EWS #90 On Daily Practices & Tapasya – Q&A (31) - on Spiritual Life - 11
Oct 30, 2021
Topics:
Alina (0:00:00):
Namaste and good evening, all. Welcome to the continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. My name is Alina and together with Joel from Auroville, we will be hosting this talk. Namaste Joel.
[Joel] Namaste Alina.
We are happy to be back and continue part 11 on Spiritual life. In the last session, we took up some questions about the mind, the power of imagination and concentration. Today we will continue on the topic of practices and we will be receiving some more guidelines from our teacher Sraddhalu. Welcome Sraddhalu.
Sraddhalu (0:00:56):
Namaste. Happy to be with all of you.
Alina (0:01:03):
We received some questions from our viewers about practices. Juan, he is writing, ‘I have been practising Buddhist and later on Sufism for some years before I met the integral yoga of Mother and Sri Aurobindo, which I recognize as my masters. The open and universal quality of it is so great, but at the same time, sometimes I'm not sure what could or could not be included as practice. I like to have some rituals to practise every day, do some prayers, pranayamas or kriyas, asanas, mantra, meditation. But sometimes I do not know what is, this is useful and what of this could be unnecessary or even harmful. I would appreciate very much advice on this’. Another question related from Javed. ‘I am also trying to implement the practices of Sri Aurobindo's yoga, as instructed in the Synthesis of Yoga, in my daily life. I was recently given a small booklet on Tapasya written by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, although I feel as though the content of the book may have been overly simplified. I would really like to gain a better understanding about the practical value of Tapasya for the practitioners of Integral yoga and the degree of tapasya that we should try to practise in our lives.’
Sraddhalu (0:02:58):
Both these questions are so central to the practice of Integral yoga. The first question is more about specific forms of practice and particularly certain ritual forms which give us a sense of something being done. What change it makes in our consciousness is not always immediately visible but sometimes at least with some of the rituals we feel an efflatus, a boost of energy or a shift in certain states and of course to that extent they are all extremely valuable. It's the reason why every religion, every form of yoga practice, especially the specialised paths are defined by their practices. The problem with that of course is we find something odd. Two very similar practices in different systems are used for completely different outcomes or two very different practices in different systems are used for the same outcomes. And you wonder, sometimes looking at practices in two different systems and we say practices being almost similar are both doing exactly the same thing. When you actually get into the system, you find they are completely different in the experience that the practice gives you or in the goal of the system itself. And so the question of practice needs to be seen in a larger framework, which is what I want to dwell upon first before we get to specifics of the practice. And yes, there will be also practises, but we will understand it on a deeper level.
The second question from Javed is about the tapasya aspect. And I don't know which booklet you are referring to, and I don't have the specific text which you've seen, but often what happens with booklets like these, they are compilations made by somebody. The compilations are very useful because they give you in small bits, small snippets, a kind of a survey of various interesting aspects of a theme. So you can look at, somebody has made a compilation on a ‘dream and sleep’, and you get a lot of interesting insights in one little booklet. So they are very attractive and for most people it's something you can read casually without much serious thought or depth or even sometimes demand of practice and that's what makes compilations so popular. The problem though with compilations is that they represent somebody's idea of what is important about that topic. So with certain topics you don't have much material so you can compile everything. With other topics you have so much and sometimes allied discussions which are more critical which are all edited out because they don't concern the topic at hand. And so all compilations have an inherent bias of the compiler and his idea of what is important and the result is you may get a warped sense. For example, if someone made a compilation of difficulties on the path, straight away you will have hundreds of pages from which because your theme is difficulties you will select the most interesting or the most intense, the most extreme letters or discussions or topics about difficulty and put them in a book which will then make it seem like, oh this is a hugely difficult path, difficulties are everywhere, there are only difficulties and they are all difficult to overcome. It will have the exaggeration of that idea. If instead you did a compilation on how smooth and joyous and sunlit the path is, then you will end up with something very smooth, joyous and flowing, as is for example a little book called, The Sunlit Path, which is a compilation of themes in that direction. And I would highly recommend that also if you want to read compilations. So in this case, I don't know what is in that compilation in that booklet, but I would assume that it deals with the tapasya aspect and the degree of concentration and focus required and sometimes even the struggle.
Sraddhalu (0:07:35):
I will answer both of these questions but towards the end, after setting the context in which we should understand the actual forms of practice as well as Tapasya. And this context is what I touched upon several times in past discussions and even in the just previous one, where I said a yoga that is affirmative as the Integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo necessarily has a completely different viewpoint than a yoga that is ascetic where the goal is withdrawal or even where religions view reality in terms of something or a domain of suffering or something to be escaped from or as a temporary passage. Now I want to highlight this difference first because it changes the whole nature of the practice and you will recognize later when we have the discussion that it's not the practice you do which will make the difference but why you do what you do, to what goal you direct the practice. For example you could do pranayams or prayers or kriyas or asanas or some kind of mantra. For what? If the goal is simply to withdraw into the Self, discard the world as an illusion, well that's the direction you will go to. But for an integral yoga, the same form of practice may be directed in a completely different focus. So I'm not going to focus on the practices now, but set the context and then we will see how practices can be relevant. The context is this. First, how do you conceive of the Divine? Depending on how you conceive of the Divine is your relationship with the Divine. And depending on your relationship with the Divine is the form of the practice by which you will approach the Divine. Everything starts with your conception of the Divine. If you look at the Abrahamic traditions, this includes Christianity, Islam, Judaism to some extent, not looking at their mystical dimensions which often take a very different turn, but the official broad framework. The starting point is this idea God created universe, is then outside the universe, makes certain laws which are imposed on the universe and on us human beings. If you live by those laws and follow them eventually you are rewarded by heaven or you're punished with hell, at least in the Christianity and Islam you have this idea. And in any case God himself is up there only to intervene occasionally when He decides by some grace or when you call intensely. Or the passage in life itself is seen as transitory to a permanence after life in eternity of heaven or hell. So this is a temporary passage; a hundred years is nothing compared to eternity. So in some of these traditions, you will even have people saying, you suffer here. The church taught this for many centuries. Suffer here and the more you suffer here, the more you will be rewarded in heaven. Which is very convenient because it allowed people to be willing slaves to the church control. And they worked hard. They were the labourers. In a war, the soldiers died, the king was celebrated as the winner. In any observation of the win, the king creates a great cathedral to celebrate his victory. The people are the willing workers, slaves, for the king's eminence, he created this cathedral. It's a very interesting way of directing people to suffer happily and it was misused. But it was possible because your hundred years of life or seventy years of life or if in extreme cases you had less, was suffering acceptable in comparison to infinity of reward in heaven instead of infinity of punishment in hell.
Sraddhalu (0:12:02):
The idea that God is separate also distorted the whole experience of reality. Now you cannot explain why the world is a domain of so much great suffering. Why would God create a world where everybody suffers? Then they make up more stories. ‘Oh, He's testing you all the time so that you are worthy of the heaven which he is going to grant you’. But why would he be such a monster that he doesn't even tell you that he's there and you should live by his laws. Why would he command that you follow laws which are not even known to you? But that's where the church says, we tell you. Of course there's no evidence and there's no way to verify. So the whole distortion of reality takes place. God himself becomes as if a monster or a tyrant or at worst he is not listening to you. You are appealing, help me, I'm suffering. No answer. So there are counter practices which come from various other distortions where they will say now instead of worshipping God, you worship some inferior demonic power. They are listening to you, they grant you a wish and that becomes more seductive. All these distortions follow from the fact that the Divine is separated from the world. In some of the late Vedantic traditions, you have another form of separation where, or let's look at Buddhism, where the first turn of the Buddha was to realise freedom from suffering by the shortest method possible. And as a result, the world became in his experience a domain of suffering and the outcome finally was in a withdrawal into nirvana to withdraw from the suffering and to be free of it. In some of the traditions of Buddhism you live in the world in the state of liberation of nirvana as long as you have a physical life then beyond that you transition into permanence, into freedom from suffering. You are free from the cycle of birth and death which binds you in the suffering and compels you to come back in suffering. Shankaracharya, taking this starting point, turned it around and said, No, the domain of suffering itself is illusory. It is the Ananda which is the reality. This is illusion. You are falling back into illusion again and again in the cycles of birth and death. And so in the ascetic turn of that later Vedanta, you have this tiredness.
And I've heard sometimes young people who have been seduced by this idea coming with comments like, ‘all this return to birth and struggle and death and birth and struggle and death, enough’. I've heard people in Spiritual practices or at least seeking Spiritual practices saying things like, ‘with this life I'm done, I'm not getting back to this, this is such a big mess of a world, I don't want to come back’. All these ideas are coming from this assumption that the world is domain of suffering which is intractable, you cannot change or it is a domain of illusion or as in the Abrahamic tradition, it is separated from God, a temporary passage to permanence in some heavenly domain. All three broad categories and then within that there are many variations which I don't touch. Broadly, all three look upon the physical world as passage to something beyond. Inevitably, therefore, in all these traditions, without exception, the elite are monastic. The ones who dedicate themselves to realising higher experiences of the spirit, to a Spiritual life, have to withdraw from the world and live in a monastic, ascetic life. Necessarily, because that's the nature of the relationship you have set with the Divine.
Now comes the natural conclusion of this relationship. Since the goal is withdrawal, everything in the world is seen as a binding and a trap. Your body is the thing giving you this heaviness and dullness, it weakens your aspiration, it makes you lose hope and faith. You fall back into the inertia, the tamas of the body again and again with every sleep. Isn't it? And it is the body which is also the repository of all the compulsions of your instincts and desires which are also binding you because the desires make the world interesting. They bind you into the illusion or in the suffering or against the law of God which says don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, right?, to be rewarded in heaven. And it is the desires which pull you back into wanting to do all these things which are forbidden or which are illusory. Or which cause you more suffering because they start more chains of karma and cycles of karma. Isn't it? You look at all three approaches. Finally, action and living in world and desire are your enemies. Mind becomes your enemy because it questions, it doubts what would be your natural faith or the teaching of whoever represents God, the priest who tells you, No, God has promised you this, don't doubt, believe. In the church teaching for example, there's a great importance given to ‘have faith’. In what? In the book, in the church, in the priest. And so it's actually a belief in what is taught to you but which is contrary to your experience. So it's not the true faith, it is a belief, not the yogic sense of faith which is Shraddha, which is an innate knowing of the soul within you. Or you have a similar difficulty in the other ascetic traditions where mind now becomes the thing that binds you in the illusion or the thing that creates the chains of suffering and karma. So cut mind, kill mind.
Sraddhalu (0:18:15):
In the practices of Vipassana for example and this is where I want to highlight distinctions. The first step of stepping back, observe your sensations, observe your emotions, even observe your thoughts. Step back. You are not these three. And step by step, you step back. Find a base of freedom. Wonderful. Even as a practice, it can be extremely useful and common to the Integral Yoga. But what happens next is very different. In the goal of the Vipassana practice, you eventually turn upon the mind to snuff it out. The word snuffing out is nirvana, extinction. Extinction of the active consciousness, ideally of the ego, but still it is seen as the active consciousness, and it is the extinction which leads you to the immersion, free from suffering. As long as you have this active focus of consciousness, you are bound in suffering. Contrast this with the goal in the Integral Yoga, having found this poise of separation and freedom of the witness consciousness, now this poise turns to a higher consciousness to invoke its presence, to fill the mind, fill the life energies, even fill the body and its sensations in order to divinise them. The poise of freedom from these three is used as a step to transformation instead of a step to killing or destruction of the mind. So that's why I'm saying it is not the practice you do. It is why you do the practice. It is the direction in which the goal is set, which is going to be more important than the practice itself. And even more important than that, the relationship you set with your life, with yourself, with the Divine and particularly as I'm going to highlight with the world itself and your personality and your nature. Because this is going to be completely different, it's going to be reversed a hundred and eighty degrees, the very opposite as we will see.
So your body is a problem, your emotions are a problem, your desires are a problem, your mind is a problem because the goal in the ascetic way is to get out. And everything in Nature is holding you back tightly to prevent you from escaping, isn’t it?. The nature of the sadhana, the nature of the yoga, the nature of the tapasya, the nature of any practice in such a context is struggle, struggle, struggle, suffering, suffering, suffering, until suddenly there is a great release. But till then it's painful. Every day, every moment you try, try, fight, fight, exhaust yourself, regain energy, fight, fight, fight in order to free from everything which is against you to prevent you from escaping. I want to highlight this. Maybe I'm exaggerating it even to some extent but this is the reality implied by the relationship set that the world is a transitional passage from which you have to escape because God, the Divine, is not world, is away from world or the goal of world is outside itself. This we have to be very clear because it changes everything. Now we reverse it. In the Integral yoga, in the framework, I will say starting in the original Vedic conception and not as they are understood today in the later Vedantic philosophy where the Vedas is justified to describe this illusoriness of the world. But in the original sense and you have to actually read and Sri Aurobindo justifies this from the original texts of the Veda. The world is a manifestation of the delight of the Divine. It is a manifestation of Sat, Chit, Ananda. Existence that is consciousness that is bliss. And the greatest creation of Ananda cannot be suffering, isn't it? So why is there suffering? And then we have to understand the world for what it is. I will make a summary of the steps, so I might skip a few logical steps, but you will see the trend of the logic. Each plane of manifestation of the world is representing a different quality, a different characteristic. The totality of broadly we say seven planes making the whole, which is necessary for a cosmos to exist instead of being a chaos. So when all possibilities of the Divine freedom and bliss are manifested, and the universe bursts out as a manifestation, not as a creation, first thing we realise is that this manifestation is not separate from the source. The Divine is not outside, the Divine is not away, the Divine is not immune and silent and disinterested. The Divine pours out as power, as love, utterly conscious, blissful in that movement of manifestation.
Sraddhalu (0:23:32):
In two sessions ago, we discussed the movement of the manifestation of the Divine Shakti, the Divine Mother. Review that. The whole movement is the universe manifesting out of the Satchitananda but manifesting the Satchitananda itself. All this universe is substance of Satchitananda but on seven gradations in which we experience characteristically different experiences of that Satchitananda. So we realise nothing is other than Satchitananda, but Satchitananda representing itself to its own experience in different ways. And the last of these, the most physical, material substance, consciousness, universe, is Satchitananda representing to itself as form, persistent form. Rigid form must necessarily be resistant to change, otherwise two forms colliding, poof, they vanish. A single wave of the ocean, which is the analogy given, is a form in the universe. But that's where the analogy ends. A wave cannot sustain, it lapses. But a form in matter is rigid, you can collide again and again and again and still it is resisting. This allows for permanence of forms and experience. It allows for Satchitananda to play out through many centres, through which conscious participation of the Divine, as many centres of Divinity is possible. This is the direction of evolution. For which rigid form was the starting point, for which, because of the unfoldment in form of the Satchitananda potential, the first movement of rigidity of form conceals, binds, hides Satchitananda. And then because it is bound inside, it pushes out, it forces its way and reveals layer by layer its capacities. That movement we call evolution.
So in the first binding of form you have the rigid matter, so-called dead matter, out of that the conscious energy aspect begins to express and first you see energy without consciousness and that's when you have forms developing energetically, living forms, plants. Out of that the consciousness now in the energy begins to awaken and so from plants you see the transition to animals where a crude level of consciousness is felt and expressed. Out of that a sufficiently developed consciousness emerges which is self-aware mental human consciousness. So the existence, sheer existence which is immutable, represents in matter first as rigidity and stability of form, refusing change. The conscious energy, conscious force, works out first in the emergence of force and then of consciousness through steps in the evolution. And of course, eventually the ananda. The ananda is concealed behind. In everything in nature you will find a profound joy or delight in just being, in the unfolding, in the play, in the oneness in which everything is held. It gets fragmented with our individualised mind, but you see in animals there is a spontaneous joy to be. And even when an animal eats another animal or eats the grass, you do not see malintention, it is just their rhythm of relationship and there's a delight even in the experience in certain animals, there's a delight to be eaten and sometimes they willingly give themselves in that state. It's interesting to observe. But the delight is concealed behind, it only leaks out through appearances. In the flower the beauty is the Ananda represented in form and the perfume is the Ananda represented as sensation and so on. But the Ananda is the last to emerge. In the human being we experience all kinds of joys but they're heavily mixed because the consciousness is limited and bound still, in dullness, matter, habit, preference, rigidity. As the consciousness widens and frees much more, transcending beyond mind and opens out to experiences of infinity, that's when the true character of Ananda can begin to be felt.
Sraddhalu (0:28:14):
So the answer to this question, why is the universe the mess it is? Because we are still incomplete in our evolution. And if you complete the evolution, then the nature of the original Satchitananda begins to be revealed more and more. This is the direction of evolution and therefore, while all those traditions had a point in what they saw, yes, the universe, the world as it is, is a domain of suffering. Yes, the appearances as we see are an illusion in how they appear to us. Yes, the world is a kind of a transitional place for a greater realisation of the Divine in the world. So what has happened is in various traditions and religions, an aspect was got and maybe at that time for evolution that aspect was needed as a preparation. But the full picture reveals here an unfolding evolution that takes us to fulfilment where not in some beyond but here in the world, in the material world including. A fully awakened consciousness of living in a Supramental consciousness, let us say, not only will experience in the physical body and the contact of the physical senses the touch of Satchitananda, your contact with a flower will be not just my fingertip meeting the flower petal. It will be the experience of an infinite Ananda on this side, meeting infinite Ananda on that side as form meeting form. And the experience of that will be a colour of the Ananda of the bliss. And each experience will be colours of bliss, never repeated, always new and always greater in the unfolding evolution. If this is the broad direction of our evolution and our purpose, we are now at a transitional point and a critical transitional point where we can begin to now directly participate.
So physical life and the material world are intended to be experienced as Satchitananda in form, now revealed more and more but again progressively. But a supramental being will not only experience this in the physical body, he will live on all the planes of consciousness simultaneously and will experience himself living in the full spectrum of reality, of which the physical domain, this material universe will perhaps be the most important, because it is here that stable form of Satchitananda can be held and related to in permanence or at least in form of apparent permanence. In other worlds you do not have that experience. There form blends, form is not rigid; form is passing, form is transitional, form is representative. Here form is first and it allows you to represent so many different qualities of consciousness simultaneously in form. This is a very interesting observation the Mother made. It is a description in her records in the Agenda, where she writes that she had this experience that in her physical body there were multiple Spiritual states or experiences simultaneously held. And then she said if this is true, her vocabulary is very precise and very careful, if this is true she says, then it means the human body is the most extraordinary instrument ever created in the whole of the cosmos, across all the planes. And our body is only barely beginning to enter that potential. Now all this is to explain the complete shift now in our relationship with the world. We are not here to escape. We are not here to go back to other worlds. We are not here in transition, in passing. The compulsion of rebirth is not a compulsion. It is a free choice we make because we want to participate in the manifestation of the Divine in form in the material world. We chose to enter for this purpose. And the adventure is here, not elsewhere. Of course, the full potential here will be revealed when you rise and experience higher states of consciousness, which now you will bring to manifest here. Not lose them in some meditation and come out back to your normal state. You want to manifest it here, to transform your embodied mind, vital and even the physical body to reveal Satchitananda and perceive and experience Satchitananda in everything.
Sraddhalu (0:33:03):
It is very important to ground ourselves in this complete shift of perspective. You see how it is the very opposite of the ascetic view. Now, having got this first correction, and you must allow time, you must dwell on this, you must meditate on this, infuse this vision and experience in you, that you are here for this, to realise and manifest the divine Ananda and the whole Satchitananda to be revealed and experienced in the world. Now implications also are completely the opposite of the ascetic. I'll state generally and then we will look at specific examples. Generally speaking, everything in the universe, everything inside you, your mind, your life, your body, is intended to be a vehicle for Divine revelation, not as a trap. Everything in the universe, every activity, every action, every experience is there to assist you in your evolution, to grow in your capacity and in your perception of the Divine. Nothing is there to oppose. Even the so-called anti-divine, asuric or demonic or other forces, what's their role really? They come to knock you in the part where you are most weak. They're there to help you, to say, here this is your weakness, develop this, grow stronger here, grow in capacity there. When you are walking and you trip on a stone; do you say, oh that stone, it is a great demon who came to make me fall? Or do you say, thank you stone for reminding me to be more vigilant as I walk? The whole perspective changes. There's a very interesting comment that Kirit Joshi had shared, an experience he had with the Mother. He had gone to the Mother and he was complaining to the Mother, oh all these people, all these hostile forces, all these hostile forces are spoiling..’. He kept talking about this and then he said the Mother very firmly said at that point, ‘There are no hostile forces’, and again she repeated, ‘there are no hostile forces’, and he said for him it was as if she had dissolved once and for all this whole idea of hostile forces and never again there are hostile forces.
Elsewhere in one of her talks she explains, their role is as sensors. They're here to help you by pointing out, checking you, are you ready, are you ready, what's your weak point? And they knock you precisely there where you have a weakness. If you enter a new house, which you are going to rent or buy, you take a little hammer and you tap on the walls. Wherever there is a weak point, crack, it goes through. Isn't it? And that's how you know that there is a damage. But if the wall says, oh, you have come to beat me. No, I have come to check where there is a weakness and there I will repair it. And the sensors are doing their job to hit you, knock you at a few points, but they aim only at where you have a weakness, which makes you say, ah, I need to strengthen this and I grow. They are also helping you. I come to this idea, everything is here to help you. Let's take a few examples of this. One of the biggest problems in the ascetic tradition is this business of desire. Oh my desires are my trap, I need to get rid of my desires. Either you end up suppressing them and so you suppress the vital and the enjoyment of life and everything kind of fades out, which is good because the goal was to get out of it anyway or you end up with greater complexes by suppressing it here it pops up in a different form in a warped way and actually makes the job more difficult. The knot, Sri Aurobindo says, the knot of the desire has to be untied, not cut. You untie the knot and you discover the threads are woven together to make a beautiful tapestry. What is desire? Observe carefully. I want this. The moment I get it, fun for a while, I show off. After I've enjoyed, I start showing off to others to make myself important and then now your attention turns to the next thing which you don't have which now you desire and then the next and then the next when will desire end? As long as there is something which is not yours the desire will continue until you have the whole universe, that's when desire says, ah, now I'm fulfilled. So how can you own the whole universe? If two people try to own the universe, they collide. That's when you have the boundaries of collision. So obviously desire is not meant to be by physical ownership. Desire is meant to be fulfilled by consciousness ownership. That is, you have to experience the whole world, the whole universe as your home. And therefore everything which is in the universe is yours, because it is within you. And then two people can both experience the whole universe as their own, and have no collision. And it is only in the consciousness of oneness of the Self that you will experience the extinction of desire, because desire has completed its work of pushing you to the oneness, which it is trying to do. Desire is there to help you to go beyond your boundaries of littleness, to remind you that you must experience and own the whole universe. It is your birthright because you are that, which became the universe. If you think about it in this way, desire is a great help. It forces you to go outside your boundaries. Boundaries limit and however wonderful they may seem, well the wonder is limited. You must experience the full wonder of oneness with the whole universe.
Sraddhalu (0:38:56):
I will share here an interesting story, it's entertaining but it shows you the value of the boundary and its limitation. The story goes like this. The king is in a high, so he wants to feel he is very important and he commands his wise men, answer my question, tell me who is more powerful, God or I? And we make the story a little more interesting by saying the king adds, if I don't like your answer I will cut off your head. So all the wise men now get into trouble. If they say God is more powerful then they get their head cut off but they can't say the king is more powerful because he is not. So they go to the most wise in the kingdom. He comes to the king and says, Oh my lord, you are the most powerful. King is pleased. I like your answer, but now you must prove it. You can't just make up a story to please me. How do you prove it that I am more powerful than God? Wisest man says, ‘yes, you see my lord, you are so powerful that you can throw away anybody out of your kingdom. God cannot throw anybody out of His kingdom’. Think about it. Very interesting idea. All is the Divine. There is no other. And so there is no question of throwing anyone out of the Divine dominion. There is only Divine which is Universe. See, the whole thing changes when the Divine is not outside, but one with the whole. All the suffering in the world is the suffering of the Divine in the manifestation, supporting, sustaining in this awakening movement to awaken, to be able to experience and manifest the Divine bliss. The passage of suffering is a passage, true, but towards the realisation of bliss here, not elsewhere. And all is the Divine. There is no outside. The king in his limitation is more powerful because he can throw someone outside. But you have to ask yourself, is it a limitation? Is it a strength or a limitation actually? And that's desire. Desire reminds you that you are limited. Open yourself more completely. And the way to deal with desire is not satisfaction by physical possession, but by possession in identity. And then desire is such a great help, isn't it?
In the same way, the power of your mind, which is questioning, which is doubting, it is there to help you because it helps you to cut through appearances. It looks like this is the case. Is it true? Let me look deeper and you go deeper and you go deeper and every time you think this is it, this doubt says is it truly it? It reminds you that there is a greater depth of knowledge, of experience, of understanding of everything. So the same mind which was a problem for the ascetic becomes now a great power again to take you all the way to completion of the totality of knowledge. Notice now, the mind will be only satisfied when it has all knowledge, without any limitation and that omniscience of the Divine creative energy of the Divine Mother is meant to be expressed in your mind. Your mind is meant to be a vehicle to manifest the Divine omniscience. And so your doubting is only the impulse planted by the Divine to help you to grow out of the limitations of your knowledge and it will not stop until you reach omniscience. Your life energies and the power to action will not stop until they open out to the full power of omnipotence. Your body which is vehicle in matter and therefore a form, how does it manifest the Divine? By beauty, by harmony, by perfection, not only in form but in action, in skills of action, in every way, in the domain of form. So the Divine knowledge, the Divine power, the Divine beauty and harmony and perfection, all these are meant to be manifested by these three bodies given to you. They are not traps, they are vehicles for divinisation and perfection. And your soul, which is right now so lost, covered up, struggling even to extend its influence in these vehicles, these koshas or these sheets which are covering it, is meant to be a vehicle of the Divine love. Because it alone, as literally the substance of Satchitananda, knows the Divine oneness and can give itself to the Divine in entirety without limitation or error. And so the soul's emergence brings the underlying sense of unity and oneness and love experienced in that oneness. Increasingly, it too must develop in its capacity to experience and manifest those things. But because it is already a part of the Satchitananda, in essence, it knows it for what it is. But still it has to grow to develop its capacity to express these. Everything in you is growing. Everything in you is meant to be a vehicle for the Divine manifestation.
Sraddhalu (0:44:22):
And so we come back to this idea. All is there to help you and all serves a purpose in the Divine manifestation. There is nothing which is not only unnecessary or superfluous or false except in its form and in its habit or in its past atavism. But the thing itself is meant for divinization and a vehicle for divinization. Look at your emotions. You have jealousies. You might say, oh, I have to fight my jealousy. I suppress my jealousy. No, no, no. Please. I say it partly in joke, in jest, but accept your jealousy as a great help. Increase your jealousy. But look at it this way. What is jealousy doing? You look at somebody and you say, I wish I had that. What is the jealousy doing? It is awakening in you the memory that this you should be capable of. You see, you're not jealous of everything. You're jealous of somebody when the potential exists within you. Let's say for most of us we look at a gymnast in the Olympics and say, wow what a wonderful performance and you're content and if in you there is the urge that says, I wish I could be like that, then yes you have the potential gymnast in you, but for most of us that's not there. We look at somebody else who does something wonderful and say I wish I could do that or I wish I could have that what they have and that means the potential is within you. So the jealousy is only a reminder of an undeveloped or an unfinished potential within you. And use it rather than fighting it you say, ah yes, this is coming in the form of jealousy is a distortion but the essence of the jealousy is a help for you.
So to notice the tendency for anger, when do you get angry? When you want to exercise your power but are pushed back or unable to or unable to contain the power itself to exercise. You get agitated, you get shaken up and that's where you lose your control and you get angry and through anger you try to impose your will. So when two people are quarrelling, each is shouting louder and louder, you notice the tendency is to want to impose their will or their power upon the other. So at the root of it, the anger impulse is nothing but an insufficiency of your ability to express power and the most powerful people are the ones who never get angry. They stand there with their power and impact their space or exercise their authority but never lose their balance. The ones who lose balance are the ones who are unable to exercise. Think of it. So anger really is again a measure of the deficit of your ability to contain or to exercise power. Every emotion, every distortion is only a distortion in form of a principle which is itself valid or even at its essence a Divine help or a Divine power, undeveloped, unfinished, unstable etc. You see, your whole vision of the world, yourself and your relationship with the world and with the Divine are the very opposite of the ascetics. This is the nature of the Integral Yoga. This is the vision in which you have to see the world and experience life and your purpose in this world. And the taint of the ascetic values, paths, ideals, habits, tendencies is so strong because everything out there is ascetic.
I have actually looked very closely, I have looked very closely at so many traditions and so many lineages. I have not found one which looks at the world as manifestation of the Divine for realisation and transformation into Satchitananda. At best, they look upon the world as transitory. Yes, you must embody your liberated state until the body dies. Then you are free to continue. That's it where it stops there. The active divinization is not found anywhere else except in the original sense of the Veda and in Sri Aurobindo. And even the way Sri Aurobindo presents it is well beyond what the Veda conceives of. And so it's very important that we review our relationship and not mix with the influences that come from ascetic values. Here's a little booklet, called How Do I Begin, written by my teacher, M.P. Pandit, and he writes there, a primer of affirmative spirituality. And this is the sense of affirmative, a spirituality that accepts the world as the field of Divine realisation and manifestation and this is full of guidelines on how to put into practice a daily framework for any kind of affirmative spirituality.
Sraddhalu (0:50:00):
So now we come to the questions themselves. With this framework of an affirmative spirituality that accepts life, if you review your practices, whatever you may like, so our friend has listed prayers, pranayama, kriyas, asanas, mantra, meditation etc. Then you can find many others. Yes, they would be useful if taken in the spirit of an affirmative embraced life. All of us inevitably, before we come to the practice of the Integral yoga, have had exposure to other systems. Or even if you have grown up in a family which has orientation to the mother or Sri Aurobindo, it doesn't mean that they are free of the ascetic taint. They are all carrying some backlog of the past of ascetic tendencies. And we have to view now the value of each of those ascetic paths. In the case of Juan, he has mentioned the practice both of Buddhism and Sufism, extremely valuable. The path of Buddhism is primarily or very close to in similarity to the practices of Raja Yoga because the Buddha himself was a master of Raja Yoga and so he took all the methods and techniques of Raja Yoga which he had learned before he started his own quest but turned them towards this particular objective that he had set. And so you'll find the practices are very similar. It is an excellent base for development of the mind, to build the base of equality or separation in the witness consciousness and the whole training of the yoga of knowledge will find strong correlations with the training of Buddhism and the practices of Buddhism, where the goal is really to master your own mind. In the same way, Sufism is a path of bhakti, prepares the opening of the heart to the love of the Divine and perhaps even the perception of the Divine love in all things, and through it the consecration and self-giving and surrender principles, again depending on systems, depending on practices because there are so many, and it is not fair to generalise but this is a broad statement of the path itself. It's an excellent preparation for the opening in the heart. In both Buddhism and Sufism there will be an element of the Karma Yoga through the heart or through the mind in consecration or otherwise and so they all provide an excellent base for the yoga of self-perfection and transformation.
If you look at the framework in which Sri Aurobindo presents the Synthesis of Yoga, as the name of the book is, he starts with Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, as if they are three, the tripod of a stool. Each of these takes up one of the three impulses within us and turns it towards the Divine. But you have to read carefully now, the Synthesis of Yoga is not taking up these three paths as they are taught. He takes the principle and then broadens each of the paths to a goal relevant for an Integral yoga. And the practice therefore undergoes a widening relevant to the Integral yoga. So when you reread these chapters on each of these paths, and there are many chapters on each of them because it goes in great depth, you have to recognize how he shifts the goals of what comes through the traditions and widens them for an active, affirmative and an integral realisation. But these three eventually combine because they become the basis in which our whole outer nature is prepared by turning to the Divine and in the opening, a purification that takes place. So the triple path joins to form a base of purification and readiness in which our whole the next phase which is the yoga of self-perfection which is properly the yoga that Sri Aurobindo teaches which was revealed to him in frame in essence in while he was after he came to Pondicherry he in fact he says it was already revealed while he was in a Alipore jail but after he came to Pondicherry that was the full focus of his practice described as the Sapta Chatushtaya, the seven quartets in which the framework is structured and you will see he uses those keywords even in explaining. The chapters are arranged perfectly in the sequence of the yoga. The way he practised it, the way he teaches it are exactly aligned.
I'm making a point to mention this because unfortunately there are attacks on Sri Aurobindo taking place, very calculated, very perverse, to try to cut his practice from his teaching. They tried to do something similar to Ramakrishna Paramahansa, as some of you know. I don't want to go into details, it is very perverse. But the same group is working on a similar attack on Sri Aurobindo. And what they have done is, they took the Sapta Chatushtaya, he describes in the Record of Yoga, and changed the order, because he presents two different sequences, one which is consistent, which is exactly the same as Synthesis of Yoga and once he mentions the sequence differently which in the current published version is only the only sequence presented by mischief deliberately. They have edited the text, it's not the full text that is printed and then you are shown that this sequence is different from his practice. All false. When you see the original sequence as revealed to him by Sri Krishna and as practised by him for 75 years, you find exactly the same sequence in the Synthesis of Yoga. So that's the framework in which he unfolds, where the whole basis is this initial base that is built and upon that he presents six because the seventh is the base on which the whole thing is built. We will look at these in a subsequent discussion. But all this is now to put in context the practice.
So what do you do as a practice? Perhaps the simplest in terms of tapasya also is this little booklet of the Mother, The four austerities and the four liberations, or you can just look up because these are six articles that the Mother wrote describing the nature of the tapasya of the Integral yoga and she starts by saying tapasya is not suffering it is not self mortification of the body or of your nature. That's the ascetic way and as we saw is a perversion of a great truth. Your body is not your enemy. It is a beautiful vehicle intended to be divinized. Then she describes the tapasya of beauty, the tapasya of power, the tapasya of knowledge. As you can see these correspond to the three parts of your being, the physical body, the vital body and the mental body and then the tapasya of love which is the souls and these four which complete the four liberations and the four austerities is the form of the practice. Now you read the text, you will find she describes many things you can do. All of them are at an essential level, psychological practices. None of them require you to sit down and repeat a mantra or do certain asanas. But if you look at the essence of the psychology and the effort, you can use external means for example to concentrate them. To make the body conscious, Asanas are an excellent way, Gymnastics are an excellent way. Or if done correctly with that intention, climbing steps as you climb up a building are an excellent way or simply sitting relaxed in a chair infusing your awareness in the body and awakening it because essentially it is the psychological method that is at the core of which physical means can be a help to hold attention or to amplify certain results. Sri Aurobindo himself you will find didn't need to do asanas nor the Mother till the age of 80, when the Mother was going every day almost to the playground, playing tennis, she never needed to do asanas or stretching of any kind because there was a direct awareness infused in the body which kept it so supple. And I've seen this, I've heard it narrated by the person who used to record the Mother's talks while she was in the playground and you can see it in the video which is one of the few videos that exist of her in the playground. He described how she'll be sitting for two hours, sometimes three hours at a time on her chair. Not once did her body fidget. Try this. You're sitting on a chair, you're interacting, you're speaking, you're meeting people one after the other. Not once, no adjustment, no fidgeting, no restlessness, your leg moves, your hand moves, you need to stretch, nothing. The body was completely clear, pure, supple, conscious. And then at the end, and you can see this in the video, she is finished, she looks left, right, nobody else left, and puff she gets up. No strain, no lifting, no support needed, puff she gets up. She's sitting and puff, she gets up. And this is the description that was given to us by Vishwanath-da, who was at that time a young man recording it, recording her talks. He said it was amazing to see after three hours of continuous activity of meeting people but sitting on the chair, no movement in the chair, she would just get up and walk. Even if you do, try this after three hours you get up, you'll need to stretch a little bit. Some muscles at least will be tight. Nothing. Smooth, clear, totally aware body.
Sraddhalu (1:00:12):
Another example which comes to mind, which was shared to me by an attendant of hers. The name slips my mind now, but he was attending on her at some point, And suddenly the Mother started scratching her arm and she told that man, go immediately to my salon in the ashram and bring the cologne, the water, perfumed water, but it has a slight amount of alcohol for rubbing. And by the time he came back and she applied the cologne, she said, it's too late, it has got in. What was it? It was a mosquito bite which she could feel in the body, had injected a certain, I suppose it's a virus, which causes the elephantitis, the swelling of the leg. She could feel it entering, so mosquito bite she might have had, but here she could feel the infection entering. She asked for the cologne to neutralise it at a physical level which was too late, she said it's got into the body and yes she went through that illness and overcame it with no use of external medicine, just by the application of the inner awareness and will. All this is to show you the extent of the consciousness, suppleness and development of the physical body at the age of 80 with no recourse to any stretchings or asanas or exercise necessary. How? Because of the direct application of consciousness in the body. Yes, you may use the asanas. Again, with what intention? Be clear about it. And infuse in the asana, in the stretch, the consciousness, so that your body may be made more aware and turned to the Divine, that it may participate in your Spiritual life. Yes, that becomes useful. Pranayam for what? If it is to increase the life force, of course your goal can be purely physical health. That has no Spiritual value in itself. But it's good to have a strong body. But if your goal is to make your body or your consciousness grow in the awareness of the life force in the prana and then awaken in the prana, the widening and the aspiration and receptivity to the Divine, for that pranayama can be useful, but you can achieve the same result by direct awareness and widening of the prana or a similar result in your mind by certain mental practices.
So it is not the form of the practice which is important, but the direction that you set which would make it relevant for the Integral yoga. In fact, Sri Aurobindo even warns about focusing too much on certain forms of practice. And I want to read from a passage here because it is harsh in its criticism, but necessary to remind us of the reality of things. And this is coming again for an essential practice. This is the book, The Yoga and Its Objects. Do read it. It provides the framework of the Integral yoga at its most essential level but with a vocabulary which is of an earlier phase. This is the vocabulary. It was originally written in 1912. Before he had developed the forms of his yoga and the vocabulary of his yoga in the way it is today. So wherever he speaks of God and the power of God, well, later you will find the divine Shakti, because the power of God is the divine Shakti and it will say surrender to Mother, here he will say surrender to God and God's will. And the psychic being is not directly represented here in the vocabulary, but it is there in the nature of the aspiration and the movement of self-giving. And he continued to have it published all through till 1949, the year before he left his body. Multiple editions were published. That means he found it necessary and useful for people to study, only with a difference of vocabulary. Unfortunately, when the book is published today, there is a mischievous quotation inserted that Sri Aurobindo wrote in a letter, and the context of the letter is not mentioned, that the booklet represented an early stage of his sadhana and only a part of it is applicable to the yoga as it has been taken form after lapse of more than 20 years. Now the moment this quotation is put right at the beginning, most people read that, ah, not relevant. They don't bother to read or they don't think it applies in the practice of the Integral yoga. But if you read the entire first half, the whole central process is very much aligned with the difference of vocabulary. Later parts which are very specific of certain kinds of inner practices are not primary in the form of the Integral yoga but they are useful in any case.
Sraddhalu (1:05:04):
Now in this text Sri Aurobindo writes, ‘there are other paths [after he has described this path] that offer more immediate results or at any rate, by offering you some definite kriya [kriya means activity or exercise or practice], you can work at yourself, give your ahankara, or ego, the satisfaction of feeling that you are doing something. So many more pranayamas today, so much longer a time for the asana, so many more repetitions of the japa, so much done, so much definite progress marked’. So he is ridiculing that idea that, ‘today I did japa hundred times, tomorrow I did two hundred times, six months down I am doing japa thousand times. Wow! How much I have progressed’. Have you changed in consciousness? No, probably not. Or at least the result of the japa that you got was already done within the first 20 and you didn't need to go up to a thousand. And so he says, ‘but once you have chosen this path, you must cleave to it’. And then he explains the difference. ‘Those are human methods, not the way that the infinite Shakti works, which moves silently, sometimes imperceptibly to its goal, advances here, seems to pause there, then mightily and triumphantly reveals the grandiose thing that it has done. Artificial paths are like canals hewn by the intelligence of man. You travel easily, safely, surely, but from one given place to another. This path is the broad and trackless ocean by which you can travel widely to all parts of the world and are admitted to the freedom of the infinite." And then he discusses what you need for the path. I won't get into it. It is worth reading on your own and worth meditating upon. He gives a symbol of a ship and the captain and the compass. It's very profound.
But in this booklet, there are three steps he describes. Read the three steps and read it as if Sri Aurobindo is giving you the command. Do this first step, do this second step, do this third step and you'll find the essence of the yoga. We will discuss this on another occasion where I will compare the nuances of the steps and the practice with the form of the integral yoga itself and you will find perfectly alignment. But all this is also to remind you that the focus on Kriyas is useful for you to put attention on an effort. Numbers are not important. I had a friend who was, I found him to be hugely sleep deprived and I asked him why aren't you sleeping? He says it's because of all my sadhana practices. What do you do? He described to me what he did every morning for four hours before he went to his work and he was reading entire texts, chanting, reciting and doing various things for several hours at a time. And I said, do you need it? He said, yes, I feel good after doing so much. Then I asked him, out of the four hours, how much time does it take you to reach that stage where you feel good? Oh, the first half hour. So having got to the first half hour of the result that you wanted, by whatever means you used, do you need to really do the numbers? Because the numbers are not the point here, it's the shift that you feel that is important. So I don't know, I think he was able to reduce it by one or two hours but he couldn't let go the idea of not completing his cycle because of the feeling it gives, oh I have done so much. So the ahankara, the ego which feeds on this numbers idea, you have to let go and look at the practice purely from the value that it has in helping you grow in consciousness. Yes, if it helps you, do the japa. But to what end? If your japa is to enter in relation with the Divine Mother, well, you have a favourite mantra, wonderful, use it. If it helps you. If it doesn't, change the mantra or simply the word Mother or the mantra given by Sri Aurobindo, Om Anandamayi Chaitanyamayi Sathyamayi Parame. Whatever, simply, Mother Sri Aurobindo. Your heart opening, more than the number of counts. Discard the numbers, numbers don't matter. It is the support you get in the vocalising of the mantra for your consciousness to open. And you repeat once with the turn of your heart. You repeat a second time with a deepening. You repeat a third time with a consecration, with a self-giving. And maybe a fourth or fifth is not needed. Let the mantra form lapse and remain in immersion in the experience. If it takes you 10 repetitions, fine. Don't count. Focus on the experience with which you enter into the relationship and the immersion and then spontaneously the mantra has to fade so that the silence may form in which the higher power may descend. The fundamental error would be to think that repetition of mantra gets you the experience. No, the repetition is an activity which prevents the deeper experience from being attained. If you want to experience the Self, it is a silence of mind and generally of your whole being which brings you closer to the Self which is of the nature of silence and peace. Activity will cut you off, will prevent you from deepening.
Sraddhalu (1:11:10):
And again I will share with you here an actual incident, I was in Ahmedabad for some program and somebody, we were part of a group or something and then somebody met me and he asked some question about practices. At first I thought it was a genuine question, he wanted to know and I began to explain and he cut me short and he said, oh all that I know, I have written several books on these things. So I am wondering why is he asking this? Then I asked a few questions about well what did you do, what are you doing? Then he shared an incident. He said I had gone to the banks of the river Ganga. For two years. I lived there on the banks of the Ganga and I did my practice and I didn't get any result. It's sad. He was so unhappy about it and the sense of failure. I asked him what was your practice? He said, I sat before, beside the Ganga and I was repeating my mantra. I said what was the goal of your practice? He said to realise silence of mind. It's obvious what he made as a mistake. If you want to attain silence of mind, you make your mind quiet, not keep it in activity of mantra repetition. Or at best you use the mantra repetition as a point of focus to enter, to bring you close to silence at which point the mantra has to dissolve and you have to merge into the silence. So let's say the mantra can be any word, it's not important what words you use, it's what it means for you and the way you use it. So the Mantra mother recommends for that silence of mind, simply say peace. So you say peace. And then you feel the peace and peace and peace, and you immerse into it. And the words fade away into the silence and the peace, and you enter the state. And then you realise the mantra itself is unnecessary. All you need to do is turn your attention to that peace or silence and begin to immerse. At best, the external form is an aid to the focus of your consciousness.
All this to come back to the question itself. What should be included in the practice and what should not? A general answer would be whatever helps you to enter into the experience or the relationship or the state by relationship with the Divine or the state of consciousness that you wish to enter. Whatever helps you is useful. To the extent it helps you, discard the rest which is not needed anymore. And whatever does not help you is irrelevant and it may change. There are situations where you feel the need for a call in words and when that happens, do it. And there are situations where you may not need, you can discard and simply open and enter. It's not so dramatic, it does not give you the ego satisfaction of numbers done. But once you're free of that idea, the experience itself is far more satisfying than the idea of numbers. And I would highly recommend asanas and pranayama at the very least to make your body more conscious and healthy which is a necessary base for the yoga but then into that if you can bring the intention to awaken in body consciousness and in your life forces the sense of widening and opening and aspiring to the Divine Mother then you have brought the asanas and pranayama into relevance of the Integral yoga and it is extremely valuable for that purpose. Otherwise just valuable for good health which is again needed for the Integral yoga in any case. So what is useful, what could be unnecessary, the criteria is simple. If it works it's useful, if it doesn't work it's not useful now, at least.
Sraddhalu (1:15:11):
What is even harmful? Yes, it can be harmful if the focus is only on the form or the purpose of the practice is a withdrawal. Or one of the objectives that comes with the ascetic practice or the association of the practice with the ascetic idea. Oh, these are bad, these are to be removed or killed or etc. Correct for those, all forms of practice are useful to the extent they bring you closer to an experience, and at some point the forms fade away and the direct turn of awareness to the experience is your key. We will come to an essential psychological practice later on in the next few discussions, which will be the core of the form of practice at least in meditation, and we will also follow the text of Sri Aurobindo where he describes this in great detail. But I think this is a broad direction in which we can look at it. All the past practices and the systems you have followed are extremely valuable because they have allowed you to build a base, a base in which now something much wider and inclusive can be taken up. And as far as the tapasya is concerned, the pure psychological practices of the four austerities is the way I would suggest as a form of tapasya. But at the essence of the whole concept of tapasya is the concentrated effort of your whole being towards this purpose.
Because the Integral yoga views the world as the domain of realisation and manifestation, it has three characteristics that Sri Aurobindo describes as outstanding characteristics. I'll briefly touch upon them. The first is that this yoga does not have a fixed sequence or practices. Now this has been misunderstood by people to think there is no sequence or practice. No, there are sequences, there are practices. They are not fixed. They are not fixed because your nature is multifaceted and depending on your nature and its current stage of development, certain aspects may stand out more, certain needs may stand out more and so the form of the practice may vary and the sequences may vary. But yes, they are there. And this is very different from other systems where there's a very clear sequence, it's like a ladder. Until you have done step one, you can't go to step two. Here it's a multi-dimensional opening. If you're familiar with mathematics, it's a tensor. Many directed movements rising out from one centre of the central aspiration. The second outstanding characteristic is that there is no prerequisite. So in every path you have a requirement; to be in the path of devotion, well, you must be a devotional type. A mental type does not fit in a devotional path. But since here the goal is an entire transformation of your whole nature, all starting points are included and therefore wherever you are, as you are, whatever your current incapacity, the path is still valid because you start from where you are and you grow towards a multi-dimensional goal. The third outstanding feature of the Integral yoga is that nothing in life needs to be rejected from the yoga. All activities, all needs are accepted and taken up. Maybe the form in which you do, the priority with which you do, the psychological focus that will change. But the form of life experience, nothing needs to be avoided. You do not need to withdraw from anything. You may of course choose a strategic withdrawal where you say, all right, for this purpose in my current phase, I can't stand that situation. And until I'm strong enough to be able to stand it, it's better I change the form of my work to something which is more amenable to my current need. But eventually you will grow in capacity to the extent that you can walk into the midst of a battlefield and still hold this poise of yoga. Otherwise it's not complete. So nothing in life needs to be abandoned. All can be turned to that purpose. So even if you are doing a job which is very superficial in its focus, into that you can bring the sense of consecration at the very least or use it as a means for developing and refining certain parts of your outer nature or something in your inner concentration. Everything can be used as a means and therefore by extension all practices can be used also but the form in which you utilise them and the priority you give them will be different.
So these three outstanding features of the integral yoga also make it that the world is your friend. All circumstances are there to help you. All things within you are also there to help you, including so-called, what you called wrong movements or limitations. They are there to help you finally to complete the perfection that is required of which they are imperfect impulses or distorted impulses. Even for example, in the practice of separating unconsciousness from these tendencies of what Sri Aurobindo calls lower nature, habitual instinctive impulses that pop into you. If you look at it this way, when that thing pops up, it's only helping you to distinguish what is your outer layer and what is your inner. The fact that I am conscious, oh here is this strange feeling or strange idea or strange impulse, why has it come up again? Instead of saying, oh I'm being attacked, you can say, ah, the part where I'm experiencing this is not centrally me. The part in me that finds it strange is more truly me. You make the separation. Every time that something happens in your nature, in your consciousness, which is contrary to your aspiration, and you recognize this is not what I want, you're more conscious of what you want and you are conscious of the gap between the part where you are more truly you and the part which are more superficial. It helps you to centralise your consciousness in the part which is already pure, ready, consciously aspiring and open to the Divine. Everything comes to help you. Think of it in this way. The skill is how you take help from the situation for the growth.
Sraddhalu (1:22:05):
And finally in all this discussion and practice, remember in the integral yoga and you will find this repeatedly discussed in the little booklet, The Yoga and its Objects, remember in the integral yoga it is not your strength on which the yoga is done. Rather it is on the strength of the divine Shakti working in you, the Mother's force working in you that does the yoga and the transformation. Your strength is needed only for the opening, self-giving, receiving and containing of her work and your sanction, your participation saying, yes, I want this to be changed. And that's well within your reach because otherwise you wouldn't be here. Because this is already there within you, that's something you aspires and wans to experience and transform. That's all you need. The rest is starting with the part in you that is most centrally open. Don't worry about other parts which are still a bit confused or doubting or even conflicting. Start with what is open within you and let her action begin in this space of you. It is Her strength that does the yoga and your incapacity is irrelevant here. Do not worry about your capacity or your readiness. If you feel the aspiration, you are ready for that much at least. Start where you are, as you are. Relying on her strength and her help, call for her help, consciously, frequently, repeatedly. Because it is her working in you. Until her working is so stable that you don't need to explicitly call. Let that begin in this way. And my last comment on this. Understand again, this has to do with the complete shift of orientation from the ascetic paths to the integral yoga and its affirmative spirituality. Since everything is here to help you, since the primary effort is done by the Mother's Shakti, by the Mother's consciousness and energy and force, the way is always from joy to greater joy. The nature of the yoga is joyous and easy. It is not painful, it is not a struggle, the Divine is not far away that you have to go a million miles of suffering to get to. At every movement you grow from closeness to greater closeness. How? The basic approach of the yoga is to put all of yourself in relation to the Divine. That's your starting point. All of yourself that you can be aware of, doesn't matter. And then with that contact, the Divine energy, the Divine consciousness will fill you and awaken in you other parts which are then gradually taken up more and more in this opening. And therefore, it's growth from joy to greater joy. And if there are gaps, if there are pauses, it's only because something is happening deep inside you in assimilation of work done or some block which is preparing now to open for a more complete realisation. And at that point you call in the parts which are conscious, in the parts which are open and you remain in receptive, joyous self-giving.
If you've experienced struggle, if you experience suffering, if the goal seems distant, you are making a mistake. Go back to what we have discussed before, make the correction in your attitude and in your relationship with the Divine, because the Divine Mother is not far away, she is in you. She is in your intelligence. She is in your heart's love and devotion and gratitude. And even when you feel nothing, she is in your body as the very life force that sustains you. Become conscious of her, open yourself to her, and the rest she will help to clear any clouds or confusions which are within you. Let this be the broad direction of the path and the practice. Other forms as necessary and helpful for this and then we will take up a more specific form of the practice and what we have earlier described as the direct method that Sri Aurobindo discusses and how to open to deeper and higher ranges of consciousness. So this will be the theme in our successive discussions. As always, as I already mentioned before, your comments and your questions are helpful so that we can direct the discussion itself to make it more relevant for what is helpful to all. So, feel free to send and even if you do not get a written reply, you know that your questions and your comments are read. I think this will be a good point to pause for today.
Alina (1:26:51):
Thank you very much, Sraddhalu, for our session. It was an amazing introduction and a preparatory ground for further talks. And thank you, Joel.
[Joel] Thank you.
Sraddhalu (1:27:09):
And we will take this moment now to concentrate, because it is worth it, after a deep discussion of this kind, to assimilate, to absorb and let the imprint of the whole experience settle in us. The reception and absorption until it becomes a part of our being, that we view and experience the universe in this way. This is extremely important to be firmly established in the affirmative aspect of the Integral yoga. So we will take a moment in concentration.
Sraddhalu (1:27:50):
Okay. Thank you. Namaste.
[Alina] Namaste.
[Joel] Namaste.