EWS #26: On what is Yoga and what is not Yoga (2)
Feb 23, 2019
Topics:
Narad (0:00:00):
Welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. We have touched upon Work, Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, but there's still much more. So please continue with that.
Sraddhalu (0:00:46):
I wanted to highlight also what is not yoga but which passes under the name of yoga. Much of the confusion today in popular vocabulary is coming from the new age confusion which is all over the world. The problem with the New Age movements is that they take certain partial truths or fragments of truths and build around it a whole system or even a whole business and the problem of developing a business is that you have to somehow separate yourself from others you have to develop your USP, unique selling proposition, how do you differentiate from your neighbouring yoga teacher so you have to somehow bring in some element of novelty or uniqueness with which you can say mine is special, that guy is ordinary.
Narad (0:02:26):
Religion has done it for centuries.
Sraddhalu (0:02:30):
And so in the new age confusion what you see is rejection of formal religions because now that's fashionable and replacing it by non-formal, more fashionable new forms. So there are actually people looking for new things to appropriate into their framework to distinguish themselves from others and then what they do is they dig into all the yoga systems, all the traditions, pick out some elements, some keywords, some novel idea which no one else has highlighted specially, build around it this exaggerated place and now this is my imprint, my teaching. Sometimes even to ridiculous extents. In the US there is a very popular school of yoga called Bikram Yoga. Now this is a guy who went from India. His name is Bikram, so he has called it Bikram Yoga. He has put his own stamp on it. What distinguishes it from others is that you do your asanas in a hot room. You raise the temperature to 32 or 33 degrees, you start sweating and then you have to do your exercises and that's it. That's Bikram yoga. And then he has patented it. Copyrighted the term which is fine but then he has patented his whole thing. So others cannot do it with a high temperature. Can you believe that? Your uniqueness is doing exercises at high temperature. But that's, ok, so we laugh at it. That was the early stages of this. Now it's gone much more complex, now you have got crystal yoga, you have laughter yoga, you have dog yoga, you have acro yoga - acrobatics mixed into yoga. [Narad - oh, I didn't know that!] So you have also hammock yoga, goat yoga, etc. What is dog yoga? Putting dog into special postures for his good health. What is crystal yoga? Well, using different kinds of crystals and laughter yoga, well you laugh for half an hour or whatever, but what is it making it yoga? if you ask yourself the question why did they attach the word yoga to laughter, crystal, dog or whatever. What did they think when they used the word yoga? They just latched on to a currently fashionable term. People are looking for yoga. Here I give you yoga, it's called laughter yoga. To make money. To run your business, but why did you call it yoga? If you go to the root of the word, it was a means of entering in relation with the Divine, union, yoga. How through laughter are you going to enter into union with the Divine? And if your laughter yoga is not going to lead to self-realisation, then it's not yoga, very simply put. But what has happened is the word yoga has now been perverted to mean healthy exercise or now associated also with healing. So crystal yoga is used for healing. It's not going to lead to self-realisation but it's used for healing. Or the asanas are used for good health. And so when they use laughter yoga, it's for good health. If you laugh half an hour every day, then it increases blood circulation, it increases vitality, you feel good, your heart is in good condition and you can do medical tests to prove it. So you have done laughter yoga for so many minutes every day for two weeks, well your blood pressure has dropped, you are a happier person, that has nothing to do with yoga. So unfortunately the word itself has been so badly abused now, you have lost all relation to the original sense of it. But it is commercialised. It is totally commercialised.
Audience (0:06:30):
Especially yoga retreats nowadays. Yes. There are a lot of yoga retreats every week and it has nothing to do with the true purpose. They want to have a spiritual experience so they provide them a plate of yoga.
Sraddhalu (0:06:45):
But it's not even thought of as a spiritual experience. When they do yoga retreats, all you're doing is you will spend a few days of concentrated activity of some good health, de-stressing, healing or feel good if nothing else. So the easiest way to build a large movement and a large following is to create some mechanism in which you do good, be good, feel good and everybody is happy to join that. So I just in reference to one of these movements in India, very popular movement, what is the primary teaching? Well every morning you have to do whatever exercises which the founder has formulated which is their distinctive trademark stamp which is only taken from an existing combination of asanas and pranayama. You do that and now you have a guru and you are initiated, you are given a certain authority now to teach others and make money in the process. And it's like a pyramid scheme, you teach so many and they teach so many and you get a cut of their money and you wonder what's it about. If you have not given as your objective the awakening of the spiritual consciousness or becoming conscious of the self, it has nothing to do with spirituality. It's a powerful social movement or effective business model, good for increasing good health, making people aware that there is something more to life than just mundane values. You want to feel good, that's a good step already, but it has nothing to do with spirituality.
Narad (0:08:34):
A good friend of ours attended Deepak Chopra's retreat, $5000 a person.
Sraddhalu (08:39):
And what did you come back with?
Narad (0:08:44)
He said it was all right
Audience (0:08:51):
I attended a couple of times the Deepak Chopra 21 days meditation. I would always try to listen, focus and concentrate but I would never get any results and there are 21 days for free and then of course you pay in case you want to continue.
Sraddhalu (0:09:11):
So at best it gives you some de-stressing, it gives you a little bit of knowledge, it gives you a little bit of medical benefits, feel good, good health, etc. which you can follow through. So everybody is moving into the space where they want to pretend to be teaching or assisting spiritual awakening because that's what out there people are interested in. Except nobody is really interested in the spirituality, they are interested in the feel good which is associated with spirituality and the de-stressing which comes with spirituality. So you feed them that and you call it spirituality. The result is the idea of spirituality itself has been so badly abused. So I asked somebody, do you meditate regularly and the response was, yes. I practise 20 minutes of yoga everyday, and I said, 'well what I was talking about was different, you know, meditating, do you have some relation with the Divine of any kind'? He said, I do pranayama, but it has nothing to do with that connection with the Divine in itself. And this important thing for us, why I am bringing this up, is for us to be clear that what makes it spiritual or not. Unless the practice is intended to lead to an awareness of the Divine Presence. And how do you know that? Well, eventually it should lead you to self-realisation. If nothing else, a realisation of the self within with all the realisation of the Divine presence around whatever form it takes, if it doesn't take you to that then it is not yoga if it does not awaken in you the spiritual consciousness or awaken you to the spiritual consciousness it's not a spiritual practice. Repeating mantra is one of those, so there are, again it's become fashionable. I want a mantra. Why? Well, because everyone is doing it, so I need a guru mantra, because in the tradition you are supposed to be initiated with a mantra that a guru gives to you. So can I have a guru mantra, please? So and so gives you a guru mantra. First of all in the original tradition, when the guru gave you a mantra, he put his own spiritual power into the mantra, by dwelling upon it, you were plugging into that power to lead you eventually to a realisation of a spiritual kind. But when somebody, just because now I am the guru, and you paid me $5000 or whatever or less, I give you the mantra. What have I put into it that I had? Nothing. So an empty man giving an empty mantra, you have the satisfaction of saying 'oh yes, so and so where I paid so much money, gives me this mantra and I do it every day. To what end? If you ask them, what are you doing the mantra for?, they don't know or occasionally they will say things like, yes I want to realise God. But what are you doing for God realization? Oh yeah, I do my mantra 108 times a day. If your true quest was to realise the Divine consciousness, you would not stop with your 108. You would be looking for something which gives you the contact or the experience and I have met people who say I have been at it for the last so many years and I'm frustrated because I have not felt anything yet and so my response is simply what you are doing is not leading to any result. Please change.
Narad (0:12:31):
Perhaps a little divergence but it is important I feel. Of so many young people and new people coming to the ashram and there is no physical body of the Guru, of Mother of Sri Aurobindo. How do they approach?
Sraddhalu (0:12:51):
Yes, it does make things more difficult initially. If a person comes, does not have a clarity of what is the form of the practice and does not have the capacity or discrimination to actually read Sri Aurobindo's writings or the Mother's writings and to be able to understand from it what is the form of practice he has to take, it can create a bit of a barrier in the beginning. But on the other hand, if their intention or their call was genuine, it's because they have already felt a contact with the presence of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. If that has been there, whether they understand or not, they will find their way, because that contact will lead them through. If that is not there, they have come with the idea that, oh, Sri Aurobindo Ashram and therefore somehow I will get the teaching, they want classes and they are not going to get that easily. Then sometimes they are satisfied with some little patchwork of limited understanding. There were people who I know had lived in the ashram for about 20 years and then suddenly they heard in some lecture someone say that if you have not reached your psychic being then you have wasted your life and the person says, okay now what is this psychic being that Sri Aurobindo is talking about, what can I do to find it? After 20 years of being there that they had this, because they heard this word and they realised something had to be done which they have not got, a real point of contact with their presence already, then one can be a bit confused initially, if you cannot take the trouble of reading and assimilating on your own. If there are people that you come in contact with, who are able to help you to get that understanding, it's a help. But otherwise, mostly what I find is people feel good in the atmosphere, they are happy to be here and somehow because it's so nourishing spiritually as an atmosphere, they are happy to just be in the space.
Auroville is a broader framework. The requirement of a dedicated spiritual practice is not placed there by the Mother. It's much more a space of actualization and so the requirement is to be a willing servitor of the divine consciousness and again the question should be asked being in that space are you consciously trying to serve the Divine? Most people are not. They are busy doing what they are familiar in doing but if they made that little bit of effort to ask before taking a decision, what does the Divine want of me or what would the divine want of me? Even if it's my mind's best understanding as a starting point, all the problems of Auroville would be very quickly resolved, because you made an attempt to link to that. And the same problem in the ashram, if your whole purpose for being there is to be practising the integral yoga, then at the very least in your day to day decision making, you should be making reference to the Mother. What would she want me to do? And even if it's your mind's projection, as a starting point it's good. Eventually the very fact that you make that effort to reach out to her will create the link and she will give you the insight and if you are sincere you will know that what you thought was not the best but the insight was given. So somewhere that question of sincerity and that first point of contact is extremely important. If it's there, they'll find their way. Of that we are assured.
Narad (0:16:39):
In Auroville, Mother did say, 'but if they don't know about the yoga', so she was quite clear that one should have some understanding of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, to even be in Auroville.
Sraddhalu (0:16:52):
Yes, in the way she formulated it to Huta, at some point she said and it's quite far-seeing and even radical in the way she formulated it. She said when I leave my body, there will be no Sri Aurobindo or Mother, there will be only the Divine Truth. Meaning even the personality of the Mother or Sri Aurobindo is not important for her. What is important is that you relate to the Divine in whatever form, aspect, personality that you feel naturally drawn to. Of course for us it is obvious to feel it in relation with the Mother or Sri Aurobindo, but even if you don't have that, it's okay, it does not matter. But that you should have that relationship, is a necessary starting point. So the sad thing for me is having been here for so many decades and not having read or attempted to read Sri Aurobindo's guidance on the practice, so many in the ashram chose to learn meditation from other systems and sometimes systems which are contrary in objective to the integral yoga. So many from the ashram, it was fashionable for a while, about 20 years ago, they went to practise Vipassana. Vipassana as a Buddhist practice, is very useful for particular development of separation of the mind as a witness from the senses, separating the mind from the body, from the emotions and even to some extent from the thought. But the goal of the practice is, having made that separation, to stand back from the mind, to extinguish it, in order to attain to a nirvana that disconnects you and dissolves your separateness from life. The problem of that practice is fundamentally it is contrary to the objective of the integral yoga, where we want to realise the Divine consciousness to be able to bring it into life. We want to be able to quiet the mind in order to transform and divinize it. We want to be able to separate our consciousness even from the physical senses, emotions and thought in order for that consciousness now to be able to go beyond its mental limits to open to the higher self, to be able to bring those into these. So as a practice, it is contrary in objective.
But many people who took that practice had some practice of meditation. When having stayed in the ashram for decades, they had nothing or they had not learnt or bothered to learn. So one of the examples that I want to share with a name even, Maggie Leachie who was here for so many years and still in Auroville, had become a great fan of Vipassana meditation and having preaching it now to everybody, one of the devotees who had a deeper insight asked her, well now that you have practised it for so many years, has it helped you to grow in your psychic being? Has it brought you in contact with the psychic presence? And she went, 'oh yeah, that's a good question, I don't feel it'. And that should have been the warning that what you are doing is taking you away even. If your growth was in a direction which is healthy for the integral yoga, you would have had some deepening of contact of the devotion, of the mind, of the consecration, of some influence of the psychic being. If rather there has been a drying up and an increasing withdrawal and a distancing from life in a way that is unhealthy, then you should know that that practice is not commensurate or aligned to this. So I take this as an example because they did not bother to read Sri Aurobindo, where Sri Aurobindo has given detailed explanation for how to meditate with the objective of the Integral Yoga, with the whole rationale of the practice and specifics of the meditation process itself, describing all the variations of the practice and it's all there. People have not bothered to read or put it to practise. And so these are sad things, but possible because we do not have a formal framework in which you are shunted at one end in an assembly line, now do this, now do this, now do this and you will reach.
Sri Aurobindo takes pains to articulate three exceptional features of the integral yoga and the first of these is that there is no fixed process or method which people take to mean no process or method. His highlight is on the fixed, it is not fixed, there are processes, there are methods, there are stages very distinctly but they are not fixed because you are developing a multi-faceted immersion in the Divine. So depending on your nature and the starting point of your nature, one of these might be highlighted in the beginning or another or you may go through an alternation between two or three aspects of the growth because we are a multi-dimensional being and the integral yoga wants an integral transformation so all these facets have to be taken up to whatever extent convenient but they may undergo shifts in prioritisation. So it is not a fixed sequence or a fixed method but there are methods, there are sequences and there are definite stages or steps and directions of the sadhana and that is ignored. Unfortunately the people who most promote these wrong ideas are precisely the ones who don't put to the practice and that has led to confusion in the public. So this was an important point I wanted to bring into our discussion here, since we are in a, in the last few sessions we have been describing many of these wrong ideas in practice. Aligned to this is also the question of fasting. In many practices, as well as yogic traditions and spiritual traditions, a lot of importance is given to fasting as a spiritual practice. Mother was very clear on this, she said it may be good for health, but it is not a spiritual requirement. You can fast all you want, it will not bring you closer to the self. It will rather destabilise your nervous system. In destabilising your nervous system, there is a momentary separation of the subtle body from the physical body, or a partial separation, which may give you a high of energy, which may awaken in your mind a sense of great clarity because now the dullness of the body is somehow separated and you are more freed from it. And in that state you may feel good, but also you may feel spiritually exalted. But essentially it has destabilised your nerves. Now if you try to hold that higher consciousness or engage in life with it, you'll find your emotions, your thoughts and even your health unbalanced. And so you may make that partial separation for a particular axis, but it's not in itself healthy or stable. But if you combine it with a certain practice, or use it only as an initial purification for your physical health, for a deeper spiritual practice, it can be a help at best. But in the process of the integral yoga, that kind of clarity of consciousness would be attained by the means of the yoga itself and not by artificial methods of this kind. For certain body types, it may be helpful for a while and that's all we can say for health reasons. But for spiritual reasons it is advisable not to destabilise.
Narad (0:24:55):
Mother says a moment of true surrender, sincerity is worth all the meditations in the world.
Sraddhalu (0:24:58):
Yes, one drop of practice, she says, is better than an ocean of theories, advices and good resolutions. And so her emphasis was always on the practice and even a moment's contact with the Divine Consciousness is more valuable than all kinds of partial wanderings. It does not mean meditation is not necessary. Champaklal had this question to Sri Aurobindo, if any way the higher consciousness will come, why do I have to do any meditation? I will just continue my work, it will come when it comes. You know this is all again in the context when they were doing the yoga for you. So Sri Aurobindo's response was clear, he said, if you do not prepare yourself, when it comes, you will be unable to contain or make proper use of it. So to create within you a climate of receptivity, a climate of, a base of stillness and even a purification of your consciousness, in which this higher thing can come and settle and be held and be allowed to fully develop. For that reason, you need to meditate regularly and so meditation is a great help. But in the way the Mother highlighted the use of meditation, you will see in the practice as she brought it into the ashram itself, she would sit with them for meditation every day, imprinting into them her force, imprinting into them the experience. Sometimes in the early days it was two or three times in the day. So in the morning there would be the darshan, where she would come to the balcony, people would be standing below, before they go for work. She would bring down her force into all of them, infuse them with her energy and higher consciousness with the intention that they may enter their work space with this alignment to her and with the energy and consciousness that she has given to them and that is how they would grow. At the end of the day there would be the meditation, sometimes pretty late in the evening, people would get sleepy because she was delayed, she was meeting people, whatever, but she would come down and she would again draw people deep inside. And I remember still hearing from one of the those disciples of that period, she said how she would be on the edge of the whole group sitting around the Mother in the meditation hall, she would be outside and she said just being in that presence you felt pulled deep inward, you have to make no effort she would literally pull you inward and you went deep and you had the contact and the deepening of the contact but this was given by her as an experience directly. She still gives it when we approach her with that call, this was necessary as an activity, as an exercise so that in that concentrated deepening of the contact you build a passage, you build the contact with your most surface parts and your inner parts, that you can extend that into your daily activity. Her emphasis was always what you experience in meditation must now become the norm in your activity of the day. The value of what you receive in meditation is only in terms of how much it changes your consciousness in your normal life. But you recognize the place for meditation as a concentrated period of deepening and preparation either to receive an experience or to create the climate in which the experience can be received and then extending that into the whole day. Eventually, there should be no distinction between the concentrated meditation and the work itself. And at that point, your work will be your meditation with eyes open. You do not need to close your eyes anymore. Whether it is done for the purpose of purification to receive and hold, or whether it is even done to deepen and manifest what you hold, what you receive within, but it would be done in the midst of activity. This being the goal, eventually people have misrepresented this, as saying work is the meditation. The work does not become meditation unless you do it with this effort, which means already to bring your work to some level of depth of consciousness, you must have practised deepening your consciousness, for which you need meditation. So what is important to recognize is, you do need meditation as a practice to begin with. Its fulfilment is in its extension into your work space in your life, until eventually there is no gap between the two. But then to say that the work is the meditation without really deepening it, would be an error, which is one of the common errors here.
Narad (0:30:40):
I believe I mentioned my experience on the balcony before.
[Sraddhalu] Please share it again.
Narad (0:30:41):
In those days there weren't so many of us, and we would stand beneath Mother's balcony, and we would know the moment she began to look at us. And every single person knew that. There was no question. So one day, I always used to stand beneath her feet. That was my place. And I was looking at her, my hands folded, and suddenly she knocks me three feet back, and her eyes burn into my chest like spinning diamonds. And I told a friend who lived here in Maryland, and she said, Oh, that's a common experience. <laughs> She said, Go to the library, and Janina has done that exact photo, a painting of her experience, the same experience, but it wasn't common for me. <laughs> It was an extraordinary moment. I mean, my body, my whole body went three feet back. Her eyes didn't burn me, they just went in, just wanted to clarify it.
So we have discussed work, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, meditation. What else can we offer today?
Sraddhalu (0:32:19):
If you read Sri Aurobindo's Synthesis of Yoga, you will see how he formulates the framework of the integral yoga, as having three legs, so to say, like a stool on which the integral yoga is sitting. So, Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga and Jnana Yoga as the base, because all three can be practised in the midst of activity of life, upon that the stool itself, the base, is the purification of consciousness, which these three lead to in all three parts of our being, which makes you ready for the integral yoga proper, which is the yoga of transformation, of self-perfection and that is sixfold in its practice. And without going into the six of them, the first of them, the first requirement or the first facet of the practice is building the base of equality. And if you take this as your practice even initially, it can assist even in the purification or make it complete and that would be a worthwhile effort. It means that whatever may happen externally, somewhere within, one remains unaffected. So at first when you read his two chapters on equality, he discusses how one gets to that point and initially it may be a stoic resistance to not react, but after a while it gives way to a real sense of equality, a real sense of separation of the surface and the inner parts, until eventually the true equality is experienced in the influence of the presence of the Self, where the part of you within remains unmoved, unaffected, in spite of whatever may happen on the surface. But reading those chapters, taking this as an immediate practice in life, on the basis of the karma, bhakti, jnana form that one may be oriented to, would be a good starting point.
Narad (0:34:31):
I would like you to speak a bit about love for the Divine in the context of all of these aspects.
Sraddhalu (0:34:40):
If you see the way Sri Aurobindo structures these three, Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga. He starts with Karma Yoga, shows you how far it goes and it can't go much farther beyond that point. And then he takes up Jnana Yoga, which he shows goes a little further than Karma Yoga. And then comes the Bhakti Yoga, which goes to the culmination, which even Jnana Yoga cannot take. But then he also shows you how each of these assists the others. But the Bhakti Yoga, the essence of the Bhakti Yoga is in the love for the Divine and in the self-giving that the love leads you to inevitably. If you understand the nature of love, if you introspect and try to find out what it is that makes you feel love or what it is that makes love, love or what it is that love is flowing towards, it's a very interesting exploration and introspection. The error is to stop with the first point of contact when the love reaches out and it may stop at a form or a thing, an object, an idea, person. But if you pursue the introspection to see where it is really settling on, you will see it cuts through the form of the person or object or idea and goes to something much deeper. It's as if it is trying to go all the way to the inmost soul of the other. And in the same way, if you look at the origin of the love within you, you may find it comes from your emotions or from some idea or some activity that's only the surface appearance if you continue the introspection you'll find it goes deeper and deeper until at the depth of it, it fades out of your normal range of awareness and if you can still follow it, it goes all the way to your inmost soul, in the psychic being. If you realise, as a phenomenon, as an experience, love's roots are in the part of you that is Divine and it flows to something in the other which is essentially Divine. And obviously therefore the movement itself, although it may have so many emotions and ideas and forms associated with it, if you go to the quality of love in its essence, you will find it is something which is also essentially Divine, not belonging to emotions, not belonging to ideas, not belonging to forms or activities. It fills them because it is Divine. It can fill any of them or all of them, when it fills them, it makes them worthwhile, but in itself it is none of these. And you realise in the human experience the pure thread of love, the pure essence, the juice of love is one thing which is not human, it is Divine, and then we understand most deeply the Mother's statement, she says, 'it is not the love that others feel for you that makes you happy, it is the love that you feel for others that makes you happy'. First insight you have, see everybody goes through the phase of infatuation, teenage or even later in life, somebody is in love with you or you are in love with somebody but if somebody is in love with you and you have no feeling, it's a pest, it's bothering you, come on give it up, get rid of this, but if you feel love, even if the other person doesn't reciprocate, you have the high of the love, 'ok we discount all the exaggeration of the emotions and the vital mixture and all that', but the point she makes is it's not what comes from others to you, it is what grows out of you that is making you happy and then she explains why, and the same statement goes, 'for the love that you give is the love that you receive from the Divine who loves eternally and unfeelingly'. In other words, what you're giving out is only what you receive from the Divine which passed through your psychic being, it was never yours to begin with and your psychic being was only the link point or the mirror or the vehicle in which the Divine love could be received in some human vehicle or receptacle from which it could glow out and spread into the human space of life and experience and it still has its origin in the Divine love, who loves eternally and unfailingly. And that's the reason why in our experience of love, we feel the sense of eternity, oh my love is forever, also the sense of unfailing, I will never betray that which I love, of course we always betray, it always fails because it got mixed into all these things, but the true love is that which comes from the Divine and its only receptacle which is pure enough within us is the psychic being and from there everything that reflects and pours out is mixed and goes into mixed forms. And when you look at the world through this vision, you realise that, at the core of it all is the psychic spark, the mother says. You look at an atom, there is a psychic spark. You look at a grain of sand, there is a psychic spark. You have anything that exists, is supported by this tiny bit of the Divine Light as a psychic spark upholding. If that went away, the thing would cease to exist. Because the Divine Presence supports it, the point of contact of that Presence is the psychic spark.
Sraddhalu (0:40:43):
And in the evolution within us, that psychic spark has organised itself, become more and more conscious, more and more organised into itself until it becomes a psychic being and even a psychic personality and everywhere in everything, it is the psychic spark which is the point of receptacle or the point to receive resonating with the Divine love. So you look at the big picture of the universe, from the Divine Mother, the divine love pours into the whole universe, filling everything, but the only point within every object that can receive the divine love is that psychic centre, that psychic spark. Within us now sufficiently organised is a psychic being that it can not only consciously experience, enjoy and give itself back in love to the Divine, but also radiate that to life, which the grain of sand cannot do, which the stone cannot do although it is still upheld by the love. So the Mother explains how in reality the entire creation not only is formed out of the Divine love but it's sustained by her love and is brought back to her, brought together by the divine love. So she puts it this way, when the subatomic particle is drawn to the subatomic particle, it is the divine love that brings it together, which using the point of the psychic light, the psychic principle at the core of each, it brings it together and the force that draws it together is the divine love. The force that binds to make the atom is the divine love, the force that brings together all the atoms to form molecules and chains is the divine love which makes the cell and the form of the being is the divine love, but also it seated within, is organising itself, building its own vehicle which is our psychic being. In the divinisation of the human being, therefore she explains, the mind is intended to become a vehicle of the divine knowledge. The vital, pranic body is meant to become a vehicle of the divine power. The physical body is meant to become a vehicle of the divine beauty. And the psychic being, the soul within, is the vehicle of the divine love. And you can imagine or intuitively glimpse or sense what the nature of human life will be in this divinization. That from each one's heart, it is the divine love that pours out, now through a transparent instrument of mind, life and body, no more clouded and mixed, relating to and sharing with all these centres of divine love that pour out equally, and a mind that is awakened to the omniscience of the divine, participating now in the play with the power of the vital, which is an expression of the omnipotence of the divine and a body that reveals the beauty of the divine. And that is a glimpse of the nature of the divine world that all this struggle of evolution is growing towards. However long it takes, everything is pointing towards this and therefore it is inevitable. Sustained by the divine love in everything, pushing us gently, persistently and inevitably to this divinisation and the overt revelation of the divine.
Narad (0:45:10):
We have a few minutes left. I would like to ask you, to speak on two lines in Savitri, "Bliss made the world not a blind nature force" and "calling the adventure of consciousness and joy".
Sraddhalu (0:45:14):
You know in the initial outburst from the Divine which made the worlds, it was the movement of delight, of the sacchidananda. And so it is that which is at the base of everything. It is the delight which sustains everything. It's the delight, which is so to say, is creeping out through all sensory experiences, all emotional experiences and all our mind's learning experiences. They are just facets of delight, in reflection, brief glimmers and glimpses. And so the whole purpose of this life is to share and participate in the divine delight. Human experience of joy is only a first pointer in that direction. But in the human experience we have also the accompaniment of the negation of emotions. Sri Aurobindo explains how the positive feelings or the positive experiences push us towards the Divine. The negative experiences, the sadness, unhappiness, pain, suffering, point us to the fact that whatever we have experienced is insufficient. So if you didn't have the opposite experience, you experience joy and you can say, 'I am happy enough I don't need anything else', and then comes the negative experience, unhappiness, to tell you that happiness you had is not yet it, it's not sufficient, here I am, to prove it to you. And so now you seek for a deeper, more lasting, more true happiness and so it's as if there are two goads. The positive goad is pushing us towards the Divine, the negative goad is pointing out at each step that whatever you have is not it, there is something more you have to get to. In the Veda it is a description of the bright mother and the dark mother who nourishes the soul, which is like a baby, suckles the milk of the white mother and the milk of the dark mother and through the duality of the experience, grows to this eventual awakening, to the real delight, which has no more the duality, everything is colour and shade of delight only. But what holds it together, what makes this possible is the underlying Divine love, which embraces the whole universe and draws it back to her.
Sraddhalu (48:05):
In the traditional formulation of this, the image is not so much of the Divine Mother but of the highest personality of the Divine that is called Sri Krishna. And the root of the name itself, Krishna is this power to draw together. See in popular understanding, Krishna, and the word, the name Krishna is associated with dark. Krishna is also the word used to describe black colour, so they will say, oh Krishna because his skin was black, so he was called Krishna. No that's the wrong understanding, you have to go to the etymology, the Krish root is also the root of Akarshana, attraction. So the power of attraction is the characteristic of Krishna. Because the black colour absorbs light, as if it attracts or absorbs light, it is also called Krishna, as a colour. A colour which absorbs light is Krishna, but in this case it is the power of attraction which is being highlighted. So, Sri Krishna is the aspect of the Divine, who is so attractive to everything in the creation, that even the glimpse of that is enough to move your heart to forget everything else and want only that. And the flute is his call to remind you that he is there waiting for you. So, in the symbolism now you can see how beautiful it is. You as the gopis, the human souls are lost in the routine and rut of life which is represented by their cowherds They milk the cows, they take the milk, convert it into yoghourt, churn the yoghourt and separate the butter from what remains as the whey, then the butter they melt to make ghee which is the highest form of clarified consciousness, so you see the whole activity they are participating in is transforming consciousness step by step but in normal evolution until it reaches clarified mind, awakened mind, ready for divinization but not yet it. And they are lost in that routine of the rut of the unconscious yoga of nature. And Sri Krishna plays the flute. And in the story, these are, each gopi is a human soul, they are doing this work and suddenly they hear the flute and it is so haunting, for a moment they are mesmerised and they forget what they are doing. And sometimes they are holding a pot and the pot slips from their hand and falls, and then when the flute stops ,they say what happened? we were mesmerised, we were lost, they forget who they are. But then after a while the comes repeatedly, they recognize that it is a call and then I have to find the source of it. So now they lose interest in all these things and start looking for the source. And even if they know it is Krishna, where is he? And he is hiding behind trees. And then there is the play of hide and seek. Every time that they can't find him, they are about to give up, he reveals himself briefly, and that looking at him, the gaze falling on him is so mesmerising. Again, they are moved, they experience the delight, the delight, the bliss of self-loss and then he hides again and now they are restless because having experienced that, nothing else is interesting, so they have to pursue and pursue and every time they're about to give up, he gives them a glimpse and you can see the whole journey is a symbol of human evolution now awakened. 'I know there's something more to this life, but I don't know what it is', and I start searching but I have lost interest in the mundane and then I have a glimpse and each time I try to grab it, it vanishes and so each time I go a step further. But increasingly, he becomes more and more familiar and more revealed, into the forest, drawn into the forest. Now again if you look at the Sanskrit language because of the multiple usages of it, symbolic, essential etymology. You are going to the forest. In the forest, vana is the word used for forest, but vana is also the word for delight. So it is as if from the surface regions where the delight is not known, you are in the divided consciousness, you are being drawn deeper into the experience of the true delight of the Divine. And only when you have gone deep enough, that you have gone beyond the dualities, you meet Sri Krishna in the clearing which is at the centre of the forest. In the oneness of it all, the centre of the world, of the consciousness itself. There you can meet him. And of course all the souls, all the gopis are there, each experiences him uniquely. Although he is one, each experiences him as if playing only with her. So you have the dance which is described, under the moonlight, where he is dancing, although he stands at the centre and they are dancing around him, he becomes multiple and dances with each one at the same time uniquely. And so this is a relation of the human soul to the divine, in the revealed divine relationship where with each one of us there is this uniqueness of the relationship and yet he transcends them all and is at the centre of the whole play always directing the play. The play is his manifestation of his delight and each one enjoys it uniquely. And they dance under the moon, the moon here representing again the delight, and the Soma, the nectar of immortality which pours from the moon in this play of delight and we share in the immortality of the Divine revealed. That's the vision on which we should meditate perhaps.
Narad (0:54:18)
Thank you.
Sraddhalu (0:54:19):
Thank you, Namaste.