EWS #62 Questions from viewers (13) Satsang and Community
Jan 11, 2020
Topics:
Narad (0:00:50):
Namaste and welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Sraddhalu, in the early days of Auroville, the early seventies, when your teacher, M. P. Pandit, would come out each week and speak to us on the integral yoga. He often spoke to me about the importance of satsang in our daily life. It would be nice if we could start with that.
Sraddhalu (0:01:25):
What did he tell you?
Narad (0:01:27):
He told me it was absolutely critical for Auroville that we have this satsang weekly and there should be no breaks in it because he translated it for me as company of the holy. I don't know how you would translate it. That's the way he put it and it meant so much to me that we had each week in the Matrimandir Gardens nursery, a reading of Savitri and different people would come. Sometimes I would also read it in the area Mother named Peace, which is long before the beginning of the Matrimandir started. And it was a Keeth[1] structure, all keeth, and there were a number of rooms, and we had a little meditation room where I would read Savitri, and where he would come, and occasionally Aurobinda Basu. And these were the only people who came out to speak to Auvovillians about the yoga. And then we would have an evening of music once a week also in the Matrimandir nursery, Higher music, classical music. We also had people who played classical guitar. Special time because no matter how difficult it was for us physically, the joy of knowing and feeling that Mother was with us at every moment, we cannot overstate this, the importance of this. Now of course many of us feel her in a different way, not so much the actual physical contact that we felt we had with her then, but maybe in a wider sense, I would say. So Satsang.
Sraddhalu (0:03:25):
Yes, and the form of the satsang, of course, can be many. Satsang, the word in Sanskrit is Sat and Sang. Sat would represent the truth, the divine, the sacred, holy. Sang is collective, community, and it takes the form typically in the way it is used in India, in a form of a gathering where people listen to something which is sacred, uplifting, inspiring, spiritual, which turns the thoughts and feelings towards the divine. But all together as one collective. Often it takes a form where somebody is giving some lecture or narrating stories from certain traditions or just speaking of his experiences or elaborating on some teachings, some sacred text and everybody in the crowd is one-pointed in their concentration. All thoughts, all emotions and even physically the body and the sight is turned to a single point which is the focal point that rises in aspiration and that's really at the heart of it. You can change the physical configuration instead of having one person with a group you could put all in a single circle and all share or one person reads others take turns, you share, you discuss but this one-pointedness of the thoughts of the emotions and even the physical consciousness joining and rising in a one-pointed aspiration. That's really at the heart of it. There are two components to this inner experience. One is the fact that we join together. Now this, you don't have to do much. It happens automatically. Just by the fact that we are dwelling on a single idea or theme or just the fact that we are sitting together long enough. If you watch the same process taking place in a public gathering, or you have a large number of people in a waiting room before they go and meet a doctor, if they are sitting long enough, at some point there is a blending of the energies that takes place. Except that it is not particularly uplifting in its intention. If you are at a political rally or in some music concert, something similar happens, where you get pulled into the collective crowd consciousness. Again, it can be a low grade or a high grade, depending on the content.
Sraddhalu (0:06:12):
But this joining together has value from a spiritual perspective, only if it takes place in your higher spiritual parts, or if these lower parts turn towards that higher and join in the higher spiritual domain. A vital unity can equally form, but left to itself, it will only create a larger collective ego. But if that vital collective turns in aspiration to the spiritual, then the vital itself can be lifted up and something deeper can work through the vital. So this joining of the consciousness which takes place spontaneously and of course there is an intention in our coming together which helps. That is one aspect. The other aspect is that we turn that unity towards the higher. How high? Whatever for us at that moment is the highest that resonates in our current capacity.
[Narad] How important is silence in the group?
[Sraddhalu] The silence creates the receptive base. When the consciousness turns in this one-pointed aspiration, there is always the response. Immediately. The question is, can we receive it? To the extent that our consciousness, and even the collective consciousness, is holding a container that is silent, it can fill you, us, as a group, with something more valuable, more profound, more deep, more intense, even a great power if necessary for the work or a light of consciousness. The Mother's presence can then fill us as a container, as a group, as a collective holder of what she has to manifest. The silence and the purity of our intention, these would be the two things that make the container capable of receiving. But in the one-pointedness as we rise, we need not aim for the highest which might be too abstract, but for us at this moment that which represents the highest practical. So let's say as a collective we are all working and we take the example of Auroville when the work was much more physical in the early days. So you cannot at that point be thinking of a higher abstract community framework which is not yet in place. Your minds are much more dwelling on the current physical structures. Well, at that point, in your body consciousness, with this struggle of the effort you have done, what's the highest that to you represents something tangible, real and even practically meaningful? It can simply be dwelling on the mother, or the message she has for what Auroville represents, the ideal of our life, an aspiration of our life, whatever form it may take, some form of dwelling on the divine. And then the collective vessel then becomes the container that receives.
The result of this will be, when we go back to work, while each of us may do something different, we are all connected and held in that container. The spiritual container that is formed in this state of the satsang continues and it does not need our physical proximity. It continues to act even when we are spread out and without our knowing, we tend to be spontaneously in harmony with everybody else, but a harmony which is not primarily vital but primarily spiritual, but if the vital has been taken into it, then it can act through the vital and even through the physical actions. So those who meet in such a way regularly in the satsang, you will find very quickly they will begin to coordinate their actions, their efforts, even without seeming to do it consciously. You happen to do something today and I happen to do something today spontaneously and we discover it was perfectly correlating and complementary to some part of the work, but we find out afterwards. And all of these things can begin to happen naturally. Wherever our goal is to manifest a higher ideal than the current norm of humanity, such a framework of satsanga is of immense value, and we may even say essential, because the thing you are trying to manifest is not already a part of our consciousness and an effort needs to be made to align to it and to invoke it. In contrast, if the goal was simply to replicate what is already well practiced, then you'll find in many companies, let's say an engineering company or a construction company, where they are practiced in what they do, everything moves smoothly, automatically, almost effortlessly because everyone knows their job, they keep doing it, they do the minimum of external coordination. But even there, the effective team is one which has developed such a collective identification at the level of the vital or the mental. For a spiritual goal, this is not enough, there has to be the spiritual origin and then if the mental and vital are aligned, then you have an extraordinary team.
Narad (0:11:41);
So these groups in business that have meditation rooms and gatherings like that, it's not high enough?
Sraddhalu (0:11:51):
It depends on what they mean by meditation. So if a company has a meditation for de-stressing, for optimising your work efficiency or for bringing in a little bit of novelty of creativity. Well, it's not aiming at a spiritual ideal, but still at a mental or some part of the mind turning to some ideal, you have created a collective and a container which makes the team that much more efficient and effective. These two things we have to distinguish. Efficiency is one thing, effectivity is another. And from Mother's perspective, effectivity is more important than efficiency. You see, we can very efficiently destroy ourselves or destroy the environment. It was a big word, if you go back about 40 or 50 years ago, it was a big word, everyone wanted to be efficient because that was the in thing to do. And in the solar energy department of the ashram, Dr. Chamanlal Gupta was heading it and he had asked the Mother for a message for efficiency and Mother wrote a message, ‘Blessings for Effectivity’, and so when he got that he said he was very disappointed, I wanted efficiency, what happened? and then he thought about it and then it struck him that what she had given was so much more valuable. Effectivity, that you can be effective in your work in the outcome that you seek and especially when trying to manifest a higher ideal to be effective in the action so all of that gets amplified, both efficiency and effectivity. So in a company they may do that with a lesser objective, it may or may not have a spiritual component or just touch a little bit of something. But still if they do bring in the spiritual content, and very few people could do that, obviously it means the entire team is aligned to something of that spiritual consciousness, then the whole thing can be enormously amplified.
Narad (0:13:59):
There have to be a leader or can it just form spontaneously?
Sraddhalu (0:14:06):
In the minimum required, the leader is that centre, the ideal, the divine. And we have all aligned ourselves to that ideal and we can become now effective instruments for that. And there the leadership exists. For a project such as Auroville, on the scale of Auroville, that's the true leadership, always. But it means everybody must consciously, at least in thought or in feeling or intention, open or align to or make reference to that leadership. In the absence of that, or in the absence of that ability to be able to align to that, you have a physical representation of leadership and a physical centre for a minimum coordination that we don't end up in complete disarray. Considering the wide variation of humanity and the wide variation of the capacity to respond to a higher inspiration or intuition, a physical focus at least becomes absolutely necessary. But that's only a limitation of the human consciousness in the collective. If we were all sufficiently awake and conscious and in alignment in sincerity and goodwill, we didn't need a physical leader. Now, not having enough of that, it has to represent itself in some unit, some focus.
That leadership could be a person, it could be a representative leadership from the collectivity, which could rotate, there are many variations that could be done. But it should represent for what the community considers or can feel its highest poise. Otherwise it would not be true leadership. If you pick the most mean and petty and incompetent person and put him in leadership, he'd only pull it down. So it's obvious by taking an exaggerated extreme, it's obvious you need to pick the most wide, the most centred, sincere, pure would be the references at least in consciousness to be at that centre. If you see the way Mother chose leadership in the ashram departments, she was at the top always, but each department was broadly decentralised with somebody taking care of the departments. She picked people who were inclusive and wide in their consciousness. So that they could include all the variations of types. And so one of the criteria for that leadership would have to be this wideness of consciousness. And then it must be able to sense when something is off. Logically you can justify anything. Logically you can tell me this is effective and I will say yes it sounds good. But if there is a core of purity that indicates, watch out, there is something which is being missed. And that purity or some reference of intuition with which things can be checked which are well beyond your normal human intellectual capacity. But you can check against a reference which is deeper. That would also be a criteria necessary for the leadership. They don't have to be experts in everything, but they should be able to feel if something feels right or doesn't feel right and then to be able to articulate if possible.
Narad (0:17:45):
Can you give us some examples of satsang in the ashram?
Sraddhalu (0:17:52)
Well whenever we have the formal collective meditations that take place in the playground or in the ashram main building or there are other occasions when we have programs on certain special occasions, it becomes a kind of satsang. But a lot depends on, as I said, the group itself and why they gather. Some of it tends towards formality, more like a ritual almost. And I remember in the earlier days, while we were students, we were forced to go for the morning New Year meditation, which would be quite early and not always the time when every child is fresh to go. And then we were made to sit there, which was great. There was the music, which was fine, but the man who was coordinating, let's say, for lack of a better word, the whole space was a tyrant. He would look and glare at every child, and if you so much as moved a little bit, he would come and threaten to hit you, and all kinds of weird stuff. So we hated him, and the result was we felt suffocated in that space. It was not a loving, embracing or inviting space. It was a torture. It was tyranny. And often what would happen is the moment the 6.30 clock struck, the front part children would leap up and rush out. And some of them would shout with their voice, Awww. The silence which had been built, they rebelled against and pushed out. And then he would get more angry and more dominating, unfortunately. And it could have been handled much simpler if they had put the right kind of person. That's why when we speak of the leader, he was effectively the coordinator for that event, but the worst possible. And if there was somebody more appropriate, it could have been handled much better. So, yes, these are occasions, but we need to ensure that they are properly…
Narad (0:20:05)
But I would ask that in these occasions, there are many, many different people coming in, and many of them may be only sightseeing. Others may have negative vibrations or attitudes towards most things in the ashram. How does it form a satsang?
Sraddhalu (0:20:31):
The benefit of the collectivity is that the larger collective tends to blur out these variations. And so if there is somebody who is particularly contrary to the purpose, he might even find himself suddenly changing in his consciousness and feel something different. And equally somebody who is normally in a higher state might find himself pulled down. So it was a conscious structure that the Mother made and she spoke about it. She said she has linked everybody in the ashram on an occult level, as if with a network of consciousness like a mesh, threads linking us all together. And she said the result is that those who are naturally ahead in consciousness, they tend to experience a dulling, pulling down, whereas those who are particularly lagging find themselves lifted up. So in practice, many people will feel that it's a weight, the collectivity becomes as if a weight pulling you down. But in practice, she said, the overall lift is more than the loss. The benefit is greater than the loss. And that's why this was worthwhile.
Narad (0:21:55):
What about collective groups as satsang around the world? Let's say Sri Aurobindo centres.
Sraddhalu (0:22:03):
Well the same thing would apply within the centre where the people meet. It becomes an occasion to intensify and unite in the aspiration. But the same tendency would apply also for it to become monotone and mechanical. The question is the form of the satsang should, does it match the current aspiration and need of the group. That's why I started with what is it that you aim at. So if you have a collective that needs some intellectual stimulation, intellectual understanding and you sit together in silence, it's not going to work too well, which was the problem with the children. So they needed something which at least that silence didn't make sense to them or it was a bit too not properly conducted. Then a study, a reading. You would read something from Sri Aurobindo, perhaps discuss it, see what resonates within you or how you can apply it or some examples in your life where you have experienced that, which you can share, and so kind of a discussion around some ideal with some practical implications would be one form. Or it could take a form where they could just be in a more bhakti space, where they would read something that resonates with the heart's love and devotion, if that is the need of the group. The problem now is how do you standardise this for all the centres? In my opinion, you should not. But that's what they want to do. Because most of these centres come under one big umbrella structure, then they want from the centre to say, okay, all centres should do like this. Then you get into a bit of a difficulty.
But if you recognize that each centre may have its needs, you can give them suggestions. Here's a combination of things you could try, see what works and then evolve as you go along. It may be that you start with something which you read and after a while you feel well this is not quite working for us, what do you think will work, we can discuss and find something else. A lot depends also on how we see this, the value of the satsang. Let's say, you take a large city where everybody in the city comes together. Maybe numbers at the time have been 10 or 15. It made sense for everyone to come together. It meant a lot for them to be in that collectivity even if it's once a month. But after a while some people feel, oh, it's too much of a strain and I'm not able to come here. I'd rather meet in my house. And then a few who are nearby, they break away and form a separate gathering there. And to me thats fine. The value of the satsang is in the effect it has. And if it has no effect, then change what you are doing. If it works for you, wonderful, and you need to fine tune, of course. So I would say in a large city, many small groups may break out and form their own collectives. One need not see in it anything negative. Often what happens is there is some part that wants to centralise the power and if you know we are the official centre you should not be meeting separately and these are petty human differences. But many, many such gatherings and each should have goodwill for all the others because we are all working together and perhaps once a year we can all gather in one place and have a larger gathering. There are ways in which this can be managed. If we hold the objective of the satsang with clarity, then the form of it can be played with until we find something that works.
Narad (0:25:52):
To go back to Auroville for a moment, there are many people who are coming there who know nothing of Sri Aurobindo, or they may have heard the name, and yet there's an interest. So how do we embrace them?
Sraddhalu (0:26:06):
I would ask them what is your interest? There are some who come for the newfangled architecture, something outrageously different and new. There's some who come for the cultural aspects of arts, others who come with an interest in the social aspect of it, for some the spiritual interest is much stronger, the ecological interest could be another aspect. So one would begin with that which for them is most important, which for them represents the closest point of contact with the large body of knowledge, experience and consciousness that Sri Aurobindo represents. And so start with that which touches you. And then from there as you go along a little more, oh I didn't know this, that also, and that interests me and you broaden out. He leads you to broaden out, the whole consciousness. I can look back at a time when certain things didn't make much sense. The socio-political aspect was for me something very distant. And a couple of decades later, suddenly that became extremely important because I was now facing that problem in the collective space, in humanity, in the country, within the community and then I said, well now this is very important. And when I began to study those things, suddenly it acquired a depth which earlier I couldn't have because there was a maturity in my own experience and consciousness and the same with certain aspects of art. What earlier was somehow not tangible later became much more, it was vivid, it was even so intense that I said, I wish I had this earlier but I was not ready.
So recognizing that each person goes through their own growth path, you begin with what works. So that's why the multiple centres of satsang are so valuable. Each then develops its own particular characteristic. There will be the satsang for those who are more artistically oriented, some who are more socially oriented and they will have their own particular form of the communion. Looking back at the space of the ashram particularly, the gatherings which we have already, as I said, the meditation timings, they have a certain value because the people who come there are of a certain type, but it's not the whole community. And then at some point during a certain period, it was found that the numbers of people who came for the cinema in the playground was much larger than those who came for the meditation time. And there was one lady who would come studiously, regularly for every cinema irrespective of whether she understood the language or not and her justification for it, she said, you know, the cinema time is when everybody in the ashram comes together and that's when Mother does the most important work in us. So I'm coming for that. I don't know if she felt it, but it made sense at least. But if you think of the meaning of it, there is no occasion when the entire community comes together. The only time it used to happen was on Darshan days, when the entire community came to join the queue to go to Sri Aurobindo's room or the Mother's.
[Audience] The 2nd december?
Sraddhalu (0:29:40):
The 2nd December program is also one of those, yes. That's one cultural program where almost everybody used to come together, but not so much now. What happened is again it split, because the numbers were large. So let me explain this. The same thing happened with the darshans. So as in the beginning, because it was mostly the ashramites and a few devotees coming from outside, it was perfect. Nobody came unless they had this very clear connection with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Later when the numbers dramatically increased because people came for religious reasons rather than the spiritual experience. They came because someone said, Oh it will give you good luck, you will get benefits in this or that way, your prayer will be granted, so large numbers came on that promise. Now they've fallen a little bit, thankfully. But when that happened, the community unit which was there got enormously diluted. Suddenly you had people in front and behind you who had very different vibes, sometimes terribly contrary vibes. And you could not, it was a struggle to stay concentrated when you were in the queue. And briefly for a while, the organisation had been changed and they kept a two hour slot just for ashramites. And it lasted barely a year or two. At that time it was such a beautiful experience. The whole community was together, we were in the queue together, going to meet the Mother. It was such a beautiful experience. And that was the closest to the real satsang.
The same thing happened with the 2nd December program, where earlier, well it was a gathering on the occasion of the school's anniversary and there was a program, a big demonstration, large parts of the ashram participating and everyone else watching. And then the visitors started. And they forcibly asked ashramites to come on the dress rehearsal day and not on the final day. So that that could be made free for the visitors and tourists who had no interest in anything deeper. They came for entertainment and they get better entertainment on TV. So they are coming more as a ritual, I have to go there, I have nothing else to do. And so it's an opportunity wasted. So the collective unit again got fragmented.
A similar thing happened in the early days of the ashram. Everybody was living in a perimeter around the central building of the ashram within half a kilometre or less, maybe a quarter kilometre, within a few hundred metres at least. Everybody was there. And somebody who lived too far away, let's say four or five blocks from here, we said, ‘ah, it's so far.’ And then there was a passage where suddenly they gave up all the houses which were being rented. The management gave up those houses. And you had actually a benefit if you had stuck on, you had the right to first purchase. But they just pulled out and built these housing blocks in one of the gardens far away. So the entire ashram community was pushed out and the surrounding space became full of these completely contrary vibrations. Certain political parties set up office, businesses set up office, now you have the restaurants which are trying to come close and it spoiled the atmosphere of the collective. And the community which was pushed out didn't get the nourishment of the centre and the centre didn't get the protection of the community and the whole thing, spiritually, it was a disaster. I don't know if we will ever recover from that. But it's the damage done, it's too late to change. So the satsang container which I spoke of, that's why we have to go back to what the satsang is intended for. If you understand the importance of the container and the relationship and what it receives and builds, for a spiritual community, it is extremely precious. You could do without it. The container could become more rarified, more abstract, but it demands much more on each individual's effort. Coming together, the collective effort sustains and makes more easy for everybody. So I would still hope for some way by which within the ashram we can have that kind of a gathering where everybody is together in that state of aspiration for a common purpose. Cinema is not the best state.
Narad (0:34:16):
When collective meditation is taking place, people are all over the place in their minds. We don't find anymore that one-pointed concentration.
Sraddhalu (0:34:26):
Yes. There are two reasons for this. The first and most important reason is that we have never bothered to learn how to meditate. Or it has not been taught. And it goes back to some aspect of the history of the ashram itself, because there was always the sense that each one had their unique relationship with the Mother and so we never have a formal framework where the teaching itself and the practice of the teaching is taught. The teaching is reduced to a level of abstraction of the philosophy, but the practical aspect is not led through. And the result is, suddenly nobody knows because they don't even bother to read. Sri Aurobindo has taught, he has spoken about it, Mother has spoken about it, in fact many different practices and forms of meditation. But if you have not bothered to read then well you don't get it. The other side, the second reason is that earlier when people sat with the Mother, you didnt need a formal guideline, you went there, and the power of her presence was so intense, you were just sucked inwards and lifted up and the work was done. In the absence of her physical presence, the presence is still there as a container again, but subsequently when the numbers came in filling which were diluting, so I said the problem starts when large numbers of visitors come who do not have the spiritual aspiration, then the thing began to dilute and now people found, earlier we used to sit and we would get pulled in, now it's not happening. But they never made the effort to cultivate and deepen the capacity which came with that experience. They never built on the experience. And Mother has spoken about this, that you have to follow up, you have to build on it, develop and deepen. They didn't do that and now suddenly they found that they were unable to.
Or they had to run away from the crowded time and go at times when the crowds were not there, go late in the evening, early in the morning to the ashram. And so many of these, these are historical reasons, but they led to a thinning or a weakening of the container. And today we are struggling with that. People have got used to the container carrying them and lifting them, and now suddenly the container has become too thin and weak and so they don't get that lift anymore and they don't know what to do. And then they either have the arrogance which is I already know, I don't need to read or study or learn or they don't have the habit of reading and so they miss entirely. I remember Panditji describing this, when he used to sit for meditation in those days, one day Kapali Shastriyar had asked him, what do you do when you are meditating? And he said, well, I just stay quiet. He said, no, that's not enough. You have to make an effort. You are supposed to do something with it. And so he told him what had to be done. But this is not being said by someone. There is no one who can say, hey, you are not doing it right. You better do something about it. So people sit, they feel good, the mind wanders, but somewhere in the heart you felt peaceful and happy, you came out and something of that effect remains. Or you come for that nourishment, but with nothing that you do to contain and retain it. And so you lose it and you come back and you are just taking and taking. There is nothing which is being given to build or strengthen the container of the presence. For the spiritual community, this is extremely important, to strengthen that container. Otherwise, with the weakening of the container, the protective layer also weakens and all the other intrusions begin to happen, which is what we are facing now.
Narad (0:38:44):
Can one bring children into this container and if so how? Sraddhalu
Sraddhalu (0:38:52):
Absolutely, I would even say we should, we should bring children. It's one of the most important responsibilities of the parents. We have discussed this earlier when many sessions ago, how parents who had an experience with the Mother have not transmitted those values or the words of that to their children or grandchildren and suddenly you find at best they have a picture of the Mother, they do their daily puja and walk away, but that living experience, contact or some deeper practice has not been transmitted. A lot of the problems which also we have discussed before from education and the current declining society can be neutralised if the child has a deeper sensitivity and connection to the presence within, vivid living influence of the psychic being within. But all of this will not happen automatically. Against a society which is pushing hard to degenerate and to harden you, you have to push back with something which is positive and deepening and making more subtle and sensitive.
So the parents have this responsibility first in the house that if they sit in concentration, if they have a space where they do their prayer, one can build a very strong presence, then you bring the children in with you, let them sit with you. And maybe the child's concentration attention span is five minutes, but let that five minutes be as fulfilling. Let him acclimatise to that vibration, so that now anything which is strongly contrary to that vibration he feels, ‘ah, something is not okay’. And then as the child grows older, you give him things to do. Now you will repeat this mantra. So we have often initiations at certain ages. When you are 12, you are given a certain initiation of the Gayathri mantra, you are given responsibility and authority, you say, oh now you are a young man, you are going to be responsible for your growth and now it's a kind of formal handover of responsibility and this is the mantra which you will repeat every day. So here's something you can do at that age or before that age, other things you can do, in feeling, imaging or even in repeating a mantra. As they grow still older you may teach them certain practices of concentration and meditation which he can then utilise. By then the power of concentration is also developed and so on. But that kind of teaching has to be done. Otherwise you are leaving them open to all the contrary influences. So it's the parents' responsibility. If they have not done it, they will find, oh our children were so nice, but now once they have reached this age, they are losing all interest in deeper things and they are coming back with contrary ideas. And you are at fault, because you did not give them the necessary tools.
Narad (0:41:54):
So I have two things to ask you. One is about these young students who come from Mumbai specifically for this, for this concentration, for this satsang and the other is, what about the ashram students who are here without family, many of them. How do we achieve this?
Sraddhalu (0:42:22):
It is fascinating to see how people who have had no exposure before or let's say limited exposure of some kind, they can come into this space and suddenly experience something so profound and life changing. Some kind of preparation has to have been made. Otherwise you cannot get that kind of powerful impact. But on the other hand, people have grown up here, they tend almost to become insular to the gift which is given. And the Mother has commented on this many times. She said, you don't realise how fortunate you are for the facilities given to you. Because you grow up thinking, oh, this is how the world is, this is how it should be everywhere. And then it's only when you step out of this space and see how things are, you realise, my God, this is so valuable but at that point, you got so used to it that you don't notice and you don't care. I remember when we were still young it must be about 11, we were 11 or so there was a young boy who had come into into the school. So obviously at that point you are reading skills are not so strong and he is looking at a picture where there is the Mother and then there is some quotation and there is it's written the Mother and he looks at it and tries to read and says, ‘the moti’, moti means plump, fat, ‘the moti’ and now that I look back, I think, I realise that nobody had ever said, they put these pictures and quotations, but nobody really turned it into something meaningful. It was just there and after a while it becomes like the wall colour. You stop noticing it. Oh, it's changing every week. Oh yeah, nice picture. But what is it? Why is it being written? Some beautiful quotations, beautiful handwriting, but beyond that you read it and there are words in there which we don't know anything about.
So when we were in one of the classes, age 10, 11, there was one teacher who was one of the most extraordinary teachers, Amita Sen, one of the most extraordinary ever. And one of the things she was doing, she was trying to see how these elements could be brought into the children. And she was experimenting. I can see now, looking back. So one of the things she did was, we would all sit together in one classroom. With all other classes, each teacher sat with a cluster of children, 8 to 10 children typically, in the classroom. And in the morning there is the music which is played for 5 minutes through the loudspeaker system. Everyone closes their eyes, daydreaming. Music stops. You start your class. So she brought all three batches which were under her coordination. She brought them all together in one room. So we would sit there and then she would recite maybe a one line or two line quotation, poem, some statement, something from Savitri and she would make us learn by heart and she would comment on the meaning of it and it made sense and there was a satsang, a collective space where our mind was engaged, not just daydreaming with music, feeling good, but it's something was created and then from there we would go into our three groups, independent classes. So it was an interesting experiment because at that age obviously the vocabularies, the ideas that may still be too abstract, but certain seed ideas were planted in this way. And one has to experiment.
But the important thing is, like I said, the reference was, what is for you the most meaningful, the most helpful, the most accessible in relation to the Divine. That will be the form of the satsang. So for a child, it will be one thing. As he grows older, it will change.
Narad (0:46:25):
I would like to tell all of you that I did 13 interviews with Anita. You can find them on our website, Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
Sraddhalu (0:46:40):
I will highly recommend them. She was one of the most talented in the ashram school and the mother trained her specially, worked on her to develop her artistic side. She was brilliant in theatre, in music, poetry, painting, art and with a mind which had clarity, structured thought, ability to articulate with precision, with literary side and a deep understanding of what was intended in the whole integral education approach. And I had, I remember once I was chatting with her and she was speaking about something which was from Sunil Da’s music and then she slid from there to an artistic image expression and from there to a theatre expression and it was so seamless. I said, wow, is this even possible? I'd never seen something so seamlessly blending these three domains. It is extraordinary. She wrote many books, by the way, booklets, let's say, of articles and unfortunately nobody preserved them. She gave them to the school and they just threw it out and it's gone. But this is what Mother could do. Pick up somebody who has a potential and lift and raise all of their potential, harmonise, unify and build something so beautiful out of it. And she can do that to us, if we open ourselves and give ourselves in this way.
Narad (0:48:22):
One brief anecdote. I was speaking to her once about Bhaji Prabhu and Shivaji comes to him and he says give me 50 men and when she said it, it shook me. It was so powerful. I lived that experience. It was amazing. I never heard anyone speak it like that.
Sraddhalu (0:48:46):
In the movement, in theatre, she could bring the full experience as an impact. It's amazing. And with the spiritual dimension infused into it. But coming back to satsang, the necessity of it, equally in Auroville, which is a much larger space, now it's meant to be eventually 50,000 as a township. Let's not even look at that. We are what, 3 or 4 thousand? Less than 3 thousand currently. Let's say it even grows to 10 thousand. There is still the necessity for the coming together of the collectivity to in some way around this ideal that Auroville is meant to manifest. And the space for that has been created in the amphitheatre near the Matrimandir and often this takes place on the New Year's Eve or Darshan occasion, sometimes they have a bonfire on certain days. It can be an occasion for the whole collective to come together in silence but with the conscious awareness of the ideal and relating to the mother's presence which presides over and unifies them at that point. Something like that is absolutely necessary for any spiritual community. And if nothing else, within the larger community, in every sub-community, some such regular gathering and sharing in a satsang framework would be of great help.
Narad(0:50:19):
Is it absolutely essential for these people to learn of Sri Aurobindo and Mother through satsang?
Sraddhalu(0:50:29):
The learning may not be through satsang, but the communion around the ideal will be the primary objective of the satsang. And then if it helps, maybe sub-groups of satsangs may take up themes of learning about Sri Aurobindo or the mother or something totally different, but in the line of their inspiration. That would be fine. But it's not so much about the personality or the form of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother or their teaching. That is relatively secondary to the consciousness that they represent. And so to at least enter in collective aspiration on that, around that consciousness and the ideal would be essential. Then there are groups who would want to study, who want to understand, there are other groups who might want to feel or practice and we allow for the full variation in that space, to each their own. You see there is a natural form in which this happened in the ashram, because around the Mother, so many grew to become extraordinary beings, that those who came to visit would naturally gravitate to one or other, sometimes to more than one. But each represented a particular aspect of the Divine consciousness expressing in some way someone representing the artistic, someone the scientific, someone the yoga aspect, someone the philosophical aspect, and then your personal affinities, this person vibes more with my type, a more bhakta type, a more jnana type, a more karma yogi type, whatever form it is. So there were spontaneously multiple centres, and people who came would find themselves drawn to one or other, and as I said sometimes more than one, to draw as if nourishment from each of these. And that became a kind of satsang.
Narad(0:52:30):
So even a very small group, just how many people minimum for a satsang?
Sraddhalu (0:52:38):
Mother spoke of a centre requiring a minimum of five people and I suppose the number is symbolic but I would say that would be a principle to follow. But she has another statement, she says, where twelve people come and invoke the Divine, the Divine is present immediately. And it's an old tradition. Again the number is symbolic of the twelve aspects of the Divine. But today we have something which is unique, which was not present then, or which was present in more subtle way and that is the possibility of a virtual community and a virtual satsang, where people sitting in different physical locations can tune in at the same time and connect to the same ideal, the same consciousness and presence even though physically they are at different locations. And it takes at first a while. It helps if you isolate yourself in some way from the immediate physical appearance. Let's say you are in your house, in a city, and in your room, and you come online for something which is happening in a collective sharing of this kind. It's helpful that you enter a state or a space where you forget where you are and can concentrate fully on this. If you have a large screen, that helps you to immerse, and either you're watching something, someone, or there's multiple faces which appear on the screen, and there's something shared, and so on. You meditate together, you discuss something, and then you just engage. During that, you can all feel deeply connected. And it's a virtual satsang, virtually in space, but in consciousness terms as vivid as if we were all together in one room and this is doable and I would encourage those who don't have no other access to do this, but if you're working in a team it is helpful to be together in physical space because then you have also the spiritual consciousness filling the container of the mind, the vital and the physical also that makes for the effective teamwork.
Narad (0:54:53):
Wonderful, thank you, Sraddhalu.
Sraddhalu (0:54:57):
Namaste
[1] Palm leaf based roof or panels.