we'll be back in just a couple of minutes. The mind of light, Mother has named a beautiful flower, ‘Mind of light acting in matter’, that a flower could vibrate with such a frequency.

Sraddhalu (00:23:04):

But it also suggests to you that the bind of light, of course, in an embodied consciousness may still be a mind turned upward and that can turn down and begin to act on matter on the physical consciousness. And so it opens the way for something quite exceptional. Long before the supramental consciousness can act directly on the physical consciousness, it can act through the intermediary of the mind of light on the physical consciousness and awaken in it, something which is aligned to its action. So we have to understand this from a different angle now. The supramental consciousness being oneness and multiplicity is also by definition infinite. You cannot embody the supramental consciousness unless your own consciousness becomes infinite. And this is the challenge. Your mind is unable to hold infinity, it can never be supermentalised. But if this mind of light can be thus realised, although finite vehicle still, it would be pure enough to be able to express or be a transparent vehicle for that infinite action to work in a narrower passage.

This makes possible practically in human circumstances, the beginning of the divine life on earth. And this is the special gift that Sri Aurobindo has given, such a formation of the emergence of mind of light has not been done, has never happened before. In evolution in the universe and in human evolution would not have happened on its own because it is not a part of the compulsion of evolution. It needed an active intervention to make something happen which would create this. And having created it, Sri Aurobindo had to work on himself first to create it. And the mother observed that for a long time he was working on it and he would not give it to her until it had been fully developed. And at the time when he left his body, he just imprinted it directly into her. And after that it worked in her in whatever way. But through her now, and she is the Shakti. Through her that action is spreading widely to all those who open themselves to the action of mother's force. The result is her action in you to the extent you're open begins to form the mind of light. And this is beginning to happen everywhere on earth. Wherever there are receptive beings, irrespective of your beliefs and affiliations of traditions, it has no relevance to that to the extent that you're open to its action. The working of this has begun. So bin describes two stages in the development of the mind of light. In the first stage, it is still a power that is so to say, coming into its own emerging and assembling the resources that it needs and you do not recognise it for what it is. Once it has assembled those resources and it comes into its own as a force which is independent, then it begins now to develop itself. And at that point you recognise it for what it's now. The interesting thing is if you observe carefully, you will see in the world this first stage very obviously and the second stage in some individuals.

And so that's why I said within a few decades even it is possible because in a few individuals, this beginning would mean very soon that number would spread until quickly it can become the norm. So let's look at some of the preliminary signs of this when he speaks of assembling the necessary resources, one of the things which would be natural for the mind of light is the sense of universality. You see this as an instinct in children today that they're not interested in specialisation. They want to have as broad an exposure as possible through whatever tools are given to them through the media, through the internet, through anything, even to the extent of wanting to know the opposite viewpoint, just so that they feel more complete. It's as if those gaps are not acceptable. They want to somehow widen out as much as they can at the expense of depth. They're extremely shallow, but extremely wide because you cannot do both. The instinct is pushing you to the wideness. Once the wideness is sufficiently established, the instinct may reverse and now begin to deepen in certain aspects or others. But for now, we see this happening everywhere. Even the mind has become superficial in certain ways to a degree that is scary. But in that it has grown so wide that you cannot compare with the minds of a generation ago. It's difficult for the previous generation to understand what it's like to think in terms of that grade of universality. For them, it's almost as if everything is acceptable. Nothing is disturbing, nothing is shocking, nothing is other. We just accept, oh yeah, so of course let it be. What's the big deal? So you will say, well, they don't have morals, they don't have ethics, they have no good beliefs, good disciplines, they're open to anything. It's scary from the old mind which knew this is safe, that is not, that is the other. And here, suddenly something comes where everything goes. And yet this is of course risky. One can lose oneself. And yet there's something inside which says, yeah, everything goes, but what's me? This is me. And so there's a kind of protecting centre of what's true for me versus everything else, which may not be of interest to me, but okay, let it go. What's a big deal? So this widening, this universalizing in the mind is one of the tools. So one of the powers of the mind of light, which we see growing. Another of the powers of the mind of light is the subjectiveness of things where you try to feel what feels right rather than what is logically right. Morally, even morally, yes, of course morally, ethically, but the sense of trying to feel, and again, you see this quite widely among young children, especially where they're a little more conscious.

Sraddhalu (00:30:11):

It acts easily when they read literature. They're no more interested in hard logically structured content. They want content that feels good, that feels right, that feels somehow true. So there's actually a gap. There's a split in the way people are presenting things in speech or in writing, in documentation. There is the old guard which is stuck in hard, rigid, structured narrow, and the other which is flowing much more freely, but which is trying to feel what's true and trying to touch that. And somehow these two are not yet seeing eye to eye. And of course each has its limits. This can also get broken into something so fluid that it loses any sense of clarity and becomes self contradictory even. 

But this sense of wanting to feel is the other thing. The form that it'll take eventually is that every time I come across something new, I try to feel in myself. Does it feel right? Oh yeah, it's familiar. So Sri Aurobindo again describes this passage very interestingly from he describes three gradations of mind. There's the mind of ignorance, which is what we are starting with. We don't know and we don't know that we don't know, okay? So we think we know there's the mind of knowledge, which knows and knows that it knows entirely. And then there's in between this mind, which he refers to the mind of self forgetful knowledge, which is the mind that as it discovers something, it says, oh yeah, I knew it. I had forgotten it. Where did I know it? Somewhere inside me, the knowledge was there, but when I learned it now it resonated with something deep within me and it learns now to begin to refer internally to its deeper knowing, which is called forward by the contact externally. And this is, this in between passages. So it's as if in this particular tendency in the young children, there is the turning of habit inward for knowledge rather than external reliance. This is the second, let's say means or power of the mind of light. And there's a third power, which is the sense of the intuition which will grow from this, relying more on intuition than a sensory evidence. But that would of course already bring it into a different domain. So there are many such facets to the formation of the mind of light, which the evidence is clearly there in a few individuals. One can see it has also sufficiently organised itself as to become a force on its own. And there is the parallel existence of the conventional mind, which is rational or sense based. And these two are coexisting uneasily.

So if it is more developed, this is as if in the centre of the other mind or if in a person this has come out sufficiently, there are two, almost like two personalities, and the person is swapping, jumping from this state to the other. I've met people like that. And some of I could give you names, people, some of them are also well-known authors. I'll give you one example. Charles Eisenstein, he's been writing on economics and new economics and things like that. I had occasion to meet him a few times and I saw him in this, I don't know if he understands himself what he does. And he'll be sitting, and so it was his turn to speak in this meeting and he said, I don't feel myself impelled. I have nothing to say really. And so I knew what was happening inside him. So I engaged him, I told him a few things, asked him a few questions, and then that kick started the process. I said, okay, now I have it. And then he started and there was this fascinating thing that came through, right through. So while he was in this state, which is more conventional mind, he didn't have access to that and all he needed was this nudge to get. And once that kicked in, he was in a different mode. And you can see literally he is a light shining out of him as this knowledge is coming through exceptionally. So I see that often in people as something which is more organised or beginning to get in some children also, it's quite obvious now all of this is work that has been done by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and now imprinted. Anyone in the world today can consciously open to this influence and invite this action to grow. And this is really the work we should all be doing.

Narad (00:35:24):

Have you seen the completion of it in certain individuals? Or at least there's not the..

Sraddhalu (00:35:34):

Can’t say that. So in like, in this case, it is formed enough that it comes into its own. But again, Sri Aurobindo describes the stages of its progression and it can grow now. It has made various gradations in which it becomes more and more complete until eventually it merges and unites with the supramental. So there's a whole thing we can go through, none of which is complete, but each is growing from knowledge to greater knowledge. It's not ignorance to knowledge. And this is the interesting thing. So this is one side of the Supermental action, which is extremely important because it gives us the promise of something soon, not a few thousand years down. The second is the action of the supramental consciousness in the world events.

And this is a different topic, I want to now turn our discussion to, uh, Mother describes how Sri Aurobindo though used to use the supramental force often just putting a drop in a situation and instantly everything would just fall into place. So she describes I think three characteristics of that supramental action. The first, that wherever that action is put, the result is large. It impacts a huge space because that's the nature of the super mind. It's power of infinity in a sense, it impacts everything. But of course you see the result in a large space. Second is that the change happens overnight, almost miraculous. And because that's the nature of the supermind, it makes everything fall into perfect synchronicity instantly. So where it acts directly poof, everything just switches and oh, it's like a miracle. And the third sign is that although it is miraculous when you look at the circumstances, it's like it was inevitable. It would've happened anyway because everything was already there. It just kind of aligned itself somehow. And so it happened. That's how it seems. And one good example of this is the way the Soviet Union broke down overnight, and it was at a time when the entrenchment of the system was so rigid and so deep rooted, and remember it's been on for a couple of generations. It's got into the mindset systems are embedded in the habit even of the community. Nobody could have predicted it, nobody could have imagined, nobody could have said, oh, somewhere down within the next three years, this is going to happen. You could not have even said next month it's going to happen. It was so entrenched.

I remember the data we saw at that time in a country like Romania, the government system was so entrenched. They said every third person is a government spy. That means in a family of six people, two of them would be reporting to the government what conversations took place. And people live at a degree of fear that anything might be reported. You see some of this still in North Korea, but that's a different way. When it's so deeply entrenched there's no way that any action from outside could have broken the system or undone the stickiness of the overarching imposed control. And yet suddenly overnight, poof, it was gone. The whole thing collapsed. Superstructure gone. And what was left was no control, no centralised control opening the way to large gaps of, large regions of anarchy. If at that point there was a spiritual turn, it would've broken through rapidly to create a spiritual anarchy, which would have been potentially a divine community since that was not there or was not strongly enough as a base, although it might have been there in a weak way. What happened was other forces came and seized the anarchy conditions to form their own subgroups and control areas and so on. But that initial transition was one of those examples of the supramental action taking place. Mother also observed that Sri Aurobindo uses the supramental consciousness in this way, mostly in the mental plane. That means suddenly the mind's perspective is changed. We think differently, but not in the vital and physical. And she explained why. She said, when it happens on the vital or the physical, of course you have miraculous change. All are miraculous in that sense. But in the physical and vital levels, the miraculous change would always have a mixed character where other things come to distort and divert the intention of the action. But in the mind, because the mind is also more conscious, that kind of distortion is less easy to have. And so he limits or generally limits himself to that really.

Narad (00:41:04):

I have seen a letter shown to me by Basu in which he says, he writes to Mother and says, it seems that more and more in my talks, Sri Aurobindo is speaking through me. And Mother writes to him, the more you open to him, the more he will speak through you. So there it is. Is the supermind limited to earth only?

Sraddhalu (00:41:37):

It's an important question. The consciousness itself being of course universal, its impact is on the universe, but it's immediate focal point of action will be in the space in which its action can be most directly received. As it appears. The focus of Sri Aurobindo and the mother's work in this incarnation was our earth because it is here that the preparation has been also created. And so it links with something else. We have discussed, I think perhaps last time about the nature of evolution on our planet being a focal point for the evolution based on the individualised psychic being. And this has a very close connection with the supramental action and the supramental transformation. And this is the reason perhaps why, and this is my speculation, that the immediate focus of this working of the supramental force will naturally be in this space much more than everywhere else for this purpose of connecting to the physical. There might even be they're very likely to be beings and even civilizations and other spaces in the universe where beings like the vedic rishis have attained to the supramental consciousness in the mental or even in the vital and living in that perhaps, but not in the physical. So in the context of the physical consciousness, this seems to be the focal point for the supramental work in the universe. And particularly this is the connection which the Mother made when she was looking at how the supramental consciousness would transform the body. It's one thing for it to transform the mind because the mind is plastic. For the vital, again, to that extent it's more plastic. But the nature of matter is such a great rigidity, such a great inconscience, that a transition from this current organisation to a completely different substantially is difficult to conceive. Sri Aurobindo himself speaks of the physical organs when the physical body becomes personalised, the physical organs themselves giving way to what would become centres of energy corresponding to the chakras almost in their function. And so it's difficult to imagine how that transition would take place. And then mother comes up with this extraordinary insight and it came through a certain experience she had and she said the conclusion she had was that it would be the psychic being within which would densify itself to become a physical substantiality, which would be the supramental body. And so it's an in to out. So the logic is perfect evolutionarily. It's an in to out transformation, the psychic influence and substance substantiality of it coming forward, filling the physical, vital, mental, et cetera, but densifying itself to such a degree that its substantiality begins now to supersede and replace the functions of the gross physical machinery that we currently have. And that would become the supramental body and straight away with it comes the perfect plasticity required for the material and its harmony with all the other levels and so on. If on earth, if in the universe the super mentalization of the physical body had to be done, it would necessarily be in a space where the individualised psychic being has been sufficiently developed on a collective scale. And we know that our planet earth is the focal point for this experiment

Narad (00:45:38):

And the mind of the cells and the cellular transformation that Mother was going through.

Sraddhalu (00:45:47):

Yes, this also is work which the Mother said has not been done before. In the transition for the physical consciousness to become conscious of the divine. First of all, it is unconscious and therefore not even conscious to itself for it to become conscious of itself, conscious of other things, and then to grow conscious of something which is more than physical, more than vital, more than mental. It involves literally an evolution at a cellular level of what nature has done over millions of years in the individualised collective of the cells, the individual consciousness. And you want now that to happen inside each cell for the cell to become conscious of the divine and it's ridiculous, impossible. Now, the only way it could be done is when the embodied person is able somehow to enter into the cellular consciousness and imprint his consciousness into that or in identification with it, awaken in it and aspiration and kind of conduct the Sadhana inside the cells the way nature, unconscious nature has been doing the Sadhana in us over millions of years. So think of it this way, in the last million years that let's say we have been on earth in whatever form of evolutionary stages we have been through across whatever number of lives, who in you was doing the evolution? You're not even conscious of evolution. So much less can you participate in it. So it's as if an impulse within you is doing it, which is that impulse and it's a collective impulse working in all of us. Mother nature. We'll see. Okay, so what nature has been doing inside us, we are almost like cells in her body now we as an individual have to do in the cells of our body, but which power can do that? Get into the physical cellular consciousness. Your mind? Unlikely. If your mind enters the physical cellular consciousness, it'll just become numb and go into sleep because that's how that consciousness is. So it's like saying you should become conscious inside your sleep state. It would be either you would wake up and you won't be able to sleep or you'll slide into the subconscious and get sucked into its character and the cellular consciousness is even more dull.

So it has to be a consciousness which is greater than your rational mind, a spiritual mind, spiritual consciousness, a super mental that then enters without losing itself in the cellular consciousness and from their works to awaken literally cajoling and speeding up what in our overall biology has taken millions of years and compressing that in a few years inside a few cells or maybe more than a few, until they awaken and become conscious and their own evolution at a cellular level is accelerated in consciousness terms to become conscious of the Divine. And that's what mother did. If you think of it in these terms, it is so extraordinary that even the possibility of it had not been thought of before people glimpsed because in vision one can see things which are waiting to happen in the future. Inevitably you see it, but you can't understand it because you don't have that consciousness.

Sraddhalu (00:49:28):

So, Mother refers to this current passage of evolution as something which was seen by many of the mystic of the past and they saw fire brimstone and great destruction, great change and all kinds of pretty dangerous scenes, but that's how they perceived it symbolically, a great breakdown of the order and an emergence of something with fire. What is fire here in this case, it is the intensity of the consciousness intensified to such a degree that it burns what is unreal or false, but it's not physical fire. It's the nature of the tapas, the change that is taking place in the evolution. So they glimpse things and you have all these pretty scary predictions from various traditions. We can discuss some of that on another occasion. But the idea is something is happening here, which has accelerated so much, has to be almost inconceivable to the previous stages of humanity and even to their perception of the future. And Mother did this in her body to a point where she says that some of the cells had actually become, had achieved that union with the Divine and had become effectively immortal in her body.

Narad (00:50:46):

Transformed, yes.

Sraddhalu (00:50:47):

An effectively model. That would mean they could stay on as long as they wanted or of course they can choose to drop, but they could stay on.

Narad (00:50:56):

And she used the term by a vast contagion, they would spread to others who were open.

Sraddhalu (00:51:04):

So again, as a reference, we have to understand everything that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother did. They said if they had done it, if they had to do it only for their body, the work would've been done long ago. But the nature of the responsibility of the avatar is they have to plug into the collective consciousness. And everything they do in themselves is as if held back by that large collective consciousness into which they're imprinting or against whose resistance they're developing the change in themselves. The only way to assist this is if immediately around them there is a part of humanity which is more conscious, supportive of this effort and even participating in this effort. So it's as if a kind of a slope of consciousness is formed, which makes it easier for them to realise this while others gradually buffer and eventually connect with the mass of humanity. So this was the whole meaning of this community that is the ashram to the extent that the people participated, this could be done much more rapidly, that it could not be completed, shows you how unready humanity was. Mother even said she wouldn't have to leave her body if there was one person on earth who considered this body to be the single most important thing. And of course that also could not be, there are many examples one could give of individuals who wished to be or worked or tried to be in that kind of alignment. But the very fact that the effort was made even by those was the great support and the promise for something more. But I want to come to this that in so doing whatever was achieved in her body is imprinted in consciousness as an impulse, as an instinct into humanity, most obvious in those who are conscious and aligned to them.

Now, that means you may do nothing consciously here, but when you put your consciousness in alignment with hers, this work she did is almost as if instinctively pushed into you or awakened in you an alignment of the cells to want to, on an urge. However mild, however limited, but that turn is made. And if into that, you can bring a conscious intention or a conscious aspiration that can be greatly accelerated. And again, you do not have to know them as individuals in form and name any way that you're on earth if you're aligned to this ideal or if something within your awakes with no prior external education, something within your awakes to this ideal and aspires for it. This alignment is enough to awaken within your own physical consciousness, that instinct in the cells to do what she had achieved in her body. And this is the whole point of their work and the action of the avatar. And so the vocabulary of a contagion by which this change spreads

Narad (00:54:19):

One last question and that is new soul or new souls or souls taking birth now for this purpose?

Sraddhalu (00:54:34):

Yes, at several stages, Mother made reference to souls coming for a purpose and sometimes even groups of souls coming for a purpose. And we see in many of those who came to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, certain clustering of that. We see also subsequently certain years in which mother spoke of in this year, there's a special batch of souls that has come for particular work and so on. And one can see if you're a little sensitive, one can see that there's some light in that group or in that person. For a while when I was teaching in the ashram school for almost 15 years, I was seeing these batches pass by and the certain batch suddenly poof, there's this bright light among all and then again something, and then again another group. It was interesting to observe that and suddenly they're more awake, more conscious, and then again, a passage. What I saw though in my interactions with people all over the world, those years, for example, one of the years that mother referred to, I found people occasionally I would meet somebody and I would say, oh, there's a familiar feel kind of a light. And then I discover, oh, they were born in that year. Interesting. It's not so important what year it is. The idea is there are groups that have come together and it may not be necessarily in a physical location, they may be spread out over the earth, but it seems to happen in a kind of rhythm.

Narad (00:56:32):

You spoke about the children, but we see 20 million babies going to be born in India in one year.

Sraddhalu (00:56:46):

The entire population of one of the small countries in the world is being born every year just in India. Yes, India is exceptional in that sense. Sheer size, sheer numbers. The biggest state of India, incidentally Uttar Pradesh, if it was a country, in its own right, would've been the fourth biggest country in the world. That's the scale of India. So things which happen here, even when India takes a small step, it's one fifth of the world's population having moved forward. So it may seem almost trivial when you look at events in the news, oh, in India now this has become the norm and people have moved from that stage to the next stage. It's a small step. Oh, in India it was done. So we put India along with so many other countries, except India is actually one fifth of the world. So it's like saying one fifth of the world has suddenly made the step. Oh, that's a big step, isn't it? And then keep in mind also that it is also a space where this spiritual sensitivity, I won't say spiritual development, but spiritual sensitivity is very much awake in the mass. And so the small step has a huge impact, has a huge import in spiritual terms.

If in this space people can grow more conscious of the sense of the evolutionary urge of the present times, then something can happen here, which will be like a precursor or even a model for the rest of the world to follow. In one of her messages that the mother gave, it was addressed to mother India and mother said something to this effect that, oh, India, land of light and spiritual knowledge, wake up to your true mission in the world, show the way to unity and harmony. And that tells you what's supposed to be happening here. And you have to see in this context the placement of Auroville in India. If a space had to be on earth where all the different cultures, where all the different human mind types, ways of thinking, ways of values, if there was one space where all these had to come together and work together and a space conducive to this, not opposed to this, it had to be in India, it couldn't be anywhere else. So just as mother said, India is a focal point for the world's problems and the earth is a focal point for the universe's possibilities. So for the earth, India is a focal point. And for India, this space which they have created, where there's a conscious alignment to the sense of the nature of the evolution and the means to participate in that evolution, that space is here. So in all my travels I can say this, I've been to a lot of places, a lot of communities, spiritual communities, I mean met with people from many kinds of spaces, traditions, religious and spiritual, and some of the best I can say that I've not seen anywhere on earth where such a large number of consciously aligned people are gathered as at the ashram and Auroville.

Sraddhalu (01:00:42):

There's a difference in the focus of the work in the ashram and Auroville, and we will discuss that perhaps next time. But if you put the two together, nowhere in the world, such a large number of consciously aware and sensitive people in the sense of the evolution that is before us. There's nowhere such a large number. If into this, the awareness of the means and the awareness of the true impeller of the evolution within us could be further awakened then that would of course enormously speed up the process. But that is not yet. Mother spoke of, for example, it was in the context of the ashram, but it applies equally to Auroville. Mother spoke of how a large number of people come in preparation for the life of Sadhana. So they, they have a little bit of devotion, they're happy to be in a peaceful place and feel good and this and that, retired comfort, et cetera, where the soul is so to say attuning itself to this vibration, to this ideal, to this atmosphere, preparing for a life where it could commit to make that breakthrough. And I believe I've met people all over the world who have as if passed through that process and then taken birth elsewhere. They don't have to take birth here. It's the alignment which is important. And I give an example. Recently, some of our friends from the US, an Indian couple, they brought their child who's three years old. For the first time they came to Pondicherry, after many years after the child was born. And as they were driving to Pondicherry, suddenly this child spoke up and said, I'm returning to Pondicherry.

Narad (01:02:37):

Three years old.

Sraddhalu (01:02:41):

So there are a few signs like that. Occasionally something comes up and you say, ah, this is different. But the idea is once they're acclimatised to this orientation of consciousness, to this evolutionary purpose, it doesn't matter where they're born, they as if come for a life which is different if what we discussed earlier, the Asuric education does not stuff it out or cover it. If the inner being has sufficiently prepared itself and is able to resist that, then of course so much more will happen. But the space, because of the number of people who are conscious, is exceptional. I want to end this discussion with a very important reference, which is also practically, for all of us. When the supramental manifestation took place in 1956, Mother said, only four people on earth were conscious that something exceptional had happened. One of them was in Africa. She said, you see, in her universal consciousness she knew who had responded in what way. And the person, in fact who saw this, who had that experience, later he narrated it and noted down and came to the ashram later. But she said, how would, you know, feel if there is nothing in you which resonates with that, which is familiar with that. So right in front of her, she said, all these people who had been in the ashram for years were busy getting up, yawning, rolling up their mat, ready to go, not realising that the most momentous event had just taken place because nothing inside was attuned to or familiar with that consciousness for which we have to work. If this is our intention, if this is our ideal, that this yoga is not just a yoga of rapid accelerated evolution, which is more complete and more integral, but it is also yoga of a supramental consciousness to be realised in life and in a material life. And that's really the combination or the focal point of what makes this yoga distinct. Then we have to align ourselves to that if nothing else in our thought, in our heart's aspiration, but which part in us would be familiar or would be able to be aligned or have the familiarity of closeness to it. The one part in our being, which is our aspiration, is the deepest inmost soul, the psychic being. And to grow more conscious of it, to grow more conscious at the very least of its aspiration as it reflects in your heart and in your mind, would be the minimum of the effort that we have to make further, to put our thoughts and our emotions in a reference to that. To feel how it aligns with the deeper aspiration would help to organise our personality and our life around this true centre.

And then increasingly as this influence becomes more distinct, more organised, and more overt, mother explains, she says, it is possible from the psychic consciousness to actually have a glimpse of the Sachidananda, and it is from there that you have the part within your most responsive to the influence and action of the supramental. And so this is like the receptive station in us. If you take a radio, you're tuning the dial, what in the radio is being tuned? Not the box which is made of plastic wood or whatever, not the battery, which is only supplying energy, which part inside? And if you go to the crux of it, there's one circuit which is a capacitor and an inductor, a resonator, it's called. There's one little piece which is resonating. And when you're tuning in, you're basically shifting this, you remove this and the whole radio is useless. You make this enlarged and the whole radio begins to resonate more and more intensely. So you look at your whole personality, what in your whole personality is, what's the point of this personality? It's this psychic being psychic presence, which is the evolutionary person who's using this machinery to act in the material world. And the more you put this machinery in tune with the centre, the more the machinery acquires meaning, purpose, deep satisfaction in anything, in everything in life. And the more it expresses the reason why you're here on earth. And to give it time to pay a little attention to this, how many times do you check your bank account? How many times in the day do you check your mobile phones battery level? Do I need to recharge it? How many times do you check? My stomach is hungry, I need to eat, my body is tired, I need to sleep. You're putting energy, taking time to nurture things which are important to you. And this is the most important thing. How many times do you refer to it? And this we must make as important or more important than hunger, than your mobile phone's battery, than your bank account and everything else. It means taking a moment to pause, becoming conscious of the aspiration, aligning your thoughts, emotions, your actions to that, remembering feeling the Mother's presence in you and remembering why you're here on earth and what your relationship with her means for your life would be one practical form of it. But we must make this a constant habit.

Narad (01:09:12):

Can we close by doing exactly that for a few moments? <Meditates in silence>