EWS #107 Summary of Practices                + Q&A on Spiritual Life

Feb 26, 2022

Alina (0:00:48):
Namaste and good evening everyone. Welcome to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Today we will continue streaming online a continuation of our studies on Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga and we will focus on specific forms of practices. So I will invite Sraddhalu to take up this very important topic for all of us and later on if we have some time we will be answering some questions that we received from our viewers. Namaste.

Sraddhalu (0:01:51):
Namaste and happy to be with all of you. Over the last six sessions we have gone in some depth on the form of practice of the Integral Yoga within the larger framework itself. We saw it described by Sri Aurobindo in a seven-fold effort and within each of these seven are four steps to be taken which summarise the effort along those seven lines. Of these, six represent perfections and the seventh or as a foundation, the base on which those six perfections are to be realised. And we dwelt on this base for the last six or seven sessions. In this my emphasis was always on the form of practice although we have to have a theoretical background for this. As a result since this has been spread out over many sessions we would tend to get a little lost. Finally what do I do? Because I know I have to do this, I have to do that and maybe there was something else which I've forgotten.

And so I thought it will be useful to do a kind of a summary. Now this will not yet be the summary of the form of practice but I will summarise each of the seven facets of the integral yoga and the form of practice on the four steps of each. And when we do this in a rapid coverage, you will notice certain common features, certain similarities or certain essential forms which include many of these variations. And then we will discuss what those essential forms will be. So if you find this a little complex in the beginning, don't worry because we are only summarising in a big picture all the details that we have covered of the practice only and then we will summarise that into actual form of practice which will be much simpler, and much shorter.

So if you recall the whole structure of this which is summarised in the seventh facet is the Siddhi Chatushtaya, in which you have four steps. Shuddhi, purification, which leads to liberation, that is Mukti, which then becomes the basis or the means for the six perfections. And so the Siddhi, which is the third. And of those six perfections, the first four are really perfections of the human nature and the last two which is the Bhukti is the participation in the divine manifestation which is the last two of the perfections. So, we will cover the whole thing in sequence primarily focusing now on the purification and liberation and then we will look at the six perfections which cover the other two elements.

Sraddhalu (0:05:12):

First of all we saw that purification itself is of two kinds. It is not a moral purification. It is a purification of the functioning of our parts of our nature. And the pure consciousness of the soul does not need purification. It is always pure. In the working of Nature, rather than as you will see in many practices, purify your emotions, purify your desires, purify your thoughts, purify this and often it is a moral purification or a very partial superficial form of purification which involves becoming simply inactive and so it feels like it's become pure. The moment you engage in activity you lose it. Sri Aurobindo goes to the root of what makes these unable to function in their purity and we see there that there are two issues first that every part of our consciousness has emerged in an evolutionary process, out of ignorance, which is division and limitation and therefore has a habit of operating within limitations and defining itself by fragmentation, ignorance, separation. So you crave because you don't have. If you already had and your energy is felt, oh, I already have, I own the universe, you would not feel the craving, isn't it? But the habit of the evolutionary emergence was craving because it started with a sense of lack from separation, from limitation. So that's the first correction to be made,-- of removal of the wrong habits that were inevitable because of this emergence from a lack, from insufficiency, from limitation.

The second purification was in each of the higher levels because it has emerged out of a lower grade of consciousness, Mind out of Life, Life out of Matter, it finds itself as if bound to those lower levels and has not been sufficiently liberated from that lower working. And so the working of life energies is clouding your thoughts. The desire in the life energy makes your will now crave fulfilment by fulfilling desire. And the will that you know to be right is somehow lost because the will is subjugated to the desire impulse. And so separating these levels, this is the second facet of the purification. Going into the nuances of the purification, separating means recognizing all these different distinctions and we saw how you have the physical body, you have the life energies embedded in the body and then you have the  substance of the mind, the chitta, you have the sense-mind that forms which engages through the senses and is primarily the animal grade of development in the Manas and then the Buddhi which is the intellect proper as an intelligence and a Will emergent from that which gives us the sense of separation from our habitual nature and perhaps even the ability to intervene and change at a very preliminary level. But the buddhi itself we saw has three gradations from a very ordinary habitual movement through to a practical applied turn to a pure turn to true knowledge. But all of this is shot through by the life energy which rises, fills it and warps it. So if you really want to do these two aspects of purification, you have to work on all these parts. It may seem like a big deal, but we will come to that shortly, how we will make that a very simple process.

We also from there went to the liberation. Once you do the purification, the natural result is all these different parts begin to function freely in the way they were intended. Your life energies can now enjoy without being attached to desire and limitation. Your mind can now think and freely act based on what it knows to be right rather than being compelled by the desire nature and so on. So this liberation we saw has two facets. The liberation of the consciousness, the soul, the sense of I and then the liberation of Nature into which the sense of I was bound. So the sense of I which stands back normally in thought in the poise of the buddhi says ah my body is a little lethargic and can put a will to change it or it can act on the emotions, it can act on the thoughts and say my thoughts today are a bit pessimistic, I will make it optimistic. This sense of I is not yet the true soul but it's the soul leaning into mind to identify with mind and this sense of I itself can be taken to a degree of liberation and then later turn around to liberate the Nature also.

So for this purpose of the liberation of the soul there were two things. We saw that in the original creative movement when the soul leans into this experience of mind-life-body, it can lean towards sense of separateness or lean back to sense of oneness. And the moment it leans into sense of separateness, ego, it experiences separate personal energy and not the fullness of the divine cosmic energy, which was its original experience, and now gets bound into this losing oneness, losing transcendence, losing freedom, and therefore requiring need for desire as well as sense of separate ego. And the two we saw are bound to each other, are different aspects of the same. And the correction would simply be, well, become aware and lean back. Except in the identification with the ego, the habit is so strong, we've forgotten what it means to lean back and recover the sense of oneness. We are so bound into this and as a result because there is also a cyclic repetitive process of taking birth in the physical body and the dulling of the body we again find ourselves bound to body itself, and as we age we generally get a little more free. But this means for doing this Sri Aurobindo described as the lifting up of the whole being, surrender of the whole being in this lifting. And the result will be that leaning back, not just in the mind, but also in the other levels of our consciousness. The whole nature is as if to be turned to the divine consciousness. And we saw also how this leaning back to recover the true will from which we leaned into this separation and becoming free of desire are one and the same thing..

Sraddhalu (0:12:36):
In the form of practice, Sri Aurobindo describes it in this way. ‘Release from the ego, from the ignorance that you are the actor etc’. This is from the record of yoga. So the wording is a little brief, not elaborate. ‘Whenever you say “I like this”, “I do not want this”, there you choose and [do]’. Whatever comes to you, you have to take and enjoy. Replace ego sense by the idea of the Divine, that you are one with the Divine or you can say you are part of the divine consciousness or it is the Divine who lives in you and through you. There is no sense of I, who is separate. I am only the vehicle at best or a point of support for the Divine to inhabit and to live. So instead of attaching oneself to that pattern, that habit, you disengage and take this higher station. So this is a very simple form of the practice for liberation of the individual consciousness.

What happens now to your nature? Nature, we saw is this working in forms and also in limitations, lower nature, because there is an energy by which things are formed. If you recall this was a very critical discussion we had. It is somewhat abstract but you have to catch the idea. The divine consciousness flows freely in qualities, infinite qualities from the same one consciousness, never losing oneness. But when it takes form in physical matter, it is translated by lower nature by her energetic processes which replicate those qualities using combinations of the three modes, three gunas and so constructs artificially what would have been a spontaneous free expression of the consciousness. The moment it's constructed by a process you are bound to the process, you are bound to Nature. Because your body is formed of processes, you are unable to change your body or reshape it. But if you go for example in the subtle world, in your subtle body, you feel yourself like this and then you choose to feel differently and the form changes immediately, spontaneously, effortlessly. This is not possible in the physical world because it has been formed by Nature's process and so you have to play with process to provide a change, play with genetics to improve certain capacities. But if you could bring this higher direct action of pure consciousness into this domain, you would simply will that change and the change would happen. That would be the nature of liberation of Nature. But there are two aspects to this. One is the dualities, the other is the three gunas, the three modes. So we just covered what it means to be free of the three modes.

And then there are the dualities which come precisely because nature is operating in finiteness. And therefore every experience is split into extremes. Or it takes the form in the life energies of pleasure and pain, heat or cold. It's not so much in the body, it's the way the life energy translates from the body. In the Chitta, substance of awareness, it takes the form of love or hate, good or evil. In the Manas, the sense mind, it takes the form of virtue, vice, truth, falsehood. If you look at these extremes, you will find they are all habitual, not chosen by you, not representing a deeper truth, but they are just habitual ways of looking at the world in terms of opposites. And as a result, you find you are busy cheesing or avoiding. Inevitably you are wrong. What you thought was bad for you, turned out in the long run to be good. What you thought was good for you right now turned out in the long run to be bad. Or what is good for you is bad for someone else, what is good for someone else may be bad for you and you are lost in these artificial fake dualities and so the correction here for us consciously is to disengage from this habitual mode of thinking.

In each of these levels,-- life energy, sense-mind and the thinking manas as well as the intellect, buddhi every time you have this idea, ‘oh this is pleasurable’, ‘that is painful’, step back; recognize that these are just habitual modes. You can actually change them or become neutral to them. Make an effort and it can happen even on sensations. Or in the emotions, in your values, there's love, there's hate. Why? Why do I hate this? Why do I love that? Why do I dislike? Why do I like? You notice good and evil. Well, it's just a formation of my mind by prior conditioning. Deliberately disengage from these artificial values. Try to see the deeper truth which transcends the sense of duality. Oh, this helps in this way, this disturbs in that way. In the long run, both serve good. Both serve evolution. So the sense of good-bad fades into a practical, actual, operative value of what things are. And this has to be trained by working on it, dwelling on it. You deliberately disengage from thinking in dualities, even when it comes to virtue and vice, even truth and falsehood. As you know already all truths are relative. There's always a greater truth and a lesser truth against which you can change whether it's true or not or a truth in relation to something else becomes a falsehood in relation to a greater truth. And so rather than giving a value this is truth falsehood, what is the deeper sense of it, what does it lead to, what does it represent, what is behind it. You simply train your awareness to look, experience the world in these ways. So this transcending dualities by making this conscious effort.

Sraddhalu (0:19:08):

Transcending the three gunas is also done by not attaching to this reactive process but to feel the deeper divine principles that the three gunas represent and bring those, infuse those, particularly in yourself. So, taking for example the starting point of your body, which tends to be more tamasic, has inertia, life force which is more rajasic, kinetic, initiating, and mind which tends to be of balance, of compromise, assimilation, you bring the equivalent quality in mind, the sense of light; that this quality of Sattwa, of balance and harmony, is now infused with light and increasing light of awareness; this kinesis and restlessness and drive is now replaced by concentrated, focused intention, will, energy; and the inertia of the body,  or any inertia even in the mind, is replaced by a calm, deep peace. Now by this process you're transforming or raising each of these modes into the deeper and higher truth. Now you'll see common to all three that we've just discussed is the backdrop of calm and clarity. And we will see naturally this process is done most easily by infusing a higher peace into our consciousness. We'll come to that shortly.

This then completes the liberation of Soul and Nature, which was the outcome of the purification and opens the way now to the Siddhi that is the perfections. Six in all of which four we will take as the individual Siddhis and the last two as the participation in the Divine which is the Bhukti, enjoyment or delight. So the first of the siddhis we saw was equality, fourfold equality. If you remember, I will perhaps mention the Sanskrit words, but don't worry if you don't understand them. It will help for those who are familiar, but I will always translate. Samata, which is equality, Shanti, peace, Sukham, gladness, and Atmaprasada, contentment. How do you put these into practice? Well, practice of equality. You consciously, deliberately disengage from instinctive reactive responses. If you have already worked on this initial dissolution of the dualities, already your perceptions have changed, your tendency to react is now reduced.

Every time that a situation happens, it comes, it changes, you look at it with equality. That is, inwardly you are unaffected. You may have reactions on a very physical level, almost like a reflex, or even in the emotions almost like a reflex at a superficial level, but inwardly you maintain this poise of calm and consciously, deliberately be equal to whatever the outcome, especially when you think of the future. Will it be this way or that way or the other? Uncertainty which creates stress for you. You say alright, whatever happens I will deal with it as it comes. If you have to plan, you plan for every outcome, prepare yourself so that you have a plan A, plan B, plan C and the materials ready if required. But you're not disturbed if you have to switch from plan A to plan B or plan C or something goes radically wrong and you have to create a plan B. You say, okay, what do we do next? That sense of equality then prepares you also, even in the senses, even in the mind, prepares you for a delight: “That's interesting”, “Oh, that's so much fun”, “This is enjoyable”, “This is a new challenge”, “Let me see how I can overcome”. And so the equality has this deeper dimension of being able to enjoy truly.

The next is Shanti, which is peace. And this really complements the equality. And especially if you have worked consciously to bring down the peace from above in the exercise we've already discussed, the peace fills you, it awakens the equality or the equality leans back and discovers a calm wide peace and rests on it and so the peace and equality complement. This then allows with the development of both an underlying state of gladness which is never lost, even happiness. Doesn't mean you have to be smiling and jolly all the time. That's an artificial form of happiness. But somewhere inside you say, okay, that's it. It's my choice to be happy or not; sense of gladness. And then comes Atmaprasada, which is a cheerfulness, a smile of the sense of participation. This is a divine play.

Now, naturally, you notice this would be the poise of the psychic being. The soul which knows itself eternal, knows itself unbreakable, undestroyable, is permanence, knows even a sense of timelessness, even as it engages with time. It is natural for the soul to say, oh wow, what an interesting world, what an interesting experience, like a child who's newly opened his eyes. And so this Atmaprasada, you notice, is natural to the poise of the psychic. The optimistic state of gladness is natural, emerging from the psychic as it influences the whole outer personality. And so you see two things. There is the descent of the peace which brings also equality and the poise of the psychic which fills with gladness and the delight of participation. Now straight away the Samata, the chatushtaya of equality in its fourfold steps has these two components as perhaps the most direct means.

Sraddhalu (0:25:25):

We go to the next perfection, Shakti Chatushtaya, the perfection of energy, of the divine energy which had as we saw four components: Veerya, which are the four soul powers in execution, the power of the turn to knowledge, the turn to heroism and courage, the turn to transaction, exchange, growth, plenitude, abundance and the fourth which is the turn to perfection and perfection in detail which includes also the beauty of that perfection. Now these are the fourfold soul powers which need to be taken up and amplified so that your nature is not bound to narrow grooves. It must be able to widen itself to be infinitely capable to whatever the divine Will chooses to flow as. And the merging of these fourfold into a single fourfold movement is the completion of this step of Veerya into which then the divine energy can pour. But which divine energy, which aspect of the divine energy? And we find fourfold aspects of the Divine Mother which correspond to these four impulses of the soul qualities and they are the equivalent of knowledge, strength, harmony, perfection. And to be able to experience those, to be able to receive their flow and to become conscious instruments, that becomes the second step of Shakti Chatushtaya, which leads to the..No,. Shakti is now amplification first of the energy in all four parts of the body, physical body, life energy, mind awareness and the intellect and into that now the divine, Devi Prakriti, the divine fourfold aspect of the Divine Mother pour in, fill, amplify. At that point, your whole being is capable of a free action from the Divine Will, Consciousness. You see how this complements also the purification and liberation aspects. But as this fills and works, you have an operative perfection. Still amplified, enormously capable, even a miraculous capacity of exceeding normal human capacities, but still only an exaggerated form of free action of human consciousness. Not yet. The instruments have not yet been divinized. And in preparation to that divinization, this instrument itself now must recognize that whatever it is able to do, however great, however wonderful, is only a point of support for something still greater which is infinite in the Divine Energy’s working, the divine Shakti, the Divine Mother. And so the giving up of oneself to that, to her, but in a faith.

And so the fourth step of this Shakti perfection is the faith of each part, each member, each level of consciousness that there is this higher capacity which far exceeds my incapacity, which does not depend on my incapacity and can lift me to its free working and that that is a greater truth. This, the lower old habitual nature and its incapacities are a falsehood. So the turn of the faith, innate faith, Shraddha, to receive the greater truth and lose, abandon or get rid of the false, inferior, limiting faith - Ashraddha or contrary faith. This is a process of infusing in all the parts of our being this higher truth to which we belong; we do not belong to the lower which is now an ignorance, out of which we emerge we belong to that, we are children of immortality,-- this faith has to be infused and faith in the action of the Shakti which can do whatever She chooses beyond any limitation into the whole being. This completes the Shakti Chatushtaya, the Chatushtaya of Divine Energy.

Now prepares you for a divinization proper. That becomes the next perfection, the third Vijnana. Vijnana is the supramental consciousness which is the original creative divine power, knowledge by which the whole universe is formed. Our mind, whatever knowledge it has, is operating in pieces. That mind is infinite, does not operate in pieces. It knows infinity and it knows infinities of infinity and always held in a oneness. To that we have to open, to that this consciousness has to rise and that must now fill and raise. So this has also four steps. We do not go into the details. The only two which are immediately of application for our practice is the Jnanam, that is opening to a higher grade of knowledge where our mind prepares to open to intuition and an inner discrimination. We've discussed this so many times before.

There is a whole four sessions that we had on the intuition and the practice. I won't repeat that but in summary, the preparation to open intuition requires you to be able to silence your mind, shift your consciousness deeper inward to receive a deeper intimation that comes from the psychic, shift the centre of thought above the head where it opens more closely to intuition and infinity and then to raise all the workings of the mind's faculties to be able to align to the higher working of the supramental faculties. So this is the process of intuitivisation, discrimination; but remember there are two aspects one is the lifting of consciousness, the other is the emergence of a deeper discrimination, which comes from the psychic. So again you see this double movement, one vertical and one inward horizontal, which allows the shift from mind to higher degrees through the intuition, through the overmind, through the supermind.

The other step of this Chatushtaya is Samadhi. Samadhi is immersion in the oneness, in the presence of the divine and this I would describe for our purpose of our practice. Whatever you experience in relation to the divine as a Divine Mother, the divine Energy, the divine Presence, the divine Peace, the divine Vastness, the divine sense of Oneness or the Love or the Light, whatever way you experience the divine in your first contact, you immerse yourself in, immerse yourself in the underlying sense of oneness or infinity if you feel that. But the immersion must lead to a self-loss. Where there is no sense of I am experiencing this, there is only this and I as if merge, dissolve into this. This is the poise of Samadhi. The result of Samadhi is that whatever you experience now becomes more and more complete. You are absorbed into it, which then makes possible for it to now fill you. In the entry into Samadhi, you have complete absorption as a result of thinning of the ego, dissolution of the false sense of I etc and as in the return from the Samadhi that with which you emerged now begins to fill and come into the surface, filling your nature preparing it and so on. You see again here this similar form of practice that it points to but they are just aspects of the practice. And subsequently as a result of repeated Samadhi into various aspects of the experience, your consciousness begins to rise and is lifted and the process completed all the way to the supramental consciousness.

Sraddhalu (0:33:50):

Finally, all this higher working within you still has to rest on material which is substantially of an inferior grade, the substance of your physical body itself. And is it possible for it to be now capable of manifesting the divine freedom and its infinities of possibility? And so here also there are four steps: Aarogya - health, Utthapana - lightness, Soundarya - beauty and Vividhananda - delight of all the senses and experiences. In the physical consciousness, all four are relating to the physical body. So first is health. What do you do with that? Of course, you use all your practical common sense to make your body healthy. If you need, you do exercises, you do asanas, pranayamas, aerobics, eat healthy food, open yourself to fresh air, sunlight and so on, contact with Nature, soil, trees, all that is wonderful. But that's an external preparation. There is an inner preparation. Wherever you find your health tending to go into certain patterns, whether old habits, tendencies, associations or new illnesses, you apply a sense of a general resilience, resist the change which is slipping negatively and will it back into balance and so bit by bit the resilience itself, the capacity of the body to not slip into old past habits shifts and by this method you can overcome genetic defects also. There is no limit potentially. Some things may take longer, some things shorter, it does not matter. But this persistence allows a higher consciousness and especially if you have opened even a little bit to the divine influence, it can make radical, sometimes miraculous shifts. The tendency towards this would grow until your body becomes practically immune to most disturbances.

Similarly, and I'm not going to the extreme which is immortality, similarly the levity, the making light the body is increasing freedom from weariness, tiredness, exhaustion, heaviness, lapse into loss of strength and so on. This also can be done in a very simple exercise which you can do as you walk. You notice your natural way of the walking is to drag the body. Instead you hold your body in your awareness and as if lift, energetically lift and then you'll find suddenly your legs move freely, your arms swing freely and you don't feel the same sense of dullness. As long as you're doing it with your own will and effort, it can be a little tiring. But if by this time you have already opened to something higher and learned to hold this poise without personal effort, allowing the peace or presence that you feel leaning back to lift, to hold, to carry, you'll find the sense of personal effort is only needed to initiate the movement and then that takes over. And so as a result you will find a lot of things which were difficult, strenuous, suddenly become lighter, freer.

Naturally with this comes the particularity of the form, of the brightness in the body, charm of expression, sweetness of voice, sense of youth, the form itself has to grow to be more and more an expression of beauty. This may include a more superficial aspect also where the clothes you wear, if you use makeup or the way you trim your hair and so on have to be taken into account, but essentially the Soundarya is not of the external form but of the inner shift from within the consciousness reflected in the form.

And as a result of all this, within the physical consciousness, in the way you experience the world, through the senses, and in the contact of the senses, and in the interchanges that take place, including energetically, you have a delight and a beatitude which comes naturally, felt in the physical body itself. Your body feels happy and content and begins to experience something of the Shraddha, the faith, and can begin to lean back on the deeper possibilities which have been worked on in the other perfections. This completes the four perfections, and we have seen also the character of the practice for each of these.

Sraddhalu (0:38:42):

The last two perfections are general perfections, which are of your participation in the divine delight, in the aspect of the Bhukti, of the enjoyment of life as a liberated, free, divine centre of consciousness. And this has two Chatushtayas. First is the Karma Chatushtaya, which, not going into specifics of the four steps, I will simply describe as the consecrated service and the self-giving to the immanent divine. You have already by now with the other practices a general sense that there is the divine presence everywhere and you dwell on it, let it grow, let it intensify. You may not have it in your daily interactions, but the moment you disengage from those interactions, you should be able to bring back something of that perception. And so before you start your work you bring this perception - all this is form of Satchitananda and everything is permeated by the divine presence and formed by the divine Energy, the divine Shakti, sacred body of the Divine. Whatever I will do now as I begin my work will be done as an offering to the Divine and then of course you plunge into the work as far as possible, maintaining this poise. Don't worry if you lose it. At the end of the work, you come back, return to this vision, perception or feeling and say whatever I have done, I do as an offering to you and it is given to you. I have no personal claim. It is not mine. I was used merely as an engine for the Divine's work and you give it up including the consequences of the work; ask only to be a more and more transparent engine for the divine working. This would be the aspect of the karma chatushtaya, the perfection of the work and action.

And finally the last of the perfections is the Brahma Chatushtaya, the perception of the Brahman, the One that is all and there is four steps to it. The first is viewing all things as the One that is all, as the body of the divine. Into this the second step will be opening to the sense of infinity and eternity in all things and we have done exercises and discussed this in the earlier, so I won't go too much into detail. There we did it in some depth. You can see infinity, perceive infinity, even in finite forms with a certain exercise that we did. And then of course, if you lean back to the sense of the Presence, you feel the Presence and therefore the sense of infinity becomes familiar. The touch of eternity becomes familiar. Allow these to become familiar. Let them creep in, let them fill more and more your sense of yourself, world and interactions in all forms. The third step in this will be increasingly oneness with the divine consciousness, the divine knowledge perceived behind all things in the working of the universe. At least as an idea you can begin with this idea that behind all appearances there is an extraordinary divine intelligence which knows everything intimately in its oneness, in its infinity; it is directing whatever may be frontal appearances, however much we may in our stupidity delay oppose limit harm, that infinitely conscious, infinitely capable, infinitely infinitely free, will find a way to draw out the best and eventually the divine fulfilment is inevitable. Whatever opposes will only make the fulfilment more complete, more perfect, more beautiful. So that conviction comes from this increasing perception and finally behind that you perceive all this was an expression of the divine Delight. Behind all in the origin is the divine Delight and in all the play it is the play of the divine delight and underlying the divine delight is the divine Love that is the oneness which pours out in delight and draws all multiplicities back into its oneness of love. So the four steps of this last perfection: Sarvam Brahma, all is Brahman; Anantam Brahma, infinity, eternity of Brahman; Jnanam Brahma, knowledge, wisdom, consciousness of Brahman and Anandam Brahma, delight, love, bliss as the underlying truth of all things, which is also your truth ultimately in your deepest origin and poise.

Sraddhalu (0:43:38):

So with this we complete the seven fold practice of the Integral Yoga, focusing primarily on the form of practice with four steps within each of these seven. Now you've seen if you went through the list already certain similarities, certain common elements, threads which combine and the most obvious when we look at it in this way are three forms in which the practice coalesces in which all these variations or aspects are included. But if you did not know these you could do this practice but limit yourself to a form of the practice and not realise that it is actually meant to open to so many aspects; that's why our understanding is important.

What are these three practices? The first which from point of priority is the turn inward to open to the psychic presence, the soul, the divine Presence within you. Almost as if it is a piece of the Satchitananda that has incarnated, which is journeying across lives and which is the essential true you, the one who chose to take birth, who carries the summary and essence of the learnings and evolution of this birth into the next. In this psychic being is spontaneously a living aspiration to grow and to fulfil its purpose in the line of realisation and actualisation and fulfilment that the divine chose or you chose in your divine poise. It has also naturally the sense of the faith, the Shraddha, that yes, the divine is, the divine is present, all is ultimately the divine. It has naturally the perception of the whole world as the field of play and for manifestation of the divine and looks with curiosity, with enthusiasm at this adventure of consciousness. So many elements which you would have normally wanted to develop, would naturally develop simply by the emergence of this influence. But for the emergence, you have to first turn towards it in a quiet aspiration. Now I said this is priority, but it may not be your first point of start.

Because for many, the starting point is an upward opening. So that is the second form of the practice. The spiritual, the vertical opening, opening to the divine presence which is already above you. When you say where is the divine? Oh yes, in understanding you may say it is all behind the appearance and I am lost with the appearance. But where do I experience the divine most easily? For some it may start deep within, in the psychic presence. For others it may be felt simultaneously or separately as an opening above the head. So you concentrate at the centre above the head and open out. Become conscious of a vast sense of something, presence and eventually it becomes more and more concrete as if a dense ocean, a Peace, a Presence, even a Light or a Power or later a Knowledge or Bliss and they're all there as Powers of the Self, it is the presence of the Self.

Whatever you experience of it is the first point of contact and you open to that and in opening to that you give yourself the samadhi experience of immersion but following that also is the descent that takes place as you return from the immersion. Whatever you experienced you invoke, you invite to fill part by part into your entire being. Now you may initially go through stages in the body, as if locations in the body, but you will notice very quickly this range has a quality of mind awareness. This range below the shoulders has a quality of life energy awareness and further down it acquires a denser physical grade. You simply notice and automatically as a result of the awareness that comes with the peace and presence that descend, you will begin to be able to discriminate and separate between these layers. There will be a profound calm which comes spontaneously with the peace that descends, your mind becomes quiet, your emotions lose their restlessness and lean back into a calm. And so the characteristics of the three gunas liberated in transcendence, naturally filled, with the peace comes a light that fills the mind, a concentration of energy that fills the life force and a deep peace and calm that fills the physical consciousness. And the three gunas are put in relation to their true spiritual sense.

With it also comes a deep equality, a great freedom from emotional instinctive impulsiveness, a great sense of equality in the mind where the dualities now cease to have a great compelling power. Now you may still have to refine the perception. If you don't, you will just stay with peace, focus on the peace and say I am peaceful and I don't need anything else. But when you engage with life, you will find yourself lost by the old habit patterns. So that's why the understanding of all those stages and steps was important. Now with the peace filling you, you turn to the dualities and bring an equality in your perception. Make conscious effort to look deeper and because there is a greater light which fills the mind, you will find spontaneously a deeper insight or a deeper feel and even the beginnings of an intuitive sense which come purely from the descent.

Sraddhalu (0:49:20):

And so in the rising movement you have a liberation in consciousness of the soul. In the descending movement the poise of liberation and all the powers begin to fill your nature and begin to transform your nature. So the perfection of the freedom, purification and freedom are somehow included in the psychic inward movement and the spiritual upward movement. But in both there is a dual side. There's an inward going as well as the psychic vibration and influence and values filling you and in the upward movement there is the opening to the powers of the divine consciousness, well actually to the divine energy, the divine Shakti itself and then her descent into you as peace and light, power, knowledge, eventually the bliss, which has its transforming effect. And just these two practices you will find largely cover the bulk of the different aspects of the effort required.

And there is a third which completes it, and which is the perception of the One, of the Divine, of the Divine Consciousness, the Divine Mother. So it can take the form depending on your temperament. You see the whole universe as a gigantic flow of one divine energy of the Divine Mother and you turn to Her with love, with devotion, with an adoration, with a movement of self-giving, trust, faith. Or you may feel not so much the dynamic aspect of the Divine Mother's energy, but behind as a backdrop, the one Divine Presence, as if supporting everything from within, as if seated within the heart, not so much the physical location, but in the essence of all forms and all things, seated within, supporting, containing, embracing and holding and also directing secretly from within. And you dwell on that aspect. Eventually you switch between the two and then the two merge because it is that one divine Presence that fills and flows with his Power, with his Energy, with his Vision, with his Love, all things. And you have an experience of both. Perception of the Divine Mother can be done even with eyes open, and in fact it should be done ideally in that way. You begin with an inward concentration, immersion with eyes naturally closed at that point, and then when you return, you continue that immersion and extend it with open eyes, through sight, through the senses, all around you. Until what you felt within you and above you begins to be felt all around you, containing and embracing you and maybe even containing the whole universe and embracing the universe. That's when one is able to hold that poise in the midst of all activities of life.

What you will dwell on will be the Immanent or the Oneness or the sense of the Infinite or the sense of the Eternal, or the sense of the Love which is all-embracing, whatever aspect does not matter. Start with that which is most natural to you. Dwell on this. So these are the three that Sri Aurobindo describes as the three realisations of the Integral Yoga. The psychic realisation, the spiritual realisation, and the realisation of the Divine Mother as the one in everything and holding, carrying everything in Herself and even everything as expression of Her consciousness. Now this, if you reduce the whole practice to these three principles, you will find it is quite comprehensive but you may lose nuances if you're not aware. You may not make those efforts, for example dissolving the habit of dualities. If you don't, it will still happen eventually, but it may take a little longer. Now, not all of us would want to engage with all these details of the different aspects of the effort. For each one of us, some of these will be more natural, more interesting, more attractive, and even easier. Start with those. At some point, you will notice, oh, something is blocked, something is missing. And you'll say, ah it is this aspect which so far I had neglected. Now it feels like I really need to work on this and you will turn more to that and so on. Each of these aspects, each of these steps in the growth assists all others to make for the complete sevenfold ascent and transformation of the integral yoga.

Sraddhalu (0:54:03):

I will dwell on a few more which are nearly highlighting certain components and elaborate on those as form of practice. Not essential but some of you will particularly enjoy it and they're extremely useful. You see when it comes to transformation of your nature, yes the divine Shakti working in you will do it. But you can participate, you can engage with and allow her working to happen faster. For that, there are three things required, Sri Aurobindo points out: Consciousness, plasticity, surrender. So in the first step, try to make yourself conscious of everything as far as possible and push the boundaries of your awareness in the mind, in the emotions, in your life energy instincts, even in your physical body. Whatever you can be conscious of, be as conscious as possible and then push the boundary and make more conscious. In effect, what it takes the form practically is you mentalize your life down to every detail. And when you start doing that, you will find the separation of those layers becomes very distinct. And then finally in the intellect itself, I will give it a certain form of practice, which some of you will enjoy very much. And that is, as you open to this higher poise, you notice that your thoughts are associated with words. Many of us have a habit and sometimes it comes from the kindergarten education that you have to think with enunciation of words. When you read a book some of you will find lips moving internally or maybe the lips don't move but you are enunciating and therefore the reading speed slows down. Consciously remove words, you will find reading speed doubles, triples, even quadruples effortlessly.

Then you notice you are aware of something, you know what you want to say or do, but you can't find the right word or you don't know how to articulate. So notice that you can have an awareness and knowledge without giving it words, but also without giving it thought form. So try to hold an awareness without words. You have a thought. Thought without words. You can switch into any language you want because there's the same thought taking these words or those. But now you become aware without thought. You know without thought. It's a very interesting experience. And that prepares you and brings you very close to the intuitive knowing. And you move from awareness ‘ah’, to awareness ‘oh’, awareness ‘ah’; as if you went through series of thoughts but there was no thought, there was only awareness, but in the awareness you felt a deeper intimacy of knowing, as if a kind of a more deep knowledge, which then you can turn into thought, which then you can turn into words. Play with this. It is tremendous fun. But it is also a step towards mastery of thought and a step towards intuitivisation.

In fact, one of the things you will notice in, well, it will also bring you equality and other poises naturally in the mind at least. But one of the things you will notice in a dream state because of the habit of thought form, you see something there's an associated thought and the thought changes the experience immediately. So for example, if you have a moment of lucidity in the dream you say, ‘I'm conscious, I'm dreaming’, the thought says, ‘ah, my body’, and poof you turn to your body and you find yourself awake. If you can hold awareness without thought, conscious, conscious of all options and turning awareness now to do this, to do that, I choose to float and I float or I go somewhere. The self-control or self-mastery that is possible once you are free from thought pattern, which are all habitual by the way, allows you to then choose freely. And if you have done this in waking state, naturally it happens during dream state also because the basic centre of your thought shifts from here [points to the forehead] to above head. If you combine it with those practices for intuition, it makes things much more complete. But then once you have that poise of awareness, you can even be walking on the road or sitting in a bus or I don't know about driving but you're sitting in the car you can hold that poise. Then from that poise of thoughtless awareness you gently turn up as if perceiving.

Remember the three intuitions Sri Aurobindo spoke of: One is behind, the other is above and then there is the transcendence. But any one of these you can open to simply and as if your awareness opens to its own larger body. You have a piece or a tail end, a fragment or a limb of something more complete, more wide. And naturally your thoughtless awareness now opens out to a sense of infinite or eternal or wider poise of knowledge. And when even a little shift takes place and it will happen very naturally almost effortlessly you will find your way of thinking now is wider, larger, more inclusive. You will have a thought when you choose to have a thought but the thought will have multiple facets, will be wider, more inclusive. You will have a thought when you choose to have a thought, but it will take into account different angles in a single awareness, vision. So preparing you for the various gradations all the way into the intuitive and so on. But just the sense of the infinite, the sense of the eternal, or the sense of something wider to which this opens, that starts the process.

Sraddhalu (1:00:21):
The result, Sri Aurobindo says is the creation of a derivative body of knowledge, which is derived from the gnosis, from the supramental consciousness formed within your mind and bit by bit that is taken up and so on. So all this now you will see involves very little in terms of types of effort but within each effort itself you can have multiple facets in the experience. Whether you consciously seek them or not, they will be there and eventually they will open out. If you are aware of them, you can consciously experiment and open to them. If nothing else, all reduces to those three realisations, into which you may consciously add the effort to become more conscious, to make more plastic. And then I did not complete this: so the next step after increasing consciousness is plasticity. Which means, you allow all your capacities to become more and more plastic, less and less bound to habits and limitations. Your fingers, for example, what can you do with your fingers? learn to play a new instrument, push the boundaries, do not hesitate, do not say I cannot do; just because you couldn't doesn't mean you cannot. Push the boundaries, do things, stretch them, extend them. Even on a very physical level you make your body plastic, but you make your energies plastic. You make your capacity to experience the world plastic, cutting through shrinkings and limitations of various kinds. One of the rules Sri Aurobindo had in his life, he said, whatever comes to me I have to take up and be able to do. No limits. And so certain opportunities came he said, ‘okay, I will do’. Of course you may choose time wise a priority, but when something comes your way, take it as an opportunity to make yourself more plastic, adaptive, wider in capacity and learn, experiment, flow and widen. Particularly removing, dissolving all prior preferences, habits, preconceptions and programmings of various kinds on all these levels of your nature.

So you become like a child in the kindergarten: what's that?, what's that?, what's that?. In a toy shop you play with all possible toys. So the consciousness, plasticity and the last is unreserved surrender. In all that you have become conscious, in all that is brought in plasticity and readiness to open to the touch of the infinite, well, you bring this entire self-giving. Here, I will put two key words. The surrender entirely to the Divine Mother and exclusively to the Divine Mother. The difference is very important. exclusively to the Divine Mother. The difference is very important. You can say I have surrendered, but it's one part. The rest is not. It has to be entire, all has to be taken up. So whatever is in your awareness, that's your all currently. There are other layers you're not conscious of, but eventually they will be. Whatever you're aware, you turn entirely. Nothing to be left behind, including all your desires, preferences, likes and dislikes, and hopes for your own life and plans for your own life. Yes, you can cling to them if you want, but you're limiting yourself from a much greater possibility which comes from the divine freedom. Let go of everything. All is given up. All belongs to Her to be remoulded, new formed, freely by her infinity, by the touch of the infinite as Sri Aurobindo says. So entirely and then exclusively. You cannot say, yes but my this guru, my that lineage, my that friend, my that responsibility, my family. Nothing. Only the one highest divine consciousness, whatever that may be, by whatever name, form or transcendence of name, form, – the highest that you are able to conceive, know and experience to that highest. Because that includes all these.

The moment you tie yourself to one of these inferior levels including you see many of us have also been through various Let's say guides, teachers, gurus, some of them we have accepted spiritually as teachers. And then you move on to something more complete and you say, but I hold allegiance or bind. No, you don't. They were all the one divine consciousness coming to you in various forms and facets to help you, nudge you at the time when you could not recognize that directly. From the point you can increasingly open to the one source, all these are included. You're bound to no limited form. And it is exclusively to that that you give yourself. Nothing else to come in the way. So, surrender, unreserved; surrender, entire and exclusive. So, these would be facets or forms of practice. And as you can see, it is very doable. None of these in themselves require you to give up anything in life, but you do make choices, lift the quality, character and form of things which are given to you or which you have to do. In your own consciousness again, in your own nature, no part is rejected. All is taken up, refined, purified to its true real function and therefore more complete, more enjoyable even in the way you experience life. Nothing is denied. All is taken up and raised, transformed. So I think with this I complete the summary of the forms of practice and immediate focus for all of us. We have a few questions which relate to the practice which come from these discussions as well as prior but which are relevant now which we can take up.

Alina?

Alina (1:06:40):

I feel already you answered my own question in this session but if you have anything to add maybe I will still address it. So I'm wondering on this initial preparatory steps, how to deal oneself with the tamasic inertia that is felt in the process of yoga when we are still in the initial movement, we are withdrawing into this wider consciousness from above and then usually the body gets very calm, quiet. You don't even want to engage in any physical activity. You just want to stay inert and then it's hard to push oneself to become active, dynamic, to take up the works. Or on the other side, sometimes we tend to be very dynamic, very eager, a lot of agitation or  a lot of drudges.

Sraddhalu (1:07:49):
And then you lose the inner poise. Is that the point?.

Alina (1:07:52):
Yes. Now I understand that maybe really focusing on foods or activities that are satvik, that's  just an initial or maybe could be a help or support in our sadhana, but we should...

Sraddhalu (1:08:08):
So, you will recall the discussion of the three modes of Nature,-- the filling in of the consciousness and light which brings clarity, harmony, balance followed by the concentration of your energies to a particular action that you're doing but which comes from this light which comes from this awareness or becoming aware of the peace which feels like a foundation what would have been inertia is now filled with a peace which is a solid dense peace which now can be a base for you to be able to act perhaps even with greater effectivity. So the key in this will be first that aspect of the light and awareness filling, which prevents sliding into inertia or unbalanced rajas, kinesis and excitation. Now, if this we make our starting point of the practice: On emergence from let's say the poise of peace, you turn to action, what do you have to do? You gather and concentrate, focus, do the thing, complete it and then come back to rest in peace. So the form in which Sri Aurobindo describes this is engaging and then coming back to rest. Engaging, coming back to rest. Now it may happen initially as you engage you lose yourself. Fine, but the moment you're finished you make a conscious effort to come back to your poise of rest.

So this going back and forth between these two modes, these two operations, will tend to create a bridge in which at some point even as you engage the underlying sense of solidity or peace is never lost and then you're able to come back the moment the work is done. Or from the poise of peace you never have the sense of inertia, you can always flow easily to action and return. This would be the form in which one can consciously orient the practice. Of course, if there is inertia, you notice where it is. Primarily, it starts with the body and from there it reflects in the life energies or in the mind. And if there is a genuine cause for the physical inertia, for example, lack of sleep or poor insufficiency of food or nutrition, you have to correct for that also. But in principle, simply by bringing a higher poise of consciousness, many of these things can also be corrected. But you have to recognize that currently the body is not sufficiently conscious to be able to respond purely to the spiritual action and you need to give it the support on its level.

Alina (1:10:49):
Thank you very much. I will continue with some questions. First, we see from Zachari. In a discussion on human evolution, you suggested humanity wasn't fully developed in some intellect or mental capacity, hence our relapse into the rational age from some previous intuitive age. Looking at just the physical aspects of human brain, there are less neurons and more development capacity compared to the Neanderthal. At an elementary school level, kids are asking more critical questions than adults. And there is a tendency later in life to rationalise or rely on past experiences as an explanation for intuition. What is it we are to be working on to tap more directly into spiritual light from the human mind? It seems to me that what gets us into the habitual tendencies of the failing of our rational ascent to the intuitive culminates in this example of relying on past experiences that causes suffering, grief and a lot of other issues.

Sraddhalu (1:12:20):
Yes, and this is a good point to discuss this because we have just described how past habit patterns tend to bind us in each of these aspects of perfection and especially when it comes to rising beyond the intellectual working of mind to an intuitive. There is a tendency to fall back into the old patterns and I give the example earlier of how we tend to enunciate because as a child you were told to spell a word, – C-A-T cat, D-O-G dog, and the result is your lips are taught to follow and slow down the thought, for example. And later when there is a higher poise of intuition, it has to go through all these strange habit patterns which are utterly contrary, which break or dilute or even confuse what is streaming through. And so yes, one has to let go of past habits. And that's a large part of the purification process itself and the natural consequence of the purification. So yes, this needs to be done. But the other side, you will recall the focus when we were discussing the training of the intellect. The self-aware intellect, intelligence and will, has to as if separate itself from the lower working, on the one hand, pull out, and on the other side to open to something higher, in a poise of a passive receptivity. And so training the mind to become quiet at that point and receive in stillness would be the complementing side, but first sufficiently disengaging from the emotions, from desires, from the inertia of the physical body. And you'll find it's not difficult.

Let's say you take an example on a day when you're tired. Maybe this evening you're tired. If you find your mind a little dull, do this as an experiment. Notice where the dullness is felt. Is it in your thoughts, energies which are tired or body which is strained? Now become aware of the intellect as it is. Come into your own as self-aware centre of awareness and disengage, as if pull out, dis-separate yourself from these. And immediately you notice your mind becomes clearer, wider, freer, light; the inertia, lethargy just vanishes. And it takes barely a few seconds. Okay, take half a minute. But you come into it, half a minute is more than enough. You are there. Wow, it feels so different. Now at this point, you could make the error of dragging the body along, although the body is tired. If necessary, you will do it. But otherwise, you say, all right, body needs its rest. What do I want to do? Turn this fresh, clear mind now to wider, freer, either backdrop or higher awareness, receive, read something which is corresponding to this grade of subtlety and consciousness. You might like a passage from Savitri or in this poise you might write a few words or read something which is generally supportive of this consciousness or just hold this poise of immersion in awareness of the Presence without strain. So if the body needs rest, you sit back in a relaxed poise, become conscious of the sense of the divine Presence, even as an idea, and just stay immersed in it. And so the body gets its rest, the mind rests in a lit-up awareness of rest. And so exercises like this would complete. And the point is very valid that it's the past habits and tendencies which tend to pull you down. The purification and these exercises would very quickly free you from that. And then you have the whole process of the development of the intuition which we have covered already. I think we can take one more question.
Ah, yes.

Alina (1:16:32):
So Vignesh Bhat is asking, “How do we prepare for supermind only through works and not just meditate.” He's asking, “We endeavour to make our body and its parts more conscious. Does it help when we come back taking birth? Is it going to help only that soul which made that effort last time? Or will such labour help all souls in future?” Good question.

Sraddhalu (1:17:06):
Yes. So there are actually two parts to the question. One is how to prepare for the supermind through works and not just meditation because in pretty much all my descriptions so far I have tended to highlight the poise of concentration for the descent of peace or the opening to the presence above which tend to be done in a state of inward concentration. But he says well not just meditation, I also want to do it in work and through work and that's a very valid point. And the second question is regarding the body consciousness. So for the first question, yes, you will see the basis of the practice is not dependent on a state of interiorized concentration. Rather the state of interiorized concentration is a focus, a special focus to deepen and intensify to to reach beyond what you normally can. But subsequent to that concentration, when you come back to your surface awareness, you open your eyes, you don't leave that behind. You bring it with you. You bring that awareness. You bring that Peace. You bring that Presence. The love, the wideness, the sense of the divine Oneness. Whatever form it takes, you bring it and then with it you engage in activity. But starting with very slow gradual activities where you can remain meditatively concentrated. So for example, having just had a deep concentration where you were immersed in a certain state in an experience with the divine Presence, you come out and extend that perception first everywhere and then you move to do a simple activity while remaining immersed.

So if you have brought the perception, let's say, of the divine presence everywhere, all this is formed by the foam of the Divine Mother's play, her energy and the Satchitananda. I dwell upon the things around me in this way. Then I take a broom and slowly sweep the floor. And as I sweep the floor, my hand is also formed of the foam and the divine Energy works through my hand, even as it forms the shape of my hand. The divine Energy has formed the broom and then the dust which is being swept and the floor. And I bring this perception into all these things. Now its a wave of Satchitananda flowing on Satchitananda, pushed by Satchitananda for its delight. At least in my perception or in my underlying sense of reality. And I enjoy that, ‘oh, it feels so good’. And so I'm extending an experience touched in a deeper concentration all the way into an activity.

Sri Aurobindo gives great importance to this. The Mother gave it great importance. She of course gave it importance by saying you have to do work. Otherwise whatever you have experienced or realised within does not transform your nature. Sri Aurobindo gives this various forms. He says there are two ways in which you can bring that poise into the consciousness. One is holding a poise of detachment. You hold that state and then everything is happening as if mechanically. The other is you flow from that state and everything is done as a consecration, as an offering, which is the pattern in the Karma Yoga. So you can choose what is more natural for you at the beginning, but eventually if you can bridge that experience all the way to the most physical movement, your dynamic parts, that's the vocabulary Sri Aurobindo uses, which are quiescent during concentration, they also are engaged by the experience and the experience settles all the way into your most physical parts. It is when the experience settles in the physical body, to whatever degree, that it can become permanent in life and therefore change your life. So yes, your question is very important. And although my primary concentration has been on the inner experience, this completes it. And this is perhaps more important than even what you attain within.

Sraddhalu (1:21:23):

The second question is, whatever you do to make your body conscious, let's say, and develop certain possibilities of consciousness, will it stay with you when you come back to take birth and will that apply only to you or will it also influence others?

The answer to both of these is, yes to some extent. And we have to understand it to what extent. When the soul incarnates, takes up material which is substance of the mental body, takes up substance of the vital worlds which becomes the life force body, the Pranamaya Sharira and the physical substance which it cannot take up directly because of the rigidity of nature's processes and the three gunas and so must take a birth in a body which is formed by that process. Okay? So you have three bodies, three layers, none of which are in themselves naturally conscious of the soul or aligned to the soul's needs. But to the extent that an activity is aligned by chance or by the soul's natural push and nudge and a certain maturity of the personality in which the soul's influence is still strong, those experiences the soul absorbs and holds holds, keeps, because their experiences of growth in closeness to the divine and in manifesting the divine.

Things which represent truth, beauty and the sacred,-- these are the nourishment for the soul and these it absorbs, assimilates. But when you had those experiences, which of these three layers held the experience? Was it primarily in the mind with the life energies and the body mechanically supporting? Or did it infuse into the life force and perhaps even in the physical consciousness? That would not happen normally by itself. But if you consciously infused it as in the example we took earlier of sweeping the floor with this concentration that even in your hand is the divine Shakti and the Satchitananda working and you experience it as something not yours, instrument of the Divine, given for the Divine, given entirely and exclusively. And you feel it, you consecrate your action with that. Those are moments for the soul's nourishment and to the extent that that consciousness infuses into your physical body or at least in the hand at that moment, something of that template of consciousness in the physical vibration is absorbed by the soul. So when the soul leaves the body, it retains in a large part something of the mental consciousness to the extent it has developed in alignment to the soul, drops entirely the physical and vital normally, except this very fine template of consciousness in the vital and physical if you have worked on it. Sometimes you worked on it unconsciously while you were training to develop a special skill which was done for a consecrated action but we did not intend it, but mostly since we don't do that there's very little that remains.

But if you have done this, yes, this will be absorbed as a template of a physical vibration held in the soul consciousness because the psychic supports all these levels. And when it takes the next body, when it incarnates, if it chooses, again it's a choice, it may bring that aspect of the training, of the development, of its maturity, that vibration, and infuse it into the new body. If it is sufficiently conscious it may even choose an environment or an inheritance where the body is already more conscious or capable of more consciousness but still it can infuse even in a relatively dull body a higher grade of its psychic personality. Now all these layers developed form the personality of your psychic being. It infuses that and lifts the physical substance to a different grade of consciousness, of capacity. As the child grows, of course there's no physical memory of it, there will be instinctively a tendency to be conscious in the hand or to be able to, it will find a new spontaneous skill and plasticity in the hand. It's as if the hands are open to intuition or mental suggestions almost effortlessly because of that work done. You may choose to develop it or if you have complete loss of the sense of spiritual purpose you may degrade and lose even some of that work done and that's really dependent on what happens. We have seen cases where people didn't do much although they had a huge potential. We've also seen cases where that thing infused in the consciousness could be seen in the aura. You looked at the person's aura and you said, wow such a fine refined mesh of fibrous, let's say weaving, very rare in human beings and it's obviously work done in prior lives. In the aura it's largely the mental body but it goes all the way into the physical and the person can feel as if his body is more conscious and when there is a dulling experience or a loss you feel you have lost something in the body consciousness.

So yes, something can be carried, is carried if it is raised and aligned to the psychic vibration. And when such a thing is done of course on some level it has an impact on the collective consciousness. Even a purely mere physical skill developed in your physical body without this deeper psychic connection would act as a rhythm in the biology of the species, making the species slightly more capable. If you have pushed certain boundaries, let's say you race, you've pushed the body to be able to go faster and crossed a certain threshold of normal capacity, well that capacity imprints in humanity.

I give an example here which is in the Olympics. If you go back a hundred years, I don't know the exact date, but there was a big deal about the four minute mile. Can you run the mile in four minutes? It was considered impossible biologically according to the best of the medical science. And then one man did it and when he did it suddenly the next year two people did it and then three people and five and ten and today there are quite a few people who can do it, not everybody but there's a very large number who's able to do this. And the same in gymnastics and the same in weightlifting, the same in speed. A 100 metres race which is pure speed and not about stamina. Every time we are pushing the boundary, every Olympics you find 0.1, 0.2, something 0.01, but something which is pushing the boundary and it's as if the whole physical capacity, may be in an elite, you see, evolution is always in a slope. There's a cutting edge and then a wider and wider edge and then the mass which is dragged along almost inevitably and unintentionally, even sometimes resisting the change. So we are somewhere there when we push a boundary and that stays in the species. Even if your psychic being does not carry, that's one level of evolution which is the collective consciousness evolution. Separate is the individual consciousness evolution and that's where the psychic absorbing would allow you to carry that into the next life.

Both evolutions parallel but it is the individual which leads the collective and if the individual can speed up enormously the collective can also make a radical breakthrough. To that extent all of us who feel drawn to the Integral Yoga, even to I will say to whatever degree even partially, who aspire for a divinized life, a transformation and an elevation of the human consciousness and to manifest a higher possibility, all of us feel drawn to this, belong to the edge that Nature finds most useful as instruments. And so Nature gives you the necessary push. Not only Nature gives you the necessary support but the divine Grace looking for instruments to act through finds these and works through them even when you are not fully conscious. But when you open in awareness and aspire and give yourself then that action can be rapid, complete and its result also also rapid and radical. So all those of us who feel drawn to this, it is a great privilege. And Mother used this word, and she said this in one of her messages, “that one day I hope you will realise”, I am paraphrasing, “what a great privilege it is to participate in this effort”. And we have to be worthy of the help of the opportunity and the divine Grace that carries us even when we are not conscious, pushing us.

Sraddhalu (1:31:15):

I would like to take one more question because it completes this discussion. Can you see that?

Alina (1:31:24):
Yes, of course.
So, Vegadarshi, if I pronounce correctly, she is writing, it has been said that what comes before, aspiration or grace is a mystery. Why is it a mystery?

Sraddhalu (1:31:44):
Yes, I don't know where she has this. Maybe is it something the Mother has said, I don't know. But there is a saying that which comes first? You aspire and then there is a responding grace? Or is there a grace which awakens the aspiration? Which comes first is a mystery. And there is a reason for that. You see, in the mind consciousness, we tend to view things in fragments. So there's an aspiration and then there's a grace. Or there's a grace which awakens you and makes you aspire, which came first? But when you look from the deeper consciousness of the Oneness, there is only one movement in the universe. The fact that the grace turns awakes the aspiration. The fact that the aspiration rises opens to the grace. Or you say it is one movement of the soul's choice that says ‘Ah’, and there's an alignment from both sides because there is only one consciousness. So the soul is one with the Divine and the Divine is concentrated in the soul. And there's one movement. So yes, to the mind it's a mystery. To a deeper consciousness it was an inevitability of the free choice of the soul, of the self, of the divine Grace. But there are one in the movement of their alignment.

So you can look at it this way. We all had the privilege of the divine Grace turning to assist us and help us awaken or we have the privilege that as we woke the divine Grace came and nourished us, helped us rise, filled us with something greater than our capacity and is leading us now to our fulfilment and because She leads, the fulfilment is inevitable. Time does not matter; that depends to a great extent on to what extent we are able to open and offer ourselves. But it does not matter because we have already a movement that has begun, which carries us. Alina used this phrase earlier when she said, “in the preliminary practice”, but you will notice nowhere have I used that word preliminary. You may feel it preliminary but if you find this interesting, if you find yourself called, if you find a deep resonance it's not preliminary; it is a choice of the soul and the soul's choice is your destiny, there's no other destiny. Destiny is what this - freely chosen by the soul and therefore, yes, you may consider yourself as making small steps, you may call it initial steps, but from a deeper truth there is already a movement of commitment to the Yoga, to the realisation, to the transformation, to a participation in the divine manifestation that is already done. What is being worked out is more in your surface parts, in your thoughts, emotions, instincts, energies, etc. So, never doubt. Hold firm this faith, because it was not your surface mind that chose, it was your soul that chose, and the Grace that has responded. And when these two work together, the outcome is certain. Hold the faith of that certainty and allow it to carry you.

We may take a few moments to concentrate in assimilation, in gratitude, and in conscious self-giving to the Divine Grace and the Divine Mother.

Sraddhalu (1:36:06):
Thank you and namaste to all.

[Alina] Namaste, thank you.