EWS #127: Questions on Evolutionary Trends + General Q&A

Sept 3, 2022

Alina (0:00:34):

Namaste, good evening everyone. Welcome back to our continuing series Evenings with Sraddhalu. Namaste Sraddhalu.

Sraddhalu (0:00:43):

Namaste.

Alina (0:00:45):

We are happy to be back and continue our series. Today, part 127, and we have a very interesting topic with some questions that we received from our viewers on the topic of Evolutionary Trends. So we decided to make a whole session today. We invite you kindly to ask questions in the chat box on our YouTube channel.

So I will start with one question of Vani: In the last week's talk, 124, you spoke about the unification of spiritual evolutions by various saints, yogis and acharyas of the yore. You have also spoken of where traditions and religions are moving towards briefly in various discussions. Could you please bring in detailed talk as to what is the current scenario of the evolution, its path forward? Sri Aurobindo's Utapara speech sets the direction for strengthening Sanatana Dharma. How are youth today to align to their journey on this front?

Sraddhalu (0:02:06):
Mmhum. So the current scenario of evolution is only understood when you look at the larger picture of evolution, which itself spans millennia, thousands of years, actually millions of years, but of which the last part that we are conscious of is the tail end of a much longer process going back a few billion years ago and this tail end you will recognise from the Indian tradition which describes the four yugas from the Golden Age and then a decline to the Kali Yuga of which we have made an entry about 5,000 years ago. So that gives you a kind of a perspective of what is the context you have to really set to be able to properly understand what is happening today.

The European modern model of human development looks at all civilisations starting about 2000 years ago with Christ, everything before was barbarism, and it's as if, if you see their graph it is moving flat, no evolution, and then suddenly in the last 2000 years a sharp rising curve which then becomes almost vertical in the last hundred years, it's as if in the last hundred years you've seen more change than in the last 10,000 years even. In fact there is a truth to this. There is such a curve in fact, at least superficially, technologically we see that. But what we do not see is that before this let's say plateau out of which you see the rise at least in the European context, there is another descent from a still higher greater height. We do not see the descending movement which goes back and which India records by the way with the decline beginning with the Mahabharata which is about 5,000 years ago. So 3,000 years before the European picture of the low point is a height and a pretty great height because we have even using technologies as a reference we have flying machines described, some pretty extraordinary weapons and capabilities, some of them occult, some of them physical. But before that, that period is itself the decline from a still greater period that it remembers as the Golden Age and for that you have to go back nearly 12,000 years or so. So, what we see is a huge fall and then a kind of a rapid rise which is and it's only the tail end of this rapid rise that we are recording in current textbooks of history. But if you go back still further that height was preceded by another cycle which was preceded by another cycle and so on going into thousands at least. But each of these Sri Aurobindo points out is a spiral so there is a rising movement. Each fall makes for a greater ascent and so on. If you don't keep this big picture you lose perspective easily of what is happening.

In one of his little booklets, a very small text, The Yoga and Its Objects, Sri Aurobindo makes a passing mention of this. when he says, “God always keeps for himself a chosen country in which the higher knowledge is through all chances and dangers, by the few or the many, continually preserved, and for the present, in this Chaturyuga at least, that country is India”.

Now a Chatur yuga, that's the last cycle of four yugas, that means the beginning from that decline of the previous Golden Age we have entered, let's say the fourth yuga. And then he explains how when God “chooses to take the full pleasure of ignorance” and the “which is the play of Kali in short, he dims the knowledge in India and puts her down into weakness and degradation so that she may retire into herself and not interfere with this movement of his Lila. When he wants to rise up from the mud and Narayana in man to become once again mighty and wise and blissful, then he once more pours out the knowledge on India and raises her up so that she may give the knowledge with its necessary consequences of might, wisdom and bliss to the whole world”.

Sraddhalu (0:07:10):

We're going into the deepest underlying layers of cause and effect. You see, you can look at historical circumstances, relate them to psychological circumstances, relate those to still prior circumstances, but underlying all these external superficial phenomena and causes is this deeper will of the divine in the play. And he explains this part, “When there is the contracted movement of knowledge, the yogins in India withdraw from the world and practise yoga for their own liberation and delight or for the liberation of a few disciples; but when the movement of knowledge again expands and the soul of India expands with it, they come forth once more and work in the world and for the world. Yogins like Janaka, Ajatashatru and Kartavirya once more sit on the thrones of the world and govern the nations”.

So it's quite an extraordinary statement and when you understand the deeper implications you get the first glimpse of what is happening. First we realise that in that declining phase, it was a necessary phase, so that whatever was attained then in the previous peak needed to be seeped all the way down to the most material physical consciousness, so that the new rise will include all these layers into a still greater possibility. Sri Aurobindo also gives a different angle to it where he says, the previous attempt rose up to the level of intuition but the intellectual passage was not sufficiently developed and therefore a fall was needed so that this part may be again worked upon and taken up and included for a still greater rise to intuition.

Now all this is to say that even as today we reawaken to our intellectual capabilities all over the world globally, he says, it's not because it's happening right now, it's because it has happened many times before and we are only recovering what was worked upon before. But equally the current phase which is actually a transition from intellect to intuition, we do not see it yet but it's happening and it's happening at a very preliminary level. We're going to enter into a much deeper and more intense intuitive phase. Even the recovery of that, at least in its basic capacities, has been worked upon in the past. But now when it happens, it will be better integrated with the intellect. And so what will happen now in the unfolding spiritual age that has to follow, will be far greater and richer and more complete than anything before. But in between we have the end of the intellectual phase, not yet the spiritual age and in between even before the intuitive has begun there is the subjective age where there is the subjectivism following the failure of objectivity of reason and science.

So, the current scenario of evolution is that there is this huge movement of many ripples going back in the past, but this huge movement of a descent to integrate and an ascent which you see quite rapidly but it's rapid simply because it's catching up with what was already done and then the end of the modern age and the entry into the subjective age and the passage through the subjective into the spiritual and the first step of that spiritual will be in through the intuitive to still higher ranges. So this is where we are now.

But when I say where we are today it's in the let's say spiritual elite of humanity, those who are working upon themselves to open to these higher possibilities, but this is the push of nature. See nature's push is always ahead of the state of the common mass. When nature is pushing the mass of humanity, her push is on this edge and the mass is being dragged in spite of itself. So there as if lagging behind but the cutting edge of nature's push is what we are describing which would be a better description of the current scenario because this is the push all of us are receiving. Whether we are conscious of it or not, if we have the aspiration, nature is pushing us to help in this and at the same time on the other side there is the new consciousness, the spiritual, the supramental consciousness which has already entered into the earth atmosphere as a manifestation, as an active evolutionary force that is right here in front of us. It's permeating everything but still too different for us to be able to directly receive it. It is pulling, it is infusing, even as nature is pushing and struggling to break through, it is infusing itself and assisting by pulling, shaping and also by breaking that which is resisting, the chains which tie us to the past it is breaking.

So we see three movements: the breaking movement which is of course the most painful when we cling to the past, the pulling movement which can also be painful because we are as if compelled to grow, and then there is the infusion of that into us, its influence. And to the extent that we open ourselves, that can be a joyous process. To the extent that we are closed, it's almost like a pressure squeezing, almost crushing.

This is where we are, if you want a kind of a broad sense of the evolutionary turn.

Sraddhalu (0:13:12):

But I will go into some finer gradations particularly in the Indian context because we see these let's say steps of the evolution more clearly in Indian history. Practically all other I will say all other ancient civilisations having been destroyed they do not even remember sometimes their original languages, they do not remember their own history, Egypt does not even know how to read its own hieroglyphs. Others like Atlantis have been swept underwater and some others which had reached a high peak have collapsed into almost a barbaric state, and so you do not have the continuity except in India and the reason we see now because it is the space where the knowledge is protected for its awakening in the future.

So what you see in India, in the Vedic age is that opening to the intuitive. Now the Rishis may have been the leaders of the age because they embodied the highest possible but the mass of humanity being reasonably receptive was open and therefore suffused by that intuitive consciousness, and Sri Aurobindo therefore refers to it as a symbolic age because you are as if perceiving higher truths but representing them in terms of symbols of your current capacity of consciousness but the truth is felt, it is lived. The symbolism is needed because the consciousness receiving in humanity is not yet sufficiently developed to directly relate to the truth. This point is very important. There's a gap and yet the truth is lived in the best way it can receive through symbols. So that whole period you will find full of these symbolic descriptions, perceptions. Reality of the spiritual is so close, it is felt, the sacred is living all around without effort. People spontaneously fall into its rhythms and its influences.

The second transition, the next yuga from that is the Treta Yuga which has this particular characteristic that the gap is felt between the living truth and the forms. And there's an attempt by willpower to enforce, to drag, to pull, to live by what you know to be right, but you can't so directly feel. Now, this is to say that there is already a gap forming because humanity has been lifted to a certain height and now it is slipping. Or perhaps the truth is intensifying and it is unable to keep up, but there's a gap that's begun. More generally what happens is there's a rise and then as a tiredness of that effort and so need to fall back into the inertia of the physical consciousness and that's what you see in the mass of humanity. At that point the willpower is dominating and there is an attempt to force things, compel things, and so Sri Aurobindo describes this as the phase which he calls the typal age. And then from there a further gap increasing, you find even your willpower is not strong enough, you have to organise by compulsion, by coercion, by organising society, and that's where the religions begin to form, the social orders, the social organisations, hierarchies, patterns of behaviour and values, the shastras of good conduct and a right way of living are written, formulated, put out for people to live by. And where people don't make the effort, some suitable means of compelling them to make the effort by some form of punishment or reward or combination, the conventions, Sri Aurobindo calls it the conventional age.

And following that, when the gap is too much, then even those textbooks you read it and you say: what? I am not going to live by this, it doesn't resonate with anything in me, what do I really want, I don't know. That's when you break away and you have the Kali, the age of Kali, which Sri Aurobindo describes really as the transition to an age of individualism and a reason. So you are breaking away from wanting to live by a social conduct of a certain value which just seems too artificial now because things have shifted so much and you are now living for yourself. And there's a rapid passage through wanting to live by ‘what do I want, oh I want the pleasure of my body and comfort, I work for that’. Having got it, I say, not good enough. I need the enjoyment of my emotions and desires and their fulfilment and their aggrandisement, I work for that. Having done that, not good enough. Then I seek something still higher, a satisfaction of the mind and the power of the reason and the exploration through thought and intelligence. And that was the phase of modernity which you see largely all over the world in the last 200 or 300 years. That having reached its acme, having made made all the promises and failing, intellect is not good enough. What do you do? What else do you have? Nothing. Because the human evolution is only up to there, you're not able to open to something higher or if you glimpse that you don't know how to reach it. You fall back to a kind of a deeper introspection and a subjectivism and that's the subjective age which has already begun. It will get very confused because the moment you go into subjectivity each one is wandering in their own little bubble. Today highly exaggerated by the media and the way the social media builds a separate bubble around each one of us by feeding us the things which we want and the things we want to believe and then of course trying to manipulate us. We have discussed these before I don't repeat.

Sraddhalu (0:19:37):

At that point is where the crisis of today is that, are we going to stop at this false subjectivism or are we going to go deeper to the soul's truth which then having reached, we begin to live once again by real truth and at least the part of humanity that is able to do that begins to live or rises into the next golden age or Satya Yuga, age of truth, spiritual age, in this case, in the vocabulary of Sri Aurobindo?

So in some sense the spiritual age is already dawning in a tiny part of humanity, but a larger part of humanity is in this subjective, and a still larger part is breaking out of the shackles of age of individualism and reason, and so we have many layers in humanity. Where do you belong? Each one of us has different parts belonging to these different layers. Can we integrate ourselves? And the more we are able to integrate closer to our highest part, the more we are on the cutting edge or closer we are to the cutting edge of this evolutionary push. So this direction is the Dharma, the Sanatana Dharma, the eternal truth, which is to be lived spontaneously. It is not based on a Shastra. It is not a teaching which comes from outside. It is a self-discovered living truth within you. And how are the youth to align their journey on this front? If they recognise this big picture of where we are coming from, where we are going and what is the potentiality of it, and if they can recognise that the means for this evolutionary leap is also, has also, been given to us, they can choose to participate to various degrees. The youth becomes for us an important reference as comes from the questioner's wording because there we see our future. But a large part of the youth today is really-really-really confused. The scope of the confusion in this youth is far greater than, let's say, the questioner's youth, who is mother now for her children. So her age had less confusion, the previous age has had less confusion. Today's youth are really confused.

Within that confusion is an opportunity. So in certain ways, Mother said, this phase of breaking of old shackles is useful. Although it leads to confusion, it allows for greater plasticity and for the working of the supramental consciousness, less resistance in certain ways. But to the extent that this confusion is also going towards a regressive turn, it will also be harder. For the youth who do not sufficiently distinguish the lesser from the, the inferior from the superior, there is a greater difficulty also.

So as was Mother's observation in the 1960s, humanity has already split in consciousness. One part rising, one part falling and the gap is growing, and there comes a point where the two are so separated that they do not see eye to eye. Each lives by its values and cannot understand the other's values. The higher could to some extent recognise what the lower represents but refuses. The lower cannot even understand the higher. It seems so alien and this is the reality of today and it will get a little worse. Well it will get much worse in a way, worse because of the misunderstanding but until this higher movement can organise itself and take the lead, the conflict will be hard. When this takes the lead, the lesser will tend to fall in line or accept or no more oppose violently as it does today.

So this gives you some picture of the big cycles into this, since the questioner has asked yogis, acharyas, saints etc. traditions, religions. In this whole movement of the first three yugas let's say, and they decline, you see the religious forms come in the third yuga where the conventional age takes place. In the fourth yuga, in the particularly the breakdown of the past, you have many lineages appearing, many forms appearing, each represents a partial truth attempting to assert to fill a gap momentarily. If you look at the big picture of a thousand years, some saint rises for a moment, there's an active influence within his lifetime and it goes away, maybe a memory of it remains or a conventional form of it continues as a positive influence still.

All these tend to blend. Each you can see as little pockets of flashes of light pushing, rising, lifting, making small corrections here and there. Not all of them are conscious of what they are doing. But you have to see this big picture not from the point of view of what we intend, but the deeper purpose of God's working that acts through us. We are often not conscious of that working of what that working is. And so from that perspective you see each one as a point of light filling a gap, making a lift here, making a correction there, and it's as if bit by bit all the pieces are being pulled up as much as they can and right now is the crisis that we are at where although there is this pulling up movement there is a choice which makes for a split. A choice to align to the higher or a choice to refuse. To choose to not align is a kind of a refusal already but you can still make a correction there. But once you make a hard choice to refuse consciously, then the drop is certain.

So this is where we are. I think it's a big Big picture, useful to understand. We will see how this links to the next two questions also. So we can go to the next question.

Alina (0:25:48):
Tulsi is asking: there have been many freedom fighters, devotees, partial avatars and a Kalki avatar who had taken birth in Bengal (Subhash Chandra Bose, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Rabindranath Tagore, Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Swami Vivekananda, Chaitanya Maha Prabhu and Sri Aurobindo), I'm sorry if I didn't pronounce correctly, and yet, isn't it surprising that Bengal, both East and West, is under Islamic rule? Even Sri Aurobindo's birthplace has been affected by partition. So much suffering and the slaughter of Hindus is still going on. It disturbs me. Do you foresee any solution sooner or later?

Sraddhalu (0:26:48):
Yes, the question has several aspects but keeping it in continuity with this big picture that we have been describing: you see in Bengal, quite exceptionally, a very large number of freedom fighters of an extraordinary calibre, Vibhutis, partial avatars and Sri Aurobindo himself and you have all these names of exceptional people. All of them taking birth in a rapid succession in a short period, let's say about less than a hundred years. This list is very small. There are exceptional scientists, the exceptional philosophers, musicians, artists, literally an outburst of creativity in such a small space. Well, Bengal is small when you look at the whole of India, but it would be equivalent to an entire country in Europe. So it's not so small. But still why in such a small space for such a, in such a rapid period and then after that almost as if it's a famine of great people, a complete loss and a complete collapse? Bengal was one of the hubs of the industrial development in India also. It was a centre for trade and shipping for all over the world going back a few thousand years. And after India gains independence, some of these great leaders, poets etc. they rapidly fade out. The place comes under first communist rule and then a kind of a semi Islamic rule. The other half of Bengal which was partitioned off goes completely under Islamic rule and a pretty painful one which eventually separates from the other half of what was West Pakistan because it was actually not ready to take that Islamic rule, culturally too different and yet that has stuck, once it's stuck it's difficult for it to get free, and yet the Bengali people in Bangladesh also have a different type and temperament. But still why this loss and collapse? Because today what you see everywhere is only poverty and a helplessness and a suppression by powerful interests, and this thriving industry was completely wiped out under communist rule. All of them moved out or were extinguished, and today there's a struggle even for the regeneration. Why does this happen?

And we understand this when we look at the bigger picture of the cycles. So in certain spaces there's a special concentration of possibilities, a readiness is prepared and Sri Aurobindo comments on this going back nearly a hundred years where he says that in India the Bengali type of the mind is the most developed. The intellect is developed, the heart is developed but there is a lack, a gap of the link between these two. That lack of the link makes it possible for the heart's emotions to seize the mind and dominate and override the intellect. But where the link has been sufficiently developed in those individuals, you have an extraordinary capacity for the intellect and the emotions to work together as powerful instruments for any expression. And when that opens to the higher intuition, then you have all the extraordinary leadership that you see, from the spiritual to the artistic and scientific and so on.

What happens though which is also the case in such spaces, there's a special force, a special energy, a special push, and it gives birth to many possibilities, rich possibilities and then in exhaustion falls back to rest. You see biologically the same thing happens to a mother whether human or animal. When she gives birth the whole process is a gathering first, a build-up, the pregnancy, the building of a possibility and then the throwing it out. And having given birth she is exhausted, tired, goes to rest before preparing for the next movement. Something like that happens also in cultures, civilisations, nations. And what you see in Bengal is one such movement, something special was built up, it gave birth to all these possibilities, and then there is as if exhaustion of the tapas of the concentrated energy and a lapse into rest. Again if you look at a deeper spiritual causes, you will find, it will integrate something higher with the lower and then again lift and rise and so on. But in between there is scope for a lot of hijack and confusion.

Sraddhalu (0:31:42):

You see similar things in many other countries. You look at what Greece had produced during its period of creativity. Literally defined the type of thought in Europe and the art of Europe going back 2,000 years, and then suddenly there's an exhaustion and a loss and a complete flattening out. You go to the Greece of today, you will not find any of that kind of a thriving creativity and originality of any kind. Even an attempt to replicate what was done in the past is not living as a force. It's this exhaustion. Similar things you see in other countries in Europe also and generally across the world wherever there was a special outburst of some kind.

So, yes, it is not a happy condition to see this kind of a fall, but we have to understand the deeper causes. At the end of the day the collapse happens because there was some major lack, something missing which makes for the fall to build that, to integrate that and then again a rise that will come subsequently to be seen in what form. But one of the ways in which nature assists this kind of a rise is by blending external other influences. So something will be mixed in from outside sometimes by an invasion of sorts, it could be a cultural invasion or by taking some of the best minds out from there into other spaces to be nourished with complementing influences and perhaps eventually to be brought back. Or if that is nature's intention to blend into the rest of India instead of bringing back Bengal as a special focus, that is to be seen if we have a deeper sense one could so to say perceive what is the intention. If you see the intention, you can predict confidently, this is what will happen. But if you can't see, then you see all these possibilities. And which of these? Ha, we will see, or you see trends initially suggesting certain things. It's fascinating to understand, because the Mother said in the 1960s, nature had decided to blend, to mix all the specialisations she created across cultures and across racial types also. So we will definitely see some of that happening.

At the same time the passage that has happened where there has been this extreme fall leaves its other side effects. When at the end of India's independence or at the end of the struggle for independence and as independence was given, there were certain riots, it was the conflict of the Muslims wanting their own separate land and then in starting to kill Hindus and there was a slaughter taking place. And I'm referring to this other part of the question.

Sraddhalu (0:34:40):

At that time I think it was Nirodbaran who asked Sri Aurobindo, perhaps it was somebody else, who asked Sri Aurobindo: Surely the Divine will save Bengal? And Sri Aurobindo's answer: “If Bengal wants the Divine.” Very important. So the help is there, do you want it? Or, do you in that moment of clouding, darkness turn to your own insufficiency and wallow in it? Perhaps eventually out of that wallowing you say ah yes perhaps there is something more and open to a higher help. That is to be seen. But this is an important indicator at that point of what would determine the future of Bengal. And I'm using the word ‘Bengal’ to include both East and West because culturally they were really one, one special space. So solution? Yes a solution will happen and it will happen as people wake up. As people say, this is enough, we want to change, you will see a radical dramatic changes taking place sometimes very smoothly or sometimes with great pain and struggle, which one it will be again depends on choices that we make. I think this gives you a sense of why there can be some greatness followed by a lapse. For India itself you could look at this in a sense a big picture: going back 2000 years was this epitome of everything that was so rich and diverse, and in the period of exhaustion but it was not really exhaustion it was the otherworldly turn of spirituality, the withdrawal from the life to turn to spirit in exclusion and then the exhaustion came subsequent to that which is in the last thousand years. During which time that there is a deeper preparation, as you go into sleep there is the regeneration, the body rebuilds itself inner consciousness realigns and integrates, assimilates the prior learnings. prepares for the new birth and then again bursts out. You see something of that happening in India, similar things will happen in pockets and perhaps around the world to be seen in what way we can go to the third question.

Alina (0:37:13):
Apoorva is writing: Nietzsche's superman is very similar to Sri Aurobindo's concept of superman or could say it is much closer to the aspect of overman since Nietzsche died in 1900’s, he probably did not have an idea of the superman. Nietzsche as a philosopher did not have any anti-semitic sentiments, but his sister and his brother-in-law did, who later on went on to publish Nietzsche's works posthumously and they served the Nazi propaganda. In short, Nietzsche's philosophy was worked and mobilised by the Nazis.

Sraddhalu (0:38:07):
So yes, the question has, well it's one question followed by some observations. In fact, Sri Aurobindo has quite a few very interesting things to say about Nietzsche, as well as his concept of superman. And some of what the questioner asks is, or states is not quite correct as we will see. So first of all Sri Aurobindo very clearly distinguishes Nietzsche's superman from Sri Aurobindo's own use of the word “Superman”. And although Nietzsche is, has so to say coined that word first and therefore every time you use that word you have to make sure to differentiate in what way you use it otherwise people would tend to understand that. Also this aspect of anti-semitic sentiments and what happened later etc., there's a truth to it but it's not as simple as that, it's not about anti-semitism, there's something more essential we have to look at. Whether it turned out to be anti-semitic or ‘anti’ some other, the root is what you have to look at.

So we will look at some of these things in relation, from Sri Aurobindo's own comments. And it's quite fascinating, Sri Aurobindo both praises Nietzsche for his special features as well as criticises him for his limitations which we will find helpful for our own understanding.

First a comment from the Mother, this is in a lecture that she gives in Japan, and that would be let's say around 1918-19 or 17 something, something like that, in the midst of the First World War, and she's speaking of the possibility of this higher self and the higher evolutionary Superman. She says: “However, that self which we are not yet, but have to become, is not the strong vital Will hymned by Nietzsche, but a spiritual self and spiritual nature.” As distinct from the vital self. “For as soon as we speak of supermanhood we must be careful to avoid all confusion with the strong but so superficial and incomplete conception of Nietzsche’s superman.” It’s strong but superficial and incomplete. These are the three criticisms she makes. “Indeed, since Nietzsche invented the word superman, when someone uses it to speak of the coming race, willingly or not, it evokes at the same time Nietzsche’s conception.” And she explains that, yes, we have to become ourselves, but what is this “ourselves” that we have to be? Then she says, “Nietzsche made the mistake we said we ought to avoid: his superman is but a man aggrandised, magnified, in whom Force has become super-dominant, crushing under its weight all the other attributes of man. Such cannot be our ideal. We see too well at present whither leads the exclusive worshipping of Force —to the crimes of the strong and the ruin of continents.” She is speaking remember during the First World War, and then you see, how prophetic this is of what happens with the Second World War. And she said: “No, the way to supermanhood lies in the unfolding of the ever-perfect Spirit. All would change, all would become easy if man could once consent to be spiritualised.” This is a very interesting idea. Nowhere in Sri Aurobindo’s and Mother’s writings, you will see this emphasis on struggle and pain and suffering in the journey of spirituality. She says, the only reason that is the struggle would be because you refuse. Once you consent to be spiritualised, all would become easy. “The higher perfection of the spiritual life will come by a spontaneous obedience of spiritualised man to the truth of his own realised being, when he has become himself, found his own real nature; but this spontaneity will not be instinctive and subconscient as in the animal, but intuitive and fully, integrally conscient.” And then she makes a very interesting observation, for us very relevant, we are reading this a hundred years later: “Therefore, the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age, will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being, an evolution or conversion of the present type of humanity into a spiritualised humanity, even as the animal man has been largely converted into a highly mentalised humanity.”

So, the individuals who will most help the future of humanity will be those who recognise the spiritual evolution as the destiny and the great need. Think about this. And this is what you will see everywhere in the world. The resistance is from those who refuse this or aim at the opposite, and the breakthroughs will be by those who seek this or recognise this.

Sraddhalu (0:43:44):

So having said this from the Mother's observation, we go to Sri Aurobindo's comments in an article in the Arya called “The Type of the Superman”: He points out that recently again a hundred years ago, “The ideal of the Superman has been brought recently into much notice”, and some “fruitful discussion”, and so on. And he discusses how the idea is of a “rare … solitary ego”, etc., and then he compares with Nietzsche: “Nietzsche first cast it, the mystic of Will-worship”, he describes Nietzsche as “the mystic of Will-worship”, but then “the troubled, profound, half-luminous Hellenising Slav with his strange clarities, his violent half-ideas, his rare gleaming intuitions that came marked with the stamp of an absolute truth and sovereignty of light.” Interesting.

Elsewhere, I don’t know if you will read that, elsewhere he describes how people are justified. You know, in Europe, many described Nietzsche not as a philosopher. And Sri Aurobindo says, yes, they are right, he is not so much a thinker for the purpose of thinking, he is more a visionary, but what he sees, and he sees the truth, but what he sees is through a muddy perception with occasional flashes. And so, he glimpses something, but by the time he articulates it, it gets totally warped. And he uses this symbolism, he says, of the Greek fortune tellers who would see the future and they say it truthfully but in a way that the listener would understand it in the very opposite way, and that is Nietzsche’s “half-luminous Hellenising Slav”.

Each of these is actually a very suggestive word, “Hellenising” as a characteristic of the Hellenistic, the Greek type and the “Slav” is a different type, and he blends these. But I won’t go into detail.

Next, he says, Sri Aurobindo says, “But Nietzsche was an apostle who never entirely understood his own message. His prophetic style was like that of the Delphic oracles which spoke constantly the word of the Truth but turned it into untruth in the mind of the hearer. Not always indeed; for sometimes he rose beyond his personal temperament and individual mind, his European inheritance and environment, his revolt against the Christ-idea, his war against current moral values and spoke out the Word as he had heard it, the Truth as he had seen it, bare, luminous, impersonal and therefore flawless and imperishable.” Sometimes. Otherwise, he was bound by this “war against … moral values”, bound by “his revolt against the Christ-idea”, bound by “his European inheritance and environment”, bound by “personal temperament and individual mind”, all these were distorting elements.

So, Sri Aurobindo is precisely marking out all the distortions. You have to have really almost literally met the man to be able to describing with such, such precision. And that is Sri Aurobindo’s extraordinary perception and precision of articulation. For those of you who are interested, you should read in more depth, because he gives so many very interesting ideas, and then he elaborates on each of these, explains how these distortions come, etc. But we skip that.

So you see how Sri Aurobindo praises him at the same time showing his limitations. But then coming to the idea of this supermanhood, Sri Aurobindo explains that the need to truly become ourselves which you find in Nietzsche, yes that is true, but what is it that, that will be the form of this supermanhood? And there are two extremes, the God and the Titan. Both are trying to be truly themselves but they're completely different in their sense of themselves. And there's a long discussion where he speaks of this in detail where he says, the gods come from the oneness and their universality and return to their universality, the Titans are emerging from below as an evolutionary ascent out of chaos and division and so their identity is a divisive identity and therefore when they try to assert themselves and fulfil themselves it is by suppression and domination of others.

Sraddhalu (0:48:40):

There's a whole fascinating description of this which I would want to read in greater detail because it explains so precisely the way this, this temperament works, the Asuric temperament, where he explains how, let me see if I can find this, he explains how for the Asuric temperament: How do you demonstrate that you're the boss, that you're dominating, that you're compelling, that you're owning? You see the gods find fulfilment by finding harmony and in finding harmony they recover their unity or they bring unity. The Titan or the ascending type finds unity by suppressing, co-opting and swallowing up the other. That's all he knows. And how do you know that you have dominated the other? By making the other squirm under your foot and pressure. The more you are able to make them squirm, the more you are fulfilled in your sense that ha I have reached my power of dominance. You see how the perversion happens. And so Nietzsche's superman tends towards this. Sri Aurobindo's concept of Superman tends towards that. And they are literally poles apart, opposites to each other. It’s not even approaching the overmental idea. It’s completely opposite. It is the Asuric form that we see. And therefore Sri Aurobindo points out that in this subjective phase of Germany where Germany, both wars, great wars, really it was asserting itself in the Nietzschean superman type. He says, “The real source”, and I read from Sri Aurobindo, “The real source of this great subjective force which has been so much disfigured in its objective action, was not in Germany’s statesmen and soldiers”, it’s not even Nazism, “—for the most part poor enough types of men—but came from her great philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Nietzsche, from her great thinker and poet Goethe”, and “from her great musicians, Beethoven and Wagner, and from all in the German soul and temperament which they represented.” So, now he takes it and even deeper, inside the soul and temperament of the nature is a certain aspect which these musicians and thinkers represented, which then shaped a certain outlook, thought-process, value system and shaped a society which became what we saw and ended with the wars.

So it's not his, the soldiers, it's not even Nazism or the anti-semitic form of it. That became incidental to this temperament which says, okay if you are a superior race then by the same rationale of the reductionist evolutionary idea of the superior dominating the inferior, this superior race had to dominate whatever it considered to be the inferior and then it looked at which are the inferior ones and then starts the whole process of enslavement. Again this turn of subjectivism, and how it works out, and what could have been done to correct, or what is the correction that may come in the future, all this you will find in Sri Aurobindo's writing. Then he says, “The misapplication by Treitschke of the teaching of Nietzsche to national and international uses which would have profoundly disgusted the philosopher himself, is an example of this obscure transmission. But still a transmission there was. For more than a half-century Germany turned a deep eye of subjective introspection on herself and things and ideas in search of the truth of her own being and of the world, and for another half-century a patient eye of scientific research on the objective means for organising what she had or thought she had gained. And something was done, something indeed powerful and enormous, but also in certain directions, not in all, misshapen and disconcerting. Unfortunately, those directions were precisely the very central lines on which to go wrong is to miss the goal.”

Sraddhalu (0:53:42):

So a lot of good things were built up at that time. Literally Germany was leading the world in all these spheres. But these central distortions made everything go off completely. So again I will not go further into this detail, inviting you to read these texts on your own. Do we need to go deeper into this? Many interesting observations Sri Aurobindo makes about Nietzsche. He parallels him to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, shows similarities and differences and what was the driving perception, compares him with a Buddhist thought and things like that. Quite fascinating. For example, he says that, see, in the Indian tradition there is the concept of being and becoming. The Buddhists and Nietzsche together have emphasised the aspect of becoming but not of being. So everything in the world is this perpetual change, motion, movement. And for Nietzsche it was the Will to be, which Sri Aurobindo correlates with the tapas shakti and the Brahman as tapas. So he had aligned to certain aspects but could not see the other aspect. And then Heraclitus instead has the concept of both although he emphasises more the becoming aspect. The fascinating nuances and insights that Sri Aurobindo gives us of these. And it's fascinating when you read Sri Aurobindo, in a few lines he summarises large tracts of knowledge, insight, perception and weaves together links across time, across history, across cultures and civilisations and shows you the underlying common tapestry of thought and perceptions and of course their resultants, consequences and actions. So I think I will leave it at that for purpose of Nietzsche.

Coming back to the question, yes perhaps Nietzsche's philosophy was warped and mobilised by the Nazis also but you have to see it had already got warped because the philosophy itself was a mixed perception of a deeper truth. The power of the truth remains but the distortion now warps it in a way that those who follow that distorted form inevitably end up with a massive failure. And this we have to understand is so important for us. Do not ever compromise. Do not ever allow slight distortions especially when dealing with great truths. A slight distortion is enough to lead sometimes to even doom in this case.

I want to go back to a question we had taken about two weeks ago and if you recall, this was a question which was by someone who asked that: I don't want to have all this theory, if I just find the Guru within me, the truth will flow and everything will be fine. And we saw that it doesn't work like that because we have so many parts. But here comes the important thing. Let's say you find that truth within you, the part in you which lives by that truth is relatively small, the rest of you not living by that truth, as soon as they receive the influence of that truth would catch and distort. And imagine if everything within you which was ignored now takes the power of that truth and starts distorting and expressing a distortion. What happens then? The power of the truth acts but the distortion warps and harms, and such a person could easily become asuric. In fact many of the great asuras were great yogis as you know. They lived actually by certain realisations or had the power of certain realisations but because the rest of the personality was given to the ego, it caught the light, it got the knowledge and warped and distorted it. While still expressing perhaps in forms, in words, in ideas, but in spirit distorting slightly. And it needs a very slight distortion to swing it to ego assertion and dominance. And it can be done in such a subtle way that people do not even recognise that it has got that. And this is what you will find happening all the time with every great spiritual revelation, teaching, manifestation, realisation, in its expression in the world, not always in the person who embodies it, but in those who receive it around, there is this insufficiency, incapacity, mixture and so on and the tendency to distort and turn around. What happens then? If you're not careful, you've just created the very opposite influence, right around the very centre of the light, which is what you see as the church taking the teaching of the Christ and warping it to something which is built on fear and guilt, where Christ was trying to manifest love. But this tendency you will find tending to happen everywhere. The ascetic turn was an attempt to also protect from such distortion but in the very act of the ascetic turn you made a distortion again. So there is no easy escape out of this. You have to just bring forward, that's why the word sincerity, to stand by what is your highest and organise yourself by the highest available to you at that moment. And if you have particularly the deeper psychic intuition, intimation, influence, you will just feel ha something is not okay, something is missing, something is mixed, and you will withhold, wait for the clarity and then if the clarity comes with the intuition you will distinguish, take what is relevant, remove the distortion. But otherwise you will just be wary and not submit blindly. But especially where these things take the form of a movement, the masses follow without that kind of discrimination. There is not yet in the mass of humanity a sufficient psychic sensitivity developed or rather whatever little was there is largely being subsumed by the current excitations and vital distortions through the media and other means. So it's a tricky passage. If you are vigilant, if you are conscious of this, we will make the corrections at each step.

Sraddhalu (1:00:39):

I remember it was in the nineteen, mid-eighties I think. It was barely 15 years after the Mother had left her body and there was a certain group in Auroville who had not even bothered to read Sri Aurobindo. They had read the Mother's Agenda and had got swayed by certain comments and they said oh Sri Aurobindo is now old and Mother is the new, and so they began to burn Sri Aurobindo's books and eventually they found it was not interesting to stay and they left Auroville. But somehow that imprint of that way of thinking stayed and I found until barely 10 years ago there were people who were speaking of: Ashram is old because it follows Sri Aurobindo and Auroville is new because it is formed by the Mother. Ashram represents the past, Auroville represents the future, and such kind of weird divisions, but when presented in a kind of a charismatic form they found followers and these ideas seized certain minds. But anyone who has a little bit of that internal discrimination, they say, ho that doesn't fit, because what the Mother spoke or expressed and put out is exactly the same thing, it is the same teaching, there's no difference, and what Sri Aurobindo presents if you're bothered to read is something so inclusive, so wide as to have no equivalent in human history so far. And having read it you will say this is going to survive for the next thousand years at least as the most outstanding work and guide and light for humanity, at least a thousand years. Because of precisely the far-seeing vision, comprehensive, embracing, integrating perspective, nothing is left out, everything is included, all is put in its place with such clarity and precision and a rational articulation. And the moment you see that, you say, okay, if something doesn't make sense, it's probably because I have not understood it properly. So you wait, you become quiet, try to perceive more deeply or wait for an insight to clarify what you have not understood and you'll find this is natural to those types in whom the psychic influence is somewhat clear. And you read and you have the natural humility to say, ah something I'm missing, I'll wait, I'll come back, I'll read it again, it'll come. But the other type which has the arrogance of its self-importance it reads, ho that doesn't make sense, that's wrong, see Sri Aurobindo is wrong here, and they just go on without even bothering to stop and question their own understanding.

So well this I'm just putting all this in view and linking it to the first question about how are the youth today to begin their journey. It will depend a lot on their internal sincerity and that alignment to the deeper psychic influence which alone can be the light to lead you through the increasing chaos.

So coming back to the question, Sri Aurobindo's Superman is very-very different, completely the opposite of Nietzsche's use of the word “Superman”. Similarly we have to understand also the word “Supermind" that Sri Aurobindo used is very different from the way other people use it. Sometimes people use it like a hive mind and this you will find in some of the modern new age gurus who use that term, and if you read the same words do not assume that they mean the same thing.

Okay I think I will take a quick look at the chat box and see if we have any questions pending from here. Okay there's a question on mental and physical illness, maybe we will come to it as part of some other subsequent question. So Hanel asks: Is this Golden Age already a certainty or can we still miss it, I often feel the resistance is due to the inferior forces and that enlightenment of humanity seems as if impossible? In the rationale of the cycles of the ages, it is inevitable. Whether it happens now or whether it happens in a thousand years, that's left to our participation, sincerity, openness and allowing the change, committing to the spiritual change. Whether it happens smoothly or through a greater destruction, again depends on us. But it's inevitable in the very nature of things. Because there is a compulsion of a deeper kind which is so overwhelming that it will crush resistance eventually through pain or lift those which are awake with joy. Again what proportion of humanity make that separation? A lot depends on the individual choice. If you look at humanity, the part that's choosing is still very small, but at least for them it can be quite a rapid, and I will say, I will use this phrase: it is happening now. We who choose to be a part of it are already in this upward movement. How much we will be able to rise in it? Again depends on our participation, how much value we give to it, how much importance and thereby how much time, attention, commitment we make for it. It doesn't mean you have to sit down and meditate for an hour. Maybe that will be one way for you to align. But in life, in every choice you make, in every action, in every relationship, in every decision, whether you choose to refer to this deeper reference of two ways. One is conscious of the presence deep within and your deeper aspiration aligning to that or this idea that all this is building towards a new step to a new consciousness. And what I am doing now, does it assist? does it align? So there's a kind of an objective perception, there's a kind of a deeper subjective, and maybe both are aligned, depends on you. So rather than seeing whether it will happen or not, the question should be rather formulated as: In how many will it happen and how many will miss it? Then it makes sense. And then how soon among those in whom it happens? through how much struggle? But it has to happen at least in that part that chooses it.

Sraddhalu (1:07:33):

So Rumpul, Rumpul asks, which book was I reading? I was reading from several books including the Human Cycle where he discusses Germany's turn. There is his writings on the article called “Heraclitus” where Sri Aurobindo also refers to Nietzsche, and then there is another article on the Superman or “The Type of the Superman”, that's the title where also he refers to Nietzsche. I think I was reading from and then I read one part from The Yoga and Its Objects about India. That is references. But you can easily go to the, to one of these websites and search keyword ‘Nietzsche’, you'll find all the references.

Vyjayanti asks: What are the strengths and weaknesses of a typically moulded Indian mind taking into consideration future evolution? Actually that's too broad. It's like saying what are the types of the European mind. Yes there is a broad European mind but within Europe there is a distinctive difference between different national minds. The French mind for example is very different from the German mind which is very different from the British mind which is different from the Italian temperament etc. So it's more useful to look at these distinctive types to fully appreciate but if you had to make a general comment about the common space of Europe and the common space of India so in India also the Bengali type is different from the Maratha type which is the different from the Punjabi type which is different from the Tamil type and so on. But there's something common among them and there Sri Aurobindo makes an observation which is a whole long article on this where he says where the European mind has been trained to look from outside-in, the Indian mind has been trained to look from the inside-out. And to the Indian mind the sense of the infinite is familiar whereas to the European mind the finiteness has a greater hold and to the Indian mind even the sense of the timeless is very strong because always there's the sense of even in the history long cycles, long periods of time and what I do now, how long will it last, those become references and with all that there's the intuitive turn which the European mind is much more a rationalistic turn. Now all this remember is a hundred years ago. When later he's speaking to Nirodbaran and others who, some of whom had their education in the West at least some part of their education, medical education, or otherwise, he says, you people are already half-European in your mind and you don't understand what I'm describing. So I would still say, to a great extent quite a large part of the Indian mind has had an overlay through education because it was a European import of education, there's an overlay of the European mentality, and then to be able to perhaps harmonise the two becomes a necessity inevitably, although there's a struggle in between, what will come out will be even more rich.

I could say a lot more about this because of personal experience having struggled in fact with the harmonisation of these two tendencies of the mind and to some extent it took me about 15 or 20 years to bring it to some level of clarity in the harmony and seamless continuity. Maybe some other time when it would require me also to introspect on how to articulate certain things, but what will come out will be far more rich. Whereas in Europe there is not the compulsion of the other type of mind. As in India it came through the colonial phase that it was imposed so that the integration of the two is compelled. Europe, there is not the compulsion. But what you do see in Europe where the minds have turned to this other aspect of the more intuitive and higher type, the blending has taken place, those people stand out, they are outstanding, and how to translate that or transmit that to the larger mass in Europe to be seen. What I do see interesting in Europe is certain schools, for example in Ireland and England there is this school I think it's called The School of Philosophy or something like that where they bring Sanskrit into their course from the beginning, from childhood, all the children speak Sanskrit and have exposure to some of the Vedantic thought and Sankhya philosophy. It would be one way by which they are made to grow up with these two approaches and then there is an automatic blending which takes place. And it will be interesting to see whether those students stand out in their power of, or capacity of either perception of through mind or articulation through mind. I have not had enough contact to validate this, but it's an interesting example where it could happen.

Sraddhalu (1:12:50):
So Aditya's question: What from the Indian culture will be discarded in the evolutionary movement apart from the acquired tendency to asceticism? For sure everywhere asceticism is being discarded. The truth of asceticism will stay and perhaps even in the ascetic traditions that will become to some extent true. But in the process there is a confusion. When spirituality is associated with asceticism, there will be confusion of whether this is spiritual or loss of spirituality. So there will be a necessarily a struggle in understanding, a need to restate etc. But other things which will be discarded. Now it's perhaps discarded is a too strong a word. Mother was asked, she said something, I am now going to paraphrase, so don't catch exact words, but she said, she was asked, she said something first that from the supramental view so many things which are valuable for humanity are completely false and irrelevant. And someone asked her, ‘for example’, and she says, all this thing which you do prayer, puja, japa, or rituals etc.

From the perspective of the spiritual consciousness, well it is there. Why would you want to do a prayer around it? So this example I give sometimes when people are too rigidly attached to the need to do formal invocations and prayers. I said, let's say you're sitting down and you start your prayer and you're going to do your 20-minute or 30 minutes of invocation, chants, whatever ritual. But the moment you sit down, the Divine Mother appears before you and says I'm here. Will you say, wait-wait let me first invoke you, let me complete my prayer or will you say thank you I don't need the prayer anymore or what I did was already the prayer it had its result. Think about it.

So, there has been a remnant of the religious phase. Remember, religion belongs to the third of the yugas where the ritualism, formalism of the means of entering a relation with the divine symbolised, structured, organised, very valuable at a certain stage of human evolution. Perhaps still valuable today in a symbolic form, at a symbolic level and for a certain mass of humanity perhaps essential to keep the direction and aspiration alive even if unconsciously and mechanically. With the moment you've crossed a certain threshold in your consciousness in your evolution you can actually say up why am I doing all this when I have the divine right in front and I can directly relate and know the divine in intimacy both in silence as in full intensity of expression. So it's an example I hope the elaboration was sufficient, otherwise you can think about it more deeply.

Aditya's question about human race as a link between animal and Superman will survive, what happened to the Vanara race that was linked between ape and human? it's not even that the human being will survive as a link rather between the human and the Superman there will be a link that won't survive the human being is there representing the intellect, it's not a link in a sense everything is linked, but it's a type, it will stay. The link is a transitory type between the human and the suprahuman which should be of an intermediate grade of consciousness which is unable to survive on its own, it either falls back or it has to rise. So Sri Aurobindo gives this example and this we understand when we enter the experience of the mind as it opens to its own higher possibilities, higher ranges. As it opens to what he calls “the mind of light”, first the higher mind, and then from there the mind of light, and then the intuitive mind. In these intermediate steps, none of these can you stay-on on your own. If you go into the higher mind, you can stay for a while, but eventually because it is as if a larger, wider framework of the current mind type, it will tend to either lapse back or it will need to continue to rise but cannot stay stable in itself. Again, in the illumined mind, there's a great light and perception, a seeing rather than thinking and when you are in that you are seeing but from there it swings towards the intuition or lapses back. But intuition is the first level that is stable in itself. You neither fall nor rise if you choose to stay there and you can stay because it has a base of truth, all it perceives is truth although in finite bits.

Sraddhalu (1:18:04):

So in the human evolution, there will be all these intermediate gradations till it reaches the intuitive and at that point there will be stability and the intermediate gradations will either fall back or be absorbed into the higher but then a kind of a gap. Similarly the overmental before the supramental could be a station for a while, it is unlikely it would last too long or it might and then from there is supramental. So Mother actually envisages several stages as intermediate levels, not all would survive as a stable stage. But this is just for us, it is more academic although we understand the principle of it. What matters for us is what steps we take today and the growth that we can make in consciousness.

Sraddhalu
Yes, the human, mental human will continue even with the supramental because it represents a step and they may perhaps see other such intermediate levels of the intuitive and perhaps over mental also. But again that's not important. What is matter, what is important for us now is to what extent we can open.

There is a question from Rupal about Mother's guidance on reading Savitri as a sadhana to keep you protected on the path. I am not sure whether the question is more about protection or as sadhana. But it’s not that Savitri is necessary as a path of sadhana, it's that you can of course use it as a support in your sadhana. But simply reading Savitri would not be a sadhana in itself. It can be an aid, it can be a support. When you read, you feel a certain uplift. Yes, certainly use it. There are passages which are intensely assistive to open to certain experiences. Again, use it. But if merely reading will be your means and feeling good by reading, that's only so useful. If that's the goal, that's fine. But in itself, it cannot take you beyond unless you make that effort to use it as a gateway to go beyond. And when you do, at some point the words will fall away. You'll read something, it will lift you to an experience and then the experience has to stay and then you can use it as a gateway but not just Savitri even other writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother as you read you will find they give you a touch in the vibration itself of the experience described. Sonnets of Sri Aurobindo are extremely powerful, some of them are, just open you to certain experiences. Or even when you read The Life Divine or The Synthesis of Yoga where he describes certain experiences, it's actually enough to begin the opening of the experience. So it's up to you. Some of us find it more naturally assistive and particularly with Savitri because it touches through the intuitive layers much more. But would you make the effort to integrate with your thought mind also? Or will it be again a gap with an undeveloped thought mind opening to some kind of an intuition which will mix with your own emotional, sentimental, instinctive and then blur out? Or will you use it also to develop the clarity of your mind and so on? Depends a lot on the choices you make.

I think, we have covered the questions here.

Ok, there is a longish question about healing, and, so we will take that up next time.

But we'll just complete with the last question of Nina since we're talking about Savitri.

Alina (1:22:00):

Nina is asking: I know Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri is a supreme poem, but sometimes I get bored. Why? And sometimes I listen to Sanskrit stotras of the Divine Mother, it awakes devotion or deep vibration in me. Then I saw a video of someone saying, Aigiri Nandini, Mahishasura Mardini, I felt delighted maybe he is sincere in his devotion I thought and he looks innocent and also like kshatriya, a warrior, his recitation made me feel joyful, why? I'm not sure, I pronounce correctly the Sanskrit.

Sraddhalu (1:22:44):

That’s fine. Okay. So basically reading Savitri sometimes she feels bored and sometimes she listens to some devotional songs and something about Mahishasura Martini, so she is an aspect of the Divine Mother destroying the demons and there is the enthusiasm of devotion and the joy which comes. So she's asking: How is it that is giving me joy and Savitri makes me feel bored? It depends which parts of your being touched. And the strong vital energy of the chant and the recitation and the singing naturally gives a lift to your vital energies and your emotions and so the happiness of the emotions. Savitri does not have that. Of course you can still feel that sometimes, an upsurge, but it's not so strongly vital in what it conveys. It is rather something felt in a state of deep stillness and quiet at a depth and so to the surface parts which need a little bit of excitation it can feel as boring. And yes there are parts where it becomes sometimes so abstract to you that it doesn't make sense and then you feel as if a distant resonance, oh yeah something is there in it. But it doesn't touch your emotions, doesn't touch your vital layers, and you say it's boring. Doesn't touch your intellect, you say I don't understand. And yet somewhere it feels good but that's something so deep and high that it's no more interesting for the rest of you. So well just accept, recognise this is what it is. There are different parts resonating. A time will come though where in these parts which currently feel it boring, when those parts awake and turn, they will also feel a lift and there will come become a time where you will read the same lines and you will say, my god this is so fascinating how is it I did not perceive this before? So just recognise, observe everything you read, everything you hear resonates with certain parts in you, sometimes more superficially, sometimes more deeply. Observe. Do not blur them. Do not confuse them.

So when you listen to this, let's say, video chant devotionalism and the vitality of the devotionalism and the force and power and enthusiasm of the emotions, it hits you on the surface emotions. It excites. But on a deeper level perhaps, the excitation covers up a deeper resonance which may be there which may not be there. If the person who's singing has a genuine deep devotion, aspiration, you will feel the deeper resonance also. Then all these layers are aligned. If that is not there and he's just somebody with a good voice and with a charismatic personality, it will shake, resonate on the surface but have feel hollow inside. Simply observe, and then choose. Choose at different times what is most useful and what you need at that time, and that's all. Remember everything is to be taken up and turned Godward. And if you find it helpful, go ahead use this. At some point, you'll find something deeper, more helpful, you'll enjoy stillness and deeper perceptions more, follow that. To each according to their need, according to their type, according to our current stage of development in those parts and it could be different in different parts. I would put that as a general guideline. But in whatever you enjoy, give it an upward turn, share in the opening and the aspiration. Even if you don't feel particularly the sense of the opening, just the enjoyment that you have you share the enjoyment and say, here thank you for this wonderful experience and I invite you to fill me and share in this with me. Just that is enough to create the link, whatever the nature of the experience that you're going through.

If there is a basic turn of alignment in aspiration to the divine, to this sense of a need or an aspiration for a new step in evolution, an opening even in idea to the new consciousness that is waiting and just in thought, in feeling or in a quiet aspiration you turn and open and stay like this. Immediately something of that influence begins to percolate in you. That influence entering begins to make the changes in you, shape you, turn you, bring more and more of you into alignment, unifies, aligns, integrates the different parts in you, and the work is being done and the sadhana is taking place. It can be as simple as this. To the extent you are more completely open, more completely receptive, more completely giving, it is even more rapid. So this initially may feel like a quiescent state, you are too passive, opening, receiving. But then eventually you engage in your work and in your work you keep this idea, I am doing this because this is part of my life's steps towards this growth, towards this evolution, towards the assisting the divine consciousness to manifest in life and change life, transform life. This idea is there, not necessarily in words. This sense of purpose is there. Where you have to make a choice, where you feel conflict, you bring this as your reference. Does it align with this? What aligns better? And follow that. Just that is enough to bring that influence in the work you do.

And here we come to a very important point and we'll complete with this. When in your work you have a part that has opened to the higher influence, the divine Shakti, the divine consciousness, the divine energy fills you and acts through your personal effort and lifts your work, and if in your work you're making an error, it will lean, turn you to correction or awake in you the perception of what is right and where there is the error. So even in your active processes of life and steps every day, if you have this at the background, you'll find yourself helped, guided, supported, protected, sometimes saved from even calamitous situations, because of this one centre that remains open.

Sraddhalu (1:29:29):

So keep in mind these two things. There's a, let’s say, inner side and there is a more outward and active side of you. In the inner side, you spend a few moments every day in quiet aspiration, concentration, opening, self-giving, receiving, containing and then from there you turn to your life, flow into your life as far as possible keeping the continuity of this link and do the best that you can using this as reference wherever you need to. The fact that there is this opening will make it that the help will continue, the influence will continue and shape your active working parts and change them. This would be the active way, the most direct way in which we can bring the sadhana in the work itself. There's much more you can do and we have discussed those things, but this is something so simple and so basic that all of us should make that effort every day.

I think this would be a good point for us to pause, and we'll take up further questions some of which have appeared now also into the next week's session. Recall for those of you where we discussed last time the question of soul relationships, if you can, do take a look at the talks from the evening series number 17 to 24 and my mother was watching them recently and as I overheard that they're quite comprehensive and will be of extreme help for many of you who may have these questions about relationships and so on. We can close with a short concentration together.

Sraddhalu (1:32:00):
Namaste.

Alina (1:32:04):

Namaste.