EWS #77 Questions from Viewers (20) - Education & Teenage Issues - 4
July 31, 2021
Alina (0:00:00):
Namaste. We welcome you all to our weekly sessions, Evenings with Sraddhalu. I am Alina and together with Joel. Hi Joel.
[Joel] Namaste Alina.
[Alina] Namaste.
[Sraddhalu] Namaste.
We are happy to be back and continue on the same subject - education and teenage issues. In the last two weeks, we already covered in detail some of the questions received from our viewers. We will continue to answer some questions in this session, and other further topics will be discussed. I would be very kindly asking Sraddhalu if he could answer our first group of questions. From a student, we had a comment: Many famous poets in Europe, such as Samuel Coleridge, used to take opium to help their poetic inspiration. Steve Jobs, inventor of the iphone, used to take drugs in his youth, and it is said to be the cause of his creativity. Is there a danger in taking drugs for increasing creativity? What about microdosing on drugs, as it is common with many industry leaders in Silicon Valley? Is there a better way to increase creativity? And another question from Kasi, what correlation is there between drugs and art? I see art of very dark nature to be produced by artists who consume this, especially in hip-hop and maybe also other styles. In the guise of self-expression, there are depressing themes.
Sraddhalu (0:02:46):
Yes, both questions pertain to the use of drugs for creativity. And there is a point to it, of course, and then there are limitations which we will look at. But the question, interestingly, is of the example around Samuel Coleridge, a famous poet, for those of you who are familiar with his poetry. The incident which is very famous and it is as if taught to children when you are introduced to Coleridge's famous poem called Kubla Khan. You are taught that he was under influence of opium and this happened. So the story goes like this: He was taking opium whenever he needed to get into a certain state. Sometimes perhaps it was for poetry, sometimes it was just for the opium high which he was addicted to. But on such occasion when he was in an opiated state, in half sleep or half trance, he had an entire poem, and he says about 300 lines, which came into him, and then he got up in that state and began to write it. And after having written some 30 or 40 lines, his accountant came at the door, knocked at the door, which forced him to get up, meet the accountant. And after the interaction, when he came back, he had lost the thread. And he only recalled a few fragments, which he then added. And the poem, of course, is quite extraordinary. Even as young children reading it, you're struck by something, almost a feel, which is magical. And Sri Aurobindo actually makes a comment of it. So I will just read the first four or five lines of the poem so you get a feel of it. It's called Kubla Khan. It goes thus:
“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea….“
And so it goes on and there are lines which stir layers of magical feel and then of course the whole thing breaks down when he's lost the thread and he has only a few. It ends with these lines:
“...
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.”.
So both the starting lines and ending lines you can see actually seem to touch domains of some higher consciousness and I was speaking to Narad earlier about this poem and he said that these initial lines of Alph, the sacred river, through caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea, it represents the divine light flowing down into the subconscious. The poem itself is so moving, one is tempted to think that it is the result of his opiated state and that's where the catch comes. Similarly, Steve Jobs, because he was post flower children phase, when the hippie movement, he was part of that whole drug culture and many felt that in a drug state their minds opened because they saw the world differently and the boundaries of their imagination were released and so on. Many attributed their creativity to the drugs. What is interesting is those who did not take drugs were equally creative. So the attribution is probably not justified but what it did to them though, it broke the illusion of the purely materialistic worldview. To that extent it served. But did it increase creativity?
Sraddhalu (0:06:45):
And the same question can be asked of Coleridge. So here I want to read from Sri Aurobindo what he has to say about Coleridge. The comment he makes is, of his own life he says: ‘I read Shelley a great deal and took an intense pleasure in some of Coleridge's poetry’. That's interesting for Sri Aurobindo to say that. Of course, that was in his younger days. And then another comment which he makes specifically about Coleridge. He says, ‘Coleridge, more than any other, more than any of his great contemporaries, missed his poetic crown. He has only found and left to us three or four scattered jewels of a strange and singular beauty. The rest of his work is a failure. There is a disparateness in his gifts, an inconsequence, an incoherence which prevented him from bringing them together, aiding one with the other and producing great work rich in all the elements of his genius. Intellectually he had in abundance a wide, rich and subtle intellect, but he squandered rather than used it in discursive metaphysics and criticism, etc’. So I don't read more. But this idea that incoherence, inconsequence and the failure of much of his work that Sri Aurobingo points to, I would even attribute this to his opiated state. And the poetic genius of course is independent of this because it's as you can see not consistent whereas his opium was consistent. So I can now come to another letter of Sri Aurobindo which is written to Amal Kiran where Amal Kiran is trying to play with this poem of Kubla Khan and then to improve upon it and so there Sri Aurobindo says, Sri Aurobindo writing in 1931: ‘let me add that this poem of Coleridge is a masterpiece not because it is the quintessence of romantic poetry but because it is a genuine supra physical experience caught and rendered in a rare hour of exaltation with an absolute accuracy of vision and authenticity of rhythm’. And then he says trying to walk back that poem and improve upon it is foolish and then his advice to Amal Kiran. He says, Sri Aurobindo says, ‘you have a genuine vein of poetic inspiration somewhere above your intellect, which comes through sometimes when the said intellect can be induced to be quiet and the lower vital does not meddle. If I were you’, look, Sri Aurobindo says this, ‘if I were you, I should try to find that always, that genuine vein of poetic inspiration. I should try to find that always and make the access to it free and the transcriptions from it pure. For then, your writing becomes marvellously good. That would be a truer line of progress than these exercises’.
I am reading these lines with some pause because I want you to realise that this applies to some extent to all of us. Now not all of us may have poetic genius waiting to manifest, although in potential all of us could awaken to that as we have seen in the result in the ashram of all those who turned to the yoga force. But we will have certainly inspirations, intuitions of various kinds and forms. For some it will be music, dance, writing, speech, action, work, inspired work equally is a stream of inspiration. But the point would be to connect to that. Somewhere above your intellect, which comes through sometimes, when? When the intellect can be induced to be quiet and the lower vital does not meddle. Okay, so this should be our practice. And if perhaps the opium helped Coleridge to make his mind quiet, we have far better means to be able to do this through the practice of yoga and the methods of quieting the mind and opening to intuition. And then he explains what is to be done specifically: ‘Find that always and make the access to it free and the transcriptions from it pure’. Okay, three things. Find that always, then bridge the link. Make the access to it free and then the transcription from it pure. That means in a state of utter stillness, you receive what comes, let it flow and let it take its own forms of transcription. If you can do this, your power of creativity would be increased and I'm not exaggerating when I say a thousandfold because the creativity of the intellect is at best combinations and permutations of what it already knows or has seen. The creativity of the intuition and inspiration is something fundamentally new which the intellect could not conceive, could not know by itself. And that's when what comes through has that power of genius. What drugs do, and we understand the utility of it, is to break the hard edges of the boundary and expose you to something wider momentarily.
I've been looking for the last few days for a good example of what is normal yogic development versus drug-induced breaking of boundaries. I would take an example of your eyes. You see, in your eyes you have the pupils which can dilate to allow more light or less light. And so when you look in the dark, the pupils open to allow more light. Now you may say, I want to see better, I want to see more clearly. So you can put, inject some chemical which forces the pupils to dilate. And yes, of course, you will see more clearly, but at that point, it will also overwhelm your eyes and weaken the sensitivity of the surface that receives the light. Or what drugs would do even more effectively when sustained, you punch holes in your eyeballs. So much more light comes in and for a moment you're dazzled. But afterwards the holes damage your normal ability to see. So what would be the healthy way to do it? You would train your eyes to become more sensitive, to be able to focus better, and with the growth of the eyes' natural evolution and the opening of the inner sight, you would begin to see things in their truer reality, bypassing the limits of the physical eyeballs, which now become a support for the true sight, which replaces. So this is an example, an analogy of how different the two approaches really are.
Sraddhalu (0:14:32):
There's also the question of micro-dosing because this is considered to be the in thing because many industry leaders in Silicon Valley are using that. They take tiny amounts of drugs every day in their water. So it's a micro-dose, not enough to give you a full high, but they say it helps them open their creativity because it somehow loosens the boundaries. It's a bit like someone says, I need to take alcohol to loosen my tongue, to be able to speak what I want to say. Otherwise, I am too constricted. I can't speak freely what's in my mind. I'm afraid to speak freely, someone says. So, he takes alcohol so that he can speak freely. The yogic way would be, train yourself, purify, remove those boundaries which are blocking you consciously. Bring forward the truth speech or the consciousness which is a frankness and openness. Develop that, remove those artificial boundaries. So remember our discussion here is in the context of the yoga. For those of us who aim to realise our full potential, human and spiritual, because we are spiritual beings finally. But the full potential is what we seek. Then these methods which will provide some momentary exaggerated responses are not worthwhile. So the same I would say for microdosing, not worth it. When through meditation, through concentration and through basic yogic practices, you can dramatically increase your creativity and I will say within a few days or if your power of concentration is not developed within a few weeks you can dramatically increase your creativity and we will be we have already covered this in some detail in our discussions on opening to higher states of consciousness and developing intuition but we will be taking up questions about this hopefully from next time on if we finish today's series of questions. So yes, we have far superior ways of developing creativity.
The question from Kazi about drug-induced art. What is seen in those art is what the person experiences. Remember, art is a manifestation of an experience. That's when art becomes most effective. I've seen great artists, really extraordinary artists, opening to the vital world. And I'm thinking now of one example where the artist drew a being of the vital world. It was an Imp like creature from the life worlds perhaps seen among trees and plants, so living that when you looked at that painting, you felt the being alive. You felt his effect on you immediately. That's the power of art, to convey an experience, to make living that which is hidden or unseen. When you open to the vital worlds, the best you could do is manifest those beings. What do they manifest in terms of consciousness? Perhaps some excitation, but nothing of value that lifts humanity. If anything, those energies create divisions, create conflicts, because that's all that they can do. They're small, lower vital beings. If they're higher vital, they can raise again, open the vital to something larger, but they fall short of our greater potential. Here if you see what the Mother did with the artists in the ashram, that's an indication of the direction to go into. What she did with Sunil da was to train his consciousness to receive the stream of a higher music. With Huta what she did was to prepare her whole being, including her hands to receive directly the flow of the higher form of painting and art. And there were many others in whom she worked who are perhaps not so well known as artist Prithi Ghosh. And there were a few others who had similar. When looking at the painting, you feel as if you're glimpsing the higher worlds or even of the psychic domains sometimes. And there were others within dance, for example, with Anuben. I've mentioned some of these examples in earlier discussions. Aiming at the highest and the access there is had directly by opening of consciousness through the heart's love to the Divine as well as the mind's opening to the presence and perception of the Divine far more effectively, far more profound and with a value that is eternal. The nature of true art is when you touch eternity and infinity in some way and you catch a piece of that in form, in limitation of time. So this is as far as these two questions go.
Alina (0:19:38):
Thank you, Sraddhalu. It was almost like an introductory for our next session. So, we thank you for reading from Sri Aurobindo, that was very uplifting and good comments on the, on the writer. So I will read another question from Sanjana on regarding the advice to have unconditional acceptance of a drug addiction as we talked previously. What if this kind of unconditional acceptance makes the habit of the abuser become worse? Because the person perceives you as someone who will accept anything from you.
Sraddhalu (0:20:17):
Yes, it's a very important question. The question is whenever you try to help somebody, the fact that you have an unconditional acceptance can also be misread and even misused. And this is most extreme in people who have addiction of any kind. I've seen also alcohol addictions, something similar. But we have to make a clear distinction in the unconditional acceptance. We accept the person unconditionally. We do not accept the behaviour. We distinguish the person from the behaviour. We evoke directly the positive behaviour, the higher possibilities of the person, point out to their greater, deeper creativities, that which is more true and innate to their inner being. These things are not theirs. These things are not them. These things are not acceptable as forms of action. So distinguishing the person from the behaviour, this is the important thing.
You see in the yoga, this distinction is very important, especially in the integral yoga. I am perhaps digressing but you will see how this corresponds. A lot of people have this problem when they speak of surrender. Even Sri Aurobindo is asked this question. Isn't the Gita contradicting itself? First it says that you have to act, it tells Arjuna. Sri Krishna says you have to act. And then he says surrender everything, give everything to me, give up all dharmas. Isn't that contradiction? In practice, a lot of us have this problem because on the one hand we say everything has to be surrendered to the Divine and so people take a very convenient position of surrender - I have surrendered everything now, whatever happens is the Divine will. No that's not how it works. At the same time when it comes to something they want, they will just do it! And it seems, it is contradictory of course or they will say they will go to the extreme of surrender in becoming passive and then say, well I don't have to do anything or I don't know what to do. Sri Aurobindo makes a clear distinction: ‘The surrender is of your sense of I to the Divine. Surrender there is combined with an effort to lift from our lower nature to our higher nature’. So if you have tendencies and habits which do not match your ideal, well, you start changing them. That's an active work of change. And thus, you make an effort to raise your nature to match, align with that to which you're surrendering. And it's only when the whole thing is raised fully that there is a total surrender of yourself. Until then, the surrender necessarily is partial because you can only surrender a part of you, but not the rest of your nature, isn't it? And even that part is very superficial because you're not yet aware of your own deeper and higher ranges. So there are two phases. There is a double side. There's the consciousness and nature. Both have to be raised in the Integral Yoga. But there are two phases. The first phase where the effort is included in the surrender process, and the final stage when all of you unified is then surrendered entirely to become a conscious instrument. That's why in the Bhagavad Gita, that total surrender, abandoning all dharmas is the culmination of the yoga itself. And it is something like this, even in dealing with the person who's struggling with an addiction, they have to go through that phase of the struggle where they have to refuse certain tendencies and actions even though they are struggling with it and recognize that what they are is different from their action. You are assisting them in this dual recognition.
Alina (0:24:14):
Shall we move on with our next question?
[Sraddhalu] Yes.
Alina (0:24:16):
So, Kwasi is asking, because we talk about video games addiction. So she's asking, is there no way to enjoy the games without trapping ourselves?
Sraddhalu (0:24:33):
It's an interesting question because if you play a video game without immersing yourself, it's not fun.
Sraddhalu (0:24:44):
If you immerse yourself, well, you get trapped because it's designed to hook you. But this applies to all things in life. Any kind of enjoyment for that matter, isn't it? You cannot truly enjoy if you don't fully identify with an experience. Or you are like a kind of a lotus eater, an enjoyment at a distance, vicarious perhaps. But then it's not a full enjoyment. It's not seizing the full scope of the delight even, or even the enjoyment or pleasure even. So how do you do this? And this is again an aspect of the yoga which we have to recognize. There is a part in you which has to fully engage in the work if it is to be fully effective. But there is another part of you which also remains free. This we call the Purusha or the observing consciousness. Now the two are not initially separate, so they are mixed. In practice, therefore, initially there is an identification and there is a stepping back. So let's say you are starting a work, a project. You step back, look at the big picture. These are the things I have to do. This is how I am going to do them. You schedule it. Nnd now the first step when you execute your plan, you enter and start doing, at which point you are more and more immersed which goes fine as long as it is flowing according to plan and then when something happens which is not in your plan, there is a shock, you step back, review now the changed situation against your plan, modify your plan and then re-engage. So initially you have this movement of identification followed by stepping back, followed by identification, stepping back. The two principles are alternating in time. With the practice of yoga and these are the practices which we have to work on, they don't happen just like that.
With the practice of yoga, one trains oneself to be able to stand back in a part of the consciousness and then even when another part is fully engaged, this part remains in the background and as a result the two poises are simultaneous. In practice, the part which is engaged may still step back and forth but the part which stands in the background as a support is never lost. Initially there's a phase where you start with this witness position, you engage and when you come back you realise, ah the witness position was still there. But you are involved and step back. But the witness position was still there and you come back to it, it never left. You have a sense of continuity. Later what happens is the duality becomes more and more vivid and that can at any point pull back or from there you can recognize there is a shift in the situation and from there the poise of correction is already taken and the executing consciousness moves without needing to step back totally because they are connected and this is operating independently. This comes with training of the consciousness. And that would be the best way by which you can enjoy fully without being trapped. And this is how you will enjoy life fully without being trapped. But until then, this phase-wise alternation becomes necessary. In practice, this is compelled on us every day, because at night we have to stop, we have to step back, we have to go to sleep. Or even between work when you are exhausted, you're forced to stop and step back to some extent. But if you can do this consciously, you can do it frequently. Wherever in the work there's a transition point or a pause point. Let's say you're working in an office. You get up, let's say you have a break time for food or break time to go to the toilet. Transition between two meetings, transition between two activities, transition between two rooms. Whenever there's a change, you make a pause, step back, recenter yourself as far as possible in the freedom of you, your Self, but whatever you can reach of it. Step back, centre yourself, remember the Mother, look at the work done so far, make a conscious offering of all this - ‘this I give to you’, look at the work to be done next, perhaps even invoke the help and guidance for that and then plunge in once again. So in practice, you may end up with 20 or 30 brief stepping back poises during the day. Even when you stop to eat, you may take a moment. If you're with people, you don't even need to be seen to close your eyes. Just that moment of stepping back, pause, and it doesn't take much time. It can be done in a few seconds. But all this will be greatly aided if you start your day from that poise, where you look at the work to be done today, make a conscious invocation for the Divine help and guidance, and then begin the day from that poise. So short meditation, concentration of deep immersion with the Divine Presence would be an excellent start and an excellent end of the day. And then these frequent touches become very easy to practise. But the question is important because it's not just with games. The whole life is a video game for us. And so it applies to life itself.
Alina (0:30:26):
Oh, thank you for such practical guideline, that was very helpful. I hope many benefit from such good practices. Could we now go to another question from Conner. There is a subject which interested me for many years, so I'm happy to read this question. What is a yogic view on emotional trauma and things like post-traumatic stress disorder? The new age focuses very heavily on emotions and healing from trauma, especially that happened in childhood development, saying things like, all our past emotions are trapped in our bodies and need to be resolved. What happens to suppressed emotions and thoughts? To what extent is it true? What are some yogic methods of healing trauma and how does it distort our personalities?
Sraddhalu (0:31:40):
Yes, it's a very broad sweep in the question itself, but the topic is extremely important. So perhaps we may not be able to cover the full scope of what the question actually requires, but a few indicative pointers. And I will also draw on the experience both of Joel and Alina in their own work with therapy. But first, recognize that in the new age, there's a lot of mixture and there's a tendency to exaggerate because every new age teacher has a need to distinguish themselves from others. That's their USP because that's... I like use this phrase that they are in a career of becoming teachers, whether spiritual or otherwise doesn't matter. Finally it's a career that they are running. For purpose of a career, you have to have a USP, unique selling proposition, which distinguishes you from others, which automatically means to exaggerate something to distinguish yourself, inevitably. Even there are people who have used Sri Aurobindo and this is a topic perhaps we will discuss next time because there are questions relating to that. Even there are people who have used Sri Aurobindo and claim to be representing Sri Aurobindo's teaching but in order to be a teacher they have to have their own USP, so they will disengage or exaggerate some part. One very famous person who was almost entirely inspired by Sri Aurobindo but later in life had to identify himself and he came for a lecture in the ashram school and he said well what I'm going to say is very similar to Sri Aurobindo but I differ from him on some points. He had to start by distinguishing himself that he differed from Sri Aurobindo!
So the problem with a lot of the new age philosophy or teachings are these exaggerations. Many of them also draw heavily on the Freudian framework where the starting point is body and matter as the basis and psychology as a phenomenon taking place, even consciousness as a phenomenon taking place on top of matter. Therefore anything happening in the psychological domain has its roots in the physical or eventually settles in the physical. Now of course there's a truth to it and the truth is that yes, our mind and life energies are embedded in the physical body as long as we are incarnating the body. But the greater truth is that our mind and our life bodies are not physical fundamentally. Even if they are embedded right now, they are not fundamentally physical. They have their own laws, their own principles. So there is a truth to these statements that traumas tend to settle in the body, but it also means that you can deal with them directly on their level without needing to first deal with the part which is attached to the body. In fact, releasing the trauma in the psycho-spiritual domain may actually release the knot in the physical. But it also works that you work to release the knot in the body. There's a momentary relief, but if the knot in the psychology is not removed, then it reforms either the same knot or a different knot. So those who deal only with the body processes to release knots will end up chasing knot after knot after knot unendingly unless the moment that first knot is released, the person takes charge, wakes up and breaks the psychological knot which also happens, in which case it will be seen that, oh yes, body treatment healed the psychology. But not always, mostly it just goes back and forms new knots or repeats the same knot so you keep doing the same knot again and again and again until eventually the psychological habit itself thins out and dissolves. And that's a very slow process. Ideally, then we would address both. We would work directly on the psychological cause as well as its physical roots, if it has taken roots.
So now the question really is this. What happens to suppressed emotions and thoughts? Depends. If the thoughts and emotions are light, not so strong, well they fizzle out. So yesterday I met somebody and he said something insulting and I felt the impulse to speak back and I held back the impulse. I suppressed it. It's gone. I don't even remember it today perhaps. There's no value. But if this happens every day that I meet the person again and again, spend an hour with him each time, and I each time suppress something, then perhaps over a few days, it may create a knot in my physical body. But otherwise, no, it just dissipates. It's the same with a lot of karmic things also. Many of the traditions which do not look at the spiritual reality, don't have the idea of Soul or the Divine, reduce everything to karma mathematically. No, a lot of these things just fizzle out on their own. Their energy is put out, they dissipate. And so it is with our emotions also and with suppressed tendencies. So not all things need to be taken to their biological roots.
Sraddhalu (0:37:05):
But if there's a very strong trauma and PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, is really relating to that, a strong shock. You've been in a war zone and perhaps you just missed being killed or you were asked to kill. It was very interesting to see in Vietnam when the United States was fighting the communists there, they sent young Americans who were totally unprepared. They had just been trained and sent with cannon fodder to go out and kill or be killed for what was basically a political war after a point. So it was interesting to see they would take the gun to aim at the Vietnamese but somewhere inside they could not kill. What would happen is in the act of shooting they would tilt the gun and the bullet would go up in the air. They would aim at the person but as it came to squeezing the trigger they would tilt just enough that it would miss. And this was happening again and again with them. But you can see the struggle that would happen within you if you had to do that. You are asked to kill, you are made to squeeze a trigger, you know you're going to kill an innocent person, the villagers who have no arms, you're asked to kill them and you can't. And the struggle internally and made to happen repeatedly, yes, eventually it will create some knots and even lead to physical traumas and some of these things would appear in dreams and so on. So PTSD really is a fact and when it gets into the body, when it is something of a very extreme kind of this type. And in such cases, yes, one has to also release the knot in the physical consciousness to get a full healing. Otherwise, if you can deal with it on a psychological level, eventually that also will soak down, but not always. It depends how deeply that knot has got buried. Something that happened, especially at a developmental stage, you might not be able to access unless you made the effort to enter and release the knot. And I suppose that's where one has to utilise those methods also. Some kind of a regression into that event and then now restating it or understanding it in new terms from a new light of your current evolutionary status would allow you to dissolve or free from that knot and it can happen immediately if it is correctly done even. Sometimes the knot itself is so hard you're not allowed to reach it because the approach to it creates a trauma, shakes you so much, so you make small steps each time reviewing, realigning until eventually you're able to face it and totally free. But these of course are in the extreme. I want to actually take examples or comments which you have both from Alina and Joel. For those of you who have not listened to the previous sessions, both of them are therapists and Joel is a certified therapist in family counselling and Alina is a certified therapist in acupuncture as well as Shiatsu. And you've dealt with these kinds of things, so I would be happy to hear something from both of you.
Alina (0:40:15):
I could share something because almost daily I'm working with people treating their health problems. And first of all, as you said before, as you mentioned, the system of self-defence is so strong that not everyone would allow you to talk about freely. And so I'm also very careful when I sometimes I'm engaging with people where they don't want to go deeper and understand the cause of their condition. I've already studied many therapies and little sciences in this. So, as you said, Sraddhalu, there's many approaches and everyone tends to create an own system of whole education. And I think for people who don't approach life spiritually and, or maybe they are not open to a yogic or a spiritual approach to where they can withdraw their healing from, I think these kinds of therapies are highly recommendable and maybe would help them in treating their conditions. But as you said, and I have already noticed that, that when you treat from just from a mental, vital or physical level, may be you treat that condition but it can reappear if you don't work upon the true pattern itself. Because we always have desires, we're always getting hurt if our needs are not satisfied. So just for example, we should go and work on different levels and not at superficial way. Then another thing which I could share from my work, sometimes I am massaging people and sometimes I ask more questions. I do so and I'm surprised on the feedback that I receive. I will just give some examples so it makes some things clear. I did massage a lot of girls who, when I do a manipulation, they cannot open hips at all or they have a very limited movement. And I also feel somehow there's something that the person holds back and sometimes I ask them if they experienced any sexual abuse or maybe if their mom experienced that experience of sexual abuse. Maybe she was conceived in a way you don't you never know. So many times the girls confirmed and they said yes, how did you know and they sometimes they start crying or sharing or maybe they don't want to talk about it. Same, just the shoulders, we express a lot of our relationships, and then I see how some people have very blocked shoulders. I know we are carrying our problems and difficulties on our shoulders, and you can feel when a person is anxious or stressed, you can see where that stress goes into the body. So it's reflected on the shoulders, or some people have pain in the legs, and then legs are very, for example, they are connected with the earth. And then I ask them, do you have a strong connection with your mom? How is it? Is it painful, your relation? So many people confirm, how did you, how did you came to that and I sometimes explain them that. Yes, we, we tend to store this emotion, then if we don't have an approach of practice and releasing and surrendering us you before advice does everything. Then, of course, we get, we get into these conditions. Same with law and karma and our ancestors, because we are just carrying a lot of their information in our bodies, a lot of energies or a lot of patterns are being expressed in our behaviours. And I see very often people who tend to have the same problems like their family. So I'm asking sometimes, are you going through a divorce? But what happened to your mom? Where is your mom? Where is your dad? And when people start talking about it, they realise why I keep repeating their patterns. Why it cannot be me? So many people realise on their journey that something is wrong. I'm just expressing something which is not me truly. It's a part of my family inside me. And it's interesting to work with these people. And some go for just on a psychological approach. Some, they understand they can get a higher health from above and yeah, just I could talk a lot about it, a lot about this subject but I think just to have a confirmation or maybe we can draw from Joel's experience.
Sraddhalu (0:46:20):
In your approach when you see a patient or when you approach them, you're already sensing in some sense their energy even before there's a touch. Are you able to sense this and is there a difference when you touch or when you have sensed already?
Alina (0:46:30):
Yes definitely, it can be also just seeing them and then the moment when I touch them I can see already a rigidity or a resistance in the body. So that means you cannot really, they're not very easily flexible or maybe they're more introvert. They cannot allow themselves to express what they want. And some bodies, like yesterday, I worked with a lady who, she's a dancer, quite a famous dancer. So I could feel her body was just so aware, so light. And I just encouraged her to continue dancing, although she's now having a family, so her career is not the main focus. But I suggested to her, please work upon, and she said, how do you know I am really aware of my body? And she tells me how she feels, any slight changes occurring in her body. So, yeah, it's beautiful to share with some people this kind of thing.
Sraddhalu (0:47:43):
So, there are two things Alina has brought in which is very important. One is that you can also inherit certain tendencies because once the knot is in the biology, it also gets transferred in the biology, sometimes from parents to children. And Mother makes this observation that at the moment of childbirth, we would think that it's the best that you give out. But that's not always the case. She said often in the mother, the instinct is to throw out what is the worst in her, in the act of childbirth. So unless there has been a conscious training and a conscious intentionality with a higher purpose even in the birthing, often the tendency is of the most heavy and dull material knots which get thrown out in the process and the mother feels a great relief but those knots are then part of the psychology and biology of the child even and we inherit sometimes these tendencies without realising they're not ours. The second observation...
Alina (0:48:44):
One of the major works which I used to do using these healings, you would focus a lot on the project purpose we call this period before conception, nine months of pregnancy and first year of life. So a lot of the work is based on this project purpose, which means, I mean, how you've been conceived, what was the was there any will for the child to be birthed? Because of course you inherit that whole baggage of psychological approach.
Sraddhalu (0:49:28):
Yes. The second observation which you made also which is extremely important is the way it represents in different parts of the body. So depending on the nature of the knot, the level of consciousness where the knot forms, it maps to different parts of the body. So things to do with the mind would tend to happen in this region of the head down to the neck. Things which deal with the higher vital would tend to be in the chest region and arms. Things with the lower vital would be in the abdominal region. Things with the purely physical would be below that, from below the stomach all the way to the feet. And it's interesting because automatically where the trauma comes, and it may not be a physical trauma, it may be purely psychological trauma, for example, like in a divorce, the actual cause of the divorce might be on different levels of consciousness, and then it tends to accumulate in that part of the body. Of course, if it is a physical trauma, then it may make a knot there. But generally, the trauma itself is not from the physical injury. Like you may get a bullet in your arm in the middle of a war, but it is not the arm where the pain is. The pain is in the emotional centre where you had to do things which conflicted with your deepest values. And so, the knot itself might be mapped differently from a physical injury.
Alina (0:50:53):
Yeah, we have a whole section of, for example, of books, which tells us, for example, what could be the psychological approach, conflict or trauma related with all diseases, and we named all diseases and all the possibilities that could be behind in helping to facilitate the person to heal. So yes.
Sraddhalu (0:51:20):
Joel, would you like to share anything?
Joel (0:51:24):
Yes. So what I could say is that me, I have stopped practising. I practised for 10 years in psychosocial environment. But I stopped and I also stopped because I was very disappointed with the results. I was seeing very little changes in people, at least not permanent changes. And I remember one of my supervisor, a psychiatrist, telling me when I shared with him, he told me there are very few people who want to change and even fewer who are able to change. And I really, really wondered. So I'll be a bit radical. I do believe that at least in the field of psychotherapy that I've studied a little bit, I believe that without the spiritual component in it, the result will be very minimal. And I can draw on my own experience. So to solve all kinds of issues at the age of 25, trauma, abuse in childhood, I went for psychotherapy. I went to I think five different psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, design analysts, hypnotherapists, and I got some results, especially on the level of the heart, I was able to open a little bit. But it was a lot of work for very, very minimal results. I mean, I was in quite in a depressive mood since a teenager, quite anxious. And those things didn't really evolve much. But when I encountered spirituality, this I would like to share, it's a very interesting experience. While studying hatha yoga and other meditation practices like 13 years ago, in one experience of contact with Divine Love, all my symptoms of depression went away forever. In one contact.
Sraddhalu (0:53:20):
Wow!
Joel (0:53:21):
So, that was quite remarkable. I was totally astonished. The experience, the content of the experience of words, though it was an experience of love, through a calling for blessing on oneself and others, the message was, you are not alone. And that healed instantly all feeling of depression or depressive state, depressive mood that I was with, I've always carried since teenager. That was really like a gift. And continuing my journey as a patient, I turned towards Mother as a psychotherapist. She is all free and she is Almighty. So going to Matrimonial every day, I really went there with that idea also, is okay, let's continue the healing process. And I must say, though there's no discussion like with a psychotherapist, the transformation has been mindblowing, not knowing precisely what aspect of my psychology she was working on, I saw with time the result and the change, and they are permanent changes. What I was not observing in my patient or the people I was following, I had the feeling that those changes were not permanent, that something was falling back to the whole habit. Here, even I was smoking cigarettes like 10 years ago when I came to Auroville, and it went away completely. Not like when people stop smoking, you know, it remains always kind of an effort to avoid other people smoking. Either they have a repulsion or they have an attraction, but they have always a kind of conflict emotions regarding other smoking. Me, I can have somebody smoking next to me and feel the smoke and say like, oh yeah, okay, smells good. No, I'm not interested at all. So this type of definitive healing and transformation, I have found it only through the contact with the Divine. Now I would like just to share something because I don't want to bash too much psychotherapy and psychotherapists. There are many good advantages also. And one of the key ones for somebody who's interested in sadhana, what I have learned through my psychotherapies is to develop introspection and a sense of sensitivity. Because when you look into oneself to see where are the knots and things, it becomes very useful for your spiritual practice further on, which is that, oh, okay, this needs transformation, this needs transformation, and it's much more easy because you have learned to be honest with yourself and seeing what are the weakness to be transformed. So that was my little contribution.
Sraddhalu (0:56:08):
It's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. So we recognize the value of psychotherapy also as a therapy, but it's limitation because of the very model that it approaches, which is a bottom-up and pushing everything into the subconscious. Ideally, and there are people like that, psychotherapists, who come from a deeper understanding of the yoga psychology and particularly the integral yoga psychology, which is much more profound than just basic yoga psychology. Because normal yoga psychology is primarily oriented to the withdrawal from life, which is what you'll see in most of what comes as yoga or as goal of yoga, even as spiritual practices of all lineages. Integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo is the only yoga which aims at a manifestation and therefore deals with every part of consciousness in terms of its full potential to manifest the Divine. And so as a psychological framework, it is far more profound, rich and complete than anything out there without exception. And so there are people who have this background to whatever degree, not always necessarily complete but still and who bring in these elements into their psychotherapy practice. And I've met people like that in the West particularly. It's interesting, I noticed that many people in the West who have an innate spiritual aspiration and would have taken to a spiritual life if they had known about it. Take to psychology as their study, specialisation, and then psychotherapy as their work, because it automatically involves introspection, self-observation, and self-cultivation, and then helping others do that. So effectively it becomes a kind of a practical yoga, but of course starting with a framework which is still very immature and raw. But then they through it they open to Sri Aurobindo and then begin to bring that knowledge into their practice and of course they have some of the most effective results.
But the important point which Joel highlighted is unless there is this top-down change, the bottom-up change is never permanent or complete. Top-down change not only becomes permanent and complete, but it can be radical change in a very short time with minimal struggle. And this is the advantage of the Spiritual approach. So I think he has already answered the question about yogic methods of healing trauma. But to generalise all the points which were covered both by Alina and Joel, to generalise the yogic methods would be becoming conscious and then opening that of which you're conscious to the higher action of the Divine. It's the most general way in which I could describe it. You cannot always become entirely conscious but even if you're conscious of the blade of grass that comes out from the ground, you're not conscious of its roots and they can be very extensive. Even if you're conscious of this blade of grass, you open it to the light of the sun of the Divine consciousness. Again, many ways to do that. Aspect of the Divine Mother as a Shakti, aspect of the Divine as the Divine principle above. Again, personal or impersonal, there are many ways in which you can relate. But just bringing that in relation to the Divine is enough to start a process by which the Divine light and force begin now to enter. And through the blade of grass of which you are aware only, the force enters into the root system and begins to change from inside out. This is the great power of the yogic approach because it does a top-down. A bottom-up action cannot do that because you are always dealing with subconscious impulses and they don't have a capacity to change themselves. A super-conscious action can act to change everything. So this would be a most general perhaps response to the question. We could go to the next question which is aligned.
Alina (1:00:09):
Yes. So, Connor is asking, what do you feel in the Aurobindonian view on shadow work or Carl Jung's concept of the shadow? It seems Jung's theories have quite a lot of truth in them, but it also seems he made some large errors and had quite a few misunderstandings. Specifically, is there a truth to the concept of projecting our parental wounds, inner repressed desires, shadow or unmet needs on all our situations in life, as well as needing to build healthy masculine and healthy feminine qualities, and disconnecting ourselves from our parents' false concepts of us. It's in the same range of topics. So opening also from within, and I met also many of my teachers and other psychologists would use as a base this method, but it would be good if people would have on their own this interest towards spirituality, because it's hard only at once, in one session, going to a psychotherapist to do the whole working opening within or from above, and some people, people want to have more practical therapies.
Sraddhalu (1:01:50):
Yes. So again, the way Connor has articulated his question is very very broad. Just some initial quick comments and then I will also ask Joel's observations on this. This whole term shadow work and the shadow is for me a bit problematic because it assumes wherever there is light, there will be a shadow and shadow represents, shadow has to be there in some form. That's an assumption, an implication. And the shadow is used to describe anything that we are not conscious of. And necessarily in the thinking itself and in the vocabulary that is representing something negative, something dark, something contrary to that which is lit up, which is positive. Somehow this implication is always there. You may not always make it explicit, but it's always there. The problem with this model is that all that is unknown to us is considered shadow, when in fact the bulk of what is unknown to us is light and is super conscious or is subliminal, but is lit up and extremely aware, extremely developed even perhaps, but unknown to us or unconscious and all that would be also thrown into shadow if they were aware of it. So the implication of shadow work is always about something negative and there's no one recognition of that higher possibility. So this is a problem first to the term itself and then the whole associated nature of shadow work which comes in with that theory. So yes there's some truth to it. There's an exaggeration which comes from it and all of it is burying everything into the subconscious when in fact it is bulk of it may be in the super conscious. This is a point Sri Aurobindo makes in fact regarding all these theories, projecting parental wounds, inner repressed desires, unmet needs, etc., all these are of course part of human life. None of them need to become a serious problem. All depends on how one deals with them.
I'm just going to put it in this way. Let's say you have a parent, sibling, friend, boss, whatever, who is a cause of great wound potentially. The person is always criticising or is always a negative or whatever. A lot depends on how you receive it. If you looked at it and say, oh poor fellow, he has so many problems, oh he is always unhappy. You're actually in a state of consciousness where not only you are immune but you have something positive to give them if at all they are willing to receive. But you are effectively immune to that. But if every day you tell yourself, ‘oh no, once again he is going to harass me, oh I'm feeling so bad, oh I'm feeling miserable, he made me miserable’, you are slipping, sliding into a dark zone. The person may be exactly the same and you may actually end up feeding them in a negative loop, you'll end up feeding them. The person may be exactly the same but how you approach it will change the effect on you. So projecting parental wounds, inner repressed desires, unmet needs etc. None of them need to be cause for a problem. It all depends on how you approach them. I've shared here the example of what I learned from Dr. D. V. Joshi who was the head of our laboratory. He passed away only this year at the age of 96. He said to me one day when he was in college, age 21, he just woke up and had this clear realisation. He said, to be happy is my choice. Nobody can take that away from me. Nobody has the power to make me unhappy if I choose to be happy? And he said from this point on I have decided I will never again be unhappy and it's a fact. He said from the age of 21 once he had that realisation he was never unhappy. Whatever happened in life he said, ‘ah okay, but I'm not going to be unhappy’. That choice automatically frees you from bulk of all these things. So yes shadow work has its value, but how about light work? If I may play with that idea, how about changing how we relate to pressures of life? And then one need not get sucked into these problems. Of course, the ability to do this requires that something in you is related either to your psychic presence or the higher Divine help. That's the only light which can be permanently lit. Any constructed or pretentious form of light or optimism will eventually break under some pressure. There are people with very strong, positive, optimistic vital, but even they can sustain that optimism only if there's some deeper spiritual or psychic influence. So somebody has just put this question online right now asking how important or urgent is it to shift the centre of consciousness and for coming out of these influences etc. Yes, this is the whole point. It is the single most urgent thing. Nothing else matters more than this contact and then growing influence either of the Divine within or the Divine above or around or even an idea of the Divine to which you connect and open to. The fact that there is a link is enough for you to completely change the outcome that circumstances have on you. Circumstances may not change but how you receive their result or their impact is completely different. So for me this would be the thing to emphasise more than the shadow work. Again like I said it's not the comprehensive treatment of the topic but it's a general indicator of the approach. And I don't know if Joel or Alina would like to add.
Joel (1:08:26):
No, me, I don't have much to add. Something you have already said just before. So me, most of this knowledge I have forgotten. I read it and I forget it, especially since I discovered the extensive and most comprehensive and making totally sense psychology described by Mother and Sri Aurobindo, I remember reading the Letters on Yoga and having so many insights, thinking okay this is the real thing, really the thing.. So like you said if we rebuild the psychology or an approach based on what they are explaining, then we, we have something really worth.
Sraddhalu (1:09:08):
Thanks for sharing. Alina, anything? That's it.
Alina (1:09:10):
No, I would just add that each time, yes, when I'm facing a situation where I don't feel comfortable or with someone who is criticising or I'm trying always to see him as a collaborator for my own progress. So if he can press some buttons in me and have something come up then he's showing me over and over again on what I have to still work upon and what I still have to transform or what is still to be worked upon. Yes, so we are almost close to our very end of the session. So would you take another last question?
[Sraddhalu] Yes, we can take the last question.
[Alina] From Professor Paramanshwaran’s student. Why should current youth read Sri Aurobindo's and the Mother's works? What knowledge will youth get from their writings that can connect them with pressing issues of modern life and career? What are the basic writings of the Masters to start with, especially for those who are yet to feel the spiritual call, but are bound by compulsions of family and work and relationships? I think it's a beautiful question to end with.
Sraddhalu (1:10:46):
Yes. Many us feel the need to inculcate in our children, students, friends, the same joy that we have in reading or learning from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I've seen many families where that transmission was reduced to just offering prayers. But if there was not a transmission of this joy of learning and growing, then often the value of what is given fades. But this question is there in the minds of the youth because in the minds of the youth, spirituality is something that you take up after you retire. Everything that has been taught about spirituality is about detachment. Don't enjoy, don't get trapped, don't get caught, withdraw. Don't follow your desires, don't be egoistic, don't have fun. You have to be serious. So all the associations of spirituality are with an ascetic life. So the moment you say Sri Aurobindo, the Sri itself tells you, ah, this is a spiritual guy and he is going to ask me to withdraw from life, monasticism, and I am not interested. And they will tell you in so many words and I've heard this from so many, ‘right now I want to enjoy my life. And then later when I retire, I will turn to spirituality’. This is so deeply rooted and unfortunately it is perpetuated by the whole educational system itself, which looks upon spirituality and only in terms of asceticism. So to the question, why should you read Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s works, because it will help you enjoy your life truly. Because they will give you the means by which not only you can enjoy fully, but you can maximise the learning potential of your life and the creative potential of yourself. Why? Because what they teach is not asceticism. What they teach is perfection of life. And perfection of life in knowledge, in power, in full enjoyment and in perfection and beauty of manifestation. Therefore, turn to them because the spirituality they bring is fundamentally different. It is life-affirming, life-fulfilling, life-enjoying, fully, truly.
And I make a distinction. What is not true enjoyment? What is not full enjoyment? When you enjoy and it is followed by the negative enjoyment, suffering. I ate so much good food, now I come back and I am sick. I feel revulsion when I think of the food that I ate. That's not true enjoyment. The true enjoyment is when you can eat and eat and eat and eat. All you want, as much as you want as long as you want with full delight of everything that you eat. That's how the soul is going to enjoy the world and also your body can enjoy. So what is going to make it possible for you to truly enjoy? And in this way I mean it, to be able to eat all you want as much as you want. And you will recall Sri Aurobindo's phrase is still vivid in my mind, in his commentary on the Isha Upanishad, there's the whole section, the rule of the divine life, Tena tyaktena bhunjita in Sanskrit - by that renounced thou shouldst enjoy. That is the affirmation of the Veda. You are meant to enjoy life. But the rule of true enjoyment is that it should be without attachment. So when the food comes, you enjoy it. When the food goes, you can enjoy it's going away equally or the meeting of another food. I'm using food also in a very symbolic way because all life experiences food for the soul. All is nourishing you in some way, giving you the means for your growth. And so everything is meant to be enjoyed. But there's a way by which you can enjoy without the negation of the enjoyment. That's not all. That's not all. If that was all then it would still be worth it, but it's not all, there's much more and I want to compare here; I will read from a portion of Sri Aurobindo, from one of his letters, where he describes in what way he is different. He says that and it was in a response to a question on the Bhagavad Gita that he says it is not a fact that the Gita gives the whole base of Sri Aurobindo's message. For the Gita seems to admit the cessation of birth in the world as the ultimate aim or at least the ultimate culmination of Yoga. It does not bring forward the idea of spiritual evolution or the idea of the higher planes and the supramental truth consciousness and the bringing down of the consciousness as the means of the complete transformation of earthly life. All this is special to Sri Aurobindo which is not there in the Gita.
Sraddhalu (1:15:52):
What is special? The idea of a spiritual evolution. That here we are in the midst of an evolution of course, there's a biological and psychological evolution but we are much more as part of a spiritual evolution, where our spiritual potential itself is growing. Your ability to perceive reality, your ability to experience reality, your ability to engage with reality and shape, organise, act upon and change it, all of these grow with the heightening, deepening and widening of your consciousness. As a result, it will have its effect on your mind, life and body's capacities by deepening, widening and heightening them also. So the nature of the spiritual evolution has enormous impact on the entirety of your personality and even your body, but on your entire experience of life. There's no withdrawal here. It is all about fulfilment in life. So the idea of spiritual evolution, just this, changes everything. But into this he brings something else. The idea of higher planes and the supramental truth consciousness. Now without going into details of what that means, it means everything you can imagine today in terms of what you might be capable of in your highest, greatest potential is still of a certain limited domain of consciousness. There are things you cannot imagine are possible as experiences in the higher gradations. Experiences of infinity of knowledge, infinity of power, infinity of beauty and delight, of bliss, profound peace so solid, so vast that it can support an entire universe, experiences of intense power, so intense that they could shatter the whole universe in a single kick - All these are part of the world experience you will have of which you can also become an agent of manifestation or bring that power to act to change your circumstances and shape them as a creative expression of your life. And this is, I'm saying only as a glimpse of potentialities of higher planes all the way to the Supramental Truth consciousness, which means you have the totality of knowledge and power and delight unmixed, infinite, unendingly diverse and surprising in its potential. And all of this can be brought down to make a complete transformation of earthly life. All this is what he is offering, which is not there in the Gita, which is not there in any of the other spiritual traditions anywhere in the world today. Okay? Then the letter continues…
Sraddhalu (1:18:56):
The idea of the Supermind, the Truth consciousness is there in the Rig Veda, according to Sri Aurobindo's interpretation. Others say it's not there. And in one or two passages of the Upanishads, but in the Upanishads it is there only in seed, in the conception of the being of knowledge. Let us skip all that. It is not developed and even the principle of it has disappeared from the Hindu tradition. So what Sri Aurobindo represents is not Hinduism as it is currently known. It may be the origin of Hinduism if at all, but it goes far beyond that. But it does not stop with what Hinduism offers today. It is these things among others that constitute the novelty of Sri Aurobindo's message as compared with the Hindu tradition. Among others, there are other things also which Sri Aurobindo brings and now he shows the difference in certain areas. The idea that the world is not either a creation of Maya or only a play of Leela or the Divine or a cycle of births in the ignorance from which we have to escape. This is what comes in many of the existing traditions within Hinduism. So it's none of these. Let's look at what it is not. So the world is a creation of Maya. This is one of the Vedantic major schools today. So prominent that for many this is Hinduism. So it is a Maya, a creative or even a deceptive power of illusion which creates the world and so well you have to get out of the illusion. That's the only conclusion. Or other traditions which say, oh it is only a play of the Divine. So well you just participate in the play for as long as it lasts. Then you drop out of the play and go back to merge in the Divine. But you are only in transition here. Or a cycle of births in the ignorance from which we have to escape. This is another major tradition which is also a global imprint. That here you have only suffering. You have only ignorance. You want to get free of the ignorance? Well, you have to step out, escape. You cannot be free here. And again there, you enter a state in which you are free from the ignorance during the lifetime and eventually your body sheds and you withdraw. That's it. These are the various broad traditions associated with Hinduism. Then there are the religions which will simply say you obey the rule book and then you get rewarded or punished in heaven and hell. We don't look at that now.
So it is none of these that Sri Aurobindo teaches. What does he teach? He says the world is a field of manifestation in which there is a progressive evolution of the soul and the nature in matter and from matter through life and mind to what is beyond mind till it reaches the complete revelation of Satchitananda in life. Now this is the scheme Sri Aurobindo offers of our sense of purpose, of our birth in the world and the world itself. That this is a field of manifestation. We have come here to manifest, make many, give form to all that is potential in the Divine. So, field of manifestation in which there is a progressive evolution of the soul and the nature. So, soul grows, you grow in consciousness, I'm more mature, but also my nature changes, my body grows in capacity, my heart and emotions grow in their richness of experience, my mind grows in its possibilities and all these first we grow in matter, what we create here in the material experience of life, then they grow in life and its possibilities, then they grow in mind and its possibilities and go on growing through those higher gradations until the full possibility of the Satchitananda is not only experienced but fully manifested and revealed through your mind, through your life, through your body entirely. There's nothing which you can say, ah that cannot come down that is too pure for the material world to express all possibilities of such a done and are meant to be expressed of course the evolution will take time until they can express all possibilities potentially unendingly and that's what makes this spiritual evolution itself without limit. There is no point where you'll ever be bored every time that something extraordinary is manifested, you'll say, wow what a wonderful thing and what else and there's something even more wonderful beyond your capacity to imagine and a delight far greater than you could imagine waiting still to be revealed such is the nature, the complete revelation of Satchitananda in life, nothing left out. You see that the goal is so great, nothing is there which is not worthy of matter. Matter itself is a sacred domain for the full manifestation. Not yet capable of it, but potentially capable of it. And then he says, it is this that is the basis of the Yoga and gives a new sense to life. What is that sense? The sacredness of the universe, the extraordinary opportunity that this birth gives to us which is not possible in any of the higher domains of the subtler and higher worlds only possible in matter, only possible by taking birth in the body and that's why this world, that's why we are born, that's our purpose of life.
Sraddhalu (1:24:48):
Now when this vision of Spirituality is shown and of course I've given it in a very succinct form, elaborate it, give examples of what is possible, of course for young children whose minds are not prepared and this is still perhaps too abstract, but start with examples which are accessible and then notice how whatever your deepest and highest aspiration, desire, hope, dream, ideal, all of these are intended to be made real in life. And that's what this yoga teaches you. How to make that possible, which no other system teaches you. No other yoga or religion teaches you. How to make possible that which is your highest ideal or dream. And it teaches you in methods, using methods which are extremely practical, extremely effective and powerful. Experiences or realisations which in the other parts may involve an entire lifetime of effort can be actually realised here within weeks, months, because the method, the approach itself is different and all this is taught to you in the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Not only that, so the question to the part of the question where he asks what can these writings give you for pressing issues of modern life and career, everything! Because the goal is this full realisation and manifestation. Nothing in life has been left out in the coverage and scope of Sri Aurobindo's writings. The Mother says this, he has given you everything. Now it may sound like an exaggeration but this is the fact, because he has expressed all the seed core concepts of knowledge and these are means, these are holographic focal points because they repeat everywhere in all fields on all levels. You catch the principle and then you can see how it applies in every activity. I read Sri Aurobindo on education and I get insights on artificial intelligence programming. I read his writings on political thoughts and on human unity and I get knowledge of governance, administration, law. You read his philosophical discussions and you will sharpen your brain, your mind as nothing else can do. Nuances, subtleties, literally your mind is reshaped into the image of what he lived. So for those who are yet to feel the spiritual call, well start with your current ideal and dream, whatever that is, and you will have all the tools necessary to be able to realise them. And the point though is, it is power of the Spirit which is going to be tapped for your material realisation even if that's your starting point.
Sri Aurobindo himself, you will recall, turned to yoga with the intention of gaining power to free India from colonial rule. Because he saw a yogi perform what was effectively a miracle to heal somebody. He said, ah yes, if spirituality can give power for that, it can give me power to free the country. That's how he entered. Let that be your entry point. As you enter the practice itself, you will change because you will awaken to your own deeper and higher dreams and those too are meant to be realised. The questioner though has a flaw in the questioning. For those who are yet to feel the spiritual call but are bound by compulsions of family and world and relationships. So this idea that family, world and relationships bind you from the spiritual call is an idea that belongs to the ascetic goals. These are the things which prevent you from the asceticism. But for a life affirming spirituality, all of these are your field of action for spirituality. Family is your immediate domain, your Sangha, into which you have to bring those higher values that you wish to live. World is the larger Sangha. Relationships are the domain where you have to now bring a completely different approach. The three characteristics of the integral yoga which Sri Aurobindo describes as outstanding characteristics which do not belong to any other system of yoga or religion or psychological training: The first is that there is no fixed sequence. There are methods, there are processes but they are not fixed. They are often parallel and there is a shift in emphasis. So that is one. Second is that there is no precondition to take up the yoga. You can begin wherever you are in your current development. Unlike other systems where you must have this particular requirement of temperament, only then you can follow that system. Here, because it is all inclusive in the total transformation, you start from where you are, as you are, and grow from there to your full potential. Third, it does not require you to withdraw from any activity of life because all activities are meant to be transformed. So nothing in life needs to be rejected. And this is the part I want to highlight. Whatever you have as circumstances around you, whatever you have as strengths or weaknesses within you, they are your starting point. They are your field of growth and exploration in this spiritual evolution for a complete transformation of your life. So I think this is again a very broad framework as a response. I'm not going to details of what else Sri Aurobindo and the Mother can give you. But if we understand this fully, whatever your age, whatever your interest or priority in life you will find that there is nothing which gives you a more complete means to realise your interest.
This change is extremely important. We will have occasion to discuss it perhaps next time and the next few sessions which will deal with the nature of this yoga, planes of consciousness as well as practices and the questions around those things. So we'll be elaborating a lot more on this. But you must understand that this is something unique and entirely different from all existing yoga traditions and religions and philosophies. Go over these key points that Sri Aurobindo mentions again and again, because they're so unique and so new, that it will change entirely the way you look at the world. This entire universe, including the physical universe, is body of Satchitananda. Your body is a vehicle to manifest Satchitananda and touch and enjoy Satchitananda, that is, universe. The place of matter, the place of your body, the place of your individuality in the universe undergoes a complete change. And if you do not completely change your way of looking at things, you will never fully understand what this yoga is about. So take time to work on it, to change your perspective. It took me a few years actually to make the complete shift. But when you do this, what it will open to you, the sense of purpose, the sense of priorities, and the potentialities, and the joy of the journey itself, will be the greatest gift that you will have. That Sri Aurobindo and the Mother took birth on Earth to teach this to us and give us these means, give us the example and give us the physical presence and the contact with their personality is the Divine grace and gift that we all have and we are still very close to that event of their manifestation to be able to feel still very vividly the power of what they have brought. We can take a moment to concentrate on this, hold this, perhaps centre ourselves in aspiration or just in gratitude.
Sraddhalu (1:33:45):
Thank you and Namaste.
[Alina] Namaste.