EWS #125: Questions on the Mother and Soul Relationships
Aug 20, 2022
Alina (0:00:42):
Namaste and good evening everyone. Welcome back to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu.
Namaste Sraddhalu.
[Sraddhalu] Namaste, happy to be with all of you.
[Alina] We are happy to continue our series. Today part 125 and our main topic will be questions on the Mother and soul relationships. During our discussions you may freely ask questions in the chat box related with our topic for today.
I will ask Sraddhalu to give us some answer on Linda's first question: “Sometimes, I'm not certain when reference is made to the Mother, whether that is referring to the Mother or to the Divine Mother and whether it matters that my mind understands the distinction”.
Sraddhalu (0:01:48):
Yes this question comes and I think will come up more and more prominently over decades especially as this particular form in which we have known the incarnation that we call the Mother of Sri Aurobindo ashram, as this particular aspect of form becomes less prominent to children who grow up later, who are born later and so on. We are at a point of transition in a sense. There are many people alive who have had a direct contact with this form of the Mother.
So I am going to answer this on several levels, beginning first with the most general distinction of the Mother and the Divine Mother. Of course when we speak of an incident or a narration or specific words from the Mother, it is what this particular form that we know as the Mother spoke, wrote, incident around her, etc. Otherwise we will speak of the presence of the Divine Mother or the descent of the Divine Mother's Force and at which point it is the Divine Mother. But is there a distinction? If you feel a distinction, then there is one; if you don't feel a distinction there is none.
But I want to elaborate on this point of the distinction. I'll share an incident when my biological mother went to meet the Mother the first time. Yes, she had been told certain things but her first instinct was to ask because she'd been told from her childhood by her father that don't just bow down to anybody who is a spiritual seeming person because not all are genuine. And so her first instinct was to ask I will bow down only if you are that, that Divine Mother whom I have been worshiping and so from within her came the question, are you that? And immediately the Mother responded with an affirmation, with a gesture of affirmation but also at the same time the direct contact of the affirmation and the confirmation. Having felt that and then having recognized her as that same Divine Mother, of course she then bowed down and subsequently when she came down she had the darshan, the vision of Shiva just on the Samadhi in his huge poise. These were direct experiences confirming the identity.
Others may not have had things in such vivid form. Sometimes it is only a soul's recognition. You are reading something and you realise, oh my god, this is it. I remember this was a Frenchman, I think Gilles from Auroville, who shared how sitting in France he starts reading Sri Aurobindo's writings and something deep within awakes and says this is it, this is Truth speech. The recognition of this kind does not take place in the intellect, it does not take place in the emotions, it is always the soul recognition. Or another incident which I heard just a couple of days ago from a friend who in Gujarat was bored of reading his medical texts, asked someone give me some other book which I can read. He brings a book in Gujarati translation of Sri Aurobindo's life and as he reads it there's the recognition ah this is it. The reading story narration it must have been very superficial, it was a small slim book, but the soul's recognition was distinct.
My teacher MP Pandit narrates how when he was hardly 10 or 12, he goes into his father's library of law books and you know how these are, they all look exactly the same and they are the law, court cases, judgments and so on going across decades. They all look exactly the same yet his hand goes to a particular book and when he opens it he sees Alipore bomb case and there his eyes fall on the name Aurobindo Ghosh and that triggers automatically within him the repetition of the name and this is so significant that he writes to his teacher Kapali Shastriya who is in the ashram in Pondicherry but without, because it was a secret thing, without saying that he is in Sri Aurobindo's ashram. And so Shastriya writes back to him because again they had to maintain secrecy because of the British government wanting to prosecute Sri Aurobindo. So he maintains secrecy by writing, as you grow up you will know the full import of this experience.
I am pointing to these as examples of the soul's recognition of the Divine in this particular form of incarnation in the biological body. When the recognition is there, it is not always felt in the mind or in the emotions or even the physical senses. It is sometimes felt, sometimes it is not. Eventually though, if the soul's recognition is clear and persistent, it begins to overlay. And then the distinction becomes irrelevant. This would not be the case for every spiritual teacher. You see, one can and one does in every tradition look upon one's teacher as a spiritual teacher, guide, master, incarnation, avatar. One could give any degree of identification with the divine; not all embody the divine consciousness, not all embody them even completely.
So in this case, we go by the soul's recognition that yes, this is an embodiment, this is completeness and at least for our soul's recognition that is good enough. And at some point then when that merges sufficiently into the outer personality, the distinction is immaterial. This form of the Mother and the Divine Mother, this is just an individual expression of the Divine Mother; embodiment in individual physical form. Think of it this way, the status of the Divine Mother as Divine and Mother, first is in her transcendence above space and time, where she is the direct creative energy of the Divine Lord, who moves to manifest and his energy of movement of manifestation is the Divine Mother. And she is, but in her transcendence with the Divine Consciousness, but has power to manifest, who then takes on an aspect of the flow into manifestation into space-time, literally forming space-time and then is in the cosmos as immanent as energy of the Divine Mother, even as the consciousness of the Lord is also present simultaneously.
And so the distinction is one more of aspect in this case. One is the energetic aspect of creative power to manifest, the other is the consciousness that envisions, that conceives or that projects the energy or one is the state of dynamism, the other is the state of rest of the same consciousness. But these are again mental terms we give. And then from there, there are moments when that Divine Mother's consciousness, energy, Presence, incarnates not necessarily in a physical body but into a space, in physical space and so as you sit in concentration you feel the Presence settling, filling, surrounding and it is Her, but you do not have a form into which, a container into which you can fit her. Or sometimes your consciousness awakens to her perception and you see her everywhere in the universe. But again depending on the poise of consciousness in which you perceive, you may see differently. You may need to reduce in your power of perception, reduce to a form or be able to perceive Her directly in Her poise of consciousness which is free of form or which includes all form. There are many ways in which you can perceive and each of these could depend on your state, your receptivity, the part from which you perceive.
(0:10:54):
I remember an incident which is from one of the, so to say builders of the Gloria land farm of the ashram, I don't remember his name, Manindra. He narrated this incident that at some point he felt because the Mother is here in Pondicherry, he was on the outskirts involving a drive of at least half an hour without traffic and he felt he had been, he was too far away and he went to the Mother and said something to that effect and she told him, but I am there with you all the time and then there is the physical mind that says, yeah, but I don't see, I don't feel. And then he had this incident, he narrated how, I think he was working with some machine, tractor or something, and he fell. And he was, his head knocked on the ground. But from the point from there when he got up and looked, he saw the entire periphery of the Gloria land farm, everywhere he saw the Mother standing.
Now when you look at, when you listen to that kind of a description, you are wondering how can she be standing everywhere. Is it like 20, 30, 40, 50 different biology forms, shapes that you will see everywhere on the boundary. But that's how he described it, I saw her everywhere, standing everywhere. And obviously what he was perceiving was on a deeper level of consciousness in which he perceives her immanence everywhere and his imaging power of the mind or intelligence or the more physical part of the mind which needed the knock to kind of wake up to its own deeper truth that is translating it into form that he can recognize and understand. So registration can take place on many levels. There is a deeper registration where she is everywhere and there is a sense of the boundary and then there is this other part, the more physical part which needs to image it in physical form and so on.
All this is to show you that there are many parts within which we can receive, perceive, enter in relation with and according to the part’s capacity and requirement, the perception changes, is different or is of a different order or grade of consciousness altogether. Another incident which comes to mind is when my teacher was in the body, so it would be late 80s; one of the devotees in the United States had in a family her father passed away. They were in the church. She and her mother were standing in front of the coffin and then this woman sees next to the coffin the physical form of the Mother in subtle body obviously but visible to her open eyes. Standing there as if giving reassurance that she is taking care of him and there is nothing to worry. And at the same time that she sees her, her mother who was a Christian Catholic I think, said, “oh look there is Virgin Mary”.
So the form of the Divine Mother is registered in your consciousness in the way that you are familiar, in which you would recognize her, in the form in which you would recognize her. But herself as presence is not bound to any one particular form. And therefore, when she is present in a more individualised aspect, you see her in the way you would naturally register. So there is this universal aspect of an immanence which also then individualises in a sense of a form, but then each one would tend to register the form in the way that is more familiar to them.
Again there are degrees, there could be a more extreme material aspect of the form, in which case you may not recognize it in a familiar way and you would still have recognition if you took pains to become very quiet, you would have the recognition from the quality of consciousness. And we know of cases where there have been people, one of the incidents, I don't remember who it was, somebody was coming to Pondicherry, he was sick in the train and then he remembers seeing a lady who came all dressed in white and wearing what was a very strange headgear, who came and gave him some food and then he comes to Pondicherry in his sickness of fever, he eats, he comes to Pondicherry and then later he sees a photograph of the Mother wearing the kitty cap which was used for the physical education activities and says that's the one. And so if one has the deeper perception, the particular concretization of form does not cover. When you do not have the inner perception, the form may get so concretized that you would still see as almost a material form but not recognize what was behind.
(0:16:05):
I remember another incident which was narrated to us by a devotee in Delhi. He was very sick for many years and he was sick for many years and in Delhi, at some point the family had called doctors and at some point they called some tantric who would perhaps intervene in more occult way and the man comes to his bedroom, looks at him and then says, you should have died long ago. You're still alive because of the protection of the Divine Mother. And then there's a photograph of the Mother on the wall and this person who is the patient says but you know that's the form that we worship. He says yes that's the one, this is the same Mother that we worship. He had sufficient inner perception to be able to recognize through the material aspect of form and see through to the Divine Mother behind that or through that.
The aspect of the material form is also interesting because it allows a degree of materialisation of a certain vibration and to the extent that you recognize it you can assist in its influence to the extent you don't recognize it, it will still have an effect. I recall a friend of ours in Sri Lanka, they narrated the story how there was a fire in the house and the fire came all the way to the edge where there was Mother's photograph and stopped there, didn't burn anything further. And so literally there's a physical vibration when you invoke or establish the image with that concentration, with that intention, there's a physical vibration which emanates even from the picture.
So all these are to show you there are degrees in which one can perceive the individualization of the Divine Mother and then there are layers of consciousness from which we perceive and then the blending of all these layers and then there is that one experience where you can actually perceive the Divine Mother not only in physical form but through the physical form and experience her immanence and her cosmic aspect and all the way to her transcendence and in one continuity. But at that point this physical form is only one of the vehicles through which she is expressing. In every form, in every being, in every object, in everything, you have the same expression of her consciousness equally. And in this particular form that we are familiar with, there is a particularization or a special kind of relationship and that's about it, but then she's everywhere. And even as she's everywhere, she transcends the limitations of the form and one perceives and relates to her in this way.
All these are experiences one could have and increasingly one should deepen into that experience for the completeness. I would suggest for those who are interested to have a better appreciation of this higher or deeper aspects of the Divine Mother, to look at the evening's series number 88, which is called Worship of the Divine Mother. It was a special talk given on an occasion. I think it was on, it was for some some religious or spiritual occasion. But there you will find a greater elaboration of her transcendence and immanence and the individual aspects.
In the Indian tradition we have so many aspects of the Divine Mother and each time the name tells you what aspect it is and then sometimes you take a single aspect and then through that you try to get all the other aspects and so that builds many complex traditions. All of them in a sense represent the Divine Mother but particularizations are aspects. There is of course the aspect of Parvati which corresponds to the Shiva aspect. There is equally the aspect of the Lakshmi with Vishnu or with Sri Krishna, there would be, depending on the variations of tradition, the aspect that corresponds. And within those there are independent aspects which are more generic and then from the generic aspect an attempt again to get specialised aspects and so on. It keeps happening that you will see in a tradition a glimpse of the Lord or the Divine Mother and then it tends to get so particularised that again the tradition needs to renew by widening it to multiple aspects and then again it gets particularised and again renews. So you will find this play happening which is of course the nature of the play in the cosmos of the Divine Mother.
You have these texts which are quite fascinating also. Lalita Sahasranama. Lalita is the Divine Mother in her aspect as the one who plays, who enjoys the play and so the originator of the leela, the divine play, and her aspect of her playfulness is highlighted. And so Sahasranama, the thousand names of the Divine Mother and as when different aspects of her are invoked, each is as if those names emanate or amplify or even actualize, materialise, incarnate vibrations corresponding to those thousand aspects. Why thousand? Because that represents the multiplicity in its full manifestation. And so there are many traditions of this kind which go into hundred names or thousand names and so on. But each of those you could take and that would become a gateway and entrance into her again, into her cosmic aspect. And you have specialised lineages catching an aspect as such and then again renewing to deepen.
(0:22:20):
I am going into this in some detail simply to looking ahead at the future, because this question will come up in other ways. Looking at this incarnation of the Mother, we recognize also specialised aspects in her photographs and Mother spoke of this sometimes. And so each one of us has naturally a special photo that we like in particular because that resonates with our hearts, our soul's need at that moment or during that period of life or resonates with our temperament and overall turn of our aspiration and so on. And there will be things like this also in our relationship with the Mother. Sometimes certain aspects come forward and other aspects. It's interesting we've had many people having visions or experiences of their Mother as I narrated one before, where they see her with the kitty cap and that's one of her very dynamic aspects when she's working in the physical consciousness. And these are questions of experience finally.
Ultimately, what is necessary is the deeper awakening of the psychic perception which cuts through the distinctions of form and sees the Divine Mother as she truly is in all her aspects or in all her levels of manifestation. And it is there in that part that we know ourselves as a part of her. And it is there that we have the most intimate, the most close relationship with her. And when that grows more and more or when that influence fills us more and more, this distinction becomes irrelevant.
So I think I have taken the question as a starting point, having answered it on its most immediate level also. I have taken it as a starting point to something much deeper that we will see. We do have strange things happening even in Auroville and in our ashram where students, teachers will make comments where they don't feel a relationship with the Mother. With students in the ashram school who will say, but why do you talk about her? We don't feel it. Or teachers in the school in Auroville who say, oh, she's is that, there's a picture of her. The child asks who is that? Oh, that's an old woman. That's she wrote some things. Stop there. They feel nothing. And you will have people like that.
And then you will have people who look at the photograph and feel immediately the joy of the soul's recognition and the influence filling you and your work at once. And that's alright, according to each one's need and readiness or recognition. I have seen also people in whom the inner recognition was there but the outer mind formation was stuck with certain ideas and fixed images and could not see through here. Although the inner recognition was there, they felt the call, they felt the affinity of the soul's closeness to the Divine Mother and yet here was a fixed mental idea coming often from religious or past formations that ‘oh but this can't be that’, okay then it's not for you, at least in that part, but in the other part where there was a recognition it is, it is she. So all this is just to give you a big complex picture of all that, all the variations in the experience.
I think we've done justice to the question using it as a starting point. We can go to the next.
Alina (0:26:04):
Aditya is asking, “How is mother going into subtle world, in subtle bodies, different? Or is it same from what Ashwapati did in the Book of the Traveller of the Worlds?
Sraddhalu (0:26:24):
Yes, in the text of Savitri, Sri Aurobindo uses the narrative of the story in the Mahabharata as a base to draw something much more complete. But at the same time, he points out that even that story in the Mahabharata is the remnant of something more deep, more profound that has actually taken place. And so he as if draws back that thing and then uses it as a base to give as complete an expression as possible through human language and human vocabulary and the form of ideas that the human mind can hold to something which goes really profound.
In the narration of Ashwapati's journey, starting through the subtle physical worlds, as he goes all the way up the hierarchy of worlds and then into the deeper ranges of all these worlds and describes their relationships between worlds, the denizens, and beings and powers of those worlds and so on, he has made as complete an account as can be practically donee where given that there is a limitation of the words and the context of the Savitri poem itself. The bulk of this is his direct experience and so Ashwapati is in that sense is Sri Aurobindo himself in the way the symbolism holds.
At the same time, the Mother herself has been through all these worlds and these experiences and we know some of it as she has described in many of the incidents that she has narrated. Apart from her early explorations which were part of her occult training, there is so much more in which she goes which is way beyond any occult training could offer to you. She describes in one of the very casual conversations about sleep and the best way to sleep, she describes how you should be able to step back from your physical body and put it into a complete state of relaxation and then step back from your emotional, vital, life energies, put that into a complete state of relaxation and then withdraw from your mind awareness and put that mind itself in a complete state of relaxation and then keep going layer by layer and she just describes it like that, until you reach all the way to the Satchitananda and you rest there for a few seconds and then as you come back through the layers, obviously that vibration now infiltrating all the way to the most physical as you wake up, you have the most complete regeneration and freshness.
Now it's just described in one or two paragraphs, in a casual conversation she's having in the questions and answers in the classes she was taking in the playground. She's obviously done this. She has mastered that whole process. She was doing this for years when there's a letter of her, she writes to Andre, her son, where she says that, “for the last 15 years I have not slept”. And then she explains not in the conventional way where you lie down in a bed and go to sleep for so many hours. She said I have my little couch. I don't even have a bed at that point. This is in the very early years of the ashram. She has only a couch on which she's sitting and she says she goes into deep trance for 15 minutes during which time she does this whole process touches the Satchitananda, brings back that influence for the full regeneration of her entire personality, all the layers down to the most physical material. And that's it. And then she continues her work.
Now this is a skill, a capacity. I'm using the word skill because finally it's the capacity of your consciousness. It requires organising and she speaks about organising each of these levels and your awareness on each of these levels. She's done that and this is way beyond anything one could do in an occult training. And yet the first part of it would be common to certain kinds of occult training. So yes, that was a part of her initial exposure, but she went way beyond anything. And in going through all these levels, she describes how those worlds exist. And again, it's another conversation where she says, you can go into those worlds, do something there, come back from there, come back to your normal consciousness, live your life, go back again in a state of concentration or trance. You go back to the world and things were as you had left them. There's an objectivity to those worlds and the events there. Or what you had initiated as work has continued to happen when you go back. It has continued. So this is how she explains how those worlds actually are not merely abstract states of consciousness; they are actual real domains where things are happening which have their own independent reality, which reality of course influences all of our lower ranges of the reality and that's the whole totality of reality. And the ease with which she could go through all those worlds, all the way to the Satchitananda which means already through the Overmental and the Supramental ranges, even if it is done in a brief rapid passage just to link, that means she can pause there and then enter those worlds and explore those states and act from them and in them with the same ease.
And we have discussed some of this in one of the recent talks, how she was creating links from the Overmental gods to some of these human vessels. The ease with which she could do that is only possible because she is equally fully mastered there in those domains as here. And so yes, in a sense you can say the mother going through these subtle worlds and experiencing them is narrated and documented in the journey of Ashwapati and Savitri, but it is much more also Sri Aurobindo's own direct personal experience which is narrated and the two would not be different essentially. It's just a difference of emphasis and the nature of perhaps the work done and the scope of experiences one would have had or the scope of action from those domains.
(0:32:40):
Really, they were two aspects of one consciousness operating on all these worlds together and jointly. If you recall again the incident in 1920 that Mother narrates, how she had gone into the Overmental worlds. From there they were working for the freedom of India and then there was this huge effort the Mother was putting for the liberation and independence of India. And then suddenly there is this breakthrough and it happens and then Mother says “India is free”. And Sri Aurobindo at that point was holding the poise in the physical consciousness, holding her in protection while she was in a state of trance, operating on that level. And then Sri Aurobindo asks, how did it happen? Was there much bloodshed? Mother says, no, they went as they came. The world situation changes. Now she is speaking in the past tense because up there it has already happened. Now the facility with which she is she is able to act in those worlds, influence events of those worlds but then from there of the lower worlds, rippling down all the way. The facility with which she is able to do, the facility with which she is able to act!
Again there is a description of how she at night, she would go into these domains. And she says, she was arranging people or links between people and circumstances of the physical world like numbers but not numbers. There's an interesting passage where she describes how she aligns forces and events for their particular outcomes. Literally if we had to take an analogy of a chess game; you place your pieces to shift the balance of forces in relation to certain events and certain outcomes. She is working on those worlds the same way, the same skill. All this is in some way, I would say, in a sense, documented in Savitri. But of course, cannot be complete because that's all that the scope of the poem allows. And so we have these other experiences which are sometimes narrated and so on, which help you to understand.
But all this is also important for us to recognize the scope of the yoga and the potential of our development. Eventually all of us are meant to participate on all these worlds, not just the physical. The physical world being the focal point for all their action. But we are meant to participate on all those worlds also, isn't it? And if you think about what that means, what effort do we make even to take steps to develop awareness in these levels of consciousness within us? How much time do we give to that effort? Considering how much time we have for the work that we could be doing, it's something for us to introspect and choose where our priorities lie.
There's also this very interesting incident the Mother narrates that there was a painter, a Dutch painter who had done the painting of Sri Aurobindo and he wanted to develop his capacity to, he had capacity to remember his dreams, he wanted to develop his capacity to go out of the body, thinking that that would help him for his dreams and explore more directly those worlds. So Mother says, “I took him out and gave him the experience”, and he was lost, he was confused because immediately there was a sense of emptiness because those layers had not been integrated and developed. But the ease with which he could just do that!
Another example is Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya, who was the head of the physical education department. He narrated how at some point the Mother said I'm going to teach you occultism. So he says okay, but Mother is so busy she gets free only after midnight, by which time he is really really sleepy and then she is trying to teach him something. So first thing she took him out of the body and he is outside the body and then he describes some odd things. There was some kind of a creature which looked like a camel and very sharp points and things were poking him and he said, oh this is so uncomfortable and he came out, came back from it and finally he said, Mother I'm so tired, I'm so sleepy, can't you do something that the knowledge just gets put into me that I don't have to go through all these. She said, okay, and that was it.
What I'm aiming at through all this is to say that all these worlds are meant to be explored and for us even meant to be mastered and she has the capacity to give you those experiences. There was a time when I was really really keen on having an out-of-body experience. I was reading all the literature and I wanted to, I was thinking it has to be a technique, you know you do the technique and you get out. Of course I understood it was more than technique, technique is useful but you have to develop the capacity, continuity of consciousness and so on. So at that time my teacher, MP Pandit, I asked him, we had some discussion and he said don't worry, when you are ready for it, the Mother herself will give you the experience. At the time I was didn't quite understand what that meant and later I understood and of course now I can even express with greater clarity what that means.
Literally, she can just do this, give you the experience; but then will you remember it? Will you able to retain the continuity of awareness from that experience. And it could be as simple as you go to sleep with the aspiration I want to have this experience. Connecting yourself to her, you go into sleep and she can give you that experience. If you have a little bit of the thread of continuity of awareness, you will recall a dream I had some very interesting dream and that's it. But if you've not built that, given an experience, would you recall?
So there's enough knowledge given to you but also her active help for you to develop that capacity if you so choose. And it's choices we all have to make. Not all of us might find that interesting, but whatever we choose, at least to begin to work on ourselves with her help and do rapidly what is possible.
I think again I have taken the question as a starting point for a much broader discussion. We can go to the next.
Alina (0:39:23):
Trinetra is writing, “there is an account where mother herself became vulnerable to hostile attacks, that she needed the help of Panditji. How is it possible for Mother to have such an affliction.”
Sraddhalu (0:39:40):
Given that and the question is really about this; given that it is an incarnation of the Divine Mother herself, why would she need anyone's help or why would she be vulnerable to such attacks?
So first of all we make one correction it's not the way the questioner puts it. It's not that she needed his help; he offered to help and she said, yes surely. And then he did it through his way of knowledge, through a certain tantric ritual process; and the Mother said it helped her physical body. And so she wrote him a note saying “this body is grateful to you for the help”. But again this body's help, because it was an intervention at the vital-physical level of a protection; she could have done it on her own. He offered, she said yes of course, but she could have done it on her own. It's not that she needed his help.
Though, now we have to understand also the nature of the way the incarnation works. In incarnating, she is taking on layers of substance of each of these worlds all the way down to the most physical. At the level of the physical body and the substance of physical body, the biology is vulnerable. So, you poke a needle, well, it's going to hurt, it's going to bleed. If there's a knife which pokes, well, there's going to be a cut. Of course, from higher levels and from deeper levels, one could push forward a certain power to build immunity temporarily or even permanently. But in the process though, she would be disengaging from the identification with humanity and the human body consciousness, through which she was infusing her own higher experiences and evolution into the collective consciousness. You must understand this is the nature of the work of the avatar. In identification with humanity to lift and shape, and in the process imprint that change into the collective consciousness as a way of, as a ripple effect that we spoke of I think the last time, that influences and changes human consciousness. If that identification is not made then the point of the avatar is lost; someone comes, makes a miraculous change and then you say, ‘oh wow, yes of course he was divine incarnate’, it changes nothing. I cannot do anything.
This was the case in fact for some of the Vedic Rishis who had experiences of the Supramental consciousness on an individual level. So the memory of that is there in the cosmic consciousness but the imprint of that in the collective consciousness is not yet there. And so Sri Aurobindo had to do that from scratch for this purpose of infusing it into the collective. So all this is to say that vulnerability on a physical level would be necessarily an incidental aspect of that identification.
There's even an incident Mother says, where the people who were with her normally as her attendants had for some reason gone away and there was a whole group of people that walked in to see her and they were not devotees, it was a mix of some political and other types. They just walked in and afterward Mother was complaining, “I was left completely vulnerable, completely exposed without any protection.” There was nobody of her attendants who was present at that time and she says, “in case somebody attacked, she would have had no defence”.
This is an interesting observation of Sri Aurobindo when he is speaking, I read out from the 1926 August 15th discussion, but among those talks of Sri Aurobindo, he speaks of how as he has entered that particular stage of the sadhana, he says one of the dangers is of physical attack from forces. That means to his physical body, because they can't harm him on those higher levels, but the biology is vulnerable. And as you know the physical accident did take place. And he said it took place at a time when he was so concentrated on protecting the Mother that he did not think they would dare to attack him but that's how it took place. So you have to understand that in the nature of their work, there was this vulnerability necessary and therefore also a necessity of special protection, including on all those levels a protection from powers and some of these powers are cosmic powers.
Sri Aurobindo speaks of the dangers of a premature awakening to cosmic consciousness and he speaks of three dangers. The first danger he says is the exaggeration of the ego. So let's say there has not been sufficient thinning of the ego, not sufficient influence of the psychic set in your individuality and you open to experience of cosmic consciousness, the “I” sense of the ego says, oh wow, I am so big. You see, the entry into cosmic consciousness, if done rightly, is one movement of your giving yourself to the Divine Consciousness, to the Divine Mother, to the Divine Lord, to the Divine Presence. You give yourself, lose yourself in their infinity. That would be the natural entry, and the ego thins naturally, and then you are in their infinity. But if the whole experience is made prematurely or by this method of assertion and dominance of an entry, a forced entry into this aspect of the infinity of the cosmos, the ego is exaggerated and that's the nature of the Asuric beings. They are large egos, sometimes really large, having cosmic power. But he says at that point, that's one distortion.
The second danger he says is the sense of unreality so you enter into that prematurely there's not yet the link layers built and particularly in this case the psychic influence which would be the link and so in relation to world appears unreal. So you could slip into that sense. And then the third danger, interestingly, he says, is of attacks. When you open yourself to the cosmic consciousness, then you have opened yourself to things which belong in the cosmic, including cosmic beings who are not divine beings, but they are cosmic nevertheless. So you have to understand how that works: The so-called Asuras, what are they? They are aspects of the Divine which chose to separate themselves from the Divine Consciousness to assert egoistic consciousness, so freedom of their ego rather than the freedom of the Divine. But as aspects of the Divine, they are cosmic in their operation, isn't it?
So, Mother speaks of how the Being of Light becomes Being of Darkness, Being of Life becomes Being of Death and so on. Therefore, the four big asuras; Truth becomes Falsehood, Bliss becomes Suffering. But therefore, conscious beings, like the gods, they have a life of their own and awareness of their own and a power of their own, operating on a cosmic level and you are exposed to that now when you open to that, isn't it? No more bound in the biology's protective shield. So that's why he says premature would have all these three distortions.
(0:47:24):
All this is to say the game becomes very different. Sri Aurobindo does not speak too much about it. What we have just given mostly the hints and the Mother also, just because it's not important for us, for most of us because we are working in a very different relationship, carried their protection in the sadhana itself. But there does come a time when if it is not premature and there is a natural unfoldment, one is aware of these forces and on some level there are interactions which may take place. And if you have gone through the sadhana in the proper way, then you are also equipped to deal with those interventions.
So this is again to come back to the question, it's not that Mother had an affliction which she could not deal with. We have to understand on every level of the incarnation, there could be different kinds of vulnerabilities, all of which are accepted by the Avatar for the purpose of assisting this evolutionary change. By building a barrier of invulnerability, there would also be the limitation of the ability to help. Because to help, the best way is complete identification with the person whom you are trying to help and then a change in the state of identification which makes the most complete shift. A doctor does that in a partial way, in some mental or vital part. Healer would do that again in a partial way.
But there are partial identifications. In this case, for a change of transformation of human nature, it would have to be quite an extreme, complete identification. It is of this that Sri Aurobindo refers when he speaks of the Mother's Prayers and Meditations. You see, in her Prayers and Meditations, she is addressing the Lord. She is describing the struggle and the suffering. Someone asked, is it the Mother's own journey? He says that is when she identifies with the earth consciousness. And it is her in identification with earth consciousness turning to the Divine and asking for this help and describing the struggles of the opening and the awakening in the earth consciousness. Earth Consciousness, meaning this whole, not just the physical Earth, but all the evolutionary development of our Earth, of all the beings and levels of consciousness, including humanity and all of Nature even. To some extent, it would include the whole universe, but with a special focus on our physical Earth, and all of nature and the levels to which it has currently involved. And within that, there is a special focus on the human consciousness into which certain things are being done for this transformation.
And so vulnerability, yes, and the more physical, the more physical the vulnerability as you come down. So there, heat, cold, cuts, attacks, physical assaults, etc. Naturally, there was Sri Aurobindo's protection with her which was also operating at the same time, but still there is only so much that can be done through that protection when there is a physical vulnerability as you saw it Sri Aurobindo's own case. There is a very interesting incident of narrated by Bansidhar. He was Champaklal's brother and had certain access to the Mother during that period. I think it was in the 60s and he narrates how one day he was about to enter her room as he put his hand to hold the handle of her door, it's as if there was something which descended on him which froze his entire body. He was paralyzed, he could not move. He was held in a grip and after about one or two minutes because his sense of time at that point he panicked, his sense of time was not very clear. At the end of about a minute or two, the force suddenly releases him and now he can move and he opens the door and enters the room. And as soon as he enters, Mother greets him and the first thing he says, something very strange happened, Mother and he describes what happened. And Mother's response, she said, “Naturally. I was changing my clothes at that time”.
You see the kind of protection which was there almost at an automatic level that even on something like this it was automatically acting as a barrier to protect her. Of course there was the protection and of course this had to be held. Sri Aurobindo at least when he was in the physical body would hold at a physical level being embodied in the physical body. And Mother said after he left the physical body, she had been protected so well, suddenly that protection was gone and she felt totally exposed and vulnerable. And that's when she took the support of Pranab as her personal assistant for the particular quality that he had in his body and the vitality and strength that he had that she could lean upon for help.
(0:52:27):
And then there's a very interesting conversation which is narrated was told to me by Anima Di who was the personal assistant to Nalini-da and she heard it from Nolini-da who heard it from the Mother and it, what was said was that when Sri Aurobindo left his body there was a particular grade of vibration of the physical consciousness of Sri Aurobindo that the Mother took and infused into Pranab-da. Mother spoke of this to Nolini-da, who told this to Anima-di, who told this to me personally. And then she said, that's why sometimes being in Pranab's presence, you can feel that vibration of Sri Aurobindo's physical presence. It's quite an extraordinary statement and I'm just conveying it for whatever it is worth now.
But that was a capacity but that was also her way of holding in physical form, in physical vibration something of Sri Aurobindo's protective presence also. And there's an incident with Pranab which Pranab narrates: he says, at some point Mother said, “can I draw on your energy a little more?” You see, because it was a protection but also support of strength and there were times when she needed that to be intensified. And Pranab said, “Yes Mother, you can take as much as you want; I don't ,you can take everything even, so that I die”. And she said, “No, a mother will never do that”. So he narrates that incident also. But this gives us a hint, a glimpse into the complexities of the circumstances on a material level and the vulnerabilities and needs on that level.
One more incident, which she was cleaning bird droppings on the balcony of her room. She was cleaning it with her hand and one attendant said, Mother why are you doing it with your hand? It's so dirty. Mother said, I clean out far more, far worse filth from people who come to me. I'm pointing to this because here is a physical experience of cleaning out bird droppings. For her, the entry into somebody's consciousness to clean out the filth in their consciousness at a physical level of vibration, it was equivalent. And when she is doing that, she's fully exposed to that filth, you must understand, at a physical level of their vibrations. Thoughts, emotions, yes, on that level also, but all the way of that vibration into the material body and that substantiality of the psychological being down to the material density of the filth that she's cleaning out.
And of course, they go right back and refill themselves with it because they are not conscious. But for her it was equivalent, physically removing with her hand and energetically, psychologically, spiritually removing from their physical consciousness in terms of vibration, it is the same thing. If she has to do that, she is exposed to it and so therefore the vulnerability on that level. And she makes this point, she says she could protect herself, but then she can't reach out the help. In order to reach out the help, she had to remove that barrier. And so there is a selective perhaps modulation of the protective layer according to the need and the work to be done. Obviously when she would go into deep states of trance, then there would be a greater protection. She had instructed people not to touch or disturb and so on. All that was part of it.
So I hope with this broader discussion we have a better understanding of the complexities of the vulnerabilities. And so yes, when somebody came and said, would you like help? I can help you with my mechanism, which was his tantric vehicle of puja and ritual invocation. She said, yes surely go ahead and he did and she felt the help of her body and she expressed gratitude for that. That was it, he left and that was it, there was no further need, she could have done it by herself also. I think, so that covers the question, I think it's sufficient detail.
I would like to look at the questions which are in the chat box, if you take a moment for this.
(0:57:16):
So Kiara asks about the four Mahashaktis - Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati of the Mother.
Perhaps not this time, we can do that on some other occasion that would perhaps require a more detailed expression.
Somebody asks, “Is Mother enough to get protection from hostile, evil hostile forces?”
She can naturally protect herself and others. This is an incident again, I'll share this one. She expressed this to Pranab and she said there was a huge battle taking place on the occult levels, on the subtle worlds. Huge battle, and for her to say huge, you can imagine. These are forces arraigned against the evolutionary change that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother represent and are working for. And on her side were all the people, including the people who have aligned with her energetically in consciousness, in their spiritual alignment of thought, feeling, emotions, energies. So that represents itself in that world in this form. All the people in the ashram. And then she said when the battle got really difficult, all ran away. The only person left was Pranab. And so she said that she kept him always with her. Again it tells you something interesting.
The way it would work in material terms for us, let's say there's a huge influx of a negative thought pattern of energy, of cynicism, of clouding of devotion or faith or doubt or anger or some contrary emotion or energy that floods on a collective level. What do you do? Do you still hold the clarity of your aspiration or do you allow yourself to be swayed by that and say, “okay, it's not going to happen, I give up, this is beyond my capacity, I won't do anything”. That would be you withdrawing from her battle scene. If at that point you hold with your conviction and faith, come what may, whatever these thoughts, feelings, emotions, ideas, I refuse them and I hold the certainty and assurance of the victory. When you put yourself fully on their side, that's when you're standing with them in the collective struggle of that evolutionary push.
There was an incident, I do not know if you will recall, maybe a decade ago, when there was a very strong violent attack of doubt, cynicism against Sri Aurobindo himself. And it was interesting to see so many people fell back to protect personal interests and there were actually people who said in the ashram, “We will stand with whoever is in power because we are just here for the convenience; doesn't matter who it is and doesn't matter what they say.” There were people who said that openly. And then there were others who said, “Whatever may happen, whatever inconveniences we may face, we will stand for this and held their ground.” And then there were many others who were in between. There was somebody who said, “I am on the fence.” So Sri Aurobindo is being attacked and I am going to sit on the fence. I am neither this side nor that side. I said, that's not how it works. That means you are on the other side.
(1:00:48):
If you allow the attack without taking a stance, then you have chosen the other side. So passivity means choosing the opposing side. This actually reflects itself in the occult worlds as an event in a form. There's a great battle that takes place. And so we have to understand these are real events, real struggles of energies aligned, organised and literally like a battle. Only that world is not world of form and it can be represented in form and the struggle of the forces. And the Mother did, and yes of course she can protect you on those worlds, in these worlds. But the protection is effective when you open to her; if you are closed she can't help. Of course she will help still to the extent possible, but you are the one who's closing yourself from the help.
She gives this very interesting example of when Kennedy was assassinated. First of all she was very distraught, because she said that he was a very good instrument through whom so much was being done and she was about to bring about friendship between the Soviet Union and the United States through him and that's when the other side went and knocked him out, assassinated him. And she said, if I had known that his life was in danger, I would have done something, unfortunately. Now she goes to help him, he is out of his body. She said, he was completely lost in a shell of his own conception of his heavens and hells and ideas which came from the training of his Catholic tradition. And she was unable, he was unable to receive the help and there was very little she could do.
Similarly, she spoke of a couple of devotees from the ashram who having passed on, on the other side when she came to help they couldn't recognize her. Now think of what that means. In the subtle body and you have the Mother approaching, you don't recognize her. That means in that plane that part had never opened or recognized her consciousness. Here you were in a physical body with physical eyes, you say, ah Mother, thank you Mother, I am here for you and I do whatever it is. My relationship stops with this superficial layer. There is not that deeper awakening. Or if the soul's recognition is there, it's quite well covered up by the mind, vital sheets, which do not recognize, are not open, are not receptive. And therefore when you're thrown out of the gross physical body, you are in your vital mental bodies, you don't recognize. And the soul's light is not strong enough to cut through until those layers shed. Then of course eventually that light will come through and recognize.
But at that point, not recognizing, there is only so much help that can be given. So in answer to this question, do you get protection? Yes, of course, but the protection is only as effective as you are open to her and are able to call and allow her protection to act in you and in the parts which are open. So sometimes you are open in one part, closed in another part or even hostile in another part. Those parts would not have the result of the protection. And so, how to connect with the psychic, that will require a longer discussion and perhaps we have touched upon it before. But I would say simply become aware of the part deep within you where you feel and know yourself intimately close to the Divine Mother or to the Divine Presence and a child of the Divine Mother.
Somewhere deep within you, you feel that, know that, you're not even conscious of that part, but you feel its influence, at least hold that influence and the deeper sense of knowing it and the closeness and your self-giving and loyalty and belonging to her. As you grow more and more conscious of this part or its influence within you, you will find yourself coming in more and more direct influence of the psychic presence within you. That would be the easiest starting point.
(1:05:05):
Okay, I think Kiara's question about Asuras being aspects of the Mother, how can we get past the perceived duality of good and bad, dark and light while living in the density of physical reality.
So I have already spoken about that, even the Asuras are really aspects of the Divine in manifestation, but which choose to exercise the freedom to oppose the Divine. And that is the nature of the freedom of this cosmos. You can choose to not follow the divine will or follow your own separate will, which is fine also. But then they become Asuras to the extent that they refuse, they also oppose and then choose consciously to oppose directly. In the larger perspective of our consciousness, we can see this as an aspect of the Divine also. The aspect of the Divine which assists in ensuring that any perfection so developed, insufficient in itself, is broken to force us to develop a greater perfection. So, think of it this way, the role of these beings who oppose the evolution or the forces which oppose evolution is only to point out where your evolution is incomplete, show you your weaknesses by attacking them or exposing them, that would be the right phrase and breaking any insufficient and incomplete form. So in breaking them you are forced to rebuild now with a more complete, more sufficient, more perfect realisation.
And so Sri Aurobindo refers to this. You'll find this description in his commentary on the Kena Upanishad because here there he is describing the working of the gods and he describes how there is the positive working and the negative working and this is how he presents it. So one side is always aspiring, pushing towards the absolute and the perfect and there's this other side which says whatever you've achieved now is not absolute, is not perfect and works to break or expose its limitation and thereby assists but both are assisting. And in this way, we do not need to worry about negative forces and asuric forces. We only look at the Divine Mother and everything else in the universe is there to assist you one way or another. Even where it contradicts, it is assisting you by strengthening you and allowing a greater perfection. And that would be the more healthy way, from a higher Spiritual poise, the true vision of the struggle and the play.
Another question from Kiara: “Why was the important event of India's independence accompanied by tragic event of partition, given that we had the luminosity of Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo's light behind all these events.”
Precisely because of insufficient receptivity among the human instruments. Remember, the people on the ground who are going to sign the paper, that's where the vulnerability exists. The pen could spill ink, for example. The hand that writes could be seized, could be cut; the mind is accepting, could be made to turn away, could be made to compromise, which is what we saw happening all the time in that culmination of the freedom struggle. Even the delay of the freedom took place because of that. In 1922, the British came to the negotiating table; we would have got India's independence without partition and without the further inertia that came into the country as a result of the delay and the huge destruction.
At that time, Mahatma Gandhi was one of those leaders who said, we do not want to discuss independence. First give the Muslims the right to follow the caliph of Turkey as their religious and political head. It was a complete turning away; the British had come to negotiate and they were given a completely different story. Independence was set aside and unfortunately when he did that the other great leaders had just passed away. So, you can say unfortunate circumstances but finally it is human beings who are vehicles and the same thing happened when the last attempt was made to have independence without partition. Sri Aurobindo sent a special emissary to Gandhiji to say accept the Cripps mission. This was an offer from the British government from Sir Stafford Cripps, I think who said, let's give a deal to India where we don't have to have partition. And everybody in England laughed at him and even Churchill made the joke of him saying these people don't deserve freedom and so on. But he came, he made his effort, he went back with failure. That was the last attempt, possibly even. And at that point, Sri Aurobindo sent a special emissary to tell Gandhiji, in writing, the reasons why and among them was, this is our last chance to have independence without partition. And then the positive benefits of that Cripps’ proposal that India would remain as a Dominion state, the British would still be there in Dominion for five years and then there would be handover after the world war was completed. It still happened after the world war was completed. But in those five years, Sri Aurobindo said, you would have had a working army, working organisation of administration, all trained to run by themselves, which had not yet happened. There would be a handover which would take place, it would be chaotic, if there was not this smooth transition and partition would have been avoided.
Human beings, human instruments not recognizing the Divine help given but they are right now at that point choosing or aligned and open to forces which sway them and when the forces sway, it's because something within them is not aligned to the truth, isn't it? That's when you can be swayed and of course all of us have all these parts which are not perfectly tuned or aligned. So we are all vulnerable to that extent but if there's a central sincerity and someone comes and says, “look here it is, this is how it is”, you'll say, “oh yes, I'm sorry, I was deluded for a moment”. But if the central sincerity is missing then ‘I’ choose and I don't care if you are right, I will assert myself; that's the ego assertion. It becomes Asuric in the very act.
And so there's this very interesting observation the Mother made about Mahatma Gandhi saying that he was open to the same Force which was influencing Hitler. So when she said that, it spread in the ashram community in a certain, well, rapidity. And then there were people who were Gandhians who were very upset and Jayantilal Parikh was one of those. He was, as you know, later the founder of the ashram archives. And he said to us, so he went to the Mother and said, Mother, how can you say this? And Mother said, well, he is open to all kinds of influences, including the positive and the negative. So that's how she kind of diffused his distress. I think it's important to put this on record. Once, I've heard this from Jayantilal himself.
And we understand how there are complex plays of forces working through instruments. So yes, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother could do everything that they could. Even I say the Cripps mission was initiated by Sri Aurobindo by a direct intervention. But this last step where there was the vehicle which had to make the decision of acceptance or rejection in the then political power structure, there was this ego aspect which chose to reject for its own personal aggrandisement and the opportunity lost. So we have to see it in this way: It's a struggle in the battle, opportunity lost. Well, out of that the Divine will make something more perfect, more complete in spite of whatever struggle it involves and the suffering in the passage. But in a sense that struggling, struggle and suffering is a consequence of the human refusal to open to the Divine help. You see, the same thing is happening today. It is for the whole world now. It is not just about India's independence. It is independence of the world against an entrenched group of interests that wants to subjugate and suffocate all sign of freedom and free thought and free speech. And something Sri Aurobindo has spoken of already going back a hundred years, written about it in the Ideal of Human Unity, as the world state forms, the first thing it will do, it will suppress free speech because it needs to suppress freedom of thought. How will we respond as a collective depends on how awake we are [[Some interruption from Narad - How I get the volume?, okay one moment]. How the world response depends on your receptivity and your choice of alignment to the higher truth.
So in that sense, even with the Divine help constantly with you, your response to it would depend on your openness and receptivity in the choices you make. And that's why finally it comes back to us, what choices we make and in spite of our choices eventually that will happen what the Divine chooses, but through a more difficult painful passage which is the consequence of the choice we made, but eventually though everything will be used for a more great, more complete perfection and realisation.
(1:14:58):
So, I am looking at the questions again. Kiara's question: “Is reunification of India and Pakistan essential to the full manifestation of India's role in the world's evolution?”
Yes, Sri Aurobindo said so. He says as long as this partition persists, India's future may be greatly compromised and her spiritual role in the world could be, I don't remember the word he used, but he says delayed or limited and even the danger of foreign invasions. All this he describes as consequence of the partition and therefore by whatever means the partition must go. And this was his insistence. It will happen now of course inevitably and you see but how much struggle, how much pain, how much suffering for everybody involved.
So there are other questions which relate to the deeper contact with the Mother and the meaning of the darshan and so on.
I take Miran's question: “How to be in constant contact with the Mother?”
There are two aspects to the question. Yes, some part can be in constant contact, but then will all the parts of you be in constant contact? So the goal is of course constant contact but in all of your being. Necessarily in the beginning you can't, you're not even conscious of yourself. So you start with a tiny part and maybe one part or other. In your thought, in your heart's devotion and love, in your actions, in consecrated work. These would be straightaway three forms of entry of the contact. The most profound would be the soul's aspiration and to the extent its influence comes forward, the psychic influence, that contact would be natural. But initially, with these three, you turn them to the Divine. In what you do, for a few moments at least, for a few seconds, for a few minutes, before you start work, when you end work, you can keep the sense of consecration and remembrance. When in the midst of work, some part of the heart's love can be for her, as you feel her, why are you doing this work as a consecration to Her and the love and the devotion is felt even as your mind and actions are lost in the work. Or sometimes the mind turns in remembrance. So it could switch between these different parts. Increasingly, then they would begin to integrate and some part would remain at the backdrop supporting and if meanwhile the psychic influence begins to fill more and more, that part which is behind would merge with the psychic influence and something inside would always keep a sense of closeness, intimacy with the presence. And you will be lost in the work in the surface part, you will return and you will feel, ah, it's still intact, the connection is felt, I still feel the Presence and that's it. So that would be still a layer within, to the extent that those parts are now influenced, they receive the help constantly, to the extent other parts are not, they are vulnerable to all kinds of mixtures, increasingly this influence would fill the rest of you, to a point where you do not need to make an active effort. Something always in all the parts of your being is somehow attuned and when something is wrong you just feel, ‘ah something is off’, and it's a Presence within you that in which you feel the dissonance and you turn attention and make the correction and so on. But I think this is like in a brief summary the general means of developing this.
So there were some other questions which I had planned for today which had to do with the soul relationships and that's part in the title but we will keep that for next time. As also Aditya's question of what is there, is there a truth in the concept of soul mates. I will combine all these questions relating to the soul and relationships of soul and we'll make that the theme for next time. But for now I think this would be a good place to to pause with the last question with closing question from Kuljit.
Alina (1:19:26):
Kuljit is writing: “the more I read and the more I hear the talks, the more confused I get. I just need help on how to achieve total surrender. Once this happens I will automatically live a truthful life and a life full of love and happiness. I don't want to learn the theory of spirituality on how it happens. Just surrender 100% and let my inner guru show me the truth and the way. Please help.”
Sraddhalu (1:20:00):
Yes, one wishes it would have been as easy as that. To the extent that you are able to do that and in the part you are able to do that 100% surrender, yes, you will have your truthful life and life full of love and happiness and truth in that part. The problem is the part which gets the 100% surrender is so tiny in you, the rest of your personality and your nature is not in 100% surrender. And therefore, even the part that we will say 100% surrender is not 100%, it's mixed with everything else and therefore is whatever percent less. So on some principle we could say yes, what he says is right; on another level we will say it's not how it works, because we are not conscious of ourselves and therefore the 100% surrender is not possible even.
So when you say that I just need to know how to achieve total surrender, that itself becomes the whole sadhana for the whole of your nature, if you want really a total surrender. Or you say I will do a partial surrender in a tiny part of me and make that as complete as possible and in that part I will enjoy the truthful life, life of love and happiness etc. But that's our starting point. So turn within yourself, observe what in you feels the most natural sense of closeness to the Divine or the Divine Mother in whatever way you feel and relate the Divine Presence, the divine Mother. Feel which part in you feels that. Feel that part, you don't have to give it a name. Turn to that part, immerse yourself in that part, and in that immersion feel that closeness and lose yourself in that closeness. Invoke that presence to fill this part where you feel the closeness and then hold what you receive, stay in it, immerse in it and then allow it to spread from that part into the rest of you bit by bit. And it's like if there's a centre which is glowing and then a radiance of that glow, it seeps into the rest and maybe there are different parts at different times and whenever that part, whichever part feels closest, feel that centre, it open from there fully, receive the influence, hold it and allow it to spread.
Now, we will use the word percentage only as an indication, it is not mathematical but let's say in this part you have a 10%, in that part you have a 20% opening. Well, those are the glowing centres out of which that influence and that immersion now spreads into the rest of you. And increasingly as that spreads, other parts now begin to wake up as if by the light, ‘Oh I feel this presence, it feels so nice’. And when the presence is lost, ‘I miss that, I want it more’. And then from this centre where you feel it, the glow fills those parts and those parts now begin to participate in the aspiration and the yearning and they begin to participate in 5% while this 10% has grown into a 20% and then eventually grows into a 30% while those parts which were 10% become 20% and other layers or other parts now get a 5% influence.
Okay, the numbers are only for the minds. The experience of the glow growing, the experience of the Presence filling, the experience of the closeness felt more and more in all of you and deepening. Until at some point, as if a kind of a central column of your personality, a central sense of individuality is now so totally turned that whatever may happen in other parts, fluctuations, this central part is never lost. This we will call the central aspiration or the central sincerity. Once this is there, the rest of the journey of the sadhana becomes smooth, increasingly effortless and increasingly stable and joyous in the journey.
And so the logic of Kuljit's question is accepted. The moment you achieve total surrender, you would have automatically this, you do not need theory. But you have to start with the part and the part which has a progressive surrender and from there the influence which has to progressively spread into you. All this you can do with zero theory, simply by concentrating on the experience and allowing it to, there's this phrase which is used in one of the traditions,-- ‘allow yourself to be eaten up by the Light’. It's as if that central light spreads out and brings more and more of your rest of you into its domain by consuming it with the light and awakening it to the light. And all the journey is then done in this way. No words, no logic, no technology or science or complex vocabulary to confuse you. Pursue this. You will experience all these layers and parts. There will be an opening to deeper layers. You will experience them all without having a vocabulary. Doesn't matter, you don't need the vocabulary.
So he says I don't want to learn the theory of spirituality. You don't need to. But start with this experience in the part in you that is most open and ready and from there let it grow into total surrender in all parts. And that's your Yoga journey, that's the journey of your spiritual life. And then increasingly as you are allowing this turn to engage in your thoughts and emotions, feelings, actions and so on, in your relationships even, to that extent those parts are being co-opted into your spiritual journey. And this must be done. All of your life must be brought into the ambit of the spiritual journey. Nothing is to be left out. All is to be taken up, turned, divinized and transformed. And it's as simple as that. No more theory required. Isn't it?
And the inner Guru is not only showing you the way; as the light fills, the inner Guru fills with consciousness and knowledge and force and love those parts and leads from inside out even to right action, right expression, right perception and right knowledge and even effective outcome of the result of action. All this will happen and then you don't worry about how much time as long as it's growing steadily. Isn't it? All the rest of course because some of us need to understand because life is so complex we want to enjoy through knowledge as much as through experience on other levels. That's one level of experience. And sometimes the knowledge can be of help because when you feel yourself blocked, unable to do, ah yes, this is what it is. The knowledge can give you the guidance. The knowledge can emerge from inside. The inner Guru will give the light also and give you the knowledge and the hint.
But to the extent that your own knowledge is currently blocked, wrongly shaped with wrong ideas that prevents the inner knowledge from emerging. Because you have a fixed idea it has to happen this way and you keep trying and the inner light says, ‘no but’, but you're not listening to it because you're too fixed in your knowledge. And so the ideal method would be to actually let go everything that you know, everything that you are, all your expectations, all your desires, all your ideas of what should be, how it should be, how it should not be, including how the divine Force should act in you or should not act in you,-- all those you have to let go and give it all to the Divine Shakti, the Divine Mother, the Divine Presence in whatever way you relate and allow Her working, allow It’s working. Simply be aware of the Presence and the working of the Presence and the Force and allow it to do even when you do not understand why it does what it does, allow it to work in you. And then it will override your pre-existing notions and give you the true deeper knowledge and capacity and do the work. And that would be the way, as Kuljit wants it to be done.
Into this, according to your nature, you may have elements which need to understand, which need to participate in a more direct way with a kind of a personal effort or a personal support and participation. All that can of course come in to the extent you need. And the knowledge and understanding. For me personally for example, understanding why the world is the way it is and why things go wrong or don't go wrong or how the Force works through circumstances, all that is extremely useful. And so I love to read when Sri Aurobindo explains this, I say, wow, now I understand. It's a different way of participating and relating to the Divine even through the knowledge, isn't it? And in that knowledge itself there is a revelation and you begin to see, wow, this complex working of the universe is the divine play and what an extraordinary Wisdom and Power working through it all and what a delight. It's a different entry point where the light now grows in the mind and through the mind. So it's a different centre; they each operate according to their characteristic way. If possible, everything within you, turn it to the Divine. Or at least the centres which are more awake, more developed, more aspiring to know, to grow, to feel, to give. Turn those and then let it grow and fill the hole. And so there you have the broad framework. It's very simple, no theory required. Simply put into practice. Give yourself with love entirely, exclusively to the Divine, to the Divine Mother, the Divine Shakti, the Divine Presence, the Divine Energy, with love because love is what melts in union and therefore the most direct way of the surrender and self-giving.
I think we'll pause at this point. Concentrate on this in our aspiration.
<silence>
(1:30:44):
Namaste.
[Alina] Namaste. Thank you very much.