EWS #97: Questions on Practices
(eclipse, descent, widening, brain, psychic, etc)
18 Dec 2021
Topics:
Alina (0:00:00)
Namaste and good evening everyone. Welcome back to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. As you all know, my name is Alina and together with Joel from Auroville, we will be hosting this series. Namaste, Joel.
Joel (0:00:28):
Namaste, Alina, Namaste, Sraddhalu.
Sraddhalu (0:00:56):
Namaste. Welcome to everyone.
Alina (0:01:00):
Namaste, Sraddhalu. We are happy to continue our series as usual every Saturday evening. And today we will continue on the same topics, questions on practices that we receive from our viewers. Last time we have explored the first of the six perfection of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga. After we will take up some questions received from our viewers we will continue the same theme. Kartik wrote, “Many times while eating I have observed then that when my mind is on something else, I have bit my tongue or lips, often suddenly. Sometimes when discussing some matter seriously, I have experienced this sudden biting and then took it that I had some wrong attitude. Why does this happen when we don't intend to bite?”.
Sraddhalu (0:02:08):
Ha ha. Yes, it's an interesting question and although very specific to one particular symptom of the tongue biting, we can use this question also to generalise, to discuss similar problems or similar issues which may happen in different parts of the body also. At a very superficial level, the first response would simply be unconsciousness in the tongue. So think about it in this way. The complexity of what happens when you're chewing food and at the same time speaking. The complexity is so great. Your food is being chewed, your tongue is moving around, your cheeks, your lips, everything is perfectly coordinated. None of it conscious to you. But it is an automation of the body consciousness. In the body consciousness, when there is coordination between different parts, if one of the parts is more stiff, and you understand now stiff in its true sense, stiffness means lack of response to an intention. If one part is more stiff for some reason, then automatically it throws in disarray the natural balance of the body and the balance then adjusts itself to adapt to that stiffness. So for example, when you're walking, you have an injury, your leg is stiff or you can't bend, you can't move normally. At first you go with a limp and gradually the body adapts the balance such that the limp is minimised. And to a point where sometimes you might not even notice that there's a problem with the leg. So something similar, the body consciousness is adapting to your incapacity or unconsciousness. But if this happens frequently, it's an indication that the tongue consciousness and the teeth coordination is off and that means the tongue is somehow not conscious enough. So very simple training I would suggest is to do exercises for the tongue and there are quite a few which come from the Hatha yoga like Kechari mudra and all that or you do exercises vocal exercises which are for training the throat or training the speech or simply to make some conscious movement with the mouth, infusing awareness into the tongue. As a result, immediately this pattern or this tendency will reduce.
So this is at a very superficial level. But I will go a step behind. Such patterns could happen anywhere, in any part of the body. But behind that there's a symbolism. It may not always be there, but for somebody who's in a Spiritual life, generally there will be a deeper dimension like this. The mouth, throat, represent the mind turning to express itself through speech, through words, and so the throat centre Sri Aurobindo describes as the externalising mind. But from the throat centre, the energy flows through the tongue and out through the mouth. And the tongue is the vehicle in between which links from the throat because the base of the tongue goes all the way to the throat. And so the energy flows through the tongue. It's one of the reasons why in certain Hatha Yogic practices, they point the tip of the tongue to the palate, the soft palate in the mouth, as a way of routing the energy to the higher center through the mouth. So these are very specific exercises and the energy of course is a vital energy, not necessarily a Spiritual energy.
And they have their places, but I'm pointing to that only to indicate the role of the tongue. And therefore something in the externalizing mind expressing itself needs some purification. There is some mixture and you have used this phrase when your mind is on something else. When the mind is distracted and the automatism acts, the energy flow acts, there is a lack of continuity, lack of break, disharmony, a lack of continuity or a break, a disharmony, but also perhaps in the flow of the energy or in the thought, is there something there? Is there something within you that doubts what you're going to say? Or hesitates to say it? Observe carefully. And you might find some little block. And it can vary from person to person, which one it is. You may be very sure of yourself in one part, but another part says, but do I have a right to say this? Am I really so sure? And just that doubt could act like a bump, like a speed breaker on the road. So there's a bump there and that's it. Or maybe that your work requires you to say things which you know to be false. And it pops up at that time or it pops up when you're exaggerating. Maybe there is a real experience, but in the act of expressing, you exaggerate. Observe and then you will just discover some tiny knot, a little piece. Clear that, harmonise the two pieces which are out of sync and the problem will go away of its own. And I'm giving this as an example because you may have similar problems in the stomach or in the chest. And each of these layers, parts of the body corresponds to a level of consciousness. Observe what is happening in that level of consciousness. And you will get a hint generally of what you need to do to correct it. I think that's a good enough coverage for the question.
Alina (0:07:56):
Yes. We have another question received from Jyoti, “Please can you explain the good and bad of solar eclipses due to 4th December 2021, the significance and beliefs from religious point of view and also from scientific view”. This is a very good question because we all get scared that there is a bad solar eclipse. We have to be careful. What is this relevance?
Sraddhalu (0:08:26):
Yes, you know when we say scientific, it's as if somehow an authority in itself. But you must also understand today at least the word scientific means materialistic. So basically the question is religious viewpoint and materialistic viewpoint. We have actually touched upon this in some earlier discussion, but that was more than a year or two ago and that went much more into the astrology side and things like that but here I want to take it from the larger context of our current drift of the discussion. So from a purely scientific perspective there's nothing to be afraid of, isn't it? It's just an alignment of some the solar body, lunar body and earth and it makes for a pretty sight. Dangerous perhaps to the sight, the physical sight to look directly because of ultraviolet rays etc. But therein lies already a hint that what normally would have been relatively safe somehow becomes not so safe scientifically, materially. And then that links to the religious viewpoint and in the religious experience, of course, religion, remember, has a deeper dimension which is the source of the religion, some deeper vital insight, some deeper perception of realities of the subtle, physical, vital and sometimes the lower mental realms, what we would generally call shamanic ranges, which are at the basis of many of these religious forms and what are dismissed by materialist science as superstitions.
There is an insight and the insight is interesting here and I will broaden the question a little bit to other such patterns. We have in the same religious tradition great importance given to other transition points. So every day when the Sun sets there is the sandhya, the meeting point between the day and night. Sandhi is the meeting point where two things join. If you have a sheet, let's say a wall and a dam and there's a water behind, it will hold the water. But if the dam is made of two pieces which are joined, and you can join them in any way that you choose. The fact that there is a joint means there is something separating still. The pressure of the water eventually will find its way through that joint. This is the importance to these joining points or transition points. So every morning, early morning, just before the sun rises, every evening just as the sun sets, these are points of joint, Sandhya. The eclipse is one such also. It's a point where two or three things are aligning and because of the alignment, there is a joint, a connection that forms between these things. What that means in terms of the occult knowledge, the vital knowledge behind, is that the Sun represents a certain energy centre and a grade of consciousness. The moon represents another grade, the earth another and their alignment whichever way it is solar or lunar eclipse makes them link up. Practically the moon is associated with the subtle physical and so it's as if the boundary between the subtle worlds and the physical world thins and things of the subtle world can come through more easily. Or from the physical world you can access things of the subtle world, energy of the subtle realms more easily. And when there is this joining point, it's almost like a gateway, a portal that is not fully open but half open. As a half open portal it means all kinds of things can come through, good or bad, it doesn't matter. And it is this which is at the basis of all these religious beliefs. Now I won't go too much into the religious beliefs, they are not so important. What is important is it's associated both with good and bad things and you have to understand why. All energies can come through more easily. But remember all these deal with energies which are in the band we would call occult, vital at best in the ranges of the lower mental and some of it close to the subtle physical and that's about it. And generally therefore what comes through being of the lower grades is not very interesting. More mischief making, more chaotic energies tend to be the first to break through, which is what animals sense and that's why you have the strange behaviour of many animals. The scientist, that is the materialist mind will say, that's because the animals are seeing the Sun covered up and they get confused. No, it happens even when this eclipse is completely covered by a cloud. There is no way to know there's an eclipse going on except you sense this something weird in the atmosphere, and it's quite distinct even for sensitive human beings you can feel immediately or something is off.
What is sensed though particularly for animals is that the energies from the lower vital world accessing the physical tend to be attracted to things of their grade. So lower vital energy is approaching animals that represent the same grade or the same quality or equivalently in human beings when parts of you resonate with the lower vital ranges will those parts get attract those energies, those forces, which is why interestingly every full moon and new moon and I believe particularly much more during the full moon, there is an increase of accidents, road accidents for example or generally other accidents. Even people falling sick is tied to full moon and new moon. In hospitals you will find the association is quite interesting. But it all has to do with this. So the question is about, explain the good and bad. Well, it's not so much about good and bad. It's about the opening of access to the lower ranges of the vital and mental worlds. What can you do with it? Well, those who are into practices of magic, which tap into vital worlds, for them it's a useful opportunity. It's a portal, you can do things. Those who are in a Spiritual pursuit can also use that time because there is as if on a physical level a kind of an access. But again, not to the Self, to the ranges of the vital and mental. So people who want to build the power of their mantra, and a lot of this building of power has to do with the vital power and the mental power. Yes, for them it becomes an opportunity, you do your mantra practice and build a certain energy, a quantum of energy which is of course finite, which has a certain material density, which you can then use, release when you need to. So all of this goes into the category of occult practices, even if they have a Spiritual appearance, from purely spiritual point of view.
And I will use here the word adhyatmik in Sanskrit, adhi atma, of the character of Atman. So there is in Sanskrit, three terms, Adhibhautik, Adhidaivik, Adhyatmik. Adhyatmik is of the nature of Atman, of the Self. Adhidaivik, deva, is god, we translate, gods. But actually Div is beings of light. So of the nature of the beings of light which represent the psychological powers or intermediate domains of beings, positive or negative does not matter. And Adhi-Bhautik, Bhuta is the elements, the things at the level of the five elements or the elemental character, the things which form the denser ranges of reality. So these represent three grades. So anything, anything has its representation on these three grades and they are linked in the sense that the lower is always a reflection of the higher. So even things on the material plane are a reflection of things of the domain of the Diviner beings which are reflection of principles and powers of the Self and these are the three broad categories one might say of domains.
Sraddhalu (0:16:49):
But when you go to the pure domain of Atman, which is really the range of the freedom of the spirit, the true freedom of the spirit, none of this matters. From the point of view of the Self, the sun is equally the Self, the moon is equally Self, earth is equally Self, their alignment is just a play of the Self with Self, which is always on whether they are aligned or not. At best, you may say they are colours of the play. So Sri Aurobindo has a very interesting aphorism which I will, I don't remember exactly but I will paraphrase. He says from the point of view of the physical senses the Sun goes around the earth. From the mind's perspective the earth goes around the Sun. You see, literally opposite. Physical senses and mental perspective are literally opposite. But from the perspective of the Spirit, neither is moving. There is only a change of relationship in consciousness between sun and earth. And in the change of relationship, in the totality of Self, there is whole sun, there is whole moon, and the earth, and only relationships between these played out. In that consciousness, or from that consciousness, from the Spiritual point of view, it makes no difference. So the distinction, I will put it in with a different image. Is it raining outside? Does it make a difference for you? If you're going to step out of your house with just your normal clothes, the fact of the rain is going to affect you greatly. If you go with your umbrella, the fact of the rain will be an inconvenience, but it won't prevent you. If you're taking a flight on an aeroplane or you're going by the train, whether it rains or not is irrelevant. But the fact of its presence is there. It does modify things. Maybe the traffic increases, something is modified, but fundamentally doesn't matter. Rain or sun doesn't matter. You do what you have to do. This is the nature of the perspective of the Self.
And from a spiritual point of view, for those of us for whom the spiritual comes first and the religious is at best an expression of the Spirit, it does not matter. And the Mother was very firm on this. She was asked multiple times about this. Does the eclipse make any difference for your work? Is there anything we should do? She said, nothing. Everything goes normally. In a temple, they will close the temple, do purification rituals. Because the vehicle of the embodiment is still occult primarily. Even if there is a Spiritual power that is called, the vehicle of holding the Spiritual power is occult and therefore the ritualism. But when you are in a Spiritual space where it is the free action of the Spirit, it does not matter. All the functions of the ashram go on irrespective of whether there's an eclipse or not. You eat at the same time, you have your prayers and other activities, everything at the same time as you would as if the eclipse didn't matter, it doesn't exist at all. In a normal context of the religious, you don't eat and this is the interesting part - the scientific confirmation with the religious, yes we discover through the study of science that in fact during the eclipse the count of bacteria in the air shoots up, triples. For what reason? oh, they will say it's because of ultraviolet rays. No it has nothing to do with lack of ultraviolet rays, that happens also at night but your bacteria count doesn't go up the same way in 10 minutes of the eclipse. So there is something happening and the bacteria count you will understand because it represents the bacteria themselves are a physical densification of vibrations from the vital domain and particularly the subtle physical. So when things come from that domain, it has the effect of immediately, dramatically increasing the bacteria count. Depending on what comes through, positive or negative, the bacteria will be probiotic in a positive way or in a negative way. But all of that is irrelevant if your consciousness is primarily focusing on the self. You can eat the food you want, it will be no different than someone sneezing on the food. Yes, of course, there's some spread of bacteria but your consciousness is designed, your biology is designed to be able to digest it all. Do not worry.
If you fix yourself on those thoughts, then your acceptance of that as an issue might cause your body to react to it in a certain way. And that's why Mother says there is a from the fact that one does not believe. The act of believing is also an act of opening to a certain influence. And putting it in the context of astrology, she said, when you pay attention to the deities behind these planetary arrangements, they also pay attention to you. And therefore, their effect on you actually increases, is amplified. When you stop paying attention, they lose their hold on you. And yes, they are a part of a cosmic rhythmic process, but if you don't engage with those rhythms, you are not directly, so directly affected. So my intention in dealing with this question here is much more from the perspective of the Self. From which perspective I would rather we emphasize the freedom and align ourselves to the freedom of the Self and not bother with these. Oh, there's an interesting eclipse. Wonderful. Would you like to look at it? Yes, sure. Of course, you take your precautions, take a look and then get on with your life. Don't worry about should you eat, should you not eat. One can make too much of a big deal around what may otherwise be trivial from that perspective at least. It is not to trivialise the knowledge which is there. Like I've said before, it is all very useful for those who want to engage on that level. For those who want to open to the self, these are all children of the Divine and they have their play, but we engage with the Mother of all these deities and we live in Her freedom and then allow Her therefore to act through you. By engaging with the secondary, tertiary and still lesser powers, you are interfering with the free action of Her force in you. By accepting certain beliefs and fixing yourself in them, you become vulnerable to those beliefs and you prevent the Mother's freedom of action in you. This is very important to understand.
And you have to really introspect and decide which is more important for you. Do you actively want to stop the Mother's free force from working in you in order to latch on to some inferior, secondary and imprisoning powers and beliefs? Or would you rather live in the freedom of the Self? And if that be the case, discard these beliefs. By conscious will, simply throw them away from you as deeply as you can, taking them out from their roots, throw them out. Yes, I have lived that life. That life is over. I begin a new life now, where I open myself entirely and exclusively. These are two very important terms. Open yourself entirely to the Divine. You can also open yourself entirely to other things. No, so exclusively to the Divine, entirely to the Divine and nothing else. And this allows her free action in you without interference of your own beliefs, but also of other powers that you have allowed to enter and interfere with Her working. Think about this, make a conscious choice, decide what is most important for you and make the best of the opportunity given.
Alina (0:24:52):
Jyoti wrote, please can you explain the good…I'm not sorry, Alok, next question. Alok is writing, “How to establish silence in the mind, peace in the vital and stillness in the body, so that these cravings or addictions may not arise or even if they arise they will not agitate the being”.
Sraddhalu (0:25:23):
Yes, this was the question which came during the time we were discussing the different kinds of addictions and how to free from them. And I held back this question because it would not have made sense to give a complete answer at the time. But now that we have discussed this whole process of the descent of peace, we can give a much more useful answer to this question. So, how do you establish silence in the mind, peace in the vital and stillness in the body? By the descent of the peace from above. And it is that peace settling in these three parts which can dissolve and erase all the cravings, addictions, agitations, their tendencies, their habits and even their roots. The peace itself is felt and this is the experience for those of you who have been practising this. It's almost like a dense liquid, a presence liquid that fills you. And like a liquid, it flows into you, spreads into all the crevices, the cracks of your being, percolates like water into the soil. You see, these are natural symbols in the experience itself. And that's why you will see the Vedic symbolism was not just an association of mind, they are literal experiences. The soaking in of the peace into the substance of your being is like water soaking into soil. It goes through all the cracks, enters all the spots that you are not conscious of, and begins to dissolve knots from inside out. And especially when there is the combination of the descent of peace as well as light of awareness. This combination is so potent, it awakens, brings into light, frees up, dissolves knots, and can do within days what normally, by a long psychotherapy process of introspection and effort and will, would take you a few years. And this is no exaggeration. In days, it can vanish. Even sometimes in a single intervention, poof, the problem is removed, and for good.
We've seen these kinds of interventions when the Mother intervened with people. We've seen this happen with people when they have opened themselves to the action of the Divine Force. And in a single action it's been done. We've seen it happen when somebody was able to draw that consciousness and act on the person with difficulty and to solve it just like that. We think of these things as miracles because to the normal pace of change it seems to be too dramatic. But that's because the normal pace of change is built on your limited effort acting on substance which you are not conscious of and it needs repeated pushes, hammerings, nudges, whatever you use, hacking away, hewing away, to dig down, to get to something which is such a slow, laborious process. When you could just pour the water and the water soaks into the soil, loosens it up from inside and prepares it for the seed planted from above the flower. Isn’t it? And all that's required from you is this movement of opening and giving yourself, as much as you are aware of. But the Presence descending then begins to seep into those parts. The intention you hold that it should go all the way through that which is the knot in you is enough to begin a state of receptivity from that part. So let's say you have some addiction, some disturbance, some cravings, some bad habit. Become conscious of that. Try to feel as much as you can the sense of the root of it. Where does it start? How deep does it go? And all that you are aware of, gently turn and open and invite the Divine Mother's Presence, Peace,Light, Love. Let it soak in. Let yourself open. Let yourself give and remain immersed. To the extent that you have been able to feel the thing within you, that whole thing can soak straight all the way in. It does not need a struggle and like I said sometimes within days, sometimes even in a moment, in a single intervention. Now if we had discussed this at that time, it would have been premature. Now with the background of what we have been discussing the last few weeks, I think all of you would agree from your own experience. Yes, it can be as dramatic.
But the question is also interesting because it touches all three parts, the mind, the vital and the physical body. And you have to consciously bring what descends into these three layers. The second thing which you have to do, and now not just about addictions and problems, but to bring complete stillness, which is part of the purification of these parts, you have to habituate these parts. When there is a descent of peace, your mind naturally effortlessly becomes quiet, but then you habituate your mind to be quiet. Later during the day, in other activities, once you have engaged with an activity and you have finished the engagement, come back to rest in a quiet mind. When you engage with your life energies or your emotions, you flow, come back to rest. With your physical body you act, then you sit and come back to rest. You should be completely still. The analogy given is of a tiger or a lion which is ready to leap. There's a state of complete stillness and springs suddenly. The more still it is able to be, the more rapid the spring. The more agitated, the more discontinuous, disorganised, unharmonious the movement of the leap. So work on bringing stillness but also on habituating your system. This is where the asanas become so useful and the truth of the asanas is seen here. You can use the support of asanas also from bottom up while doing this top-down method. But once you have a sufficient grip in the physical body, you can do the whole thing purely from a top-down method.
Alina (0:31:52):
Beautiful, because we already linked with the next question. Vani is writing, “I feel the descent during meditation or sometimes spontaneously when I'm relaxed, or at times early morning while in garden or near trees. However, the sensation of descent is felt above the head until the throat, but can't feel the descent coming down below the head or my body, what can I help to see that the entire body receives the descent?” It's a very good question.
Sraddhalu (0:32:37):
Yes, it is a very common experience that initially the descent is felt much more in the region up to the neck. Because this is the part of the body which are the centres of consciousness that corresponds to the mind. From the shoulder down begins the higher vital and then the lower vital and all the way to the physical in the sequence of the chakras, the centres of consciousness. So when there is a descent beginning above the head first and then all the way down comes to the neck, generally that's the part where most people initially feel the dense descent. But if you're careful and you follow with your awareness, you will feel an influence that continues further down. But because we fixate on the denser layer, we say, ah, it has stopped. Maybe the denser layer has stopped, but a finer grade is continuing. Become aware and follow it with your awareness. Now comes the key. That which is descending is not mere automation. It is conscious. It is consciousness which is peace. It is substance. And therefore, you can direct it. You can guide it. You can follow it. And so your participation here becomes important. In the question itself, you can see she is describing, I feel the descent spontaneously. And so the spontaneous descent tends to stop here, or at least the dense part stops here. Then continue, follow with your awareness and extend it below. So you feel it here, feel the denseness, and then slowly, as if gently nudging, drawing or guiding it, let it settle part by part. It may go slower, but follow with your awareness, infuse with your intention and awareness, let it go all the way down to the feet. This needs to be done. And that's when the descent fills all the layers of your being. This is extremely important in the context of the Integral Yoga, because otherwise those lower parts do not receive, they do not change enough, and a kind of a gap forms between the higher and the lower. So keep in mind there is a finer grade which is already going down, but with your awareness you can be conscious of it, but also you can lead the denser grade, guide it, simply feeling it, extending it, nudging it and taking it down.
You will find subsequently that you can not only at will call upon this descent, but also you can direct it to a specific part, concentrate it in a certain part where there may be a disturbance or a need for physical healing. You can also extend it outside the physical body because the descent itself is taking place primarily in your subtle body. So at first your attention may be much more in the physical and after a while you will notice it tends not only to fill but also surrounds you. Even now when you feel this descent up to the neck, you will feel also around in this space. Be conscious of this. When it goes below the neck, not only it will be inside the body but it will also surround. Some people feel it surrounding first much more than inside. Some people feel it filling inside much more and then surrounding. Either way, complement it with the other. So if you feel it inside, let it fill you and then slowly let it swell out until it surrounds you. How much? As much as it grows your entire aura space. If you feel it more outside, let it surround you fully and then from outside in let it infuse, flow and fill and soak in until everything inside is as filled as what you feel outside. But eventually both. It should be complete and all the way down to the feet and slightly below the feet because that's the range of the most material part of your consciousness including the subconscious and the inconscient. The whole body filling down to the feet and then surrounding. This should be eventually your goal. And when you hold it like this, when you feel it like this, subsequently, very quickly, you'll find the descent itself going all the way. You won't need to consciously make these connections or this bridge. You'll feel it spontaneously in all these parts. And it will not be difficult. It can happen within days. So, catch the first movement and then lead it, guide it and complete it. This would be the way forward. There is also a further dimension which is, in what descends, there is a character of wideness. So, that comes to the next few questions.
Alina (0:37:42):
So, we will proceed with two questions on the same topic of widening. First, Alok is writing, “how to deepen, heighten and widen the consciousness in meditation with practical helpful insights?”. Mahadevan is questioning, “Does the phrase ‘widen yourself’ refer to establishing an identification with the Self and losing or weaning of the ego? What did the Mother and Sri Aurobindo really meant by widening the being?”.
Sraddhalu (0:38:21):
Yes and I think subsequent to our discussions of the last few weeks, both these questions can be dealt with now with much greater depth. So the first question from Alok is about how to deepen, heighten and widen the consciousness in meditation. Already we have seen from our past discussions that the true descent which takes place from above is your key. As that settles with you, there is automatically a deepening that takes place. You can then of course turn your attention to a deeper layer. There are two ways to do this: One is like an inward concentration, where you go deeper and deeper as if to some inmost source of the Divine Presence or a more general state where you lean back in the peace, in the stillness, in the Presence, as if leaning back into its own depths. And that's the method, the direct method, simply feeling the Presence and then gently leaning back, deepening into it. And that's it. That's all you need to do. And this takes you to the deepening experience itself. In the second way it is like a wide deep depth. In the first way it is an inward depth which is much more concentrated but can lead you to the psychic centre much more directly.
A variation of this is also the heightening. So in the movement of the first opening upward, we have seen already that there's spontaneously a part of you that feel as if it rises above the head, stays there and then returns or there a descent which takes place. But in the movement which is just rising up, you hold that state. And from there as if open to a greater wideness, a greater height which is above. And simply the direct method, turning your attention to the sense of a greater height and wideness above. Simply dwelling on it and allowing yourself to be drawn into it and you find the movement of heightening taking place. That's all there is to it. It is in fact as easy as that. Once the first breakthrough is made of opening and receiving the descent, all these things become possible very rapidly. So in the heightening movement, as you first turn up and there's as if an opening upward, in the beginning, there will be a tendency of blurring of your consciousness. And that's fine, don't worry about it. Stay in that poise as long as you can and then slowly return, bringing down whatever was experienced and allowing to fill the whole being from head to feet as far as possible. The blurring takes place because you're as if crossing the boundary of your conscious band, which is a mental band of awareness. So there's a kind of a whiteout into the range above. Don't worry about it. Gradually, over time, a consciousness begins to be organised and you'll find you're aware in a very different grade of consciousness, you're able to act in a very different way, which corresponds to that consciousness and even to know in a very different way. But first you will simply remain there and habituate yourself. Allow that to be organised.
And so the third dimension, which is widening the consciousness. And here again it is following the direct method. It is natural, it is effortless, and it takes place in two ways. One is in the first opening above the head. You experience the peace or the presence and then you experience its wideness and you allow your awareness to so to say expand or open out to that wideness. A variation of this would be the experience of that wideness had above now slowly comes down and begins to fill you and you experience as if a wide presence descending and even if it comes just up to the neck, you experience its wideness and then you remain immersed in this wideness. You open out, enjoy the sense of wideness. So the actual method is as simple and as direct as this, once you have made this first link. And that's why the preparation of the last few weeks where we have been discussing this aspect of this work. And you may use freely also the guided process which was posted earlier for this upward movement and even to dwell on the sense of the wideness above as well as the descent of the wide. So this is the most direct.
Sraddhalu (0:43:05):
Further helpful insights can come with variations on this. So sometimes you are full of the presence, open like this, and then you lean back on the sense of the wideness of this presence, the sense that this presence is everywhere, not just within you, it is in the whole cosmos, or it transcends the cosmos and therefore fills and surrounds everything, the whole universe, and you as if open out to the sense of that, using the idea as the reference, and with it the experience itself begins to form and settle. Or you lean back on the presence, on the vast which is supporting the backdrop of the presence of the Self and so lean back into its wideness. In all these, when you concentrate on the wideness, there is automatically a sense of thinning of the sense of I. If it happens gradually, it's very comfortable and enjoyable. If it happens suddenly, sometimes you say, Oh, am I losing my balance? Because you may feel giddy or you may have sudden loss of sense of directions, if it happens very rapidly. But if it happens slowly, you don't even notice that it was anything unusual. Just this great wideness, but where is the sense of I? Ah, nowhere in particular. And it's a great feeling of freedom and a truly a joyous experience. With it, the thinning of the ego at least during the state, now you can come back, fall into your outer normal ego centred personality and say, ‘oh I had this great experience, I am so great’ and the ego exalts and exaggerates its self-importance on the strength of a deeper truer experience and that's that would be the common error.
And unfortunately a lot of people who have had experiences may fall into this error when they hurry to start teaching or speaking about it. I've mentioned before one example of a person in his youth I could see, in the photographs one could see that he had this extraordinary opening, maybe even a glimpse of a cosmic consciousness, but that was it. It was a glimpse. He came back and then now considered himself so great and awakened, realised or whatever he would have believed himself to be and began to get into his exercise of teaching and building a following. And the result was he lost it completely or maybe he had it during inner states but in his normal engagement with life he was completely ordinary person with an exaggerated ego, now expanded to the size of his idea of his self-importance. So it's no guarantee that living that experience is enough to free you from the ego sense. And this is where the second question of Mahadevan is so important. Establishing an identification with the Self is not enough to be free from the ego if those surface parts have not freed themselves or have not participated in the experience of the Self. And that's why you will recall Ramana Maharshi's statement that it took him three days to attain to Self-realization but ten years to establish that as an active state in the midst of all activities of life. And then you can say he was truly free of ego. Otherwise, in any part where the active presence of the Self was not established, that part would still be bound in its ego patterns, not ruled by the freedom of the Self. And that's why the establishing identification with the Self is not the same as widening yourself. So when Sri Aurobindo speaks of widening yourself, it is of these instrumental parts, the mind becoming wide, the vital becoming wide, even the physical consciousness opening to a wideness. And yes, this would happen as a result of the descent or as a result of the concentration, as we described, on the wideness, on the vast, but then it has to be imprinted into these parts. Nearly identifying with the Self is not enough that the surface parts would also open. On a return, you can find yourself bound in the littleness. But to the afterglow of that, and this is one of those very sticky situations where we would describe it as the Spiritual ego, it's very difficult to get free of that because you actually have a real experience to back the ego sense of self-importance. And that's why that initial purification that Sri Aurobindo highlights as the first step of the seven steps of the Integral Yoga.
The first base is one where your consciousness reasonably disengages. Recall our discussion last time on equality and how we started with that. What it means to be reasonably disengaged from the habit patterns of the surface parts. Some kind of basic freedom of consciousness that can stand back and observe these things or be free of those tendencies. And then when this opens to something higher, it can bring its influence into those other parts, infuse in them a thinning of the ego and establish wideness into all these parts. Now, you can have a wideness in these parts, surface parts, even without an opening to the Self. Through the experience which we have discussed before, the settling of the peace or the presence from above, of course, that is the Self. You don't live in the Self and yet you open to it and therefore experience its wideness. You can also expand without any reference to these. Train your mind to become wider and wider in its vision. Train your vital to become larger and larger and through exercises like pranayama or visualisations, you can expand your vitality greatly. But that could be the ego seizing upon this widening. Whereas opening to the wideness of the Self is not only far more rapid as a means, but if done with the sense of self-giving in these parts, there is also the thinning of the ego from the influence of the self that begins to fill. And this would be the superior way in the context of the Integral Yoga. So merely establishing an identification with the Self is not enough to free you from the ego, but if there is an active turning from these surface parts or an active effort to infuse the influence of this wideness and presence, there will be automatically the thinning of the ego. And this is in fact the simplest, most rapid, most effective way of thinning the ego.
Sraddhalu (0:49:55):
If you attempt to thin the ego by mental process, Oh, I have to make myself less egoistic. So I will start giving more. I'll be nice to people, I will donate more I will serve food it actually exaggerates the ego even more and Sri Aurobindo has this comment that there's nothing worse than the exaggerated ego of the altruist and this person is so proud of all the good that he's doing to the world and getting free of that is extremely difficult, as is also the spiritual ego, because it is backed precisely by an experience that as if justifies the self-importance of the ego. So the widening of the being was primarily a reference to the widening of the surface parts. As these parts open to that which is truly infinite and wide, they begin to open to the true nature of their own potential wideness. And there comes a time when something of your mind actually feels itself part of the universal mind. It actually opens out to something which is not yet you, and yet it is your own mind expanding or extending above which is as if infinite. I don't live in it, but I have as if an access to it. I can open to it, or I can rise into it and experience that infinity and even the different character of knowledge that we have, but I can't stay, I come back. But these repeated movements then allow for a bridging, but also an infusion of the true wideness, until here in the mind in which I live, there is this wideness. And when it comes into the vital, there is the vital itself which opens out to this wideness and eventually in the physical consciousness. The body itself will feel or the whole universe is an extension of this body or rather my body is just a focal point of this universal body which is all matter in the universe. And in that poise of wideness you can see how the sense of I as a special focus, yes of course it's there but it's not the ego, it's not the obsessive, I'm not the centre of the universe. I'm just one of the infinity of centres of that which is infinite. And so the individuality is there in a universality of personality. There is a loss of the ego, but not a flattening out or a loss of individuality. And it is this as a focal point in which the psychic can come forward and take its rightful place, and the Self has a focal point for action as a co-creator in the universe. I think this is a good discussion on widening and we have also touched briefly on the heightening and deepening. We will have occasion to come back to the question of heightening later when we speak of the second and third perfections of the integral yoga which we are yet to discuss in the coming weeks. But this would be a good starting point for all of us in our daily practice.
Alina (0:52:58):
We received an extensive letter from Arpan about a very interesting topic. I will just summarise it in a few words and then may be Sraddhalu can extend on this topic. A monk and a mindfulness teacher were using a device called transcranial direct current stimulation, which would assist individuals in their meditation to silence the mind, potentially to attain nirvana. How would you explain Sraddhalu in terms of the Integral yoga?
Sraddhalu (0:53:43):
Yes, it's a very interesting question and the experiment itself which is referred to is very interesting. It is by a mindfulness monk by the name of Shinzen Young and he is participating in an experiment involving transcranial current stimulation. What that does is they put little devices all around the head aiming at a particular location inside the brain and beam energy and the point where these different beams merge, there's an exaggerated increase of that energy. Now this can be done in various ways. It can be done with ultrasonic sound. So there's a vibration which is a very high frequency of typically 40,000 pulses per second which is double of what the hearing, human hearing can have. It's the same ultrasound which they do for looking inside the body, inside the stomach and so on, but still higher frequencies, but in very narrow beams. And from several points around the head, they can be focused on a particular location in the brain. Now, there has been a lot of work to map different parts of the brain to different biological functions, but also to certain mental functions. So there is, for example, in the brain parts which map to the fingers, arms, legs, other organs, the skin surface. And you can look at some of those maps.
It's quite fascinating to see how the whole body is mapped in the brain but at the same time there are locations which represent emotions, thoughts or certain states of consciousness which approach mystical states. That's where it gets also a little dangerous because those are also the centres of the brain which are the most delicate. What you are doing through this stimulation of, in the first case ultrasonic, is you're vibrating that part. Now imagine what happens to a part of your skin, if you put a vibrator or some part of your muscle or skin at first your vibrator goes zzzzz and I personally find it very uncomfortable but many people find it relaxing because you get shaken up, you can let go and you relax. But if you continue long enough, that part becomes a little numb. You stop feeling sensation and that people associate with relaxation. I don't like it, I find it numbing. Now imagine the same thing being done inside the brain. You jiggle the brain, a tiny piece of the tissue of the brain, so rapidly that after a point the cells don't know what's happening, they become numb and they stop working. This is very important to understand. The variation of this is stimulation by electric fields or magnetic fields, where you send out pulses of electric or magnetic fields, again directed, concentrated on a particular location and basically stimulating them electromagnetically. Effectively the same result. You shake them long enough, eventually they become numb and stop functioning. Now that is then associated with a certain state of either great relaxation or in this case certain mystical states depending on the location in the brain. So there is a particular variation of this which is called the God helmet, you put this little device, it sends pulses in particular parts in certain patterns, numbing specific parts of the brain and people have out-of-body experiences or they have spontaneous experiences of oneness with the universe or all kinds of variations, very similar in association to what happens in certain kinds of drugs. And this is not different.
So, what is then observed and I am now going to read from the letter of Arpan. He quotes from that person. In her book, My Stroke of Insight, neuroscientist Jill Taylor gives a vivid and moving description of how a haemorrhage in her left, in her brain's left hemisphere caused a radical and permanent shift in her state of consciousness. So there was a brain haemorrhage, damage to the brain and her consciousness shifted radically. Her description of that shift sounds remarkably similar to the classical mystical experience where inside and outside merge. That is, what is inside me and what is outside me there's a blend, I can't distinguish what is outside is as if inside me or what is inside me is the same leading to a sense of freedom from the limited egoic perspective and this is the the quote from that person. He subsequently goes into details explaining Buddhist attainment that her condition resembles Sotapanna or stream enterer which is first of the four stages of Nirvana or classical enlightenment in Buddhist terms, which according to him shows that there must be something in the brain which if tweaked can bring such a state to anyone. Now Arpan writes, ‘though I doubt that one can really make this assumption given diverse nature of humanity and possibly brain functions too’. So his question was how do you explain this in terms of the integral yoga and this seems to give almost completely biological view of mystical experience in general and nirvana in particular. Yes, probably the case for that particular practitioner of Buddhism. He might be a very materialist based experiencer or practitioner. The description is similar, yes. The experience will be similar, yes. But we have to understand what that means and what are its limitations. So I am going to put it now in a different vocabulary.
Sraddhalu (0:59:49):
If you look at what Sri Aurobindo has to say about the brain, let me see if I can find it, Sri Aurobindo describing the function of the brain, he says, someone asked him, is there some connection to the pineal gland, is it the centre for receiving telepathy and so on because there's a lot of literature like that. Sri Aurobindo writes or he speaks this, ”There is this much truth in such theories that external forces communicate through special parts in the body. Thus the Westerners say that the brain is the seat of the mind. But the fact is that the brain is only the organ of communication between the mind and the body”. Then he gives another example. “Thus, fear attacks us at the bowels. If you observe it carefully, you will find that it enters at the bowels and then rises upwards”. Now the key point here is that the brain is an organ of communication between mind and body. Just as we have organs of the physical body which actually relate to energies outside, so too the brain is an organ linking to mind, generally our mind, our mental subtle body, extending all the way down, not just in the physical focus of the brain, but all the way down through the nervous system into the body and all of that is as if an organ, one continuous organ which opens out to the mental consciousness and interfaces with the physical. Now the point of the interface is it limits, it controls what goes from one side to the other and from the other side to this side. So if in the mental consciousness spontaneously there is a wide freedom, what percolates through this interface, which is itself of a nature which is very physical, is a dulling limiting influence, which is the reason why all of us in our dream state naturally find ourselves much more free, wide and of course light. Or at the time of death, again there is a decompression from the physical body identification, a huge sense of widening and liberation. Or the reverse, at the time of identifying with the physical body, there's a narrowing, there's a dulling and a densifying experience. This interface is your brain. If you were to suddenly remove the interface, the two things would not be connected. The body would be without mind, the mind would be without body. If you make this interface now more and more open, gradually, you'll find character of the mind which is much more free, reflecting in the body much more.
But what does it do to the body when it is suddenly exposed? It disorients the body. The body is unable to function. It is unable to act with the clarity and precision which it has been trained to act. It suddenly becomes a blur and a blank. That's the problem. What evolution is trying to do is to gradually open us to these higher, let's say, states of consciousness, but by gradually opening with each tiny step, she is organising how that state can act in the mental working now. I'm going to give an example here. If you took an ape and suddenly exposed it to the kind of rational thinking that the human mind has. You see, an ape has an emotional mind, but not yet a rational mind. Suddenly you open to the rational mind, it'll say, ‘oh God, what is all this? What are these weird ideas? I don't know what's happening’. You won't be able to control the flow of ideas. In fact, there'll be ideas rushing. Like often you'll find people who lose the balance of mind. They'll have ideas jumping all over, they'll jump all over the place. They can't bring coherence into ideas. They cannot organise, they cannot separate one idea from another or decide this idea is more important, that is lesser and so arrange them in clarity. They're unable to do that. That's what would happen to the ape. Through a slow evolution, Nature has built in us the capacity to organise and order ideas, so that today, when you open to your higher powers of thought, you can look at a dozen different ideas, immediately arrange them, make some sense of it, and bring clarity and structure. Now, imagine this happens in the opening to the higher mind and suddenly open to a wideness which is almost as if infinite and you see an infinity of ideas, the current state of the individual would become chaotic, would be unable to handle, so the slow process of evolution is bit by bit over a few thousand years or million years you will be able to handle wider and wider larger and larger clusters of ideas. But already that's too late. We don't survive because the capacity of mind today is enough to destroy us.
Sraddhalu (1:04:56):
In the yoga what happens though is the consciousness opens up, but with it also because you're opening to higher grade of consciousness, you have the capacity which comes with that grade. And so you see this huge vision. At first even it is a little overwhelming. That's why the opening upward often has a numbing effect at first. But later you see all this and you see the continuum of all these ideas. But if there is a higher intuitive influence you see also ‘ah, this is the centre. All these are peripheral, secondary and tertiary ideas’. All is seen in a go. You'll find the description in Savitri, of the Overmental consciousness, Sri Aurobindo describes how infinities of ideas, arranged neatly like an army in clear lines, structure, order. That power is spontaneous in the Overmental consciousness where all knowledge and all perspectives are seen in the right relation. Now all this would not happen if you simply numb the part of the brain, you'd be thrown into some different poise of consciousness but without the capacity to manage it. Now what will happen then? The person would become a bit like an idiot. He would either get a huge flow of ideas or he will get a complete numbing of all ideas and a kind of a blank, which would be perfect if the goal was semi-ascetic or entirely ascetic. So in the objective of the Nirvana where you want completely a dissolution of the individual separateness, it seems to be like, oh this is going to be very useful now the sense of I has thinned. Can you function normally? If you have difficulty functioning then you have as if jumped a step or not integrated that step. The normal process of evolution would slowly open up these gradations and make the brain as an instrument more and more plastic and rich and complex to be able to handle the full flow of consciousness both ways.
By numbing a part of the brain, you have actually dulled your capacity to handle things of that domain and so that domain becomes as if a blank, but also numb the capacity to manifest that domain. If you have a higher grade of consciousness or a wider consciousness, how do you translate it in greater power of thought? To articulate more complex ideas, here you can't, because you have numbed the power of articulation. So, this distinction is extremely important. Yes, by dulling certain brain centres, you can release your consciousness into some greater, wider states. But you are first unable to manage those states, if you are embodied. Or you are unable to manifest those states, because the vehicle by which you would have manifested itself had to be numbed to be able to experience it. It's like saying, I will give you an out-of-body experience by injecting you with something that makes your entire body numb, Tetrodotoxin, for example. If you know there is something called a puffer fish in Japan, which is a very powerful venom. And it's a Japanese delicacy that they take parts of the body of that fish, fine enough that when you eat it, it makes your entire body numb, but just slightly numb enough that you find it an unusual experience and you don't get into paralysis. But if they don't process it properly, you take the poison and the quantity is too high, you actually stop breathing. If you're playing on the edge, it's an interesting experience, but what's the point of that experience? Well, you may feel lighter, freer, because it's as if the numbing of the physical body has liberated you in the subtle body. You could knock it out completely. I will say destroy your physical body and you'll be in your subtle body. Wonderful, isn't it? Out-of-body experience. But you have lost the power to manifest, to act in the physical plane. So this distinction is extremely important.
In the normal evolution, you are going to use the same part of the physical brain as the link point to manifest the powers of that consciousness. And by suppressing that part, you are liberating your consciousness into something which you are now unable to either fully control or manifest. And it's a loss, one way or other. In the accelerated process of the integral yoga, you would actually learn to become master of that grade of consciousness, but also to be able to articulate it with the power that you see in Sri Aurobindo's writings or in his poetry. He is able to access ranges of consciousness which are well beyond the mind and articulate it sometimes in poetry, sometimes even in very clear logical terms. And as you read it, it's as if a part of you opens out to that experience and you say, Wow! And yet you're not in it. It's as if a part of you touches and opens and prepares you for the experience. And when you actually have that experience, you look back and you read what Sri Aurobindo described and say, “my God! what a precise articulation of something which there is no way to describe in human language or in words”, but he could do it. That's because this link has been bridged. The brain is a physical instrument, organ for a passage to higher ranges of consciousness. You do not destroy the vehicle by which those higher ranges are going to be manifested in a perfected physical and even Divine life. But if the goal is to escape, numbing would be a method. So we understand first what that technology does. It can give you a glimpse of certain experiences, but in the process it damages the very vehicle through which you access those experiences.
Sraddhalu (1:11:01):
And that is similar to what we had discussed earlier with regard to certain kinds of drugs. They open you to the domains of the vital worlds, but from there or in that opening you become vulnerable to influences. But on a biological level, you also burn the capacity of the body now to be able to access those domains. Next time you need more and more and more of the drugs to access the same level of experience because the body is dulling and losing its sensitivity in the process. Something similar will happen with the transcranial current stimulation. That first you have an experience, the second time it is weaker, the third it will be weaker. Because that part of this braid is being numbed and being rendered insensitive rather than more sensitive. From an evolutionary point of view, you are damaging rather than developing. But still it may give you a momentary glimpse of something. Now this technology itself is still at an infancy. In fact, it is potentially of immense use for certain types of things where you want to dull a certain part of the brain. For example, people who have certain criminal tendencies. There are two reasons for that. One is a very strongly built habit of patterns, but again behind that there's always some vital force or there's some external influence, a partial possession, which is hooking into them and provoking them to do those things. In both cases there is actually a part in the brain which is the link point or the base in which this habit is rooted. You can through transcranial stimulation damage that part, so to say, burn it, numb it, so that that force has no more a grip or this habit itself is numbed to a point where it ceases to be. And this would be perhaps in the future the superior way to deal with certain types of criminal tendencies. And in fact I'm saying this not just as mere speculation, it is in fact the way which at one point long ago in earlier phase of human cycle of much higher technology when they speak of the Atlantean period and so on, such methods were in fact used, they are in fact used even today on other planets with other civilizations. But the idea is where there is a physical damage or a physical limitation in the brain, you're able to use this kind of a technology to positive use also.
One could still say yes, a glimpse of that limited freedom from the egoic perspective would be useful to everybody. Yes, perhaps. And again, if skillfully done, a technology like this could put you into a certain state of an experience, a glimpse of which could act like a precursor to your own conscious development subsequently, which is really the logic behind the use of certain types of shamanistic drugs where the idea was to expose you to a certain state and then that becomes a reference, thinning your ego. The problem though with such means again comes back to what we discussed with the question of drugs. What kind of freedom from egoic perspective do you have? In which grade of consciousness? Remember, you can experience wideness or universality or even infinity on every plane of consciousness, from your physical all the way to the Supramental. But each plane has its own quality and difference in character of experience in that sense of wideness. So for example in the physical plane which is domain of form, you'll have an infinity experienced in which all kinds of forms exist, but infinity made up of finite forms. You go into the vital world, each form could have a sense of opening to infinity and so the experiences of a different character altogether. But still in the grade, the substance of consciousness, it would be infinities colliding or in tension with or in harmony with many infinities. It could be a chaotic infinity. You enter the state of mental consciousness and if you have an experience of infinity, then it is a different kind of thought infinity. Each thought is as if a glimpse of the one infinite turning to the world, look at it in different ways. And again you can have collisions of viewpoints. You go still higher in the Overmental, you can have each viewpoint as infinite in itself but two viewpoints which are infinite colliding. And in fact the nature of chaos in such a case of collision can be much more powerful. So all this is to say that many different infinities can be had. The true infinity of infinities which unifies them all is in the Supramental.
So the question would be, when you trigger through transcranial stimulation an opening to something which is a non-egoic state where inner and outer have blurred or blended, on which level is it? Is it on the lower vital, higher vital, lower mental, higher mental, or is it a Spiritual experience? So, from the description itself, it does not have any character of Spiritual experience. To the extent that we are totally blocked, you can say at least it's something, it opens you to a non-egoic state. But having opened yourself once there with damage to that, will you be able to go to something higher or will you be forever stuck with attempting to get back to this grade of experience? I don't know. My intuition would be that in cases where someone is really locked in the physical, a glimpse of this would be enough, may be useful even, to open them to something higher that yes, there is a Reality and maybe if there's inside a deeper Spiritual potential waiting, blocked up, it could use that occasion to break through, which has happened in many cases. I will share with you an experience of a Swami in the Ramakrishna Mission in the US, very respected and I have deep regard and respect for him, even a reverence. And when I was speaking about drugs being harmful, he said, no, but my first opening to the spiritual was through a drug experience. When I had that, suddenly I had this opening to something extraordinary. The point though was, in his case, the spiritual potential was already waiting. So, something breaking the gates momentarily allowed something which was more true to come through. The same drug given to somebody else who does not have this Spiritual potential waiting, you'll only be exposing him to a vital experience, which may have value perhaps, I don't know, but would perhaps be harmful in the long run for the Spiritual experience. So in his case, having had that once, he didn't resort to drugs anymore, he went straight for the experience and took to a Spiritual life.
So I can understand how these things could be used positively also, but one would have to be extremely careful and as a rule I would say such experiences, apart from their initial novelty, may not necessarily be too useful for the Spiritual evolution itself. It is possible much more easily to enter these states of greater freedom and wideness through the means which we have been discussing these last few sessions. And they would be much more solid, not only in the first base of their experience being higher than mind and therefore true in Spirituality but also as a base then because that's your first reference you'd be on a safer path then opening to some vital domain and then erroneously thinking it to be Spiritual and attaching yourself to it and then being forever lost in all the illusions which it can create. Because in the vital domain you can have all kinds of very seductive experiences and you would not know what the Spiritual is unless you had experienced it and you would actually think these are spiritual. So I would still come back to saying it's more dangerous than useful but I can understand how in certain cases it could be helpful also if there's a Spiritual potential waiting and someone could help them touch that directly using a physical mechanism to break the barrier momentarily. I think that is reasonably comprehensive, we have explained how that thing works and also its strengths and limitations and
Alina (1:20:04):
Do we still have...
Sraddhalu (1:20:05):
I think we have crossed our time, so we'll keep the other questions for next time. I'd wanted to close with a question on the psychic being, but we won't do justice to it unless we give it enough time. So, I think looking back at all the questions that we have covered, the most important thing for us to recognize, the Spiritual state that you are seeking is always there already above you and within you. It also is seeking you. What you are seeking is not in the blind and not alone. Put it another way, you are seeking awakened because it was there calling or waiting to manifest. Start with this assumption that the very fact that you are seeking is because the experience that you're seeking is waiting to manifest. All that is needed is the link to be formed and it will fill you through the link you make gradually or as rapidly as you allow it and is safe for you. The result will be a refinement, a development, an evolution, even in your physical brain, to open to these higher ranges of consciousness and create a continuity of passage that would allow you conscious entry into these states of experience as well as conscious capacity to manifest, to articulate, to express in life as steps to divinizing your life. And this will be done in an accelerated pace, far more accelerated than possible by any physical mechanical means. The help is there, the support is there, the experience is there. What is needed is the first opening from you.
There are two means by which that opening is to be made. One is by an inward opening and one is by an upward opening. I will read again from Sri Aurobindo: “a disclosure from within or a descent from above are the two sovereign ways of the Yoga Siddhi”. And he explains how an external surface, emotional, mental effort can build up something but it is always fragmentary. “But the results are usually uncertain and fragmentary compared to the result of the two radical ways. That is why in this yoga we insist always on an opening, an opening inward of the inner mind, vital, physical, to the inmost part of us, the psychic, and an opening upwards to that which is above the mind, as indispensable for the fruits of the sadhana”. When we have means which are far more direct, even radical, and yet safe and sure, it is best to avoid the secondary methods or the distractions which can come with our beliefs in planets and astrologies and lower forces. When you have the presence of the Divine, the Infinite, the Self, the source of all waiting to manifest in you and guide you through the whole awakening. We'll take a moment to concentrate and assimilate all that we have covered today.
Namaste.
Alina (1:23:52):
Namaste. Thank you very much for today.
Joel (1:24:26):
Namaste.