EWS #78 Questions from Viewers (21)  - on Spiritual Life - 1

Aug 07, 2021

Alina (0:00:01):
Namaste. We welcome you all to our online series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. My name is Alina and together with Joel. Hi Joel, Namaste.

[Joel] Namaste, Alina.

We welcome Sraddhalu. Namaste.

[Sraddhalu] Namaste.

Today we will continue with some new topics and we will answer the questions received from our viewers on the topic of spiritual life and growth of consciousness. This will cover questions on spiritual life, various practices and experiences, levels of consciousness, and we hope for many, many parts. Today we have the first part and we invite our viewers to address their questions at the email integralstudies.in[at]gmail.com. We invite you all to write your question beforehand if you want on this subject of spiritual life, levels of consciousness or other topics which can be discussed further. Thank you all for visiting and staying with us. And I will continue with the first set of questions. From Nadejda. Here is a very nice comment she makes, which is very commonly felt through all the young people especially. She is writing, what I faced in myself and met among a lot of young people in many countries is the problem of social and professional determination. A lot of people are not happy with the profession they are in, however they cannot leave due to financial fears. Quite a few people don't know what they want to do in life professionally. They are lost in some sense and don't know how to find their place in the world. Maybe this is a gap in the educational system, but the causes are probably much deeper. Can you please talk a little bit about this problem, its causes, and its possible resolutions. Some practical advice would be also appreciated. Another question on the same topic from Lohit. In the corporate world and some of the life career coaches speak about having a work-life balance, balance in a relationship. Is there a state termed as balance? If so, how can one perceive and sustain this? Does such a state of balance play any importance in the life of a devotee of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother?

Sraddhalu (0:04:02):
Yes, these are both such important questions because I would say all of us face this problem to some degree or other. The question itself and the problem itself goes back many thousands of years I suppose. The Mother refers to it in the context of the establishment of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. She says that throughout her travels in every space where she met with people she had her own as you know spiritual groups that were studying with her. Everywhere she found this problem, especially for those who have an active spiritual aspiration, that they found themselves in conflict with the environment and the work that they were doing, which was not aligned to their spiritual aspiration and values. And it was either choosing the spiritual aspiration or accepting the work, but the two could never be unified. The work itself was contradictory. Had it been aligned to the spiritual aspiration, it would probably not be a problem and somehow any work aligned to the spiritual aspiration does not give enough money or at least in most cases it does not. And so Mother says that she decided that if one day she had the chance, she would create a space where people could devote themselves entirely to their spiritual pursuit without having to struggle to earn their living. And then she says, and so when the opportunity came to start Sri Aurobindo Ashram, it was with this intention that she started it. Now this should not mean that pursuing your spiritual aspiration is contradictory to life or to career or to work or to art or to creativity or science or business. It's not contradictory. It's just the problem was in order to earn your living, you had to compromise with the spiritual aspiration. Whereas it should be possible to have your workspace itself fully aligned to the spiritual aspiration and the two work together. Whether you are working in the field of art or science or business or any other form of activity. They can be aligned in principle, why not? But they are not, at least in the way we find it in the world. So she created such a space in the ashram where you find even people who were artists could be dedicated. There were artists who were just doing their art the whole day and then there were people who were working in their own fields sometimes not necessarily fields that they knew they liked but they got into a field which they learned to like also and then continued to do that in a way that gave them personal satisfaction in the form of the work as well as the fulfilment of the spiritual aspiration and ideal.

It does not mean that you will find that situation today. Today, if you brought Sunilda as a musician and said, okay, now you do what Mother gave you to do, it wouldn't be accepted in the present structure of the ashram. Or you could not have Huta doing her painting and art because she would be told, no you have to work so many hours in such and such a department and under sometimes not always conducive circumstances. Because we find even now people actually in their workspace find their aspiration questioned.  But that's more a condition of decline. It's not the reality of what the ashram is. But if we look at the ideal that the ashram is formed around. We find that this is the problem that it was intended to solve. But this can also be solved in other spaces. It's a model to be solved in other spaces equally in some format with its own variations. Auroville in a sense is taking this model to a broader framework of an entire township. Again things are not perfect. You'll have problems here and there, certain things don't align, but certainly the framework of freedom is greater and that allows you space to pursue the form of your aspiration which most suits. In principle, therefore, it should be possible to extend it into other spaces. It's not so easy, simply because of the way the larger economic framework is set, even that would change eventually but right now it's not. For example, if you created a artwork which is a masterpiece, the value that it would gain for you to earn a living from may not necessarily be commensurate to the actual value of a masterpiece. The value that would sell might be something much more crass and not aligned to the spiritual aspiration. So to that extent it's a reflection of the values of society which are not aligned to the spiritual aspiration itself. But all this is just to understand the broader framework.

Sraddhalu (0:09:33):

The question is what do you do? In practice, either one chooses a compromise or one finds two different spaces. One space which earns the living and the other space which becomes your primary field of let's say self-fulfilment. You are an artist, so you do your art weekends or an hour a day or a few minutes a day and occasionally longer, but which gives you that satisfaction and then you do the work which may or may not be aligned. If you can, you would find a work that is closer to your temperament, your swabhava, as we say, your innate nature. If you can bring it closer and closer, that would bring it closer to your satisfaction. But from a spiritual point of view, that will only be a first step. An activity aligned to your swabhava is naturally more conducive to the spiritual aspiration brought into the work. But in principle, because spirituality is essentially a relationship with the Spirit, with Self, it is not bound to form. So, in practice, one could bring those values into the workspace that you are required to. I am going to give a few examples and we will see also some tricky points there.

Let us say you are working in a business space. Your assignment, primary responsibility may be administering people. What you would do then is to bring in your deeper aspiration into that work. So from a Spiritual point of view, what would be your relationship with a group of people working with you in your team? And you make that the basis of how you relate to them. Even when you have to push somebody to get certain results, meet deadlines, your underlying relationship with them would be on the deeper recognition of the soul that they are in a journey of evolution. Whatever shortcomings you see in them, you would see from that point of view. Your interventions would be formed with that perspective. If you have to squeeze a person, I don't use the word punishment, but you have to sometimes squeeze a person to overcome their inertia, well, you would do that with the same compassion that would come from this perspective. And I believe that you would be a far more effective leader, administrator, if you were able to put this into practice. Now, it may not be obvious how to do it all the time. You may end up in situations where you lose your temper, you get frustrated, you lose your perspective, you exaggerate in your responses or reactions and that's part of your self-cultivation then.

If your work represented, let's say, to take a completely different example, you are now a programmer where you're not looking after people, you're looking after code, machines, ideas, implementation, within of course deadlines, then your entire focus will be on developing the perspective, the approach, the vision in which that coding becomes smooth, inspired, even spontaneous, and it would be a form of self-development at the same time. Where you find you could do things much better, but there's a deadline and you're required to make a compromise. Trying to feel what's the right balance, again, could be done through a development of an intuitive perception or a mental effort, but the dedication to the work, to make it perfect, to make it complete, to make it error-free, to work on yourself, to be able to perceive differently, all these would be a part of your spiritual life. If your work involves dealing with clients, your approach would be to see things from a perspective of maximising the evolutionary benefit for all. So your company is your first responsibility, but your client is also your responsibility. Without them, your company doesn't survive. So you would take care of them with a genuine intention. And when you actually do that, you will find the client feels your genuineness because you go out of your way to be of help, sometimes with small details. And they know you're not doing just a job, you're actually caring for them, which will create a better synergy, better trust and would actually develop the business better. If your work requires you to manufacture, for example, you are in a manufacturing sector and you have to struggle against economic circumstances, getting orders, the challenge will be how to build value in a space that assists all to grow and benefit.

Sraddhalu (0:14:46):

So I am just giving broadly some examples so that you get a sense of how any activity of life can be seen from its underlying spiritual value and you can approach it with an attitude that fulfils the larger spiritual purpose of your birth or the world and so is not essentially misaligned from your aspiration. The problem only might come where either the work you are doing is fundamentally not aligned to your temperament, so you're being asked to do programming when you're naturally an artist and would rather be doing music or painting or writing poetry, but then you would try to see how the programming itself can be dealt with as a work of art. And it's possible. In fact, that is my experience when you are really doing it well. But that's not always possible for everybody. Or you find yourself put an assignment of selling a product when you want to be an artist. I'm trying to show a sharp contrast. And you find yourself totally misaligned. Well, the effort would then be to bring the sensitivity of your art nature into the product sale. Would that make you a better salesman? I'm not sure. But at least if you bring that in and try to lead to some fulfilment through it, your work would give you some satisfaction. Of course, such a work, such a sheer misalignment would not last. You would need to change job eventually, if not sooner than eventually, later you'll be forced to change it.

So let's move from this extreme misalignment to something which is a partial misalignment, a compromise. Now you find in your work you're required to do something which is contrary to your conscience. As a salesperson you have to push so many products. Perhaps you're required to deceive your customer, hide the defects of your products and these would go against your green. Perhaps even here there are ways to do it that you may still not reveal what are the shortcomings of your products. But in a discussion, you may say every product has its specialisations of strengths and perhaps it has weaknesses. But as far as we are concerned, we are focusing on our strengths and you push the positive aspect. If negative issues are raised, you can of course draw upon what the company's position is formally and say this is how we approach it. But it would create conflicts. You're required to, sometimes in big companies, you're required to bypass the law of a company, of a country. If you're in a multinational, you have to find ways to fool the local laws to fulfil other objectives. These things will conflict with your conscience. And we cannot say that they can be brought into the domain of your spiritual values. But what you can do is to push on the positive side. You're asked to lie, to sell a product as part of the job. So I don't have a simple answer for that. But it's a question of recognizing what works for you and what does not. For some people, they will say, all right, if I didn't lie, then somebody else would take my place and would do the job better than me in any case, so I might as well do that and earn my living and ask for forgiveness. For someone, that might be good enough. For someone else a play of words might be acceptable as you see in the Mahabharata when Krishna asks one of the warriors to lie, he asks Yudhishthira to take a position about whether Ashwatthama has been killed and Yudhishthira says, ‘yes Ashwatthama is killed’ and then murmurs softly whether the human or the elephant is a different question. So there's an elephant named Ashwatthama who has been killed and so he can get away with what is called a white lie. Technically it's a truth but actually it's a deceptive lie. For some people that might be good enough to find your way. Some people may feel none of these are acceptable, they will struggle in that position avoiding to lie perhaps with lesser sales or eventually they will change job. So I'm not offering a simple solution here because there is none. The point is to find your level of comfort to draw in the activity of the work field given to you the maximum potential of your spiritual values and thus bring it in alignment as close as practical with your overall spiritual aspiration.

Sraddhalu (0:24:09):

The Mother made special effort to bridge this for which purpose in the ashram she brought in every field of activity including And the very first business she named Honesty. The second business she named Honesty. The third business, Honesty. So there's Honesty departmental stores, Honesty engineers and contractors, Honesty electricals. All of them were Honesty. Why? Because she was trying to bring those values. And I do believe that a company which practises these values will always succeed better because the client base will always trust you. In fact, in the most advanced business training programs, these are the values which are actually put forward. You have to be honest, you have to be transparent, build trust with your customers and so on. The problem is if your product is defective, you can't really build trust with the customers. So there is a need for integrity in the business. If from conception to product to marketing, everything is integrated with those values, then nothing can prevent your effective growth. Into that if there is a shared value system among all those present of a higher purpose, a sense of purpose, you can actually feel the energy, feel the vibration. As a client you will feel impacted by it. Often, I don't remember the name, but once in a while one comes across one of these very new startup companies where they actually tell you we are XYZ, they give you their names and say what they're passionate about. Now the whole thing could be a pretence in principle and some of them do pretend because that's now the marketing gimmick. But when they are genuine you read their bio or you read how they describe their product and the kind of pride they have in certain minute nuances of it, you can feel that they truly care for what they are doing. And then of course what remains is the business acumen. If that is lacking, even a good product will not succeed. So a business environment is difficult, but assuming that all these competencies are taken care of, the underlying sense of purpose will actually make it far more effective in the long run.

So this is just to give a broad answer. I don't know if there's a simple solution. What I will say is, find a workspace where you have to compromise the least with your overall aspiration. Find an activity in your workspace which is most commensurate with your swabhava or when it is not fully aligned, take it as a challenge of how you can develop your competence and capacity in that kind of activity and how you can bring in those higher values in what you do to whatever extent. Again a very important correction for you will be to not mix the sense of spirituality which we have with the ascetic spirituality so I find a lot of people have a problem with increasing profits. So they'll say, ‘I'm being pushed to raise profits. So I feel that's bad’. Why? ‘Well that's bad. Money is bad or profitability is bad’. I'm sorry that does not fit our objective or our perspective of spirituality. Wealth is meant to be expressed for the Divine work. And if you treat the work you do as a service or as a consecration to the Divine, increase of wealth and increase of profitability is fine. Again, the proportion of profitability, you might say, oh, we are profiting 10 times over actual expense. That's criminal. I don't think that would be a correct perspective. If there was a time when profit was a product cost plus a certain fixed amount, today it is a multiplier. So product cost multiplied by so much. I don't think that in itself is an issue. The question is, where is all that profit going? After going to investors, yes, of course, they benefit. But then is it also going to improve the product are you actually creating real value for your customers maybe if you're very expensive your customers may be not enough in numbers but those who value it and are willing to pay that much it's fine you're meeting their requirement but then through it all are you continuing to build value or are you after a year going to shut down the company and like a fly-by-night operator shift to some other product. Then that's a different game. That's a form of cheating in a sense. You build a trust and then deceive. So I don't count on that. I am looking at a real value created whatever the profit margin is irrelevant here, if all that is going eventually to continue to build value. So that ascetic mentality needs to be corrected for, it should be removed. Wealth is to be seen as a means for increasing the possibilities of the Divine work and the richness of the Divine work to bring in opulence and wealth, comfort, strength, knowledge, all of these are to increase.

Sraddhalu (0:26:06):

The second question in this life, in the same context of a corporate life, is about balance between work and life. So again, the problem is work and personal life are seen as two different things and sometimes contradictory. Ideally, your work should be your life or your life should be your work. This used to be the case earlier where let's say a carpenter who made beautiful furniture was doing that all his life. His home was his workshop. There is not a business and then a turn back to a home life which is different from the business. The family itself was dedicated to that skill. The children would learn from the parents. Both husband and wife would be in some way participating. You still see that in some of the smaller shops, what they call family shops. There's no real difference. For a doctor, for example, in the middle of the night, if a patient says, I'm having an emergency, well, you just wake up and go. You don't have a separate life really. All life is given. And of course that's an extreme because only in a medical emergency would you be awakened at night. A carpenter wouldn't be. But still, if someone were to come and say, you know what, I really want this and I'm leaving tomorrow, can you help me out? If a person really cared for his craft, he won't say sorry today, I'm shut. He'll say great, I'll give it to you because you love it so much. So this work-life division seems to me a bit of an artificial thing. On the contrary, here today the work is sometimes so gruelling that you need to break away from it to have some de-stressing time which becomes your life. And that I think is an error of the workspace itself. And such relationships with workers are not going to last normally. It might not be the most healthy environment for you also spiritually, but maybe you earn a lot, so you choose to compromise. So again, you accept that it's a compromise, and then you find your line of balance. In that case, balance exists, yes. What that is, depends on your temperament again. In your youth perhaps you can overwork with little rest, which eventually takes a toll on your health. Then you need more rest and less work, by which time the company ejects you because you're not good enough for them. So yes, you can have compromises, as you call the balance, but ideally one would want an integration.

Again, the question would be, for what? If it's high paying and you're willing to suffer, for what? For some, the idea is I will earn enough in the next five years, and then I will retire and then do what I want. It's a strategy for life. But for others, if you're thinking of a long-term thing, you might choose to take a less paying job, but where the environment is more supporting and nourishing. You're paid less but your lifestyle then will be much more fulfilling for your purpose. How much do you actually need? And you need to review things from that perspective. We have of course the extreme examples of labourers from India who would go to the Middle East, live in the most uncomfortable situations to earn a lot of money which they would send back to their family over a few years and then come back and share in the comfort or the complete change of their family values. Unfortunately, the problem is with the increasing wealth, their expenditure also dramatically increased which was unnecessary. It gets into that mode of showing off where you now start spending wildly without thinking of what you're spending it for. What is its actual value? And there are things, for example, you buy a fancy car and the moment you've bought it, its resale value is about 50%. You see, the act of buying a car is an act of throwing money. If you saved that much money of the car's value, you could have hired a taxi every day for every trip and you would still be wealthier than if you have just spent it on a car. So these are things one has to think about and of course sometimes for your business you require to have your own car. It's a different case but not everybody needs it. So today fortunately circumstances are easier for renting also but one needs to review what is your value. Are you here to show wealth to others? And for what? Or do you want to dedicate your life to something meaningful? And I believe that if one chooses a reasonably comfortable life, one can do pretty much anything one chooses to do, even without compromising too much. So I think this is a broad picture of how one would balance things from a perspective of a yoga aspirant and especially in the context of the integral yoga.

Alina (0:31:19):
Thank you very much for this could be still talked further maybe other other sessions because I was wondering also for all these youth who are finishing school and they don't know whether they should take a specialisation or what should they turn to professionally or what they should study. I meet a lot of young kids and they're totally disoriented. They don't know how to choose. Could you give us an advice?

Sraddhalu (0:31:59):
Yes, that's a bigger question of how we can choose. In fact, I had done this as a workshop in Europe with some young people who were on the cusp of completing their college level and they were to choose a career or some of them were even pre-college needing to choose their specialisations. And I gave them a perspective, which of course is what we have from the yoga tradition of the broadly the four soul aspirations. In each one of us we have four broad categories of the soul's primary aspiration: In the direction of knowledge to learn, to share, to play with, to increase knowledge. That's one turn. The second is in the direction of strength, leadership, administration, action in the world to bring about change, adventure. That's the form that the second turn of temperament takes. And the third is towards exchange, interchange, building networks, relationships, increasing values, sharing, caring, giving, exchanging but always with an increase in the overall growth. This is the third category and you'll see this naturally for businessmen and people in trade. The fourth category is of skill and perfection in the work. Artisans, craftsmen and it can be computers for example. Your skill perfection in programming can come in that category but it would be knowledge combined with this but not always for everybody. So looking at these four broad turns of the soul's aspiration, we recognize that in each one of us, one of these dominates. Sometimes just one dominates. The other three are subdued. For some of us, one dominates and a second one comes halfway, perhaps. Not equal, but reasonably strong. For a very few of us, there's one dominating, one coming halfway and a third also important enough that it can't be ignored. That's rare. But observe which is your natural temperament. So I made them go through certain exercises of self-observation by certain questions.

And then now you'll notice within that broad turn of nature, you can have many number of forms. The form itself is not important. It's this turn which is important. So, I take an example. Somebody as a child at the age of 12, the way it works in India, the parents decided that he had to be a doctor. Now, that's the parent's decision. The child was not interested at all and it was probably the most erroneous thing they could have given him. He was not suited to be a doctor. I'm speaking of somebody who was my classmate. So at the age of 12 he was taken out of the ashram school and put into the conventional grind of education in India to be on the track to become a doctor. Well many years later he did become a doctor, but what happens? After he's got his degree, practice didn't interest him. Eventually he became a businessman for medical objects. Interesting. So just to show you how it works. You've been trained as a doctor. If your primary temperament was knowledge, you would end up in medical research. If your primary temperament was action, leadership, adventure, then you would end up in a temperament which would be, let's say, an activist in the medical field or you would go deep into untapped areas, making a change for people who are the most neglected groups, doctors beyond frontiers. You know, you're living an adventurous life, basically. The medicine is just the way you do it, the excuse for living an adventurous life. The third temperament, let's say of a businessman generally, well you would trade in medical goods or you would create a hospital. Especially the second and third temperament combining you would build a hospital. But you run a hospital, you won't be treating patients. It's only if you are the fourth temperament, you really care for what you're doing as a medical person that you would make a good doctor who will care for patients. You would ask them what are your symptoms, what is it, is this the problem, is that you would go into detail to fine-tune your diagnosis. But if your primary drive is to make money through an interaction with patients, you wouldn't care for details. You would just ask two questions, give your medicine, ensure the medicine is bought from a certain shop which gives you a kickback or commission for the medicines bought. You're only looking at your total at the end of the day. You're not looking at the life change of your patients. And yes, those also exist. The question really is, what is your broad temperament? You could still be pushed into any kind of activity that temperament would mould the way you do that activity. So obviously we can see how certain activities are better suited for certain temperaments and one should begin to assess in this way.

Sraddhalu (0:37:52):

Currently it's done in a completely wrong way. You have these career counsellors who look at your marks in different subjects and say you should go for this or that. That's the completely wrong way to do it. Of course, nobody's ever checked for marks for art or creativity or music. Even if you do, it really doesn't measure anything of the person's innate capacity or worth. And so the real thing is never recognized. But I would suggest this as a starting point, introspect to see which of these four is your broad temperament. And then into that you look at what kind of activity, there are nuances to the personality. For example, you may be a person who is naturally enjoying interactions with people. That would make you a good businessman perhaps, perhaps a good salesman, perhaps a human HRD person, human resource person who looks after people in a company, cares for them, ensures their needs are taken care of. You could be a good counsellor, psychotherapist, or just a good person on the front desk who greets you as you enter a big company and directs you to the right people just because you enjoy interacting with people. That's it. If you take any specialised kind of work, into that work, you see how this role would suit you best and where would you get the full satisfaction of this role.

So there's a way of looking at it and I'll put it this way. If your company is big enough and complex enough, let's take one of those really large multinational giants where you have a place for everybody. If you find somebody not doing their job well, you can say, all right, he doesn't fit, we throw him out. Or you can say, he does not fit this role, what is his ideal role? Find the right role and put him there and you'll find the person blossoming. Well, if it's a very small startup company, you don't have enough slots for full possible gamut of roles but the point is there is no such thing as a wrong person. There's a person who's wrong for this job and find them the right job and you'll find it works well. If into this you bring in the aspect of growth of consciousness for yourself first, you take a space where you have maximum opportunity to grow, not because it's comfortable for you, but because it gives you an opportunity to grow. You see Mother's example when she played tennis, even in her childhood. She said, I like to play with people who are older than me, who are better than me, because that's how I learn, although I lose all the time. And the same would apply in a job. There can be a jobcomfort. I'm good at this. I can do it well, but I'm stuck in a zone where there is no growth potential. Or you're given an opportunity where you have enormous growth potential, but in the beginning you have to do a lot of hard work. You don't have full responsibility because there's somebody else overseeing you all the time, but who helps you now, who nurtures you to grow to your full potential. And it may be difficult, it may be demanding but that's what you want, you'll enjoy it. So these are things which if given a broad enough explanation of how this works through a series of questions of introspection one can be assisted to assess where you are, what would give you deepest satisfaction and then move into that line or that direction. And again from a spiritual point of view, since the goal for us would be to develop as much as possible of all the faculties and especially when we have a more rich or potentially rich nature, then you do not narrow yourself early on. You may even go through a series of jobs which are very different from each other, but each fulfilling a certain need, a certain aspect of your potential and it may seem like a zigzag path in your career but at the end of the zigzags you will reach a point where you bloom fully like a flower with a dozen petals and then you'll find you can go anywhere and you will be effective in whatever role and that's when you're ready for some of the most challenging roles. And so it all depends on your temperament but this is the starting point, the deeper yogic psychology of one's nature temperament would be your starting point to understand how to choose your career.

Alina (0:42:32):
I hope many of us will benefit from these guidelines, very important. We can move on to our next message received from Rohit Reddy for one who's into making music for living, how does he find the soul's deeper aesthetics that are closer to the Supramental and incorporate them into the contemporary style of music making?

Sraddhalu (0:43:05):
Yes, in fact I just discovered today there was one more email from Rohit asking about film making. So I think that's a broader question we will look at later. But just this question about making music and bringing the soul's deeper aesthetics. I don't know how much of it would be selling in numbers, because naturally what sells in numbers is things which excite. Well, that's the current age, that's the current mood. You could go to a particular time, age of human development, and a particular space in which the soul's deeper aesthetics would be there in music. Everybody is seeking that. And then such people would be, of course, very famous. So, setting aside that goal of becoming famous or making a lot of money from large sales, what can one do to bring the soul's deeper aesthetics? And for those who value that, and there are enough people. I would say the bulk of us who are here today right now in this discussion, while we might enjoy a little bit of a light music or an exciting music once in a while, we would seek things of deeper worth, which touch us more profoundly or which uplift or change in their impact on us. So there are enough people and we don't find enough of this good music in the world today. So there is a great potential for this and I do believe as we are transitioning through the subjective age now that this will increasingly become what is more valued. Closer to Supramental, I don't know, but certainly closer to higher ranges of the vital, closer to the touch of the psychic presence into them and these can be done.

Two things I would suggest. First, as a musician, learn to become very quiet, very still and if possible entirely still. Not a ripple in your emotions, in your thoughts, in your life energies. Everything becomes entirely quiet as much as you can. Maybe you do this in over five minutes, maybe it takes you half an hour to reach that stage, doesn't matter. Practise this every day if you can. Once you come to that complete stillness as far as it is, become conscious of your deepest aspiration or as deep within you as you can of the Divine presence or as deep as you as you can of the love and devotion, bhakti that you feel towards the Divine or the Divine Mother and hold. Stay in that as long as you can and again practise this every day until it becomes natural for you to be able to find yourself centred like this. So in the beginning it may take a little bit of effort but you'll find very quickly the touch of that influence will help to bring greater stillness. Its influence filling you will bring a touch of a deep joy and satisfaction which subsequently you will start to crave and you will want that more and more and so that in to out will meet the out to in interest and the link will begin to form. So this is the first practice which would allow for the deeper influence now to fill you. To the extent that the stillness has been set, that influence can fill everything which has become still. Now the second practice will be from this poise or whatever you can of this poise that you can reach. You will turn to the music. So I don't know what form the music is, whether you play the keyboard or you sing or you write the musical notes. Whatever the form in which you express or any other form of art. From that poise you turn and begin to express. So in the beginning don't worry of with what comes. Just let your fingers flow. If you're doing a piece of painting, let your fingers and colours flow. But holding the poise. So the important thing here is the movement of your fingers, the movement of your body can continue without losing the poise. In the beginning what will happen when you start moving you will tend to get exteriorized, you will lose the centering or you will feel it receding. And then you pause again, re-center and then again engage and re-center. But very quickly, you will be surprised how quick, sometimes within days you will find that you can continue the movement. Let's say you're playing with the paintbrush or with the pencil or fingers on the keyboard, you'll find you can play while aligned here.

Sraddhalu (0:48:37):

And once you've got to this point, which should not be very difficult, it just needs a little bit of persistence, you will find the flow can begin. So you start playing, and then sometimes the mood just flows through the fingers and something comes through, something which uplifts, we say ah this is beautiful, this is interesting, something inspired and then out of that your training kicks in and it starts flowing and it starts building and then gradually the vital energy, the enthusiasm, the power aspect, the force aspect, they begin to fill. But on this underlying current. And then that makes for the extraordinary music. Or art, or whatever it is. So I have not looked at the question of your training. I'm assuming you have that training already. I'm looking at the question of how you bring in this deeper soul aesthetics into the work, into the training which you've had. But for those of you who don't have the training, in fact what will happen is when the soul alignment is there, what will come through will be so beautiful spontaneously and sometimes you will struggle to keep up with a little bit of with the skill aspect but it will come through so smoothly that you'll be surprised and when the alignment is not there the skill also drops. I've seen people, when aligned, they would draw something and it would be so beautiful. And when the alignment was not there, it would be almost like a caricature. And it was either extremely good or extremely bad. And it was always a reflection of the alignment within. Which is just to say that their external nature was untrained. But the touch of the inner brought the harmony spontaneously in the action. I suppose this would be a good starting point.

Alina (0:50:28):
Thank you. We continue with another letter received from Sudhir from Bangalore. I was in Auroville in April this year and found this text in the guest house where he was staying. The opening statement, which is a conversation between Satprem and Mother, talks about everyone suddenly having a psychic being and that it will cause a stir. My question, what does this mean and how far is humanity from experiencing this.

Sraddhalu (0:51:15):
Okay, yes it's a very interesting quotation that he has pointed to and it's actually a joke that the mother made. I will read the actual conversation. So there was a passage in the agenda when the Mother was speaking about an experience with one of the sadhikas, Rijuta. She saw the person’s psychic being larger than her body and she had this distinct experience, insight, conviction that it was the psychic being which becoming materialized would become the Supramental body. So, this was like a huge breakthrough in terms of what that is going to be like. In terms of understanding, it's a huge breakthrough and she spoke of it in an earlier discussion. So Satprem asks the Mother,’ I wondered if we couldn't add to the Notes’, (Mother had the series called Notes on the Way, which then became the Agenda) ‘What you said last time about the psychic being that will become the supramental being’. So Mother asks him, what do you say? He says, I say it's important. She says, yes. And then Mother continues, she said, I mean about the effect on people. I'm afraid everyone will suddenly have a psychic being. And Satprem appreciates the joke and he says, oh Mother, you are priceless. That's the translation, the actual French word was something else. And Mother laughs, never mind, it's all right, it will cause a stir now. What will cause a stir is this idea of course it's something so new and it's such a profound insight it makes enormous sense in the whole evolutionary logic but then her comment I'm afraid everyone will suddenly have a psychic being is you know reading this people say okay where's my psychic being oh I have a psychic being and the whole focus will come back to that. That's the joke. She made as a joke that people will have a psychic being. Well, right now everybody has just forgotten their psychic being are busy in their life interests, let's say superficial interests. What in life compels you to remember that there is a psychic being within you. Nothing really. It's only when you become depressed, you suddenly feel life is hollow, empty, meaningless. You feel disconnected. But you say I'm disconnected. But from what? You don't even question why do you feel disconnected. That means something was connected. What was it connected to? You're not even conscious. In fact, the sense of this connection is the disconnection with the Divine presence. And that's when suddenly everything becomes hollow, empty, meaningless, you feel listless. So the understanding that it's the psychic being that will become the Supramental being that she said will remind people and force them to suddenly discover oh yes I have a psychic being. So it was said more like a joke. It's not that suddenly humanity will find a psychic being. It's just the priority would shift if you really understand this. But I'm going to make this now the direction of our further discussion because after all if that does not become our priority, then we really don't have much of a spiritual life. So I think we'll go to the next question and then we'll see where that takes us.

Alina (0:54:50):
Yes, so we have one comment from Shiva. I want to know about the psychic being's mastery over the physical being. What does that look like?

Sraddhalu (0:55:03):
Yes, unfortunately the psychic being does not have mastery over the physical being. It does not even have mastery over emotional being and not even over our mental being. It has no mastery over anything of us, unfortunately, that's how we begin. The psychic being is there within. At best you can say it has mastery of itself. But even that mastery is a big word. It is, simply. And it knows and feels closeness, intimacy with the Divine, that's all. If it is grown and matured over lives sufficiently, it may have some effective influence in the personality. Again some, especially in early childhood before the personality is formed. As the personality begins to get more formed, more trained, more rigidified, more fixed, that influence weakens because innately the psychic influence is plastic, is elastic. The more rigid the outer, the less influence it can exercise on substance that is rigid. It's a very important idea. Sri Aurobindo reminds us of this when he is discussing in the Life Divine. The conditions for us to be able to remember or have continuity of consciousness across life, that is when you shed this body personality, pass through what is called death, take new birth, well you've pretty much forgotten everything, you don't remember your previous lives, not that it matters perhaps it's better you don't remember, but the benefits of what you had learned and especially from a spiritual point of view, what you had acquired, you've also lost, at least in memory. You may have it as an instinct deep within, but that's about it. And if all the work done in this lifetime especially, and this is one of the most important lifetimes, without doubt, if all this work done and what is still going to be done, if it is to be forgotten and in a sense restarted, it could be a bit of a waste.

So it's worth the trouble to build the link to make that transition. How to do it? Sri Aurobindo explains and the three conditions for doing it, he explains. And for those of you who are interested, I would highly recommend for you to view the series of talks on the Life Divine that we have on the same YouTube channel IntegralStudies.tv and starting from the episode number one, because we started the discussion from there. First of all what the soul carries across lives, what is the mechanism of what it carries and then he discusses how to ensure we can have continuity of awareness across to the next life. This is very important for us to develop. So one of the three conditions is that we have to become plastic to the touch of the infinite. In other words, when the soul takes new birth in new form, the rigidity would prevent you from entering and fully adapting to the new form which is required for your evolution. And that's why the necessity for shedding the form and with it the memory gone. But if you can make yourself plastic enough, you can reshape now into the new mode necessary for the new life experience without losing continuity. Now I'm pointing to this not necessarily in the context of the transition across lives, but in the current life, if you are not plastic in your personality, how is the psychic influence going to, well, shape you or act through you with its freedom which is far greater than your rigid, structured mind, vital or physical. This was the problem the Mother faced when she was trying to bring in the new music and the new art. And so she told Huta, I tried before you, I tried with some of those other artists. Many of them were master artists who had come from cleaning under master artists. You know, there were Jayantilal and forget the other names, very big names trained in Shantiniketan and then coming here and revealing beautiful art. But for the new forms that the Mother wanted to bring, their training was too rigid and structured, not plastic enough enough to be able to shape precisely because they were trained well. That is the interesting thing. That's the contradiction in terms. Unfortunately, most of modern education is formation, giving form and making rigid in the form, which is great if you're going to be a cogwheel in the machinery of society. It's not great if you going to be a creative centre for the Divine action. So plasticity of your personality, adaptability and even instantaneous response to the touch of the infinite or in this case of the psychic is a necessary part of the training if this has to happen and unfortunately the physical being is the most rigid, the personality are rigid and so the psychic being's influence on them is also to that extent weaker. So there's no question yet of mastery over the physical being which was what the question was about. That does not happen and to reach that point is a very distant step. Even to get to mastery over the mind and the emotions it takes time. Mind is far more elastic plastic and therefore the psychic influence there is often easier and through it through the artistic methods.

Sraddhalu (1:01:01):

How would one do that? Well precisely by turning to feel and flow from that influence. So it continues from the previous discussion we had about preparing ourselves. I took the example of the music. The part that is rigid, the surface personality, must now give up what would be its first instinct of action. It should become extremely quiet, turn in to feel what is the psychic influence coming into it. And the psychic influence at first is extremely gentle, extremely soft and delicate. You have to become as delicate and still as it to be able to receive its influence. That's why that initial stillness and training is so important. When you become utterly still, then the touch of the psychic stillness can fill and act and then flow into movement. So initially one would do it very gradually, very slowly, maybe in a state of certain concentration. It's interesting to see in many different traditions there has been effort to do this. There's a particular form of art in Japan particularly, but subsequently it has spread into many of those what is called Far East countries, where the master holds a paintbrush dipped once in the ink, he holds it over a piece of paper and then in a single stroke without a break draws and a masterpiece comes out. Throughout the movement he has to remain utterly still that the brush is moved by that influence of the inspiration whatever it is from the psychic or from above. And the appreciators of this art can sense when you lose, when that smooth flow of the stream of inspiration breaks, or it stumbles, or has a little ripple in the flow. You can feel and the true master just moves and that's it, it's done. It's a form of training, but the point is it need not be done in a short state. It can be done in a continuous form of living. Coming back to the question itself, yes, mastery over the physical being is still far away because this is the most rigid part of us. But influence in the mind, influence in the heart and to some extent influence in the body also is possible. And just with that the kind of beauty and creative expression possible becomes already unearthly. You get a glimpse of something which is almost heavenly in those who are able to bring that. Mastery would come much later, perhaps only with the supramental transformation.

Alina (1:03:57):
Shall we move to the closing question?

Sraddhalu (1:04:01):
Yes, I think so.

Alina (1:04:02):
Okay. So, we still have a few other questions about the Psyche being. I don't know if we will be able to cover all of them. In everyday living, how do we ensure our being comes out and takes control of our life? Our society and lifestyle largely makes us a more external person. person? How do we break it inside out? Another question from Rohit Reddy. How does one develop the intuition to identify the psychic being from one's own approach? And how does one maintain a constant sense of deep sincerity while doing that? And Narayan, what sadhana should one do to find the psychic being and to live in it?

Sraddhalu (1:04:58):
Yes I suppose in the context of the integral yoga these would be the primary questions for the sadhana. Generally, to put it in these terms, how to allow the influence of the inner being or the true being within you to grow in intensity and exercise increasing influence at first in your life when almost entirely our society as well as our education is an outside experience compelling us to turn more outside, not even to turn in. This would be one major shift. From here, you could go deeper and say how to identify with the psychic being and maintain a constant connection with its influence, actively, consciously. And then the third question is really find the psychic being, live in it, live from it even. Why this is important? So, the actual practice for this, perhaps we won't have time today, and we will take that up next time, but why it is important is what I want to focus on a little bit and this would help us to understand something of the human experience itself in a way that the Mother has expressed to us so wonderfully and in a way that exceeds completely all the ideals of all the spiritual traditions that you might have heard of, studied or have existed on earth for the last thousands of years. So it's part of a discussion that she has and I'm going to read from that a little bit. It's part of a larger discussion where she was asked, the question was asked to her, do we have to go through all these stages to get to the spiritual perfection? Do we have to go through all stages or do we just reach it? That was the question. In fact, the person implied that is it necessary for everyone to go through all these stages? I mean, implying that since we are here with you, why can't you just put us into that stage? That was the implication in the question. For those of you, I would in fact suggest for some of you to read this also. It is from Mother's Questions and Answers, Volume 8, 6th of June 1956. If you like, I will paste the link for the online text in the chat box later. But with this reference, I think you should be able to find it easily also. Let me just paste the link here. Okay, so I'll read I'll read out from this. For now it's best if we just stay with the text itself rather than searching the link.

She explains how the actual experience of a state of consciousness living in it is fundamentally different from approaching it through a laborious process. You know you can keep approaching and struggling with the intense tapasya and you can go on for centuries with very little benefit. But when you're in it, it's there, it's never lost. So the two are very different statuses, struggling to gain and to get it. And increasingly you will find in this yoga, that's the approach. You get into a certain state, not struggle to climb as in many other more rigorous ascetic paths. You enter a certain state and then perhaps you lose it and then it comes again and you lose it and then gradually a kind of a bridging takes place through a series of contacts and the point is when in that state all values shift. When the state is established there is a complete reversal of consciousness. That's the phrase she uses. And then she explains how usually the first contact with the psychic being brings this experience but it is only partial it is in the part of your consciousness which has that contact and that part of consciousness which is united with the psychic being has the experience in that part there is this reversal all values change and then of course there are other parts. When those other parts are active, you may feel as if this experience recedes into the background, but it's never totally lost, or maybe it's lost. But when that part, which has been touched by the psychic, now comes forward, Oh! It's back, it's there, it was never gone. From this comes a very important idea, and this is what I am going to read.

Sraddhalu (1:10:05):
And if you have the will or take care or able to put into contact with this part, all the problems of your life and all the activities of your being, all the elements of your consciousness, then they begin to be organised in such a way that your being becomes one unity. A single multiplicity. A multiple unity. Complex but organised and centralised around a fixed point. So well that the central will or central consciousness or central truth has the power to govern all the parts. For they are all in order, organised around this central presence. It seems to be impossible to escape from this necessity if one wants to be and is to be a conscious instrument of the Divine force. She explains, you know, we are all unconscious instruments. As long as we have a little bit of goodwill and sincerity, well, the Divine uses us one way or other, but we are unconscious of it. But she says, to become a conscious instrument capable of identification and conscious willed movements, you must have this inner organisation, that is all the movements of your parts are organised around this centre. Otherwise you will always be running into chaos somewhere, confusion somewhere, or obscurity or unconsciousness somewhere. And naturally, your action, even though guided exclusively by the Divine, will not have the perfection of expression it has, when one has acquired a conscious organisation around this Divine centre So this is what she's saying.

Now I come to the core of this. I skip a few, couple of paragraphs Comes to the core of the whole Reason why we are on earth and she says, and what adds to the interest of the thing is that this kind of work, this harmonisation and organisation of the being around the Divine centre can only be done in a physical body and on Earth, that is physical incarnation. That is truly the essential and original reason for physical life. For as soon as you are no longer in a physical body, you can no longer do it at all. Now you see how important this is. In the physical body you have the opportunity to organise all the parts of your personality around the psychic centre or around the part which is in touch with the psychic centre. You leave the physical body, in the subtle body you cannot do this. First of all you don't have all the parts of your being because the physical part is no more there. But whatever parts are there, are also don't have the, I would say, solidity of form to be able to organise with full effectivity. The fact that you're in the physical body forces your mental body and vital body also in identification with the physical body. That's what we are as living bodies. And by the fact that the mind and life energies are bound to rigidity of form of the body makes it possible to organise them in this way in a manner that is permanent and harmonious and with a fixity and a permanence that you would not get in the subtle body alone. This was the whole point of the physical body and the nature of the physical substance and its rigidity is necessary for that. You cannot do it when you don't have a physical body, she says. So, that is truly the essential and original reason for physical life. And then she continues: And what is still more remarkable is that only human beings can do it for only human beings have at their centre the Divine presence in the psychic being. For example, this work of self-development and organisation and being aware of all the elements is not within the reach of the beings of the vital and mental planes. Not even of the beings who are usually called gods. And when they want to do it, when they really want to organise themselves and become completely conscious around a psychic being obviously they have to take a body.

Sraddhalu (1:15:30):
Very interesting! What is the work? Only human beings have at their centre the Divine presence in the psychic being which vital beings, mental beings don't have. And to organise entirely themselves and develop and organise themselves around this, you have to enter the physical incarnation. And then she says, and yet human beings come into a physical body without knowing why. Most of them go through life without knowing why. They leave their body without knowing why and they have to begin the same thing all over again indefinitely until one day someone comes along and tells them, be careful you know there's a purpose to this. You are here for this work. Don't miss your opportunity. And that's what Mother is telling us. And then she concludes, and how many years are wasted. So this is where we are. The reason for our incarnation on earth, we have taken a body which beings of the vital and mental worlds with extraordinary powers in their domain do not have the opportunity to do which is to organise themselves around the psychic centre of the Divine presence which is within them. And here in the body we have come to do this work without remembering why it is we have come. And when we take the trouble to do it, everything in the universe is there to help us to do it. Even that which seems to oppose, which seems to distract, is only helping you by showing you where you have a weakness of distraction and helps you grow stronger and more complete. Where the organization made is weak, you get a little bit of a poke and a knock from somewhere outside, shaking it up, only to show you that here's a weakness. Fix it, repair it, make it more complete, more stable. Everything out there is there to help you realise this. That is truly the essential and original reason for physical life, she says. What is it? This organisation, this harmonisation and organisation of the being around the Divine centre which can only be done in a physical body on earth. So this brings us to the importance of the psychic centre within the psychic being that we truly are as the one who took birth and the sense of purpose of our life. Now think of it in this way. Everything you do, we have spoken today of so many things including career, your temperament, your opportunities of life. Everything you do, without exception including the things which you feel contrary to your temperament, everything is an opportunity for you to harmonise a part of your nature, a part of your being, a skill of your consciousness, to harmonise it with this centre and to organise it around this centre. Every day, every work, every activity is an opportunity. But you cannot take advantage of it if you do not have some sense of what the centre is. How would you organise around it otherwise? And so with this comes the extreme importance of becoming conscious of what that is within us. I'm not saying you have to become conscious of the psychic being. That may take time. But the fact that you have it and that you can enter in relationship with it is now your reference, your starting point around which you will build, organise, harmonise everything else, all the parts of your nature, all the skills of your consciousness, all your capacities, your intelligence, your emotions, your power of action, your will, everything will be organised around that. That it may reflect the psychic influence and its values and perhaps even express what the psychic is, not it chooses what it is that it may flow freely from you as you are truly, from the Divine centre.

Sraddhalu (1:20:31):

So this will be the broad direction of our further discussion. How do we become conscious of this? How do we organise our life around this? And these are really the questions which have been raised. How do you find the psychic being, live in it, how do you maintain the constant contact and let it govern your life and lead. So the second part of these questions we will take up next time. But for now, simply becoming conscious for this. And I'm going to suggest this as an exercise. It's my intention that over the next few discussions that we have on this theme of spiritual life and its practices, I will end each time with a suggestion for a practice that you can take up and continue for the rest of the week to whatever extent you can. And so the practice which might be helpful for us, it can take two forms, I'll suggest two different practices. One is what we already discussed last time, what we discussed earlier, making yourself completely still, centering yourself in that part which is the deepest that you can reach from where you know yourself a child of the Divine Mother or from where you feel your love for the Divine Mother or where you feel as if the most central aspiration within you, the most deep, the most high, the most essential, whatever form you may find that's the reference. First making yourself very still and then centering around this. So this will be one exercise. I would suggest you do that in the beginning of the day and from that centering, from that stillness turn to face the day and put an intention that everything you do will be as far as possible in alignment with this aspiration or with this relationship which you have with the Divine Mother.

The second exercise ideally done at the end of the day will be to pause, to sit quietly for a while, again come back to stillness as far as possible. Maybe you're very tired at the end of the day, but still, whatever you can. And then review the whole day, like you're watching a scene, not going into details. That's a different exercise to go into each detail and consider. Just review like a broad spectrum, like a film reel unfolded in a stretched piece of plastic. It's all there, all the events, the timeline. And then observe where you were more conscious of this and where you were less conscious. Maybe the bulk of the day you were completely lost. Or you might find tiny moments where you paused, where you become aware, where maybe you felt something deeper or just remembered briefly in thought or in emotion and then lost yourself again in the activity. Just observe simply. From that centre as far as possible, from the stillness and alignment with your deep aspiration, you'd look at the day. Notice this, no judgement, no criticism, this is how it is and then make a conscious offering of the whole day's efforts to the mother. You can't offer during the activity, do it after. Offer all these energies that you have poured out into your life, ‘these are given to you, Divine Mother, fill my life, help me wake up’, make a conscious prayer with words, without words, doesn't matter, but a consecration and prayer and then go to sleep. So two exercises. If you can't do both, do one, any which you like, that you find most naturally in affinity with, with something, if possible, every day. What this will do is begin a process of alignment. You will find automatically things you do, you will begin to value them more or less depending on whether they are in alignment with this central aspiration. You're not just speaking of becoming aware of the psychic being itself, but just aware of its reflection in your heart, in your aspiration, in your emotions or thoughts, whatever form it is, in the love that you experience for the Mother. That's all. That's your starting point. And more of what we can do subsequently, we will take up next time. Perhaps this would be a good occasion to pause here in concentration, reminding ourselves of the Mother's words, that is truly the essential and original reason for physical life. This harmonisation and organisation of the being around the divine centre, which can only be done in a physical body and on earth. Reminding ourselves of this sense of purpose and all of our life as an opportunity for this.

Sraddhalu (1:26:04):
Thank you and Namaste.

[Joel] Namaste.

[Alina] Thank you. Namaste.