EWS #69 Planes of Consciousness (6) - the need to develop Intuition
Feb 24, 2020
Topics:
Narad (0:00:49):
Namaste and welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Namaste. We will continue with the levels of mind and there was a question.
Sraddhalu (0:00:36):
We discussed over the last three sessions the levels of mind above the intellect and the transition from the mind of ignorance to the mind of knowledge through an intermediate passage of a mind of self-forgetful knowledge that Sri Aurobindo calls. We looked in detail at various levels of consciousness from the Higher mind, Illumined mind, Intuitive mind, Overmental and gradations exist within those and the Supramental proper with gradations in between all the way to the highest Supramental. An important conclusion that we came to was that the intuition is the first point of contact where we touch the Supramental, so to say. Of course we are not in the Supramental consciousness, but the ray of the truth is available as a finite point of contact. And everything above intuition is only a further development of an opening into infinity and aspects of infinity from there. But anything below the intuition is still form and process of mind, and therefore unreliable and unstable. So Sri Aurobindo puts great importance on settling ourselves in the intuitive mind and making that like a first base of stability.
He describes the whole process of intuitivising the mind in broadly four different efforts. And the rationale of this is very simple. Your current mind is completely the opposite of, in all its habits, in all its tendencies, in all its in all its working, it's the complete opposite of the mind of knowledge is infinite your current mind is handling finite pieces, finite thoughts, finite ideas, cannot handle infinity. It can only keep on assembling finite pieces in different combinations and that is always boom, one whole infinite. And so how does this work like that? It cannot. Equally your current mind operates from outside in. I look at a flower, I see only its shape and then I try to guess what its internal powers are. I look at a person's face, I see him smiling and I try to guess what he is thinking. Is his smile genuine? Is it fake? What is his interest? Is he trying to please me? Is he about to kill me and putting a smile to come close? I cannot know because I'm going outside in. And the mind of knowledge is inherently inside out. It is one with what it knows. As it looks at the person, it is one with the whole and from its deepest depths knows not only the thoughts, the feelings, the whole turn of his nature and the line of development of the person's journey even, in time and space. So they are completely different in their working. And so how is this going to be a vehicle for that? Or how is this going to rise into that? And so this becomes the challenge.
Sraddhalu (0:04:38):
So the first requirement we saw last time was the necessity for the current operations of the mind to come into complete silence. And that's not enough because when the intuition, let's say, gives it a nudge, it will still jump up and seize and distort when it moves into action. So silence is at best a first step. Into that must come the change of habits. So that when from silence it moves to express, it must move led by that and not led by its old habits. The stilling is the passive side, the allowing to be led is the active side. So can you allow your mind to be led in its thought process? What does it even feel like? You see we are so used to thinking by our effort, to let go and let something else lead and carry. It's a different experience. Even in the physical body we resist. If somebody leads us too much, we feel the need to assert our individuality and independence. In the mind it's even more. Just as an aside, the Mother made a very important distinction between the architect and the engineer. In their training, they are in this way separate. The engineer, his job and his training is to take the design given by the architect and turn it faithfully, precisely into the outcome. He has no right to change. Whereas the architect in his very nature inherently wants to assert his uniqueness, his creativity and his ego, his independence.
So when Mother gave the design of the Mathramandir, she allowed the architect his elements of fancy and they were fanciful, many of them. And then she would nudge the fellow, push him a little bit here, there. Knowing when he has come up with something too fanciful, she knows this is not it. She'll say, yes, let's think a little more, let's try a little more and give him a little nudge inside. But helping him from inside and him not realising that his job was to allow her to lead him to the vision of what she had and he is busy trying to assert himself. And interestingly you saw this tendency even among his followers. The architect said this, he was Mother's architect, whatever he said we have to follow. And it was like fixing into something, not trying to feel what Mother wants or what the higher intuition would lead you to. So the necessity of the architect is to assert himself but the engineer is different. So when it finally came to the inside chamber of the Matrimandir, Mother said I won't speak to the architect, she called only the engineer and she gave precise measurements, precise elements of the design because that was the most critical part for her. But this is part of the training of our mind. Can we train our mind not only to remain in a state of quiet, but allow it to be led. And at that point you are not passive, you have to be active. Something gently carries you, you have to participate, you have to move with it. So it's a whole different training. And these two are as if complementary.
The first step is being able to silence the mind. There are many methods one can use to silence. You will find open any book of mind training, mind development, yoga and a whole lot of newfangled terms they have invented in systems for training the mind. All of them draw on the yoga knowledge basically and build variations on it. There are most crude and superficial methods which involve, let's say, observing the breath and your mind detaches itself observing the breath, it separates from the body perhaps even separates from its own thoughts and gets to some level of calm. These are simple, they are useful for somebody who has absolutely no other capacity of the mind to even become conscious in the mind. It's like a first step of becoming aware in the mind. But very quickly one can outgrow these and get to something more direct. There is a more direct action, which will be the will of the mind willing itself into silence. And it's a useful exercise. I will highly recommend this. Although it's not the easiest way for our purpose. Because in its very nature you are pushing, imposing, controlling. But try it out. Stop thought now and hold your mind in a state without thought. And the moment you notice a thought comes, stop it. Another thought comes, stop it. Another thought, stop it. And stay like that. Now if you were doing a workshop, I would wait for all of us to do this. But when you start doing, you'll notice very quickly that as soon as you stop one thought, another pops up. You stop that and another pops up. And it's unending. And as you stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, you become more and more tense and more and more like that. And you can relax after a while. The mind itself can relax and then you'll find it's easier to be quiet in a relaxed state than in this active tense activity.
Sraddhalu (0:10:11):
If you've gone through all these exercises it is extremely helpful because you gain a first control of the mind. These are things which should have been taught in our school training, in our childhood as basic practices. I remember when I was in the school, it was in the age 11-12, because I was listening to lectures of my teacher MP Pandit, everyday almost he had these lectures, and I was familiar with these ideas that you should be able to silence your mind, you should be able to control your thoughts and all those things. Normally people don't tell you these things at that age. So when we would have our morning music in school and then some kind of meditation. Mostly children close their eyes and they dream. And I would say, OK, one day I just remember I just had this idea. Well, why don't I spend this time trying to practise this, not thinking? And so I began this process, a very tight, rigid force of will. And I could push it to 5 seconds and then 10 seconds and then 15 seconds. And it was too much. There was a tension building up in the mind, could push it to 20 to 30 seconds, which was quite a good achievement considering the kind of tension it builds. But then spontaneously it gave way to a more relaxed way. But it's doable at that age, we should be able to do it as adults. And if you have the key that you don't need to be tense, you can do it in a more relaxed way, you'll find you can hold that state for quite a long time. But you notice your mind is primarily aware in an intellectual grade. It's the thought layer in which you have got the silence. And that's good. Into this now you have to connect or bring in something else. So this, from the silence it's not enough. You have to turn up as a feeling or opening to something wider, something larger. So it can often take the form that your thinking mind which you feel pretty much identified with the brain is as if turning to become conscious and feeling something wider, higher. If meanwhile you have had certain experiences of the presence of the Divine Mother, presence of the Divine, then this state of silence is turned to the awareness of that presence and there is an immersion in it. This is the easiest way to hold and stay. And therefore it's also the easiest way to reach the silence of the mind, where instead of fighting, struggling and all that and please do those exercises because it will give you a certain skill of playing with your thoughts. You can stop a thought, you can turn your mind away from a thought.
Sraddhalu (0:12:53):
Maybe I'll just dwell on this a little more because it's a useful skill. You see, we often are plagued with some persistent thoughts and especially negative thoughts which bother us. They can even take the form of fears. Little children may have an associated idea or object or thing they are afraid of and then it keeps popping up. As adults, it's not too different, it takes more complex form. What if I lose this? What if so and so dies? What if this doesn't happen or happens or whatever? And instead of struggling with that, if you have trained your mind, you should be able to direct your mind to a thought that you want or withdraw awareness from a thought that you don't want. And this skill is very useful. It's still a mental training. But if you've got to this, then all the rest of the things become much easier. Because then you are able to manage distractions easily. If you have not worked on it, you'll find at pretty advanced stages of practice, you will still find the distracting thoughts bothering you. So you sit down and you want to put your mind into a state of quiet, and all the things which you have not been thinking about now rush in. Oh, I have to finish this work, I have to finish that work, oh my God, I have neglected this for the last two weeks and I have forgotten, and all the memories rush back. And so to be able to say, all right, stay away now, don't bother me, I will discuss this later, to be able to push out, refuse or ignore is as much a power as being able to concentrate to hold a state of concentration and it's still a mental skill. So it's useful to have developed all this.
So the most direct way then is therefore to put your mind, let's say in a relaxed quiet state and turn it towards the experience of the Presence in whatever way you feel it. You feel it within you, you feel it above you, you feel it around you. These are typically the three broad ways. And you become aware of the Presence. And your entire mind more and more becomes quiet and opens itself to the presence and invites the presence, the stillness and even eventually the peace which is in the presence. And so one of the most powerful methods is to turn the mind's awareness to the Presence which is above. And it is as if above the head is this vast presence of the Divine ocean of peace. And we stay open to it and then allow it slowly to descend and settle more and more in the mind. And it brings a complete stillness. When it settles sufficiently, even the mind becomes as if numb. Its habit of activity begins to be dissolved and you can find, you find yourself able to stay aware with no effort without thought and as long as you want or as long as you feel that Presence and the Presence fills you. In the nature of the yoga though we will not focus on one single goal. If that thing settles in your mind, it should equally settle in your life energies, even into your body, into your physical tissue and nerves even. And so we would want this to come all the way down into the whole being, which of course makes the most stable base for the mind also to now open to the higher possibilities. So this would be like a first basic practice. The result of it very quickly you will find at least for short durations you can stay in a reasonably quieted state. Later that quietness will deepen, become more wide, more deep and become like a deep solid peace in which thought becomes impossible. And yet you are able to exercise activity, choice and even think when you want, but the agitation of thought becomes impossible. That is no more there as a restlessness. And one should be able to bring it to that point. You had a question about what happens when suddenly this comes. Can you repeat your question?
Audience (0:17:09):
It just happened. I didn’t work for it. So there was a complete grip of silence. And it made me feel that something extraordinary has happened. I didn't know, you know. [Sraddhalu]So I immediately panicked. And I went to one of the teachers and he didn't know anything. He said, oh, this is some prana which has passed. And then I kept on pacing up and down. And I said, what's gone wrong, what’s gone wrong and then after a few minutes I said, let me get over it, let me get over it, then it went away.
Sraddhalu (0:17:50):
Then it went away? Yes, but you see what happened in this experience, when a kind of a solidity of the silence came that you are unable to think, the first reaction you have is of panic. Something has gone wrong. And you want to understand what's gone wrong and you want to get out of it. And if you think about the rationale after all that we have discussed, you should rather be saying, ‘Oh, what a wonderful gift! Let me stay in this for the rest of my life’. But because it's so different, because it's so different, we tend to think that we have become stupid. I have suddenly become an idiot. I can't think because we valued our life or our mind in terms of its ability to be restless and this has to change and that's why initially this letting go of the past habit takes a little time for most people. If there has already been some preparation of practice where people are used to sitting in quiet or being in a space where to be less active in thought, etc., has been inculcated and it's part of your so to say DNA, then you don't feel the struggle so much. And that's why Sri Aurobindo's insistence on the psychic influence, because that feeling tends to bring with it automatically a kind of stillness and sensitivity to the Presence and a sense of purity, clarity in which when this happens and the mind becomes silenced, we don't feel it as something odd and it's not the, difference is not so stark, it feels almost familiar, oh it's so nice, you say and then you're happy to stay in it. But had you known that when you had this experience, you would have said, oh wow, wonderful, stay on. Isn’t it?
Audience (0:19:39):
Or if there is an experienced teacher around.
Sraddhalu (0:19:42):
Yes, if someone had told you, great, now keep quiet, don't mess around with it. You remember Sri Aurobindo narrating this. He says, somebody had come to him asking for the experience of silence of mind. Because in the yoga tradition, they speak of it as one of the great goals. So, Sri Aurobindo says, okay, sit down, and then he continues reading the newspaper. And after a while, this fellow suddenly experiences this complete stilling and silencing of the mind and similarly, he can't think anymore. He jumps up and says, I'm going mad, I'm going mad and runs away. And Sri Aurobindo says, it's a typical reaction of a mind which is not yet ready. And that's why a lot of the initial phase of becoming ready saves us all this. But if you have understanding of what it is, what it represents, if you have glimpses of the experience that prepares much more.
Audience (0:20:40):
What does it mean to be in DNA?
Sraddhalu (0:20:42):
In your DNA, it's a way of saying that it's in a part of your nature, that you are used to either the idea of it or even being in a space where things are like this. It could be this birth, it could be previous births, even if it is in previous births, in this birth there is always an occasion where it is recovered to be reintegrated. So it can take many forms. You see there are people who enjoy very much being in a silent space or spontaneously they tune into the silence. It may be you go into a forest and in a forest you could be very active, let me dig a hole, let me do this, let me explore, let me note down, or you just feel the, listen to the birds and listen to the trees and somehow you tune into the silence behind all that. Why did you do that? Because something in you instinctively enjoyed it. And then you can say, oh, it's something familiar from previous life. But still you have to develop it, you have to imprint it into your present personality. So some people have it naturally, especially those who are more introverted tend to stay like this. It could happen in a beautiful space or it could happen in a space which for you is consciously uplifting. You go at the ashram, you sit near the samadhi or you sit in a state of prayer or meditation. You read a book sometimes, a spiritually uplifting or inspiring book and then it, something touches you, it fills you. You've read a few lines of Savitri and then you close the book and stay in it and allow the assimilation and automatically instinctively you will tend to be in a state of reasonable silent receptivity. It may not be a total mental silence but at least that backdrop is there.
So all of these types of things would make it that in your nature there's a familiarity and so there is not the panic and the worry and so when it comes you feel good and then you want to stay like that. Problem is at first you may want to stay like that for a long time and then you say, but I have work, how will I do my work? So at first the silence is in contrast to activity of work, but later as it deepens, and then we use the word peace much more, but it can still be a silence, then you can hold that even as you engage with work, and you don't lose it, or it remains more like a backdrop. And if you have brought it to that point, that's of course the most valuable, on which then the other practices for developing intuition can grow. If you have brought it to this point, one of the benefits will be the part in you that is, so to say, leaning back in silence, while the other part in you is moving in activity of thought or work. In that part which you are conscious of now, which is in silence, the intuition can settle and develop. And from there it can fill and guide your active part and this is the most valuable because then the intuition, the link to intuition and activity begins to form more and more. In the beginning though, these two parts may not be simultaneous. So I go into silence and then I engage in work and then I pause and go back into silence and then re-engage in work. I open to intuition and then turn to actualize what came in intuition. Then when I lose myself and get into a crisis or a problem I stop again to feel what the intuition would want. So there's this back and forth. But after some time when the double awareness develops it begins to be more and more just a shift of emphasis. I'm more in the activity of expression or more in tune to receive. And at some point the two become so continuous that there is no more gap. The intuition comes, flows into action and even as you act the next wave or eventually a continuous stream, no more gaps, no more pulses.
Narad (0:24:44):
When Sri Aurobindo speaks about the work to someone and he says in the beginning you think of the mother when you begin and when you end. And then he says maybe you can begin to think in the middle of your work and then eventually it becomes a process where you are always thinking of her.
Sraddhalu (0:25:03):
Yes, of course the problem is in the vocabulary itself when you say you think of the Mother, then I stop and think and get back. But that ‘think’ should be only a point of contact in which you feel more and more. And if this is our goal to grow into the intuition, that is to open the mind to her consciousness, then you feel her and as if invoke her presence, substance of her presence. This is the important thing. You feel her closely, you feel her vividly, almost like a dense presence of peace or love or joy or light or whatever way, I don't know what, I just feel her presence. And you have to infuse, invoke, let it fill, let her fill. And that's the true sense of remember the Mother. Because you make a conscious effort then to open to her and when she fills you, as you re-engage with your work, she is there inside, in your arm, in your thought, in your feeling, in your work itself. Of course you may lose after a while because you go back to your old habit, but something has come in and begins to shape from inside the working. And so that becomes a very simple practice. But still you will find in the practice these four different distinct stages implied in this very simple articulation of it. If you simply thought and went back to work, it would not do the same thing.
Narad (0:26:36):
It was more an awareness, an awareness rather than thought.
Sraddhalu (0:26:41):
And joining in her, opening to her, letting her fill you and then expressing.
Audience (0:26:47)
In the Agenda, where Mother is talking to Supreme, she is having a conversation, closing it, and she says, go and meditate. And he says, and she is asking him, is this helping you? And he complains to her saying that it is just silence, you know, it is just silence. And she says that, this is something which I have worked on for years. And then and he says how Ramakrishna used to get this imagery of the Mother. So here when you are talking about feeling the presence, we are still not hooking up with the image of her or.
[Sraddhalu[ You don't need images.
[Audience]Because she is still saying this is mind formation.
Sraddhalu (0:27:29):
You don't need images. In fact, images can often limit. So much limiting because people catch the image that they miss Her true form which is beyond all images, which includes all images. So what will happen is, let's say, you know, the people, and a lot of this comes from the very traditional popular religious form of stories and narration. They will say, for example, so and so, all his life he did intense tapasya to have darshan of God. And so one day Shiva or Vishnu or Durga, whatever aspect of the Divine he wants, appears before him with so many arms or so many whatever form it is. And now the person says, Oh finally I have you and he bows down and then the form goes away. Now we see the problem of this form. He is there only inside that form. As long as the form was there, the form is gone he has gone and now I turn and meet another human being, you are not Shiva right?, because you're not that form but if a human being comes painted in that same form you might mistake that human and say Shiva has come back, right? Where is the real experience then if you fixate on form at best form is for you an entry point to the experience of the thing in itself. What is Shiva's consciousness? Not the body. He is infinite. If you truly experienced him in his totality, you would experience this humongous, gigantic world of the creative energy of the whole universe. Where is the form in that? Right? Or the same for Vishnu or Durga in whatever aspect that they represent but it will be a Cosmic in scale and even in that the universe may be a form of Him or Her that he exceeds all that. Universe is a tiny part compared to that totality. So if we are not clear of what we are really seeking and that's why the understanding is so important. We tend to stop short and then that's it.
So I've actually known of people who had the darshan and then they said, okay I had my darshan, I'm happy, now I go on with my life. What was it about them? Was the darshan just an ego satisfaction? Heart's ego maybe, love of devotion, that's it, oh I have met my God, that's it. Now I know he is there and now I get back to what I was. What's the point then, isn't it? So somewhere you may use a visual if it helps you to hold attention on her. But what is it that makes it her? Not the fact that you have a photo printed on the wall, but the presence that fills, right? So you use the picture to focus on her presence. Or feel your love for her through which as a gateway you feel her love for you and you enter into the experience of her love or her presence or her peace or whatever aspect of her presence that you open to through that. And eventually whatever you feel has to open out into its infinite form. And so if you feel her love it's not just a patch of her love it is her love that fills the whole universe, even as it fills you. Eventually it has to... you start with something small, eventually it opens to the whole universe and beyond. And then you have concretely the experience her love which is beyond the universe, filling the whole universe and then filling you as her special child. And then you have the real experience of her presence. And with it, automatically all the other aspects will begin to fill. And again you can dwell on it. If you fixate yourself, oh I am just a bhakta, I will only feel her love. You have consciously shut her aspect of knowledge, her aspect of power, her aspect of even violence, violent and intense action and dynamism, which can shatter a whole universe. And she is still that. So all these are different aspects of her. You really want to know her you must know all these. To have known this and understood this can save you the trouble, the error of stopping short. But you have to then want to extend beyond that.
Sraddhalu (0:31:52):
And it's like initially when it is too much like the sudden silencing of the mind, you are disoriented, you don't know what to do about it. Sometimes she reveals this overwhelming side. If you are too fixated on the form, she gives you a blast breaking your little shell and then you may say, ‘oh my god, what's happening? No, no, come back to this’, and you catch, cling harder to the little form. And this is what happens to in the Bhagavad Gita when Shri Krishna reveals his form to Arjuna. In fact Arjuna says show me and so Krishna reveals his form and his Cosmic aspect and he sees that in that Cosmic all the Asuras are included and all the Devas and all the demonic beings as well as the divine beings, everything is there and everything is on a scale of infinity. So he is so overwhelmed by that, that after a while he can't take it anymore. He begins to shake and he says, enough of this, end this vision, it's too much. Come back to your normal form of four-arms. So now he sees four-arms holding these little devices. Okay, familiar, safe, secure, little. So of course many people have commented on this. Does that mean that Arjuna used to see Sri Krishna in four arms? Or what did he mean by that? But I understood it to mean simply that my current conception of this little simple you as the form of the Divine, familiar, safe.
Audience (0:33:43):
Firstly there is the chant, secondly, there is the bhajan. And thirdly, there is the meditation of the name of a particular God they believe. Where is the teaching?
Sraddhalu (0:33:56):
All these activities you will find generally associated with the bhakti traditions, devotional traditions, where repetition of a name, singing the name or counting how many times you repeat or dancing with the repetition of the song, all of these are celebrated as ways through which your vital energies and your heart's devotion can turn to God. But again the same thing would apply. What is this that you want to relate to. For many it is satisfying enough. I experienced a lot of excitement in chanting the name of God and what did I really go back with? The excitement, in which on the crest of the excitement maybe a little bit was touched of some devotion but again filled with excitement and I'm happy with that. And if you're happy with that, that's good enough. You're not really seeking a deeper immersion even in the bhakti. But the true bhakti necessarily would demand a quieting of the excitement which is screening and preventing you from entering the deeper experience of the Divine. It breaks the experience completely and creates a wall that separates you. It exaggerates the sense of separation sometimes. And so even in the nature of the bhakti, if your goal is to experience identification in the divine entirely, then you would want, even if you start by the chant, by the name or the song or dance, you would at some point break out of the form of it into the experience of it and in the first experience of it there will be the peace that fills. Even if it is an ecstatic experience, the ecstasy of the Divine is founded on a solid peace and so the true ecstasy would be followed with the peace and a complete stilling and silencing of all this excitation. And only then you would be able to receive that bliss and hold it in yourself. Otherwise, if you are in a state of excitation, you mistake the excitation for the bliss and that's a huge error then. And you lose a lot of possibilities, you waste a lot of time. So all these methods are helpful if you use them to go beyond the limitation of the method itself. But if you stop short with the method and the method is your aim in itself then you lose the deeper spiritual possibilities and you can waste years in just things which may give you temporary satisfaction but do not lead to spiritual breakthrough.
Sraddhalu (0:36:44):
But for most people in life that is good enough. They don't seek that breakthrough anyway. Isn't it? So all of this really brings us back to the importance of the deep silence of mind in which first, we will train the mind to remain receptive and second, we will train it to follow the suggestion which comes from the intuition to let it carry again in a state of stillness rather than ceasing to catch and warp and give it the form that I am used to. See one form it takes, I have to choose will I do this or that, which is right or what does the Divine want from me. And I deliberately give this example because it shows you how ridiculous the question can be sometimes. Should I eat chocolate ice cream or should I eat Cassata ice cream, I don't know some name.
[Audience] mango ice cream.
[Sraddhalu] Mango ice cream, all right. Chocolate or mango, what does the Divine want me to do, right? So there are people who will actually open the book Savitri with a marker. What is the guidance? They'll toss a coin, what does the Divine want? I'm deliberately giving this example to show you how ridiculous the question is. But we assume that the Divine will wants us to be a puppet, which is not the point at all. The Divine will is for us to become instruments of the Divine freedom. And so to develop individual freedom is a necessary first step and that's why the ego becomes a necessary point. The ego must be constantly turning its impulse or desire to a higher goal and that's how the change takes place. So it's not which one you eat, it's in what attitude you eat which matters. That's what the Divine is concerned about. You eat all you want or don't eat, I don't care. But what you do or don't do, do it with that consecration, with that attunement to the Divine Presence. So when you ask questions, you have a preconception that the answer should fit these grooves. It should be either this or that. But the answer actually says, I don't care. But nothing in your receiving mind is ready for an answer that says, I don't care. Because the Divine is supposed to be telling me what I should do, right?
Actually heard this recently. A person who receives intuitions and sometimes quite interesting and very interesting intuitions. She can sometimes look at a person and tell you what happened to the person or you know you went through all this, you shouldn't do that, you shouldn't do this. And the person feels as if, oh did you just read my mind, how do you know about me? So she has that kind of intuition. And her problem is, every morning she tries to feel what does the intuition what does the Divine want me to do and the Divine intuits in her you should wear this dress and she says but I don't like this dress and yet I wear it because the Divine wants me to do and I asked myself simple question why would the divine be concerned about which dress you wear or which ice cream you eat, coming back to that point. That's not real intuition. She has an intuitive power and because she can validate it by telling you what you were doing or what problems you're going through in your life, she's convinced that the intuition is correct, but in her receiving base of mind there is a huge mixture in which things pop in which are not intuition but she cannot distinguish anymore. And that's why I'm giving all these examples. You must be able to stay quiet and when the intuition comes, allow it to lead. And it leading is different from you setting grooves and forcing it to flow into your preconceived grooves. That's why this general initial training of the mind is of great value. Often we have people who came with an untrained mind, opening to the intuition, and then these kinds of problems happen. The mind was not made enough plastic, not enough conscious, not enough wide and flexible as an instrument.
Sraddhalu (0:40:58):
On the other hand, people come with such rigid structures of training. The fellow has done his PhD and his this and that in so many fields and he knows so much about everything that when the intuition comes, it has to move through these grooves. Sometimes, again I reduce it to ridiculous to highlight the point. I was in a journey, we were going somewhere to some historical place and I said something about that place, which the other woman who is much older, she said, this is completely wrong, you don't know your history. This is how it happened. So I said, okay, to me it didn't make sense. She says I know because I'm a history teacher. Okay now think about what that means. What makes you a history teacher? You passed an exam which gave you this label paper that says you're a history teacher. But what did you do to pass the exam? You read what someone else told you, mugged it up and vomited it out. How do you know what really happened? You are as ignorant as I am or as that little bird is. None of us really know. We are just repeating what we were told. But instead if you applied your thinking, if you applied your intuition, you might actually glimpse that the history was actually very different from what you were told. And this was Mother's experience by the way. In her childhood, she would read in the history books and they would say this is what happened and then suddenly she would say, ‘oh but that's not how it happened, that's not how I remember it’. It was totally different in the way she remembered it. But you know this is that the mind of self-forgetful knowledge. You pick up something you want to know about, you read and it triggers the memory. I said but that's not matching and what do you trust? You have to trust that and not this.
But those who are specially trained in rigid intellectual thought, they have these grooves into which now the intuition has to struggle to flow around or learn to make it plastic. So both extremes are wrong. An unformed mind is not helpful, but you can start with it. A too formed mind is again a problem. What you need is plastic, plasticity, and that can only come with humility. It can only come in a culturing of mind that says, everything I know, I'm open to revise. And what I have to learn before me is infinity compared to my little piece. And even when I receive the first wave of infinity, it is a tiny piece compared to the next wave of infinity. And with it some training in which the mind has become conscious enough and is able to manage fine nuances of thought. Now you could start with none of that and the intuition could develop all this if the plasticity was there. But if you have trained it in your early upbringing, but not in a rigid way, but with a, let's say, intuitive feel in the early training itself, which should be how our education should be, then your mind would be a ready instrument for the intuition to fill and work in it. And that's what Mother tried here in the ashram school. She found that the sadhakas who came with prior training, prior practices, prior disciplines of religious or spiritual types, were too formed, too rigid. And when she was trying to work through them, she was constantly bumping into these rigidities and resistances, preconceptions, sometimes very rigid, because you have the ego of, I am student of such and such a school of art, such a great artist is my teacher, I am the artist anyway. You never speak like that, you may be the most humble person, but the knowledge is embedded in this ego of its self-importance and then mother is trying to Express through you a new art, it cannot.
Sraddhalu (0:45:02):
And so what did Mother do? She took Huta, who came with zero artistic training and built her from scratch from basic sketching, sharpening pencils, cleaning brushes, drawing, mixing colours, all that and worked through her. And just once that Huta, and she was very strict, do not do any other painting than what I make you do, because I am working through your hands. She was infusing literally her skill and art into her. Once that Huta looked at a picture from a magazine and then drew her own. Mother saw the picture and got very upset. She said, where did this come from? She caught the vibration of that distortion. You know, mostly what you see in magazines are pictures intended to attract. So they have a strong vital, whatever, excitation. Something of that came through because she had used that as a model for her own drawing. And Mother said, never will you copy from elsewhere. What was she doing? She took raw material and built. And the same thing happened in the sadhana. When she was trying to make people into effective instruments, she was hitting these boundaries, always. Of course, not with everybody, but it was so prevalent that when the children came as refugees, she said, well, here's an opportunity. Can we train a new humanity from scratch? And that was her effort. And that's why I'm giving this example because it's one of the problems that the divine consciousness has to work in the evolution using the ready material we have. If our educational system was intuitively formed or filled with intuition or the psychic influence from the beginning, then the mind could grow and develop skills and complexities and the richness of powers without being rigid, without being in this way fixed, plastic to that influence and then the journey could be so much easier. And I'm saying this so that someday some of you will develop these training modules or introduce at least these values into your schools, in your children, whatever form it takes.
So I was going into what happens in the second aspect. One is quieting the mind, the other is allowing, training the mind to allow itself to be led without resistance, without rigid fixed preconceptions or grooves of expectations. To be totally open to, Sri Aurobindo uses this phrase, to be plastic to the touch of the infinite. When the infinite touches, you remember what the intuition is, it's a ray of the Sun, little finger coming from the Sun, when it touches and yet it is from the infinite. When it touches, you should be able to be plastic to its touch. So this image is very interesting because you will see this, in the Vedas of course they speak of intuition as the ray of the sun. But you see the same image in the Egyptian symbolism. You see the picture, it's a famous one, where you have the sun and then the rays coming from it. And at the end of each ray, there is a human hand and the human hand is holding the Ankh. The Ankh is described, if you read the literature, they'll say it is the symbol of life. So you have a little circle, a straight horizontal line and then a vertical line. So you can put your little finger on the circle and hang it. It's like a cross but the top is not a straight line, it's a little oval circle. And so the ray of the Sun has a human hand that holds the Ankh in front of the king or the priest who is now receiving it. You see the symbol is so powerful. It is a Supramental consciousness as a ray of intuition now and giving you the Ankh.
Sraddhalu (0:49:06):
What is the Ankh? So they will say, oh it is a symbol of life. For them it is just some beliefs. No, as a symbol it is very powerful. It is in fact the true symbol behind Christianity. In Christianity you have the cross, but if you see traditionally before that particular form of the cross there is the ankh, of which the cross is a degradation. And the symbol there is very interesting. Sri Aurobindo says that symbol of the three, individual, universal and the transcendent. And the vertical line is the individual, the horizontal line is the universal, and the ankh above is the transcendence. So it's as if the Divine is giving you, through the intuition, the opening to this triple realisation. Literally, it is experienced like that. When the intuition enters, it's like a touch, and suddenly, ooh, it just lights up, opens up, knowledge fills, whatever way you may feel, insight, flash. So in the quiet mind, you are waiting for an answer, and suddenly something, like a little finger touching the water in a ripple, and the knowledge is there. And then you wait for it to lead, to guide your mind, and to allow it to unfold, all that it has to reveal. So this will be the first training. Quieting the mind with all this, with the intention of opening it to become a receptacle for that.
Second training is now, as a corollary, it develops this idea a little more, that as long as you are quiet, you are still mind into which something higher than mind comes. But you have to become intuition. So this has to actually turn upward and as if rise beyond mental quality to something more and more refined. And in practice, it may take the form of this turning as if upward because we feel naturally the higher gradations above us because the centres, which register those higher grades are above in the subtle body. But it means literally that you shift your thought awareness itself out of the physical mind into your subtle body and in your subtle body opening it to the higher centres in the subtle body through which the intuition naturally flows. So just as here in the centre of your head is the centre of the intellect, so you feel yourself here, or the centre of the chest would be the centre of the vital energy, or the higher vital, and you have the chakras, the centre of intuition is above the head. And so, it's not enough, you can of course physically be here and turn your awareness above head, but you shift not only the centre of thought above head, but literally lift the thought working out of the gross physical body into the subtle body. And you have the experience of, as if rising in your mind awareness. And as you shift more and more into the subtle body, suddenly you feel the mind released, becoming wider, freer, more plastic, more spontaneous. You shift back into the dullness of your physical brain and you feel this dulling, heaviness and you have to now struggle to think and form. So this shifting is not only a physical shift of the centre of thought but literally a shift in the grade of substance in which thought is taking place. Freeing from the physical mind is critical, freeing from the brain and then once freed sufficiently all the rest becomes easy. So this becomes the second practice that Sri Aurobindo recommends.
In its most reduced form, try to shift the thought itself to a point above the head. Where are you when you think? You will find you are pretty much here somewhere. And then it's as if in your thought maybe either you turn up becoming aware of the space above, inside your head and then above the head. So you're still identified with the body, so you feel I'm here in the body. And then after a while you as if feel the space and allow yourself to drift into this space and settle here even as you continue to think. As an exercise Sri Aurobindo writes this elsewhere in his letters, he says, when you shift your centre of thought above head, the first thing that happens is you lose brain fatigue. As long as you're in the brain, your thinking process makes you tired and after a while you say, I can't think anymore, I'm fed up. At that point, if you make this conscious shift out of brain and above head, you disengage from the physical brain, suddenly you find your mind is free, it's no more tired. Body is tired, I am not tired. Mind is clear, mind is fresh. The second thing that happens is you realise your mind is much more free, much more plastic, much more light and so much more wide. And automatically with this begins the shift into the working of the Higher Mind. Where earlier it's as if the thought was dulled down and narrowed to fit your brain's smallness and dullness. Now suddenly you feel released into this much wider thing and the broader, larger thought idea forms can begin to develop.
Sraddhalu (0:54:42):
And so the most basic exercise will be the shifting of awareness in the physical brain, but in the subtle body. You actually feel not in the brain, but around or wider or above and one begins to live in that. This allows them to come to greater proximity to the focal point in the subtle body, which is the centre of the intuition. And so through it, the intuition can fill your mind much more. But still your material of thought is only a refined grade of mind. But increasingly as something of that begins to fill, you experience as a substance of something higher filling, a light of that higher filling and your mind suddenly becomes clear, bright, fresh and the shift to the seeing operation begins. So the character of the illumination, the illumined mind begins naturally to fill. And all of this I am describing as something which almost automatically happens by this simply turning. But if you are aware of it, you can consciously open to the wider presence above and invoke its peace and its light and let it fill and grow. And very quickly you feel as if the substance in which your mind thoughts are taking place become more clear, more bright and more lit up. So a question comes or a need to know comes and as your mind turns because it's full of light, it reveals and you know, this of course behind it the intuition proper, and so in that you know ah yes that's what it is. But it's effortless and it's spontaneous and more and more therefore the nature of intuition begins to fill and you know because something of the higher mind or large thought and so on.
So this is the second movement of changing the grade of substance opening to higher grade, higher centre and freeing from identification with the physical brain into the subtle body where actually the real thought is taking place. So just so we understand better how this works, your subtle body, let's say this is your subtle body and this is your physical body, I'm making it slightly smaller, more rigid, they are identified. Okay, the extension of the subtle body around the physical body is what we feel as our personal space or aura. So they are identified, joined. But this is the stuff outside. In this stuff of the subtle body is the real thought taking place because it's in your mental body that you think. But because it is joined with the physical body which includes the physical brain, what is happening here in its plasticity is bound here into matter. So now my fingers can't move, you see. The subtler part which is embedded in the physical is dulled by the physical. And because I feel I am body, I am only conscious of this part that is fixed in the physical body, not that part which is free. So what happens as you shift your awareness consciously towards that part, you realise you're actually thinking here and not here, and now you're free to think in the full plasticity of your mental body. And then you realise even the location of the physical brain head is only because the brain was there. Actually in your mental body your thought is everywhere. Or even the sense of relationship with thought changes. Thought is felt as a thing, as a form. You can feel the thoughts entering within you, or you can open and call a thought, you can consciously release a thought into the universe and so on. All of that becomes easy, natural because that's the nature of your mental body. But right now you don't have it because you don't know your mental body, you know only the part of it embedded in your brain and nervous system. And the rest of it is as if tightened, rigidified because of its dependence on the physical. So the second exercise frees you. And in the mental body because the centre of thought also now is much more here, it's closer to the true centre of intuition, its action now, its light, its illumination, its influence now begin to fill and can rapidly flood this mental consciousness. So this will be the second method. And there are two more methods which we will then take up for next time.
Narad (0:59:40):
Thank you.
Sraddhalu (0:59:43):
Thank you. We can take a few questions if you like.
Audience (0:59:48):
You said that there is a thought to not touch the brain, but if we are necessarily holding the silence and just being here, then there is actually no thoughts, right?
Sraddhalu (1:00:07):
Yes. But still, so one thing, there is a difference when you are in the silence, you can of course be in total silence, no thought at all, in which case the intuition can work by passing thought completely. But also in that silence, you can choose to have a single thought. And then your whole attention is in that thought in purity, in distinction, not in part of a chaotic, yes, with concentration, intentional, the thought rises, is given form, and it subsides, and it's done. So at that point, the intuition can actually form a thought or clothe itself in a thought to articulate itself. But the intuitive content of it was not bound to the thought process at any point. When Sri Aurobindo wrote the Arya, the way mother described it, she said his mind was in silence, it was in the silent mind or from the silent mind that he wrote but the flow was above head from the higher. At that time he was already living in the Overmental consciousness which opens to the Supramental. So he was aware of the Supramental consciousness not always living in its highest poise but open to, in a free flow across that boundary. So when he wrote from that source whichever poise he took, it flowed and she said it passed the mind completely which was totally silent and it flowed straight into his fingers as he typed on the typewriter. Now if you think about it, it seems, you know, we don't know what to make of it, of the description, but it's literally this. As the experience, he's living the experience first. So already in intuition, what you know is what you live, what you are. And here he's in the larger, overmental, universal, infinite consciousness. And everything he's writing is coming from the experience. The way a sentence is structured is the way an experience is flowing within its infinity. It flows this way. The paragraph is a series of ways of looking at himself or as the whole experience. A chapter is only an aspect of the whole. So, his sequence of chapters is, I look at myself this way, this way, this way, this way in the infinity and that's your chapters. And into that, there is the flow of the experience describing that aspect. And because he is already simultaneously one with the whole, all these parts of it, there is no thinking first this, then this, then this. Since I am the whole, I flow like this. There's no planning involved. There's no notes to be made. So at one point in the Arya, he's writing six books at a time and he has no notes. And next month when he has to write, he tells someone remind me when I have to give the manuscript. So the fellow reminds him, he says okay. He sits down and chapter 2, chapter 2, chapter 2, chapter 2 of each of these six books. Not needing to go back, what did I say last?, because it's all there in my experience. So, if I again as an analogy, you want to describe the experience of your aam. So, I took one aspect, I finished the thumb last time. Do you need to remember what did I write? Or do I have to do next? No. It's this finger, then that finger, then that. Right?
Audience (1:03:36):
For example you gave in the talk of how Mother expressed, Divine Mother expressed herself and finally the link just happens.
Sraddhalu (1:03:42):
And the flow in the chapter is I just went from here to here from here to here so I don't have to remember anything because it's already there. I could reverse the flow I could go this way this way do I have to remember? No. I could reverse the flow and go like this in a spiral. Do I have to remember? No because I am what I wrote as an experience. So the whole this is the nature of supramental memory. It doesn't have to remember. It is. So now he is writing five, let's say six books now. Okay. Each or within each chapter is like a finger. You get the analogy. And when he forms a sentence, it's the experience takes the form of words and flows directly into the fingers, which of course should have been sufficiently made plastic and trained to type. And that's it. The whole thing goes right through the silent mind. It can use the formative power of the mind to give it a mental structure. If he wants to release an idea into the universe, he will give to it a form of idea and throw it out. But in what he was doing, it was not forms of ideas, it was a direct experience that was going through. So, one gets a sense of what it is. So, silent mind could remain silent and just let the pure intuition go through. It will still be very clear and structured or it could use it to form idea structures, idea forms, but in its freedom, more like a clothing.
Audience (1:05:11):
Just now we have touched on multiples qualities. You also touched on plasticity, and somewhere to practise all those aspects, we need sincerity. <laughs> So I am just using this rare example of yours. So if we are just focusing on one object and working on this the rest of it would…
Sraddhalu(1:05:34):
If you cut out one piece and say I will only do this, but if you cut out one piece and say I will only do this, you may ignore the rest. It may drag in or it may not. You may actively refuse it because for you that's not Divine. Right? So a lot depends on the general approach you take. If you go without preconception and give yourself in the joy of self-giving to the touch of the infinite and if you know her in her infinity not in an aspect to which you limit then all this will take place in the single movement and in a multiple multifaceted action of her working. So in fact in the whole description on the development of intuition and we said we'll discuss four, he says not one of these four by itself is enough. In In fact, all four are as if aspects of each other, which happen simultaneously. And if you are conscious of what we are doing in a general movement, then the action of the Mother's energy, the Mother's shakti will use all four methods, shifting focus as necessary, unifying them, specialising, unifying. And so all these aspects are included in a single effort. That is the best way. But if you are much more mental person, more reduced in your effort, you go aspect to aspect.
Audience (1:06:59):
One quick question, Sir. Just going back to the history of how Sri Aurobindo got into this silence.There was a reference about Vishnu Bhaskar Lele. So, did he give some kind of directions or instructions like this, only silence or it happens just like that?
Sraddhalu (1:07:16):
No, he gave instructions, Sri Aurobindo describes and these are very basic instructions, you'll find in any yoga text. The way to get to the silence of mind was, you stand back from your own thoughts, observe them in a detached poise and then whenever a thought comes in, you reject it. And after some time, no thoughts will come and you go into complete silence. That's the basic instruction. There's no big deal to it. And you can do this as an exercise. Again, very useful. Because you will then notice thoughts actually have a reality of their own. They come in into you. And physically there's a direction. You'll find most of my thoughts come from here. And then there's one grade of thought which comes from below. And often those are more emotional thoughts. Not really mental thoughts. More sentiments taking form of thought. And then some which seems to come from above which are much more like intuitions. But all this you can experience and it's a very objective experience. But still the way to remain in state of silence is the descent of the peace that brings the silence but also awakens to a higher grade of consciousness. It's no more a mental silence is a dry experience. Nothing is happening. Your mind is just there. But the thing filling from above fills it with something of the higher joy and fullness and deep sense of completeness. And that is a much more rich and fulfilling experience. And you can be in that. You don't get dryness. It's very rich and full. So still from an integral yoga perspective, the descent from above is the best way. But to train your mind to be in the state of receptivity or silence, all these different methods can be used as a preparation.
So we will continue this theme in the third practice and fourth practice next time. So we will continue this theme in the third practice and fourth practice next time.
Sraddhalu (1:09:12):
Okay. Namaste.