Welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. We continue today with Sraddhalu's journeys through many, many countries, and one of them that interests me very much is why you went to Cyprus and what you found there.

The first time was 22 years ago now, may be even more, 24 years ago. And then, second time was just after, two years later. And the third time was now, just a month ago. And this time it was for a gathering of young leaders coming from the Middle East, young people involved in climate activism, protecting earths from various destructive processes of human life and things like that. They were all selected from the Middle East region and with people coming from Morocco to Saudi Arabia to Palestine, to Israel to Iran, Jordan. So quite a mix. And then, from India of course, but the main thing was from the Middle Eastern region. And our discussions were meant to explore the spiritual dimensions, inner dimensions of climate change and related issues.

Well, it's a hot topic these days. And would you share some of your experiences on that? Because there are people who say, well, this place had snow last year and never had it before. So where is the climate change? And you know these arguments?

Yeah, I think the problem is when people speak of global warming as a term, because one can show that while average temperatures in most spaces are rising, average temperatures in other spaces are falling. And if you measure from the satellites, the overall earth climate seems to be cooling. If you measure from the earth surface, the overall climate seems to be heating. So it's full of contradictions. While the northern hemisphere is losing massively the ice caps as well as the old snow peaks, which are melting even in the Himalayas, on the southern hemisphere, particularly in the Antarctic region, large areas are in fact growing massively. So if you try to get an overall sense of it, it's confusing. So climate change is a better term because it's describing something which is changing in the climate. We don't say which direction, hot, earth, cold, or what. One of the signs of it is increased instability in the climate all over the world.

I'm looking at it, of course, from a spiritual perspective. One would look at it from what the Mother spoke of, and she was asked in the 1960s, 'What would be the first sign of the supramental consciousness working in matter?'. And she said two signs. First, a change in the climate of the earth. So this is in the late sixties, maybe early seventies, and she said, 'the overall temperatures of the earth will undergo a change'. And overall, this is of course she's looking at the larger trend. 'Everything will become more moderate, all the extremes will fade'. That means where it's extremely cold, it'll become warmer, where it's extremely hot, it'll become cooler. And so I've been watching very keenly to see how this overall drift moves. And I find this to be the case in most places, except that in the transition there are these violent swings, highs and lows, some of which incidentally can also be traced to human interventions, inadvertent as well as deliberate. So the inadvertent interventions are because we're cutting forests and the trees are the main control for the earth's atmosphere regulation. And the poisoning of some of the environment also is having a ripple effect, which finally affects trees or microorganisms, which affects climate. But deliberate ones are whether actually military interventions by certain powerful countries to try to mess around with the seasons for military or economic objectives. So create a famine in one place or trigger excess floods somewhere else and things like that, which is being done with perverse objects. But all of this finally is modified by the climate shift that's taking place in the earth's rhythms, but also in relation to the sun.

And this is something people are not speaking of. There is a change in the sun itself. The sun itself seems to be, is going through cycles of intensification and diminution of its activity. And we are in fact at one of those odd transitions where the overall sunlight reaching the earth is dropping. As of 1956, there's extraordinary data to show all over the earth, the quantum of sunlight reaching the earth's surface has been dropping on the average of 3% every decade. And this is like a global average in some areas such as Siberia, it has dropped almost 30% in three decades. So no explanation for this. Scientifically, it's not particulate matter, it's not clouds, it's not anything that we know which could explain this. And as far as the scientists are concerned, even the sun's radiation has not changed. But there is in fact a change in the solar radiation which has been monitored, which is being detected, but it's not correlating with this. This is a different cycle.

So to me, the date was very significant. 1956 is the supramental descent, and the Mother spoke of the action of the supramental consciousness on matter. And so as of 1956, something is being done by this power working directly on matter. So this was the first thing she spoke of. And the second sign she said, was a change in the human body, but maybe that we can discuss another time. But staying with the climate change thing, all of these discussions really go to a deeper idea that there is a spiritual power that can influence and even override earth processes. And it is happening already in spite of all the other mess that humanity is making. When the Mother looked far ahead into the future. She also spoke of snow in Auroville. You know that incident? Yes, yes. And it is fascinating to explore what that implies. For those who may not know, when she described the creation of the Matrimandir, she spoke of a lake to be dug around it as a water body which would supply also water for Auroville, but it was part of the design of the Matrimandir. From a spiritual or occult perspective, it defines the boundary within which the spiritual energy that is contained is so to say, held like a container. But when you dig, she was very practical. When you dig, all the mud that is taken out, she said should be piled into a hill on the northern side.

And this was argued against by certain architects, and we still don't know whether it will be put on the northern side.

Yes, that is human foolishness. But her instructions were very specific. And then she said, when you make that, it'll be an artificial hill. On the hill, she said, you should plant Fir trees. Right? And Huta was recording this. She looked at the Mother in shock, surprise, and the Mother smiled mischievously and said, because there will be snow. And so we are just starting the digging now.

Yes, it's just started. And that means let's say five years down, the artificial hill will be on the way sufficiently to be able to be recognised. So we are very close to that time when we might actually see snow in Auroville. So I'm looking at two implications. First, the evidence that even this is possible. We have records in the last 10 years of freaky weather, and this included snow coming in parts of the Sahara Desert, snow coming in Dubai, which is desert and it's unheard of. And a few years ago they had snow in Hyderabad as a freak event. So that's close enough already. But it suggests not only a massive shift, the implications are a massive shift in the Earth's climate, but also a possibility of a physical shift in the Earth's tilt in its orbit. And the evidence for that is also from many sources. From an occult source, you have Edgar Casey, you know of him as one of the greatest modern mystics. Yes, one of the most reliable in terms of his... He spoke of the earth's tilt changing, and the beginning of the change he said would be visible from 1996 onwards. And I was fascinated to notice most of these disruptive weather patterns were from that period on. And if earth's tilt begins to shift even a little bit, it would have massive implications for the weather patterns. But on the other side, when the ice is melting around the polar cap, what is happening? The earth is a spinning top, and the ice on the polar cap is a major part of the mass of the earth. And when that melts, the water redistributes, it's no more a solid thing. It'll unbalance a spinning top. What happens when a spinning top is unbalanced? It wobbles or it finds a new angle, a new axis on which it settles. Now if this happened in a sudden movement, it would be destructive. You would have massive tidal waves all over the world. But if it happens gradually through a series of small shifts, then you'll have disruptive weather patterns until eventually you notice, ah, the axis is tilted a little bit or the magnetic field has modified and things have settled after that.

I've been to Alaska three times and I have seen the melting of the caps. I mean, it's unbelievable. I mean, there's this stone now for miles and miles where there used to be iceberg.

Yes, and it's the same in the Himalayas. The starting point of the Ganga river has already been pushed back several kilometres and almost all of the sources of water in the Himalayas, which were in the perennial ice, we find they're melting.

Just to come to that, before that, let me complete this. There is also a huge shift taking place in the earth's magnetic field. The earth's magnetic field is already drifting. Everyone knows that we know it's happening. We have the evidence in the rock that it shifts over millions of years except over the last a hundred years, we find not only it's shifting rapidly, much more than normal, but it's accelerating in its shift. And currently the magnetic north pole of the earth is shifting about 60 kilometres per year. And that means every two years, all the aeroplanes have to recalibrate their magnetic north position because it's shifting so fast. Now, the magnetic field is very deeply related to the climate processes of the earth as well as other processes. And that shift is going to make a major change in any case. So all of these are showing you something weird happening on a physical level and which will lead through many fluctuations perhaps to something which will be a very different climate. So to your next, this point is very important. Who controls the weather really, at an operative level? We have, the Mother speaks of the king of the snow that she saw in Algeria, and he was called by the trees.

So in our discussion with the young leaders, I brought in these angles, first that whatever you may look at in terms of a change taking place on a physical level has behind it operative certain occult processes, energetic processes, but also conscious energies and even conscious beings as in this case. And they have a relationship not only with the trees and the earth, but also with us. And if we do things that disrupts their rhythm, it has the effect of the disruption of the weather patterns because they finally control those. If you cut trees, for example, the relationship between the rain gods, if you may use that term, the rain beings and the forest is that the forest calls the rain. You grow trees, the trees will call the rain physically. You may say, ah, there's evaporation, which triggers, et cetera. All those explanations are good, but they're not enough. You can have physical evaporation from a lake only, but you'll not get rain there. Why is it you get the rain only where there are trees? Because the trees are consciously calling the rain. So if you cut the trees, there's no one to call them and the result is the rain stop and then they have to go somewhere else and all kinds of things. But then the human element also is there. We can call them. We can consciously enter in relation with them. We can even bring a healing in the disruption that has taken place because of our own stupidities.

Yes. Of course, if you really look at the big picture, that's the last remnant of the lungs of the earth, the lungs of the earth were everywhere on earth. Those are the last remnants, so we call it that, but actually they were everywhere. If you look at India barely 200 years ago, it was full of trees. 90% would be forest like trees, and all of that has been cut through the colonial period, and then in the post-colonial, even more destruction.

Well, I know that the British took out the mahogany and the teak. I mean practically denuded India of those two species. But you say post-colonial, even worse.

Just going back barely 10 years, when the government started these massive highway projects, all of our old roads were lined with trees, gigantic trees. The trunk would be about this much. Some of them were three, 400 years old, maybe more. And the first thing they did was they just chopped all the trees and then expanded the road, do something like three times the width, four times the width. And it's ridiculous because they could have easily built roads on the side and kept this in the centre, but political interests, they made money in the process and things like that. And all of these could have been avoided. It's a crime.

And they gave you shade, they protected you from wind, they gave you food, fruit, yes. All cut just like that, and you can feel the barrenness when they're gone. And this creates a major disruption for these beings who look after the trees and the plants and they get so distressed. Then we have all kinds of strange activities such as the atomic bombs, which have been exploding, which also creates a disturbance on a subtle physical level, which extends far beyond. It extends literally around the whole earth and even beyond the earth, and they all get shaken up. These beings get shaken up.

Recently, I've been reading Mother on nuclear armaments, and she says that each country builds more and more out of fear, but the fear actually attracts the use of the bombs.

Yes. And Sri Aurobindo has this observation that if you keep a gun, the gun needs to be used. It wants to be used because that's its purpose. And so it attracts the circumstances which would encourage its use. So if you build all these atomic bombs, it attracts a crisis where they would want to be used.

In 1972 when we had the cyclone that tore the first major branch off the service tree, mother said it was the low consciousness of the Ashramites. Sri Aurobindo has said also that nature is not like that generally, I guess, but because she does things in her slow creative method. Since then, the service tree has been damaged many, many times. Could you speak on that?

Mother considered every detail of the physical building of the ashram to be significant, having an occult and a spiritual aspect, dimension. If you have access to the old map of the Ashram main building, you will see every room has a name, a particular quality of consciousness that she had either invoked or which it represented. The kitchen, which is upstairs in the corridor along Sri Aurobindo's room moving towards the west side, there's a small kitchen there, which was used also by Pavitra-da for his experiments with chemicals. She had named that room Alchemy. And there was one room which was the fruit room then, which has now been closed, in which the newspapers used to be kept and Mother was particular, the newspapers should not be put anywhere else. They should be kept within the limits of that room. And she named the room Falsehood, because it was meant to contain the falsehood, so to say, keep it within the boundary and not let it spread. And every little detail, even the change of one brick, she said, was not to be done without her explicit sanction and permission.

Of course, all that has changed now. Even the fruit room has been shut down, which is very interesting because I always look at what are the implications of this? If you accept that the ashram community is representative of the world and that there is an occult connection between what happens here and what happens in the world, and a two-way connection, the implication is that every problem out there will get represented here, and everything that happens here will have its ripple effect out there. And so I'm always watching to see how these things match and what you see strangely enough, from around the time that the fruit room was shut down, we have all over the world a massive decline in the fruits, fresh fruits which were available and the biodiversity of the fruits. And it's symbolic as far as I'm concerned, but things like this are suggestive.

So coming back to the tree itself, the service tree, the Mother gave special importance to, its not only is a conscious being, but a very high conscious being. And some of the people that we have known with the sensitivity without being told anything, on meeting the tree, they recognised and one of them actually said, this is a Rishi, and he could see that. The Mother spoke of the tree also being this place where the people who have passed on from the body, at least a part of their vital consciousness rests in the tree, because of the peace and the particular supportive vibration that it offers. But the tree itself, you can see is so conscious, it leans over the Samadhi as if in consecration, as if bowing down and also protecting. So when the branch broke, Mother indicated that it was the result of the lowered consciousness in the community, which made possible the branch to break. Otherwise there is such a strong protection that such things could not have happened, and that's why these things have an occult significance. It's not the same everywhere. If you go to somebody's garden and the tree breaks, okay, it's a normal process of nature, but here there's a spiritual protection which has a physical basis. And so the physical basis and the spiritual protection are connected, and anything which happens here has implications for the spiritual consciousness involved. We've had several breaks of the tree subsequently, and the most drastic was the one a few years ago when there was this gigantic storm in which Auroville lost nearly 50% of its trees and Pondicherry town similarly had a massive damage. And it was just before New Year, but it was at a time when the community was going through one of its biggest crises, in terms of its choice whether it would stand for Sri Aurobindo or not. And the storm came just at that time. Interestingly, its focus was Auroville and the region around the Ashram in Pondicherry town. If you went further out, the damage was not so great. It was fascinating to see that and it was indicative.

We have still to hear about these 29 countries. What was the most interesting for you?

So just going back to the Cyprus experience, what was interesting was all these young people, when we spoke about some of these things, I didn't speak of the supramental consciousness, but the fact that there are these subtler beings presiding behind the processes and that we can relate to them. I gave some interesting examples. I showed how, for example, if you look at the crocodile, there's a little bird that comes and eats from between its teeth. The bird itself is never eaten by the crocodile. The crocodile will open its mouth, the bird comes, eats, and the crocodile is relieved of its discomfort. The bird gets its food and then it flies off. If another bird comes to peck, the crocodile will eat it up. Now, how does a newborn crocodile who has never been taught that this is the species that you should not eat, how does it know not to eat it? If you go to the experience of the crocodile consciousness, it feels something which is warm and comfortable and familiar and just instinctively knows to accept and not eat. And that's all. What defines this relationship? And so I gave this as an example to show how there is a species consciousness of the crocodile. There's a species consciousness of the bird and at the level of the species consciousness, there's an alliance, and this alliance can be built, it can be modified, and even human beings can enter into such alliances.

We have the example from the Mother. She speaks of how when there were a lot of snakes in Nandaman, one of the Ashram gardens which we have lost, the snake king came to her and said that, 'I see that you're worried about snake bites'. And he said, 'I'm willing to make a pact that if you promise not to harm my kind, I will promise not to injure your followers'. And Mother said, 'I can't guarantee that they will not harm you'. But you see, if she had agreed to that pact, all she would've had to do was to order everybody, 'You will not kill snakes and then they won't kill you'. What does that mean? Suppose this decision was made, you could approach a snake and the snake would accept that you touch it. It would not bite, but anybody else approaching it would have its normal reaction. How does it know this? In every being, in every creature, there is the species consciousness along with the individual consciousness. And at the level of the species consciousness with these creatures, at least that species consciousness can override the individual habit. And this has massive implications. It means at the species level, if we reshape our relationship with all the animals, birds, trees, we could have a different relationship. We could literally walk into a forest and the animals would come to us instead of being afraid. They would be friendly.

Yes, so we discussed some of this. And then the storm, for example, has also a presiding being. You can enter in relation with it and ask it not to come or ask it to dissipate or invite the rain. So I have another story about this. We had some students from the Ashram school, you know, in the Ashram because under various circumstances, the Mother took occasions to leave these little gems. She taught a mantra for invoking rain and another mantra for stopping rain, among other things. And so some of the children had learnt these in childhood, and a group from the Ashram school, they went for a picnic in the Nilgiri hills. It was midsummer. Somehow that day it was raining heavily. So their picnic being spoiled. They sat for a while, sulking, and then someone said, Hey, why don't we try this mantra? So they did the chant to stop the rain, and in about half an hour the rain stopped. Then gradually the sky cleared. They had a nice sunny picnic, and on the way back they stopped at the local village and asked them, how is it that you had rain in middle of summer? And the villagers said, oh, this morning we had done a rain dance for our crops.

So what is amazing in this incident is, here is one group that calls the rain, another group comes later and dissipates the rain. And it could have been done in a way that was so natural if the relationship was right that all we had to do was say, ah, we are going to plant these crops. We need the rains just enough for the crops. And the rains would come give you the water you need. And that's it. That's possible, and that's our future. But this is one of the issues which we need to look at to solve the mess that we have created in the earth. And then going a step further, there are of course many levels among these beings. There is Mother Earth as a conscious being. And we can relate to her and ask her help not only for setting right, let's say you've destroyed the forest, she can trigger the rapid growth of the entire forest rebuilding, if she so chooses. We can ask for assistance there. We can also ask for assistance for specific knowledge of how to undo some of the poisons that we have put out. So Roundup^[1] is one of the major poisons which is being sprayed to control weeds. It's one of the most destructive carcinogenic compounds, it gets into everything, destroys everything. Once it's dissipated, it's gone into the oceans, it's gone into the soil, how are you going to get it out? And she could still give you means. She could show you methods or give you the, not just the knowledge, but even the thing itself. She can create a bacterium which would go and eat precisely that chemical and break it down and turn it into something safe. She can, but we have to ask and we have to enter in that relationship. So we discussed some of these things also, it was already second or third day because it takes time for people who have never thought like this. They're all thinking about science and weather and chemical to recognise that there are layers behind. And what was fascinating was there were people coming from many different traditions, including religious and non-religious, but they were so open, they were so open. In this particular discussion. I was not sure how far to take it, but it was amazing

They were all from, let's say 24 to 40 on the highest. And for most of them, it was a eye-opening, life-changing experience, because they went back now realising it's not activism, shouting and revolting against systems and structures, but a much deeper base on which their work has to succeed.

Kalpana Patel recently sent me an article written by, is it Rita Jha, Rita Jha on Auroville. And in it, she says that India has the most polluted cities in the world. How is one going to reverse that kind of pollution that is affecting the children's breathing lungs?

Actually, all of these statistics are deceptive if you reduce it to per capita pollution. India is not too much worse than anyone else per capita. What we have is huge concentrations of people, which of course exaggerates the pollution and makes the effects much worse. But the problem itself is everywhere. And this involves a much deeper solution. It means distributing resources better so that people don't have to come to cities for jobs. What we are seeing in India is a massive migration going back last 60 years, massive migration out of the villages into the cities. When the strength of Indian economy was decentralised village units, through the last 5,000 plus years of clear records that we have, India was the only country in the world which did not need to conquer others in order to build its economic success. It was the only country in the world which generated an excess in its economic growth without destroying the environment, without conquering anybody, without the use of slaves. And going back, barely 200 years ago, when the British came to India, India was producing 25% of the global industrial output, and England was less than 1%. As the British took over the lands and controlled the industries, they shut down industries. All these units which were running decentralised and independent, thriving economy were shut down by deliberate process, in order to turn India into a supplier of raw material for British industries. So by the time the British left, India's 25% output was down to less than 1%. England had shot up to 25 plus, I don't know, 30 or 40%. Why? Because of a deliberate destruction.

And one of the results, or one of the forms of the destruction was a series of famines that they created, artificially. And between 1850 to 1900, over 50 years, 10% of India's population died of starvation, because of the famines created by British policies intentionally. And the records then are quite fascinating. They describe, one of, the Viceroy then writes to his boss in England and says that, 'the planes of India are littered with the bones of the dead. I have not seen such misery'. Now, 10% means out of every 10, one has died of starvation. What happens to the other nine? They're starving, but they have not died for 50 years. You sustain that level of starvation. What will happen? People are driven to desperation. And one of the forms of that desperation was the British seizing your property and making you their slaves, taking you out of the country and putting you in their plantations around the world. And that's why India has the world's largest diaspora going back to that period, precisely. They're all descendants of people who migrated as slaves of the British, because they could not pay the increasing taxes. And one of the games they played, of course, was to keep increasing the taxes until at one point they were putting a taxation of 90%. So the British lost a war in South Africa. They put a war tax on India, they had a famine in England, they put a famine tax on India. So it was burdening and burdening intentionally, of course to destroy the economy. India had the world's largest production of diamonds, gold. In fact, until 1895, India was the only producer of diamonds in the whole world. And the largest producer of gold, biggest ships, pearls industry, textiles industry was the world's biggest. It was so big that the senate in Rome during the Roman Empire phase, they had an emergency meeting - the trade with India is disbalancing the finances of Rome. And so they passed an order that 'Indian textiles will not be bought by Rome anymore in order to protect our treasury', stuff like that. The stories which are galore of India's influence all over the world, all this was completely destroyed. Post independence, the same policies continued because what happened was the British educated, British trained, British thinking Indians were the ones who took charge.

We had spoken about this earlier, but Nehru's great statement that he's the last Englishman to rule India comes to mind. And he thought he was an Englishman and pretended to rule like the British. And the same mentality continues in the politicians later. How to loot, how to plunder, how to tax, how to take rather than serve. And the subsequent phase got much worse because there was no accountability anymore. And that's when you find all the migrations taking on their most extreme form. Today, the villages are practically dying. There's nothing happening. They've lost their independent economic foundations and the cities have become these gigantic, well, sweatshops, so to say. And that's the result of what you're seeing here, and the pollution. One of the things which did not change fast enough, and this is all over the world, the habit that people had in the villages after you finished your food, well, what did you do with the materials? You could put it for wash or if it cannot be washed, you could throw it away. It was all made of baked mud, baked clay. You could just throw it away to sink back into the earth. Except now you have a plastic wrapper which you throw away and it doesn't sink back into the earth. It stays right there and accumulates. And it needed an education to tell people this is not acceptable. It needed a mechanism to take that plastic back to recycle. None of this was ever done. And that's why you have the extreme forms of the pollution today. It'll change when the right people who are in positions of power make the change or when we at our level start that triple effect.

Some talks back, you mentioned that the Supramental force would even use plastic.

Yes, Sri Aurobindo was asked whether the supramental body will be radioactive. And he does not say yes or no, but he says the supramental consciousness being the foundation for everything in the universe, it can use everything including radioactivity as its means of growth. So it can use anything, but that does not justify the destruction that we are creating. But I come back to the earlier comment that you can ask Mother Earth. If you're conscious that she's a conscious being and you are in relationship with her, we can ask for help. There's also the other extreme where she can say enough and she shakes her back and you have these massive earthquakes and volcanoes. And while human life is poof, wiped out in a few seconds if she wants, so that she can start again or the few surviving, she will rebuild. And these are also in the possibility. She can, if she so chooses.

So another example which I will connect with this. This was in Switzerland. I had heard of a person in a Swiss community who had precisely spoken to Mother Earth or had that communion with her in which he showed him some new technologies. And he built a machine which was supposedly generating electricity just like that out of the air, free energy. I had read of it. I'd seen photographs, I had read reviews of scientists going from University of Berlin to study the machine, validating that it works, but not explaining how, they couldn't understand. So all that I had seen. So the first time that I went to Switzerland, my hosts asked me, do you want to see anything? I said, I'd like to see that if I can. And for some reason they said, oh, but it's not possible. It's too far. Actually it was not, was barely an hour away. And I said, okay. But the second time that I went, I didn't ask them, I asked someone else from Auroville and she helped me to make contact with that community. And I went there. I had no idea what it was. I went for the machine and what I discovered was a spiritual community. And the person who was heading it, who had made this machine, was a spiritual teacher. And one of a few people that I can use the word, Master.

He was 90, 90 years old. And unfortunately he had declined too much in his faculties. But when I went and met him, I had an extraordinary experience for what he radiated in his consciousness and what he was able to see and relate to. And it was clear that this was not an ordinary man, but what he had created was this machine. And he showed me the smaller version of it and he said, I have brought it out to the public for the first time after 10 years. The bigger version he did not bring out. I was told later that it was dismantled. But when he first created it, he would keep it in the open. Anybody would come and see. And at that point when it became too threatening for the powers that be, he said they were raided by the Swiss military, as a threat, saying, don't get on with this. And then somebody from NASA came, claiming to be from NASA and threatened them to stop showing this or developing this technology. So that's when he pulled it out of public circulation. But I got to see that, very simple, so simple that if the plans were put out on the internet, anyone in their garage could build it with a little bit of skill. You started running with your hand and it keeps running and generates electricity, a little thing like this, putting out 300 watts. And the big machine he had was producing three kilowatts, free electricity, steady 24 hours, no problem, no fuel, no wastage, no pollution. So this was one of the very special experiences I had with him. So the form it took, I had that experience with him, the energy, the consciousness that he radiated was exceptional.

And as it turned out, I had to go a month later for a different programme in Switzerland. And I took that occasion to go and meet him, a third time, no, a second time, sorry, that was the second time. The first time I had this experience, the second time. But he was not in his state of energy. He was very weak and he was closing his eyes repeatedly and as if drifting into sleep and his body would slump. So I said, all right, I don't wish to insist on him. And I said, since he's maybe meditating or sleepy, body's tired, let me also meditate. So I closed my eyes and I invoked the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. And because I had such a wonderful learning experience here and I invoked their presence and I said, here's something beautiful. And the moment when I felt the contact with their presence, this man suddenly opens his eyes bright, clear, fresh, and he says, your friends are most welcome here. And for a moment, my mind was a little confused. Is he talking of my friends, like my physical friends or is he talking about this? It was amazing. The same thing had happened the first time. He was talking words which had double meaning up there and here. And I was not sure whether he meant this or this. I've had that kind of experience with very few people. And to meet someone like that in the middle of Switzerland was too much of a shock. So here momentarily, I was confused, but then I guessed it was this. He was referring to the presence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and just so that I wouldn't have a doubt, after a minute or so again, he opened his eyes, 'Are they happy with what they see upstairs'? Upstairs was the temple, where he had all the concentration of the energy. And I had to say, I don't know. Are they happy? Well, that's not for me to judge, but it's exceptional.

He passed away a year later, and I was told that he had dismantled it before he passed on, but that he had left some documents explaining things for the future, that I don't know, this is what I was told. But his explanation for how he got the knowledge. Because the scientists would say to him, you're not an engineer, you're not a scientist. How did you make something like this? So his explanation was, I went into the forest and I asked nature and nature gave me the knowledge, and I link it to the earlier discussion. If you ask Mother earth, Nature and the Divine, all knowledge, all knowledge, all technology, all science, everything is there. How did Sri Aurobindo receive the downpour of knowledge, which you see in his writings? By opening to that consciousness where it's all there already and it's all waiting. And this is as accessible as this, for humanity. We don't need to wait. We don't need to have all this destruction and suffering. Everything can be avoided if we ask. Are you reminded of the Mother's statement, 'this wonderful world of delight waiting at our gates and it's waiting for us to invite it'.

Where did you find the most spiritually open group in all your travels other than Switzerland then?

Well, this community in Switzerland was one of the largest collections of sensitive, spiritually sensitive individuals. I have seen outside Ashram and Auroville, they were about 125. Apparently the group was much bigger. They were 250 before. But in terms of the level of sensitivity and the overall refinement of consciousness, it's the largest that I've seen outside our spaces. But smaller communities, I've seen in many places. Many of the programmes that I was invited to, they were all, most of the participants were people who had already a spiritual, either deep practice or orientation or interest. And so many of these would be a selection. And in a sense, I have had the privilege of meeting the spiritual elite of most of the spaces that I went to.

Many were non-religious, some were religious. But the nature of the meetings that we had were, was for people who had already transcended the narrowness of their religion. They had already a deeper practice and a mystical and a spiritual dimension even to their religious practices. And it was interesting to see how in this meeting, inevitably their boundaries would be further stretched or even broken. So we had, in some of the early meetings, there was one Buddhist activist, and after the third or fourth meeting that he participated, he spoke of the Divine Mother. And then there was a evangelist who was working for climate change, one of the very few. And so he was participating in a couple of meetings. And in the second meeting we had many people speaking of Mother Earth. And in the last introduction that he had when he was presenting something, he was speaking and then he said, and he was about to say Earth. And he paused and he went hmm, hmm, Mother Earth, which from his tradition was something very new, but he hesitated. But then it came out and after that it was always Mother Earth. And you could see how people's boundaries were stretching across traditions in ways that could not have happened otherwise. This is what Mother wanted when, she didn't say destroy religions. She said, each religion has to grow out of its limitations into a universality while still keeping whatever framework was valuable in what the religion represents. And so through many of these meetings, which involved gatherings of people across traditions, we had experiences like that, some of them with a very deep spiritual base.

[1] As of Nov 2022, Indian govt announced that glyphosate, used in Roundup and few other pesticides to be hazardous for humans and has restricted its use, but has not yet banned it.