On the split in human evolution with a part rising up and another part sinking down.

Welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Today, I'd like to ask you if you would elucidate on two things. One, on book 11 in Savitri, Sri Aurobindo is extremely positive about humanity, that even the common man shall feel the wide uplift and more and more beings will grow into the light^[1]. Now, 23 years later, Mother says, I don't know if man will exist, continue to exist.

There are a series of statements that the Mother made in the early seventies, just before she left her body. In one of the messages, I think it was 1970 or 69, the new year message was, 'Men, countries, continents, the choice is imperative. Truth or the abyss'. Yes. Now this is so significant. You have to make a choice and the choice splits you totally. There's no middle ground. It's either truth or it's abyss. You cannot waffle around. You cannot hang around. You cannot be in a grey area. You can't sit on the fence. And if you don't make a choice, it is effectively making a choice, which is abyss and it is addressed to three - men, countries and continents. Now that's something to dwell upon. So for each one of us individually, we have to make that choice. And the other, next is at the level, a national identity at the country, you have to make a choice of the nation's direction of development, which is almost independent of the individual. They could go in different directions. Of course, each influences the other, but the third is even more suggestive. What does it mean for a continent to make a choice? Because we understand cultural, national identities. What does it mean for a continent? And it suggests to me something, which is the physical base of the earth, which is what defines the continental space or shelf, on the level of the physical material substance. It's as if these are five different regions, five continents. And at that level, a choice has to be made. It represents something much more deep, and it's as if the choice being made at that level will determine even the physical future. What we are seeing today with rapid climate shifts, destruction of environments, collapse of ecosystems, poisoning of the environments, all of these cannot be isolated across the country's border. They have continental impacts and which direction it'll go is as if the outcome of that choice. So this was the first significant warning.

And then she said something about crashing circumstances and she said, ‘if only men would consent to change, otherwise they will be compelled through crashing circumstances’. And she said, ‘it may be that we have to pass through one of those dark nights of civilization’. This was the possibility that she foresaw. And what that means, and this is what we have to today recognise because it's happening, it's happening on a scale that is so unprecedented, and where we individually are so helpless that we have to be able to face it for what it is in order to be able to defeat it and change it. Nights of civilization means the entire civilization is heading towards a kind of decline and a collapse, out of which it cannot recover on its own. The mechanism of its survival itself breaks down. So for example, we have devices of government, devices of protection of law and order, devices for economic stability. And when those institutions themselves are so corrupted that you cannot rejuvenate them, then the decline is inevitable and they're all there set as mutual protections against each other. But when all of them become corrupt and in cahoots with each other for benefits of a few or accepting a declining value, then you have nothing left in society to break it, except the human, the divine soul within. But that means the civilizational collapse then breaks through with the awakening in the hearts of people that then reverses the process. And we have been through that many times in the past. It's not something new.

So the question is this, why isn't the supermind doing something about it? But let me complete with the third statement she made, and she said, and out of great disappointment with humanity, she said that, 'I cannot guarantee that the Divine will find it worth it to save this humanity'. Now, what does it mean to 'save the humanity'? It does not mean human species will cease to exist, with the current values and civilizational values and culture and the framework of organisation of human life may have to pass through collapse because there's nothing worth saving in it. And what does it mean to save it? What is there worth saving if there is a spiritual aspiration? So why isn't Supramental doing anything? Because that's the argument people make. ‘Now that the Supermind has come, everything will be okay’. I've even met people who were deeply influenced by Sri Aurobindo’s writings, and then having come to that, they said, ‘well, but Supermind is descended. Things are only getting worse. Therefore I cannot accept this’, and they turned away to other systems because, and this is part of what I call loose talk. People speak very loosely as if Supermind will act out of some miraculous magical intervention and suddenly everything will become all right, while you may continue to do exactly what you do, which obviously cannot happen, it bypasses the whole logic of evolution.

What is the supermind doing? And Mother explained that, it is, you see the action of the supermind because it is a consciousness of infinity and all encompassing, its action is not single pointed, it is always multifaceted, all inclusive, including the action of the enemy which is opposing the supermind's or the divine action, is included in its scheme and turn against the opposition. But that process, if it goes too fast, again, it's the power of infinity. It can just slam through and it'll crush everything. But then the whole point of evolution would be missed again and you would've to restart. So it chooses to push as far as it can. And Mother explained it is pushing to do the most rapid progress with the minimum damage. So the challenge is this, you could have faster progress at a much higher price of damage or you have slower progress but less damage. And the balance is by its wisdom and its wisdom is complete. So now the question is this. Our role decides what is that fine line of balance? If all of us said, well, let's make a conscious effort to lift ourselves, lift our ideals, lift our quality of intention, consciousness and effort, and turn it upward, even a tiny step up, then the Supermind can push much faster and with less destruction to achieve the same result with less suffering.

But if all of us are busy with our own sleepiness, following our old values and instincts and impulses or being swayed by the false values which are being so widely propagated, and we tell ourselves, oh, Supermind will do it, then in fact we are delaying the action of the Supermind and it now has to push more slowly through much longer time with greater transitional suffering, but the outcome is still inevitable. So what you see in the text of Savitri is that outcome being inevitable, but the passage in between is what Mother spoke of. Will it be through much suffering and through the nights of civilization or will it be through a rapid awakening? And that's left entirely to our choice and our conscious participation. And it's not a choice that you have made 10 years ago. I have met people who said things like, ‘20 years ago I read Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and I surrendered my life’ and I said, well, something's wrong with that. You did it 20 years ago. And then he's complaining, ‘but nothing has changed’. And so you have to recognise that the state of surrender is not an event. It's a state that you have to consciously cultivate at each moment and build upon. And that's the nature of the spiritual life. You cannot say, 'I have done and now it's over. The rest is left to her'. So if someone says that, let's take the logic to its conclusion. Well, it is, you have left your life in Mother's hands, fine. So why don't you wait for her to feed you? You're hungry. You sit on your chair and pray and she will come and feed you. Well, why don't you do that? Why do you go and make the food and eat it yourself? And most people get flummoxed when they face that kind of argument. But when she faced this extreme of that logic that I will sit back and she will do everything, then you realise something is wrong with that whole thinking. That's what Sri Aurobindo has warned against as the passive surrender. And he says that leads to nothing except inertia, but you make the effort to eat. You have to make the effort to make pure food, make it healthy, make a selection which is made with your intelligence and invoke the spiritual force in it. And that result will be that much greater. But that's still left to your effort and your intelligence to be applied at each moment. And considering that we are in such a precarious transition, do you think the opposing forces are sitting idle and waiting for a miracle to happen? They're working with full force in a coordinated attack to do everything possible to harm human evolution and to delay it as far as possible. And on the other side, if we sit idle, then we just give them the full space, we have to push back.

But we have never seen on earth the power of these, shall I say, cabals and their total world influence.

Yes. What's interesting is all these centuries, we saw the influence of these interests in local spaces. And for the first time, we are seeing this happening on a global scale. And interestingly, Sri Aurobindo anticipated and described these things in the Ideal of Human Unity, the thing he warns against and which has been exactly happening the last 25 years, let's say, was one world government. When the whole world is united in the framework or umbrella of a single world government, it'll be the most damaging to human evolution and to the multiplicity and diversity which is intended in the spiritual development. It'll create uniformity, suppress, and even destroy individual creativity and initiatives, et cetera. And this is what began sometime around 1990-91 when you had the first US invasion of Iraq and operation Desert Storm was built on a lie. The US had actually told Saddam Hussein, we will not interfere in your problem with Kuwait. It's your internal matter. And a week later when Hussein crossed over to take over Kuwait, the US came in with full force. They announced that Saddam Hussein was about to cross the border to invade Saudi Arabia. The French released a satellite image showing US troops amassed on one side and nothing on the other side. And so the whole thing was a propaganda affair to convince people to justify a full fledged war in the Middle East, which had no other justification.

Weapons of mass destruction, which didn't exist, but that came later. This was just done on the basis of invasion of Kuwait, the first 1991 invasion, 1992 or 91, what was behind it? Saddam Hussein had announced that he would disengage oil sales from the US dollar and make it multicurrency. Now this is the starting point, and with that came...the US at that time, or rather the world order behind the US government could not accept that because the large objective of the one world government was to bring the whole world under a single domination of a single financial structure. And here was somebody breaking away and he had the power because he had the oil. And then Bush at that time, George W. Bush announced the New World order, and there was a big brouhaha around the media about what that meant. What we have seen in the last 25 years is the development of this new world order, which has increasingly woven the whole global economics under one umbrella, which is controlled by the central bankers of the world, let's put it that way. And at the same time, the political freedom of people has been usurped and it's been done very quietly. For example, the European Union, and again, Sri Aurobindo describes this whole unification of Europe and the current problem they're facing.

The way it was done, the political systems were bypassed and they created a European parliament, which is not of elected people but selected by governments. All of them former bankers or former finance ministers, deeply connected with banks. They're sitting together in a parliament which decides financial policies of all the countries bypassing the current election and the democratic processes. And the result was when there was this huge collapse, economic collapse in the US and Europe, basically, it was not a global meltdown, it was the game bankers had played. And common man found all the money they had put in the bank suddenly vanishing into debt. The bankers had gambled with other banks. The whole big thing they played and common man was left as the slave, just the money sucked out and that's it. And nobody realised that this was a game being played at the top where they would celebrate these victories of having turned the country subservient, having caused economic collapses in the lives of millions. And this charade has now developed to a point where even in the election process, the two sides coming up have a fine distinction on some minor issue. Other than that, the positions are so common that it doesn't matter who you elect. The people who are actually coming with revolutionary ideas, who want to make real change are cut off at the early stage of the electoral process. They never get a chance. So effectively democracy has been snuffed out. The whole control of the economic system has been centralised to a degree that any country going out of that is bombed and destroyed.

Another example is in North Africa where, what's the name? The one who's overthrown? Morocco? No, Libya, Gadaffi, yes. Gaddafi for a long time was projected all over the world as a madman. At some point after 9/11, he said enough of this, and he deliberately gave up all his weapons development, gave up whatever nuclear, semi nuclear and other weapons he had, opened his country to international inspections, cleaned it out and said, whatever money I have I will use for development. In 10 years, what he did was in 10 years, he created the most developed country of Africa in which everybody had free education, everybody had free healthcare, the economy was booming. He had developed a canal system across the whole country, which was feeding the desert and creating rich crops everywhere. And it was a model for the whole of Africa. Now who has anything against such a country, except that it was destabilising the intended global order, you could not allow a country to come up, which was now free of controls, of economic controls. And the first thing that Obama's administration did was they bombed it. They bombed the canal systems, they bombed his palace and they funded a group of extreme Islamists who basically chased him and killed him in the most gruesome manner and subsequently find the entire country back into a collapsed non-functional economy. At that time, Hillary Clinton was on record, laughing gleefully, stating, we came, we saw, he died. It was a repetition of Julius Caesar's pompous statement, 'I came, I saw, I conquered'.

But you wonder what is it that drives people who have such powerful weapons and control systems to destroy something beautiful which was emerging rather than promoting it as an example for the rest of them to follow. And then we see something even more insidious happening all over the world. Now the entire educational system is being dumbed down. And a good example is what's happening in America where what used to be earlier taught in, let's say high school then began to be taught in college, and it has been pushed out of the education system to a degree that today most of the college life is all about having fun and somehow passing some very bare minimal exams. And most people don't even think, find it worthwhile. They don't get jobs because what they have learned has very little value. The entire content of the educational system has been dumbed down and then slanted towards mere rote learning and passive acceptance, not questioning, not thinking, not even directing your energies to oppose something which goes wrong. And the result of anybody who's passed through that system is when things go wrong in society, 'oh, we have to pass a new law'. I see this thinking has become so prevalent. So we had, for example, in India, there were some gruesome rapes that took place in Delhi. 'We must pass a law'. Now what is that, going to solve problems? We already have laws. No, but you just make laws upon laws upon laws, but you're not looking at the core problem - what has declined in social values that such a rape could take place.

And we are not addressing the key problem and this thinking that oh, someone has to fix it by a new mechanism to be imposed. It has been indoctrinated in the educational system. And so there have been things happening now where the amount of funds going into creativity and innovation have been directed to social objects, social studies, and the whole study is designed to divide groups into subgroups and sub subgroups. We have huge confusion now in the US among what they call entitlements and white entitlements and privileges. And suddenly you realise the whole society has been fragmented and fighting each other. What was there as an underlying unity has actually been further fragmented by a deliberate programme introduced. And you wonder how could this happen? Do you think people inside the system don't realise it, even if they realise they're powerless because the controls are at the top and at every step it has been so mechanised that you've just follow orders or you're thrown out of the system.

And if you're thrown out of the system, you cannot survive. And this is part of what Sri Aurobindo described as the one world government. You are in a hierarchy, in a gigantic machinery where top down things ripple down and you have no choice. You have to execute or drop out and fade out or become irrelevant. We have actually moved to a one world government framework without realising it and it's been done so quietly. In India, for example, is a struggle between the government and the Central Bank, Reserve Bank of India. Unlike the US, the Reserve Bank of India is actually a part of the government. In the US, the federal bank is actually, the Federal Reserve is actually a private bank, which is a very strange situation. The government borrows money from a private bank, effectively everybody has been paying taxes to a private bank. It's not so bad in many other countries, but strangely, the same Reserve Bank of India wants to be as if not part of the government, wants to be beholden to the international bankers. And it was all done very quietly in the last 20 years. And when the Indian government says, oh, but this money belongs to India, they say, no, it is our independence. And if you don't follow our independence, then there'll be a massive reaction from international banks against you. The threat that they made. This all happened in last few weeks. The threat openly made against the government to allow what? To allow the Reserve Bank of India to continue to keep high interest rates and remove liquidity to destroy the economy. An intention under orders of an international master, imposed in a mechanism with the entire media protecting the Reserve Bank's independence.

And the media is another big story. The degree to which this has gone - In 1991, there is a CIA document, a statement made in the US senate by the then CIA director about what they call Operation Mockingbird. And he says there that at that point they control something like 95% of the US media, the CIA controls 95% of the US media that they can remove any story, insert any story or slant any story as they choose. And as for the rest of the world, they control 80%. This is 1991 and since then you can imagine 25 years. I am pointing to all these things happening around that period because it's significant that the new world order was framed with these intentions that today the global media is a puppet. And the easiest way to prove this, and anyone can do this research. Anytime there's a significant event or a significant collision of interests, you'll find across 50 different newspapers owned by different people, exact same headlines, sometimes to the extent that the full sentence of the headline is the same, sometimes the major phrases are the same.

How does it happen that people wake up in completely independent media houses and come up with the exact same headline? It's not possible, unless there's a central control which is guiding them. Now, I don't go too much into this, but just to give you the idea that when you control the media, when you control banks and interest rates, when you ensure the political candidates are finally selected by you and you don't care which one wins, what have you got here? The common man is living in a fantasy of freedom. What you have here is the world government imposed upon you quietly bypassing your systems, and you have people like cattle in a gigantic machinery feeding the whole system. We have already reached that point. The economic and I didn't mention, educational system also equally has been corrupted. Now at this point, we are only looking at degrees of corruption in different spaces, but the controls are complete.

Are we able to reverse this? Common man cannot. We have literally millions of NGOs working for the last how many decades? What dent have they made in this? We have only, I didn't mention pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare (industry). We have only increased in illnesses, we have increased in poisonings, we have increased in dumbing down of education, increased in division of society. In fact, many of these NGOs end up being funded by these interests to further subdivide and create collision in society itself by promoting certain underprivileged groups against the so-called privileged and further dividing and getting everybody busy fighting each other. And you start wondering, something is very wrong in this picture. The only pushback possible is first for the common man to start waking up that we are being taken for a ride. Second, you cannot fight the system by going once again, being another NGO that fights to further divide.

You have to go with the fundamental shift in your perspective and the change of consciousness is your foundation, but it doesn't stop there. You have to still act. We had a very interesting discussion. I was just coming back from a gathering in the United Nations Climate Summit in Poland, and I've been going the last almost I think eight or nine years to each one of these. And that's something we can discuss later. But in many of these discussions, because I was part of a group of religious and spiritual leaders from all over the world, we looked at these underlying spiritual causes of the current ecological crisis. And so of course you can say, yes, there is a systemic failure, but why did the system fail? Why does the system go in this wrong direction because of desire, greed, et cetera. But desire and greed have been part of humanity going back thousands of years.

What has changed? And so we go one more step and then we discover what I've referred to as memes, certain seed ideas which allow for this exaggeration and perversion of society. I give one example. Modern science teaches us that all evolution is the result of some kind of a gigantic scramble, survival of the fittest. The more powerful has to dominate the weak and win. And that's how evolution moves forward. Now it's nice as an idea, it makes sense, but is it true? And the simple test, you shouldn't just stop with an idea. Does it fit the facts? So you look at nature, you do not see a scramble of destruction. You see rather deep collaboration, deep communion, the strongest supporting the weakest, the weakest, somehow supporting the strongest. And the whole deeply interconnected unity of nature is the reality that you see. You see a collaborative evolution, not a competitive or destructive evolution.

Yes, competition is there as a secondary power of the underlying collaboration and it is not a destructive competition. Now, we were taught and on the basis of this teaching that it is destructive competition, which is the evolutionary force, you had the second world war. The elitism of a race dominating another race because it considered itself superior evolutionary and therefore having a right to subjugate another or even exterminate another. This thinking was at the basis of the whole colonisation from Europe, of the world and so on. And if you don't change thinking the current framework which we are now trapped in is also justified. So there are means like this, which are seed thoughts, seed ideas, values, which are defining, I would say modern society. But if we go to Sri Aurobindo's text, he says European values versus Eastern values. And he says, the future of the world depends upon whether it'll be the European values which will lead or the Eastern values which will lead. And this is where we are coming to now. These are the seed ideas which need to be changed. What are we doing? Have we even got three of them ourselves? Briefly earlier we made a comment about how in India and generally among all spiritual communities, people are infected with the imprint of the life denying renunciation and the ascetic spirituality. Why? Because we have been at it for 2000 years. Count how many lives it would be, let's say even 10 at the minimum, maybe 20 lives. And the imprint of that is strong in humanity and it serves a purpose. But most of the good people, anybody with a general spiritual orientation is then stuck with that passive condition that comes from the ascetic spirituality and says, 'ah, yes, I see the problem, but it'll get all right, some how. The Divine grace is there, it'll work'. I do nothing on the other side.

The ones who are not tainted by this are the ones who are busy doing it. So I was coming to this example in one of the discussions we had, and this was in Romania, going back a couple of years. We had a group sitting and discussing and somebody who was a Buddhist and he was a very wealthy man and then he became Buddhist and now he's given his wealth to spreading those values in his business and all. And he came up with this long speech about how the problem is our mind, we have to change ourselves. There's no point criticising the bankers. There's no point criticising the system. We have to change ourselves. And it was very nice, very powerful and inspiring. And then on the other side was this Rabbi, he's a very interesting man. He said, wonderful, let me represent the bankers. Please go ahead, be busy changing yourselves for the next hundred years, thousand years while I continue to do what I want and take away all your money and make you my slave. And suddenly everybody in the group said, 'oh yeah, that's true'. He brought in the idea of the necessity of activism. You cannot just be busy changing yourself while doing nothing to change the world or your circumstances. The problem today is anybody coming forward to change, if they don't come with a deep enough foundation, they only add to the confusion. But if they come with a deep enough foundation, we can make a real change.

Now I'm connecting all this back to Sri Aurobindo's message. And why is this so important? I do not see anywhere in the world, the clarity with which this has been articulated as in Sri Aurobindo's teaching and the form that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother gave to it in the Ashram and in Auroville. And having given that form, we still have the freedom and the stupidity to be able to subvert it or not follow it. But if you stay with the form as they articulated it, I do not see anywhere in the world such a clear articulation and such a clear push towards spiritual based activism. Now, the activism here is not political. It is life changing, restructure life, rebuild life values. And if you take Auroville as a model for a township, as a model of human unity, the structures of governance, the structures of economic development, the structures of education, the structures of life, social, et cetera, all of them rebuilt from scratch on spiritual foundations is what the world needs. It's the model for the future of the world. And yet, we allow what is coming from outside to overwhelm and not make the pushback needed. For this, I will say we have failed as in disciples of Sri Aurobindo, we have failed. Well, we have never failed in the sense of an absolute failure. There's still time to wake up and move forward. There are always a few who are doing it, but as a collective we have failed. We did not take the trouble to follow literally what they have asked us to do, and they were very clear about what needed to be done.

So if you take a look at just the problems in Auroville, at a very material level, the Mother's guideline was 'buy the lands quickly', because you do not know how far human greed can go. They didn't. They spent the money for other things. The result is today land prices have shot up because of Auroville's development, and now you cannot afford to buy them. And then the land mafiaa comes, and then the government machinery gets sucked in the mafia. What can you do? Well, all you can say is we wish we had followed Mother's guideline. And the same for the Ashram. All the properties around ashram main building. Mother said, buy it up. The then persons in charge did not buy the land because of 800 rupees. Today, you will laugh at the sum and just because of that today the same thing costs some millions or billions of rupees and it's not even available for sale. It's so expensive and it's gone. You cannot reverse this. It's done. It's painful for me to even make that statement. It's gone. It'll not be reversed. The only way it can reverse is that the government buying up the whole space, which it'll never do. So we have compromised the project at such deep levels because of human stupidity, but as long as we live in this illusion that it'll happen by magic, we will only delay the effort of the supramental action. The action will be there. The result is inevitable. The question is will it happen rapidly, smoothly, joyously even, and that's possible or through long, painful, delayed crashing circumstances which will compel the transition.

Could be or can be sooner. My reference is Mother, both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother rarely gave dates for this reason because it's in the balance, it depends on human beings really. And that was her message also when she said about whether humanity, I cannot say whether divine will find this humanity word saving. And then she says the question is still in the balance. It's hanging in the balance. And this was just before she left her body. But about this, I look at one framework of dates that the mother gave. When she inaugurated the Ashram school. She said, Sri Aurobindo is presiding over it, with all the creative power of his genius. And she said, whether it takes 50 years or a hundred years, it'll be the greatest one day, it'll be one of the greatest centres of learning. And you may doubt whether I'm present, but I will be there. She said, the greatest, yes. Well, she said THE greatest. Now we are at 75 years, nowhere near, not even an effort, not even a vision of what that greatest centre can be like. It's completely blanked out. And it's not that she didn't see it. In 1970 about, she made the statement, 'when I look at the Ashram school, I see a big blank wall and one day, I'll release the force to break it'. Now we are waiting for that. We need a breakthrough. But the question is all of this gridlock that you experience even within Auroville and the Ashram, gridlock to progress is part of the larger gridlock of human development, which we just discussed earlier. We are not insulated from that. And that's why to say that we will do our work quietly, even as a community, is foolish if we do not influence society around us to share those values. It is for this reason that the Mother created or accepted to create the Sri Aurobindo Society as one of the vehicles and the World Union as one of the vehicles of spreading these ideas. Did we do it? Well, initially there was a burst of a few inspired people and then a rapid decline and the whole thing just ground to halt. Again, I'll say OUR failure, but she gave the indication of what needed to be done. These ideas need to be seeded into the world, and that's how people will start thinking differently and even experimenting differently.

If we look at the facts as they now appear after many documents have been declassified, the whole Cold War was a big drama. At the highest levels, the military on both sides knew exactly what it meant. They played the game as one of the ways by which they took control of the resources, the funds, the military, et cetera, by creating fear in their own populace against the other. This was the big drama and it was under Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev that the first coming together bypassed this creation of the deep state, the fake Cold War. It was fake on that top level. At the lower levels, it was very real. But they broke that and suddenly you had the glasnost and perestroika and the breakdown of the Cold War. And then what happened is the people who were feeding that whole fake structure as a way of building the deep state and the one world government, they said, well, now we need a new enemy. And then you see the beginning of terrorism. The next cycle of the enemy that can never be conquered, can never be seen, that is everywhere, somehow magically is through the framework of terrorism.

So with the 9/11 George Bush suddenly declared that 'Al-Qaeda is now in 165 countries. It's deeply entrenched. They can bomb anyone anything, destroy anything. And now this is going to be a war which will go on for decades'. What did you do? You just replaced the Cold War by a new fake war. And imagine where this Al-Qaeda came from. The centre of Al-Qaeda was this Osama bin Laden who was a CIA asset, trained by the CIA, funded by the CIA, to fight the Soviets who were inside Afghanistan. And now suddenly this becomes so powerful that it is in 165 countries overnight. How do you explain that? Well, you don't. It's not true. The whole thing has been a fake war and it was used as an excuse to enter the Middle East. And what happened with Afghanistan? Before the invasion from the US forces, it had poppy fields among other things. After the US entry, the production of poppy and the derived drugs have shot up 1000 fold. It has become the world's biggest producer of drugs which are now under control of the CIA and being spread all over the world and a large part coming into the US.

It's a vicious cycle deliberately created to block and prevent the forward movement of evolution. Now, let's not get into that because it doesn't help us, but it's useful to understand how deeply gridlocked the whole system is. Where will the change come? Precisely by these seed ideas spreading out, the counter seeds against those false seeds? The example I gave earlier about destructive, conflicting dominative evolution with collaborative evolution. And these ideas have to go out. Can we build a new system? Can we build a new framework? Can we? That's what Auroville was about and it's happening, but there is not enough attempt to stabilise, to concretize and then to spread it as a model for the rest of the world. This needs to be done. What is interesting is the Supramental force, in spite of these failures, will still do its part. And let me show you signs of this.

These values which are being attempted to be established in Ashram, in Auroville, these values and the work done in small groups, let's say within Auroville, a group of 20 people or a group of hundred people or even a group of five people, if they have sufficiently stabilised these values and got something functional, that is picked up as a template and imprinted by this spiritual force into other communities. Individuals who are looking for and aspiring for something but have no one else to share with are somehow brought together by chance. And then they form small groups, small communities of sharing and then something touches them, oh yeah, let's try this. Let's see if it works. And the template developed here is imprinted in their minds. And if there are good instruments, everything boils down to willing and capable human instruments. If there are good instruments, the same thing. Instead of happening on 25 or 20, we'll hit 500 or 5,000 or may hit the head of state. And from there it'll impact a million people or a billion people. And that's also happening at the same time. So what we see is something fascinating - bypassing this gridlock. There are centres of, let's say illumination popping up. Mostly they don't last too long because the spiritual base is still weak, but they pop up, they fade out, they pop up and fade out. And occasionally an individual or a group comes with some great force, some light, even a half light is enough. The Supermind can work through to amplify and do something extraordinary in spite of their limitations. And the three centres which are obvious for this large scale action, currently what I find is in India, in Russia and in the USA, for the large scale action, top down, even in the political and economic field, in spite of the gridlock, which is still intact in all these spaces.

They have to come together. Mother spoke of the US and India coming together for the mission which has to be done, fulfil in the world. She was very keen that this should happen. For various reasons again, human's stupidity, this was delayed, but it has happened in the last two years in a way that we could not have imagined.

How much have you seen in all your travels throughout the world of this coming together of small groups.

The small groups coming together? So this is at the top level, the smaller groups coming together, I'm seeing examples everywhere, everywhere in the world and some places which are surprising. And one example is in South America. It was to me a revelation to see the degree to which there is an openness to some light in South America in the common populace in spite of all the other economic and other issues. It is fascinating to see these groups forming. Unfortunately South America is full of the remnant of the earlier influences and associated with it, exposure to drugs as means of entering altered states of consciousness, which have in some sense diverted this aspiration into some kind of intermediate zone. But the readiness and the ability to come together in groups was one of the things which I was pleasantly surprised. In Europe, it seems the difficulties are greater because systems are more rigidly organised. So people don't have enough time, they don't have enough free space to be able to come together. South America because the social structures and economic structures are more fluid, they have the free time and that seems to make a huge difference.

So I find these groups for me, and what is interesting to see though, is most of them are attempting to go back to their original traditions. So in Europe, in certain parts, the Celtic tradition going back to their roots or the other spiritual local subgroups, cultures and somehow link it with the newer ideas, but it's heavily mixed. It's very difficult to find these smaller groups where there is a clear light and a clear focus. And those inevitably tend to have somehow some connection, with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, if nothing else they have read from or are continuing to read from as one of their main sources of inspiration. But where that kind of clarity is not, there is inevitably confusion of half light, of new light, old light and half light mixing. This is the most important thing Sri Aurobindo has brought, which is the clarity that comes, putting each thing in its place and seeing the whole as a continuum, but in a way that has a practical application which is undiluted, not confused. Where that kind of clarity is not there, I find inevitably the groups either have some confusion, they stop short and then get off track and it fizzles out, and then something else forms. Where that light is there, something beautiful forms, but it's limited to a space of individuals, so to say, enjoying that light, getting a relief. But it does not take the form where it moves into action.

And this is the point of our discussion currently that it has to at some stage move into action to impact society. If you do not, then the pushback from the other side is already strong enough and you're doing nothing. This I have also found in some spaces where the good is also pushing back. And one such was just now I was in Delhi in a conference on wellness, it was on management and a large number of people had come from different angles of management connecting with consciousness and wellbeing, et cetera. And there were two in particular. One was the head of Philips Lighting, yes. And he was, I think he had a global role. He was involved in major mergers across countries and he was describing his style of leadership, which was inherently consciousness based and with deep spiritual principles, but which he was bringing into the corporate culture and changing corporate culture and values of course only to the extent that the company's priorities were met.

But even more revolutionary was the head of Bajaj Capital. It's a company in India and the family has deep spiritual roots and they've been trying to bring those into their management style to a degree that I found astonishing and that I believe will be one of the templates for the world. It is literally a unit on a scale which is as big as the whole of Auroville or perhaps bigger, but with impact, which is far bigger because the company serving millions of people. But if I remember right, the group that he's directly responsible for is about 3000. So that's comparable to Auroville, into which he has brought not only the deeper spiritual principles for corporate governance and corporate efficacy, effectivity, but also not just that, but going deeper to actually actively bring spiritual values. Now that I have not seen so far in many large companies, it may be there in a few individuals, in small groups of five or 10, maybe going up to 50, but not much more.

And so this was one of those, for me, it gave great hope and great promise for the future. I do believe this kind of thing can be done most easily in India because the underlying spiritual values which are inherent in the culture and in the people, you don't have to do much to turn them to bring forward these values. They're already trying to practise them in their homes, but they go to the job where the contrary values of the European values are really imprinting the whole management structure. Everything boils down to performance numbers, get your job done, sell more at what cost? profit. So one of the persons, and this is the third good example I met, he was a person with very high performance. He was in Europe running some big companies and one day he just woke up and realised the whole thing was fake. It did not match who he was within. How it happened? Obviously, the inner being was dormant in its influence. And then one day it just came forward and suddenly the contrast was so great, he was within one month of getting married and he cancelled, called off the marriage, called off his business, stepped out of the whole system and began a whole process of introspection and self-discovery, et cetera, which took him, I don't know, six or seven years. And then he has now become some kind of a coach for helping systemic changes in the corporate space, corporate culture. But he said when he was studying, I think it was in Stanford University, he had gone for his MBA training. The people there gave an example in his training, they spoke of how they were preparing in the political arena. They were preparing for Obama's election and the team which was working on the election had printed a photograph of Obama, which was taken by somebody without the permission of that man, and they'd already printed in large numbers and suddenly they had a problem. Now, do we have to pay money to that fellow? So somebody in the team said, let me handle it. He called up the photographer and said, by the way, we have selected one of your photos of Obama, which is good, and we are offering you the privilege of allowing us to print it. How much are you willing to pay? We demand a thousand dollars from you. And after negotiation, the fellow accepted $250, he paid money to these people for printing the photo as if they're doing him a favour. And this was presented in Stanford University as an example of good business practise, how you turned a problem to profit. And this man said, 'I had a problem with that. I said, no, I don't accept this. What about human values? Was it right to do this?'. And it started a whole big discussion. He didn't tell us what the discussion was, but this is where we are facing the corporate values of domination and subjugation of the other, turning the whole of business into a gigantic battleground, where you destroy your opponent, eliminate, create monopolies, and basically turn the whole of the financial framework towards feeding on the common populace rather than serving them. The same industrial mentality, the same cabal, which you see all over the world, the one world government, but within the management space.

And a person in India has this spiritual values which maybe he has inherited or he cherishes within his house, goes into this space and has to live this falsehood. And what happens then? Eventually the falsehood pushes back, seeps into his home. And you see this often in Indians moving into Europe, losing their spiritual values and culture. And sometimes it happens at two generations down. The children suddenly say, but what about this? And then there's a pushback. But in the US, interestingly, wherever they have gone, more often than not, they have attempted to protect their spiritual values. They've created their own little communities, temples, et cetera. But how far can you go into freezing the values and where you're not successful in living it rather than freezing it into cultural forms, the children lose because they get infected by the other values. So the whole discussion today is about that question Sri Aurobindo places, 'which will define the future of humanity, the European values or the Eastern values, and that will decide the fate of humanity'. For the moment, the European values are pushing hard and the Eastern values are on the back foot. The pushback is happening in small spaces of the examples I've given here. But it's not organised. It's not sufficiently strong spiritually. And that's where we have a critical role, and this includes all those who are watching this discussion in each of our lives. It's not enough that we read. It's not enough that we pray. And yes, those are important. It's not enough that we meditate. We have to found ourselves in a deeper foundation spiritually for which you may use meditation, you may use prayer, you may use your reading. But having founded yourself there, you must exercise those values into your life and push back against those contrary values. This is essential and this pushback is what will swing and change the future.

In a few days, we will be in the new year. In terms of percentage, what is happening now with this huge conglomerates controlling the world against this movement of spiritual?

What I find happening in Pondicherry on New Year eve, earlier we would have prayers, we would have people even getting up in their homes, sitting for meditation in the half hour or 10 minutes before New Year, listening to Mother's music. Well, that is gone because people now watch TV. They're not fresh enough to wake up in the middle of the night. But what you find instead on the roads, people going at high speed in cars and motorcycles, screaming, shouting and in energies and a voice which is ghoulish, devilish and it's all around the Ashram, the screaming through and the voice. And you can feel it's not human. And this is in Pondicherry. Imagine what's happening in big cities. The values of what New Year means and the way you celebrate have been dropping so rapidly. There has been such a hardening and thickening over the sensitivity of the soul values everywhere.

I spoke of education, but what's happening outside the formal education, through music, the coarsening of humanity by the crude, coarse, hardening, metal and pop and other forms which have been thrust upon the young people, they didn't have a choice. Nobody gave them even an option of elevating and sensitising music. It's thrust upon them. Parents just ignore it. It's bypassing the educational system coarsening values to a degree that what else is there left? So frankly, if you look at the external evidence, you see only a decline. You do not see an awakening. Having passed through decline, some of them pop up because the inner being pushes eventually and in late adult age they say, but spirituality. But they've been so damaged by this whole process that even their access to the spirituality is now clouded and confused. They need some excitement while they struggle. And I've seen too many of such examples in Europe and in America. Because yes, they want this, but they, they're not able to free themselves from this.

The frame of purity which we had even going back 20 years where people grew up in an innocent space and then could open to the spiritual light without the mass of coarse, heavy led anchors, so to say, shackles, it was easy to grow up like that. Today you are bound so early on, this is becoming a struggle. So I don't have a positive message, which is obvious in the masses. You do see pockets and the pockets will form. They will coalesce much more because that's the only way they can protect themselves against the darkening which is taking place. So if you look at the pure bare evidence on the surface, you see humanity compellingly driven to this dark night of civilization that the Mother warned about. If that is allowed to cross a certain threshold, you will only have centres of light, a few centres in isolation, which will somehow scrape through the passage and come across eventually on the other side while the rest of humanity maybe gets even darkened.

Again, I go back to the Mother's statement, which people don't recognise for its value. This is in the early sixties. She spoke of in the Agenda where she spoke of the nature of the transition from the current humanity to the new humanity, which we have referred to as the supramental or even the superman consciousness leading to the supramental. She said, it'll not happen with the whole group rising up. It'll be a split. A part of humanity will turn up and a part of humanity not turning up will turn down, by the very fact that it has not chosen to turn up and the two will separate sufficiently that they will not see eye to eye. This is what we are seeing everywhere. The question is how many here, how many there?

And we have to make an effort. I am even disappointed to see in those whom the Mother inspired, who met the Mother, their lives changed, in their families, you go down one or two generations and it's gone. At best, the photo of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo remain on the wall, the grandchildren are growing up, 'oh yeah, this is what we used to be worship. It's just another deity replacing', but nothing of the love, the joy, the sense of the higher values have passed through. Why? Because those who were so inspired said, 'It'll happen. Mother will take care of it', and did not make their personal effort to transmit those values. And when yes, you say Mother will take care of it, society is also taking care of the opposite influence. And obviously that is being given all the freedom. And so we are going through a crisis today where not enough is present in the masses.

I don't have a positive message. If you look at the masses, if you look behind the scenes, yes, things are happening and that's the nature of the supramental working. In spite of what you throw at it, it'll overcome. It'll take its time, but it'll overcome. What we do see, and this is what I said in the large structures between Russia, USA and India, top down, there are groups of individuals, not a single individual, groups of individuals, top down in the power structures who recognise this and want to dismantle the one world government framework. And this is extremely important. If this succeeds, what we will see in the next three to four years will be the breakdown of the deep state, the breakup and the exposure of the cabal. And suddenly the dam will be broken and the flood of possibilities can break through. This is the hope, which I can offer for a rapid and real change, but it rests on these efforts which are currently ongoing, which are literally on the edge. One example I will give is what you see happening today in the strong international bonds which used to exist, which had so far been built as part of the world government, you see the trips and then subsequently the name of this organisation is The World Trade Organisation. WTO, World Trade Organisation, where large countries are bound by a rule imposed from the centre on everybody equally. And basically each country is fighting for tiny exceptions to protect their local interests. And this has been going on now 20 years. We are part of the WTO framework where somebody can decide and order and compel with a few minor variations as concessions, but the country, the whole world is somehow forced into a uniform framework of give and take, which has made that China now becomes the manufacturing centre, India becomes the IT service centre, US becomes the consumer top dog who feeds on everybody else's slavery. Africa is the raw material resources and suddenly the world is reduced to a few large flat pieces joining to feed one big monster that eats everything up. An elite that is feeding on the rest of us, slaves.

It's not going to work. That's one world government. That's not the framework of human awakening to its spiritual diversity and cultural diversity. What is the framework Sri Aurobindo offered was a federal structure, in which each country has its complete independence of its values, its cultures, and its spiritual identity. Now engaging with each other in its terms that support it as well as nourish the other, and with the maximum freedom given to each and WTO is completely contrary to this. We've all been brainwashed to think that the world coming together in the way it is doing now is the only way. So one of the discussions I had with people in this meeting, in the UNO, they said, but in this world, one world, global world today, we cannot have one country breaking out. I said, that's an assumption that you've been brainwashed into thinking that this is the way. What you see, the US has pulled out of many agreements.

Russia is pulling out of some agreements, India is fighting too. And this breakup and a realignment, US you saw, was a part of NAFTA. NAFTA was broken up and realignment of relationship set, which was beneficial to all sides separately. So you're seeing a multilateral exchange structure breaking out of the one world government with huge opposition from the interests that be, powers that be, which is economic and political, and the whole media, which is in their hands. In Europe, the French Gilet Jaunes, basically common man rising up and saying, 'We do not want this domination by the state. We want to be able to assert what is true to us'. Literally a second French revolution, will see if it goes forward, it might just be crushed because they brought in tanks. Not French, but of the EU, tanks belonging to the EU were brought into French roads. Again, what you recognise is the structure of the EU, which became the framework of the one world government, was oppressing France and pushback taking place in several countries, which have now opted to break out of something extremely dangerous, which is called the UN Migration Pact, which is one of those structures again, the UN has created, imposing on the whole world where every country will be compelled to accept any refugee from any other country.

A refugee can effectively say, I wish to go to such and such a country, and the country should accept it and give them money. What you see, for example, in the US, if a refugee comes in illegally, the US pays $3,000 per month for the person's wellbeing. Whereas the veterans who dedicated their lives to protecting the country are paid $1,500 as the little pittance. It cannot sustain. You cannot give refugees greatest status and you cannot compel refugees. So many people are pulling out of this pact. Suddenly you see the breakup of this imposed structure and it's part of this effort being made by these groups. If this succeeds and we must pray for it to succeed, if the awakening can take place at the ground level to common man, as we see in the Gilet Jaunes in France, now spreading to other countries also, then it is possible to push back and overthrow this false one world government structure.

[1] “Thus shall the earth open to divinity

And common natures feel the wide uplift,

Illumine common acts with the Spirit’s ray

And meet the deity in common things.

Nature shall live to manifest secret God,

The Spirit shall take up the human play,

This earthly life become the life divine.” - Savitri.