EWS #59 Questions from viewers (10)

Dec 21, 2019

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Book referred in the talk:

Narad (0:00:52):
Namaste and welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. We had a question from the audience?

Audience (0:01:00):
Yes, I would like to know what you think about people having experiences in coma and coming back. What do you think about this?

Sraddhalu (0:01:19):
It's a general category of experiences called near-death experiences. There's a lot of literature available today of this and the fact that people can speak of it openly, record their own experiences and put it out there on YouTube as an open platform has also given more access to a wide range of experiences. Earlier people were hesitant to speak of it and even if they did speak, unless it was taken by the conventional media, nobody would know about it. And so one of the earliest books on this topic which was by Dr. Raymond Moody. It was called Life After Life. And as a doctor he had people on the operating table who died and then were brought back to life and then they remembered what happened in between. Many of them narrated how they found themselves floating away from the body, wandering around the hospital, seeing things and then being pulled back at the time of the resuscitation. Sometimes it happened that there was an accident and the person died in the accident, was taken to the hospital and revived within a short enough time and the person recalled what happened at the point of the accident and then how he came back and the element of choice and the experiences of the subtler realms in which they had transitioned. And so there's a wide variety of experiences that come in within this because that's the nature of reality when you go out of the body or when you're thrown out by accident that you can be thrown into any of the many planes of consciousness and a lot depends on what happened or the circumstances in which it happened and the state of evolution of the person. Some people have no recall at all. They may have had experiences but they lost all memory of it. Others have recall but experiences were of a lower grade, some of a higher grade.

So I'll just summarise broadly certain elements which are common and they fit in perfectly with our understanding of what happens when the person leaves the body also. So one of the things you will find common is whenever the death took place as a result of an accident there was a brief moment of a flashback of the whole life. So let's say the car is driving at high speed suddenly out of the corner of the eye he sees another car coming and there's about to be the collision and at that moment the person describes as if he finds himself projected out into some different kind of state and in a single instant there is a review of the whole journey of life and all the significant events of life. So what has happened at that point is not the mind, not the physical mind, but the soul or the inner being comes forward and seizes the situation knowing that there's going to be an accident and there's a point of choice. It brings forward and this is the soul's review of the life's journey, all the things done and that's why in an instant you see many years worth, of course not details like what you ate for breakfast every day which is irrelevant for the soul but all the significant experiences and at that moment the person knows in the very instant of that seeing this is typically of the soul's knowledge, it's not thought out, it's not processed. You see, you know, because you are what you know and it's obvious, I'm not ready to leave yet, there's still something remaining to be done. But if at that moment the soul's decision was made, okay I've done my part, then in the next instant is the collision that's about to happen, it happens and you're thrown out of the body, the body is damaged, it's not holding you anymore, you're thrown out and technically you're dead, the body is dead and you're out, you've been evicted from the body by a violent interaction. But if the soul says no I want to stay, there's work to be done, then that inner being which has come forward momentarily seizes the situation. And yes, there's still the collision, but you survive. Something is done, the body held back in a certain way to hold, to prevent the damage, which could be extreme. And yes, you might be hurt, you might be bleeding, you might even be momentarily knocked unconscious, knocked out of your body, but not sufficiently damaged that you cannot be brought back to life. At that point, the shock may throw you out, because the shock of the impact is enough to stun the physical brain. So your subtle body is as if thrown out. And then in the operating table, you're called back, etc. So this is one kind of common element, that at the point of transition there is a choice. Apparently this takes place for many others also even when they are ready to quit from illness. It does not happen when the person is leaving from a gradual withdrawal where the decision to withdraw was already made and now there is only a gradual process of graduated reduction and withdrawal where you have anyway made the decision and you pass on with age or other factors.

Narad (0:06:54):
I'd like to share the story of my daughter Shali. My wife Mary Helen was operated on. They opened her up completely and they said the cancer was so widespread nothing could be removed. And so they sealed her up again and she was in the room and the nurses said, if she doesn't urinate she will die today. So Shali went to the Matrimandir chamber and she's in tears and suddenly Mary Helen appears in the chamber and she says, ‘it is so beautiful here but I have to return, I have more work to do’, and she survived three and a half years more.

Sraddhalu (0:07:50):
Experiences like this which contradict the medical diagnosis diagnosis are evidence that the inner being and the soul have far greater power to change the physical circumstances than we give credence to. Even as in this case where it was extreme cancer, technically the body cannot survive, the push from within can seize the physical material and reshape it and take it on. Of course the body will suffer because there are things which are well damaged, not functioning, etc. But the choice of the person to stay is enough at an inner level. The choice of the inner being to stay is enough to push through and enforce its greater freedom on the body. And this can be taken a step further even and there are a few examples of such near-death experiences where a person so sick in the hospital technically incurable about to die actually dies or has a spiritual experience at that point of transition where they're taken up into this very beautiful domain, where you don't want to come back from, it's so beautiful, infused with light or told that your work is not finished and sent back. Then this woman in this case which I am referring to, she comes back and next morning they find complete cure, all the symptoms have vanished, all the cancer is gone. And these are called spontaneous remission. That's all the medical science can say, we have to give a label to it, spontaneous remission. Okay, there was spontaneous remission so you can write that on the paper and send it back. Of course you have explained nothing. There are several hundred such cases of spontaneous remission medically documented because it took place in a medical circumstance and no explanation from the medical side. Of course, the only explanation is that the spiritual being has the power to impose itself on the physical body and do what is required if the choice is made from a maturity of a spiritual development and if the body is sufficiently receptive also to its action. But yes it can be done.

So this brings us to the other aspect of the experience. When freed from the body, the experience is almost always positive. Almost always there is first, a sense of a decompression. The fixing into the physical body is felt as of a narrowing, dulling and becoming heavy. Even your mind becomes dull, your emotions become dull, your senses become dull, your consciousness becomes now locked, I am here, I am so small. And the moment you are released, equally there is this decompression that takes place and suddenly you feel yourself so much freer, wider, even vaster and your mind is as if now able to think and know in large sweeps and your vital is free to flow and even experience far greater intensities. There was recently a scientist who had a near-death experience and he was a neurophysiologist, if I'm right, who had a near-death experience. He found himself floating in the as if rising through planes as he felt it flying through the air in the sky and he heard this incredible music as if an orchestra of a thousand different instruments playing at the same time but with such an extraordinary harmony. It was as if the whole cosmos was singing or playing and something like that cannot be registered by your physical dulled hearing and senses. It has to be only the subtle body that you can hold an experience like that so large and so rich. And many things which he experienced and states of consciousness that he experienced which he had never had in physical life and then he comes back and wakes up. And he comes to the conclusion that well this cannot be reproduced by purely biological neurological processes and he came up with the conclusion that, well there is such a thing as soul and there is such a thing as God and whatever else he had experienced.

Sraddhalu (0:12:26):

So this decompression makes the experience so beautiful that often you don't want to go back. But what happens is, let's say the accident has taken place or on the operating table there's a situation where you're thrown out. On the other side or in that state, often the description is that a being advances towards you, a being of light, which often they will interpret to be God or Christ or whatever the head of their religious formation and the being is so full of love, the being is literally substance of love and you feel melting in the love of that presence and you, these are experiences they've never had in the physical body and physical life and they are so overwhelmed by that and then the being says, ‘it's not your time for you, you have to go back’ and then you find yourself coming back and then awakening in the body. But the impact of that experience either of the experience of those domains and the beauty of the domains or the contact with this Divine being is so great that the person is never the same afterwards, inevitably. All of them undergo a spiritual awakening. I think about what that means. This spiritual awakening or this spiritual sensitivity or shift was already there in their inner layers. It's only that the outer personality was so rigidly, narrowly bound, it was suffocating the inner being. And education being another layer which is hardened, narrowed, fixing you into the surface senses only, and a very narrow self-centric thought process and emotion, again binding you. And in that moment when you were thrown out of the physical body, you were freed from this narrow shell. And once having had this experience, you come back, the shell is too small, it cracks or is dissolved and you are no more the same. The true person behind now has come forward. The real personality we will say has come forward much more. But such would have been the result of a conscious spiritual discipline had they followed that in their life. But instead they were given the reverse of the spiritual discipline to narrow, to block, to lock and to harden their surface personality. So it needed as if a shock or the shock was given or used to help in a spiritual awakening. All of them come through with a completely different personality even,  much more benevolent, much more caring, less selfish and so on all the rest.

Narad (0:15:10):
Many of them speak about going through a tunnel and seeing light at the end. 1

Sraddhalu (0:15:17):
So this is the other aspect which is common to many, but just before we move to that, I said almost all of them speak of this beautiful experiences there are those though who have had negative experiences because they may be thrown momentarily on certain lower levels of consciousness and be exposed to domains which are of the vital nature and may come back even with memories which are not so nice. But generally that represents something in the person which lived more on those levels than on the higher levels. But well, the sense of the tunnel is interesting also. At the point where you're thrown out of the body, first they describe that they see the physical body lying on the operating table or at the site of the accident and they find themselves just drifting away and floating. Many don't notice whether they have a body. They are just a consciousness looking down at their physical body. And then after a while they see people walking around and going to the person, but they say, ‘oh, but I'm free’, and then they wander around, they start looking, exploring. So one example is a person who is, these are examples you will find in this book, Life After Life by Raymond Moody, and if you can get hold of the DVD that would be extremely helpful because in the DVD there are interviews and some of those interviews are so deeply moving, because the sense of the experience they had, the spiritual content of it comes through and there are equally many videos on YouTube which you will find. Just search the keywords ‘near death experience’. But the vibrations coming through tells you this was a spiritual experience.

So first he finds himself wandering, he floats off from the body and from above he is able to see things from the ceiling which normally would not be seen from below. So something which is kept on top of a cupboard he is able to notice, which he later recounts and the doctors verify. Then he wanders through the hospital, in this case he floats outside the hospital and goes up many stories because the subtle body has no weight and he finds a shoe on the ledge of a balcony and it has a cut, a notch on the side which is facing outward, all of which he narrates later when he comes back to body and the doctors verify this. So it couldn't have been seen by anybody on the other side, on the human side, because literally this opened out to the sky. There's another such who describes how he finds himself wandering in the hospital and he comes to a room where there's a woman giving birth to a child and suddenly he feels this very strong urge to put his head into the child's head. And he is about to do that when he pulls back and says, no, but my family is waiting. And he pulls back and then he is quickly pulled and is revived in his body. So when he narrates this, the doctors verify, yes, actually there was a childbirth that took place and the child was stillborn. Very interesting example. It meant literally he had the choice. Here was an accident that had taken place. The body was damaged. He had a choice to switch body to continue the work which was unfinished. Birth taking place, he is given the chance to take this body and he refuses for some reason at that moment. So he is not conscious of why he refused. All this is taking place almost as if instinctively. And this I'm giving as an example of a someone who is not spiritually sufficiently mature to be able to experience the layer where the choice took place. But he is only registering the reflection of that choice in his emotions. And so suddenly he feels no but my family and so he pulls back. But you have to think of the extraordinary wisdom that is operating behind the scenes that aligns someone who has just passed on with a child who is about to take birth and because this is an accident you don't you want to continue you can take birth immediately if you want but when he chose not to there was not an opportunity for another soul to come? It raises questions… hmm.. why was the child still born then? It's not so obvious what, always why these things happen. But it just shows you there's something behind the scenes which can actually look at things from a poise which is as if slightly above our sense of time and space and look at alignments of consciousness and say, ah yes, you are about to take birth, here is the space most resonant to your aspiration or your current consciousness and they help you to link there.

Sraddhalu (0:20:08):

I think mother speaks of beings whose task it is to assist souls to find the right place to take birth which is commensurate with their aspiration or their maturity. So there's a whole, let's say machinery machinery, maybe the wrong word, the whole environment of beings who are dedicated to this function in the universe and who help. So you are first in your subtle body and then after a point you may find yourself pulled up as if through a tunnel. So this is a common experience which is registered in these descriptions that a passage like a tunnel which has sometimes a sound, a resonance in the book which you will find one of the persons describing the movement rapidly as if he's pulled through a tunnel and he finds the sound, resonating sound which he describes in the book as boing boing boing which when I read it I said ah okay this is someone who doesn't know the sound ohm, the resonance of ohm or a single ohm, I don't know what it was. So he finds himself suddenly pulled through a tunnel and he doesn't know how the way the tunnel appeared from but on the other side of the tunnel he finds himself emerging into a domain of light intense white light but also intense love and the whole state of consciousness is also different, wider, freer, lighter, higher, you don't have words because you have no equivalent experience in your life in the body and there a being meets. So many of them will say it was Christ but well not really, it's a being who presides over that passage and sometimes he is asked, he is shown, it's very bureaucratic in form, someone comes and says are you so and so? and he says no I am someone else and the fellow says, ‘oh then there is a mistake, you are not the one who is supposed to come now’, and he is sent back. Interesting!

Narad (0:22:26):
Interesting.

Audience (0:22:27):
I met somebody who had this experience. He started to search for spiritual masters, etc. His name was Illuminati, means full of light. His name was. But at the end, he discovered that no fear of death. He said to me now I can die now, no fear. It is extraordinary.

Sraddhalu (0:22:55):
You see, having had an experience like this, you have no more a fear of death because you know what is on the other side. The main reason people have fear of death is because it is fear of the unknown. What happens then? So your mind imagines a blank. So I will cease to exist because that's what I imagine, it's a blank or it's dark so I fear the unknown, I fear I will lose myself, I will cease to exist and so the fear. But you've been on the other side or you've had an out-of-body experience you know what it's like it's not a big deal you step out of your body, that's all there is. Or you open out into a wider freer and higher consciousness. It's much more beautiful, why would I fear it and I don't die, I continue in fact in a better state. So if you had that experience once, why would you fear? But you can have that as a result of a spiritual development equally and so that also happens for people who have had experiences of higher states that after that you don't fear the death anymore. But coming to this being or this bureaucracy that says, oh mistake was made. This is interesting that there is as if an intention to pick somebody whose time had come, but you got the wrong person.

And Mother speaks of this. This is the only place you have an explanation because in none of the literature out there you will get an explanation for these things. They just don't know. All they have is documentation of these experiences. Mother explains that there are actually beings which can be said as if emissaries. Emissaries of the being that presides over the transition, which we may call God of Death, for want of a better word. In India, traditionally the name given is Yama and in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri, you will find similarly the word used, often he uses either Yama or the great law, great shade also, but the aspect of Yama ,you see Yama you find the same word used to represent control or Niyama is something you should do, Yama you should not do or exercise restraint over in the Yoga Sutras. So Yama is a term that represents the order or the law or the control of the overall working or rhythms of processes of life-death. So Yama is not death per se, Yama is rather the law which keeps the order and which keeps the balance. So that's why the ‘iron law' would be one of the terms Sri Aurobindo phrases, Sri Aurobindo uses. So it's not to do with death but the one who keeps the regulation. So this being, because seen from a different point of consciousness, recognizes when it's time for someone. And Mother says sometimes it can be quite complex. Emissaries of these beings, as if projections, vibhuti is the term we will use, projections of these beings go out as secondary powers, whose job it is now to bring such and such a soul. And sometimes they have a quota. Sometimes they are told okay, so many people and they pick people who are ready to pass on and complete. Now you will wonder, it sounds very bureaucratic, it sounds very strange, you have a quota, but it's really the way our mind articulates or recognizes the working of this balance.

So it points later to a larger question which we will look at about the population explosion. But behind it is as if a mechanism that maintains the balance, the harmony of beings. Think about it in a forest for example, where every species is somehow entangled with every other species for the balance. The lion has to eat the deer, but the lion itself has to be susceptible to certain other things Otherwise there'll be too many lions and too few deer and the deer has to eat the grass Again the grass and the deer there has to be a balance and then their whole complex circles of dependencies. Every time one of them goes too low, something happens to correct the balance. Who keeps balance? Now if you think about it, if you had to monitor, let's say you have a GPS on every animal, to manage that would be beyond your human intelligence with so many. And then to pick out which is the best most suited to be removed when it's time to reduce a few in the population. Who's the most evolved to preserve the larger intention of nature's evolution? You remove the ones who are least capable of evolving. So who decides and how? You can't do it by an observer mechanically thinking with your intellect. It can only be done by consciousness that lives inside all the animals and that consciousness feels the balance. Why I'm leaning too much this side and it wills itself to shift, lean to the other side and that ripples out in the adjustment of the species fertility, species death, species birth cycles. It's taking place at a level of consciousness which we cannot even imagine. It's something so spontaneous and so deep-rooted. But when it ripples out at that point what ripples out is as if impulses. Oh, this has to reduce, that has to increase, this we need to cull a few, the most sickly or the most weak. And so sickness is the form in which it emerges. Those impulses which come out, not part of the unifying consciousness which makes the correction, those seem to be distinct. And when they go out, we need to reduce a little bit of the lion population. At that point, it translates into four lions need to be reduced. So either they fall sick or they fall in a gorge, there is an accident or they get knocked out by something else. And which ones? Well, the ones most accessible. But if at that point the lion says, no I will not or at the moment of slipping from the gorge it pulls back because it is more conscious, that force has missed its count of four and now it looks for the next weak one to pull. Now once you understand it like this, it makes eminent sense. So these are the Yama-Dhuta, the term in Sanskrit will be the Dhuta is the messengers of Yama. They come, they have now very narrow pocket of action, focus of outcome for which have to go or this accident needs to be made here whatever it is the thing they have to do but that's not the mechanism the true mechanism is the one behind which holds in totality and with great compassion and balances, (checks) is correction necessary.

Narad (0:29:56):

How close was Darwin to this?

Sraddhalu (0:29:59):

Far away. Darwin is still seeing things very mechanically and survival of the fittest, everybody is fighting to survive but there is no fight in the forest, everything is helping everyone else. The lion sits quietly watching the gazelle feed, he is not hungry, when he is hungry he will get up and amble along, approach the deer and when an opportunity strikes, someone is weak, someone is lagging, someone is accessible and the hunger is strong, then he will move around and then chase etc. It's not done out of a giant scramble of fittest in a giant battle. That's the wrong image completely. Here it's more hungry, you go and eat what you're designed to eat and that's it. But so these forces, Yamaduta, messengers of Yama, they have a very limited focus and they may come to a person and as happened with Mary Helen, on the border line, you are available, so the Yamaduta comes, but the person says, no, I am not yet ready. And the fellow has no choice, he has to go and find the next one. So it has also happened in many such examples, where on the near-death experience you say, ‘no, I'm not ready’, of course you come back, you are resuscitated. The doctors succeed and they will say medical science saved you, actually no, I decided to come back. But we hear in the next room or further down the hall in the hospital someone passed away at the same time, interestingly, the Yamadutha went and picked the next person available to maintain that balance.

Audience (0:31:41):
That's why Mother told Udhaar, even if death comes, don't yield.

Sraddhalu (0:31:48):
Yes, that was the Mother's advice generally. Even if death comes to say, okay, now are you ready to come? You have a choice and you can say, no, I am not, because I have work to do. And I would say for those of us who are clear that we want to push forward our spiritual potential as far as possible in the opportunity given in this lifetime, we should seek to extend our life as much as possible. Not out of greed, not out of fear, but because of the opportunity given and what it represents, which you will not have, the same way another time. And so we should make the most of everything. And even when it seems as if your body may be unable to sustain the fact that you make that effort to push a little more is something which is built within you as a capacity and which is also shared in the species in the evolution. You want to share Mary Helen's experience when she said that she said that she has to keep pushing for Mother.

Narad (0:32:54):
yes she said she had more work to do for Mother but she also said that it was so beautiful where she was that she didn't want to leave but she had to come back.

Sraddhalu (0:33:05):
But later on when she finally had to leave, you remember you shared with me the experience. She said, I have to keep doing, because I'm doing it for Mother. She said, and that's the attitude. Even though physically the body is not supporting, and you know you'll have to shed it, but when you take it as far as you can from the spiritual perspective to push the capacity as far as possible. And the Mother did that also with her body, even though after she decided to withdraw, till the last she pushed the body to the maximum. She wanted to walk. She wanted to walk.

[Narad] She said, make me walk.

[Sraddhalu] And Pranab would say, but Mother your body is suffering, it's shouting in pain. And Mother said, no, in the cosmic balance, it makes a difference. I have to do, every moment that she could, She had to push. So I'm coming back to this passage and experience with Yamaduta and being on the other side and this seemingly bureaucratic thing that says, ‘oh, a mistake was made, it's not you, it's someone else’, so you're sent back, which again has a very interesting implication. It means even after you're being kicked out of the body, Because you didn't choose, you were thrown out from illness or accident, if the soul is not ready to transition, well you can be sent back and the body can be picked up and rebuilt enough so you can continue with your life. So I always insist on this aspect of choice. The transition from the body, even in a damaged body, is always a choice of the soul obviously, not of our surface personality. And the more we are rooted in our inner layers, closer to the soul and the psychic presence, the more free and clear the choice is. And when that choice is exercised from within, from the action of the freedom of the self on the body, it can override whatever the medical conditions are. And we know of cases, even in the ashram, where the biology should not have survived because of the medical balance of things and yet the person was conscious and able to function although in extreme pain because of the imbalance of the biological content and that's always a choice, remember that. And this is very important for us. There are wrong ideas where as if they will say your death is predestined, your horoscope says you will die on such and such age and things like that, all false. Yes, horoscope may indicate cycles and rhythms but of the vital plane, not of the spiritual freedom and choice of the soul. That is not frozen in these things.

Sraddhalu (0:35:57):

So coming to the experience then. This experience of the being and the tunnel is something very special. You find it happening across cultures, across religious backgrounds, whether it is a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu or an atheist, science, atheist, doesn't matter. This is a common experience. But you will not find it described in any of the traditional texts. So the Tibetan Buddhism has the ‘Book of the Dead' which describes the passage through so many levels and they have a whole ceremony where they tell the soul, now you're here do this to move on to the next, now you're here do this to move on to the next. They are creating as if a passage for you and that's the whole point of the Book of the Dead. The Egyptians have a Book of the Dead.

All the traditions that exist none of them describe this passage and the only place we find an explanation for this passage is in Mother's personal notes which then she elaborates upon in one of her conversations I believe in the Agenda. Mother made a list and this is very early on, she made at the very beginning when the ashram was formed, a list of her program. I believe it might have been an earlier list also. But it's a list of 10 points which is her program to accomplish in this lifetime. And one of those items is to create a passage for people to go through after death and a guardian who presides over the passage who will assist in this transition and she created it. It was her creation. It was not there before. You will not find it anywhere in the traditions. She created it and subsequent to its creation, anybody anywhere on earth at the point of transition is given this assistance and what is the reason for it? So in the process normally that happens, you shed the gross physical body, then the subtle physical body, then the lower vital and finer gradations of it, then the higher vital and then as you pass through all these different domains and worlds, you suffer the experience of those worlds and especially the lower ones are not so nice and especially if in your vital you had all the nasty things, you experience them exposed. Imagine if by nature you are angry or jealous or fearful person, what would happen? Shorn of the physical body, suddenly all that anger, jealousy and fear becomes overwhelming, almost as if it's the only reality of the world and that's what you experience. And this overwhelming experience is your hell. Until that part sufficiently breaks down and dissolves, when you wake up, become a little more conscious and now oh I don't need to be angry or the anger is only provoking this horrible experience and I choose to withdraw from the anger and I transition to the next level and in the next and in the next until the psychic being sufficiently freed can withdraw into rest. That passage was always traumatic, especially the lower ranges if you have not prepared yourself and so in all the traditions they teach you to prepare, think of God at the time of death, think of the higher things so that you go to the higher planes and bypass the lower. And you could get lost. Oh, is this it? I have reached. This is the hell. If you have been taught in life, now I am in hell, I am going to suffer. Or you have reached the heavens and you say this is it. You forget or you don't know that there is more.

So in the normal process of things and especially during wars, there are large numbers of beings who come from the higher planes to assist in the transition, who will tell the person who was passed on, the fellow is still running around with his gun and trying to shoot, except there is no gun and there is no bullets, and he doesn't realise he has lost his physical body. And they have to tell him, you know what, you have to stop now, you are dead. No, no, I am not dead, can't you see? But you are dead and then they have to convince him. If they can bring a higher light, that light touching them, they wake up. Oh yes, I'm not in the physical body. So there's a whole passage of adapting and transitioning which can be difficult. All of this is bypassed and it is one of the Mother's great gifts to humanity that she created first this passage, which as if cuts through all these intermediate worlds, takes you straight to a realm of light where you are free and you're awake in your higher status and then there's the being which is presiding over this, which also she has created. What do you mean she has created and again this the implications are so extraordinary. On the subtle worlds when you create something you create out of what? Out of your own will, your own consciousness. At best you assemble material from that zone, but with your own consciousness infused into it to give to it the form. So when Mother creates a being, a spiritual being, it is an aspect of herself. That's the being that you are meeting, who helps your cross. So it is an aspect of the Mother and we will use the word an emanation of the Mother. it is described as genderless obviously because in those worlds gender has no meaning, but it is a being of light and pure love and it is met at the end of the tunnel normally, because that's when you are sufficiently awake to experience it as it is but obviously it is that which has been drawing you through. It's as if again it's difficult to translate this into physical terms if the consciousness from a higher plane reaches down into the more material plane and holds and draws you up. You have the contact but in a medium which is of a lower grade. So you don't recognize the being for what it is. You just feel yourself pulled. But it is His consciousness or Her consciousness that draws you and then when you come into its domain, you experience the being and you say, oh this is this incredible being of love and light, it's made of light and love and there that love is what soothes you. The transition having its own element of trauma at a psychological level, the love embracing you, it dissolves everything and obviously it is such a beautiful experience that you may even say I don't want to go back, but if it is not yet your time, you're sent back, a mission given to you sometimes, the occasion is used to remind you of your purpose in life. So many of them come back with something told, something which they may not always remember or something communicated which gives them once again the awakening of the spiritual purpose of their life. And then you come back and it is as if you were initiated into the spiritual births or born into the spiritual life. Everything is changed after that. So this experience of the tunnel and the being is a recent, relatively recent phenomenon and it's a universal phenomenon of which no explanation, except the Mother's explanation.

Narad (0:43:13):

Could you speak just a few minutes about Sri Aurobindo's symbol on the head of those passing?

Sraddhalu (0:43:22):

Yes, I think Champaklal had this experience that he saw somebody who had passed on in the subtle body but with Sri Aurobindo's symbol on the forehead.

Audience (0:43:32):
Mother had that experience.

Sraddhalu (0:43:34):
Oh, Mother had that experience? Okay, Champaklal narrates it.

Narad (0:43:38):
There was a woman who was a very difficult person in the ashram and who asked Mother that question? They saw Sri Aurobindo symbol on the head and they said, even her? And Mother said, yes, anyone who passes away in the ashram has Sri Aurobindo’s symbol.

Sraddhalu (0:44:00)
But you know what does it mean, the symbol? Again we have to look at it from the perspective of the subtle body. Unlike the physical body where you can brand and the mark remains, the subtle body is fluid. The symbol is not a branding, it's not a mark in the rigidity of the body because there is no rigidity. Rather it is the consciousness of his presence which is placed, which is seen as the symbol in this way. It means that his protection is there and it was Mother seeing. So she saw it in the form of Sri Aurobindo symbol. We might see it as Mother's presence which is with them equally. So the particular form of it is to me not so important but the fact of that protection and the stamp of their consciousness on you is the promise that the Mother made. You know she explained how every time that she saw a person, the first meeting she made consciously a link from her consciousness to the psychic being by passing the mind, by passing the vital, she would plunge straight into the person and make the link with the psychic. And she said with that link she took responsibility for the person. And because it is not in the mind and vital, but with the psychic, being that link is forever. It is across lives. You shed the mental and vital bodies, but the psychic link is with her. And so the next life that you come, she is still holding you and carrying you. So to me it is more the sense of the responsibility that they have taken and it means not only that they are responsible for your spiritual journey across lives but also in that immediate passage of transition where you are under the protection.

Mother speaks of how she went when she heard about Kennedy having been assassinated, she went to help him make the transition. She found him lost in this little bubble of his own beliefs created and it was the Christian framework of heaven, hell and he was lost in that and he was too lost in it to be able to recognize the help she was giving and so she couldn't cut through that bubble but it just shows that in the transition there is a period where if you are not conscious or make an effort to call on the Divine, you can be for a while in this intermediate passage. But once that is shed, well the passage opens up for the transition through the worlds into the higher realm if you have that. The person I mentioned last time, whose niece was practising ouija board. So it is in that family, the same person who was my friend. She was the lady of the house. She is now a great-grandmother. She had a surgery in which they put her under anaesthetic and she was losing contact. She was as if thrown out of the body. Body was losing a lot of blood, she found herself emerging in this domain of light and then she was brought back and she remembered this, she said to me afterwards I saw the light, I was there for a while, but it doesn't need a special spiritual development or even location here, if you are conscious and you have the thread of connection to the Divine Mother in this case we will give it the form of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo because that's how we know her. But in any form that you know the Divine Mother and you have that link consciously in your aspiration from your psychic being, She is One, She is One in the whole Universe. She is there to help you and protect you even.

Sraddhalu (0:48:04):

There is one more incident I want to share which is aligned to this and the shift in state of consciousness which takes place. So you may go into these higher realms, incredible love and extraordinary music and so on, but here at a lower level even the decompression from the physical body is an extraordinary experience. So there is one experience I want to end with. This is a person who is there on the video in the DVD of Life After Life and in the book of course. He describes how as he found himself freed from the body, he opened out into a consciousness which was so wide that he felt he was everywhere at the same time and he uses these words, he says, I was in Moscow, I was in Paris, I was in London and New York everywhere in the world whatever to his mind represented major centres. Where was he? Everywhere and then there was this part which was attached to this body or there's some special focus here that's all. But the consciousness was naturally wide and then after a while in this dead state, he is wandering around and for some reason he goes to meet some of his friends or relatives and he ends up in someone's house. One of his relatives, I think his sister or brother and there's a baby there who is crying all the time and he comes to the baby and in this subtle state he recognizes what is the problem with the baby. The hip is slightly twisted, the leg in the hip joint is twisted and he's in pain. But he's still three months old so he doesn't have the means to speak. So he's just crying in pain and then this man tells the baby, the baby recognizes he's there, he tells the baby, ‘look there's no point crying because these people, they are dumb, they don't understand that you're in pain. So stop crying, it doesn't help you, it doesn't help them’. So the baby looks at him and says okay and then he stops crying. So what is interesting here in this experience is that he could communicate with the child who had no physical mental development. You see the mind or the inner part of the consciousness is sufficiently developed even in the child to understand, to know, but it's not organised in the physical brain. And this distinction is so important. But he is able to communicate with the child who is the one inhabiting the body. But that's not the surface mind which is the physical mind, what Sri Aurobindo calls the physical mind, the part tied to the brain. And the child stops crying. Then he tells the child, he soothes him and says don't worry and then he goes around sees the other people they are having a party and so on after he has come back to his body. It's interesting, he never lost that sense of the opening to the vast awareness and in the video when he recounts this experience you can feel the vibration of that experience come through, it's so beautiful. And then he says what happened next, he has come back into his body, of course his personality has changed because he has something of this opening to the vastness of his own consciousness. Then he tells the family, this is what happened with that baby. And they confirmed they were having a party and for some reason after many weeks of no reason of crying, and then they did a check they found yes the hip was actually, the joint was twisted, and they corrected it now.

What it means? Again the implications are so important. First you are not this body, you even as mind are not this narrow mind, you are this inherently wide consciousness that's the real you and even as a mind you are inherently a wide mind and because you identify with the physical body so much you find yourself reduced, narrowed and dulled, forgetting what you truly are. But when you are more in that part of your consciousness which is free, when you met the child you knew what was wrong with him, you didn't need to go through a medical diagnosis. You could communicate with the child as you would with another adult, that's the level of maturity already inherent in the child's consciousness and your ability to communicate. Now extend this to other animals, you know about horse whisperers and dog whisperers who can communicate with animals. It's the same principle, but done from this deeper poise of consciousness and the third, the sense of I is no more this narrow body and as a result, your sense of the infinite and the presence of the Divine is also so much closer, because you are not cut out, you are in a wide, free embrace. This is our natural poise and this is the very base that should be our normal state of consciousness and if you put into practice a little bit of the yoga, one can get to this much very quickly. If you could get it simply by being thrown out of the body and then coming back, it's not something difficult. All of us should be able to get to it by conscious disengaging from this exclusive identification of the body and recovering our own deeper wideness and if we can make a little bit of effort in this direction, we can begin to live in that joyous and blissful consciousness which you experienced there, in your current state of evolution but freed from the body, you had access to that. You should be able to live in that right now as you are while in the body and this is what you can do in as short a time as it took that person to be thrown out of the body and come back, in principle. Given that you have a few days, weeks, months or give yourself a year, you should definitely be able to do that, but you should make the effort. And so small steps in the direction of the practice of the integral yoga will bring you very close to things which we read of as something so beautiful. You wouldn't want to come back because coming back means losing that, well that's because we didn't do the yoga. And when we begin to do the yoga, we should be able to have that here, isn't it? The whole domain of near-death experience is useful for us to understand this. The whole domain of near-death experience is useful for us to understand this which is our true nature and our spiritual potential.

Narad (0:54:55):

I ask that we spend a couple of minutes to meditate on this.