EWS #82 Questions from Viewers (25)  - on Spiritual Life - 5

Sept 4, 2021

Alina (0:00:00):
Namaste, welcome all to the continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. We are happy to continue part 5 on Spiritual life and in this session we will answer questions received from our viewers on the same topics of growth of consciousness, practices, experiences, different paths, and different levels of consciousness. Most of our past sessions now are being translated in Russian and in Spanish, thanks to Nadezhda and thanks to Juan who made this translating possible. And there have been several requests from our viewers to translate the sessions in French. If anyone would like to be a volunteer and offer to translate, please do get in touch with us by sending an email at integralstudies.in[at]gmail.com. Last time we took questions about different paths and teachers. One question remains to be addressed. Amit, you wrote, people like Ken Wilber are digesting and offering Sri Aurobindo’s thoughts sometimes with distortions and then criticising Sri Aurobindo. How can this be prevented? Namaste Sraddhalu and Namaste Joel.

[Sraddhalu] Namaste.

Welcome. We are happy to be back and continuing the series.

Sraddhalu (0:02:22):

Happy to be back and this question is very important because there have been many who have been inspired by Sri Aurobindo, who sometimes refer to him, but mostly simply draw from his writings, from his knowledge, from his inspiration, but without always acknowledging and sometimes even criticising. And this is the reason why in this particular question I've allowed the name to be mentioned because Ken Wilber is one of those who started his career drawing heavily from Sri Aurobindo's inspiration, even terminologies from Sri Aurobindo including the word integral yoga integral psychology and others terms he then branded himself around the name using the word Integral. Did a lot of good work in the way he presented some of these ideas, elaborated on them, developed certain philosophical, let's say, formats in which these ideas were put out, inspired many young people to study these writings but of course as his own ideas which is also fine but then the problem is somewhere along the way in order to distinguish himself he began to criticize Sri Aurobindo dismissing Sri Aurobindo as among those old irrelevant thinkers belonging to some past generation who have nothing to offer while continuing to draw on him for inspiration and so that's one of the reasons I allowed the name to be mentioned, otherwise I simply edit the name we put XYZ because it's not only unfair it's a very low form of betrayal.

We know of many popular speakers in the world, famous, well-known, making a lot of money in their presentations, who draw heavily on Sri Aurobindo's writings, and who don't always credit or acknowledge. From an ethical perspective, it's not so nice. It's not acceptable in a scholarly field, as Ken Wilber was, is even. But I don't mention their names because it's something which has been there for a long time, it began even in India when one of the very famous nationally renowned philosophers actually copied large chunks of Sri Aurobindo's writings and passed it off as his own and equally a very famous Yogi teacher who had a large ashram in the north of India took certain passages straight out of the Life Divine passed off as his own. These things were reported to Sri Aurobindo and he took it very lightly saying well they're spreading something positive. He didn't give it much importance. So I don't see that as a very serious issue from a Spiritual perspective. From a moral and ethical perspective and scholarly perspective, it's a different story. But then after that to turn around and deprecate Sri Aurobindo, diverting his students away from Sri Aurobindo, so that people may not recognize the similarities or may not recognize that he's actually taken all these concepts from Sri Aurobindo, that's a little petty. And so we need to recognize that these tendencies do exist. They exist especially in certain spaces of scholarship where people need to identify themselves and establish themselves in their own separate right. Now this is a tendency which I want to dwell upon a little bit because it's normal for the human ego to want to isolate oneself, separate oneself and distinguish. It's normal. In a business framework, it's often necessary to define your unique selling proposition as they call it. So you define what makes you separate from others. What is your special character that others don't have so that your clients may come to you. And it's absolutely necessary in a business environment. In the space of knowledge though, it becomes a bit of a contradiction in terms, because knowledge cannot be owned. Even what you claim to have discovered right now as a brilliant idea is not your own, you only received it. And you may discover that 100 people that a hundred people before you have all described it in great detail where you have only just penetrated the first step of the insight and you can say well it was my original one, but in the field of scholarship of knowledge they will say you are plagiarising if you don't acknowledge that others had it before. So in the field of knowledge one cannot attempt to distinguish in this way. Of course that's part of the distortion of modern intellectual properties but still that's why the boundaries are very difficult to define in intellectual property.

Sraddhalu (0:07:49):

But in the spiritual domain it can be disastrous because in the act of separating yourself and distinguishing you have to emphasise something either in an exaggerated way or twist something in order to distinguish and that's where you are distorting a truth. The loss then is a damage which can turn into perversion or even falsehood. Sometimes it's a seed of falsehood in what is otherwise large or clear truth but the two don't mix. You can feel this boundary where a distortion happens and eventually the influence of the seed can percolate into the whole domain. Now with Ken Wilber I want to give an example of how this happens and again it's not to criticise; I will appreciate greatly the work he has done to disseminate these ideas to inspire new generations and I have met a lot of people who had no idea of Sri Aurobindo, didn't know he existed, but were students or appreciators of Ken Wilber and greatly benefited in their own personal journey and understanding. So one has to appreciate that and I don't criticise that part. What is missing unfortunately is the recognition of the original source for this reason. So now I give an example of how that works. So in one of his books, he tries to show how there has to be some material which bridges let's say two gradations of consciousness. So there is an intermediate material and then intermediate material and so on and the logic leads to a continuous gradation of materials, which he presents as matter. Matter itself has a physical density and ascends all the way to Spirit, as matter, Spiritual matter. Now there's a truth to this in the sense that in the density of matter itself there are finer gradations which we call subtle matter or subtle physical matter. The Vedas speaks of seven gradations even within matter and one could say the highest of that approaches Spirit but it is still material, but it's not the same as saying life energy or mind are gradations of matter. That's where the distortion happens. So one of his students asked me that what about this? I said no it doesn't work. You cannot say that because by definition matter cannot be the same as spirit. But the correct word would have been substance which is the word Sri Aurobindo uses. There is a continuous gradation of substance all the way to the highest and from the highest all the way to the lowest. And there are gradations of substantiality and substance of which matter by definition is the lowest plane of substance.

So it might be a subtle distinction arguing purely from a philosophical point of view, but from a spiritual point of view and a practical point of view it can make all the difference between what it means to have a Divine materialism or a Divinized body or a Spiritual transformation of the mind, life or body. The entire meaning of that can be completely distorted and deviated which is the tendency that happens if you take Ken Wilber's that particular vocabulary to its conclusion. It comes I understand also from the approach that he takes, he comes from a base which is in the West where matter is all-encompassing; he wants to bridge into current psychology which is all matter based because the consciousness is a phenomenon of the brain and so on but in the process the truth has been warped. Technically it sounds like a subtle warping but its result is a massive distortion of the whole of reality. So the questioner actually makes this comment about how there is a distortion. Yes sometimes it might look like a small distortion but in implication it is massive. What can you do about it? One could raise the issue, make a scene, take it to legal dimensions or approach it from an ethical moral perspective in the academic space and say this is academic fraud if you do not acknowledge your sources or turn around and criticise them by on false grounds. This is the interesting thing. What he criticises Sri Aurobindo for is not at all Sri Aurobindo's position. It's called a straw man argument. You place somebody else's position in your own words, but distorting it and then criticise them. That's not acceptable. One could do all that. I personally don't feel it's my inclination. I'm not academically oriented. I had to do that once when there was a severe attack on Sri Aurobindo from _within_ the ashram community, using the name of the ashram. I did what I could, put the best that I could in that kind of writing or but this is not really my domain but what I want to share here is one way how this collision did take place once.

Sraddhalu (0:13:00):

Some years ago a couple of decades perhaps when Ken Wilber's group now, because one cannot blame him beyond a point, because after a point there's an institution which runs the whole operation and so he has created the so called Integral Institute and branding everything around the word Integral. So they collided with some of the writers from the ashram saying that we have copyrighted the term integral psychology so you people don't have a right to use the word integral psychology so our people said, well yes how can you say that? We've been using it for a long time. So the offer which came from the Integral Institute, and I don't blame Ken Wilber, now it’s his machinery of administrators. They offered to our people saying you should use the word Integral Yoga Psychology and leave us to use Integral Psychology. So our people, you know, as they are very kind and gentle and they're not confrontational and they don't see the implications of this kind of manipulation. Even I was not. At first I used to take it very lightly until the attack took place on Sri Aurobindo from within the ashram institution itself with this kind of perversion. It was funded by these very groups based in the US who were hostile to Sri Aurobindo and took those ideas and twisted them for their own objectives. So when I came across this, I said, no, this is the game they play. That they seize on the main form and make yours like a secondary form. So integral yoga psychology is an inferior grade. It's an inferior form of integral psychology proper. So now it seems as if the great truth is their form of integral psychology and Sri Aurobindo's integral psychology is like an inferior form derived from theirs. That's the big game. And I told some of our psychologists from the ashram, I said, no, you should have fought back and said, no, we keep integral psychology and you make yours, whatever term you want, derived from it. And it didn't strike him. He said, oh, yes, I never thought of it this way.

The fact is that in the ashram school, going back at least 45 to 50 years, Professor Kishore Gandhi was taking classes on integral psychology, long before Ken Wilber had even read Sri Aurobindo, perhaps. And so, the term cannot be copyrighted by them legally. And if someone wanted, they could have taken it. But well, that's not our way. We didn't think it necessary. It's a different story. How can it be prevented? These are perhaps some of the means. I don't know. And I don't think it is very important at this point. What is important is that the distinctions now should be made clear. Where there are distortions, where Ken Wilber's community is compromising or losing the clarity of the full sense of the vision that Sri Aurobindo presents in an attempt to distinguish themselves, the small distortions they make and how it warps the rest of the understanding. This needs to be understood. This needs to be articulated. For example, the little one thing which I spoke of, that's one of the things I had noticed I have not read him, it was something pointed out by his student and I said oh yeah this doesn't work. But this can be done by those who are more scholarly inclined. But I suppose this is going to happen and it will continue to happen.

The difference is this. I'll put it this way - I draw all my inspiration from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother's writings. Yes, there are others also from whom I've drawn inspiration. But whenever I have a problem and I find myself blocked, I look for something from Sri Aurobindo. And immediately it's like a ray of light which just opens up a whole new world and the flow starts. All of us draw on Sri Aurobindo, sometimes even unconsciously, unknowingly and I believe over time and over the next few hundred years there will be many great presenters, speakers, teachers who will draw secretly from Sri Aurobindo and then want to distinguish themselves. It will continue to happen. This tendency of course cannot be avoided in the market space of spirituality, even in yoga which is now kind of a marketplace. I remember I was in a conference in Europe of yoga teachers and the theme for the conference had been set by some of them, as can Europe's contribution to yoga now give it the right to claim that Europe has developed its own unique form of yoga. That I don't remember the title, but that was the theme. And I had an occasion, an opportunity to speak for about five minutes. What I saw there was this tendency again to claim, appropriate, by distortion. And of course, I didn't go, I couldn't say it in those terms, I just said that yoga does not belong either to Europe or even to India of today. It belongs to the Rishis who saw and who formulated and actualized this knowledge and practice. I don't think there's anybody in India who can say that they have contributed today at least to the knowledge of yoga other than Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda and a few others who brought in certain new elements into the knowledge of yoga itself and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa who integrated in himself certain realisations but other than that the knowledge and the body of knowledge traces back all the way to the Vedic Rishis and so the attempt to appropriate is absolutely unnecessary, if we see it from that perspective. What we can say is we have created a new packaging, we have created our own emphasis of a certain form of practice which is better suited for a certain type of person or a certain situation or a certain lifestyle. Yes, that's acceptable but to claim yoga itself was improved or developed by somebody is a little exaggerated.

Alina (0:19:40):
Thank you for such a clarification. I think it was very much needed to... 4

Sraddhalu (0:19:46):
I'm tempted to actually build on this a little bit before we move on the next question, drawing from a comment last time. You see, last time I covered this whole topic on what it means to be a guru and I made a distinction between teacher, shikshak, adhyapaka, pundit, acharya and guru and these terms. There were some comments I saw somewhere somebody saying, ‘oh but how can you criticise X guru?’, no I'm not. No, I am not criticising X guru. I have no interest in criticising anybody. What my goal was to distinguish what should be technically called guru from a spiritual sense. We can even use the word guru in a less than spiritual sense. In the Indian tradition, we speak of the music teacher and the music guru. So, the teacher would be one who gives you lessons, but the music guru would be somebody who has mastery in that style or in that lineage or in that, they call gharana, meaning the house of that style. So someone who has a mastery and a living experience, then teaching you, an advanced student, to now rise to your own experience of mastery. Such a person is called a guru, because he gives you something which is a transmission of an experience, he removes from you certain forms of ignorance and allows you to make that breakthrough into a living experience. What does it mean in practice? How far does it go? I have actually, I was part of an interview with one of the great musicians of modern India and one of the questions we asked him was, what do you experience when you are doing the performance? And then he his eyes looked distantly in it was as if the memory brought back a certain state and he said, before me is the Divine, within me is the Divine, everywhere it is only the Divine. And that was of course the epitome of the musical experience. And the purpose of the whole experience itself, of the field of music, is to bring you to that experience in innumerable variations, because the ananda of the Divine is unending, each time different. But to be able to come up to that point, and to be able to transmit that capacity to another. That makes the person a music guru. So that word can be used in that context and in an inferior level, a dance guru or a music guru at least brings you to some level of mastery, even if not the Spiritual.

So that word can be used somewhat loosely, but we use it in the context of spirituality and I define that word carefully. The second point which I made was to distinguish between the nature of the action because the question was very specific about some of the modern new age teachers whether they help in evolution. Generally everybody helps, I said. But is it helping spiritually and then there has to be a spiritual message or a spiritual practice and to distinguish between what is spiritual and what is not. That was the intention in going into that detail of the description. I wanted to elaborate on this a little more that 50 years from now, there will be many more, many more such teachers, many more who will be closer perhaps to what seems to be Spirituality. Some more, some less, some still in an appearance. But this discussion will be important irrespective of the names and forms. That's why I'm not bothering with names. I'm not interested in that. Not interested in criticising, but only in distinguishing what helps, what does not. The nuances of this whole question, I would like to touch on a few one is the power of the lineage or the tradition or even a ritual which you will find in certain lineages of Spirituality. The question had referred to some of the new gurus or the new teachers but in the lineages which I didn't comment on, there is often a power. Even if a certain teacher has not reached a necessary spiritual realisation to be a Guru, still the power of the lineage is there as a Guru and sometimes acts through this person. I had this experience and I had shared it in these discussions long ago. I was at a place in somebody's ashram. The person himself is a very sweet man, teacher of in that lineage now, but that's about it and I did not feel at any point that he could give anything of value, even in transmission. But he was sitting there in the space with people around him, things were happening, there was some discussion, there was nothing of value that came through him, but there was a power. And people were drawn to the power and they were happy to be seated there. Then the session was over and he invited us all to go for dinner. And as we got up, he got up and then as we got up to follow him, he got up and walked away and it was amazing to see the power stayed right there. He walked away and the power was there. He went away, others went and I just sat there for a while in front of the power and I said, what is this? Where is this from? And on inquiry I found out that was the place where his predecessors used to sit for their expositions. So the lineage held the power, the place had it anchored still, whatever they had done they had maintained that purity of good intention that it was still there, but it was not really connected to the person who was now holding the lineage. But it's possible that in future somebody else comes, who or even he may grow in time and acquire that capacity then to embody and transmit more directly and that may happen.

Sraddhalu (0:26:27):

 It's interesting to see in India and I've had a lot of experiences with many lineages, brief but often very insightful, with many lineages across the world from many traditions. It's interesting to see in some of the lineages in India for example, I have in mind a person now who broke away from another lineage, formed his own thing. He became an excellent teacher of philosophy and other aspects of knowledge in India, the Nyaya tradition and Vaisheshika tradition and all these were, he was brilliant as an intellectual. A lot of goodwill. He did great work in terms of spreading Vedantic knowledge and teachings. But in his own practice, he would say, what's the use of meditation? Not necessary, he would tell his disciples. And I suppose it was because he himself had not that experience. And it was interesting to see how it worked. So in one of the... there was a session which took place in Delhi. It was a special occasion, I think, Bhagavad Gita Day, and an industrialist had invited. So he doesn't have any much discrimination. He just called like five or six speakers and that was it. This great man, famous person was there right in the centre with his ochre robes. I was also invited along with a couple of others who were and each one of us somebody raised a question and sometimes the question was bounced around among us or just left open to whoever wanted to comment. So a question came, there are so many books, so many commentaries on the which is the best? So naturally this teacher, he was a very humorous man, he said, ‘I will say mine is the best’ and then he laughed and he said, ‘of course, everybody will say theirs is the best’, then he went on to emphasise his thing and then someone asked but how do we know that the knowledge given in there is is genuine. Where does it come from? What's the origin of the real understanding of the Bhagavad Gita? He said that depends on the lineage. I have received my knowledge from my teacher who received it from his teacher who received it, and he said, all the way up to in the lineage. So his whole idea was the transmission of the Gita's knowledge in a lineage from person to person being the only understanding of it.

So I got a chance. When I got a chance I said when you read the Bhagavad Gita, read it thinking of Sri Krishna as the Divine Guide within you and you are Arjuna in your struggle of life and each time you read a verse you pause and think of it this way: Sri Krishna within you is teaching you how to live life and I said the true knowledge is always coming directly from Sri Krishna. Lineages can embody but in transmission there is always loss and distortion. It's not so much a transmission of ideas but a transmission of the living experience which is important. And you can get that directly from Sri Krishna if you open yourself. So it was perhaps a little radical and it kind of deprecated the value of lineage in the way he might have understood it. Though I didn't mean it that way and he got a little upset that he took an occasion to leave quickly from that meeting but this I'm just explaining to show you that in a lineage sometimes there are great people and then it gets mixed and then again there are great people who come to renew the power of the lineage. We see this even in the Catholic Church there were Popes who were genuinely deeply mystical and Spiritual and then there were those who were very crude politicians and it happens sometimes in waves. But when somebody comes who can embody, the lineage gets regenerated Spiritually and then it has value. If it does not get regenerated eventually the power thins enough that there's nothing felt and people themselves don't feel attracted.  You see people can get attracted to power whether vital power political power or Spiritual power, but it is power that attracts generally. So if the spiritual power weakens and it's not replaced by political power, people fade away at least from coming as a spiritual source. Of course if it's political power, they come for public political interest not spiritual content, but this is possible.

Sraddhalu (0:30:48):

There is another example I want to give of not obviously a lineage and that is Ramana Maharshi. There is no lineage, nobody taught him. He plunged within, realised the Self and that was it. He then expounded, again with minimum of words, mostly by presence radiating. If you go today to Ramanashrama, there is nobody who is a successor to him. There were disciples, even those numbers now who were residents as an ashrama, they faded I think less than a handful now. But his presence is active, very strong in fact. When you enter the main hall, of course there are a lot of rituals, chanting and things happening, so sometimes one cannot always feel. But if you close your eyes, you will feel after a while his presence is still there. But what is more interesting is there is next to that a small room which was his personal room which is now used as a meditation room only. You enter there and you can feel much more easily. And I want to share my personal experience of some of these here. So when I went there, sat before the bed where he would, he would be seated or lying down, they put a large photograph or a large photograph of him, coloured, and I don't know if it's a painting or a touched-up photo but. I sat there, after a while the meditation just came and then I opened my eyes and looked at the image and it was in complete three dimensions with him sitting there, smiling with physical sight. That form itself, you could feel in it the depth and the vividness of his presence. It is strong enough, concrete enough that he is present and gives you the help that may be needed. You don't need to have a transmission of a lineage. You do not need a head. What is needed though is for people around to be protective of it. Otherwise, the presence may withdraw. It will still be there. It can still be accessed everywhere, finally. But it may withdraw from that space if it is not sustained and nourished, protected even. So, when he was about to leave his body, somebody had asked him, somebody said, one of his disciples, please they said to, they would address Maharshi as, I forget the term exactly right now but they would address him in a particular way and he said please don't leave us. And even as he was preparing to withdraw more and more he simply smiled and said, where can the Self go, the Self is simply, you are in its presence, you receive that's all, and that continues.

So this is another example of a Guru. It is still the Guru, the presence is the Guru. Whether in that personality or that form of encasement through which the Self had manifested, that's not so important. That is the Guru. I had a similar experience in my first trip to Belur Math, that is in Kolkata, which is the centre where Swami Vivekananda established the temple and sitting in the temple I sat naturally up close there was the glass sheet to separate from the inner sanctum where they have a life-size statue of Ramakrishna Paramahansa. Sitting there initially with eyes open and after a while I suddenly felt something moved, what was that? And of course, if you move your head a little bit because of the glass sheet, there might be some sense of a slight distortion. So, there's some movement. But if you sit very still, of course, the form doesn't move. But it helped. The glass sheet helped initially to break through the perception. And I saw his eyes blinking, the statue, and the chest breathing and felt the living presence. And I said, oh, this is something quite extraordinary. And I recall now, I said almost 45 minutes throughout, it was a living form. And the presence was living. And it was such a beautiful darshan. After that, I came away and I went to their museum and there I found an interesting quotation, He, that Paramahansa Yogananda, sorry, Ramakrishna Paramahansa had said to Swami Vivekananda, wherever you install me, I will be present. That icon, that idol was established by Swami Vivekananda. Of course, with the full presence consciously invoked of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Subsequently, every time that I went, I had exactly the same experience. The presence is so vivid, so living. It's not an occasional intensity. It is a sustained intensity and presence. And that's again an example of a living guru. Biologically, you may say, oh he has passed on, but the consciousness, the presence is there. Many years later, I had occasion to visit the room where Swami Vivekananda stayed in Belur Mutt. Normally, you are allowed to see from outside through a little window. You can peek in and see a little bit and people stand there. I had that glimpse once. I couldn't feel much, perhaps because the whole space where people come in, touch and all that, is a bit cluttered. But I had got special permission once to go within and sit, which is rarely given. I sat there for a while and it was a very special experience. The presence, his presence was so concrete. The meditation was profound, in that living presence and then I got up, I went to the bed where he used to lay down and stood before and as I bowed, there was a clear form seen with inner sight, not physical sight, of his golden body so vivid so intense, it's not something your mind can create, it was so vivid and I just had the satisfaction of his living darshan and that was it. Again I give this as an example to show you that the Guru need not be tied to form, can manifest through form, where it is the living presence and its power to act to help. That is what matters finally.

Sraddhalu (0:38:17):
There is one more allied question which I had mentioned in passing last time about ascetic paths. I said some of these are ascetic paths, but I wanted to elaborate on this. I would not, it would not be fair to view an ascetic path as in any case, in any way inferior or less important. You have to just recognize its right place in the overall evolutionary scheme. There was a period when all over the world for about 2,000 years all over the world it was asceticism, that was the only thing perhaps a few small centres holding something else which is more affirmative. But it was a necessary phase for humanity. Because the early phases of the yoga practice have much in common with the ascetic forms, I won't say the ideal of asceticism but the forms or perhaps the essential ideal of the asceticism not to the form of asceticism, that is an inner renunciation. This is what Sri Aurobindo teaches: The true idea behind the ascetic paths is the renunciation and the true renunciation is the inner of ego and desire. That is like a fundamental base on which everything else is built up and that's what the ascetic paths really sought for initially by giving it external forms. So when I look at all the different lineages, traditions which are ascetic, on a very superficial level we can say they don't give much to the world. They give a lot to humanity though. They teach you to pull back from certain superficial tendencies and entrapments and they teach you to disengage and to pull back to seek a higher, deeper experience, realisation. But in the process, they leave the world poorer. So, they don't have much to give to the world itself, but to humanity they give much because having done that, what happens next? Now depending on the individual and the strength of the inner aspiration or the inner influence, from that point they may say, yes, but I feel the need to act, to help to do something. So they turn to exercise from a greater freedom some action in the world. Now it may not be part of the ascetic path itself, but it's their particular contribution to the world from the strength of what the path gave them.

An example would be the whole Ramakrishna mission itself which although has an ascetic turn, a withdrawal from the world in the realisation of the Vedantic ideals, is very much active as Swami Vivekananda wanted it in the domain of social service through hospitals, through the opening of centres, through opening of schools. But in the form in which for example the education is taught, there is no particular intention to change anything. They create schools, it's run by people who have devotion, it stops there. But the monks themselves who hold the power, the presence, the strength of the tapas, of the Spiritual realisation, they act on the lay people in a manner that gives them a Spiritual imprint which then they turn into a change in their life. So although the core of the ascetic form or power is held in an ascetic framework, the influence it has on the community can be affirmative. But in the community when people wake up enough to the Spiritual aspiration, well they turn back to asceticism. So in some sense it's a loss but yet it acts. Again taking the example of Tibetan Buddhism which is the Mahayana approaches or some of the other variations where the goal is I will not withdraw from the world until every human being is liberated from suffering. So there's the turn to act even though the goal is ascetic that all will withdraw from the world eventually into the Nirvana and yet I will wait and act in the world to assist others. So even when there are strong ascetic lineages, inevitably they are compelled to engage with the world and have their huge spiritual impact on the world not always visible.

Sraddhalu (0:42:51):

This is a clarification I wanted to make about that. We have all had to pass through the ascetic phase, not necessarily in this life but in prior lives and even in this life at an initial phase of our Spiritual quest. The question which came up in some comment was what right does one have to judge? How can you judge if someone is realised or enlightened or not? No, you cannot. You should not even try to. It's not fair. Unless you yourself have a realisation greater than his, then of course you may make an observation, but again it need not be a judgement. But the question here is not that. The question is not about judging. It's not even about assessing whether someone is realised or enlightened. In fact, this is the point I want to elaborate on a little. This idea that somebody is enlightened or not is wrong. That somebody is realized or not is wrong. That's not how it works. First of all, enlightenment and realisation or Self-realisation in the Vedantic vocabulary are not the same. This word enlightenment is from the English language and is used as a translation for a technical term, initially, it came from Buddhism. With Nirvana, instead of using the word Nirvana, they translated it as enlightenment. Now the problem is in translating you have used a word which has many other meanings. Now this became very convenient for a lot of the New Age communities or teachers because now you could use a word which had a mixed meaning and it could be adapted to suit your convenience. So someone says I'm enlightened. No, that doesn't mean you have attained Nirvana or Self-realisation. You have just used a term which is undefined or which has multiple definitions.

So in Europe for example there was the age of enlightenment when people woke up from the darkness that the Catholic Church had imposed on them and rationality became the norm. So does that mean everybody got enlightened in the sense of Nirvana or Self-realisation? No, they just became mentally more aware, more conscious with reason became accepted as the leader. So enlightenment can have as low a meaning as being reasonable or often as used in many Spiritual communities or new age communities. They've been awakened in some Spiritual way. So I met somebody who claimed that one day I woke up and I was enlightened. So I am in the lineage of Ramana Maharshi because he attained his own enlightenment without someone else's help. I attained my own without anyone's help. So I'm in his lineage. Of course you can see logically it's not correct. You can just say you are your own lineage but that's about it. But nor can you say that what you had in your so-called enlightenment was the same as Raman Maharshi. It was not. That's the point and the person doesn't know the difference. He doesn't even know what Raman Maharshi had and he's not bothered to read or to try to understand. It's just a very superficial populist idea of, oh there is an awakening which is an enlightenment and that's it.

Now some of this came from the Zen tradition where there's this idea that you either are awake or you are not and the way it happens is often instantaneous and all the rest is preparation to get to that and again there I do not know enough about this in tradition but whatever I can understand is even there there are degrees of gradations so the idea is there are certain states or certain poises of awakening which once you have it you have it or you don't have it or you're close to it but you don't have it still but after that there may be others. So speaking to some of the Buddhist practitioners or some of Buddhist teachers, I could confirm that even in their tradition they have this idea that in nirvana there's a first entry into nirvana and there are further gradations of its greater completeness which is also recognized there. But this knowledge is not transmitted in this superficial vocabulary of enlightenment and then that idea gets retransferred into the Indian context by saying oh he's realised or not realised and that's the wrong idea. I'm going to put it in a different way. Someone once came and said to me, you know X told me that he has realised his psychic being and he asked me what is your experience? What have you realised? That was the question. I didn't want to discuss that but what I did was to turn it around. I said what do you mean that he has realised his psychic being? Or what does he mean by that? And I'll describe the spectrum. I said, you can have an experience of the psychic influence flowing out from within. You do not know its source, but you have the influence coming out. It's like water gushing out from a cave. You don't know what's inside the cave. You don't see the source, but it comes out. Does that person call that psychic realisation? That comes out in spurts or it comes out constantly. Would that be a higher grade of psychic realisation? Or the person enters the cave occasionally, experiences a glimpse of the psychic or its reflection in the waters of his own consciousness and says, ah now I've realised the psychic being. Often it reflects in the sentimental emotional poise in some way and many people think oh this is the psychic or has he gone deeper and actually touched that which is immortal and eternal within and then come out changed by it and he says now I've realised the psychic being or does he go have access to it at will, can go in come out or he goes within, stays in its closeness, lives in its closeness and even lives from its closeness, would that be realisation of psychic being. Or he goes within and now he is merged in the psychic being, there is no I separate from that, there is only that and that acts or that simply sits and glows out, while the rest of the personality moves in a normal perhaps mechanical or nature-driven habitual way, would that be realising the psychic being? Or something of that influence now seated within fills the whole personality, nudges it, guides it, shapes it, suggests suggestively while the rest mostly follows a mechanical process, would that be it? Or that influence now begins to fill your thoughts, fill your emotions, even fill your physical body and its actions and begins to lead it. No more Nature doing things mechanically but that influence not just filling and suggesting but actively guiding and leading. Would that be it? You see I'm giving you this full range, a whole spectrum, series, degrees of awakening to the psychic presence and experiencing its influence within you, filling you with it or even that one could say there is something more beyond that. Which of these would you call and what does the person claim it is?

Sraddhalu (0:51:03):
And I put this to my friend in these words simply to make him conscious that don't get carried away by such claims. Very likely the claim is some partial. Because when one actually experiences the full contact with the psychic being, you are changed in a certain way that cannot be had by any other way. It fundamentally changes your sense of identity and your values and that can be sensed. It can be seen, but at least sensed. There are in fact people who may not have such a vocabulary, who may not know these terms mentally but who have had the touch or the experience of the psychic being or even the self or have been filled with a with a flow of the from the intuitive consciousness and one can if one has it already one can recognize immediately that vibration. There's an example Sri Aurobindo gives of one of the sadhikas. I forget her name now but she was working in the Mother's kitchen and she was preparing food for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. So they had chosen carefully the people who make the food, because the vibration of the person who cooks the food goes into the food and if the mother and Sri Aurobindo are to eat from that, well it had better be of a certain grade of purity. So she was there preparing the food and of her Sri Aurobindo wrote I think it was to a letter to Nirodhbaran, Sri Aurobindo writes, she has experiences which are Upanishadic, of the Upanishadic Rishis, but she doesn't know what they mean in intellectual way or she does not have the vocabulary to say this is what that it is. But the experience is there, you don't have to have intellectual knowledge or have read those things to be able to have the experience itself. You can have the experience and just be and then someone can describe that and say, oh yeah that's what it is. But she lived in it and if you met her, it was a very interesting experience. I had occasion to meet her much later when the Mother's kitchen had closed and she had, mostly she was bedridden and some very interesting experiences I had. Some unusual, okay I'll share this one because it has to do with the food. We had gone for an interview, audio recording in those days, and she offered us some food.

Now, you don't refuse and she gave pomegranate, which until then I had never liked because when I ate pomegranate, it caused sneezing. It was too strong, too intense and I always sneezed after it. She gave that and because she gave it, I couldn't say no. I took it and I ate the first few seeds and it was delicious. The most delicious pomegranate I had ever eaten till then and I ate the whole thing. I had no sneezing and after that never again I sneezed after eating pomegranate. I don't know what it was but there was something to her touch, the vibration that came when she made food or gave food which had a healing capacity. I'm giving these examples to differentiate again. There's no point trying to judge somebody's development or experience or realisation. The discussion last time was about impact on humanity in the Spiritual development. But I'm going into this aspect now because it is also useful to understand how things actually work from within people who may have a Spiritual development. It does not make a person perfect or able to express higher knowledge or even capable of right action even if they have experience of the Self. Precisely because the part which experiences the Self and the part which acts or which speaks or which formulates knowledge are different. And especially in the ascetic tradition, there is no compulsion for these to be bridged. And so the person can live in the Self even, and doesn't mean they all do, but even if you have a glimpse of, even if you live in the Self, it does not mean that their action would always be right. So I give the example of Raman Maharshi. He said, it took him three days to attain realisation of the self. But after that, it took him 10 years of sustained effort to integrate that experience of living in the Self in all activities and at all times of his life. Now he would sit down and prepare food. That was one of his ways of transmitting or sharing with his disciples. So he would cut vegetables and cook. But initially when he was in this experience of the Self, it was there, when he came out it was not there, or at best as a backdrop. And then he worked to extend that influence into the thoughts, into the emotions, into the activities, to whatever extent he found necessary. But in all states of activity of life, he was able to sustain; that took him 10 years. If he had not attempted that, it would not be so. And that meant that he could have lived in it and yet spoken words which were not fully aligned or done actions which were not fully aligned.

Sraddhalu (0:56:48):

So this was part of the point I had made last time. Even I give one example of somebody who lives in a consciousness which is saintly, but still the knowledge and the actions may not align. And we have to understand why and this is where this discussion is important. On the other hand, somebody who may not have reached the experience of the Self or the psychic being or even any opening to higher intuition, but if they have developed a part of their consciousness, let's say a narrow part of the mind or the emotions or even physical action, which has been sufficiently refined, purified and connected to either the soul or the intuition or both, then through that very narrow thread, like a pipe, something higher can flow through and produce extraordinary expression. So a musician who plays the piano, I had an occasion to see one of these master pianists and he's still considered one of the best in the world. He came in, he was a performer, he took the applause etc. and it was his usual personality and he sat down at the piano and you can see the shift and it was not him anymore. There was no him. There was only the thing which flowed and it flowed through the whole body. The mind was pretty much non-functional, the emotions were not there, the whole body and then he flowed and he played and when it was over he got up, took the applause and it was his personality, not fully but still, there was a transition. He took his applause, he made two or three curtain calls, but the personality by then had begun to creep in. And I'm saying this because one does not have to be even a practitioner of a Spiritual life to be able to do that. In fact, there are many people who do not realize even that they have a contact with something deeper or higher. Even a touch of the psychic influence may be there in a person, even sometimes a very active influence and there's no thought form or vocabulary to represent what it means. It's just there. It leads their life, guides them and they just feel something and they know to trust it or not and that's about it. So this is to say a highly spiritually developed may have defective knowledge or action but a not sufficiently developed may have very superior inspired knowledge or action also. It's as if the person has created a very narrow channel, a pipe through which the light or the knowledge flows, all the rest is undeveloped and that's fine also. The content of the knowledge is quite pure but will not be complete necessarily because of the nature of the passage being narrow. Unless the entire mind is awakened and purified and made a full vehicle for the intuition and things beyond, you will always have partiality and limitation or some boundary outside which it will be solid ignorance and then suddenly there's a light in this very narrow passage. In fact what often happens of partial spiritual experience can often lead to an exaggerated ego sense.

Sri Aurobindo has this comment he makes in his letters where he says that a premature A premature experience of the cosmic consciousness has three dangers. The first danger is the exaggeration of the ego. You had an experience in a part of your consciousness and then you come back to your normal functioning personality and the personality now bloats out, wow I am so great, I am so big, it's a little the ego fill the infinity of the cosmic consciousness or whatever is left of it that's one distortion. The second, he says is the sense of unreality of the world because something has been experienced which is so vivid and real and you come back, against it all this seems to be somewhat constructed, fictional, fake, thin, unreal. And the third, interestingly, he says, is the danger of attacks. And this is something to understand more deeply, that when you are in your narrow ego shell, the shell protects you. When your consciousness opens out to something freer and wider, well you are also open now to things which happen in that larger consciousness which are now inside you in a sense. There's no hard rigid shell to separate you from them and so you're open to all kinds of things including attacks from cosmic forces which then take more interest in you because they say, oh this fellow we need to make sure he doesn't go too far, keep him within the boundaries. So this is a problem which can happen is an exaggeration of ego. I remember one example and again it's something I will share with a person who was very popular for a while as a spiritual teacher. He was part of a lineage I understand and he had become very famous, a lot of famous people were going to him and then one day suddenly there was a scandal, somebody had put a video camera in his room and he was found to be in bed with some film actress and things like that. It became a bit of a scandal and he was, he apologised and withdrew from public space and then came up with his own new formats which were quite strange to say the least.

Sraddhalu (1:02:52):

What is interesting is one of the admirers of him that I had met showed me a book of his life which was published during the peak of his fame. I saw the last few pages because they opened in the middle so, all colour photos, it was garish, I would even say ugly in the coarseness of what came across. But then I said, okay, what's his background? So I turned to the initial pages and there were some black and white pictures. They were of his early phase, before he became famous. And looking into his eyes, one could see, ah yes, he has touched something. So I read a little bit of his bio and he had a certain profound experience at an early stage of his life when he experienced what I would call a glimpse of the cosmic consciousness. Having had that, he said, oh now I have reached. Now I am a teacher. Now I will teach what I am. Of course, he never lived in it. He had an experience of it, came out and maybe a series of experiences, I don't know. But he came out and began to now teach, became a guru or what he thought was that. He had a certain power from the lineage perhaps and there was some occult knowledge from that or he got it later. I don't know. The result was a severe distortion of his personality and like I said, what was on the surface was quite garish and I think he lost the Spiritual experience also. That's what it seemed to me in any case, but this is to warn of the danger of exaggerated a premature experience and the ego which is not ready for it and I want to perhaps give one more example. This is from an American teacher, a very interesting man very charismatic in his personality and style. I read of his experience that he had spontaneously an experience of Cosmic consciousness and he even said occasionally that he would experience it and transmit it. So I had occasion to meet him once. I enjoyed his charisma. I then met him personally and I wanted to gift to him a book of Sri Aurobindo. I took Sri Aurobindo's commentary on the Isha Upanishad which of course would give the base for that. So meeting him, I asked him one question. First question I said, do you live in that experience which you have described in your book? He said no. I said can you call upon it at will either to experience it or to transmit it. He said no, it comes when it's necessary for the work. Then I asked him, why don't you work to deepen and to establish yourself in that experience? He said, if I do that then I won't be able to do what I want to do with my group which is to build his community. You see the error of this. Unfortunately, too many, too many yogis, seekers, spiritual practitioners, too many stop short for this, getting in a hurry to teach. And the result is you are not living in a consciousness of which you are speaking and around which you want to build something, let's say in his case the community. But on what grounds? On what you are, which is this narrow petty ego, which has not been truly liberated into that consciousness.

So it was a bit of a disappointment to see that, but it was clear that he couldn't, he was too strong as a personality, very strong vitality and like I said charismatic. So, the pull of that attraction was too great. I did give him the book. He said, normally I don't read books but Sri Aurobindo I will definitely accept. I appreciated that. But subsequently, I heard some problems in his community that he was extremely manipulative. He would force people to get married or live in certain ways and not do things. It was just a control system against which the whole system rebelled eventually. But why did that distortion happen? Because it was not an expression of that experience. And yet, his power or authority was backed by an experience. This is the greatest danger. When there is a Spiritual power or an experience backing but an insufficiently developed vehicle or receptacle, adhara, the term Sri Aurobindo uses in the yoga. Adhara is the foundation, the base on which or through which the action can take place. And that's why it is so important in any system of yoga or spiritual training to first thin out the ego sufficiently. But that's not enough. You can have a thinned out ego but in the influence of this great experience, the thinned ego bloats out. And so it does not have a hard form necessarily, but it's a bloated ego finally reflecting the experience and therefore limiting or distorting the work, which would be fine in an ascetic path where the goal was anyway a withdrawal. It is not fine when you turn that into either helping others, leading, teaching or manifesting something of that consciousness. Then it can go far, you can still do great things but there will always be a fundamental flaw and a distortion which eventually will spoil the work.

Sraddhalu (1:08:42):

So this is all to, its a bit of an elaboration on various other possibilities. So this is all to share with you the complexity of the whole field of Spiritual experience and the teaching transmission or guruhood, if we may use the term of becoming a teacher for a Spiritual path or a lineage and it's not easy. Often the fact that you take on the position of a teacher is a sure promise that your further Spiritual progress will be blocked because you don't have enough time, you don't have the luxury, you don't have a chance to make mistakes. You see, you cannot pass through an experience which involves a struggle because well you have to look after your whole followers and your institution and all else or you're busy having to earn money through programs in order to run the whole machinery which have seen a lot of these teachers and get into. For what? To teach what? It comes with a flawed or partial or even distorted knowledge or experience. So understand the complexity it's not easy to be a teacher and people who get into it may have had an original genuine experience but getting into it prematurely often get into great trouble in terms of their own spiritual progress. All this is pointing to the huge benefit and advantage we have from the integral vision that Sri Aurobindo gives us. Because of that vision, one can understand all these things. The full picture of the work to be done and the numerous forms of partial awakenings possible as well as the numerous kinds of distortions possible.

I share with another example. This is somebody, this is the man I mentioned earlier who said one day I woke up and I was enlightened. So I found him cute, he was sweet, very fine person. But I didn't feel a depth of Spirituality. He had some occult experiences. He found himself one day suddenly in a completely different place in a tropical island. He lived there for many days and then again he woke up in his body and no time had passed. But that whole experience was tangible, physical. And he said I don't understand this. So I explained to him the subtle physical realities where you have a tangibility of the physical matter but not the same sense of physical time and oh, he said oh that's very interesting, you see that's the advantage you have of being in a spiritual lineage you have all this knowledge but I don't have any of that because I'm not in a lineage. Okay. I met him a few years later. We were sitting in a restaurant and eating and each time I looked at him, I felt this great depth, something deep, something wide in his eyes. It was as if he was living in a different state of consciousness. And I was itching to ask. I thought it was too intrusive. I waited and at some point on his own he said, I asked him, has something changed in you? Something is very different and he said yes for the last few weeks, he said, I have been living in this state where I'm trying to experience my life as the universe would experience it from its perspective. Very interesting. It's a useful exercise to try. So the result was he had as if opened out to this wider, freer, larger consciousness and had identified with it. And it was such a beautiful thing to see. I said, ah, wonderful. Now he is clearly on a Spiritual path that is of some worth. And then a few years later, I met him and he was back to his normal state. It was a passing experience. There was no reference for him to value it for what it was leading him to and I suppose he just dropped it or he has occasional access to it. That was it.

Sraddhalu (1:12:58):

So that's why it is so important to have this integral vision. We are fortunate, if we take the trouble to enter deeply to understand the full scope of Spiritual experiences possible that Sri Aurobindo maps out in such great detail in the Synthesis Of Yoga particularly, some of it in the Life Divine, some in his letters, but the full spectrum, the full scope at all the levels and all the variations is there in a certain way, so that wherever you are you may say, ah yes, but this is the beginning of something so much greater. You never make the error of saying, I have reached and this is it, you always know this is great but it's the beginning of so much more and then again the beginning of so much more and as in the experience of the Vedic Rishis each mountain peak that you climb shows you a greater peak that is waiting for you and that's the nature of the integral yoga. Do not be troubled if it feels like it is too big as an ideal, as a goal. The journey itself is a journey from peak to peak, from joy to greater joy, from depth of intimacy with the Divine to greater depth of intimacy to Divine, to still greater depths of infinities of intimacy with the Divine. So enjoy the way that is more important than the big picture, but the big picture is necessary so that you may know where you are on the way and you do not stop short or get caught in any of the digressions.

Alina (1:14:40):
Thank you very much. It was a beautiful session. Thank you for sharing so many experiences and for bringing so much clarity. It was a very exceptional session. Thank you very much.

Sraddhalu (1:14:59):
We can sit for a few moments in gratitude to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother for this gift and for their continuing living presence as the Guru on the path, with us always helping and guiding.

Thank you.