EWS #108 Secrets of Occult Science - Part I + Q&A

March 5, 2022

Alina (0:00:48):
Namaste and good evening everyone. My name is Alina and this evening I will host a very special evening with Sraddhalu, part 108 on a very interesting subject, the Secrets of Occult Science. Today we will take up a question that we received from Vani. During our discussions, all viewers are invited to address questions in the chat box or if they arise from what we are being discussed, it can be sent, that question to our email - integralstudies.in [at] gmail [dot] com.

So I will first read the question from Vanni. “From the text of the Life Divine, which was referred in the section on the three modes of Nature by Sri Aurobindo, he says, design, quantity and number can be a base for the manifestation. What does number imply here? There must be a deeper knowledge related to this. Also there is a similar description in this chapter, effective arrangements of numbers with regard to creation. We request you to kindly to give us some insights on the relationship of numbers with the manifestation”. I welcome Sraddhalu. Namaste.

Sraddhalu (0:02:38):
Namaste and happy to be with all of you. The question itself is so potentially provocative that I thought it needed a whole discussion in itself. And so I have titled it with a provocative title also. Because what Sri Aurobindo describes with these three words, “design, quantity and number” as a base for manifestation, actually goes to the very roots of a whole science. Physical science for sure, but not limited to physical science. It extends all the way into an occult science and even what we may call a Spiritual science. But the question allows such a wide discussion that I don't know if I will do justice to either the question or to the theme title. Nevertheless, we could treat it as a first entry and exploration in this. So you will recall this passage, which Vani refers to - design quantity and number. Sri Aurobindo refers to in a chapter titled ‘Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable’. This we took in our discussion on the three modes of Nature. And we saw how while the pure free consciousness can freely express any quality, when nature wants to express that quality in a physical substance as a process of energy in the physical world, She has to replicate the quality using her three modes- inertia, kinesis and balance & assimilation. And combinations of these three modes make for a whole variety of qualities that we experience through our five senses. This was the broad base of the discussion just to recapitulate.

In this chapter Sri Aurobindo describes how Satchitananda involving itself into inconscience as if losing everything, all consciousness and all delight naturally, all that remains is as if sheer existence driven by a mechanical force and that's the base that we experience as the physical world. This acts like a screen and through this screen it is as if it forms things. There's a fascinating description in this chapter. I hope someday to do a more detailed elaboration of the chapter itself. He describes how you look at the universe you have this sense of something infinite, of course you don't see the infinity. So it is as if a boundless finiteness and in this blank base where there is nothing determinable, there is nothing fixed, there is nothing which you can even find as independent or real, kind of an emptiness, suddenly you find very distinct determinations, forms, characteristics, things appearing with distinct qualities and then each of those things has a variety variations, changes but around the broad base of a type. Why? How? No explanation.

Science describes the processes. It will describe how from hydrogen emerges helium and so on all the elements, their relationships, their qualities, their combinations, their reactions to each other all that is carefully described. But why? Why should it be like that and not otherwise? We don't know. Knowing a few things you cannot assume anything else because each thing seems to have distinctly different qualities with no logic of why it should be so. And so Sri Aurobindo says it in these words:“These formulae of science may be pragmatically correct and infallible. They may govern the practical how of Nature's processes but they do not disclose the intrinsic how or why; rather they have the air of the formulae of a cosmic Magician, precise, irresistible, automatically successful each in its field, but their rationale is fundamentally unintelligible”. So you have this cosmic magician producing all these different elements of matter and then out of combinations of elements suddenly a protoplasm and then a plasm and then a cell and then a plant and then an animal of changes, variations and like a magician. All you can do is describe, analyse but you never understand fundamentally how it happens or why it happens.

Sraddhalu (0:07:46):

Sri Aurobindo gives a very simple example. We know oxygen, we know hydrogen. By their qualities that we observe, we could not have deduced them from the formulae of the atom structure. We just see the qualities and then there's a flash of lightning, spark of electricity and the two combine. Hydrogen burns, hydrogen combines with oxygen and becomes water. Now there is nothing in water as a thing in itself that has anything in common with hydrogen or oxygen. You could not have calculated by the qualities of hydrogen and oxygen that their combination in this way would produce the qualities of water. It's completely independent. So we describe that process and we say, ah now we know how water is made. We have explained nothing. Why? No idea. And then we study water's properties and they're so magical, so miraculous like a cosmic magician again. Precise, is automatically successful but we don't know why. And the same water put through other processes, it changes, it becomes; we freeze it, it behaves differently. We make it, we boil it, steam it, it behaves differently and whole range of such qualities, properties emergent from the same hydrogen-oxygen combination that we call water. Is water really hydrogen oxygen combination only or is it something fundamentally distinct which needs hydrogen, oxygen as a basis to emerge but is not in itself just hydrogen and oxygen.

Now this may sound like an odd question but the same question could be placed to a scientist, a quantum physicist, where you ask what is a neutron made of? See when you degrade a neutron it disintegrates into a proton, an electron and if I recall right an anti-neutrino. So our normal thinking will say a neutron is made of electron, proton, anti-neutrino. But the physicist will say no no no, you can't say that. All you can say is that when a neutron degrades it degrades into these three things but it's not made of them. Now when you listen to this logically it's stupid because the same scientist will say when water degrades it becomes hydrogen and oxygen but it's also made of hydrogen and oxygen but somehow at a quantum level of a particle that does not apply. So you find these weird almost fickle patterns of behaviour under what is otherwise precise automatic formulae of a cosmic Magician.

And so Sri Aurobindo explains how this happens because precisely it is the Satchitananda that is involved in this screen of material energy with a mechanical appearance. Everything that is in the Satchitananda as its realities, its fundamental truths, principles is naturally represented in the play of this energy. And the freedom of the Satchitananda, which is an utter freedom, is also represented in the play of these natural truths. So you have as if certain fundamental underlying, Sri Aurobindo uses the word he uses - determinates. It's a very general term. Determinates would apply to all levels - physical, vital, mental and even spiritual. But certain fundamental determinates which are really expressions of powers of the Satchitananda and then the full freedom which is expressed through the determinates and its infinite variations. Now why am I going into all this? Because our theme is occult science. We will come to this shortly. If you understand this, the whole basis of occult science becomes obvious because that is the mechanism nature uses secretly to produce things. And the difference between science and occult science is only that you're entering domains which are hidden. So cosmic Magician has done his formula, you see the result but what was the formula, what was the principle? That's occult science.

You see the processes in the result that you call that physical science but the boundary of physical science keeps going deeper and deeper towards the occult. When Sri Aurobindo now describes all this, he then gives you the clue, the principle of occult sciences. He says, “one begins to understand how arrangement of design, quantity and number can be a base for the manifestation of quality and property”. Now these are different qualities and properties that Nature creates by playing with design, quantity and number. What is the relationship between these two? And he says, “for design, quantity and number are powers of the existence-substance,” satchitananda, “quality and property are powers of the consciousness and its force that reside in the existence”. So it's as if quality and property are hidden in the existence. When you capture existence, the first way you meet it is design quantity number. Play with those and you can draw out quality and property. So “they”, quality and property, “can then be made manifest and operative by a rhythm and process of substance”. Now in this one sentence you have all the fundamental, let's say, principles of physical science, occult science and to some extent even spiritual science. This is something so profound, so insightful. I do not think I will do justice to it in one session, but I will elaborate with a few examples, which I will try to make as accessible as possible. But in a way that goes from physical science through also to occult science and show a continuum between these, elaborating on these three words of design, quantity and number and how their rhythm and process can make operative quality and property.

Sraddhalu (0:14:05):

So we will look at all three, design, quantity and number and there is a distinction between these three words. Design is something far more on a material level in space, to some extent in time, but in arrangement and so closer to Matter, quantity is less bound to physical form and closer to the character of a vital quantity, quantum and number as we will see although it has a physical and vital representation it is essentially a mental truth. And so design, quantity and number are spanning these three domains although in some sense all three are everywhere. We will see with a few examples.

So let's look at design. A lot of current technology is pushing towards metaverse, as they call it, --a virtual universe created, into which you can plug in through your five senses. You wear these goggles which project images to your eyes. You wear special what are called haptic gloves or even other haptic suit. A body suit can be haptic also. Now watch what happens. Let's say you're projected in your goggles the image of a flower and an apple and I'm taking these just for the variation that they represent. In my visual as I move my hand to reach out to the flower that I see before me, I'm wearing haptic gloves so the gloves sense where my fingers are and the computer watches. It has projected a flower here, as my finger comes to touch a petal of the flower the computer now has sensors on the fingertip of the haptic glove and it starts buzzing, pulsing those sensors. So at the moment where I'm supposed to touch the petal I feel a pressure on my finger. As a result I am convinced that I have touched a flower.

Now the question is, is the flower an imitation plastic or is it imitation silk or metal or a real flower? So when I come to breathe, to smell, the computer may release the perfume of a rose and I might be convinced I have smelt it because it is timed perfectly. But when I'm touching, what is the sensation? By pulsating the finger surface, by making that pulsation soft and gentle each time I touch, you can create the sensation of silly smoothness; by making a hard dense rigid push, you can create the impression of hard metal. Now when I rub my finger on the surface of the petal there is a pattern of little bumps. If these bumps are even, spaced out and as I slide my finger I will have the sensation of silky smoothness. If there is a stickiness, sticking with a little sharp points and my finger jumps over, I will feel it as hard, rigid, sticky substance. The only difference is the pattern of the pulsations and the design of pulsation in space and time. This is design, pure design, nothing else. Quantity, maybe the intensity comes in there, but number is not so important. It is the pattern laid out. You can replicate by putting these appropriate sensors on your fingertips any sensation of any substance including sensations that you have never touched which you cannot imagine, in principle.

And the same with the eyes. The image placed is design, purely design. You're creating an image of the flower, the apple, and now with my finger, I push a button and my fingertip becomes a knife in my virtual world and I cut the apple just by pointing to it and the apple opens and falls apart. At which point, what has changed?, the image, the design of the light patterns projected to your eyes. Yes, there is quantity in brightness but primarily it is design. I smell and the smell of the apple is given to me by whatever devices are plugged in and so on. If done skillfully, there is no way for you to know whether this is a real physical world or an entire virtual computer creation. There is no way to know because actually it's your mind which is perceiving these things through the physical senses and if your physical biology was replaced by a machinery of equivalent sensitivity and detail you cannot know the difference. And this is the basis for a whole technology that will come. This is to show you that something entirely non-existent could be made to be as if existent by playing with design. Evoking qualities which could not be there, would not be there or qualities rather are simply an outcome of the change in design, quantity and number. Although to pure consciousness quality is present even without design, quantity and number. Rather invoking quality would produce rhythms of design, quantity and number from top down. But from bottom up, it is as if design, quantity and number evoke qualities and properties. Okay. So, this is the basis for all the occult science, but I am still looking at physical science first.

Sraddhalu (0:19:53):

Let us take another example of optics. What makes glass transparent? So if I look at the molecules or let's go to an atomic level in the glass, they are all arranged in a lattice, evenly spaced out horizontally, vertically in certain arrangements of the crystalline structure of glass. And the spacing is such that when a wave of light comes, let's say with a certain wavelength pulsating, it finds itself almost exactly going, waving between two different atoms spaced out or a multiple of that gap. So, suppose a wave starts here, by the time it hits a peak there is another atom there. This atom will absorb the peak of the wave and nothing will pass through to the next. But if the wave starts here, peaks in empty space and falls again exactly where the next atom is there, it continues from that item to the next peaking which is an empty space and goes to the next atom where it is not absorbed and so on. It can pass right through the material and the material is now called transparent for that frequency. Change the spacing slightly. Bring those atoms slightly closer by a pressure or by an electric field or a magnetic field. Modify slightly and the same glass piece now becomes non-transparent to this wave frequency or a glass piece which is non-transparent becomes transparent because you spaced out the design. Change the design slightly so that in one angle the light passes straight through, in another angle the light breaks or is absorbed. Or at a different angle a different frequency is absorbed, at a third angle a different frequency is absorbed and you will have an extraordinary quality in the glass just by changing the design of the arrangement of the atoms. So you see here quantity and number are implied but they're not so strong. It's the design purely which is working.

Now if you take this principle, you don't have to do it at an atomic level. You can do it at a molecular level. You can do it at a macroscopic level with objects which are as big as your hands. If you space them out correctly, arrange them correctly, then light should be able to pass right through, isn't it? In fact, this does happen and it is a whole new dimension of technology which is called meta materials, where and especially when we do this with microwaves where the light, the waves, electromagnetic waves are typically a few centimetres in wavelength. You can take metal pieces and arrange them with the right spacing and pattern so that if there is a microwave radiation which comes it will bend around, go across the other side and continue as if there was nothing in between. So you've created a meta material object physically, this large, so so big you can hold in your hands that is completely transparent to microwaves and inside this you can put any object, you can hide a diamond, you can hide gold, you can hide anything which is precious to you and If somebody is scanning with microwaves, it will pass right through and come on the other side with no image of anything blocking it. It will be utterly transparent and object this big [shows the fist].

The same principle of what is happening at an atomic level can happen at a molecular level can happen at a macroscopic level. Purely by change of design, you will have produced properties of transparency or absorption or variations of combinations of absorptions and transparency. And this is the basis for a technological magic cloak. You put the cloak around you and you are invisible. Invisibility cloak is actually made with substances like this using meta materials. Now imagine this is done at the level of an aircraft. The aircraft moving radar pulses go right through it as if it doesn't exist. Visually you will see the aircraft, you will say I'm seeing something, but the radar guy says, ‘no, there's nothing in the air, it's your imagination’. Technologically feasible, doable, has been done even and we have similar observations for UFOs, flying saucers. They come, the radar says there's nothing; people see visually, they interact with it physically and the UFO goes away or the reverse,-- the UFO comes, visually you see nothing but the radar says there's an object it can describe the size and even metallic characteristics. All by modifying design on a micro level.

So this is just to give an example of how powerful design can be to evoke any, in principle, any kind of qualities. There is a whole other field called antenna theory, where you find exactly the same thing. Increasingly, you will see when you go to a shop, you buy a product, in the box there is a little antenna with a little circuit that picks up a radio wave and transmits back a number. If you walk out of the shop stealing the object, you're passing between two antennas which pick this up and give a beep. And they can tell you exactly what product you were carrying in your bag. Or if these things are tagged like this with RFID tags, radio frequency ID tags, they are often the size of a grain of rice or smaller. They can be slipped into anything today, stuck on paper in a way that you will never know. They can even be injected into your fatty tissue and you will be tagged and you won't know it. As you walk through a doorway, it will beam through, get the number and they have tagged you and monitored you. In principle, you can beam from a satellite a strong enough signal that will provoke this to give out a signal also and then it goes silent again, in principle. But all this is to show you that you… oh and if you look at the antenna I was coming to that if you look at the antenna and the circuit, it is so passive. There is practically nothing except design of a little bit of copper painted on a flat plastic that's your antenna transmitter and receiver. Inside is a tiny chip. The chip itself what is it? It is a grain of sand into which you have mixed mixtures of other atoms where they call it impurities which make it behave like a semiconductor and by the design of the semiconductor you produce properties and computer behaviour. A computer chip is just that sand with a design which has been changed at an atomic level and then at a molecular level. So if you see the basic process of creating a computer chip is lithography. You beam light and etch a shape and that's it. That's all there is to it with the impurities which have been put in. Pure design makes for all your computer technology combined with painted design of copper. You have antenna transmitter receiver, that's it. That's your technology and you can miniaturise it as much as you want. It's amazing.

Sraddhalu (0:27:30):

It's not so shocking once you recognize that this is what physics is telling you. All matter in the world is nothing but electron, proton, neutron arranged differently, isn't it? So you look at the whole table of elements; hydrogen is made of one proton one electron, helium is two protons two electrons and you throw in a neutron, lithium is again electron, proton, neutron combination. You just keep adding more of electrons protons and neutrons in different arrangements of design. This number is now creeping in, quantity is creeping in and suddenly once you hit the number 79 of electrons and protons and equivalent neutrons you have gold. In other words you took 79 atoms of hydrogen and a few neutrons, merged them, rearranged their arrangement and you have an atom of gold. Add one more hydrogen atom that is one electron, one proton and you have mercury. Or you take mercury and take out hydrogen from it, at least logically that's how it seems and you have gold. Interesting. And your ancients were not fools. They mapped out the same properties in a different way on the basis of these qualities,-- design, quantity, number rather than current physics which looks at structure only. And they saw this connection between mercury and gold and the transmutation of mercury to gold was a technology which actually was perfected and kept secret naturally.

So here you begin to see how the role of quantity comes in. Yes you have design but with the same design of a nucleus with electrons rotating, you are modifying quantity of electrons, quantity of protons and neutrons and you are producing new properties. Now at this time you have moved beyond design, put a new layer of quantity within the same design and different properties begin to happen. What is making the quantity more? More energy or less energy. Pull out energy or add more energy and the quantity and the properties change. So the example I gave earlier: You take a neutron, break it up and you have electron, proton and anti neutrino. Or you take electron, proton anti neutrino, join them somehow, quantity add them up, combine them in a way, we don't really know how to do it but when we do it, it happens. You have a neutron or the same neutron could be built by special particles they call quarks and so on. But finally what you see is you put more energy and the energy vibrates in different modes, that's the design part and suddenly you have a different particle or a different atom. In fact when you look at an atom you never see this little balls whirling, the way they picture it in your textbooks. You see modes of vibration, they're pulsating, literally pulsating modes of vibration of energy. You add a little more energy, it changes the mode and now it pulsates with a different vibration pattern. You add a little more energy, now it shifts and pulsates with a different vibration pattern. That's all the electron is. When you observe the qualities it looks like it has little things but they're basically nodes of energy pulsation. Standing waves so to say of energies.

So quantity becomes almost a thing in itself. Design seems to be secondary to quantity when you look at it this way. Interesting. Ratios, proportions now begin to become much more important. Design emerges by changing quantities and ratios and you see how it's already tending towards numbers. We have for example certain technologies in India. When you go to a temple, the idol typically is made of a metal. A metal made of five different materials. Panchaloha. Pancha is five, Loha is metals. Put in precise proportion, there is gold, silver, I don't remember now, mercury, copper and something else. But they represent five elements. And the ratio is extremely important. When you mix in the proper ratio and process in the right way, the quality expressed by that metal is extremely close to life energy or rather the metal resonates with life force in a way that you can infuse life energy into it or evoke certain rhythms or qualities of life energy from it. And in this way a technology was created which was suitable for the temple purpose where you created the Panchaloha idol and then you invoked a certain vibration of spiritual consciousness which this metal could now embody and hold, at a very material level. This is the equivalent of our human body and mind. Our body is sufficiently evolved, mind is sufficiently evolved that it is able actually to plug into still higher ranges and so higher ranges of consciousness can fill you and you can embody, contain, express, evoke or invoke. Something equivalent is done with the Panchaloha metal mix and it's an interesting technology playing with proportions and that's all that's required and the processing required by which perhaps there's a shift in design but here number is not so important. Just giving a few examples of how this works quantity wise.

Sraddhalu (0:33:28):

And actually now we come to numbers. Numbers may seem to be physical objects because you say oh you must put so many grams of that and make the right proportion. So you're talking numbers, but show me a number as a thing. Can you show me number 1, number 2, number 12, as a thing physically? No you can't. You can show me 12 of something but that thing is not the number, it's the count which is the number. So is number a physical thing at all or is it a mental concept or a mental reality that corresponds to physical experiences but is not in itself a physical thing. The Mother has a very interesting observation. She says mathematics and music belong to the mental world which is the reason why you will find animals sense, but don't have the skill. Or rather the skill of managing numbers is proportional to the development of the mental consciousness in the animal. So certain animals can count one, two, three, four, five and that's quite a bit already. Beyond that it's like big. You will see in certain primitive cultures, very primitive cultures they will count, there's one particular tribe which used to count one, two, three and then many. Interesting. Of course their mind is developed to be able to count more but they didn't need to and that development was nominal, it was not refined.

As more evolved cultures today, the child will want to count more even if he does not have a vocabulary. Now you give him a vocabulary and then the skill of counting more and then it opens a whole new world. How far can you go? It's not so much about counting numbers. It's about the relationship with what the numbers themselves are. One of the most brilliant examples we know of, is Ramanujan, the famous mathematician, who was a genius of a different order. His mind was open to the intuitive. He would receive in perception the relationships between infinity series and finite numbers and relationships. It is something so extraordinary and he would see and then note down. And he would say the goddess revealed it to me and to the physical mathematicians in England at that time because India was still colonised, they said, ‘oh, this is all just religious fantasy’. But for him it was the reality. And the kinds of things he wrote as formulae, some of them they already knew, some they did not and just attempt to prove these formulae made breakthroughs in mathematics. To this day there are formulae which have been validated with computers but not proved mathematically. But he just saw and described and each of those formulae opens new dimensions in mathematics and physics naturally.

I'm giving his example because there's once Thomas Hardy came to him, he was very sick. He came to the hospital, I think, he came in a taxi and he told Ramanujan oh that number of the taxi easy, he says a 4 digit number, was not at all interesting. Ramanujan says, ‘no, it's very interesting. It is the first number which is the sum of two cubes of something’, some relation, just like that, bum. He did not need to calculate; he knew numbers in a way that they were living powers, entities with relationships among themselves. It's like a family.

I went once in Rajasthan we had we went to a tribe which looks after camels from generations. It's as if their God-given duty is to care for camels. They know all their camels just like that. So I asked one guy, I was testing. I said, who is that camel, what is the name? The fellow blushed, it was a female camel, he said the name but he blushed, the relationship with the camel. Then I said but who are his parents? oh, he looked for that one, that one. If you go to a family among human beings of a few dozen people, a few hundred people, you will identify, oh that fellow is the son of this, grandchild of that, daughter of this, uncle, aunt. How do you know? Well, you know them like they're your family members, right? What if you knew numbers the same way? And not just counting up to hundred but into a million or more. What is the number for you at that point? It represents a truth, a reality that stands by itself. Now I'm going to bring this into context in a different way. You see, across the whole universe, 2 plus 2 is equal to 4. You can go on any planet, any galaxy.

You can go to the end of the universe on one end to the centre or the other end of the universe, it will still be 2 plus 2 is 4. You can go back in time to 13 billion years, you can go back to the Big Bang and it will still be 2 plus 2 equals 4 and at the end of the Big Crunch if there is such a thing or into eternity 2 plus 2 will be 4. Think about it when everything in the universe is changing, evolving or disintegrating, everything without exception is changing when all the galaxies that you can see today have disintegrated or been replaced or combined,-- 2 plus 2 will still be 4. Isn't that interesting, that the relationships between numbers are eternal truths and true everywhere in all space, all time, across eternity and infinity.

Now you can begin to glimpse why numbers are so important or why the relationships also become so important. Because the numbers can be important in themselves but their relationships reveal something and by combining their relationships, remember what Sri Aurobindo says, “can be made manifest and operative by a rhythm and process of substance”, you set up the relationships and you're activating the qualities that those relationships represent. You invoke a number, you're activating the quality that is being represented. You evoke a quality and the quality or the characteristics of that number will tend to emerge.

Sraddhalu (0:39:59):

I'll give an example. Everywhere in the universe you will find threes, things happening in threes, at the foundation always there are threes. In the most abstract or psychological level there is an observer, there is an observed and there is an observation, right? In the most material level in the atom, finally it boils down to proton, electron, neutron. Why everywhere you go, in the human nature, in the temperament of Nature, in the three modes of Nature,-- tamas, rajas, sattva, everywhere you find 3s. Why? Because at the very root of things, the triple is the expression of the triple of the sacchidananda. And if that is at the root of things, it is at the basis of everything, it will be seen in all emergent processes as triples. But there's also duals because after all everything is Purusha and Prakriti or consciousness and energy of consciousness and their play, isn't it? So there are the duals also which come everywhere, you'll find the duals everywhere. So in the threes you'll find dualities or in the dualities you'll find threes but the duals are as if an underlying reality everywhere. There's always an opposite, there's always a complementing as long as you're in the finite domains. As long as you're in manifestation, there will always be two aspects, sides, opposites, complementaries, whatever name you may give to it. That's a shift in relationships but there will be two, twos.

And so each number seems to correspond to some underlying truth or power or quality of the Satchitananda consciousness. And when that quality comes, the numbers will tend to resonate. Or you bring those numbers, those qualities will tend to be evoked or invoked. And now you get your key to magic - design, quantity, number. Playing with these you can evoke or invoke different qualities and properties. But there are certain numbers which although you may visualise physically, the visualisation is a mental visualisation and not a physical reality and yet they correspond to physical experiences in a way. I give an example. You see you can take any number and divide by any. The division process itself can be physically done by compass and a ruler. You can measure out and cut into twos and threes. And then you find although you can conceive of one divided by three, there is no physical way with ruler and compass to do a one divided by three. You can do 1 divided by 2 or divided by 4 but 1 divided by 3, you'll never get it exact. You can calculate in your mind and measure out in a ruler but you can't do it by physical process. Interesting. So, what would you do to represent one third? Try. It's very hard. You will get approximations and approximations of approximations to any level of precision you want but you will never get it, because somehow that's not a physical thing in itself. Yet you can represent it and you can make a mark with a pencil which is one third but it won't be exactly one third or there's no way physically to find the one third unless you go to mind and then back to physical. Interesting.

Something more interesting even, there are certain numbers that you cannot represent even in physical symbolism. So you can say 1/3rd,-- one divided by three. If you had to convert to a number you would do 0.3333333 unendingly, infinitely. Otherwise you can't represent it. So you can represent symbolically, one divided by three. by the relationship. So while numbers exist physically, the mental world has more numbers which you can represent by physical relationships of numbers, one divided by three. But now there are mental world realities, numbers, which you can't represent even by symbols and one of them is pi (𝜋), the ratio between a circle divided by the diameter. Take any circle. Draw a circle with a compass. Put a rule across the centre and do a diameter. You are seeing the ratio visually, but there is no way to do it as a calculation physically. You can of course do a mental calculation. You measure this with a string, measure that with a string, measure on a ruler, do a calculation and interestingly, you get a number which goes on 3.141596 etc., etc., and goes on repeating but unlike the 0.3333, you do not know what will come next. There is no pattern. You can go a million digits down and you will not find any repeating pattern. Go a million digits down and you will not find any repeating pattern. Go a ten million digits, a billion digits, a trillion digits down and you will not find any pattern that repeats. It seems to be entirely random but it's not because it's still a division. The number pattern seems to be random, never repeating, therefore it seems random and goes on unendingly. And there is no way to represent it by saying 1 divided by 3, the approximation you do is 22 divided by 7. But that's not exactly 𝜋.

You cannot represent by any numerical relationship the number that 𝜋 represent. And that's why it's called a transcendent number. It transcends even the ability to represent and yet it's a reality. It's true because you're seeing a circle and a diameter, isn't it? Amazing. So in numbers you find these relationships of physically representable numbers, numbers which you cannot represent physically but you can represent by relationships of numbers and then transcendent numbers that you cannot represent, at all except by inventing an arbitrary symbol. So we make pi from the Greek letter 𝜋. That's all. You can just speak of it. You can name it, but you cannot grasp it even in mind, mental representation. You can grasp it through the mind's perception, but not in a representation in a mental thought. Amazing.

Sraddhalu (0:46:40):

So numbers have the power to go through not only the physical and vital, but into the mental domain and as if bridge the boundary of the mental domain to something beyond mind. Now you see why playing with numbers can be so powerful for the purpose of invoking or evoking qualities and powers including transcending qualities and powers. You draw a circle, you draw a diameter and somehow amplify this relationship in your representation and you have as if invoked pi or what pi represents as a potential as a quality. Or in your mind you conceive of pi giving it the shape of the form, the letter 𝜋, but that's an arbitrary correspondence. Circles and lines or circles and triangles would be closer.

Now you see why in magic there is a lot of importance given to what is called sacred geometry. Well it's sacred because it corresponds to realities that belong to the realm of the sacred, now represented materially. It's not sacred because of an arbitrary correspondence. It is a reality which is being invoked when you play with those numbers. You will recall as children, in your textbooks, you were made to draw or calculate what were called magic squares. So, you had a 3 by 3 grid. So, 9 squares. You had to arrange numbers 1 to 9 in this grid in a way that no number is ever repeated and the total always comes to a certain fixed amount whether you count vertically, you add vertically or horizontally or diagonally, the total is still the same. And of course, there are several ways to do it but they are all basically mirror images of each other. That was called a magic square and then they gave you another square with four and you had a range of numbers to arrange so that the total was always the same. You could have a total now representing various numbers. They were all called magic squares. So as children we say, ah yes, it's called magic square. We never asked why is it magic? Oh, because it's surprising that you can total up. No, these squares were considered by the ancients to be powerful resonators, like an antenna because of its size resonates with a certain light wave or a radio wave and if your spacing of the antenna length or the atomic spacing of design is just right, the light passes right through or the light is absorbed or a specific frequency is absorbed invoked or evoked by resonance. So by playing with which numbers you arrange that horizontally, vertically, diagonally, it gave the same number total, you were as if tuning into a universal vibrational quality that corresponded to that total number, mapped out in physical space and acting as a resonator for that. It's as if that quality in the Satchitananda flows right through everywhere in the universe, but when you have a resonator it vibrates and therefore catches, absorbs and radiates it out. Like a radio wave and a radio receiver. Right now all the radio waves are passing right through you at all frequencies but when you tune a radio receiver for the coil and capacitor to resonate at that frequency it catches, it becomes non-transparent to that particular frequency which then is absorbed and therefore this starts resonating and then you tap the resonance, amplify the sound modulation and you have the knowledge, the information, whatever comes through.

Or you take a bell, hit it, what's the frequency? If it's a precise frequency, you can go elsewhere take another bell of the same frequency, hit it and and this starts resonating. Both are resonating. So if in the universe that particular frequency is passing right through and your bell is tuned, it will start resonating suddenly to that frequency. Evoking and therefore also invoking that vibration. Now imagine you have in your, let’s say, sacred space or magical space, for the moment I won't distinguish too much, a certain quality that you want to invoke. What do you do? Well, you create the magic squares corresponding to those qualities with the numbers arranged, but if you infuse intention, the mental content becomes stronger, as we saw with design also, intention can make a difference. So you concentrate on that deity or that psychological power or that spiritual idea. Write down the number as if fixing it, invoking it by a procedure, a process. There are several ways you could do it. You could go one, two, three, four, but jumping across the squares or you could write the squares and then you have geometrical patterns which also correspond to certain vibrational qualities. So vibrations, sounds, speech, corresponding to things, numbers, quantity, design all weave into a process, a ritual perhaps, but a process in which you are integrating and creating a resonant focus, which therefore absorbs, evokes, invokes or evokes. Into this you add colour, materials. So a lot of occultism magic ties to various deities, secondary powers, the nine planets and so on and each of these has colours, numbers, objects which resonate with it and this is mostly just told to you this is how it is. Why? Well that's how it is. There's actually a deeper cause for which you have to go again behind the veil to understand why.

Sraddhalu (0:53:10):

There are for example certain trees which flower, now I don't remember how many years it is, 120 years or so, but which corresponded to the orbital period of Jupiter.^[1] Every 120 years, if that's the number, I don't remember now, every so many years the tree would flower. Sometimes they would die out, but they would flower only after so many years, which corresponded to Jupiter's orbital period. And you'd wonder why? Well because Jupiter itself is a resonator of that deity or that consciousness and this tree is so to say expression of a mix or a large part of that consciousness. They're all mixtures but a large part of that consciousness. Colour red corresponds to Mars. Why? Well you will say Mars itself seems to be Reddish but it's not just that. Because of the common principle behind that Mars represents and the colour red represents that you have this correspondence, if you look at it at its deepest level. But on a very practical level, you say, okay, this colour corresponds to this. So there are people who want to amplify the planetary influences in their body based on their horoscope or the day of the week. So Tuesday is day of Mars. So each of the days of the week by the way correspond to planets. Monday is moon, Tuesday is Mars, Wednesday is Mercury and so on. So on that day they will wear red. On the Mercury day they will wear mercury colour as if to amplify that particular resonance passing through you. Of course you could do that. But what if you lost your calendar and suddenly you don't know which day it is today. And you just happen to wear the red on the day you felt like wearing red, you would still get the same result. But here you're trying to tune into a cosmic rhythm, let's say. All of these are processes of Nature. They represent a very low grade of magic, but effective nevertheless for its grade. A higher grade of magic could override all this, which we will come to shortly.

So in fact today's session is number 108 and when Alina mentioned that, I said, oh we should speak a little more about 108 but I would do a whole thing on it which would last about 20 minutes to half an hour, but maybe I will touch upon it in a certain way, very superficially. You see 108 is a number used when people count the beads, when they do mantra japa. And interestingly it's not just there in the Indian tradition, it has spread from India to various other religions and 108 somehow seems to be common. Why? Ah, it's a sacred number. 7, why is it? A sacred number. 3? A sacred number. Everything is sacred number but there are different qualities. But why 108? What does the quality it represents? So I will just try to share with you. You can't reduce it to a mental formulation although I will do that towards the end but to really understand it you have to experience what it is on a higher level. So I will go through a few examples and provoke you to appreciate it in a different way.

You see, Earth is the only planet that we know of in which the Sun and the Moon align perfectly with almost exactly the same size so that the Moon covers the Sun during the solar eclipse. Interesting. You go to any of the other planets, their moons are either too small or too big from the surface of the planet and they don't have this. When it's perfectly covered you see around the Sun the ring of Sun's corona which only earthlings can fully appreciate among all the planets that we know of. But this is possible because of a certain geometric relationship. That is, the distance from Earth to the Sun divided by the diameter of the Sun is the same of distance from Earth to Moon divided by diameter of the Moon so that you have visually the same size. It so happens that this ratio is 108. Earth to Sun distance divided by diameter of the Sun is 108. Earth to Moon distance divided by diameter of the Moon is 108. Interesting. So you have four astronomical measurements tied together by two 108s. It's almost too much to be a coincidence. But just in case, and this is the nature of the human mind, we say it has to be a coincidence, we were just lucky. So as if the intelligence behind is pushing it to you in a different way. You see, when there's a lunar eclipse, Earth's shadow falls on the moon which is almost exactly fitting the moon also. And this is possible because of one more measure which is the relationship between Earth's diameter and the Sun's diameter with these distances. That is if you take the Sun's diameter and place a string of beads which is the size of the Earth, you will get 108 beads exactly or 108 Earths which make the exact diameter of the Sun. These numbers are quite remarkably exact. So now you have five astronomical measurements,- diameter of Earth, diameter of moon, diameter of Sun, distance from Earth to moon, distance from Earth to Sun. All these are tied together with three 108s. Will you say it's a coincidence? Obviously not. There's something more to it you sense it although your mind cannot accept intuitively you sense this ah something so you're surprised and then the mind because it can't make logical sense it turns away and busies itself with other things.

Sraddhalu (0:59:03):

When you study astrology though we find there's something more with the relationship. We are told okay, we see for example that around the earth in one complete orbit every 27 days,  27 days and nights. And it takes four steps each day. That is every six hours, the moon takes one step. So four steps per day, 27 days to go around. The moon is taking 108 steps around the earth and in astrology each of these steps corresponds to a certain quality. Interesting. So we have at any given moment, oh there's one more thing. We have the nine planets which have significant influence on us astrologically. Remember all this is at the level of the vital plane, physico-vital, nervous system, not even mental. Only indirectly through the vital excitation, it may affect the mind. But mind is free of these. So it's not a spiritual truth. These are very low-grade realities. They are operative as weather patterns are. One need not give them more importance. For those of you who are interested, do look at the early part of this series where we have discussed astrology in great detail to know its limitations. So you have nine planets and then you have 12 zodiac signs. Each planet can move in each of these zodiac signs to produce a particular combination which is distinctive. 9 x 12 gives you 108. So, 9 planets on the zodiac, 108 influences, Moon having 108 steps, Earth, Sun, Moon in all their relationships of measurements, 3 times 108. All these 108 are swimming around you in astrology, right? Equally there are certain other symbolic sciences of Indian dance, the science of mudras and so on, where again you find 108 happening many times. I recall something with the human body design also 108, I don't go into that too much. But all this is to suggest that somehow this 108 corresponds to something quite essential for earth life, for human beings and even for our psychological formation.

And then we get the clue in our tradition in the symbolic, deeply symbolic story of Sati who is human, wants to marry Shiva, unite with Shiva, but she's a human being born of the five elemental substances of the human body and its limitations. So she is yearning for Shiva. Eventually though, and the whole thing is very deeply symbolic, although it has its own historical representation, her father is Prajapati, the creator of human society. He founds the values of human society, organizes society. So you can see what it represents in terms of consciousness, a part of the mind. And Sati, his daughter, yearns for Shiva, the divine Lord and she marries Him. But there's some whole event that takes place. Her father insults Shiva. She can't bear the insult. She jumps into fire and dies. Shiva is grief-stricken. He takes her body and in his grief he loses all senses. And he is dancing around all over the universe. The universe's balance is broken because he is not doing his work of maintaining the universe and everything begins to break down. So Vishnu releases his disc and cuts up the body of Sati into 54 parts and those 54 parts fall on to earth. Each of the body part corresponds to a particular vibration of consciousness, quality of consciousness which is embodied in the function of that part and it falls on a physical location on earth which maps out to the entire region of India and each of these locations now is a sacred location and there's a temple there of Sati and that part represented and that quality of consciousness of the feminine Prakriti because it is, Sri Aurobindo says, it is the holocaust of the Purusha who chooses to manifest and descend into matter but much more, he says, it is the holocaust of the Prakriti, who chooses to become physical Nature, losing Herself in the process to manifest.

And this is that movement of Prakriti establishing in 54 locations, 54 aspects but Shiva can never be separate although he holds a oneness he can never be separated from her. So he is present in each of these 54 and 54 plus 54 makes for 108. So we find in this number 108, the complete meeting of Purusha and Prakriti in manifestation. And you will see this represented in the pattern that is known as the Sri Yantra. Those of you who know about Sri Vidya, it is the particular design of Sri Yantra which is made of so many triangles and the square patterns around, which is representing the Divine Mother. Sri is the highest divine Shakti. Yantra- machine, vehicle or the mechanism would be the proper translation, which embodies, represents, invokes or evokes by resonance, the consciousness of the Divine Mother. You look at that pattern, you count the number of triangles, the vertical and horizontal triangles representing, sorry, vertical descending triangles and ascending triangles representing Shiva and Shakti and their union which creates the complete manifestation.

Sraddhalu (1:05:12):

If you recall there is a particular symbol of the Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s symbols overlaid which is the symbol of the International Center of Education, the ashram school, which Mother named the perfect union of Ishwara and Shakti. But you see something of that in this Sri Yantra. But, if you count the number of crossing points, I'm told it is 108. At least that's what you're told traditionally. I have not counted, but I believe it to be true. But the idea again being Shiva-Shakti unifying, uniting for the complete manifestation represented by their combination in 108. And somehow 108 is so deeply rooted in the relationship of Sun, Moon, Earth astronomically, astrologically that it seems as if their manifestation has a special focus for not only this physical earth of our planet, but for the human consciousness itself. Perhaps there is an equivalent in each solar system in its evolution, I don't know. I would believe so, but at least for us it is something special. Now all this is to highlight the sense of 108 and I have given it a kind of a mental articulation but if you try to feel all the things behind that it carries, you can feel it is a transcending truth into which we give a mental form. And of course we can capture it but do not capture the tail and say this is the creature. The tail is the tailend that leads you to the full body and so use this as an entry point of thought to the perception of something which is bordering the edge of a transcendent perception in the old tradition of sacred geometry, sacred numerology and so on, of which what they teach today is a very crude applied form which is almost disgusting when you look at people saying, oh this is lucky number, that is unlucky, it's so stupid.

Numbers are mystic, spiritual almost truths and even transcendent mental ideas opening to spiritual truths and if you meet them in the right way hold them, receive them, play with them, arrange them, it's as if you are representing mentally and even physically then a higher almost spiritual truth, principle, reality, quality, property, invoking, evoking, aligning to it in some way. This was the whole concept of temple construction and the location of temples, the arrangement of temples, their relationships, sometimes aligning to the zodiac signs and so on. If you look at the Great Pyramid of Egypt, actually the three big pyramids, they are slightly different in size and slightly offset, not in a straight line. Although perfectly aligned north-south, why are they not in a straight line? Because when you take the zodiac of what is called the zodiac symbol of the Archer, the three big stars which represent the belt of Orion, they map exactly over the three pyramids, the brightness corresponding to the size of the pyramid and locations slightly offset. The dagger of Orion is seen with three smaller pyramids on the side and the rest of the body of the Orion, to each of those points proportionally in Egypt you will find temples located. It's almost as if the entire zodiac sign of Orion is physically mapped out in a huge space perfectly aligned astronomically. What was the point? Capture that vibration and imprint it fix it on earth. And if you look at all the ancient civilizations going back to period almost 12,000 years ago when Atlantis is supposed to have sunk, you will find a belt of all these temples all around the earth. The belt is not exactly on the equator, it is slightly offset by about 12 degrees and it represents, if you want to say, in the subtle physical body of the earth as if the entire belt of zodiac represented physically through a chain of symbols, temples corresponding to each of these, as if they were mapping the physical earth to some higher heavenly realm, to fix it, to align it, to balance it, to invoke it, I do not know exactly, maybe a combination of all these. Interesting.

Sraddhalu (1:09:56):

So this was the great importance they gave to this design, quantity, number and the rhythms and process of substance by which you can evoke or invoke. And so this gives you kind of a basis for the science of occult knowledge. Understanding how nature is working behind the scenes, behind the curtains, multiple layers down and then using those principles directly. I will just look at the question. Okay, so that's alright. So there's no particular question so far. So I will just continue with this. We have looked at the power of symbols, magic squares, colours, numbers, shapes, etc. Speech comes with that.

But speech is much more close to the mind. And so there what you capture is qualities of consciousness corresponding to physical vibrations of sound which is the basis of Sanskrit language itself or the original Deva Bhasha, the lingua of the gods. When you take an experience and translate it into a vibration in the mind, to vibration in the vital, to vibration in the physical, there are qualitative additions that are made until finally  you have the sound that comes. These become the seed sounds. They are called the... what are the mantra root? The root sounds which goes Heem, Him, Hrim, Shim, they correspond to the different chakras and on the petals of the chakras correspondingly are the alphabetical letters and the entire alphabet is mapped out through all the petals of all the chakras in sequence. This is amazing if you think about it. Now, apart from the fact that it is geometrically perfect in a sense, here comes again the occult knowledge. Each of the chakras corresponds to certain levels of consciousness and functions of consciousness and each of the petals correspond to specific functions of that grade of consciousness. So the letters, the sounds, the articulation of those in a way activates those vibrations. The sequencing, remember the key word Sri Aurobindo uses, rhythm and process of substance. So the sequencing and the rhythming of them in language is as if unfolding certain qualities. You speak out those mantras, even if they don't make too much sense to you, you speak them out in a sequence and there is a particular result. Sometimes the result is almost physically vivid.

Brahman, the word, the name Brahman. Why Brahman? Observe the way you articulate it. There is a pressure of air built up. Bha - So first is a build-up of air with an intention. You see your mind has already willed to express. The will is held back. It is not given form of manifestation. It builds, builds, builds as if life energy building and then suddenly release in a burst like the Big Bang. Brahman, Big Bang bursting out into creation, into manifestation. But in the very burst out is the rippling rhythm. Rhythms of space, rhythms of time, cycles forming, so the brrrrr and then there is the release in exhaustion, brrraah. Now pure force sustaining, spreading out equally. In physics terms they will say it is the inflationary mode of the Big Bang. Once it is released the sudden inflation and an evening out, a stretching out which forms the form of the physical universe. Brah and then the ‘Man’. ‘Man’ also corresponds in sounds to man-mind. So the initial oneness into multiplicity now sustained by the cosmic mind which works in the divided consciousness. Brahman and then the fading out. So it says literally a physical representation in vibrational quality and in sound quality of the whole movement of creation. So it's very interesting to see some of these correspondences and you get a glimpse of the power of the gods.

Why is it the language of the gods? Because the language itself is a physical representation of spiritual and psychological and energetic vibrations all aligned perfectly to represent the vibrational quality. So when you speak in Sanskrit with a certain intention behind, there's a tremendous power that goes into it. All human languages are really degradations of it and when the degradation has gone too far, there's a tendency for the language to return to find a close enough sound or quality which matches the meaning we have given to it. For example in the English language I don't know the root of the word cut but the nature of the sound cut has this incisive sharp sharp, cutting effect. Harsh. The word has a harshness. Soft. Ending with the ter, but the ter we tend to de-emphasize when you want to really make the sense of soft. So the words themselves, although originating, then distorting, losing their way, mentalizing of language, come back to try to give vibrational quality that corresponds to their current meaning. There are some words which have gone through quite extraordinary loops. At one time I had made a list, I don't have them now.  So all this is to tell you the basis in occult science for the use of mantras and sounds, but of course amplified by the meaning we give to it. So certain mantras have an effect even if you don't understand the meaning. Other mantras are where the meaning is stronger, you amplify and then the words may not matter if the focus is on the meaning directly. You can say a mantra in English, an intention, I want this to happen, and said with a certain clear focus, it will have the same effect as a mantra stated without perhaps the same degree of concentration.

Sraddhalu (1:16:20):

So I just look at the questions which have come up about three, somebody was playing with number three, okay. Relationship between three and four. You'll see interestingly, the four soul powers,-- the Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra, the four qualities of the soul powers which make for a complete human being but they are soul powers when they flow out their expression is in Nature. Nature itself operates in three modes and the three modes are represented or particularly concentrated in the three parts of our body,-- mental, vital and physical layers. So four qualities operating on three modes make for 12. 12 distinct kinds of combinations of their play which would be a way of mapping your personality by the way or measuring the degree of development of these four qualities in your three modes. Interesting. So you can map a person through a questionnaire to form a grid, so to say, of four by three and get a map and then say, ah, these are your weak points, these are the things you need to amplify, strengthen, or integrate. And it would be a way of, it would be a whole science, a technology, you might say, of self-development or improvement or mapping or matching teams.

At one point I had worked with a friend from Chennai to do something like this and then he developed it much more, it was just an initial nudge. You can look at two people and their compatibilities using these 12 and 12 matrix. Just to show you, you could take any principle like this and build a whole technology around it and it will be a big deal. You may give it a system, give your name to it, go and sell it out in the public. It stays for a while as a fashionable thing and fizzles out until the next fashion comes. They all have truths but you cannot exaggerate beyond a point and make too rigid a system out of it. At some point it loses the truth behind. So multiples of three similar squares were considered very important in the symbolism. You see, I have not gone too much into the math symbolism.

Any number can relate to any other number, right? But every number can relate to itself. So squares of numbers represented in their chain something very important. The self-awareness, you meeting yourself in a way, each number meeting itself now is represented by the square power. And that's why square was very important. And square, you see, represents the supermind; actually the cube in three dimensions, but in two dimensions it is a square. Why? So you feel something there, interesting symbols there. Yes, bija mantra, the root is called bija, they are seed sounds.

And somebody asked the question, “how do you know if you have a occult sense, aptitude or talent?”. All of us have occult sensitivities. Occult is nothing but hidden behind the surfaces. We all have it. At this level, because the inner consciousness exists already, well, it picks up things. The question is how conscious are we of it in our surface parts? Or from our surface, how much can we turn in to receive consciously. This can be developed. So my focus would not be so much on the occult side, but because of the very nature of the Integral Yoga to become entirely conscious of yourself, especially when your awareness turns inward to become conscious of the inner mind, inner vital and eventually the inner physical, as you become conscious of your subtler bodies and layers, automatically things which are imprinting on those layers come into your awareness. Equally, automatically when you are aware of something, you have the power to influence it. So when you are aware of something within you, obviously you can control it, restrain it, direct it, activate it, de-emphasis it, or direct it as a force even in action. But once you feel it within you and manipulate it within you, the same equivalent quality of consciousness felt around you in the space around you, you can feel and again manipulate.

Sraddhalu (1:20:36):
So somebody says there is disorientation when you grow too rapidly.

Sraddhalu (1:20:40):
Yes, of course it can happen because as a child I remember when suddenly my height shot up. Within a period of two years, I went from being the shortest in class to the tallest. Till then, on my finger, I knew this bit was one centimetre, that much was one inch. So I could actually put my finger on an object and know exactly whether it was one centimetre or two. Now suddenly my body grew and my hands didn't match anymore my sense of space. So I'm walking, I will lose balance slightly as if I have to regain balance. Of course it was a passage of a few weeks, all of us may have had it. When there's a sudden shift, it takes a while for your nature to adjust. A sudden shift in consciousness also may have a slightly disorienting initial sense, but you know, your deeper truth is your inner reality. When you awaken to it, the outer gets disoriented, the inner gets relief, finally. And so the adaptation is quite fast. The problem is only if you resist the shift. Then you are as if fighting, two different parts fighting. Instead you relax, allow the inner to settle and flow, and your disorientation very quickly dissolves.

So there are other questions which are too, which demand too much of an explanation so I will skip that. There are also questions which are outside the scope of our discussion so I'll keep them for later.

But so in geometry there are degrees. This is also very important, degrees of 9, 45, 72, 280, 720. They are all natural divisions of the 360 degrees. Now why 360 degrees? Wouldn't it have been much more convenient to have 100 degrees? Wouldn't it have been much more convenient to have 10 hours or 20 hours or 100 hours in a day that you could divide by tens? Why week, days of the week are 7? Why not have 10 days in a week, right? It would have been so much simpler. Imagine this complication, 60 seconds make a minute, 60 minutes make an hour, 24 hours make a day and then 30 days make a month and then 12 months make a year. Why all these arbitrary numbers? And interestingly they are common across all cultures of the world, across time. There's a very good reason for that and that's why we have 360 degrees in your compass measurement also. All these derive from astrology. They were a perception of the rhythms of the universe impacting us. You see the moon rotating around the earth in 27 days. It's not exactly 30 days. But the earth going around the Sun in 365 days, not exactly 360. But the fact is there are 12 of the signs of the zodiac. Why 12? It's actually 3 x 4. Remember what we discussed earlier, 3 of the 4 soul qualities, 3 modes of nature. That's one way of looking at the 12. There are 12, you can't help it. Fortunately, our earth has 365 days. So we can round it off to 360 for astrological calculations and correct for the 5. Fortunately the moon is 27, close enough to 30 that we can map it close enough to the month and then make corrections.

So now you have lunar calendars and solar calendars and there's a slight difference. But they have different effects. The lunar calendars capture more closely the vital worlds and their influences and rhythms. The solar calendar much for the physical and mental worlds and their rhythms and effects. If you can align these suitably, you will find a shift takes place in the solar calendar. For example, 23rd of December is when the sun reverses and the day becomes longer. So the light changes balance. In the astral worlds, light grows stronger than dark, not yet fully amplified, but stronger in power of effectuation. And it's as if passages open for the transition to higher worlds in the subtle worlds, but the full activation of it happens with the full moon that follows that. Interesting. So moon as if activates into the vital world but all this was the basis of occult knowledge and I have actually during the time, at one time I was studying all these things to understand the science. They went in such precision in astrology that you could reduce it down to let's say Monday is moon because at that particular time at the point of sunrise the particular alignment is of the moon rhythm so that's called the day of the moon. But within that you have all seven cycles repeated. Within each of those there are seven cycles repeated and you could pin it down to a single second even. And then in one of the things I had read, this person made a lot of money by going to the horse races. At the start time of the horse race, he would see which was the particular pattern. So today will be moon under that Saturn, under that Venus at the time when the race started and that would give a certain number and he would match it to the number of the horse and bet on that horse and win. Interesting. Mostly works, not necessarily always. There are many other factors also involved.

Sraddhalu (1:26:06):

But this is just to say how far one can push all these symbolic plays and yes, you can make a very big deal about it. But, and I will now move to closure. All these are at the level of Nature's working. And the bulk of it at the level of the vital physical nature, at least astrology. Numbers, music, open to higher mental realms. And number particularly can even open out to something that belongs properly to the higher mind, or even glimpses of the infinities from the higher mind upwards. But still mental in character. And there are infinities of infinities. And the whole cantor infinities, for those of you who know it is a fascinating exploration which maybe we can do someday in this series but having said that all these belong to the processes of Nature. Remember it is Nature's attempt to represent, evoke or invoke by process of Nature energy that which belongs properly to Satchitananda in its free operation or is secretly concealed in Satchitananda behind this flow of energy, hidden in the inconscience and emerging out of that in evolutionary processes.

The most important symbol in this technology, magic, occultism is the one symbol which can represent the full total potential of the Satchitananda and that is the evolved human consciousness. Your mind-life body as an alignment, as a whole being to whatever degree of evolution you have is capable of embodying all these levels of consciousness and opening to higher ranges and even to the infinity of the potential of Satchitananda. So whatever we may have emerged from the unconscious as a symbol, after all everything emerging is a symbol, we are the most complete, potentially the most developed, the most capable to embody the fullness of the divine freedom. Forget all other symbols. They're all there to help you. Don't bind yourself to them. Focus rather on the symbol that you represent, the potential that you represent, which is a symbolic representation of the self and the soul that you are. The psychic being supported by the self behind. Journeying through journeying through time and space to develop that potential and symbolically represented through mind, through life energies and through physical matter. But there's a point where that which fills and is represented by the symbol fills it and replaces symbolism by direct action. That would be the transformation. The full liberated action of the consciousness operating in material density in full freedom. That is the transcendence of the three gunas, the three modes of nature which we have discussed before. And there the soul consciousness can directly will shape itself and express whatever you wish to be or to manifest.

When Mother was asked something about some occult things, she said, ‘Oh, those things I had learned months ago, long ago, I have now forgotten’. But when she needed to do something, she could simply will it and do it. Why? What is your will? Your will is the limited projection of the divine Tapas, which is the original creative Will, by which the universe is born, by which you entered into manifestation. Recover your will and this power of will, not merely mental ego will, but the spiritual divine Will behind of which, this is a distortion. Aligned to that, that Will can now freely manifest whatever it chooses to be. And that will be your spiritual evolution. So we make the transition from the occult framework of knowledge to the spiritual science and the transcendence, liberation, utter freedom from all processes that occultism requires or the occult knowledge requires or Nature generally requires. Complete freedom of the Purusha freely flowing and wielding the energy of creation of the Sakti, not bound to any process. So the greatest truth is this. The lesser truth is our mind is a product of our body, a greater truth is that our body can be influenced by the mind and the mental will, but the greatest truth is we are first and foremost spiritual beings, we are spirit, we are the full potential of the divine creation with the full freedom of the Creation, with no conditioning and no binding of means required. And the more we awaken to that, the more we manifest that, the more we fulfil our role in this Creation and the Divine purpose in this Creation.

Think about it, dwell on this, realign your priorities, understand all this knowledge. Wonderful. Use it if it comes your way. Not important. Work on your own freedom of consciousness and the direct experience and expression of whatever you choose to manifest, by passing all limitations. Destiny is the free choice of the soul, of the self. As we awaken to the divine consciousness, as we open ourselves to the Divine Mother and invoke her free action as she wills, which is our own highest will, we have the miraculous intervention bypassing any occultism or process. And every day can become a spiritual miracle when we align ourselves thus. And this should be our primary aspiration.

So I have touched upon this field, Secrets of Occult Science. I think you've got a good sense of the secrets. Not gone too much into the application because it's not so important. Once you understand the processes, you know their limitations. And maybe some other time, we will develop some of these ideas. But for now we hold this greatest truth that we are spiritual beings with the spiritual freedom that we have to discover, invoke and then evoke into manifestation.

Sraddhalu (1:33:10):
Take a moment to concentrate.

Namaste.