EWS #70 Planes of Consciousness (7) - how to develop Intuition
March, 14, 2020
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Narad (0:00:50)
Namaste and welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. This will be our last evening for a while, but it's been such a wonderful experience to have him with us and I look forward to many years more. Our subject today is again the levels of the intuitive mind. We covered one and two last time, so we begin with the third one. Thank you.
Sraddhalu (0:01:02):
Just to recapitulate, and for those who are watching, it will be helpful to have seen the previous two sessions and a few before, where we discussed levels of consciousness rising up to intuition and then above intuition all the way to the Supermind, and we recognized that from our present development of the mind, intuition is the first point, or first level of consciousness, where we are able to touch something which is essentially true. Till then, everything in the mind is only representing through ideas, through symbols, through words, through emotions, representing what it perceives to be true but never knowing what is actually true. It cannot know, even if it tries. But with intuition you have the first point of contact. It's the ray of the truth, a point that touches, which knows without doubt, without error, precisely what it knows, but also knows that it does not know beyond that, like a ray of light, but its source is the Supermind. So the intuition is as if a ray of the Supermind entering the finite mental awareness and as a finite point of contact. If this can be developed, if this can awaken in us, if this can become more and more normal, then from here the ascent to the Supermind becomes, well, a clearly cut path. Because from here on it will be a widening, deepening, opening and the descending substance of Supermind replacing the inferior intuitive or even the mental consciousness.
Narad (0:03:38):
And it's our only possibility of getting higher. Yes. Through the intuitive mind.
Sraddhalu (0:03:44):
Yes. And so developing the intuitive mind is as if the most important thing today and even the whole of current, the push of nature in evolution is to lift the human mind towards this. And it's something which we will discuss on another occasion perhaps preparing for something which Sri Aurobindo has referred to as the Mind of Light. But for the moment we just view the whole thing as a turn towards the intuition. And you see what has happened today in the way human life is speeding up. The pace is so great. Earlier you could write a letter and it went, let's say, across the ocean and the reply came back, a month or two would pass, during which time you had time to think, the pace was slower. Today you send out an email or a message and instantly there's a reply and you have to take a decision now, you don't have time to think. And if you look at the way things are changing in just the stock market as a reference, everything is fluctuating moment to moment and you have to take critical decisions based on information which you know is false or mixed. Because that's another characteristic of the world today that there is so much fake information put out or mixed information put out that to sift through to figure out what is true is nearly impossible. And then with that, your power of the mind to process so much information is not sufficient. So you have data, what they see today is the total quantum of medical research data is doubling every three weeks.
Sraddhalu (0:05:38):
Medical data, medical research, not all of it may be relevant for you, but that's the kind of data which is being put out. Do you even have time to read? If at all you had time to read, you would end up maybe 24 hours reading. Can you digest, can you process, can you integrate? Because it's all in fragments, sometimes contradictory seeming data. How do you even put it together? Perhaps the scope is simpler if you're running a simple business, but still, the three things: unreliability of data, overwhelming content of data and your inability to process it, and the third, that you have to take a decision immediately with less and less time. This means that your power of intellect is not even available for you to use even if it was sufficiently trained. You're forced to rely on some greater power of intuition.
I have perhaps mentioned this as an example here. This is an actual experiment which was done in a meeting where they had about 100 CEOs in one big room. As an experiment they put an envelope in front of each one and they were told that inside this envelope a number has been written and you are asked to guess what the number is and write your guess. And afterwards opening the envelopes they compared who came closer to the guess in the guess and who was farther. And they found that the CEOs whose guess was closer are the CEOs who had made a profit in the previous quarter, whereas the ones who were very far off from the actual number had made losses. So what it showed was, those who have an intuitive ability, however developed, less or more, are the ones who will succeed in this kind of an environment with these three issues. And so it's as if nature is compelling humanity to begin to rely on some deeper or higher reference which goes beyond the intellect and opens to the intuition. Some recognizing this will actively develop the power of intuition. Others feel instinctively or intuitively that they have access to something and draw on that without knowing what they do, but that power stays relatively undeveloped. But if you work to develop it, then you can do so much more.
Narad (0:08:02):
Does the Illumined mind help them at all?
Sraddhalu (0:08:07):
If at all they are conscious of something like that, but what may happen is you may have occasional flashes of insights. Most people even don't understand that it comes from a higher consciousness from a supra-rational level. They call it sub-conscious or unconscious or gut feel and they think it comes from below when in fact it's a higher faculty. In practice though, none of this will lead to spiritual change; it will only give you access to knowledge that your ego mind complex uses but for the spiritual seeker opening to that consciousness involves rising into it. And it is this in this way that the evolution of consciousness will take place. But what I point out is nature is as if pushing people even if they don't want to begin to open to this higher faculty. So last time we dwelt on two different processes that we can put into practice to assist this awakening to the intuitive mind. We start with the concept that already the intuitive consciousness is there and it is, let's say the tip, the tail end of the Supramental consciousness which is infinite and beyond above. But from this point which is reasonably close enough for us to access to the mind we still have a huge gap and a completely different way of working. Intuition does not process. Mind needs to process, compare, break up, none of that intuition needs. And so if this mind is to open to intuition, either becoming an instrument or allowing intuition to act through it, the two being totally different, how do you train it?
The first suggestion Sri Aurobindo puts before us is, if you could either completely silence the mind or as a variation of it allow its working to be led by the influence of the intuition which works in it and slowly changes it. Either of these or a combination of these would be the first natural starting point. So this becomes the first practice for us to be able to make the mind silent completely and then to be able to hold that poise of silence and in that silence then to turn your awareness to a higher knowledge and then to wait for it to act and when it acts or when it puts a suggestion, to not get excited, to not leap up and to jump and say oh I got it and then twist it in the process, but to remain silent and allow it literally to flow and form and unfold itself without agitation. And so the training really is of being able to sustain a state of silence even when a higher activity begins to form and allow it to unfold. But at the same time this is not enough because the silence is only creating a climate of receptivity. There is also the need for a change of this working that takes up the use of your powers of mind and works through them. So there has to be some kind of a reception which allows that action. The moment that starts happening, of course, the mind warps, fixes, and the gradation of consciousness of mind is a very clouded, relatively dull or dark substance. So none of this would really allow a true working of the higher intuition to be free and to be perfect.
Sraddhalu (0:11:43):
So this being still the first practice, the second practice now comes in. So last time I spoke of shifting the centre of awareness above, which Sri Aurobindo puts that as the third, so we will just look at the second, there is a logical sequence. The second movement is a turning inward to wait for the action to emerge from the Divine presence within us. So it could take the form of a turning inward towards the psychic presence or the idea that deep within us somewhere there is the Divine will that is always present and instead of we rushing into action we wanting to do, we become quiet, keep this quieted state of mind and allow that deeper will and insight to emerge, to take over and act. And so there is an interiorization and an opening to the inner presence of the Divine. In his writing here he does not use the word psychic because it was written at a time when the yoga was still not giving so much focus on the psychic centre. But it is clear in the description when he says the opening to the Divine presence within. And so the second method is to wait. You make yourself very quiet. Instead of doing something, you wait. You wait for the initiation to take place from within. So let's say you are going to, take a more extreme example, you are going to perform a musical recital, you're on stage and the lights come on and somebody blows the whistle so to say okay start off, you're introduced. Mostly what you will see performers on stage will say yeah and then they start doing, but the right thing here would be to remove yourself and go into the centre or open to the centre within and let that impulse initiate, now the same thing would take place. Another example of a more physical kind, you're going to do a long jump or a high jump athletics or a gymnastics performance; you're in the Olympics, it's your turn the sign is given, now you're going to move. If you watch the Olympic performer, there's a moment when the being becomes entirely still. If they have not reached that point of total stillness, they will fail. Because what is demanded is perfection and that can only come from a perfect stillness. But then after that, who begins the movement? As long as I start moving, again it will fail because I am leading and I am imperfect. What they do and the whole training of the Olympic gymnast is to remove yourself totally and wait for, they will use other vocabulary, they will say the body takes over or the you are in the zone and something takes over it happens. Whatever vocabulary, but inherently is this idea that something greater than you within you which knows perfectly that initiates and that does and even the experience of the gymnast is I am as if watching the body do and does perfectly. If at any point I intrude and say, ‘oh what are you doing? do it like’, this it breaks the free flow.
And so similar experiences are not uncommon. I remember sitting once in a meeting with CEOs we were doing a kind of a program, training program, and I spoke about intuition. So the people who were organising thought it was making too big a leap, because they're all used to very down to earth and hard examples and methods. And I said, no, you have to recognize that this exists. And after a bit of an interaction, they opened up. And almost everybody narrated experiences that they had in which there was this state of flow or they were in the zone and the thing just happened and they were not in it, not doing it, but it was being done through them. So again it's not difficult to get to this, but to be able to enter this consciously now becomes our immediate effort. Of this then obviously a similar result is possible. But this also Sri Aurobindo points out, in the level at which the initiation takes place, although of a deeper centre, it is not yet Supramental. And so it works within its limits, it is not yet able to have the perfection or the freedom of the consciousness which comes from the higher.
Sraddhalu (0:16:20):
And so the third method which we had actually discussed last time is this shifting to the centre above the head. We are also open to the Divine will, but initiating from above. As distinct from the will seated within, which has a more intuitive discrimination more than the intuitive revealed knowledge. Whereas here above <points to above head> is the revealed knowledge of the intuition which is more easily felt, but it the same Divine presence here individualised within us and above the head, more universal and eventually the poise of the self which is above us. But something of that presiding Divine presence is what you turn to. And if you have done this training for the second step, the third step is only extending it to a higher level from here. Now what happens is one feels very distinctly a higher grade, a higher grade of consciousness, a higher grade even of substance and quality of knowledge and quality of energy that flows through us. The experience is so distinct. So even one feels it physically. And being centred here above the head, one begins to distinguish qualitatively even the finer grades of consciousness or the substance of consciousness. Now for many this is a strange term and Sri Aurobindo uses repeatedly these terms. He will say substance of the Supermind or substance and the light and the force and the power descending. And when you first read it you say well what is this? Is it just a kind of a figure of speech, a poetic description, most people tend to dismiss it. No, it is not. It's a literal description because when one experiences, and here on this level (body) it's difficult to have that kind of distinction, but here above the head one experiences a qualitative difference in grade and it feels like a substance and what descends from above is felt like a substance distinctly, even physically felt, settling, working and acting through us. And over time one experiences not only as a substance which is quite dense but also as a light and as a force and even other aspects of that, even a knowledge, sometimes even as if a ball of knowledge that comes or a wide knowledge that just wings in. That's the only way you can experience it, as if like a large bird settling and coming into a narrow space to settle, as if coming into a nest. The movements are poetically, that's the form it seems, but physically that's the experience it actually is felt as. And so these things begin to happen much more easily as the consciousness opens above. And at this point, although it is not yet Supramental, but it is still closer to the Supramental and the ability to distinguish now prepares you for making a conscious ascent and a conscious shift.
Sraddhalu (0:19:31):
But the other thing which happens, because there is a descent of a higher grade, as it fills your mind or even fills your body, a different kind of consciousness begins to act. So just as an analogy, if you compare in your own experience, the quality of consciousness you have when your mind is very clear, versus the consciousness that you have when you are emotionally disturbed, how would you describe that? It's almost like dust cloud of disturbing confusing energies surging within you when you're upset or angry and the clarity of your mind is covered by the dust. And afterwards what you find the dust and disturbance settles the clarity of mind is revealed. It was not gone, it was just covered up and the light of the mind, so to say, clear thought comes back. And you have here an experience of two different grades. This grade <points to body> which is generally quite clouded and agitated, it can become clear but still eventually you find it is still of a denser type, more sticky. That's why emotional attachments tend to be sticky. They are like a substance which is sticky and tar is perhaps too strong but as you go down into the lower ranges it is almost like tar in its stickiness and so very difficult to manage to work on it. But here in the higher emotions you still have the same problem. You experience an attachment and then you can't get free. It's like material which reforms, rejoins even if you cut it out. And all these are real experiences. The substance is like that. You can see it in the subtle worlds or in the subtle sight.
But this as a comparison which is an experience we all have in our life, when you turn up, it is so much more clear, so much more fine, free and literally the consciousness is uplifting, lightening. These are the kinds of experiences we have during certain states of meditation or sometimes when we feel, oh today there was such a great presence which came, maybe it's your birthday or some special occasion and you feel yourself filled with something which is so light and free and uplifting and you feel wow everything is so wonderful and then somehow it goes away. But you don't know where it came from you don't know where it went away but if you're conscious you realise that thing always comes down as a descent from above. It's the grade that is natural to the region above head. And if we, once we become conscious of it, we are not only able to rise into it, but also to call it down and to fill it into us eventually at will. But now when that enters, this more tarry, sticky substance, it brings with it light and clarity and freedom and transparency and even your emotions become more free, their stickiness and habitual character dissolves and the changes begin. Now since our immediate description is of the change of the mind, this higher light settling into the mind begins to reshape the intuitive working. Now it's not yet Supramental, but it is intuitive and what it does over time is to form in the minds working a more intuitive let's say tendency. So you may still think you have a problem that comes up, you start thinking but even as your mind turns to think, the quality of intuition which fills kicks in and flash shows you. So you may even have the illusion as if your power of thought has enormously speeded up but it's not really power of thought. It was intuition which was being led by your intention and the usual habit of thought but if by then the state of silence of mind is reasonably settled then you as if turn to know- what about this?, and there's a flash and then you may still use the form of mind to articulate, to give words, to express. So, as a poet you know how that happens when a poem flows through you, that it is still using the vocabulary of your mind, it is still using the power of your mind and the familiarity of language to form. But what is using is something totally different, not you.
Narad (0:24:03):
It is almost a detachment. You see it or you feel it or you hear it and it comes down.
Sraddhalu (0:24:12):
Exactly. And it does it. You are as if not interfering. It is the same state of the gymnast who is watching the thing being done and here you are watching the words form. But it still depended or used your vocabulary, your familiarity with the language. And if the same poetic inspiration now came with your mind tuned, let's say, to a different language, where you don't have the same grasp, you have the same vocabulary. Have you had that experience? Have you tried to do in a different language?
Narad (0:24:41):
No.
Sraddhalu (0:24:42):
Okay. Those of you who have done it, you'll find it's interesting. The thing forms, it's looking for a word, but you don't have the word you know the word exists, you know exactly what it means, but you don't know what the word is. And sometimes if the intuition is very clear, it can pick the word and teach you the word also. As you're writing a word forms, you know it's the right word though. You've never heard it or at least you don't remember having heard it. <Turns to Narad> That has happened to you? Some words, okay. It comes in and you know it's the perfect thing and then you look up in the dictionary what does it mean? Oh yes, it means that.
Narad (0:25:18):
Mother speaks about moment and instant and how Sri Aurobindo, when she was trying to translate Savitri into French, he said, instant is something totally different from moment. Very interesting. And she caught it. Obviously she caught it.
Sraddhalu (0:25:38):
And actually the sense of the word, the meaning of the word in the intuitive insight, it reveals much more than what the thinking mind would have normally done by usual association. So it's as if words acquire a certain depth of what they contain or are filled with depth when the intuition acts. So what's happening now is there's a descent from above of an intuitive influence now beginning to reshape the mind. And so the third practice of this centering above and opening and allowing the initiation to happen and the shift of centre which follows with it is perhaps the most significant, but it builds on the first two, if suitably done. The fourth practice though takes it a step further. Now so far we have still opened to an intuitive but even that intuition is limited because it's not yet the free Supermind. It still works within a substance which is a bit darkish and limited and sticky with its own preferences and rigidities. So it's like water trying to flow freely but there are cut channels and it has to go through the fixed channels and habits of the mind. You need a much greater light and power which can as if clear all these rigidities, soften them, free them, widen them to something which is infinite and that only the Supramental can do. So there is a shift necessary which just this is not able to do because you have not yet reached the full intuition only its influence.
At this point the fourth method comes in where bit by bit all the current powers of the mind are as if turned upward and allowed to be led by their intuitive equivalent. So the memory and we had a long discussion around memory a couple of sessions ago, how the actual working of memory involves turning in to something which already has full access of knowledge and which pops out the true memory. So your memory, now working memory turns to the intuitive memory. Your working power of logic turns to the true perception of logic. It's as if bit by bit your faculties are lifted, raised, intensified and widened, made more free and open to that influence, lifted up into it until it feels as if they outgrow their limits and merge into the intuitive consciousness above. This process is what lifts the mind and completes the intuitivisation. There is of course a descent but this rising into and joining with the intuition is what takes you out of the limitation of the mental consciousness. This would complete the process. It's not yet perfect. With this the intuitivised mind can function. But it will be perfect when this intuitivisation opens out to its supramental consciousness, which then is the rest of the journey. But getting to this already makes the mind intuitive in your normal life working.
Narad (0:28:52):
Is it then more open to the overmind?
Sraddhalu (0:28:57):
It's open to everything above more easily. Everything. The thing though is you need to have an intention to this upward movement, to this rising, widening and intensifying the faculties. There is an active effort involved. What I want to point out, in all four of these steps, a certain degree of intention and active effort is implied, which is turned towards the intuition or the Supermind. Except for the first one, where that active effort may not be so strongly turned up. Why is this important? Because many of these things are already existent in current yoga practices. For example, making your mind quiet. You will find that practically in all traditions, in any yoga practice or religious tradition, aiming at anything deeper. But in itself will not lead to intuition unless you have given to it that upward turn, to want to open and receive from above. Now let's say in a religious context, they may say, you open your mind to know the will of God, you will still end up with a similar result. But it will stop with what you think the will of God is and you are happy to fit it in your existing mental preconception. There is not an attempt to outgrow the mind's limitation. It's only opening to receive knowledge but fixing it into the little boxes that you are used to. And there is no liberation from your mind's limitation.
Similarly, the turning within for a deeper initiation, like I said, even the gymnast is doing it, but in itself does not take you to a spiritual dimension unless you aim towards that. Or the third step, centering above the head in various traditions, you will find the focus at the top of the head, at the Sahasrara is common. But with a different objective, to liberate the consciousness to go beyond, not to invite the higher to descend into the lower. So the form of practice may have similarities, but the intent you put into it completely changes the result. And in this case, since your goal is also to feel the higher gradations and the working in the lower, the distinction between the levels of consciousness, all that happens because you have intended it. And the fourth finally, this movement of taking all the faculties and amplifying, intensifying, raising, lifting. It's as if you take your mind as it is and lift it and open out like that. If you have done the first three, this actually becomes possible like this, in a movement like this. You just take and intensify and open and turn, and as if that begins to fill and flow through it. But this intention to lift and amplify has to be there. For which you must have the idea that this is possible or that there is a higher power or that your mind's faculties are lower workings of higher faculties. This framework of knowledge needs to be there. Otherwise you will say I am opening my mind to some transcendence so that my mind may be blurred out or to be extinguished or to be eliminated which is common for many practices, but no transformation, no lifting into a higher consciousness and a higher working
Narad (0:32:35):
You use the word intention, Is aspiration also for that?
Sraddhalu (0:32:40):
Well aspiration would be the word that Sri Aurobindo uses most often but the problem with that word is the moment you say aspire, people have some strange idea of what that means and often they associate that with some kind of a devotional call. I'm aspiring and I'm aspiring and it's not happening. No, that's not what it is. So I kind of avoided that.
[Narad] So intention is a better word.
[Sraddhalu] In this context at least. Well, willing or lifting the mind. In a sense, this is what you will feel you're doing. Let's say you've just woken up from sleep, middle of the night. Someone calls you up. You wake up, you're drowsy or groggy. You can't even speak, your speech is slurred. And then someone tells you, oh, there's a crisis, we need you now. You have to take decisions. Let's say it relates to your work or some responsibility of life. What happens at that point? Of course, there's a shock which wakes you up more. But then after that what do you do? You find you literally lift yourself out of sleep into full wakefulness. This movement of lifting your consciousness into what is now a familiar level of thought power. The same thing now taken slightly higher. It's exactly the same movement. I'm giving these analogies so that you recognize it's not something difficult. It's not something beyond your capacity. The only thing missing may be familiarity with what it feels like to be in a higher level, which comes with the step 3. And what you need for step 3 comes from step 2. And what you need there comes from step 1. So there are actually four different processes. Sri Aurobindo says none of them in themselves separately would do it, but all of them together will make for the completeness. Which one do you do? Yes of course there's an actual sequence we have spoken of but having developed a little bit of all four steps or even the first three, he says the better way is to leave it to the divine Shakti to act and at different times you'll find the turn of emphasis more on this or more on that and the shifting and it's like three or four different processes taken up as necessary at that moment until they integrate into a single movement and so this is the form of practice that Sri Aurobindo recommends. Once this is done the rest of the movement then is the further widening, heightening, opening and there will be as if a continuum from there, from the intuition to the Overmental and then to the Supramental and we need not go into that, it wouldn't make too much sense either. But having got to this, it's obvious how it can go go. Especially because in the intuitive consciousness is that exact infallible knowledge, although partial, infallible knowledge of the, in the experience, so as it rises up you're only pursuing the knowledge given to you which of how the next step is to be and the next and the next so within it is all that is needed if you so choose in your aspiration or your intention to make the complete ascent. And of course at each step a similar process is there, the higher joining with the lower, the lower opening to the higher, etc.
Narad (0:36:13):
We know from Mother and Sri Aurobindo that the psychic being always can choose right or wrong, and it's never wrong. How does it...
Sraddhalu (0:36:27):
So the distinction of the psychic, the psychic knowledge and the intuitional knowledge, there's a difference. The psychic may not have the full form of the knowledge. It has a more essential discriminating capacity to distinguish what is true from what is mixed and just that separating, ah, this part is true the rest is mixed. And so it allows you like a compass to know where you're going, you don't have the map, you don't have the vision of what's ahead. So if you're in the middle of a forest with a compass you look at the north and you keep going north if you deviate well the needle is changed. Okay, it gives you the moment's direction in the immediate space you're at. You have no idea if before you there is a river or there is a mountain to climb or if there is a rock how are you going to go around the rock, are you going to climb over it or around it or dig under it no idea, it just knows you have to go this way. So that's the way the psychic leads. It does not have necessarily the full knowledge. That's why that centre is your first reference because it will bring in the days of purity and discrimination from error, but not the full knowledge.
And then the shifting to above head begins to have the knowledge which reveals. So as you approach, you already know there is going to be a rock there and you know that in this rock actually there is a little hole you can knock it and cut through. The knowledge is there in the higher working of the intuition. In the bhakta, for example, where the psychic influence may be strong, it's not always strong, because often the bhakti is more emotional excitation, but if there has been the psychic opening in the bhakti, then the bhakta can feel, okay, I know this will happen, I don't know how or I know I am on the right track but I don't know where it leads and so you have a certainty and which allows certain smoothness of life, but when the intuition begins to fill it, you have also the aspect of knowledge. The two are complementary and it is the combination of these two which gives for true intelligence. You see, intelligence is a faculty which we only know by its use and it is so difficult to define. It is a power and the closest definition we have is it is a power that is able to see patterns, to recognize patterns or anticipate patterns and understand what those patterns are, where otherwise you would not be able to see a pattern. But that's about all we can say of it. But Sri Aurobindo explains in one of his letters. He says, the true intelligence is not something which will come from training of your mind. It will come from the awakening to the psychic discrimination and the opening of the intuition. It's this which gives the real intelligence.
Narad (0:39:36):
Very important difference also because when science tells us we're only using 10% of our mind, of the brain, this is far above that.
Sraddhalu (0:39:49):
Far above. In fact, one of the things which can happen as we begin to access this above head centre, the brain can even go into a state of quietness. And so if you're watching with EEG, the brain functioning, you'll see the person is in a state of meditative trance and yet the person is conversing and interacting and it's remarkable. So it doesn't make sense to science. They think that since all this is produced by the brain, this should not be possible. But there are enough people in whom this has been measured in the lab, they just come away perplexed, the scientists come away perplexed. But this would be the normal state, when the mind is silent and working is from a higher poise.
[Narad] I think we have covered this.
[Sraddhalu] Yes, this would be the most important thing as far as the development of intuition is concerned.
What can happen, and I want to point to a few difficulties on the path of this practice. What can happen is for many people, and I've seen this in people who are quite developed in consciousness, that in the initial phase of their life, they trained the mind, they trained the intellect with academic and other means, with a strong reliance on that with even a strong sense of self-importance or pride in the trained mind and so when the intuitive development began they couldn't let go of that. And the result was while they had access to intuition, the fixity of the receptive mind was so great that the intuition would easily get warped in a bias or distorted in some way and they were not even conscious. They were aware that sometimes their intuition was totally wrong and they just assumed that's how it works, but they couldn't understand it was because they had not allowed their formation of mind to loosen up. So as a reference, those who go without too formed a mind can have a certain advantage. On the other hand if they intuitivise without a formed mind then the intuition has to work through a less developed instrument. So there is a subtle balance required and the key will be that as you develop the powers of the intellect, you keep always reference that this is a power meant to serve something deeper within or higher above.
If that has been there in the training of the mind from the beginning then you can develop the powers of the intellect without it then having the illusion of self-importance. And if this could be done from childhood, that would be perfect. But even if not, in your adulthood, train your mind, develop your powers, and as you read Sri Aurobindo, this will happen naturally. But if you give to it the necessary intention and effort, it will happen much more completely. So as an exercise, you are reading, and as you read you say, wow it makes so much sense. But at that point having read a paragraph, if I ask you, explain to me what did Sri Aurobindo just tell you? What was it that you found made so much sense? Oh I can't repeat, it's too intricate, too difficult and you let go, you stop there. It's fine if that's your choice but if you want to develop your mind make an effort now to articulate in your own words as completely as possible as not repeating what he said, that would be pointless, but saying it in your words the way you have understood it, catching the structure of the flow of thought or ideas and you may often end up with the kind of a hierarchical structure- this is the big idea within which there is the secondary idea within that there's a tertiary idea, you may draw it as a picture if you like instead of writing words, it doesn't matter.
So I have in mind one day to do a whole workshop for this for those who want to really train this higher faculties of the mind. I just did one recently in another country which was a more introductory workshop but training the mind to open to the higher faculties. But here we would train the mind now to actually develop the powers. But I would suggest that you do this. Some of you may not be inclined to and that's fine. But if you want to develop the power of the intellect, do this. And having done the writing out or drawing or whatever form it is, you have summarised what he has said. But in summary, not losing the essential ideas or the structure of the ideas. Make, write, prepare your own notebook. Go on to the next paragraph and the next and having done let's say a chapter, you review the whole chapter and see what is the overarching structure across the different paragraphs and then look at your notes and see how that structure forms in your notes and make a summary of that maybe in a single page and again you may do it with a drawing of key ideas, with keywords, doesn't matter. Or you may do it with words or phrases not complete sentences, doesn't matter how you do it but catch the big structure. And then having done that, make a third round, if you really want to develop the full richness of your mind, make a third round and see how there are links across paragraphs. Something he has suggested here is then developed there and concluded there. And you'll find multiple threads across paragraphs linking like this while there are distinct ideas. And it's fascinating when you see it like that you say, wow what an incredible mind that he's able to hold this whole thing in a single thought and then articulate that as one whole chapter.
Narad (0:46:05):
We find this especially in the Life Divine. And even in the next chapter he'll review the previous chapter and move on while holding all of that and enlarging on it.
Sraddhalu (0:46:22):
Yes, if you do it as an exercise, do it 2, 3, 4 times, already by that time you will find your mind as it expands and is able to hold a rich multi-faceted idea or thought. And as you start reading thereafter, you will find a kind of depth and richness opening up in the text as you read. And it will train your mind. But in this way, preparing it to be intuitivised and a rich intuition. You can also do something else. If the intuition can settle in your mind, your mind is your link to your emotions and your body, so can you now allow it to settle down all the way into the physical action. So there, depending again on your natural temperament, if you are used to expression in dance, you may do it in the body's movement in dance. If you play a musical instrument, you may let it flow through that. Or if you're writing poetry, that would be another way to do. If you're doing none of these, I will say well, take up one of these activities with the purpose of using it as a link for the intuitive expression. Write a poem and there are other activities you could also do where this intuitive consciousness could lead and it could be a simple activity- sweeping the floor, preparing food, but it's easier to recognize it when the activity requires precision either in the process or in the result. So if you're cooking food and and you put yourself in this state and allow every action of the food from lighting the flame to putting in the ingredients to be from a poise which is linked to the intuition and with your consciousness in silence, in a receptive state, you will find fascinating things emerge and the food will have nuances or variations that you could not have thought out which make it more interesting, etc. But can you then take this influence all the way into the physical to some degree at least.
So Kapali Sastriyar, my teacher's teacher, MP Pandit's teacher, he had been able to intuitivise even in his physical consciousness and the result was that he could do activities with the intuition leading and at one point he was working in the construction department of the ashram and one of his responsibilities involved mixing paints. So unlike today where you buy a precise colour, premixed and so you get consistency of colour, in those days you had only the basic three colours and you had to mix the three in exact proportion to get the exact shade. If you had already a wall with a certain colour and you make a new mix and your mix is not exact you will see the difference of colour and there is no way you can avoid that. So the precision of mixing is critical for consistency. So he had to take a certain amount of paint, measure it exactly and then mix. And the mixing of course had to be thorough also. So since the intuitive consciousness was even operational in his hand, if he had to take let's say for purpose of an example, if you had to take 200 grams of a paint, he would scoop out and pour exactly 200 grams. It's amazing when you think about it. But imagine if his body was capable of gymnastics or athletics what it could have expressed because intuitivised. So in the many of the Olympic trained gymnasts something of this actually happens in their actual gymnastics. They reach a certain level of attainment where they can be shown a picture, a video, here this is how you do this flip, they can look at the video and internalise it and the body will know how to do it without being made to be taught. Or as they are used to doing a certain, let's say very complex back somersault with flip, suddenly they feel in the body consciousness, in the intuition of the body consciousness okay, if I push hard enough I know I can do a double flip in the back somersault and they put that extra effort and are able to do that and a whole new form of skill is expressed. But that's the way the intuition can lead in the physical consciousness also.
Narad (0:51:15):
I watched recently a pole vault fellow break the world record. And you could see at every moment his concentration was on the pole, on himself, on the distance to go, how he would leap, how he would let go of the pole, how he would back over. It's extraordinary. If you watch it in slow motion, it's really extraordinary. And we should be able to do all of this.
Sraddhalu (0:51:43):
Absolutely. Absolutely. With age, the body becomes less conscious, more dull, less sensitive. And so a lot of things which could have been done at an earlier age are more difficult later. But in principle it's possible to even now at whatever age we are at bring something of that light of intuition even in the physical body and lift the consciousness. If nothing else, maybe you can't do the gymnastics your muscles are not strong enough or plastic enough, but at least in your actions, in your physical movements something of that higher consciousness can begin to express and they will tend to be a kind of a natural and a spontaneous harmony at least in the parts of the body which have been so intuitivised in any activity of life. I remember the description which Vishwananth-da gave to us. He was at that time a young boy, he was helping the recording section. He was operating the tape recorder when Mother took classes and later he was then the head of the engineering section eventually. Then he lived to more than 90s into his 90s. And well, two stories, since we are talking about him but first story about the Mother, he narrated how she would be sitting like this at the playground on a chair sometimes for two hours, three hours at a time. Imagine what happens to you when you are sitting, let's say, even 20 minutes after a while <mimicks movement>, something you need to do, Blood is blocked, a little restlessness, my legs start moving, I need to cross, uncross, recross, something, nothing at all. She is just sitting there. She is meeting people, she has done the class, she is meeting people one after another, she gives the groundnuts, no restlessness, no agitation, no adjustment of the body and at the end of those three hours, she just gets up, not aah, aah, none of that, just gets up and that's it and walks. And subsequently I saw in one of the videos there is actually a video where you can see she is sitting, she is finished the whole thing, she looks around and nobody else and then pop she gets up and walks straight and that it. And it was when she was what? almost 80?
Sraddhalu (0:54:16):
so imagine what that means for the body. So this, a lot can happen even in spite of age in spite of the general deterioration of the biology which comes with age, if the consciousness has been infused with something of the higher, let's say intuitive or higher ranges, it is able to be lifted up to reflect more and more the freedom of the spirit. So this is one example. The other example regarding him is also fascinating because it will inspire people with age. So he was at the age of 80. Remember he had all these books. I once went into his office, all these books and it was in the 80s, late 80s. And I was interested to know how they were hacking telephone systems. So I had heard about people doing this and they could make free international calls. How does it work? What's the method? So there was two books on telephony, big fat things like that, and I read through the Strouger system and how the mechanics of it. I was so thrilled with that whole thing and actually tried experiments. Once I knew how it works inside the exchange, you can dial, let's say, a code, an STD code, to another city and from there you should be able to dial another STD code, but you'll still be charged for the first STD code right so I actually managed to do that a couple of times but it didn't always work just as an experiment so I was studying all that. I said, my god this man has read all these books. He was not just keeping them. He'd read and he was of course, they were engineering books which to me didn't make much sense, they were not interesting but all those books he had read. But they belonged to a technology which was already what, 20 years old.
And so in the mid-90s, he is in his 80s now, he says the computers come and suddenly much of that technology is obsolete. So he says I want to learn computers. But his eyes are not working too well. So he starts learning and then within about three months the person who was teaching him found that he knew more than the teacher and then he began to teach himself. He found his own resources, books and all that. He didn't need to ask anybody else. After that he was self-learning and then his eyes began to not function. So he had his thick specks and he would stay for hours together. Late into the evening he would be using his computer doing all kinds of things. Eventually his eyes gave in so he had to stop that work. But at some point when we were interviewing him, he said it was around that time that he felt as if his mental faculties were deteriorating and I don't know if he used the word senile but something to the effect that he felt that he was dropping to a level where he could not function normally in mind and so he said, no I can't allow this to happen, so he literally willed himself out of it and pushed his mind back to higher level of capacity. I think that's around the time when he also developed his knowledge of computers and all that.
Sraddhalu (0:57:33):
And so this is directly relating to what we have been discussing that once you are conscious and you are conscious of your realm of awareness, you have a lot of possibilities, a lot of leeway and flexibility by willing, by choosing the direction of your growth. By doing nothing it declines, by utilising at best you may have status quo. But by choosing to lift it, you can continue to grow and there is nothing preventing you in principle from continuing to grow unendingly, not just in the realm of current capacity to greater complexity, but to higher levels of consciousness. And this is to say, whatever your current physical, biological age, whatever your current level of capacity of intelligence or other capabilities, if you take up the practice of lifting your mind towards the intuitive mind, there is nothing which prevents you from developing this. In fact you will discover as the intuitivisation grows, your IQ as a measure of intelligence will actually grow and it can happen at any age and it does not depend on your brain, brain cells or other things. It only depends on the turn of your consciousness in this aspiration or intention and a will to grow in this way. And the method Sri Aurobindo has laid out, if this can be done and if this can be combined with a deeper consecration of the heart's love and the whole being giving to the Divine Mother and with the mind in this way the whole being is lifted up in this higher intuitivising movement. And this we have to do.
If we do not do this, we have not even begun Sri Aurobindo's integral yoga. stop short with devotion, you are at best preparing a base for a life of concentrated yoga another time. Mother said there were many who were here for that purpose, to bask in the presence and the glow, to prepare their consciousness for another life where there would be this dedication. But when you come back the next time, there is no guarantee that you will have the necessary support or that you will not be distracted in between. Unfortunately, we have had many cases like this. I share one where somebody who came during the time when Sri Aurobindo was in the body and of whom Mother pointed out how within a few years of his coming, his extraordinary powers of art and other skills just flowered up when he had absolutely no base of training of any kind of education before, and pointing to this as an example of the action of the yoga force. Well it went to whatever it was. He had a wonderful life in the ashram and then after his passing reincarnated within the same family, in the family as somebody else in the family and then grew up in the ashram school. Now what better circumstance could you have? You've been with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, prepared yourself for a life of dedicated spiritual evolution, reincarnated right there in the Mother's lap while she's still in the body and then had the whole education in the ashram school with the environment. And unfortunately one of the family members was a strong negative critic of many things including the Mother which perhaps was an influence or not I don't know or maybe things were too easy I don't know what. Completing his education he moves on for higher studies does them pretty well and goes on to become whatever line of job that he took up, etc. I'm not going to details that the identity may be kept. Maybe it was the soul's choice to develop certain faculties of the mind which could not have been developed before but I would question that. Maybe that was the compromise the soul could accept given the form of the nature and the influences outside but to me this was an ideal circumstance for a spiritually dedicated concentrated development, but you know what, when you reincarnate, your nature is quite strong and influences around you can be quite strong and can easily take you off track, even if the soul wanted this as its priority. It doesn't always happen or maybe it'll come back in late age, I don't know. So all of this is to say don't wait for your next life, make the most that you can within this life and small steps. Each of the steps we have spoken of are well within your reach. There is no reason that you cannot make those efforts. I would suggest to particularly for this training, read the chapter in the synthesis of yoga, the chapter which is called Intuitive Mind where he describes this whole process, read, internalise, put into practice and there are many ways in which you can apply the practice, flow freely, but make the efforts. And even if the efforts are small, the intention to lift to rise to grow in the intuitive consciousness towards the Supramental. Remember always the goal is towards that. That is necessary, without it, we can stay here many many years, feel very good about the space we are in but not make the necessary benefit that we should have got from the opportunity given.
Narad (1:03:40):
Namaste.
[Sraddhalu] Namaste.