EWS #130: On Rituals and Related Practices + Q&A

Sept 24, 2022

Alina (0:00:26):
Namaste. I'm Alina and I'm going to host Evenings with Sraddhalu. Namaste.

Sraddhalu (0:00:37):
Namaste. Happy to be with all of you.

Alina (0:00:40):

Today is 24th of September, and we are continuing our series online: On Rituals and Related Practices.

So we will take some questions on this topic and you may freely ask your questions during our conversation in the chat box or you can send your questions beforehand with an email at our address integralstudies.in[at]gmail.com.

We will be answering some questions that we received in our chat box from Maya: In Evenings with Sraddhalu, number 127, you have mentioned the role of ritual and prayer in our progress and that it is useful in some regards but not always necessary. Similar is pranayama, yoga, asanas, practising intuition. Is it a good use of time?

That's the first question of Maya.

Sraddhalu (0:01:56):

We can merge it with her next which is similar lines.

Alina (0:02:00):

In regards to human evolution, I understand that from Evenings with Sraddhalu 127, that we should ask the Divine Light to work in us to align all the parts of our being and to transform it, and that this should be our sadhana, to increase this sensitivity to our highest aspiration in our work and daily life. In addition to this, are other daily practices of reading, pranayam, and yoga a good use of our spare time if it is done in the spirit of opening to the divine? I would like to know how best to use this time we have been given so that we do not waste this opportunity on earth?

It's a very good question. So.

Sraddhalu (0:02:59):
Mmhm. Yes, ideally there should be no difference between your spiritual life and your so-called normal life. All has to be taken into the spiritual aspiration. It does not mean that you will be with the same state of intensity of concentration all the time. That is probably not possible for most of us, at least at the initial stage.

So what we see is certain time of more intense, one-pointed concentration especially in immersion in the Divine Presence, at other times there will be one-pointed concentration on some external work where we are as if exteriorised into that work or identified with that work. On return from that, disengaging from that exclusive concentration, we might find the inner layers where we opened initially to the presence still hold the connection. You still feel the presence. It's not gone. Only your surface part was not aware of it, though the deeper layers still held it. This would be the ideal condition we have.

In between, we have other activities where we may not have a total concentration, or in which we might be able to practise a dual concentration where the inner and higher aspiration can join with some external focus, and so that would be to various degrees more or less this way or more or less that way you may swing in degree of concentration, in degree of blending, degree of emphasis, and it doesn't matter too much where you are in the blending as long as there is some sense of the influence of the presence even when not fully conscious here as long as something of that fills in, no time is lost, even if you're doing something which seems to you superficial if that link remains, you will find in that activity a certain turn or a certain value or your mind will say, ‘into this’, it turns in a direction to make it more interesting.

Sometimes you're sitting in a bus in public transport, you see cars go by, either you are inwardly concentrated, or some part, you see we have so many different parts which need their own excitation, activity, satisfaction, utility, so some part of the surface mind which is more mechanical says, ha I'm bored with this, and so the eyes fall on car numbers and you watch the numbers and you look for interesting patterns. And that part of the mind remains occupied, whereas some other part of the mind is dwelling on some other aspect or some deeper concentration or whatever else. Or you may be thinking of the work ahead and the presentation you have to make.

(0:06:05)

So recognise, there are many parts, each needs its own satisfaction.

In principle nothing is wasted unless you experience in that activity a complete dispersal. Then you know it's a waste of time.

So pretty much everything that Maya has listed are all potentially very useful. Practices of reading daily: depends what you read, depends how you read, why you read, all of those can be made useful. Even if you take, for example, a reading which involves something not directly connected with your spiritual aspiration, let's say informational content that you have to prepare for your work, for your job, or out of interest for your mind or informational utility, you may practise speed reading, you may practise deepening your concentration, you may bring into practice the deeper intuitive feel, any of these could be happening at the same time.

You may read a novel. In reading a novel again you might be anticipating from a directorial standpoint, from the author's standpoint, from the player's standpoint, from its value in your life or examples that you have seen, quite a complex activity can go on which can be rich and fulfilling in every way.

So even if it is not overtly a part of your spiritual life, the underlying sense of aspiration being present, the training and development of your external faculties will be automatically included to some degree at least in the spiritual life and it will be used, it will be led even because of that influence, it will guide you, it will open dimensions, bring an intuitivisation into that faculty that you're developing and so on.

So my ideal perspective will be: everything is brought in, nothing is left out.

In terms of reading, I've given us some examples of how it could be woven in. Pranayama and Yogasanas similarly can be extremely useful although the immediate focus might be for your physical body, for your health, for increasing, intensifying lifeforce. Again if done with that overall alignment those parts of the body as you stretch, as you develop, as you make more conscious intentionally, as you make more supple, you can infuse into it or at least hold an intention that into it a deeper influence will be infused, and those parts gradually taught to aspire for the divine, participate in the divine, to feel the intuitive influence growing in the physical tissue and so on.

At the very least, mentalise the physical body. That mentalised layer in the physical body can then be the link point for the intuitive influence to flow in, and the intuitive will be the link point for the self to be felt in the body as a permanent physical density of presence of self, and all of this is possible without much difficulty when done with this intention.

So yes all these will be useful and especially if brought into this direction. Even if you don't do that with that sense every day, having this as a general backdrop of your exercises, even that begins to tilt and influence things. So you may decide I'm going to do every day some asanas suppling my body and this is going to be my overall purpose for which whatever I can do at that moment I will push the boundaries, and then you are busy now in exclusive concentration on pushing the boundaries of your body, skill, suppleness, strength whatever. That intention held before has its subliminal influence operating and then once in a while you'll become very conscious about it, other times you may not be, doesn't matter.

(0:10:03):

So I would say, all your spare time should be in some way woven into this. And occasionally you will simply go out into nature and commune with the trees, plants, birds or the vaster experience of nature and dwell on the presence in nature and so on.

So don't limit yourself to just what is to your surface mind utilitarian and purposeful. There are these other kinds of experiences which are just as valuable, sometimes more.

And so every opportunity, every moment given to you, is somehow to be taken in, to whatever degree, and so you will not waste your opportunity of your time on earth.

You can go to the next question.

Alina (0:10:51):

Maya is writing: I like to listen to M.P. Pandit’s rendition of Lalitasahasranama and to chant along as best I can. In your earlier talk, Evenings with Sraddhalu 127 video, you gave the perspective of someone sitting down for their prayers when the Divine Mother appears but the person says, ‘wait, I still have to invoke you first’. Keeping in mind that we should stay open to the Divine Mother who is already within us and form an intimate relationship with her, what significance do ancient prayers like Lalitasahasranama still have and why did Pandit-ji continue to recite this one in particular, even after having such a close relationship with the Mother? I also like the morning prayer that you sing on Pandit-ji's birthday in his room that begins with the word Dhyata. Could you please tell the name of it?

Sraddhalu (0:12:05):
Mmhm. So what is the importance or utility of some of these ancient prayers, traditional forms of prayer, rituals etc.? That's really the larger part of the question. And why did Punditji continue to recite?

I will put it in the context of my comment which at that time in that discussion I was saying that so much of what we do in ritual form is not necessary and even comes in the way of the direct relationship with the divine.

And the example I had given was when you start, let's say you turn with your attention to the divine and immediately of course the presence is always there, but immediately the presence begins to reveal itself. But if your mind is too focused, oh, I have to pronounce correctly, I have to repeat hundred times, or I have to speak these words, will I remember, have I learnt it by heart, where's my book, then your focus is on other things, you do not feel the presence.

But on the other hand, you might feel the presence the moment you turn and then only you begin to recite as if addressed to the presence, isn't it? That has a very different value.

But then why would you recite? So there are two things. One is you feel the presence because you turn and you immerse, you enjoy and whatever form it takes in that concentration, meditation, contemplation etc. But if this was the purpose of the recitation, then it is as if you address the recitation to the Divine with the full sense of the meaning and what it invokes or evokes within you.

So I'll take the example of ‘Lalita-sahasra-nama’. For those who are not familiar with this, there are several works in the Indian tradition which have what would be called as ‘Thousand Names of the Divine’, so an aspect of the divine masculine or the divine Mother. So Vishnusahasra, Sahasra is thousand, nama, names, so thousand names of Vishnu or Lalita is the divine Mother as the, in her highest station as the Creatrix, but who is also the player, the enjoyer. The word Lalithe in Sanskrit would be translated as, as playing in, in a soft, gentle way. I don't have the exact English term for it. My teacher M.P. Pandit used to mention the word which has slipped my mind now. So to play in a kind of a soft delightful way, so that is her aspect, Lalita and thousand names of Lalita.

(0:15:06):

This is a very interesting text. And at a certain stage in Pandit-ji's life when there was Pandit Neelkand Sastri from Rameshwaram who had visited the Ashram and many people were going to him regularly because he was doing some pujas, and at that time the Mother asked Panditji specifically to go to him and learn. I suppose that is all that whatever was relevant.

So Panditji says he went about every day for about 15 days and whatever he learnt at that time through the discussions, conversations and so on, he came back, he had some notes, he prepared a little booklet which is now published in the, through the title of Thoughts of a Shakta, and that was his normal nature that anything he received, that he had learnt, he would immediately share and so he published, and that was it, there was nothing else that he thought worthwhile to put in writing and so that was left. So and that was it, nothing more than those 15 days.

But during that time because that was the thousand names of the Divine Mother, what happened was, and the reason why the Mother sent him for that, because in his past incarnations this was one of the lines of his sadhana, in the lines of the tantra, worship of the divine Mother, and so many of his books which he has written on the tantra, he said that they represented a knowledge which was a carryover from the past and in this life being exposed to those things or those texts simply brought back work already done and integrated into this incarnation.

As also Kapali Sastriar had written I think in one of his writings he says, I am a tantric through and through, but because in the Integral Yoga so much of this is no more needed, he is not bothered to write about it, only what was relevant to the Integral Yoga he wrote among his many writings on the tantra.

So it was with Pandit-ji also. But as a, the result of that contact was that he began to chant the Lalitasahasranama, and he was not, again not doing it in the traditional way at all, there was no ritual involved at all, he did not chant the whole thing in one go in fact split it into some natural boundaries of 10 pieces. And each day he would take one of those, and then the next, and the next, and recite, and it was not the only thing he did, he had other things which he would also recite.

And so when he recited, which you will see in the introduction to that recitation, he explains how, there is of course a deep knowledge but also the words act, the names act like keys, like levers which activate that aspect or that power of the Divine. And if you dwell on the word with love, with devotion, with an intention, then there is this, in the speaking of the word itself, it is as if that power is awakened or released.

So you will see when he chants, it is first of all with deep love and adoration and in the words he speaks there is an intentionality and in the rhythm and in the formulation which is quite extraordinary.

And most important: when he chanted it was coming with the full force of his being as if it is his recitation, his invocation, not something learned by heart.

I want to highlight this angle.

This is what makes it very important.

So there's something you could have read and you're busy remembering as you chant. I'm sure it will have an effect. Or while chanting you're busy counting. How many times have I counted? Have I chanted? Because you have to complete 108 or whatever it is you have decided. Again there will be a certain result obviously because of the force and in the intention behind.

But in his case as he is chanting it is from his full heart as if he is calling out the name, the verse. It is a full immersion, a full self-giving in that aspect, to that aspect, with the full force of his consecration. And so the result is something quite extraordinary. It's as if as you go through those names, each of these aspects is as if awakened, intensified in the presence, grows, builds a certain complex, rich aspect of the presence. And in himself as if there's an opening to all this. And it is done in joy. So when you hear him chant, you can feel this, the joy of that immersion and that adoration in all these aspects.

(0:20:04):

And there is perhaps a part of the mind which may dwell on the deeper sense of those words, of those meanings.

So he later brought out a little book which is called Adoration of the Divine Mother, where he picked up 108 of the names which he thought more appropriate to comment upon and wrote a commentary on each of those names which is also very interesting, because that shows you in a glimpse what is behind a single name. And so when you dwell, there's an intuitive aspect which dwells on the meaning and the quality of that consciousness, and it's an experience and it's a quite a rich experience.

You could perhaps have ignored all that and simply immersed in the oneness of the Divine Mother or you could dwell on different aspects or you could allow her to reveal certain aspects. But this has a different character, a different quality to the experience.

And at some point, so he was also reading from Uma Sahasram, which is written by Ganapati Muni. Lalitasahasranama is a more traditional text which goes back a couple of thousand years at least. But Uma Sahasram was written recently, now nearly about 90 years ago. Under the guidance of Ramana Maharshi, Ganapati Muni wrote it, I think, in a span of a very short time. And at the end of it, when he finished writing, Ramana Maharshi said, has all that I have said been taken down, meaning, he was actually the one inspiring as Ganapati Muni wrote.

So it's a, it's an extraordinary work also. And there again there is a style, rhythm, various metres in Sanskrit. Each chapter we may say is in a different metre and each has so many verses with so many aspects of adoration, powers and so on.

So there is a lot of deep knowledge when you dwell on the Divine Mother in this aspect then that aspect and so on. In Lalithasahasranama for example, she is conceived of in each of the chakras and there is a description of the form and the colour in which she represents herself in that chakra and what she does there, for example.

All encapsulated in brief names.

She who takes this station, she who is of that quality, she who does this and so on.

So it's as if at that moment, there are particularly three in the names, she who breaks the knot of the consciousness in this chakra, who breaks the knot in that chakra and the word breaker of the knot is Bhedini. So you can see in the Bhe, the force of the breaking.

So if you actually dwell on it and as you chant you can literally concentrate on the meaning and you feel those knots either breaking or dissolving or opening. So it's almost like an entire experience that is built up through the names when done with this intention, which is what he does.

You as a listener may not have the intention, you may not have the, even the knowledge of Sanskrit, but the power of what he chanted, in the way he chanted, has an influence on you.

So he in fact would recommend for people who are going through certain kinds of difficulties to play his chanting of Lalitasahasranama in their house for purpose of dissolving or clearing the space.

So it was not that he asked them to recite, he asked them to play his recitation. You see there's a difference because of what is infused in his recitation, and therefore it has a very different quality.

You can hear traditional people chanting, some of them singing with whatever traditional intonations or sometimes in song style. It doesn't have the same force. And you can feel the difference.

So, at some point when I was quite young. I was perhaps in what would be called primary level. My Mother would bring us, my sister and I, to him every morning. Before we went to School, we went to the Ashram and then came to him. And he would teach us, just like that, I don't know how it started, he would teach us one verse of the Bhagavad Gita, just like that. And by the time we came the next day, we would recite it and he would teach us the next verse. And I think we went up to three chapters, three of the, the first three chapters, and then for some reason something changed, we couldn't come any more or something changed.

But subsequently when I was, we shifted to his house, and I think around the age of 10 or 12, something like that, every morning when he did his prayer, I would be, it would be the time I would be waking up, morning six o'clock, so I would come and sit there.

And at some point, I think when I was 12 or so, he asked me to chant with him. So that became a kind of a, and I would be in my sleepy state, and somehow I would drag my body out and chant and still be in this very blurry state, but the result was that the whole thing also infused into me as a memory, I have the whole Lalitasahasranama by heart. Subsequently after he left his body we were doing that and other chants, he had taught several others, some selected ones from Uma Sahasram which also he recorded. Everything he put out, he never left anything secret, whatever he has taught he also put it out, except there is some Suvachanani, good sayings like aphoristic sayings or proverbs equivalent in Sanskrit which also he taught as a way of young children so, and so those perhaps I don't think he has recorded but a few things like that.

(0:26:01):

So I continued to switch between some of these just to keep that whole process alive. I went through certain phases that subsequently where the morning prayers we stopped, we changed the times and so on. Now not so regular.

But still whenever I have to chant, it is with that mood of what I have experienced in him. It should come as your chant. It's not something you have learned by heart that you are repeating which is not yours. You see there's a difference.

I will give this as an example because this is so important. Let's say you take some of Sri Aurobindo's poems in English so you also understand the meaning or some of Mother's prayers. There is one particularly the prayer which says, “Glory to Thee, O Lord” and so on it starts, “triumphant”, “victorious”, “over all obstacles”, and so on, “Grant that”, I'm translating in my head, but you'll see that, it's one of the last prayers in her prayers and meditations.

If you take that for example, and you have the full sense of the meaning, you could read it as Mother's prayer, and of course it has a value, or you could internalise it to the point where it becomes yours. So there is the power which she has infused as she formulated the prayer, but now there is the call from your heart, from your mind and perhaps deeper still from your soul as this prayer is invoked.

So I take a prayer which is more, much shorter: “Make of us the hero warriors that we aspire to become”. So you can say, okay what is it? This is Mother's prayer and I am repeating “Make of us the hero warriors”.

Or I concentrate, centre myself as deeply as I can, aligning my mind, my heart's emotions, my body's actions, energies, life-energies to the deepest aspiration of my soul as far as possible. And from the silence, settling in the silence, from within the silence, now it comes as my prayer: “Make of us the hero warriors that we aspire to become. May we fight successfully the great battle of the future that is to be born, against the past that seeks to endure; so that the new things may manifest and we may be ready to receive them.”.

Held in that full concentration of your aspiration with your whole being aligned like this, the moment even when you say, “so that the new things may manifest”, you can feel literally the call and the response of the new things manifesting.

“and we ... be ready to receive them”, and with that a part of you as if opens in readiness, in receptivity.

Words have a tremendous power of creation when spoken in this way, and now the prayer is no more a sacred prayer given by the Mother, it is your heart, your souls, your minds, your emotions, your life's prayer to the Divine Mother. It's yours. And spoken with the full intensity of a full alignment of your entire being to whatever extent, and the result can be even miraculous, immediate, to whatever degree. And then repetition, once every day.

So here I will not say repeat twice, three times. You will not be able to hold the same intensity. Do not do that. One concentrated call is more powerful than a thousand or a million repetitions. The repetition is not the point at all. It is the joy of the relationship.

(0:30:01):

So coming to the question really, when recited in this way first of all there is a certain expression of your own being as your prayer but also there is a deepening of the relationship and an interchange that takes place which can be also of a great result but also of great joy.

So, recognising this, if you feel drawn to a certain prayer, if you feel called to express something either spontaneously or it may be from your heart, your prayer in whatever words they take, well, that's what you should do.

Or it may be a prayer in silence with no words.

But formulating in words would have a different value. And in this case when prayer formulated in this way is given, it has a very distinct benefit.

Again, would I do it every day? Probably not. Would I do the same thing every day? Very likely not. But what I would do is as I sit in concentration that which I feel most called to express or invoke, I would.

So recently when I had my birthday, my mother said, which prayer? And we used to do this particular prayer that you have mentioned, which begins Dhyata, which I do on Pandit-ji's birthday. So that used to be the tradition. But this year I said, no, I would rather be in silence. And we did a meditation in silence instead. Because that was the most natural thing and the best way for the receptivity. In the absence of that, perhaps I might have done that formal recitation because it's something we do regularly. So it acquires almost the character of a ritual.

My point now is, doing it as a ritual will have a certain benefit. Doing it as a conscious call that comes from your heart would have a far greater benefit. But at that point, you may have a still different benefit of the nature of the heart's aspiration or the soul's aspiration, whatever form it may take.

So it all depends on where you are in your journey and in your relationship with these things.

If you feel the mechanical repetition daily helps you hold a certain poise, a certain station of relationship with the divine and raises your consciousness, by all means go ahead, if it is useful. There may come a point where you may feel it mechanically, drop it, if not entirely at least the numbers that you do. So Lalitasahasranama we did in 10 bits, maybe that's too much, reduce it to something one or two verses if you like.

My point is, focus on the living relationship in the chant, if you choose to do that. And even in the number or in the choice of the chant, it should be a living expression of your consciousness, then it has value.

So this is giving the background in some detail of Pandit-ji's recitation.

And this particular verse you asked about which begins the Dyatha is called Paramashtakam. It is written by Kapali Sastriar. And he wrote several prayers which are all been brought out with English translation in a little booklet called Prayers of Kapali Sastriar. And it is of course part of his collected works. And some of these are inspired very clearly, and there's a certain power, because he was himself a Kavi, a Rishi, and so what came through had that force. Very interestingly just before Sri Aurobindo, just after Sri Aurobindo left his body, he was inspired to write a prayer in praise of Sri Aurobindo but as the prayer formed it took the form of not only praising him but equally the Divine Mother, and he comments on this he says that because the work continues in her and so the prayer automatically took that form.

So this is I think, we just see in the chat box in case we have something.

(0:34:34):

Okay, Kuldeep is asking, and Vajaspati also: Navaratris are coming. Is it really needed or helpful to invoke aspects of the Divine Mother?

And.

It's not necessary.

It all depends on whether you feel it helpful, beneficial, or you feel inspired, or if that's your way to relate to the Divine Mother, certainly it has an effect. But again it's a question of the value you give to it.

I remember one of my friend's father used to do almost as a ritual every year on the Navratris. He would do this Durga Saptashati which is the prayer normally done as a Bengali so he would do it with great fanfare, invite people, have lots of food and all that. Well eventually there was a problem of age, his wife was not well and so obviously you couldn't make so much food for so many people. Numbers dropped. I think eventually it changed and he just did it on his own or even maybe he stopped. The point is when it was done it was more a social occasion, although there was a sanctity to the event itself and to the invocation.

So my personal view today would be a discord with all the clutter. Do that which is for you most valuable. Again I will question: Why on these days? Because you are told it is the nine days, Navratris are the nine nights and the tenth is when there is the victory of the Divine Mother so that's when you do certain celebrations. Why? Because you are told this is such. Who told you that? Oh there is a calendar. There's a calendar, the Panchang, the lunar calendar, which tells you, it's on these days, and so you should do. Maybe. Maybe not. And as you recall Mother's comment, sometimes the goddess comes a few days before, sometimes later, she's not going to come because of the moon's position in relation to the sun. Right?

So again it depends to what extent you feel yourself bound to that rhythm and to those forms.

My personal view which is perhaps too radical for many is, it's not important, because for me ideally the relationship with the Divine Mother should be every day. On the other hand I recognise there are these rhythms, you can catch those rhythms and align with them, but it has also vital character, most of these rhythms that rituals aligned to are of a vital grade of the Divine Mother's working, not really spiritually. Spiritually it makes no difference. For a consciousness which is eternal it makes no difference. But there are rhythms in the cosmic working particularly on a vital level you can align to those rhythms. That's why the moon position, sun position, astrology all of that comes on the vital level.

Yes you could align with that. And the fact that there are millions of people doing it at the same time on the same day gives it a certain force, again a vital force primarily, not necessarily a spiritual force, but there may be a spiritual component to it. Again for me personally that's not so important. If it is being done, I will enjoy if I'm asked, I'm invited to participate, I will be in full concentration and enjoy it.

I've had occasion to go to one of these public programs where they have the Durga worship taking place and the priest would go into a kind of ecstatic dance with his cymbals clashing away so loudly that your ears become numb after a point. But at some point through that whole numbness my consciousness cut through and I had a glimpse of the battle of the Divine Mother fighting all the Asuras and the joy and delight with which she enjoys the destruction of the darkness and the evil. It is interesting. But still that whole grade of that operation is on those levels. And so yes, it has a value, it has a force, and especially when you believe in it and align to it strongly, it can have a distinct value in your life.

From a spiritual point of view of your own journey, I am ambivalent. If the purpose is the dissolution of the darkness within you, well then battle should be taking place. Battle, if you have to use that word, that should be taking place every day at every moment in a way. So yes, you could perhaps align to those days or not. It's up to you really.

Sraddhalu (0:39:22):
I think we'll just go to the next question.

Alina (0:39:28):

Aparna is writing: Can you give a few words about Agnihotra? I have found it to be an easy playful approach to Agni and Surya. The contact with them growing through this process.

Sraddhalu (0:39:44):

Yes, Agnihotra is a ritual which is often done just before sunrise or just before sunset or at the moment of sunrise, at the moment of sunset, where the morning and night join, the Sandhya, the twilight zone, which is even in the Western tradition a gap between two worlds through which things can slip in and out.

So for certain rituals like this, that's the moment where, the idea is you can slip through to other worlds, a link, which is the whole concept of the eclipse also. All of this we've discussed in some detail on the talks on astrology.

So for me again the point of that connection, that time, is relative to this idea, but if in your consciousness you are able to link in a deeper or higher part, you have, you are the bridge, so you don't need the external bridge of the meeting point of day and night, it doesn't matter what time you do. But if that was your intention and especially because you are catching the rhythms of the vital energies, yes, that's the time when you may do.

Aparna's focus is not so much on that. Her focus is on the deepening of relationship with Agni, which is represented in the physical fire and Surya, who is represented in the physical sun, and these are cosmic deities, and using this as a playful way of entering in relation with them and deepening.

Well, if that's your intention, certainly. And if it helps you, certainly. Generally speaking, the principle is: if it works, if it's helpful, why not?

But then I am a minimalist, my tendency, and everyone doesn't have to be like that, my tendency is to, I'm lazy, so knock out everything which does not work or which is not relevant and minimise it to external forms, minimise to the minimum that's required and focus on the same result with minimum external paraphernalia.

And to the extent that going through that ritual is part of your play of your relationship of devotion as people would do during a puja, they make an offering, they take the clarified butter, pour it into the fire while chanting, reciting, invoking. If you enjoy it, if it gives you that satisfaction, if it helps you deepen that relationship, why not? It's joy, as you would do a beautiful painting as a way of expressing yourself. And the ritual becomes a joyous expression of yourself in relation to those aspects of the divine.

Sometimes you will sit without any external paraphernalia and still go through that joy of the relationship and it would be fine just as well.

So already in Aparna's description, it's gone outside the ritual component to the deepening of the relationship. But for those who are bound in the ritual, it's a choice you make. Again, does it actually give you a contact with the presence? If it does not, either deepen it minimising the ritual, get to the contact, or drop the ritual. Or do it because it's being done, because you're part of a momentum, all my ancestors have done it every day. I better keep doing it because I'm part of the ancestry. Well, you are plugging in into those lower levels of identification of yourself, because you are not progeny of your ancestors of biology, you are progeny of the spiritual ancestry which is of the divine, of the Lord, if anything of the great Rishis and those have embodied aspects of the divine, but the point is that's your true ancestry from a spiritual point of view.

Mother even makes this comment which is so radical as to be almost potentially misused by people today. You have to understand. She had to be careful not to go too far out because people can take that and then twist it to suit their convenience. So she said in Auroville, the children born in Auroville would not even have the family name, because by attaching yourself to family name you're again attaching to a lower identity of yourself as a human being belonging to that family, you see, and even that she did not want. But that's far out. But what happens in practice, people say, oh I have a child, I don't know, I just had five partners, whose child is it? I don't know. So it's convenient not to give it a name. Of course the legal requirement is there for a father, you don't know. When it goes to an almost semi-animal level, but the same thing would be justified on an animal level. When her intention is of a much different grade, on a spiritual level, you are not your family biology. And let that deeper truth of who you are as a conscious soul come forward, even in the name itself.

So I am giving this as an example of how far she wanted us to actually be.

But some of us may find ourselves bound into whatever traditions, well, if you find yourself bound in it, be careful though because many of these rituals also bind you in a way that is not healthy.

So recently somebody shared this example, that is a singer, he is chanting some of the sacred songs, one of them being the song that extols the repeating the name of the Lord, but in the song is this line which says: again and again you have to take birth, again and again you have to die, punarapi jananam, punarapi maranam. And in that chant itself is this sense of helplessness, hopelessness, being bound, being fed up with life, with the turning away in disgust from this whole movement of birth and death to want to withdraw in an ascetic retirement, and that's implied in the song, in the mood of the song, in the creator of the song. And so as you sing, if you make it yours, you have to really choose, do you want to make this yours or would you rather take a different song or change the song or create your song. Again, I'm perhaps a bit radical, for those who are more in the traditional framework, but I put these forward and finally everybody has to make a choice of what is important for them and what works for them.

(0:46:29):
I remember when I was quite young, must have been around the age of 12, my mother gave me a little booklet which she had carried, which had certain verses in Marati which were from one of the very famous saints, and my grandfather, her father, was going to visit after a long time and she said, if you learn these by heart and recite to him he will be very happy. And I wanted to please him, so I started learning. I think the first three verses I learned, and something within me felt extremely uneasy and I stopped it. And now that I look back because there's a greater maturity, I look back and I say, the verses were nice, they were good, they were very moralistic. And there is one verse which still strikes in my mind which went something like, ‘all that which lowers the consciousness should be discarded, all that which raises should be followed’. It was kind of a moralistic series, and it's part of the religious traditions in Maharashtra. But when that thing came about discarding things, there was a strong ascetic quality to that whole thing, after all written by an ascetic. And that quality somehow I felt extremely uncomfortable. Fortunately that, I will say, the psychic influence was strong enough that there was this strong discomfort. I did not have the intelligence at that time to understand this. But I shrank back and refused to take it up further. If I had overridden that and done it, I would have lost that sensitivity perhaps and then got stuck into forms and then the form catches you and you can stay with it for life.

(0:48:18):

I had occasion several times to meet people quite aged who have been doing all the traditional rituals across their whole life, living by all the things to be done, you know Kartavyam, that which needs to be done, and you will find there in all cultures, all refined cultures of the world, they have lived by all that, they have read all the sacred texts, done all the pujas, prayers and rituals, and once they come to a certain age, they realise: Now what? And they are ready to, they know that now the end of this biology life is imminent and they're wondering, how will I manage this, and they actually have a fear.

Why?

Because all of that while it may have kept you morally maybe stable, spiritually it gave you nothing. There was no sadhana, there was no growth in consciousness. And perhaps even with all that morality came a humongous pride of your moral greatness, purity and superiority, and this is so commonly seen in people who are doing these rituals with a great moral force.

Again I'm not, I don't want to criticise too harshly, because keeping the moral force is a great thing in itself in a humanity which is largely degrading without morality, isn't it? Because the tendency of our animality is quite strong, to sink is easy. That's a great thing in itself, but it does not have any spiritual value in itself. If upon that, as a base of purification, one builds the spiritual experience, at some point you have to let go of the morality aspect. Because it was a crutch, it was fake, it was a pretence, as a way of forcing an outer form of behaviour which will at best is only a support for something truer which has to replace it.

I'm going to read from something that the Mother says which is quite sharp in this direction. There was a certain experience that she spoke of. And so following that experience she writes in relation to the higher supramental consciousness, she comes back and looks at the world: “In ordinary life, EVERYTHING is artificial.”-she says-“Depending upon the chance of your birth or circumstances, you have a more or less high position or a more or less comfortable life,”-but-“not because it is the spontaneous, natural and sincere expression of your way of being and of your inner need, but because the fortuity of life’s circumstances has placed you in contact with these things. An absolutely worthless man may be in a very high position, and a man who might have marvellous capacities of creation and organisation may find himself toiling in a quite limited and inferior position, whereas he would be a wholly useful individual if the world were sincere.”

“It is this artificiality, this insincerity, this complete lack of truth that appeared so shocking to me that ... one wonders how, in a world as false as this one, we can arrive at any truthful evaluation of things.”

“But instead of feeling grieved, morose, rebellious, discontent, I had rather the feeling of what I spoke of at the end: of such a ridiculous absurdity that for several days I was seized with an uncontrollable laughter whenever I saw things and people! Such a tremendous laughter, so absolutely inexplicable (except to me), because of the ridiculousness of these situations.”

Then she says: “When I invited you on a voyage into the unknown, a voyage of adventure, I did not know just how true were my words! And I can promise those who are ready to embark upon this adventure that they will make some very astonishing discoveries.”

So this is for all of us, and you will find her invitation to this voyage of adventure in her questions and answers, 1957, July 10th, that was the day when she spoke about this and invited people to this adventure following this particular experience.

But then again, Satprem asks her in the Agenda about this. He says: “The other day, too, in your supramental experience, you said that moral values had lost all their meaning.”

Mother replies: “But our conceptions of Good and Evil are so ridiculous! Our ideas of what is near to the Divine or far from the Divine are so absurd! The experience of the other day [February 3] was quite a revelation to me, and I came out of it utterly changed. I suddenly understood a great many things from the past – certain actions parts of my life that had remained inexplicable – in truth, the shortest path from one point to another is not the straight line we imagine!”

“And the whole time this experience lasted, one hour (an hour of that time is long!), I was in an extraordinarily mirthful, almost inebriated state ... The difference between the two consciousnesses is such that when you are in one, the other seems unreal like a dream. When I came back, I was at first struck by the futility of life here; our petty conceptions seem so comical, so laughable ... We say that certain people are mad, but their madness is perhaps a greater wisdom from the supramental point of view, and their behaviour is perhaps very near the truth of things – I am not speaking of the obscure insane who have had some brain disorder, but of many other incomprehensible mad people, the luminous mad: they have wanted to leap across the border too quickly, and the rest did not follow.”

(0:55:00):

Many of us would be kind of bordering this kind of idealism, let’s say.

“When one looks at the world of men from the supramental consciousness, the dominant characteristic is a feeling of oddity, of artificiality – a world that is absurd because it is artificial. This world is false because its material appearance does not at all express the profound truth of things. There is as if a discrepancy between the appearance and what lies within.”

She gives a few examples and then says: “Whereas in the supramental world, the will acts directly upon the substance, and the substance is obedient to this will.”

I leave it for you those who want to read this in great detail, you can look it up yourself.

But I bring this reference back to our question of rituals and particularly of these kinds of rituals.

If the ritual is a spontaneous expression of your consciousness, it has value. To the extent that it is a put-on of something done by others or a compulsion on you because your ancestors did it, it's ridiculous. To the extent that even in that repetition there is a benefit, it is useful for that degree of benefit.

But you would again have to ask the question: Is there a more direct way to gain that benefit or perhaps a hundredfold greater benefit without needing all these rituals? Isn't it?

Think of the people, your ancestors, who had to till the soil using bullock carts, and today the whole thing being done by tractors, and perhaps in a few years it will be done by automated tractors and drones. Certainly there's an artificiality to it that you do not have the same personal connection with the soil. But setting that aside, purely from the point of view of the form of labour of the work: Would you say, no, because my ancestors did it that way, I'm going to keep doing that, and I'll take water from the well only and not take it from the tap?

You have to see that perhaps there is a way that you will get the same result a hundredfold or thousandfold greater with one hundredth the effort. And if you recognise that, well, make a choice.

So this is generally speaking of all the religions, and as we saw, Aparna's question was not so much about the ritual but about using it as a means of the relationship certainty.

And in the traditions where they speak of rituals as a means or mantras as a means, they say there is always a point where the relationship now becomes so direct and so intimate, at which point they call it a ‘realisation’, that now the ritual is irrelevant.

So in the case of Agni, you experience the oneness and intimacy with Agni, that with or without ritual you are aware, you tune in and there, it is, spontaneously. Then you will not find even, or you may play because you play like, as you play as children, but it may not be relevant.

I think, we can go to the next question which would take this question of ritual.

Alina (0:58:30):
Karthik is asking: Many people do the last rites and annual rituals for their deceased close ones. For one who is truly open to the Mother, is it necessary for him to perform the last rites or such related rituals? For those who are not open to the Mother does performing such rights truly guide the deceased? For those who are not open to the Mother, does not performing the rights for the deceased harm them in any way?

Sraddhalu (0:59:10):

I appreciate the clarity of the three questions.

There are many similar questions in the chat box relating to rituals, around those who are departed.

So, I will first make some general observations, but then I want to also comment about certain other rituals, such as what we do for children, thread ceremony and so on.

But starting with the last rites, the questioner Karthik is saying: For those who are truly open to their Mother, is it necessary for them to perform the last rites or such related rituals?

If they are truly open, no. Very simply.

Question is: Are they truly open?

And Mother, as I have mentioned recently, Mother complained that some of the people in the Ashram, after they had passed on, once on the other side could not even recognise her when she went to help them. And that means they were not truly open or the part where they open was so superficial that it was shed with the body and the inner parts were never open to her to the same degree and could not recognise. You see the point?

And that's why the in-to-out experience of life, which would include rituals or even other morning rituals, your eating of breakfast, lunch or dinner is a ritual in that sense, you're going to work on your bicycle or your car or your bus is a ritual, well, everything in your life, putting on clothes, everything would be relevant to the extent it is an in-to-out expression, and if the inner grows, if inner enters in relation, all these things would be valuable.

If not, you see what happens, as the outer layers are shed, what remains of the inner undefined, undeveloped, unawakened, unconscious, nothing has changed on the other side, isn't it?

So truly open.

If in that inner part, there is that opening, there is obviously the recognition, but also at the time of transition, if your consciousness, the person who's making the transition, if his consciousness turns in a call, in an aspiration, in an invocation, then immediately there is a link and the Divine assists, the Divine Mother assists in the transition through to the other side.

Now in the past all these rituals were created for a certain reason.

Now there are many elements of ritual which are purely hygienic or specific to certain cultures because of their questions of temperature, cold, hot and so on. But the occult component, which now I will separate from the more material component, the occult component were given to assist those who have gone on the other side: first to become aware that they have actually shed their physical body, quite a few are not even conscious, they continue to live their mechanical life unaware; and second to make them conscious there also that they are not at their highest station and they need to let go of what is binding them at a lower level in order to move on to the higher station.

Now in most of my talks where I have been speaking about the passages after deaths and so on, you will see on the channel some of the talks I have given- Life, Death, Rebirth is one of the talks, a couple of them like that which discuss this whole topic. I have tried to make that passage of the transition, well, as simple and general as possible.

But if you go outside the generality, there are cases for example where people have transitioned and are not conscious that they have died. They going on their routine but because the nature of these subtler worlds is that they're highly subjective that whatever you choose to form or imagine tends to acquire a visibility and even a substantiality, you can actually create own world of whatever you expect and remain stuck in it.

And generally though when the grade of that substance begins to thin out or dissolve, you suddenly realise, ho all this looks fake, and then you become conscious because your finer grade of consciousness is now emerging, you become conscious that, oh whatever I am thinking of is formed that means this is not really it, this is not real or or rather it's my creation, and then you make the transition to the next grade and so on.

Depending on the state in which you are is the state of the world that you are so to say drawn to.

If all of your life, your state of emotions and thoughts have been miserable, criticising others, being petty, being, harming others, pushing people in a way that is done in vengeance of some kind. The quality of consciousness that you live in, your physical body is shed, that's the world you are in. Except because the physical body is so dulling, thousandfold, millionfold, dulling as an influence, now that is released and you are now in a thousandfold intensity of the same emotions and that's your hell in a way, your own self-created hell, of your consciousness.

And that's why it is so important in your physical life where the body dulls you, to learn to shape, change grades of consciousness, make the shifts, come to that poise at least even when you're miserable, which happens to all of us in our life, from there to be able to turn in positivity and shift level of consciousness to optimism and positivity. The result on the other side is this thousand-fold amplification of the same grade. So from that state of extreme darkness and dullness and anger or hatred or suffocating emotions, it's literally waking up in intensity of light, freshness, clarity, joy, happiness and everything around you is of that grade equally and experiences of that world and those beings and so on.

This transition, especially for a person who has not done this work in physical life, they want to help you wake up and make that transition which is the basis of so many of these rituals to free you or to help dissolve.

Now it all depends on different traditions, each has its own variation of what they focus on, how they help dissolve.

In the Buddhist tradition, in Tibetan Buddhist tradition specifically, they have descriptions of all the levels that you might be going through and they keep repeating and telling the person.

Again if it's done with a certain intention, the rituals are so designed that it has an influence.

If the person doing the ritual actually has an occult knowledge, which used to be the case once, I don't think it is the same today, then the person who is speaking literally reaches out, connecting to the one who has passed on, and as the words are spoken, they are infusing those ideas or those influences upon the person even to the extent that the power of the word is used to help break, to dissolve and release the person, push them on onward, if the person has that occult, well, capacity, awareness, knowledge.

This was the purpose of, so I'm giving you the rationale for many of these rituals.

(1:06:47):

In India again you have similar variations to these rituals with the similar objective though done differently, goal being similar again if done with a certain intention.

Now you do it mechanically, and today's priests have absolutely no occult sense, bulk of them. They have gone to a school where they learned by heart and they are doing the ritual and more interested in the money they get. So they go through the ritual.

Now the ritual is so designed as to create an occult formation, which has an effect especially in the lower ranges of the vital worlds. That's about all that they can access typically. Or a little bit of the mental, again the lower ranges of the mental. So the effect of those is to create like a current.

You see when you light a flame, and this is the pure physics aspect, the air around it heats up and the hot air begins to rise because it is less dense and the cool air around begins to take its place and so it creates automatically a rising current drawing from below around and the air flows up and continuously there's this flow.

A similar current is created in the occult worlds in the lower ranges of the vital words, where the person finds himself as if lifted, pushed up, risen to the extent this is done with the right kind of intention, concentration.

So I said, even if the person does it with no capacity, there is a certain current that is made and it does have an effect.

How much it will help that person? Maybe a little bit, maybe not, maybe they don't need it at all, but you're doing a ritual because that's now a standard to be done for everyone irrespective of whether they need. Sometimes they don't need at all and they made a conscious transition they've gone way beyond. You're doing your current flow, maybe it helps somebody else, who knows, I don't know.

So the question of whether it is useful for those who are, who have just passed on, generally speaking, it can be, it may not be needed even, it may be partially useful, it may be very useful, all depends on all these factors which I have discussed.

If they are truly open to the Mother, none of this is necessary. And what is most helpful from your side though is that you create an environment where they feel supported by your consciousness. See there's a period of confusion on the other side, oh my god what do I do, what's this, how do I move on, or even a sense of loss, oh now I have to say goodbye, I can't get back, lost my body, or they see you in struggle and they're worried, how can I help?

Sometimes, oh I wish I could have said this, oh I wish I would have told them. Things are going to get a bit more messy today because you know you have passwords. I wish I had left behind a password now all my accounts are blocked. It happens in social media, right? You can't do anything, you're on the other side.

So occasionally it happens, they catch somebody who's dreaming and say, hey can you please pass on my password, and nobody remembers when they come back. So gone.

But, there may be issues like that, but if you are depressed, if you're unhappy, if you're suffering, grieving, then they feel somehow responsible, they feel bound in some way. Again depending on their maturity they may say, okay. Eventually the soul pulls away.

There's a very interesting example I just heard of a couple of days ago from Vasanthi-ji. Madanlal Himatsinka and his wife, they were, they had just lost their son in some illness, accident, I don't know what. And they were grieving, the wife was grieving, and they had gone to many sadhus and yogis and somehow she could not get free of her grief. And then someone said, go to the Mother. They said, we've been to so many why not one more. They came to the Mother, and Mother heard her out and said to her, your son is very happy, he is very well, he is right now sitting next to you, he is unable to move on because you are grieving so much, he feels responsible and wants you to be free of this grief. She said this to her. They came back from that meeting from the Mother and then the wife says, I didn't see my son, I didn't see anything, but after meeting the Mother, the weight which I was feeling in my chest has gone.

Interesting.

(1:11:24):
And so, then after that they stayed on and then there were some other things which took place. But this is to say that the son had to hang on because he was concerned for his Mother's excessive grief.

So the question from our side is ritual perhaps or not, the state of consciousness you hold which allows them to part, where you actually say, yes, I give you a permission to go and I am grateful for all that we have received from you and whatever relationship we had, you are free to go.

That, and initially at least just after passing, the peace and the prayerful state is the state that is like an enveloping influence around them and you can consciously will, visualise, invoke, hold, invoke the Mother's light, protection, and especially in the initial transition it can be of great help.

Just this much will be more powerful than any of the rituals you might do.

So whether they are open to the Mother truly or not truly or even not open does not matter. This would be certainly the single most important help you could give with or without support of other rituals.

In the Ashram of course there is nothing of that kind because the Mother would simply take responsibility, help.

And more than that the people have prepared themselves in a certain, are supposed to have worked on themselves sufficiently that at the point of transition they are able to consciously open to her and make the link and help.

The Mother spoke of one of the missions in this lifetime: precisely to assist this transition where people get confused through these different gradations of worlds. Each time you make one transition, you say, is this it? Actually there's so much more before you can be fully out of that.

So it was one of her missions to create a passage like a tunnel. You will find many near-death experiences, people come back with descriptions of being pulled into a tunnel, sucked across and then opening out to a world of light and a being of light who meets them. But this whole passage of gradations of worlds is crossed through the tunnel which is like a protective passage through which they're taken across without the dangers of being stuck in intermediate zones.

So it was one of her missions to create this tunnel and to form this being of light who will help people across.

Now irrespective, you don't have to be open to the Mother consciously, if you're just open in a quiet aspiration and a thought Godward at the point of leaving anywhere in the world in any culture tradition doesn't matter, there is this being of light that she has formed who actually assists reaching out and takes you through the passage of the tunnel, and you find yourself on the other side having crossed the difficult stages in between.

So to a great extent many of these rituals have become irrelevant in view of this thing which she has created and the bulk of this work she did in the 1920s and 30s. And therefore it's fascinating to see across the world and this she has by the way recorded in her diary notes in the 1920s I think, that this was part-one of her objectives in this lifetime.

So almost all of the near-death experience literature of around the world that we have today, they all describe this tunnel not knowing that it's a relatively recently built structure, part of Mother's work.

So, coming back to the question, for those who are truly open, not needed.

Even for those who are not open, may be helpful or not.

For those who are not open, does not performing the rites harm them? No, not at all. On the other hand, if you were able to do the psychological process and support, and especially at the point of transition, then you can help them by invoking that light, that even when they are unconscious in the transition, that they are linked to the light immediately and handed over, so to say, and like an elevator, like a pull. It's actually felt like a flow, like a current which is rising, you pulled and taken care of.

So you could do a lot without any ritual and just focusing in this way, in the right way.

Occasionally, because initially there is this period of a few days when the person may be in the subtle body at more or less tensile grades, you may even be able to reach out to them in a certain way, communicate with feelings, thoughts, with words if needed or not, whatever you need to say as a goodbye, as a support, as gratitude and then let them free, to then go away.

As it happens, as you move away in grades of consciousness, the things of the physical earth domain become so irrelevant, so superficial that the person does not have any regret. They even tend to forget, oh, that was long ago, like a century ago. You don't bother about things which took place a century ago, isn't it? Or another life. It just fades out. And for them, there's no problem. You are busy doing your grieving for the next few years, and especially on the day of their passing, when they may be far away. But if you have a strong grief, it again creates a current that may pull them and in their consciousness something turns, aah something is calling, and there may be a point of contact. But you could equally do that with joy, with love, instead of grief, or you could simply say, happy to say goodbye.

(1:17:04):

These are ways by which you decide whether you have the anniversary of their passing is important.

So my teacher M.P. Pandit used to make observance in the first anniversary after, as it happened for example with his other sister who passed on. A year later we had a short concentration that was it. After that he said, no more, we don't give any other value to this date, forget it. Birthday, we continue to celebrate or observe in some way and that's all. But no more the date of passing, that's not important. He didn't want it to be given any importance.

I think that covers in some depth the question of people passing, and I suppose we'll have to make this the last question because it's nearly one and a half hours.

I will look at the chat box briefly.

Yes, there was a discussion last year on the Navaratris. It's called Worship of the Divine Mother. It was a talk given. I think it is the EWS evening series, episode 88. And some of you may enjoy watching that also as a deeper meditation on the Divine Mother.

So there are specific days, Menal asks about the, a special day where you remember all your ancestors and so on and is it necessary or is it helpful for the soul to be in contact with the ancestors?

No, not at all. Many of them have already incarnated. So anyway what you're doing does not help them at all. If you do call them with grief, then again you're creating a barrier instead of allowing them their free passage.

The purpose of these remembrances of ancestors is much more to remind you that you are as if inheriting all the things that they worked for. Now this has a positive side that you say seven generations of effort from all these ancestors, well, it has helped you form who you are in a way, very superficially, biologically or energetically at best, a little bit of the mind perhaps. On the other hand it's also binding to ancestry, and it is far more useful. For those of us who have a strong spiritual aspiration, do not bind to those identities and rather say, thank you, with gratitude for all that you have received from their efforts, but now open to a still higher source. Do not bind and limit to these. The more you attach to these, the more you get stuck in them. So open to something higher. And in a sense, you say to be worthy of their efforts, you be free of them and be opened to something much greater, much higher. And if you have children, if you have progeny, grandchildren and so on, well something of that still higher consciousness will be passed on to them, if that's the purpose.

So again looking at some of the questions.

Yes, in a sense, Mahadevan asks, is it always the Divine Mother based on your faith and sincerity? Is it always she who responds? Yes, ultimately all consciousness energy is Divine Shakti energy, isn't it? Through many aspects. But some of us have a particular attachment to a certain aspect because, well, that's your tradition, that's your lineage, and we are bound to that form.

There's a very interesting case of one person in the Ashram, he was a Jain, and in the Jain tradition there are so many let's say spiritual beings who have incarnated or some of them have not incarnated who are there in their pantheon, and this particular person when he passed on, it was in the sea, he drowned in the sea, and Mother said she saw this being who represented one of the Tirthankaras of their tradition lineage he came to take his soul.

It was very interesting.

So in a sense, being here, he was still attached to the force of that religious, well, lineage and had not been able to fully free himself from that identity.

Now the reason I'm saying this is, remember you could be born in so many religions across lives. Your soul belongs to no religion, isn't it? Your soul belongs only to the one divine, any intermediate form, aspect, lineages etc are all intermediate aspects. They are not who you belong to. You may temporarily identify with them but get to the fundamentals because your goal is something far more dear, far more permanent. Get free of all these with gratitude for whatever support they have given you but as aspects of the divine open to the highest, most complete source, not aspect, as far as possible at least in your intention. It may be through a name who is an aspect, it doesn't matter.

(1:22:37):

So some of you will say, ho Vishnu is my favourite deity, some say Krishna, somebody says Shiva, some says, whatever, Whatever name you take, through the name conceive of the highest most complete reality that is the Lord or the energy of the Lord, the Divine Mother, and relate to that only.

And I use two words: ‘entirely’ and ‘exclusively’, excluding all limitations and aspects with full respect to what they represent because each is herself, well, you are opening to her, so she includes them all. She wields and acts through all of them, but ‘entirely’, as far as you are aware of yourself. And even what you are not aware of, in your conception you know there are things you are not aware of, well, include those in your intention and turn.

First, turn with the central aspiration, open as completely as possible, receive as much as possible, and then contain, and allow her to work in you, gradually your container will become larger and larger until at some point it will become one with the universe.

But as she works in you, she works, liberates your consciousness, transforms your consciousness.

As a ritual, this is the essential ritual.

All external ritual is a symbolic representation of this, if you about it, isn't it? I don't go into examples, you get the sense of it.

And so we can hold this as our intention. I think broadly I've covered the objectives of this discussion, and the next time we'll take up a few other questions on developing strength and wealth and other aspects of the divine which are the next few questions.

So, yes, let's take a moment then to concentrate on this in our aspiration. Make a choice to free yourself from all that belongs to the past which is not relevant for the future. Even in forms, as a first step, let go of your attachment to all those things. What is relevant will stay and perhaps acquire a new form. If it doesn't stay, then it's not relevant. If it stays, let the new form emerge from what is deep and true within you. Let it flow out and flow as the natural form and rhythm, which corresponds to a deeper truth. Start living from inside-out in terms of your values, let go of these false, fake values that belong to the superficiality, falsehood of the world even.

And part of the work in this transition is the death of an age, end of an age, and the birth of a new consciousness and a new age. And so with it, new forms have to develop. If at the end of creating a new form you find it similar to the old but still it will contain something different. That's fine. But you don't take an old and try to change it. You let go of the old and allow the new to flow and form in its own way as the truth that has to form for the future, isn't it? And perhaps the forms will be fluid, they will be more spontaneous because more true. And all of our lives we have to as if recreate, rebuild at every moment, every day.

We can concentrate on this aspiration, on this intention and the essential ritual which is of opening entirely in aspiration, exclusively, giving ourselves, receiving, containing and allowing her to work in you, to transform you.

Namaste.

Alina (1:27:41):
Namaste. Thank you.