EWS #86 Questions from viewers (28) - on Spiritual Life - 8

Oct 02, 2021

Alina (0:00:00):
Namaste and good evening to all. Welcome to the continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Namaste Sraddhalu.

Sraddhalu (0:00:20):
Namaste. Happy to be here.

Alina (0:00:23):
Namaste Joel.

Joel (0:00:25):

Namaste, Alina. Namaste, Sraddhalu.

Alina (0:00:30):
We are happy to be back and continue Part 8 on Spiritual Life. And today we will continue covering some questions on the graph of consciousness and practices, experiences and levels of consciousness. Last time we covered some questions on intergalactic influences, materialisation, multitasking and concentration. Today I will start with one question from Manmohan: ‘Why even after understanding, we are not able to do what we should do. We do like to postpone and procrastinate.” It's a good question to start with and many are facing this difficulty if you could highlight on this.

Sraddhalu (0:01:26):
It's probably the single most common problem for everybody in taking up any kind of discipline not just for Spiritual growth and yoga but any kind of discipline of any kind. Even for people who want to go in a disciplined way for your office work, you want to do but some part of you says, ah afterwards, let's wait, I want to relax now. And the core problem is that we are not a single person. We are not one integrated being, we are made up of so many parts and each part has its own, I will use the word dharma, or at the very least its own habit. Each part wants to do according to its habit, its convenience, its comfort but behind that is a deeper truth that every part has its own dharma and so it tends to actualize itself in a different way than other parts. The problem with this is when you want to turn the whole of your consciousness to a single person, each to a single objective, to a single goal, each of these parts tends to want to either approach it in a different way or by habit turns with a different interest. Let's say you have a very important work to be done tomorrow and you get up with the idea that today, you go to sleep with the idea that I'm going to do something before sleeping, let me finish my work prepare for it at least, read a little, as you open your papers your mind wants to do, perhaps your body wants to sleep, your emotions are saying, ‘does it matter now? maybe when I get up I could do it, I could get up a little early, sleep a little early’, the different paths pulling in different directions. You are not able to bring them all together by coordination. You are not able to integrate them into a single action because nowhere in our educational system have we been taught to do that consciously. If anything, some kind of an integration takes place from the very fact that we are drilled into doing a lot of very difficult works, preparing for exams and things like that, you are forced to pull yourself, force yourself and so on. The moment you're done with that pressure, you let go, your whole being collapses, falls apart into so many different impulses. Often in reaction to that forced focus, you will go into an extreme of, people go for a holiday or they binge watch a movie, movies or they sleep extra. You see this, you work very hard during the week and you sleep excessively on Sundays or weekends and all these are reactive responses, which we get used to and then the reactive response is our normal temperament. You work hard and then you react in another extreme, which again creates this diversion between parts, because the part which wants to focus and the part which wants to react a different and so it's part of the yogic discipline to gradually integrate all these parts until they all work together for a single purpose that we choose.

The problem with that is as I said, each has a different dharma. Even if you try to integrate they need to act differently or they have different values or principles by which they act. For example, the dharma of the mind is to follow what is true. The dharma of the life energy is to enjoy the experience, the dharma of our emotions is to give a special value or express a special feeling, the dharma of the body is to hold, to protect, to preserve that which is valuable from past patterns or habits. Each of these is pulling in a different direction, how do you integrate them when they are so fundamentally different? It's the same problem generally speaking in yoga that your mental body, your vital body and your physical body are have completely and priorities. There is nothing in common between the three except perhaps one part dominating and forcing itself which is generally what happens. The mental will says I have to and I will force the body, force my emotions ,drive my vital energies always with some reaction inevitably, because the mind will overdo, it will push too hard or the other parts become very quiescent or in extreme cases they go on strike. How often have you had this problem that I know I have to do, I want to do but just as I start doing, I feel all my energy is gone - it's a revolt in the vital energies. The problem is there's nothing in common between these three around which this integrated action could take place. The only thing which is common is not in these three but is the common thing supporting all three which is what Sri Aurobindo calls the psychic being.

Sraddhalu (0:07:26):

The psychic being if you look at not a separate part or the psychic generally being not a separate part, but the essential Divine principle of each part. So if you take the mental consciousness, you go back into the essential part of the mind awareness until it reaches something which is free of the form and becomes the pure Divine essence out of which the mind is expressed, that will be the psychic. You get into the vital and similarly withdrawing to the essential that is psychic. If you withdraw from the physical similarly from the form of the physical to the essential quality of the physical consciousness again it is the psychic. And the psychic across the essential physical vital mental is like a continuum, it is the psychic plane so to say. So Mother explains that the psychic plane is not like the vertical ascension of levels of consciousness but it's the common support behind all formed expressions on all planes. And this is why therefore the psychic being which is the organised centre of the psychic consciousness in us, is able to support all these three bodies, all these layers and all their final gradations. You know we use the three bodies or three layers generally but actually there's a the three blending into each other make 3x3, nine gradations and then even finer gradations. But the psychic being which is the true centre that is able to act directly on each of these or holds all three in their essence. Like, if you had to take the analogy of the horse, if you have several horses in the chariot the rope that you hold from each horse comes back to one charioteer and the psychic being is that which can hold these. If that integration or if that has been developed when the psychic influence is strong the integration tends to happen reasonably smoothly and sometimes almost automatically unless some part generally the vital has a strong reactionary tendency then you will have those occasional revolts, until the psychic influence there also grows and it brings it into alignment. Or there's another influence which is the influence of the Self, what Sri Aurobindo calls the central being which is not the Self which is the Self of all, but the aspect of that Self that leans to support your individual evolution. It's still the same Self but it's as if turned to leaning to support this evolution. When the central being exerts its influence, it's as if it draws all the threads together and the personality integrates. If it relaxes its influence the personality begins to fall apart again, all these different parts tend to follow their own influence. So there's an influence from above, there's an influence from within. These are the two things which alone can actually integrate these different parts in us.

So far I've spoken of the three bodies or finer gradations of the planes of consciousness. In practice the problem is much more complicated. On each of these planes there are different parts in us. Each has its own pulls and pushes. So for example in the emotions, there is a part which is actually genuinely caring for others and wants to help. There's another part which is jealous and turns around and says, oh that person deserves to suffer why should I help? There's another part which is a calculating part which is, ah if I don't help someone else helps that person will be grateful to that person and not to me I need to keep the gratitude useful for me. So you have different impulses coming within the same emotional domain. In the same way, in the mind we have different parts. You will see very often when people get into an argument if you counter the argument and expose the hollowness of it, the mind just flips and finds a different reason now, flips again finds a different reason. If you push the person to a second third or fourth reason, often the fourth reason will be the direct opposite of the first reason given - because I want to do may end up with because I don't want to do or because I like you or because I don't like you and it will end up completely opposite not realising that it is the same mind which is taking these different positions and it's part of the problem of the unintegrated mind or undeveloped powers of the mind that you can have so many different contradictory thoughts at the same time. Sri Aurobindo comments on this: Unless there has been sufficient development of the mind to integrate the various powers and functions and to actually develop a focal point a centre of what we will call the buddhi as a self-aware centre which can actually say, ‘this thought and this thought are contradictory, how is this possible’, and it will start to arrange them or put them in the right relation. This is not developed in a lot of human beings especially when our life does not require it and we are happy to live in a mix of partial thinking and partial emotional feeling which is the band in which most of human life is normally lived. And so you may spend your entire life without ever needing to stand back from your thoughts and bring this clarity well because you can get away with it. Or which is what is happening today increasingly, the increasing strife the increasing conflict is kicking us hard, hurting us and either we wallow in self-pity and fall apart or we try to find we make an effort to organise to find some balance, some harmony to create even by force some kind of harmony which forces us to grow and integrate these parts.

Sraddhalu (0:14:06):

In practice, this whole problem of multiple parts takes this form. There are for each part impulse in you whether across levels or within the same level doesn't matter now we just speak about many parts: For each of these parts impulse pulling you in a different direction, your experience of life and of reality gets fragmented into all these different directions and then you experience the world as if pulling you in many different directions or attacking you from many different directions. The attempt to set right the conflict that you feel external to you forces you to integrate these parts which are within you, because finally the strings are coming to you in different parts. When two things hurt you intensely and you try to sort them out, the part in you which is dealing with those two things is also required, the two parts are required to somehow integrate. This is the slow process of evolution. It's painful, it is unnecessarily long, unfortunately that's the mass of humanity in the slow evolution. When you become conscious of this reality even as an idea and you decide that you don't want to go through this slow painful passage, the first thing you do is you stand back. It's the poise of the observer. Now there's a big deal about this idea of observer, witness and it's much misunderstood. So I will describe it rather than use that technical term. I would say, take a position in which you begin to observe your own personality, your own thoughts, your own emotions, your actions, the various impulses within you. Now you can't be doing that all the time during your day, because well you have to live your life.

So the easiest thing to do is an exercise that the Mother gives. You start this at the end of the day. You've come home, you've had your dinner, you've sufficiently rested that you can now sit quietly and concentrate and she recommends doing this exercise before going to sleep and there's a very important reason for that which I will explain shortly. So before going to sleep you sit down on your bed, give yourself about a good 15 minutes at least or more and then go through the whole day as if you are describing or observing somebody else's life. Do not criticise yourself, do not feel bad or judge yourself, it's a very detached view from the morning: When I woke up I was in my bed, I was reasonably ready to get up, it was already time but I felt lazy. I wanted to drag on a little bit, take time I wonder, maybe look at my phone, look at messages or emails, daydream a little bit and when I had to struggle to get up one part wanted to get up, another part didn't want, - observe simply, try to identify, you don't have to give it a name with your mind, try to identify the feeling of each part, the part which wanted to get up was this enthusiastic, ready fresh for the day, and the other part which was like an inertia and you feel it is something perhaps in your body or in your grade of emotions very close to the body. Notice, feel, distinguish in your experience. You feel the separation between the two. Observe right now don't struggle, do not fight, do not try to integrate by force you're not yet ready. Your first effort should be to try to to observe only and become aware. Then you'll go to the next part: after I got up, I did this, I did that, then there were interactions during the day. I met X, so very likely in your first effort to do this you might wander off. If that happens, don't worry, bring back. The moment you're aware, bring back. You may not do the whole day in great detail. You may take up some significant events of the day, why I got angry when we were interacting with this person, so and so was upset with me and then I couldn't control I reacted also - observe how the chain of anger built up. Or there were some misunderstandings and then it took you a while to come to a compromise or an understanding, observe where the misunderstanding came in your thoughts. Or you realise you had a prior bias based on which a statement by somebody else was wrongly understood, notice the bias, notice from where it came, maybe it was from an emotion and a prior habit. Whatever, simply observe, complete the whole day or as much of the day as you can, maybe it's too much if you go too much in detail for everything but just do the significant parts. Again, step back, observe it all as one person's life one experience that you have in observation and then take up the whole thing, before offering it, but you will make an important step. Observe these things and then you will put an intention, next time I will be more conscious, I will be aware of this and if you like you put an intention of how it should be. So every time you find some person comes to you agitated, you also lose your balance, you get upset also, next time when the person comes I will be aware and I will consciously take a deep breath, relax myself and be calm and clear, just put an intention and if you like you can feel what it will be like to be calm and clear when the person is upset. You're infusing an intention, a will or a state gently softly at the end you do pick one or two important points. That's it. The rest you just observe. Don't put too many intentions. And then you take the whole thing, make a conscious offering to the Divine and say, ‘here is the day, these are the things which happened, it is given to you. No more my problem. You do what is best. Help me to grow as needed’. Go to sleep.

Sraddhalu (0:20:48):

What happens now is the intention you placed, the poise of observation you created before sleeping stays automatically. You may go to sleep but that shapes your state of consciousness and creeps into your sleeping state and thus the intention you put or the state you held slowly penetrates your subconscious regions, gently goes deeper and deeper and forms a new habit from inside out. It is like a what would be called a post hypnotic suggestion, where in a state where the surface mind is quieted you are putting an intention in a deeper part. Now this is very effective because it goes very deep into your subconscious. It's as effective as watching a movie before going to sleep and then the next day remembering still and feeling the impressions of those words or those emotions in you and this is a positive intention and a positive influence placed. What will happen is within a few days the intention that you've put will start popping up spontaneously as the person comes with agitation. First you may still lose but you will remember even as you lose. The second time before you lose you will remember and you will take your poise. The third time it will happen spontaneously perhaps and very quickly. Within a few days you will find your response is different, with a very little effort. If you consider what it required very little effort to change but what it did also at the same time is integrated these different parts because the centre was held from which these parts were observed and influenced. Now in the beginning, this practical centre is your mind and the centre of your mental will which we've called the buddhi which is the proper centre to organise initially. But it's not the ultimate centre because finally it cannot hold all these layers truly and that's why this movement of self-giving, offering opens it to a still deeper aspiration which comes from the source which is the psychic presence. If possible over time as you're working on the, becoming conscious of the psychic influence and allowing it to fill, that that influence uses this formed buddhi centre, especially it filling the buddhi now begins to take charge through the buddhi. This is this normal process of the yoga.

Very rarely, very rarely, one awakens to the psychic directly and it comes forward and takes charge. It always uses initially the intermediary of the buddhi which is the most developed part in us, around which the personality can be generally organised which should be the goal of education at least if it had been properly done. But now the psychic influence filling fills and takes these threads and holds or influences through them and does the truer deeper integration and especially when all these different parts in us begin to feel that touch or begin to feel the aspiration that becomes the aligning centre, the principle around which your entire personality begins to get aligned. This process, if you work upon both the exercise before sleeping as well as the psychic influence, this process you will feel distinctly affecting your whole personality sometimes within weeks or months at most. You will feel a difference, how much? Depends on each one. For some people already the personality is semi organised. For them some there are parts which are extremely difficult and revolting for others it's just scattered pieces that take time. So do not worry if there is one part which is strongly revolting. Sometimes we see people, 90% of the personality is so integrated and so beautiful and there's one part which is violently revolting, generally in the vital and all it needs is a little bit of cajoling like a horse you have to tame, gently you give that part its due and say all right, now you help, you participate and when it begins to feel the joy of this participation or this consecration and is touched by the psychic influence, it turns, maybe gradually maybe suddenly. And then in an integrated, reasonably integrated personality everything now becomes easier. Yes, you will still get occasional revolts, you will get still get occasional conflicts, well we are not totally integrated but on a practical level you are integrated. All the rest of the journey of this yoga as well as your overall quality of life will undergo a massive shift. The full integration then may take place as the sadhana progresses and the influence both from above and from within get more and more complete and right now we need not worry about that.

Sraddhalu (0:26:00):

But this basic integration of the personality is something that we have to work towards. Some of it will take the form as I gave the example before. You wake up, you have this part which is lazy, another part which wants to start the day. Initially well the lazy part is stronger. Sometimes this will, mental will, will force but if you've gone through this exercise before sleeping in a few days you will feel I wake up I feel these two parts and then I consciously shift myself, shift my sense of identification with the other part, no struggle no conflict I shift into that part I think I'm going to get up and that's it. The other part is still there but it's less important, it has less force. The ability to shift between the parts is your first step to integrating those two parts and so this is a general indication of perhaps one of the easiest ways to do the integration. One can of course do other ways - you are conscious of this, conscious of that tendency and then you become aware you move between the two there are one can do exercises like that which are also valued in certain traditions as a way of integrating emotions. Even they will train you to shift consciously between different emotional states. So you put yourself in a state where you experience the distress, let's say, you have a jealousy - you put yourself in the state of jealousy and then consciously put yourself in a, shift yourself in a state of emotion where you feel affection or compassion or even appreciation for the other person and praise and by shifting between different emotions you teach yourself to integrate. So if you have now got into find yourself spontaneously in jealousy, I don't want this I shift. These are exercises which are perhaps more complex, not everyone can do that easily. It's for you to to see how but the easier way and the yogic way would be to use this deeper influence to integrate.

There are also other ways by which through the mind's observation one observes, integrates and so on. This is especially useful for conflicts in viewpoints in the thought which can sometimes as I said be opposite also. One of this is the big picture of what is possible. Start with what is easy, start with what is simple. Because you may not have enough time or energy to take up more detailed form and it may not be necessary for most people also. The result will be increasingly you know, you want to do, and you will be able to choose to do. Still the nature of the mind, the nature of the emotions and the fact that there are different parts of consciousness there will always be a division. It is only when the whole of your personality is taken up by the one consciousness which is the origin of them all, that they can be fully integrated and that one consciousness which is the origin of them all is the Supramental. It is only in a Supramental influence transforming the whole of your nature that a single divine will flowing down will multifacetedly express itself in a smooth stream. No conflict, no division at all, not even the slightest ripple of disharmony. But that is perfection. Well before one has even become conscious of the Supramental as an active power, a basic integration is possible and that's our immediate goal. The rest will happen in the further stages of the sadhana itself as a result of the higher consciousness working. I think this would be broad enough.

Alina (0:30:03):
I think these practices could be equally applied in another two situations which could be mentioned: When, for example, when, when there's a split in the personality, and there's a term called dis-associative identity disorder, when we have two or three or more personalities or some moments when we're in this triangle of perversity how is it called when you think one, you say something totally different and your actions are totally different so there's no balance in between what you think what you say and what you actually do. So I think same same guidelines to integrate the personality.

Sraddhalu (0:30:47):
Yes, there's one difference though. When it comes to what we call multiple personality and that's a different case, where actually the entire personality switches. There, it is a case of possession. There are different beings who take either successively or sometimes simultaneously they take over the personality and so you have a total difference even with memory. The memories also change, voice changes, appearance changes. So those are cases of possession and so there are different category altogether. Unfortunately in modern psychiatry they mix everything and view it as a as one phenomenon with extreme forms. No,  that's a very different phenomenon. And what the second example you gave is more of, is perhaps closer to what we have been discussing, where a person wants to do this but ends up with a very different response and that's a split often between different parts where we can integrate in this way. Ultimately though you see, in the mental consciousness your knowledge and your will to action are different things. So there will always be a slight gap - I know and I have to do and they are different things. It is only in the Supramental consciousness, the knowledge is the will, the will is the knowledge. So it's only in that, from that centre that you will have the full harmony. But that's alright, we understand this. There will still be a struggle always. But once the basic integration has taken place and especially when the psychic influence is strong enough, it doesn't mean you have realised the psychic being, it just means the influence is strong and overall the whole personality is oriented around your central aspiration and devotion to the Divine, to the Divine Mother, to the Spiritual life, whatever form it takes, that's good enough as a starting point and that should be our immediate goal.

Alina (0:32:47):

Okay, we have some comment and questions from Saroj. I will read his first question. Soul and psychic being progresses from life to life. Why then we are not able to remember the past life and progress? If soul and psychic being are the core of all, why God didn't give us in our nature, the ability to scan all our past lives and their progress?  

Sraddhalu (0:33:17):
Yes, very interesting question. Very practical question also. We can remember things from our childhood and logically we would say, why shouldn't I be able to remember from my past life because it was my past life, isn't it? Or at least from the Soul’s point of view, the past life. Why this gap, where everything is forgotten and where is it forgotten, where is it lost, how is it lost, can it be even recalled? Because sometimes under altered states such as hypnosis we seem to be able to recall things from past lives, but again are those true or are they all fantasy? So it's a, the question itself has many implications. But first we look at the overall idea behind it. If you, the person who's thinking feeling remembering, left the body and took birth, you would most likely remember a lot. This sometimes happens where a person has had an accident, the life work is incomplete and it takes birth immediately. Sometimes because a large part of the personality is carried over into the next because the work is incomplete and the same work has to continue with the same personality. Many memory elements do get remembered and yet a lot is lost for a simple reason that at the time of taking birth you identify with the biology body of the child and the brain naturally, the mind is infused and fixed into the brain and nervous system. But observe, even if you had not got, if you're not identified with a child, the child itself is in a state of half sleep or when wakes up is unable to fully process all the senses and it shows you that the brain is not yet sufficiently developed and organised to be able to have a fully organised mental life. So when you, even as a formed consciousness and a mental consciousness, the mental body when you identify with this physical brain which is not fully developed and formed, there is a dulling of mental consciousness which is very similar to what would happen if you were injected certain hormones or certain chemicals which make you a little bit sleepy.

So a person is given in a drink what they call sleeping medicine, you drink it and after a while you start getting sleepy, you want to stay awake but the sleep pulls you. You notice that state, very interesting. As the sleep pulls you, it dulls all of your faculties, dulls your senses, dulls your ability to think, until it's as if a cloud comes and your consciousness gets and you sleep. Until that last moment you might actually be saying something and mid-sentence you begin to fade out, you may remember at that moment what you want to say but once you've slipped into sleep and you wake up you don't remember. In the state where you're half asleep or similar thing happens when people are extremely drunk, they may say things even with memory and may remember what they have said within that half hour but after they lost consciousness and they wake up, on the other side of waking up they do not recall what happened last night, it's a blank, it's a blur. Now if this can happen to you in your current personality already fixed in the brain it is much more intense when you first identify with a brain which has been similarly or which is already dulled because of its insufficient development. So as the brain now sufficiently develops let's say over a few months or a few years that it can develop and organise its experiences around a focal point and a thread of consciousness forms, mental. You don't remember what was before although it's still the same mental personality which has got in and you may retain fragments, almost like fragmented memories. This is what happens when there is an immediate rebirth after an accident. And then the child says I don't belong here, my name is such-and-such. He is not too sure what he's saying, but his fragments of memory of what is his name and his images again in fragments. The child is taken to that place he says I am from such-and-such a village and my name is such-and-such, so the child is taken to that place and he looks at the house and says, ah yes that's my house, but the memory had gone, seeing it recalls by familiarity and so on. So this is an exceptional case but even in this exceptional case with a formed mind joining an insufficiently formed body there is a great loss.

Sraddhalu (0:38:42):

Now consider what happens in a normal transition after death when as the physical body is shed all the things which belong only to the physical body are lost with it. What is it remaining? Think about what would remain. For example, of course objects you have your very expensive ring, watch favourite physical object, that's gone with the body. But skills which are in the body but which are not integrated in the subtle body those also would stay with the physical body. Memories which belong only to the physical body would not remain, for example the physical body has a trauma memory of an injury or a burn or let's say somebody had a burn on the finger in childhood so for the rest of the life the personality is a little hesitant or the body is a little hesitant of hot things. If this memory only belongs to the physical body it's gone and for a good reason. If the person had an addiction of the physical body such as to nicotine smoking or other forms, but the rest of the personality did not did not want it, did not participate and it was only a biological craving that is also lost with the physical body. What remains next, initially the subtle physical and then gradually the vital and mental bodies remain. As layer by layer from the densest part the bodies so to say disintegrate because the soul withdraws its identification. So the same happens with the physical body as long as there is the identification of the life energy and the vital body the physical body is sustained. It begins to withdraw, this so to say a loss of interest in life with a withdrawal and the physical body begins to break down. The organs now don't coordinate too well and bit by bit it's as if the pieces fall apart because the integrating consciousness of the life force is reduced or withdrawn. But something similar happens when the mind consciousness withdraws from the vital body. So with that of course with the soul's intention, the pieces of the vital body and the emotional tendencies begin to fragment.

A few of those pieces which were strongly formed may have had a strong desire or liking for eating certain types of food which remains as a formation in the vital body. As the body disintegrates that piece floats out. If you feel the quality of the energy of that liking, craving, it attaches itself to other things which are of similar vibration. So sometimes animals who have a similar habit get this energy infused into them. This is the idea in India of offering food to crows after a person has passed away for the next three days, to help release the person's desires. So the idea that the ways popularly said is, in case the person had any desire remaining which prevents him from going ahead, we will give the food and the person will eat through the crow and thus get satisfied of the desire. And it's not the soul. There is this piece of the vital body which had the strong desire formation hanging around in that space which now is attached to or is attracted to that food being given and may identify with an animal of similar grade of vibration and eat through the crow and thus expend itself and at least that's the intention. And so we said the person is free, no it's not the person, it's this piece, this part of the vital body. These are actually this was more integrated more large, which would hang around as ghost or an influence at least of a strange ghost type you will say, you don't see a form but you feel some energy - a miser attaching himself to his possessions or his money which is buried inside the wall or the ground he will attach to that part. It's interesting as an idea that if you're in the subtle site you come into this, let's say very old palace or house and you notice, oh there's this energy attached to this part of the wall or this part of the ground and it doesn't like when we approach it, it reacts, that means there's a treasure there. You see the very fact of its presence attaching to it gives away the fact of the treasure, but this is to say the person has gone but their life energy bundle, habit attachment stays if it has not been dissipated, for which sometimes we have these special pujas invocations ceremonial invocations with the fire with the idea that the invocation of this purifying influence. Or sometimes there is an occult process which takes all these pieces which might be still hanging around and burns or dissolves them in the purification of the fire. Or you create a strong positive purifying Spiritual influence which then dissolves things which are not relevant. The idea is to dissolve all these formations and so you say now the ghost has been sent out or the disturbing energy is now cleared and so on.

Sraddhalu (0:44:15):

I've given negative examples, equally a positive thing can take place. Let's say, a parent who had a premature death is now concerned about the child the children who are alive. And so the part of their emotions which attach to the children with love for protection for helping them, for nourishing them, worried for their future or wanting to help them in their journey that emotional part can often separate, remain and stay there as a nourishing influence for the children and the children may feel, ah we have the protection of our grandmother or whatever it is. The soul meanwhile may have incarnated but the grandmother energy or the mother energy in the family is as if still there and the fact that you acknowledge it and you thank it forms like a feedback loop, you give it energy, it gives you its affection protection and so a formation is created which may stay in the house. Which, if it's a positive formation is good for the family or eventually may become limiting or if it's a negative formation can also be harmful and that's the idea behind your ancestral energies helping you or harming. All this is to explain the transition after death where these layers are dropped and with it the memory of things associated only with those layers fall away, the tendencies fall away. Last remains the mental sheath. To the extent that your mind was organised and individualised the part that is sufficiently individualised and aligned to the psychic is retained. But if your mind was a hard encrusting rigid form, well the psychic happily discards it, there's not much to retain from it. But the refined part the subtle plastic useful to its further journey is absorbed assimilated as with the other parts also. The part of the consciousness which is assimilated is only that which is aligned to psychic values, aspiration and useful and plastic enough for future use, those stay, all the rest is discarded.

Now comes the more complete answer to the question. When the psychic centre, presence, being and this now personality which is infused in it prepares to take birth, it looks forward to the next life experience. Let's say we take the example of that Sri Aurobindo gives, a king who has had everything after leaving this body says, I have never experienced what it's like to have nothing and I want to have that experience. And so the psychic being now turns to an experience of great poverty and no help and then rebuilding my kingdom, my life from zero. It turns to that and it says what is useful now for this experience? So the parts of its personality, the parts of it of its accumulated experience from all past lives, only those parts relevant for this life experience are brought forward as an active force. The other things are held back and so already the psychic personality which is evolving across lives with these it is small parts of life experience gathered, forms and template for the next life personality and experience holding back the rest turns to this and then turns to take birth at which point it gathers material from the mental world to form, lets say a initial form of mental body not yet fully developed but into which the benefit of the past mental evolution is infused, because mental substance is plastic it can do it. Similarly it takes substance from the vital world, forms like a sheathing into which elements of the past personality development which are brought forward for this life are infused. So let's say it feels it wants to experience the courage of the king's form of personality or previous work, it infuses that into the mould of the material, but again it's plastic material so you can infuse it. Now comes the physical body, if physical matter was also plastic, the soul could simply take up physical matter and shape it and you would have a physical body. This will be the future form of Supramental birth which because the Supramental power can shape physical matter also as it chooses but in the present situation physical matter is the world of form and rigidity of form. So the influence from above cannot shape matter freely and so it needs a biological process to create a form into which it can then shield itself. The problem of the biological process is that if the brain is sufficiently developed before birth it's also too big. The human body does not allow a sufficiently large head to pass through at birth and so part of the brain development has to be done after birth. It's a very interesting problem and it's a biological problem essentially or a revolutionary problem in biology. So what you see happening over let's say a few thousand years or even a few million years is that increasingly what used to develop post birth is being slowly taken into the pre-birth stage. So you see in the pre-births the development of the foetus, it goes through all the stages from a single cell multicellular cluster then it becomes in the shape of a fish and then it becomes like a tadpole. No, first it becomes like a tadpole then the shape of a fish and then it becomes like a frog then it becomes more like a monkey and even there's a brief period when there's a tail and if it had stopped there and continued that line of evolution, you would have a monkey body. But it's as if going through all the steps of evolution which normally took a few million years now squeezed into a few months until finally the human form shape takes place.

Sraddhalu (0:51:00):

You can't do everything. If you start developing the brain sufficiently, if you start developing the eyes and other senses fully while in the womb, the child becomes fully conscious. Aell it's going to get either bored or it's going to start wanting to exercise its action which is premature because the womb cannot support. So the birth has to take place at a critical point of evolutionary transition where the child is just enough formed to be able to grow on its own after birth, but not too formed where it wants to start living its life while still in the womb. So at birth, let's say the brain is just enough developed, the child can open its eyes, make a few very brief short superficial interactions and then the formal development of the brain mind personality and so on begins from there. But your identification let's say could take place just before birth, during birth, after birth but let's say within a few days at least. And the moment you have now identified with the body of the child, your sense of head in the subtle body joins with the head of the child and there's the merging and joining, there is immediately a dulling of your consciousness and a loss of memory even if you had an intention to and the soul doesn't have intention to. If you had intention to remember you would not be able to because it will be dulled. So it's only in very mature souls that there is a slow infusion that the part of the consciousness is identified but some part of the mind is held out still and over a few weeks sometimes over a few months it is slowly infused and in such cases very few people have this kind of a memory. When they remember soon after birth or even during birth or soon after birth the memories of the first few weeks or months. I remember meeting a lady who shared how she remembered her earliest memory of childhood was being in her mother's arms and she looked at mother or some other person noticed the dress remembered the dress and said why are you blocking the Sun, move aside, well that was the intention, move aside, I want to feel the Sun. That's the earliest memory. Now, as it turns out they found a photograph of that period with that dress and she said, yes this is the dress and this was the event, and her mother said, it's impossible, you are barely 15 days old when that event took place and after that this dress was not used. So it's difficult for people to believe because normally our memory begins even after a year or two, we have fragments but they are not held in a thread so we can't access them. But under hypnosis of course one could go back because imprints of all those memories are there, they're just not part of the integrated mental personality which takes longer to form. But still there is this problem: Even if you held that infusing slowly what is remembered is only what the psychic being absorbed as essential from all those past lives, not the details of the memory and certainly not the personality. Why? Because the personality needed for this experience is completely different from the personality needed in the previous experience.

The rigidity of that personality prevents its use in future experiences of life. That's why it needs to discard all the rigidities. Take only the essential and then infuse into a new form, develop a new personality relevant for this life experience. Now two things can happen if you do not do this. If  you do carry over the rigidity, you'll have the problem that your new personality cannot freely express. Take an example, suppose it is the king personality and now you want to experience what it's like to be a servant in a king's house as behaving or thinking as if he's a king, well it's not going to work out. You want to experience that humility, that servitude, that sense of self giving in affection, in caring not the power and authority of the king who commands and has everyone else obey. A completely different personality is required. If you had for a couple of lives even developed the aspect of art or music and the intuition in the vital and now the choice of the soul is to develop the intellect and the powers of the intellect freely not bound in the emotion or the life energies or even in their intuitivisation but focus only on this. If those elements come strongly as happens in the case of child prodigies inevitably the personality is shaped to follow those tendencies because they're strong they're effective and of course the society and parents will force you. But here it wants to discard, it wants to turn to something completely different and develop the powers of the mind and the intellect in a special focus, it needs a different personality form. So the soul has consciously discarded the rigid forms of the prior personality in order to have a different personality and then a different and a different across lives to develop multiple facets of its psychic personality which is still very fluid, much more integrated and adaptable. And so there's no memory. And especially details of the life which were relevant to those layers which are shed have to be lost because they are part of those layers not part of the integration with the soul.

Sraddhalu (0:57:12):

So I'm going to turn this around now with two different directions of discussion for your future. The first question I will ask you what of your present life do you feel worthwhile to carry over into the next, not as memories but as experiences and capacities - all the conflicts, all the dislikes, all the problems you've had with so many things and limitations of your personality. You don't want them, right? What do you want to carry, think about it. Even as memories, what would you really want? do you want to remember that you spent 20 years fighting with your neighbour or that you had certain addictions or habits and you want to carry the memory and have to struggle with the memory all over again in the next life? It occasionally happens when people recall past lives and I mean not through hypnosis but as a spontaneous recall coming from the soul's awakening that sometimes certain experiences where the soul suffered, not just the surface personality, the soul suffered because of a certain denial or a perversion that it had to suffer. With that memory comes also a very strong in the new personality a strong reaction or a dislike for the circumstances which created them and it biases you. You're not ready for it and it interferes with your ability to now engage with that space.

For example, there is a karmic debt, let's say. In the initial Spaniards and Portuguese entering the American spaces, there was a lot of destruction a lot of suffering that they caused deliberately coming from relatively more coarse less civilised value system compared to those who lived very close to Nature and had generosity in their temperament, there was a conflict of values. And this was a stronger force because it had a physical organisation with guns and other means which destroyed and deliberately sought to spread poison and disease to kill the people. There's a huge karmic debt and now this soul may choose to take birth in that other space which it had harmed to try to set right, to try to help them to grow or participate in their reawakening and regeneration and if it remembers that role it wouldn't be helpful, it would bring back all those tendencies. Instead, it feels and this is a memory of the soul these people are suffering so much, I must work to raise them. That's all that the soul has retained, the cause that I was part of that suffering or rather that personality was part of that suffering or cause of the suffering that's not held because it will interfere. Just a huge deep felt commitment - I have to work for this to set right this condition and that's useful and there wouldn't be a reason remembered. So think about this question: What would you want to carry over into the next that will be useful and for those of us at least who have grown into this or awakened to this Spiritual possibility and of the integral yoga and have even remembered from the soul's memory reflecting in our personality our relationship with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, yes that certainly you want to carry. Well, you did carry that but it took a while for it to emerge through that clutter of your formed personality. If you could somehow take birth into the next with that memory, ah  this is what I have to do, this is the work to continue, well that would be useful but with it would come so much more which may not be useful.

So this comes to the second, so let me complete this part. Start by integrating with your deeper aspiration the things of this life that are for you worthy of carrying over into the next. Think about it, if you have developed a skill, let's even a skill of music or art or power of thought, let that capacity turn in alignment to your soul's aspiration. Let it become a part of your active Spiritual life expression of the Divine beauty joy harmony love knowledge, integrated with the soul's aspiration that it becomes a part and the essence of that capacity at least maybe more than the essence, even the skill may carry over if that's integrated. So consciously work to integrate as much as is worthwhile with the soul's aspiration. Make it a part of your spiritual life. This is one point which brings us to the second point, that is the question Sri Aurobindo takes: How to consciously transfer from one life into the next without losing the continuity? Because the fact is for almost all of us 20 years, 30 years at least, we wandered, we wandered through looking for, not finding or being confused going into all kinds of indirect paths seeking getting into big trouble sometimes where we might have lost our way totally if not for the soul's insistent influence correcting navigating us to bring us to this point where we are today, whatever that is.

Sraddhalu (1:03:06):

If you could have in the next life this continuity, I know this is what I want, this is what is my purpose - not as a mental idea just as a conscious powerful aspiration around which the new personality could form that you don't have to lose and restart, well what would you have to do to make this possible? This is the question Sri Aurobindo takes up in the Life Divine. It is in the chapter on Rebirth and Karma - at the end of the chapter, the last two and a half pages where he describes the three requirements to make possible this conscious transition. And the most important of these is of course we have discussed the integration with the psychic and breaking the barrier between the outer and the inner - that is an essential part, but before that there are two other requirements. One is a clear integration around a centre. Unless there's a formed personality at the time of shedding the bodies everything falls apart. It's only when it is integrated around the centre and ideally the centre of your aspiration that something formed can be carried as a formation of personality but it should be around as deep a centre as possible, ideally the psychic or its aspiration at least as felt.

The second requirement is that you should become plastic to the touch of the Infinite. Because the soul wants to develop its infinite potential and from outside the Divine as if presses you in an infinity of ways to shape you to mould you to develop that potential. If you become rigid, if you become hard, crust, unable to change, unable to grow as happens with age in our mind, in our emotions, in our bodies even, well it starts the other way - it starts in the body and therefore affects emotions and mind. Unable to learn new things, unable to adapt, unable to change. The lack of plasticity is what makes you old but also compels you to shed the rigid parts. It's when you are unable to change, your entire personality is so rigid that the soul says enough there's no potential for growth, I shed this, start with a fresh material. But if you could continue to remain as plastic as not a newborn child but at least a teenager in whom the individuality is already forming but there's ability to adapt quite a lot. If you could become entirely plastic to the touch of the infinite or for the need of the soul's evolution to be able to shape the personality as required then you would not need to shed and you could carry over that part at least which is plastic as a central organised personality into the next with full memory and the soul won't need to shed. Think about it. It's a long work but it needs to be done. Make yourself consciously as plastic as possible.

I went through a phase where I realised that I had actually locked myself in certain rigidities and they might have been useful in an initial phase of life when I was a teenager post teenager if I had not held those boundaries, no I will not even think of anything outside this, that was the kind of a rigid thing that had been put and it was not consciously done, it was that come from an inner push. And at some point when I reached a certain stage in my development, it was as if those same blinkers were preventing me and there was a period where it had to be broken and I went through a phase, it was painful because these were the things which I cherished and valued as my strength and now they had to be all broken, the entire priorities of life as if were reviewed and recast and even as if to turn around to accept all possibilities and then choose freely that is a painful transition. But now I recognize what it really represented. At that time I didn't understand but in that effort to free myself from what I realised with artificial boundaries, I said okay whatever comes my way I will say, yes, of course not something which is fundamentally harmful but. So I was sitting in a restaurant once with some friends, somebody's birthday we were in Pondicherry and it was in a restaurant where they had at that time dancing waiters. So they would come and just do some dance with music and one of my friends said, why don't you join them ,and the first reaction was no of course not and I said to them: ‘where is this rigidity, what's wrong if I do it? if they're expressing a certain joy and let me participate I should be able to do it not that I will do it for the rest of my life but if I want to do I should be able to do it, now can I break this’, and I consciously got up, went there and joined them. We did a little dance and I came back and that was enough. I'm giving this as an example because Mother actually did this in a forceful way with some people.

Sraddhalu (1:08:30):

I was given these examples by Kumud Ben who was Mother's personal assistant for many years, looking after her daily in all her activities in supporting her and helping her and she gave a few examples. One of them was somebody who said to Mother, Mother I don't drink alcohol as a principle, and Mother said, ah, she took a bottle of something and put it in her mouth and that was the way she broke that, just because oh that's my principle. Somebody said I don't eat meat. Mother took out something and gave, it was I think some cheese which had some wriggling worms, and she said, no you will eat, and gave it to the person. Now not to everybody obviously but where she saw it was a false formation and actually served to feed the ego's sense of self-importance: I am so great, I have never tasted meat or alcohol or whatever it is your fancy, I am so great that - you define your superiority in terms of something which is ridiculous. Think of it - if you were born in the family which ate meat you would have just eaten meat, maybe you made a choice to eat or not later, that's different but what makes it superior or inferior, it's a pointless idea. She broke it where it was necessary for a person, not everybody. Sometimes breaking it for a person who's not ready, would harm their sense of even right or wrong, so one has to be very careful. The point though I'm coming to is, you have to consciously make yourself plastic to the touch of the infinite and the infinite is the Divine action on you through all forms through all experiences of life. Yes, it doesn't mean that you will indulge in anything that comes your way because there are also other influences working. You will be clear, you will be discriminating and as you navigate through circumstances you will know where it is a rigidity that is harmful to you, you will work to soften it at least. Still we come to certain core aspects of our personality where either we are developed or undeveloped and it gets painful to try to force a change there or it's even not in line to this life's priority. You'll find your balance once you understand the principle and gradually work on yourself: integrate, make plastic, make open to the Mother's influence in as much of you as you can, in as many activities as you can, make open to Mother's influence and the plasticity will grow from there and integrate with your soul's aspiration and align. Integration around a central personality, making plastic to the action, the touch of the infinite and the third is breaking the barrier between the outer and the inner, particularly opening to the psychic influence directly as far as possible. These are the three things required which will allow you to form or shape at least a part of your personality or the significant part of your personality that you can then continue into the next life with as much as you can of what is developed now, without needing as if to start all over again. And it is worth the trouble and especially for those of us who are more rapidly approaching the years where you know the you're approaching the life limit of a human biological capacity, it's certainly the most important thing you have to be able to do now. Think about these things, think of how much time you give for this effort and how much time you give for everything else. Prioritise, find your balance.

Alina (1:12:38):
Thank you very much. This is a great way to end or shall we take a last question?

Sraddhalu (1:12:54):
I think this is a good point to end, because it sets us a program to dwell on and to prioritise. It's also a program in itself for our life. It's something we can dwell upon and close on this. Maybe make a short concentration. Becoming conscious of this need, conscious of our purpose in life and across lives, conscious of the great gift we have to have awakened to our Spiritual aspiration and to have found our Spiritual teachers and the path and the need to now take full advantage of this and it's possible. It is possible for us as we are today in our current evolution to be able to do this. And with the help of the Divine Shakti, the Divine Mother, everything can be done in this lifetime, if we so choose.

Thank you.

[Alina] Thank you very much, Namaste.

[Joel] Namaste.