Experience of Higher Planes of Consciousness in Long-Term Practitioners of Integral Yoga

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EXPERIENCE OF HIGHER PLANES OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN LONG-TERM PRACTITIONERS OF INTEGRAL YOGA

A dissertation presented to The Faculty of Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) in Psychology

Michele Riley Kramer

San Francisco, California June 2008

UMI Number: 3396802

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Approval of the Dissertation

EXPERIENCE OF HIGHER PLANES OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN LONG-TERM PRACTITIONERS OF INTEGRAL YOGA

This dissertation by Michele Riley Kramer has been approved by the committee members below, who recommend it be accepted by the faculty of Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology

Dissertation Committee:

______Allan Combs, Ph.D., Chair Date

______David Lukoff, Ph.D., Member Date

______Jürgen Kremer, Ph.D., Member Date

Abstract

EXPERIENCE OF HIGHER PLANES OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN LONG-TERM PRACTITIONERS OF INTEGRAL YOGA

Michele Riley Kramer

Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center

Integral Yoga, developed by Sri Aurobindo, unites the ascending spiritual aspiration of the individual to access the Divine, found in many mystical and spiritual traditions, with the expectation of the descent of the Divine into the individual. The outcome of Integral Yoga is the evolutionary transformation of a human being to a spiritual being. Sri Aurobindo described the order of higher planes of consciousness, which form the conduit between the individual and the Divine. This study proposed the following questions: What is the experience of being in higher planes of consciousness in

Integral Yoga: levels of consciousness beyond higher mind, described as the beginning of the superconscient realms of consciousness? Can reading about these experiences somehow impact or change the reader? Studies on such experiences are rare.

Fourteen long-term practitioners from the Integral Yoga community participated in semi-structured interviews directed at exploring their spiritual practices and significant experiences. The range of Integral Yoga practice was 10 to 35 years, with 9 practitioners having at least 30 years experience. Data from the transcribed interviews were analyzed for themes and patterns. Interview transcripts served as the basis for developing narrative stories about their experiences. The impact of participation in the study for the researcher, practitioners, and story readers was assessed. iii

Themes that emerged from the data were that spiritual practices are as unique as the individual but possess commonalities with others, experiences and the integration of them are equally important, and the spiritual path is a lifelong process. Feedback from 10 practitioners and 3 readers indicated that their participation affected them in some way.

Findings were unexpected. While 6 practitioners described experiences in higher planes of consciousness, they were not as important as the integration and usefulness of the experiences afterward. Other experiences were equally significant. The findings resulted in a re-evaluation of the original research focus. Story readers’ reactions suggest that research information in the form of stories has an impact. Findings and stories contribute to the fields of transpersonal psychology, consciousness evolution, and

Integral Yoga.

Dedication

This study is dedicated to Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, my coresearchers, and the

Integral Yoga Community. I have felt guided by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother since the beginning. I hope this study will contribute to the knowledge pool in Integral Yoga.

My wonderful coresearchers are true pioneer-explorers in consciousness and consciousness evolution. They are truly brave souls. They broke long-held taboos in speaking with me about their experiences and revealing very personal aspects of themselves. They also risked exposure of their identities, which I have worked diligently to guard. I am deeply honored to know them.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank the members of my committee: Dr, Allan Combs, my chair, Dr.

David Lukoff, and Dr. Jürgen Kremer. Their confidence in me, as well as their knowledge and patience, kept me going.

I appreciate that Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center exists, so that those of us who do not fit in anywhere else can study unusual topics in a highly regarded transpersonal environment. This study would not have been as profound and transformative for me if not for the creators of the transpersonal research method of organic inquiry, especially Dr. Jennifer Clements, who graciously provided me access to her unpublished manuscript.

I would not have finished this study without the love and support of family and friends. Dr. Eugene Whitworth, Sri Aurobindo, and the Mother were invaluable in their support in the nonphysical realms. And the friends here in the physical world include

Ruth Whitworth, Beverlyan Burnett, Ginny Bryan, Sunny Wofford, and Terry Vitorelo, who have supported me from the beginning.

Above all, I am grateful for the love and support of my husband, Jeffrey, and my children, Joshua and Hannah. They have been, and continue to be, proud of me.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ...... ix List of Figures ...... x List of Figures in Appendixes ...... xi

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 Purpose ...... 2 Research Questions ...... 2 Significance of the Study ...... 3 Clarification of Terms ...... 3 Meditation Research ...... 6 Integral Yoga and Meditation ...... 12 Summary ...... 13 Issues in Meditation Research ...... 14 Other Considerations ...... 16 Mystic and Transcendent Experiences...... 16 Integral Yoga and Experiential Accounts ...... 20 Transpersonal Theory and Participatory Knowing ...... 20 Subtle Energy and Human Energy Fields ...... 22 Conclusion ...... 27

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ...... 29 The Psychology of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga ...... 29 Sri Aurobindo: A Brief History ...... 32 Definition of Terms...... 34 Integral Yoga Psychology ...... 39 Kaleidoscope View I: Personality ...... 43 Outer and Inner Being ...... 43 Ego ...... 44 Physical/Body ...... 46 Mind/Mental ...... 46 Vital/Life ...... 47 Psychic Being or Soul ...... 48 Central Being ...... 49 Kaleidoscope View II: Consciousness ...... 50 Inconscient, Subconscient, and Outer Consciousness ...... 51 Inconscient or Unconscious ...... 51 Subconscient or Subconscious ...... 51 Outer Consciousness ...... 53 Subliminal Consciousness and Cosmic Consciousness ...... 53 Subliminal Consciousness ...... 53 Cosmic Consciousness ...... 54 Intermediate Zone ...... 55 vi

Superconscient/Superconsciousness ...... 56 Supermind ...... 57 Kaleidoscope View III: Transformation ...... 58 Additional Considerations Regarding the Psychology of Integral Yoga ...... 60 Integral Yoga and Spiritual Traditions ...... 60 Ken Wilber’s Integral Psychology ...... 61 Integral Yoga Psychology, Psychology and Transpersonal Psychology ...... 65 Correlations Between Integral Yoga Psychology and Current Research ...... 69 Evolution of Consciousness ...... 70 Conclusion ...... 71

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHOD AND DESIGN ...... 74 Transpersonal Research Methodology ...... 74 Integral Inquiry ...... 76 Intuitive Inquiry ...... 77 Transpersonally Informed Phenomenological Inquiry ...... 77 Transpersonal Inquiry Informed by Exceptional Human Experience ...... 77 Organic Inquiry ...... 78 Limitations ...... 83 Validity and Reliability ...... 85 Precautions in Profound Interplays Between Individuals ...... 88 Some Variations of Organic Inquiry for the Current Study ...... 89 Pertinent Studies in Organic Inquiry...... 90 Summary ...... 92 Research Design...... 92 Preparation ...... 93 Confidentiality and Anonymity ...... 93 Participant Selection and Recruitment ...... 94 Inspiration ...... 96 Interview Process ...... 96 Analysis of Data—Preliminary ...... 98 Integration ...... 101 Analysis of Data—Final ...... 101 Presentation of Findings ...... 101 Assessing Impact ...... 102 Summary ...... 102

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS ...... 105 Analysis of Findings ...... 105 Schema Used for Analysis ...... 106 Coresearchers and Pioneer-Explorers ...... 107 1119...... 108 Akroyd ...... 109 Annie Dutts ...... 109 Cathleen Carmichel ...... 110 vii

Devotee ...... 110 Gopal ...... 111 Janaka ...... 111 Lizzie...... 112 Om Shanti ...... 113 Pancho ...... 114 Rishi ...... 114 Rose...... 115 Running Water ...... 116 Sphinx ...... 116 Themes and Patterns ...... 117 Theme: Each Sadhana is Unique, Just Like Everyone Else’s ...... 117 Pattern: Individual Sadhanas...... 117 Pattern: Identification with Sri Aurobindo and The Mother ...... 119 Pattern: Dynamic of Intention, Will, Aspiration, and Surrender ...... 120 Theme: Significant Experiences Account for Half the Journey; The Other Half is Integration ...... 120 Pattern: States of Conscious with Experiences ...... 121 Pattern: Ascending ...... 121 Pattern: Descending ...... 122 Pattern: Psychic Being ...... 122 Pattern: Encounters with Nonlight Forces ...... 123 Patterns: Planes ...... 123 Theme: We Never Get Off the Path; Sadhana is a Lifelong Process ...... 125 Pattern: Challenges ...... 125 Pattern: Feeling Isolated, Not Fitting In, Involvement in the Yoga Community ...... 127 Other Findings ...... 127 Impact of Study: Coresearchers ...... 128 1119...... 129 Akroyd ...... 129 Gopal ...... 129 Lizzie...... 129 Om Shanti ...... 129 Pancho ...... 129 Rishi ...... 129 Rose...... 130 Running Water ...... 130 Sphinx ...... 130 Presentation of Findings: Stories ...... 131 Creating Summary Stories and Narrative ...... 131 Impact of Study: Readers ...... 132 Ariel ...... 132 Beth ...... 133 Cassie ...... 134 Supplemental Findings...... 135 viii

Face-to-Face versus Telephone Interviews ...... 135 Impact of Study: Transcribers ...... 135 Conclusion ...... 137

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION ...... 141 Research Questions ...... 141 Research Question 1: What is the Experience of Being in Higher Planes of Consciousness in Integral Yoga? ...... 141 Research Question 2: Using the Research Method of Organic Inquiry, Can Sharing This Experience Somehow Impact or Change the Reader? ...... 143 The Mother...... 144 Supplemental Discussion of Findings ...... 146 Experience of Higher Planes ...... 146 Movement from the Head and Heart ...... 148 Prior and Synchronistic Experiences ...... 149 Incorporation of Other Yogas ...... 150 Issue of Sexual Desire ...... 151 Taboo Against Sharing Experiences ...... 152 Sharing Experiences and the Ripple Effect ...... 153 Impact of Study: Researcher ...... 154 Delimitations and Additional Limitations ...... 157 Delimitations ...... 157 Limitations ...... 158 Directions for Future Research ...... 160 Planes of Consciousness ...... 160 Nonlight Forces ...... 161 Focus on Readers ...... 161 Face-to-Face and Telephone Interviews ...... 162 Summary and Significance of Findings ...... 162

REFERENCES ...... 167

APPENDIXES ...... 178 A. Alternative Depictions of Integral Yoga Psychology ...... 178 B. Integral Change of Consciousness in the Individual and Humanity ...... 180 C. Letter of Introduction ...... 181 D. Participation Letter and Instructions for Coresearchers ...... 182 E. Interview Guide ...... 183 F. Checklist for Analysis of Information ...... 185 G. Stories ...... 186

List of Tables

Table 1: Triple Transformation ...... 58

Table: 2: Ken Wilber’s Integral Psychology Model ...... 62

List of Figures

Figure 1: Overview of Integral Yoga Psychology ...... 41

Figure 2: Levels of Consciousness ...... 51

List of Figures in Appendixes

(The letter refers to Appendix)

Figure A1. Cycle of Involution and Evolution ...... 178

Figure A2. Lowest Plane (Matter) – Outer Being...... 178

Figure A3. Process of Evolutionary Transformation ...... 178

Figure A4. Triple Transformation Pyramid ...... 179

Figure B1. Integral Yoga Process ...... 180

Figure B2. Triple Transformation of Integral Yoga ...... 180 1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Individuals reaching advanced states of consciousness are rare (Feuerstein, 1987;

Wilber, 1999, 2000). Studies in the West on these advanced practitioners are rarer still

(Brown, 1986; Brown & Engler, 1986a, 1986b; Brown, 1999; Goleman, 1972a, 1972b,

1974, 1978-79, 1981, 1988). The studies that have been done on these individuals have focused primarily on the subject of meditation. Individual practitioners who have accessed higher planes of consciousness are important to the study of the evolution of human consciousness. Individuals, not populations, are responsible for moving humanity along the evolutionary path (Dalal, 2001, p. 131).

Sri Aurobindo Ghose (often referred to simply as Sri Aurobindo), one of India’s preeminent 20th-century sages and philosophers, developed Integral Yoga. He integrated the other predominant systems of yoga in India. Whereas the goal of other yogas is to seek union with the Divine, Integral Yoga’s goal is the descent of the Divine in higher realms of experience into terrestrial life, bringing a transformation of the entire human being, mentally, physically, and spiritually.

Long-term practitioners of Integral Yoga may yield considerable information about the experience of these higher realms. Integral Yoga would appeal to individuals who are ready and interested in transformation. This population is homogenous in its intent and therefore may potentially provide transpersonal psychology with significant information about higher planes of consciousness. Sri Aurobindo’s followers are aware and motivated, actively seeking transformation.

Organic inquiry is a qualitative transpersonal research method useful for psychospiritual growth (Clements, 2002). The experiences of the researcher and 2 participants, as coresearchers, are important to the study. Organic inquiry allows creativity and innovation in data collection and analysis. Organic inquiry values the use of nonordinary realms of consciousness to acquire information and knowledge.

Narratives and stories are important tools for conveying study findings. Additionally, subjective transformation of all involved is an intended goal (Braud, 2004).

This introduction continues with a discussion of the purpose of the study, the research questions, and a brief clarification of terms. It further addresses meditation research and issues pertinent to understanding the importance of the study. Other considerations related to both meditation and this investigation are put into perspective, such as mystic or transcendent experiences, experiential accounts of Integral Yoga, and an emerging aspect of transpersonal theory called participatory knowing. The idea of human beings as energy fields deserves some explanation as well because it will clarify possible mechanisms involved with organic inquiry research.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to explore the experience of higher planes of consciousness in Integral Yoga using the qualitative research method of organic inquiry.

Research Questions

This study poses the following questions: What is the experience of being in higher planes of consciousness in Integral Yoga? Using the research method of organic inquiry, can sharing this experience somehow impact or change the reader of these experiences? 3

Significance of the Study

This study is exploratory. The significance of this study is that it will contribute to the pool of knowledge about consciousness, spirituality, and meditation. It addresses a spiritual community—Integral Yoga—rarely explored. And it adds to a growing body of research that uses the transpersonal method of organic inquiry. In this way it will add to the knowledge pool in transpersonal psychology by providing a different avenue of consciousness research. It integrates the research areas of consciousness, spiritual practice, transformation, and consciousness evolution.

Clarification of Terms

Explanations of pertinent terms and phrases will be given as they are used. The next chapter on the psychology of Integral Yoga clarifies a number of them because Sri

Aurobindo sometimes defined terms differently from their common usage. It may be helpful here, however, to introduce a few in order to understand how they are used in this study.

The use of the term practitioners rather than meditators best conveys the multi- level nature of Integral Yoga within the individual. Meditation is only one aspect involved with consciousness transformation in Integral Yoga.

Higher planes of consciousness are hierarchically advanced realms or worlds of consciousness beyond higher mind in Integral Yoga. Sri Aurobindo used other phrases interchangeably to describe these planes. These include “higher consciousness”

(Aurobindo, 1990, p. 977), “higher states of consciousness” (Aurobindo, 1990, p. 964),

“layers of consciousness” (Aurobindo, 1970a, p. 263), and “planes of the Mind”

(Satprem, 1970, p. 198). Planes are “gradations of worlds” (Pandit, 1992, p. 186), 4

superimposed structures of higher consciousness that interconnect (Aurobindo, 1970a).

“Higher Mind is one of the planes of the spiritual mind, the first and lowest of them; it is

above the normal level” (Satprem, 1970, p. 198).

Yoga has a variety of meanings. In Western society, its most common use

describes a practice of bodily exercises called Hatha Yoga. Unfortunately, this single

attribution tends to explain all yogas in the West. In this study, consistent with Sri

Aurobindo’s use, Yoga refers to a system of spiritual practice that leads one to unite with

the Divine, Brahman, the Ground of All Being. Several schools of yoga exist in India that

represent a particular emphasis and teaching: Raja, with a focus on mind control, Hatha,

with a focus on breath and body control, Bhakti, with a focus on devotion and love,

Tantra, with a focus on kundalini energy, Karma, with a focus on action and service, and

Jnana, with a focus on knowledge and wisdom (Chaudhuri, 1965, p. 236; Feuerstein,

2001). Buddhism is also considered a system of yoga (Feuerstein, 2001). A number of other yogas exist if one peruses the topic: Siddhi, Laya, Mantra, Kripalu, to name a few.

All, however, are systems of spiritual practice that lead to union with the Divine.

Its truths are based on the experiences and experiments of an unbroken line of mystics, occultists, saints and sages who have realized and born witness to them throughout the ages…. The facts of higher Yoga can neither be proved nor demonstrated. Their appeal is to the intuition and not to the intellect. (Taimni, 1961, p. vii)

Meditation is both a tool and practice that quiets the mind to the point of

accessing higher states of consciousness. “The initial purpose of yogic mediation is to

intercept the flux of ordinary mental activity (vritti)” (Feuerstein, 2001, p. 251).

Meditation acts as a doorway to advanced nonordinary states of consciousness. Daniel

Goleman (1972a, Note: First names or titles are used with last names in this study in 5 accordance with organic inquiry’s protocol) characterized these states as “meditation- specific states of consciousness,” or MSC (Goleman, 1972a, p. 2). “Prolonged use of selective attention, effort, and pure awareness, and the development of these as attentional skills, are essential for activation of the changes along the path of meditation”

(Brown, 1986, p. 264). The goal of meditation is to change one’s consciousness

(Goleman, 1978-79, 1988). The two main types are concentration and insight.

Concentration meditation involves the individual focusing on a specific object of meditation until one sees only the object and merges with it. Insight meditation has the individual become the observer of thoughts until no thought arises. Hindu and Buddhist yogas use one, both, or variations of both types of meditation.

Integral Yoga, also known as Purna Yoga, is a synthesis of several major yogas and was created by Sri Aurobindo. For the purposes of this chapter this brief summary will suffice:

1. Sri Aurobindo viewed psychology to be the scientific study of consciousness.

His yoga focused on the transformation of consciousness as a step forward in

the evolution of human consciousness.

2. The end point of ordinary human consciousness is higher mind in Integral

Yoga—where individual consciousness becomes an observer of mind. Beyond

higher mind is a superconscient realm, with three planes of consciousness:

illumined mind, intuition mind, and overmind, progressing to the highest plane

of human consciousness, supermind (or the supramental). Supermind is the

starting point of the transcendental realm of consciousness and the dwelling

place of the Divine. 6

3. Outer being is where the physical, mind, and vital aspects of the individual in

waking consciousness operate. Ego operates here. Inner being consists of the

subliminal parts of the individual, as well as one’s soul. Sri Aurobindo used

the term psychic being to describe the soul. Central being contains the psychic

being as well as the individual’s spirit, which is considered to be in direct

connection to the Divine. These concepts will be explored in greater detail in

the next chapter.

Meditation Research

Many studies on meditation occurred in the latter half of the 20th century, particularly the 1960s and 1970s. Much of the literature on meditation research focused on physical and behavioral changes, as well as the changes in life experiences and emotions. Few investigations explored the actual experience of meditative states of consciousness.

Many of the early studies on meditation done in the West compared short-term meditators to non-meditators. If long-term meditators were studied, the length of experience in a discipline usually ranged from 6 months up to 3-5 years. Studies of very long-term meditators, those with 5 to 10 years of experience, were scarce (Brown &

Engler, 1986a; 1986b; Goleman, 1972a; 1972b; 1978-79; 1988; Murphy & Donovan,

1988; Murphy, Donovan, & Taylor, 1997). Some researchers studied teachers, monks, or gurus in Asia. However, the focus of the studies revolved on what these advanced practitioners could do rather than what they experienced in advanced states of consciousness (see Murphy & Donovan, 1988; Murphy et al., 1997, for an excellent synthesis of meditation research). Daniel Goleman’s work (1972a; 1972b; 1978-79; 7

1988), as well as Daniel Brown’s (1986) provide very detailed and excellent descriptions

of stages of higher consciousness, primarily in Buddhism with comparisons to Hindu and

Western mystical practices. A brief discussion of pertinent meditation research in the

West may be helpful in order to understand the importance of this study.

Certain studies stand out because the participants were meditators considered

advanced by the greater length of practice in years than a majority of studies or were

assessed by master meditators and teachers by the levels of consciousness they achieved.

Many of the meditators practiced Buddhist meditation techniques. A few of these studies

focused on Hindu meditators.

Lawrence R. Edwards (1987), in his study of the long-term effects of practitioners

of Siddha Yoga, interviewed participants with 10 or more years of yoga practice. He used

case study and ethnographic tandem interviews to collect data from 13 participants on the

physical and psychological effects of long-term yoga practice, with his findings

concurring with the outcomes of yoga practice found in the sacred texts and literature. Dr.

Edwards’ study is an example of one that focused on the outcomes of long-term meditative experience. This current study focuses on the experience of higher realms of consciousness, a different perspective altogether.

Daniel Brown and Jack Engler (1986a; 1986b) conducted one of the most comprehensive studies on advanced stages of meditation. Data were collected from three independent studies of meditators at different levels of abilities and integrated into one larger study. The group (n = 31) in the first study consisted of Western meditators who completed a 3-months Theravada Buddhist meditation retreat. The researchers compared the effects of expectations on meditation. Data collected consisted of: (a) Rorschach tests; 8

(b) a quantitative questionnaire they developed called “A Profile of Meditative

Experience” (POME); and (c) a Social Desirability Scale (developed by Crowne &

Marlow in 1960). Rorschachs were given pre- and post-retreat. The group (n = 8) in the second study were advanced meditators identified by teachers at the same retreat center.

The group (n = 10) in the third study were teachers and master teachers identified as having traits corresponding to advanced stages of Theravadin Buddhist enlightenment; all lived in South Asia. Data collection varied slightly with this group: case studies were collected, translations made for the POME and semistructured interviews, the Thematic

Apperception Test, or TAT (India version), was given, and no pretest for Rorschach occurred.

The POME helped researchers to group meditators by their level of experience.

Teachers’ assessments helped to further subdivide the group into levels—beginner, samadhi, and insight—corresponding to the enlightenment stages reached at the time of data collection. A large degree of variation in concentration and insight meditation abilities created a larger variation in findings. The beginner level showed little difference between pre- and post-retreat Rorschachs. The samadhi level showed a “seeming unproductivity and paucity of associative elaborations” (Brown & Engler, 1986a, p. 177) in the Rorschach test. This group exhibited a “high incidence of comments on the pure perceptual features of the inkblot,” an “unusual finding” (p. 179). The insight level, however, demonstrated an “increased productivity and richness of associative elaborations” (p. 180), and an “openness to the flow of internal associations and images”

(p. 181). 9

Results from the study of advanced meditators demonstrated Rorschach findings

similar to the beginner level initially. However, further analysis elicited the unusual

finding in most of these participants that:

[Indicated] an understanding of the interrelationship of form and energy/space. The most striking feature of all these Ss’ Rorschachs is the extent to which they view their own internal imagery, in response to the shapes on the inkblots, as merely manifestations or emanations of energy/space. (Brown & Engler, 1986a, p. 186)

Daniel Brown and Jack Engler (1986a) identified one individual in the third study who qualified as a master, the highest level identified in all three studies. This master completely changed the expected perception of the Rorschach test. “Whereas most

‘normal’ Rorschach subjects unquestioningly accept the physical ‘reality’ of an inkblot and then project their imaging onto it, this master sees an inkblot itself as the projection of the mind” (Brown & Engler, 1986a, p. 190). Additionally this master integrated all 10

Rorschach cards into one narrative story. Such a “single associative theme is an extremely rare finding” (p. 191). Drs. Brown and Engler believed their findings

accurately portray perceptual changes that occur in the progress of meditation.

From these three studies, Daniel Brown and Jack Engler (1986a) showed that

differences in perception occur with differences in meditation level. A perceptual ennui

occurs early, perhaps relating to shifts in consciousness that make it difficult to re-orient

to a fixed set of three-dimensional instructions. The next shift demonstrates flow and

movement in the perception of visual cues, changing their interpretation. Dissolution of

structure and form allows perception to shift to an orientation of energy and space. And

then, in very advanced states (the third study in South Asia) the individual perceptions

obtained from each of the Rorschach cards fall into an integrative whole picture of a 10 higher order that allows a narrative story to emerge. To summarize, perception is deconstructed to its source where a metaphoric black hole shifts consciousness through to enlightenment, transforming it, and a reintegration of perception occurs.

Daniel Goleman (1972a, 1972b) comprehensively described the experience and levels of Buddhist meditation, particularly regarding the differences between the insight and concentration paths of meditation. He also compared and contrasted it with the spiritual traditions of Indian yogas (including Integral Yoga), Tibetan Buddhism, Zen

Buddhism, and the philosophies of Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti (Goleman, 1972b). In his book, The Meditative Mind (Goleman, 1988), he combined his previous studies and expanded his comparisons of other meditative systems, including Jewish, Christian, and

Sufi traditions.

Daniel Brown (1986) studied three practices (Tibetan Buddhism, Theravada

Buddhism, and Hindu Yoga) over 12 years, including the reading of each tradition’s sacred texts in their original languages (Mahamudra, Visuddhimagga, and Yoga Sutras, respectively), and identified similarities and differences in the three traditions. He found that all three are structured in a series of stages along the meditation path that are consistent across each spiritual tradition.

Each tradition divided the states of practice differently…. However…it was possible to discover a clear underlying structure to meditation stages, a structure highly consistent across the traditions. The sequence of stages is assumed to be universal, despite the vastly different ways they are conceptualized and described across traditions. This sequence is believed to represent natural human development available to anyone who practices. The sequence is assumed to be invariant…. Furthermore, it was also possible to specify the nature of the final outcome, enlightenment, according to the ways it is similar and different across traditions. The traditions agree there are three main divisions to the practice: preliminary exercises, concentration meditations, and insight meditations. According to the synoptic analysis used in this research, a total of six major stages of practice were discovered: two preliminary, two concentrative, and two insight 11

stages…. Each of these six stages can be subdivided further into three substages…[for a total of] eighteen distinct stages (6 x 3) which unfold in an invariant sequence. (Brown, 1986, pp. 223-224)

The significant variation between Buddhist and Hindu traditions is that Buddhists view enlightenment at the highest level as a discontinuity, as unconnected and discreet flowing pockets. Hindu thought views the final vision as unity, as interconnected:

For the Hindu, the vicissitudes of mental events are all manifestations of the “same stuff.” For the Buddhists, each discretely observable event in the unfolding succession of mental events is “momentary.” Whereas both traditions agree that mental events undergo incessant change, the nature of the change can be experienced differently: mental events unfold in a continuous manner for the Hindu yogi and in a discontinuous manner for the Buddhist meditator. (Brown, 1986, p. 225)

Daniel Brown’s (1986) careful analysis disputed the idea that all paths lead to the same outcome in spiritual development.

According to the careful comparison of the traditions we have to conclude the following: there is only one path, but it has several outcomes. There are several kinds of enlightenment, although all free awareness from psychological structure and alleviate suffering. (Brown, 1986, pp. 266-267)

Roger Walsh (1995), on the other hand, in mapping states of consciousness in shamanism, Buddhist vipassana (insight) meditation, Patanjali’s yoga, and schizophrenia, concluded:

Claims that shamans and masters of other traditions are equivalent and access identical states will need to make multiple comparisons between multiple states on multiple dimensions; something that simply has not been done. These theoretical arguments point to several reasons why it is difficult to make sweeping claims for identity between shamanic states and those of other traditions. Of course it is not to deny that there may be some experiential overlap between different states inasmuch as they may involve similar processes and aims, such as attentional training and compassionate service. (p. 40)

Dr. Walsh (1995), in answering the question of whether a “common mystical experience” exists, stated that some of the highest states cannot be mapped or 12

ascertained. For instance, it is difficult to differentiate between the eight Buddhist states

(jhanas) of meditative experience because of their subtleties. However, each of these

states possess “extremely high degrees of control, calm, and concentration, and almost

total lack of awareness of the environment and ability to communicate” (p. 46). But at the

highest levels of consciousness, nirvana of Theravada Buddhist tradition and samadhi of

the yoga tradition of Patanjali, verbalization and intellectual reasoning do not work.

For these experiences, and the realms they putatively reveal, are said to be beyond space, time, qualities, concepts, and limits of any kind. Hence, these experiences are said to be ineffable, indescribable, and inconceivable because they are transempirical, transverbal, and transrational. …Here phenomenological description, mapping, and comparison fail. (Walsh, 1995, p. 48)

Dr. Walsh (1995) explained further that the goal is not to describe but to

experience: “The primary and liberating task [therefore], say both Buddhist and yogic traditions, is not to describe these states and experiences but rather to know them for oneself through direct, transrational intuition and its resultant wisdom, prajna or jnana”

(p. 49). Such is the challenge of this study—how to convey the experience of these higher states of consciousness.

Integral Yoga and Meditation

Integral Yoga does not espouse a particular method of meditation. Daniel

Goleman (1972b) explained it in the following way:

The process of spiritual unfolding is as varied as individual differences, and so Aurobindo (1958) prescribes no uniform, set practice…. Thus Integral Yoga can consist in whatever technique is found to work for one at a given point in sadhana…. Among traditional paths commonly followed by practitioners of Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga are Bhakti, karma-yoga… and sitting meditation. The usual combination is the practice of one-pointedness techniques and devotion to the Mother. The fruits of meditation in MSC [meditative states of consciousness] are, from Aurobindo’s point of view, not the final goal but ‘a first stage of evolution.’ All samadhis, including the highest jhanas are to be reintegrated with the activities of life. These jhana states belong to the realm of the 13

‘Overmind’…This is but the starting point of Aurobindo’s yoga…The fundamental process is at each higher level of consciousness to ‘bring down’ its power and perception into ‘mortal life,’ making it a constant attribute of the waking state. (Goleman, 1972b, p. 167)

Summary

The population of individuals who are ready for the next change of consciousness

(Feuerstein, 1987) or the shift to the next higher evolution of humanity (Aurobindo,

1990) is small. Western studies of long-term meditators are not explicit regarding levels, except for a few (Brown, 1986; Brown & Engler, 1986a, 1986b; Goleman, 1972a, 1972b,

1978-79, 1988). Even fewer focus on the experience in higher planes of consciousness and its effects rather than simply on the outcomes. Such studies, however, examine the phenomena of spiritual awakening or transcendence (Massad, 2001; Slanina, 1994;

Waldron, 1998, 2006).

It is not within the scope of this study to compare differences between short-term and long-term meditators, such as the studies by Drs. Brown and Engler (1986a, 1986b) and Dr. Shapiro (1992). This study will also not discuss discreet psychobiological changes attributed to meditation, as a number of studies on meditation have done (see

Murphy & Donovan, 1988; Murphy et al., 1997). This study’s focus is what is experienced in the planes of consciousness beyond what Sri Aurobindo described as higher mind, the entry into superconscient consciousness. Sri Aurobindo (1990; 1993b) did not advocate a specific method of meditation discipline, as in other yoga and

Buddhist practices. He simply instructed his students to seek the space of silence and wait, using whatever method helped them to arrive there. Although Daniel Goleman

(1972b) identified Integral Yoga meditation as one of concentration-focused, he also stated that Integral Yoga has no particular system of meditation practice. 14

Issues in Meditation Research

Those who have outlined the levels of higher consciousness in Buddhism and

Indian yogas, other than Integral Yoga, tend to compare and contrast the systems with each other. One cannot, however, subscribe to one system or cultural tradition and expect it to translate equivocally to another. Daniel Brown (1986), Ken Wilber (2000), Daniel

Goleman (1972b; 1978-79; 1988), Jorge Ferrer (2002) and others made this point.

Meditation can illuminate and open the doors of consciousness beyond ego and waking consciousness. It can allow for the experience of higher realms of consciousness.

Other work is also required of the individual. It is in this capacity that the other teachings found in the philosophy of the Eastern spiritual traditions are important (Agha-Kazem-

Shirazi, 1995). It is also what early meditation practitioners in the West, who embraced meditation for a number of reasons, missed.

Others agree with this assessment. Drs. Brown and Engler (1986b) noted a difference in outcomes between Eastern and Western mindfulness meditators, especially beginners; Eastern beginner meditators advance faster than their Western counterparts.

Westerners tend to use meditation as an isolated tool without incorporating the preliminary psychological, behavioral, and spiritual preparations that occur first in

Eastern systems. As a result, Western meditators slow or arrest their meditative progress initially by choosing to explore the inner content that emerges in the initial phases of meditation, engaging in “self-exploratory therapy” (Brown & Engler, 1986b, p. 195).

Eastern meditators, on the other hand, prepare themselves prior to beginning meditation practice and therefore have addressed many of the issues that initially occur for

Westerners in the beginning of meditation practice. “The psychological changes 15 characteristic of the preliminary practices are the necessary precondition to formal meditation” (p. 196). Dr. Brown (1986) elaborated on the preparatory stages— preliminary ethical and preliminary mind-body training—that tend to be ignored by

Western meditation practices (p. 223). Integral Yoga emphasizes the importance of purifying oneself (outer and inner being) and allowing the soul, the psychic being in

Integral Yoga, to emerge and become the director of one’s life instead of the ego, paralleling the preliminary practices previously discussed.

Allan Combs (2002) also pointed out that simply reading about a state or level of consciousness that has not been experienced does not guarantee the success of the person reaching that level. As Ken Wilber put it in a written conversation with Dr. Combs,

“It doesn’t give the first-person phenomenal knowledge of that higher state. The only way the person gets that is by developing or directly experiencing that higher state”

(Combs, 2002, pp. 298-299). Ken Wilber elaborated further by saying, “we are also asking what it takes to transform an adult human being…simply getting a description of the higher state, no matter how perfect, does not permanently change that person unless they have been subjectively transformed” (Combs, 2002, p. 299).

Allan Combs and Ken Wilber (Combs, 2002), in their dialogue, pointed out a conundrum for this present study. This researcher, having studied several disciplines and traditions, accessed states of consciousness that do not conform to any particular category or tradition. Additionally, she has not practiced Integral Yoga, although it resonates profoundly. The solution may be found in the use of organic inquiry, along with the skill of the researcher, in transmitting the experiences that are the subject of this study. 16

Other Considerations

Mystic and Transcendent Experiences

Another body of literature addresses the sudden moments of entering advanced states of consciousness. These moments are often experienced as meeting a divine being, receiving intuitive knowledge or answers to a question, or being in a place bathed in love and light. These experiences are instantaneous, unexpected, fleeting, and life altering.

Joan Waldron (2006) noted that explorations of transcendent experiences have their roots in the study of mysticism (p. 14). The Western literature describes such phenomena as mystical experiences, citing authors such as William James (1997), Richard Maurice

Bucke (1923), and Evelyn Underhill (1970). A number of terms describe such experiences: mystic, peak, nirvana, divine, ground of being, source, transcendent, exceptional human, to name a few. For instance, Dr. Waldron (2006) listed several descriptors used in the literature for a transcendent experience such as mystical, transpersonal, exceptional human, and peak. The reader is also invited to peruse her article (Waldron, 1998) for a thorough review of the literature regarding the definition and characteristics of such transcendent experiences. Abraham Maslow (1972) described

25 characteristics of peak experience, which correlate with the findings of others. Jorge

Ferrer (2002) called the realm of these experiences the “Ocean of Emancipation” (p.

145).

Language is a significant limitation in consciousness research. L. E. Thomas and

Pamela Cooper (1980) attempted to codify the wording or label of these types of experiences by having 305 people (ages 17 and above) answer the question, “Have you ever had the feeling of being close to a powerful spiritual force that seemed to lift you 17 outside of yourself?” One third of the respondents were found to have had some type of spiritual experience but only 1% of the sample had, based on their descriptions, a mystical experience (i.e., ineffability, feeling a sense of cosmic unity, noesis). Drs.

Thomas and Cooper concluded that a large number of people have had a “spiritual experience of some type” and that:

Qualitative methods will be needed to measure these experiences, since individuals are able to interpret the structured question in so many different ways. Stated another way, individuals differ so widely in the types of experiences that they have had that structured questions may be of limited usefulness in studying the phenomena. (p. 83)

U. A. Asrani (1972) noted that once individuals experience these realms they want to find a way to share them with others.

Almost every mystic who has experienced the depths of peace and joy encountered in Samadhi has desired that other human beings should similarly attain: the result has been the large literature of mysticism which has sought in various ways to describe the indescribable and ineffable. (p. 237)

Transcendent experiences are spontaneous and often not actively sought except by mystics and meditators within spiritual traditions. The training and philosophy of the tradition also determines the interpretation of the experience (Brown, 1986; Goleman,

1988). Once experienced, many seek earnestly to repeat them. Yoga practitioners and meditators may have similar experiences when first encountering a new state of consciousness. Training, will, and intent assist them in accessing new levels, reaching them often enough that they are eventually able to remain in it, changing a state experience into a trait experience. A state experience of nonordinary consciousness is temporary; the individual subjectively enters and leaves the state. A trait experience occurs when the qualities of a nonordinary state integrate with waking consciousness

(Goleman, 1974; Goleman, 1978-79; Wilber, 2000). 18

In order for higher development to occur, those temporary states must become permanent traits. Higher development involves, in part, the conversion of altered states into permanent realizations. In other words, in the upper reaches of evolution, the transpersonal potentials that were only available in temporary states of consciousness are increasingly converted into enduring structures of consciousness (states into traits). This is where meditative states become increasingly important. (Wilber, 2000, p. 15)

Stabilization of experiences in nonordinary realms, and its integration into waking

consciousness, is considered “a hallmark of genuine transpersonal development” (Ferrer,

2002, p. 37). It is a significant goal in Integral Yoga. It also has implications for the

evolution of consciousness.

Joan Waldron (1998) explained that transcendent experiences and mystic

experiences described in the literature possess the qualities of suddenness and

unexpectedness. She examined the transcendent experiences (sudden onset variety) of six

individuals that carried a significant quality of instant knowing (noesis) and its long-term

impact on the percipients’ lives (Waldron, 2006). Using Arthur Deikman’s (1980) model

of mystical experience, Joan Waldron’s participants fit into the category of untrained- sensate. The other two categories in Arthur Deikman’s model are trained-sensate and trained-transcendent, experiences more often found in mystics and advanced meditators, respectively.

Dr. Waldron’s (1998) research is very similar to the intent and purpose of this proposed study. Using the multiple case study method and in-depth interviews, she compiled descriptions of transcendent experiences. Her study focused on the noetic quality of these experiences and their lifelong impact on the percipients. This study differed from Dr. Waldron’s in a few ways: (a) the experiences sought are not necessarily spontaneous and occur only once. The participants in the current study fall into the 19

trained-transcendent category of Arthur Deikman’s (1980) model; (b) the participants in

the current study, as practitioners, have a background of several years of meditative experience. With the inclusion of intent and will, they constitute very important qualities necessary for success in Integral Yoga according to Sri Aurobindo, and do not have the

“out-of-the-blue” quality found in Dr. Waldron’s case studies; (c) Dr. Waldron focused on the noetic quality and life impact of the transcendent experiences, whereas this study does not limit the focus to any particular qualities; and (d) organic inquiry will produce a different set of results than the case study method. Dr. Waldron (1998) discovered that, as a result of her study, the experience of working with her participants carried an aspect of sacredness, “the sense of being on holy ground….This truly is sacred territory” (Waldron,

1998, p. 132). Using organic inquiry, this study started with that premise.

Sunny Massad (2001) examined eight individuals regarding sustained transcendent experiences; four were interviews and four were descriptions found in autobiographies of people who had sustained transcendent experiences. The descriptions from the four interviewees displayed two outstanding features: 1. The descriptions were scant in detail of the experience outside of the feelings of bliss, joy, and peace; and 2.

Reading them did not induce any transformation in the reader (current researcher). Other

findings were that one cannot prepare for a sustained transcendent experience and that

aspiring or seeking a sustained transcendent experience will not produce it. Dr. Massad

did not identify specific spiritual practices or whether transcendent experiences occurred

during or outside of spiritual practices initially.

In conclusion, mystic and transcendent experiences are spontaneous, life-

changing, transformative events and the individual desires to repeat them. However, these 20 experiences differ from those discussed in this study as well as other meditation studies, in that the individual is not usually trained to seek or is not aspiring to have them. These events are similar in that they are life-changing transformative events and the individual desires to repeat them.

Integral Yoga and Experiential Accounts

Descriptions of experiences by Integral Yoga students in planes of superconsciousness can be found indirectly from reading Sri Aurobindo’s responses to their letters (Aurobindo, 1970a, 1970b). Other sources contain descriptions of Sri

Aurobindo’s personal experiences (Nirodbaran, 1973; Purani, n.d.; Roy, 1984; Satprem,

1970). Satprem’s (1970) biography of Sri Aurobindo provides descriptions of the superconscient realms Sri Aurobindo experienced (i.e., illumined, intuition, overmind).

From a record of Sri Aurobindo’s evening talks (Purani, n.d.), the reader will find descriptions of his superconscient experiences scattered throughout. These sources will be covered in later chapters as they might bias the researcher’s experience with the participants of this study, perhaps influencing the reader as well.

Transpersonal Theory and Participatory Knowing

Jorge Ferrer (2002) proposed a new idea of transpersonal and consciousness- expanding experiences beyond the solitary, intrasubjective experience that includes the realms of intersubjective, communal, and nature as part of the experience. In a reversal of the perennial philosophy, he believed that transpersonal events, in any context, trigger transpersonal experiences, not just the intrasubjective pursuit of them.

Participatory knowing refers to a multidimensional access to reality that includes not only the intellectual knowing of the mind, but also the emotional and empathic knowing of the heart, the sensual and somatic knowing of the body, the 21

visionary and intuitive knowing of the soul, as well as any other way of knowing available to human beings. (p. 121)

Jorge Ferrer (2002) suggested in his participatory transpersonal model that: (a)

The final point of a mystical or transcendent journey is multivariant, culturally dependent with regard to description, and nonsuperior hierarchically and contextually to any other tradition or practice; and (b) it can occur in any transpersonal event that generates an experience. This allows for a multiplicity of processes, events, and experiences that produce transcendent moments and opportunities.

Dr. Ferrer (2002) pointed out, as did Daniel Brown (1986), that Western transpersonal psychology’s emphasis on the experiential process of meditation (as the

West embraced it) did not include the ethical and philosophical preparation necessary prior to beginning meditation, steps considered vitally important to the process and outcome in Eastern spiritual traditions. Such premature and incomplete training results only in transient, short-lived peak experiences rather than long-term transformations

(Ferrer, 2002, p. 27). Integral Yoga enhances stabilization and consciousness transformation in the integral preparation and purification of the outer and inner being, the conscious-unconscious-subconscious-subliminal focus, and the emphasis on will, intent, aspiration, and surrender.

This study sought practitioners who, while possibly having peak, mystical, or transcendent types of experiences, potentially operate in the plateau level of higher consciousness—using Abraham Maslow’s vernacular (Krippner, 1972; Maslow, 1969,

1972)—or, using another term, possess characteristics of trait experience.

An important point Jorge Ferrer (2002), Ken Wilber (2000), Daniel Brown (1986) and others made is that it is not sufficient to have a spiritual experience or a string of 22

spiritual experiences, but these experiences must be integrated into one’s life, one’s values and ethics, in the context of the community and world of matter so that individual transformation can occur. Integral Yoga incorporates this belief into its practice.

A basic issue here is that, as it has often been stressed in the religious literature, the goal of the spiritual quest is not to have spiritual experiences, but to stabilize spiritual consciousness, live a spiritual life, and transform the world accordingly. (Ferrer, 2002, p. 37)

Ken Wilber (2000) and Jorge Ferrer (2002) do not appear to address, however, the effect of the transformed individual on others. Integral Yoga also seeks to transform the individual from a human being to a spiritual being living in the world of matter. The

human energy fields of people are profoundly interconnected so that a change in one

individual affects other individuals (Pierrakos, 1975; Rogers, 1970; Rogers, 1990). The

idea of human energy fields is one perspective on how the evolution of consciousness can

occur—that transformation of one person can affect others and potentiates their

transformation.

Subtle Energy and Human Energy Fields

One of the challenges of this study, using the research method of organic inquiry,

lies in the question of whether subjective narrative descriptions of higher realms of

consciousness can transform the participants, the researcher, and the reader. If thoughts

are energy, and ontologically everything is vibration and energy, then is it possible that

the interaction of hearing or reading information can change an individual? Research on

subtle energy bolsters the notion that human beings possess an energy field, which

interacts with other energy fields surrounding it.

Language, as mentioned earlier, is a significant limitation on the ability to convey

experiences in higher planes of consciousness. How an individual’s shift in consciousness 23 may affect others is an important question with regard to the evolution of human consciousness. Perhaps, then, an alternative viewpoint regarding transmission and communication, using energy fields, is worthy of consideration.

Eastern traditions accept the notion of subtle energies in their cosmologies and ontologies. Subtle energies explain the actions of the universe with human beings. They coexist with matter and consciousness. Subtle energies are more nebulous to identify within a scientific framework.

[Subtle energies are] believed to move throughout the so-called “etheric” (or subtle) energy body and thus . . . [are]difficult to measure using conventional instrumentation. . . . In addition, it is traditionally accepted that expansions of consciousness often are related to changes in subtle energies that cannot be quantified. These latter “energies”, which are said to be associated with interactions and with transcendence, may not, in fact, actually be involved with known physical fields. (International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine [ISSSEEM], 2003, Definitions)

Ken Wilber (2003) correlated the descriptions of subtle energies in the spiritual traditions of India (specifically Vedanta and Vajrayana), which are premodern, with the knowledge of science, which is postmodern, and integrated both within his AQAL model

(all quadrants, all levels) of consciousness. He connected the states of consciousness to energy realms or bodies, called sarira (Deutsch & Dalvi, 2004), to sheaths or levels of consciousness, called koshas (Deutsch & Dalvi, 2004), and to the chakras, the subtle energy centers associated with the human body (Wilber, 2003). His levels of consciousness reflect Sri Aurobindo’s hierarchy and terminology.

Western tradition addresses subtle energies from the scientific paradigm. All matter vibrates. Vibrations and subatomically charged particles create energy and electromagnetic fields in matter. Electrons and protons are electrically charged particles 24 in atoms. Atoms exist in all space and matter in the universe (Pain, 1993). Electrically charged particles, therefore, fill the universe.

The concept of fields was introduced by physicist Michael Faraday “as an intuitive way of looking at the electrical interaction between charges” (Calle, 2001, p.

254). A field has been defined as “a force which can cause action at a distance” (Jones &

Chez, 2004, p. 172), an area of space that surrounds the object that creates it (Schwartz &

Russek, 1997), and “a continuous condition of space” (Karagulla & Kunz, 1989, p. 27).

A magnetic field is created wherever charged particles exist. Electromagnetic waves are produced when the velocity of an electrical direction changes (Pain, 1993, p.

187). The result is an electromagnetic field. The Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology (Morris, 1992) defines an electromagnetic field as “an oscillating electric field and its associated magnetic field acting at right angles to each other and at right angles to their direction” (Morris, 1992, p. 725). All matter contains electromagnetic characteristics (Becker & Selden, 1985).

The human body generates an electromagnetic field from an amalgam of biochemical and biomechanical processes (V. V. Hunt, 1996; Oschman, 2002). The electromagnetic field is generated at the atomic and cellular levels of the body and emanates out to surround the entire physical body. The energy field is continuous and a reservoir for energy exchange within and without it (V. V. Hunt, 1996). As a bioelectromagnetic field, or bioenergy field, the human body is “capable of transferring energy and information from one system to another” (Jonas & Chez, 2004, p. 172).

The terms used for the energies operating in the human field have different names in different cultures. They include: subtle energies, life force energy, ch’i or qi, ki, odic 25 force, prana, élan vital or vital fluid, bioelectromagnetic fields, endogenous fields, morphogenic fields, and orgone (Collinge, 1998; Gerber, 2001; Oschman, 2002). In parapsychology, the human energy field is a possible mechanism for the evidence of clairvoyance, remote viewing, telekinesis, psychokinesis, and perhaps precognition (Tart,

1975).

The National Institute of Health (NIH) created the term biofield to express the living biologic fields of organisms and gave the term a National Library of Medicine

(NLM) medical subject heading in 1994. Biofields are proposed to be unscientifically proven energy fields that surround and interpenetrate the physical body (Miles & True,

2003; National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine[NCCAM], 2007).

[A biofield is] the endogenous, complex dynamic electromagnetic (EM) field resulting from the superposition of component EM fields of the organism that is proposed to be involved in self-organization and bioregulation of the organism. The components of the biofield are the EM fields contributed by each individual oscillator or electrically charged, moving particle, or ensemble of moving particles….The resulting biofield may be conceived of as a very dynamic standing wave. (Rubik, 2002, p. 709)

The human energy field extends out from the physical body five to six inches.

“It’s an emanation, a luminous radiation, a field of light or energy that extends beyond the body to interact with our external environment” (Bruyere, 1994, p. 18).

The human energy field is considered a part of the Universal Energy Field that makes up the known universe. Barbara Brennan (1988), physicist, psychotherapist, and healer, described the human energy field as “the manifestation of universal energy that is intimately involved with human life” (p. 4) and interconnected to other energy fields.

“The UEF [universal energy field] permeates all space, animate and inanimate objects, and connects all objects to each other” (p. 40). 26

According to Dr. Karagulla and Dora Kunz (1989), all living systems are self- organizing and are constantly exchanging energy with other systems and the environment. “This energy exchange is a constant and so indispensable for all living organisms that it can be regarded as a universal field effect” (p. 12). And, although the concept of fields is scientifically demonstrated and understandable in the fields of electricity, magnetism, and atomic nuclear activities, “when we posit a universal life or vital field…this is much more difficult to demonstrate in a tangible way, for there are as yet no scientific instruments capable of detecting the presence of such a field” (Karagulla

& Kunz, 1989, p. 13).

Nursing theorist Martha Rogers (1970, 1990) introduced the concept of human energy field in her theory of nursing. Nursing, according to Dr. Rogers, “is the study of

…human and environmental fields: people and their world” (Rogers, 1990, p. 6). She believed that an energy field was a “fundamental unit of the living and non-living. Field is a unifying concept. Energy signifies the dynamic nature of the field; a field is in continuous motion and is infinite” (p. 7). Human energy fields are constantly changing their wave frequency from lower to higher frequency patterns through their interactions with other fields, both human and environmental (p. 8).

In conclusion, energy, then, might be an appropriate concept, perhaps vehicle, that describes both the experience and end point of higher planes of consciousness. Energy may also be a vehicle that effects changes, such as transformation, in other human beings.

“People affect each other’s energy field since the field constantly surrounds us and contacts the field of the neighboring person or groups of people” (Pierrakos, 1975, p.

166). 27

Conclusion

A majority of past studies of advanced meditators did not seek the phenomenological aspects of being in higher planes of consciousness. Most focused on quantitative data, such as physiological changes, or qualitative data, such as behavior and personality changes. Studies of long-term meditators, specifically 5-10 years, were uncommon. A majority of participants in studies on advanced meditators were practicing

Buddhist. In the studies using Hindu participants, objectives were primarily to evaluate their extraordinary powers. This study contributes to consciousness, spirituality, and transpersonal psychology by evaluating, as well as seeking to understand, the experience of being in higher planes of consciousness.

Eastern systems have explored and studied realms of consciousness for centuries.

Their languages incorporate the variety and subtleness of description of experiences in these realms.

Asian cultures have highly developed vocabularies for describing and delimiting distinct degrees, levels, and types of meditation-specific altered states which our own language only vaguely and clumsily can begin to approximate. One system enumerates eight distinct levels of jhana, while the English ‘concentration,’ “absorption,’ and ‘trance’—in combination our nearest approximation—miss the mark; the eighteen states of awareness leading to nirvana…have no English equivalents whatsoever. (Goleman, 1974, p. 78)

This study contributes to the growing lexicon of descriptions in the English language for higher planes of consciousness. It addressed such experiences within the framework of

Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga, a type of yoga rarely explored in Western research on advanced practitioners. Using the transpersonal research method of organic inquiry adds a different focus to the study because of its use of alternative sources of knowledge, its 28 sacred approach to a topic and the participants, and its goal of transforming the researcher, participants, and readers. 29

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

The Psychology of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga

If, as Sri Aurobindo said, psychology is the study of consciousness—early pioneers in transpersonal psychology such as Charles Tart, Stanislav Grof, Ralph

Metzner, and others currently in transpersonal psychology would probably concur with this definition—then Sri Aurobindo has provided the field of transpersonal psychology with another roadmap of consciousness to levels beyond the ordinary waking state.

Transpersonal psychology started the trek in the West, metaphorically, by identifying realms of consciousness beyond the waking state; realms that exist in the spiritual levels of consciousness. Sri Aurobindo illuminated the next steps on the ladder to reach ultimate consciousness—the Divine, God, Brahman, nirvana, Universal Consciousness, the All, or sachchidananda.

Integral Yoga is accepted, even admired, and included in many discussions on transpersonal psychology, consciousness, and transformation (Chaudhuri, 1992; Combs,

1995, 2002; Ferrer, 2002; Lithman, 2003; Metzner, 1986; Miovic, 2004a, 2004b; Wilber,

1999; 2000, to name a few). Michael Miovic (2004b) gave a very detailed description of the psychologists and psychiatrists influenced by Sri Aurobindo.

This chapter reflects the author’s interpretation and attempt to understand the psychology of Integral Yoga from the extensive writings of Sri Aurobindo, his students and friends, and within the context of several years of the author’s exploration into spiritual, transpersonal, parapsychological, occult, and esoteric literature.

For the purposes of this study, Integral Yoga psychology will be an additional term used for Sri Aurobindo’s system. Integral Yoga psychology makes a clear 30 distinction between the psychology of Sri Aurobindo’s system and “integral psychology” used by others such as Ken Wilber (2000). Integral Yoga also emphasizes both the system of connecting to the Divine—Yoga—with the science of consciousness, which is

Sri Aurobindo’s definition of psychology. Michael Miovic (2004b) also used Integral

Yoga psychology to describe Sri Aurobindo’s yoga.

If one were to explain the essence of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga in one paragraph, it would be the following: Integral Yoga, as a yoga, aims to move the human being to merge with and manifest the Divine, or Source of all creation, on earth. It appears to go beyond other traditional systems of yoga, in which union with the Divine is the final goal, the last step on the path, in that it brings this union down to earthly existence for service to humanity. In its very basic, stripped-down form, accessing the

Divine involves cultivating a silence within, ascension of one’s consciousness that focuses on the Divine, and then waiting for the Divine to descend. Once descended, an integral transformation occurs that allows for the Divine to manifest in matter. Integral

Yoga brings the union of the human being and the Divine down into the physical realm, or nature, in order to change humanity on the earth plane. “Nature” is Sri Aurobindo’s term for terrestial life, “the outer or executive side of the Conscious Force which forms and moves the worlds” (Aurobindo, 1993b, p. 388). Integral Yoga uses the mind and consciousness to effect change in all aspects of the human being, integrating the union with the Divine into the entire body-mind-spirit dimensions of the individual. Thus, according to Sri Aurobindo, evolution occurs by transforming human beings living on earth to spiritual beings inhabiting it. 31

Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga psychology is integral because its goal is a dynamic transformation of consciousness that allows the highest spiritual consciousness to permeate all layers, all planes, and all aspects of the individual down to levels of which waking consciousness is unaware—the subconscient and inconscient, which will be defined later in this chapter (see Dalal, 2001, p. 394). Divine consciousness, then, replaces all consciousness and directs the terrestrial existence of the individual in the world of matter. “A Yoga of integral perfection regards man as a divine spiritual being involved in mind, life and body; it aims therefore at a liberation and a perfection of his divine nature” (Aurobindo, 1996, p. 594).

Sri Aurobindo was prolific in his writings and his teachings have been translated, interpreted, and explained by numerous students and scholars as well (Aurobindo, 1953,

1968, 1970a, 1970b, 1990, 1993a, 1993b, 1996; Aurobindo & The Mother, 1991;

Chaudhuri, 1967; Chaudhuri & Spiegelberg, 1960; Dalal, 1992, 1995, 2001; Miovic,

2004b; Navajata, 1972; Nirodbaran, 1973; Pandit, 1992; Sastry, 1948; Satprem, 1970;

Sen, 1986; Vrinte, 2002). Friends and students of Sri Aurobindo, such as A. S. Dalal,

Haridas Chaudhuri, Joseph Vrinte, and Indra Sen organized Sri Aurobindo’s writing by topics such as psychic being, inner being, triple transformation, evolution, and ego. The publishers of Sri Aurobindo’s letters (I, III, IV) arranged his writings in a similar fashion.

This chapter is organized to best assist in understanding the paradoxical simplicity and complexity of Integral Yoga, its psychology, and its potential contribution to transpersonal psychology. A biographical sketch of Sri Aurobindo starts the discussion, followed by a section defining a few basic terms. A general overview of Integral Yoga and Integral Yoga psychology provides a larger picture first before delving into more 32 detailed explanations. Integral Yoga psychology can be viewed or understood from different orientations and this chapter explains it as related to: personality, consciousness, and transformation. The final section will include a discussion of Integral Yoga psychology and other topics such as spiritual traditions, Ken Wilber’s (2000) Integral psychology and its kinship with transpersonal psychology. The chapter ends with a conclusion regarding the implications of Integral Yoga and its psychology for the future.

Sri Aurobindo: A Brief History

Sri Aurobindo was born Aurobindo Ghose on August 15, 1872 in Calcutta to a physician and English-educated father who embraced Anglican-European culture.

Aurobindo’s maternal grandfather, on the other hand, supported Indian independence from British rule. Aurobindo, along with his two elder brothers, was educated at schools in England, beginning at the age of 7. He finished his education at Cambridge, and returned to India at the age of 20. He became active in the Indian independence movement prior to leaving London. His activities toward this goal accelerated upon his return to Indian soil. These nationalistic activities, including his affiliation with extremist organizations and his published writings, resulted in his imprisonment in 1908 and subsequent trial a year later. He was acquitted in 1909 (Navajata, 1972).

Sri Aurobindo began practicing yoga in 1904. After the trial and release from prison in 1909, he continued working for Indian independence from British rule by writing and publishing articles. However, his spiritual progress during his imprisonment advanced to the point where the destiny of humanity became more important than the destiny of India (Satprem, 1970). Eventually this destiny, through his practice of Integral

Yoga, became his mission for the rest of his life. Sri Aurobindo moved to Pondicherry in 33

1910, and began to work on establishing his ashram, or spiritual community. He met

Frenchwoman Mira Alfassa Richard in 1914 and she eventually, as The Mother, became his lifelong colleague. Sri Aurobindo went into seclusion in 1926, communicating to his followers only through writing, where he remained until his physical transition to spirit on December 5, 1950 (Aurobindo, 1993b; Navajata, 1972; Satprem, 1970).

Sri Aurobindo emphasized that experience, not intellect, brought wisdom—the same way the sages of Indian philosophy and spiritual tradition brought forth their profound knowledge (Aurobindo, 1993b; Satprem, 1970). Even before he immersed himself in Integral Yoga, profound transformative spiritual experiences occurred in his life. When he set foot on Indian soil after his years in England, Sri Aurobindo said he had a deeply spiritual experience where he realized the importance of India’s spiritual legacy to the world. During the year he spent in prison, Sri Aurobindo received a great deal of information through his meditation on Integral Yoga and his purpose. After reaching the overmind level of consciousness (the highest level of human consciousness in Integral

Yoga) in 1926, he spent much of his time “in the other realms” in order to effect change in the world (Navajata, 1972; Satprem, 1970).

Sri Aurobindo felt a profound connection to India and India’s responsibility to share its spiritual knowledge with the rest of the world. India, in Sri Aurobindo's view, had failed in its potential to change and advance the evolution of human consciousness. It separated spiritual life from the material world; the schools of yoga in India perpetuated this by maintaining the separation. By keeping day-to-day consciousness and spiritual consciousness separate, India prevented the connection that leads to transformation of consciousness and the advance of human evolution. 34

Sri Aurobindo came upon the earth to teach this truth to man. He taught that man is a transitional being living in a mental consciousness but with the possibility of acquiring a new consciousness, the truth-consciousness, and capable of living a life perfectly harmonious, good and beautiful, happy and fully conscious. Sri Aurobindo gave all his time to establish in himself this consciousness he called ‘supramental’ and to help those gathered around him to realize it. The aim of his yoga is an inner self-development, by which each one who follows it can in time discover the one self in all and evolve a higher consciousness than the mental— spiritual and supramental consciousness which will transform and divinise human nature. (Navajata, 1972, p. 34)

Definition of Terms

Sri Aurobindo devised his own set of terms to describe what many mystics have

found difficult to articulate—the ineffable experience of seeking and finding the Divine

realm. Terminology specific to Integral Yoga and its psychology thus becomes important

to any discussion on this topic. Some books include a glossary (Aurobindo, 1993b; Dalal,

2001), and there is even a dictionary of terms used by Sri Aurobindo (Pandit, 1992).

Psychology, as defined by Sri Aurobindo, is “the study of consciousness” or the

“science of consciousness” (Aurobindo, 1993b; Dalal, 2001; Pandit, 1992). In the West,

psychology is a field of science that studies the mental aspects of human beings. With

various movements emphasizing a particular orientation (e. g., behavioral, cognitive,

psychoanalytic, developmental, humanistic, and transpersonal). Sri Aurobindo, educated

in England, believed that yoga was a psychological process. He interpreted Vedantic

philosophy, blending East and West, and elevated the spiritual traditions of the Vedas.

Integral Yoga integrated into one philosophy the nondualistic concept of being in the East with the “evolutionary perspective” of Western thought (Chaudhuri, 1967, p. 21).

Sri Aurobindo’s definition of psychology focuses on consciousness, which meshes well with Western transpersonal psychology. It contrasts with Western mainstream psychology, which focuses on “the study of the mind and 35 behavior…[embracing] all aspects of the human experience” (American Psychological

Association [APA] Online, 2006).

Sages understood the interrelated connection of psychology to the mystery of the universe since the Vedic and Upanishadic periods in Indian history (roughly 3000-1500

BCE). “The ancient sages of India were convinced that search for the supreme truth or for the mystery of the universe must assume the form of search for one’s own true self”

(Chaudhuri, 1992, p. 234).

Consciousness is difficult to define because it has a variety of meanings depending on its context (Baruss, 1986-87; Block, n.d.; Farthing, 1992; H. T. Hunt,

1995). In Western mainstream psychology, consciousness usually refers to the mental level of the human mind and tends to be viewed simply as self-awareness of internal and external environments (American Psychological Association [APA] Online, 2007, consciousness). Sri Aurobindo, however, defined consciousness as “the faculty of being aware of anything through identification” (Pandit, 1992, p. 35) and as a force throughout the universe that is found in all the dimensions of the human being. Consciousness is the foundation, the basis, the fundamental unit of existence, not just of human life

(Aurobindo, 1993b; Dalal, 2001). “Consciousness is…the energy, the motion, the movement…that creates the universe and all that is in it” (Aurobindo, 1993b, p. 45).

Consciousness exists on many levels and dimensions: physical, environmental, inner, outer, spiritual, and higher. It also exists as states—waking, dreaming, sleeping, altered

(Pandit, 1992, pp. 35-41). Consciousness is the tool the individual uses to traverse the many levels or realms to the Divine and then back to Nature (physical matter). It is the partner of the soul by which the transformation of human being to spiritual being occurs. 36

Consciousness is multidimensional, not bound by time and space. It is an awareness of all that is, but it is usually limited in scope among all but the most advanced spiritual adepts.

Yoga in Sri Aurobindo’s writings is primarily the process of aspiring to and achieving a connection to the Divine. “The common initial purpose of all Yoga is the liberation of the soul of man from its present natural ignorance and limitation, its release into spiritual being, its union with the highest self and Divinity” (Aurobindo, 1996, p.

587). Yoga “might almost be termed the consummate practice of a perfect psychological knowledge” (Aurobindo, 1996, p. 496).

A number of yoga systems originated in India and contain the same principles in their practice: purification and concentration, which lead to liberation (Aurobindo, 1996).

“The aim of all systems of yoga or spiritual growth is to bring about conscious evolution towards a principle above Mind” (Dalal, 2001, p. 395). Integral Yoga, however, differs from other yogas. Haridas Chaudhuri (1965) believed Integral Yoga to be the synthesis of the positive aspects of traditional yoga as well as the correction—the completion—of gaps, missing elements, or drawbacks to traditional yoga.

In an ordinary Yoga one main power of being or one group if its powers is made the means, vehicle, path. In a synthetic Yoga [synthesized as in integral] all powers will be combined and included in the transmuting instrumentation. (Aurobindo, 1996, p. 583)

Science is the empirical study of how our universe works. Sri Aurobindo would probably agree with the following definition:

1. The systematic observation of natural events and conditions in order to discover facts about them and to formulate laws and principles based on these facts. 2. the organized body of knowledge that is derived from such observations and that can be verified or tested by further investigation. 3. any specific branch of this general body of knowledge. (Morris, 1992, p. 1926)

Observation and experience were important to the sages of India in developing their spiritual philosophy. It is this aspect, implying the study of something that this researcher believes is meant by the use of science in Integral Yoga psychology. If science is the observation and study of phenomena, then practices such as Integral Yoga can accurately be seen as a psychology—a scientific study of consciousness. As a science of consciousness (psychology) concerned with the goal of merging or re-merging with the

Divine (Yoga), and in the tradition of the sages of the Vedas, the experience of the journey becomes the qualitative data contributing a definitive pool of knowledge.

Sri Aurobindo calls the Divine, the source of all creation, the Absolute, or

Absolute Reality “the origin and support and secret Reality of all things….[It] is indefinable and ineffable by mental thought and mental language” (Aurobindo, 1990, p.

686).

Soul is the spark of the Divine that descends from spirit into nature. It is the vehicle that is used to move the individual from one physical existence to another. The soul is the psychic being, hidden but present in all aspects of an individual, awaiting the urge that will bring it forward to replace the ego as the driving force of an individual’s earthly existence (Aurobindo, 1993b; Dalal, 2001; Pandit, 1992).

Mind is the physical manifestation of thought in its cognitive and intellectual activities. It is a vehicle of consciousness that can be finely tuned. There are three components of mind in the human being: (a) mental mind, or mind proper, consisting of three subparts—intellectual, dynamic, and externalizing; (b) vital mind; and (c) physical mind (Aurobindo, 1993b, pp. 387-388). “Mind is only a preparatory form of 38 consciousness. Mind is an instrument of analysis and synthesis, but not of essential knowledge” (Aurobindo, 1990, p. 137).

The utmost mission of Mind is to train our obscure consciousness which has emerged out of the dark prison of Matter, to enlighten its blind instincts, random intuitions, vague perceptions till it shall become capable of this greater light and this higher ascension. Mind is a passage, not a culmination [italics added]. (Aurobindo, 1990, p. 138)

Ego, in Western psychology, is the aspect of personality that individuates and gives the human being the identity of self. Ego provides the sense of distinction between the I and not-I (Ajaya, 1983, p. 127). It allows the individual to operate in the world of matter, “that initial individualizing mechanism which binds and identifies consciousness with form” (Lithman, 2003, p. 11). Ego is “involved in self-preservation activities and in directing instinctual drives and urges into appropriate channels” (APA, 2007, ego). Sri

Aurobindo valued the ego for its important role in human evolution. “ The ego-sense serves to limit, separate and sharply differentiate, to make the most of the physical form and it is there because it is indispensable to the evolution of the lower life” (Aurobindo,

1996, p. 734). However, he considered the ego to have a limited role and to be an intermediate step in consciousness evolution. The next step is for the psychic being to emerge and direct human activity.

Ego is constituted by Nature and is at once a mental, vital and physical formation meant to aid in centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action. When the true being [psychic being] is discovered, the utility of the ego is over and this formation has to disappear—the true being is felt in its place. (Pandit, 1992, p. 74)

Ego and its function will be further elaborated later in this chapter. 39

Sri Aurobindo used the term vital to denote the life-affirming senses and

emotions that make us human beings. He structured his view of the human system using

the trinity of physical, vital or life, and mental.

Sadhana, or Sādhanā in Sanskrit, is “a science of spiritual discipline” (Vrinte,

2002, p. 252). Yoga is the desire, the aspiration to seek the Divine. It is the method or

system used to access the Divine (Dalal, 2001; Pandit, 1992).

Siddhis traditionally refer to special powers or “paranormal abilities” (Feuerstein,

2001, p. 367). Siddhi also means “attainment, realization” (p. 367) and it is in this context that Sri Aurobindo uses the term. It signifies a high level of attainment in spiritual practice. In Integral Yoga, siddhi is the successful outcome, the accomplishment, of the aims of yoga (Aurobindo, 1993b, p. 394).

Sachchidananda, or Sat-Chit-Ananda, is the highest attainment of consciousness.

It is the trinity of existence-consciousness-bliss, the Divine, Brahman, the Absolute

(Dalal, 2001; Pandit, 1992).

Integral Yoga Psychology

According to the sages of ancient India whose wisdom was put into writing in the

Vedas over 2000 years ago, there are two forces, energies, or substances existing in earthly existence: spirit and matter. Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga has its roots in

Vedantic philosophy, where spirit and matter are not dualistic and separate but are one entity (Dalal, 2001; Tigunait, 1983).

Spirit is the crown of universal existence; Matter is its basis; Mind is the link between the two. Spirit is that which is eternal; Mind and Matter are its workings. Spirit is that which is concealed and has to be revealed; mind and body are the means by which it seeks to reveal itself. (Aurobindo, 1996, p. 24)

Sri Aurobindo described the process of Integral Yoga and its psychology based on his own experience. He delineated the horizontal and vertical processes as a way to help students make sense of their own journeys. Experience is vital to the Integral Yoga process; one could not comprehend universal truths without it. Knowledge alone does not suffice for self-transformation. He endeavored to share his experience with his students, never to outline and promulgate a new system of psychology (Dalal, 2001).

Transformation involves higher consciousness replacing lower consciousness in earthly day-to-day functioning. It means the individual’s psychic being, not the ego, directs one’s life. The psychic being emerges from the subliminal realm and becomes the active manager of the human being.

One of the first goals in Integral Yoga is for one to become aware of all the forms of consciousness within oneself and to “become awake and centred with the inner being”

(Dalal, 2001, p. 10). From there, one can uncover even higher realms of consciousness.

Consciousness descends from the highest realms, which Sri Aurobindo called involution, to the physical and human realm. It also ascends back to its original source, which Sri

Aurobindo called evolution (Dalal, 2001, p. 11).

[The goal of Integral Yoga is to] open the consciousness to the Divine and to live in the inner consciousness more and more while acting from it on the external life, to bring the inmost psychic into the front and by the power of the psychic to purify and change the being so that it may become ready for transformation and be in union with the Divine Knowledge, Will and Love. Secondly, to develop the Yogic consciousness, i.e., to universalise the being within all planes, become aware of the cosmic being and cosmic forces and be in union with the Divine on all the planes up to the overmind. Thirdly, to come into contact with the transcendent Divine beyond the overmind through the supramental consciousness, supramentalise the consciousness and the nature and make oneself an instrument for the realization of the dynamic Divine Truth and its transforming descent into the earth-nature. (Sri Aurobindo as cited in Vrinte, 2002, p. 193)

Figure 1 provides a linear outline of Integral Yoga Psychology. Other depictions are found in Appendixes A and B.

Figure 1. Overview of Integral Yoga Psychology

HUMAN BEING = [Subliminal] [Subliminal] [Part of the Divine Self] OUTER BEING + INNER + CENTRAL + CENTRAL BEING-- BEING BEING—Below Above & INNER BEING-- PSYCHIC BEING

Body Physical Evolving Soul True Self or Spirit Mind Mental Jivatman Life/Vital Vital

Note. Adapted by M. R. Kramer, 2008, from “A Greater Psychology: An Introduction to Sri Aurobindo's Psychological Thought” by A. S. Dalal (Ed.), 2001, pp. 336-358.

Great significance is placed in Integral Yoga psychology on the development of the psychic being in order to transcend. One must be aware of it, then bring it forward into all aspects of the self, then have it direct the individual instead of the ego, and then begin the ascent-descent process towards the Divine. The psychic being must be the vehicle driving the process to ensure a smooth and successful integral transformation.

The process of involution hides the spiritual self connected to the Divine within dense physical matter. The process of evolution seeks to reconnect to the Spiritual self and to bring it to overtly manifest in physical matter. The Spiritual self then becomes the driving force in life, not the physical outer self, or ego, that began the current life or incarnation (Dalal, 2001). 42

I am concerned with the earth, not with the worlds beyond for their own sake; it is a terrestrial realization that I seek and not a flight to distant summits. All other yogas regard this life as an illusion or a passing phase….The supramental is simply the Truth-Consciousness and what it brings in its descent is the full truth of life, the full truth of consciousness in Matter. (Aurobindo, 1993b, p. 68)

Will, knowledge, and love are “three principal faculties” (Vrinte, 2002, p. 289),

“the three divine powers” (Aurobindo, 1996, p. 521) of an individual. They correspond, respectively, with the yogas of karma (work), jnana (knowledge), and bhakti (love).

(Aurobindo, 1996, p. 521). “The integrality of them, the union of man with God in all the three, must therefore, as we have seen, be the foundation of an Integral Yoga”

(Aurobindo, 1996, p. 521).

Will and aspiration are necessary, along with purification and consecration of the lower planes, in order to call down the Divine, (Aurobindo, 1993b). Paradoxically, transformation involves will and focused effort together with a surrender and receptivity to the Divine (Aurobindo, 1996, pp. 592-593).

Chitta [pure consciousness] is the stuff of mixed mental-vital-physical consciousness out of which arise the movements of thought, emotion, sensation, impulse, etc. It is these that in the Patanjali system have to be still altogether so that the consciousness may be immobile and go into Samadhi [altered state or yogic trance state that allows one to access higher states of consciousness]. Our yoga has a different function. The movements of the ordinary consciousness have to be quieted and into the quietude there has to be brought down a higher consciousness and its powers which will transform the nature. (Aurobindo, 1993b, p. 153)

Psychicisation is a term used by Sri Aurobindo which refers to change that occurs in the individual when the psychic being replaces the ego as the director of consciousness

(Aurobindo, 1993b, p. 391). Two important movements occur in the transformation process: psychicisation, the opening of the heart center, and spiritualization, the opening of the centers of mind. Opening the heart center brings forth the psychic being. Opening 43 the centers dealing with the mind and thought opens the individual to higher realms of consciousness (Dalal, 2002).

It will be evident that the two most important things here are the opening of the heart center and the opening of the mind centres to all that is behind and above them. For the heart opens to the psychic being and the mind centres open to the higher consciousness and the nexus between the psychic being and the higher consciousness is the principal means of the siddhi. The first opening is effected by a concentration in the heart, a call to the Divine to manifest within us and through the psychic to take up and lead the whole nature….The second opening is effected by a concentration of consciousness in the head (afterwards, above it) and an aspiration and call and a sustained will for the descent of divine Peace, Power, Light, Knowledge, Ananda into the being—the Peace first or the Peace and Force together. (Aurobindo, 1993b, p. 216)

The difficulty in explaining the psychology of Integral Yoga is that the planes, sheaths, and levels all permeate and nest with each other. Integral Yoga is a multidimensional philosophy, which makes reducing it to a linear format confusing. The analogy of a kaleidoscope may be helpful in understanding the different perspectives of

Integral Yoga’s psychology beginning with the view of personality. One can then turn the kaleidoscope and view Integral Yoga psychology from the orientation of consciousness.

A third turn views it from the perspective of transformation. Figure 1 or Appendixes A and B give an overall picture of Integral Yoga psychology from several orientations.

Kaleidoscope View I: Personality

For Sri Aurobindo, personality is a synthesized interplay of physical, mental, and vital energies and forces (Sen, 1986, p. 196). Each of these three aspects of personality has an underlying consciousness associated with it. This section addresses the outer and inner aspects closest to the realm of matter, or nature. (Aurobindo, 1996). Three planes form what Sri Aurobindo classified as the lower hemisphere of our earthly existence: physical, life or vital, and mental. Sri Aurobindo called the body (physical), mind 44

(mental), and life (vital) of the earth plane the “triple universe of the lower hemisphere.

They have been established in the earth-consciousness by evolution—but they exist in themselves before the evolution, above the earth-consciousness and the material plane to which the earth belongs” (Aurobindo, 1993b, p. 51). The outer being aspect consists of mind, life and body subsets. The inner being aspect subsets correlate in the same way but are called mental, vital, and physical (Dalal, 2001). Mind consists of the mental processes—cognition, intelligence, thoughts, and perceptions.

Outer and Inner Being

In the conscious outer being the physical aspect consists of the autonomic and physiologic functions of the body, including the nervous system and sensory awareness.

The vital in the outer being is where the emotions, feelings, desires, and instincts reside.

The mental aspect of the outer being is the place of cognition, cognitive function, and the lower intellect.

[The outer being is the] instrument of expression of the inner consciousness and the psychic; but at the same time it receives influences from the inconscient and subconscient [levels of consciousness not known to waking consciousness] below, from the subliminal behind and from the superconscient [level of consciousness above or higher than waking consciousness] above as well as from the surrounding environment. (Vrinte, 2002, p. 221)

The inner being consists of a physical, vital, and mental aspect as well but on a more subtle level. The inner being is the more subtle and hidden aspect of the individual, found in the subliminal consciousness. Ego, subtle energy centers called chakras, and the doorway to the psychic being (soul) also dwell here.

Ego. The individual ego is the identified matrix that binds all aspects of the self in nature. The ego is the representative of the individual, found in the superficial and inner container housing multiple layers—both horizontally and vertically—of the individual. 45

Ego is “a practical constitution of our consciousness devised to centralize the activities of

Nature in us” (Dalal, 2001, p. 132). Sri Aurobindo viewed the ego as a temporary step, a transitional aspect of personality, in evolution (Sen, 1986). “The limited ego is only an intermediate phenomenon of consciousness necessary for a certain line of development”

(Aurobindo, 1990, p. 66). The ego directs the three aspects of the human’s inner and outer aspects—mind, vital, and physical—but the roots of ego are found in the vital, the realm of emotions and senses.

Ego is formed by the mental, vital and physical as a way of “centralising and individualising the outer consciousness and action” (Pandit, 1992, p. 74). The psychic being, when it emerges, replaces the ego—“when the true self [psychic being] is discovered, the utility of the ego ceases, this formation [ego] disappears and the true individuality is felt in its place”(Dalal, 2001, p. 408).

If the outer being has not been purified and under the control of the psychic being when higher spiritual impulses manifest in the individual, the ego, especially a hyperinflated ego, can pose a threat to spiritual progression.

If these influences are not eliminated, and the higher powers being to descend, the lower may come across and cover up the descent, and the stimulation it gives is misused for the purposes of the lower nature. It is mainly due to this reason that many sadhaks fall into a state of magnified ego, upheavals, exaggerated sex or other vital passions after having higher spiritual experiences. (Vrinte, 2002, p. 265)

Anyone who has been through the early New Age, human potential, and transpersonal movements has heard stories of spiritual leaders and teachers who succumbed to this kind of behavior. 46

Physical/body. The physical body exists in the outer surface closest to the plane of matter, and it is only one part of physical consciousness. The physical body is also a triadic system, consisting of body-physical, body-vital, and body-mind.

Mind/mental. Physical-mental, life-mind, and mental-mind exist in the outer being; physical mind, vital mind and thinking mind are on the inner plane (Dalal, 2001, p.

42). Mind does not necessarily correspond to knowledge. Mind is part of the journey, a stepping-stone between the darkness of matter and the light of the Spirit. Mind is the easiest and most efficient aspect of the human being to use in transformation. Intelligent will is the primary force with which to accomplish transformation (Aurobindo, 1996).

The mind is the link to consciousness and the brain is the conductor, the conduit, and the translator for the mind. Mind is an instrument of the physical rather than an independent component of one’s consciousness (Sen, 1986, p. 64). A major step in the transformation at the mind level is for one to learn to silence it in order for higher knowledge and experiences to come through. “ It is…in the silence of the mind that it is easiest for knowledge to come from within or above, from the psyche or from the higher consciousness” (Aurobindo, 1970b, pp. 1254-1255).

Intellect is connected with the outer being’s mind and consists of imagination, perceptions, and inferences. Its function is to apply reason to perceptions from the mind and senses, reach logical conclusions, and, if well trained, assist the mind to receive higher knowledge. But it is only capable of producing ideas regarding the Divine.

Intellect is “a reflection and a degradation of the Supermind, a ray of gnosis seized by the sense-mentality and transformed by it into something other than its source” (Aurobindo,

1990, p. 741). Intellect is transformed into higher mind in Integral Yoga psychology. 47

Vital/life. “The spirit itself if it wants to manifest in matter must use the vital”

(Aurobindo, 1970b, p. 1292). The outer life vital part of nature consists of the desires, impulses, drives, and emotions in the individual. For Sri Aurobindo, it is where the majority of humanity lives, with the mind as its servant rather than its illuminator.

The inner vital has four parts:

1. Chakra centers of throat to head (mental vital)—mental expression of

emotions and senses.

2. Chakra center of heart (emotional vital)—emotions and feelings. The heart

area is a double center. The anterior portion is the emotional vital; the

posterior contains the psychic being.

3. Chakra centers from heart to navel (central vital)—a stronger vital, more

outward and invested in its drives—manifestation of outward drives of greed,

power, fame.

4. Chakra centers below the navel (lower vital)—smaller, more individual

desires and drives of sex, vanity, need fulfillment (Aurobindo, 1993b, p. 53;

Dalal, 2001, p. 59).

Merging with the psychic being gives the vital its own immense energy and prepares it for transformation (descent of the Divine). When it continues beyond the psychic being to merge with the higher mind, the vital opens to greater knowledge and light as well. “This obedience of the vital to the psychic and the higher mind is the beginning of the outgoing of the yogic consciousness in its dynamic action upon life”

(Aurobindo, 1970b, p. 1291). Will may have the greatest impact when used in the purification of the vital. The ego and the vital resist attempts to transmute them. “The 48 vital is a good instrument but a bad master” (Aurobindo, 1970b, p. 1293). The purification and control of the vital is essential to transformation.

Psychic Being or Soul

The psychic being, or soul, is the part of the individual in direct connection to one’s spirit. Spirit is “the Consciousness above mind, the Atman or universal Self which is always in oneness with the Divine” (Aurobindo, 1993b, p. 395). It is one’s true self. It is the part that continually nudges one to discover and uncover it in order to directly reconnect the individual to her or his central being. The psychic being is the representative of spirit in nature. Whereas spirit never changes or evolves, and is not part of the cycle of birth and rebirth, the psychic being continuously reincarnates into the world of matter and evolves. The psychic being is the metaphoric black hole that binds and transports the soul back to its connection to the true self or spirit. The true self, with the soul representing it in nature, connects to and is also part of the Divine. The psychic being “is the unitary and unifying consciousness in man” (Sen, 1986, p. 233). It is essential wholeness.

Certain conditions are necessary for the opening of the psychic being: purity of being, detached from desire and emotional cravings; focused intention on attaining one’s goal; sincerity unencumbered by ego, which resists spiritualization and wants or desires to control the outcome; and aspiration, directing the will to focus on the Divine

(Aurobindo, 1970b, p. 1099). The psychic being must open fully and connect to one’s outer and inner being as a preliminary step in transformation. The inner being also opens toward the psychic being (Aurobindo, 1993b, pp. 210, 212). 49

Personality change cannot be accomplished until the psychic being (soul) is opened and brought through to waking consciousness. Afterward, the psychic being, along with will and intention, directs the change in personality. The psychic being replaces ego as the director of personality and behavior. And once the psychic being guides human action and decision-making, one can safely delve into the unconscious and subconscious impulses that influence personality and behavior. The psychic being becomes the vehicle, replacing the ego, which assists in one’s spiritual transformation, especially at the lower levels, to proceed smoothly and safely. It provides the individual with the tools and powers needed to purify and liberate one’s nature—physical, vital, and mental—and prepare the human being to open and receive the Divine when it descends.

Therefore, once the psychic being emerges and integrates with the inner and outer beings of the individual, transformation can occur that aligns the individual with Divine truth and its impulses. The channel opens and the descent of the Divine into nature becomes possible.

Central Being

The central being is part of the Divine that exists in and supports each individual.

The central being consists of one’s spirit and one’s soul, the higher and lower aspects respectively. The central being is:

The portion of the Divine in us which supports all the rest and survives through death and rebirth. It has two forms: the Jivatman, which is above the manifestion in life and presides over it; and the psychic being which stands behind mind, life and body in the manifestation and uses them as its instruments. (Dalal, p. 2001, p. 406)

Both endure and are not destroyed by death. The spirit does not participate in the life and birth cycle of reincarnation. The psychic being is involved in the cycle of death and rebirth and evolves as well.

Kaleidoscope View II: Consciousness

Consciousness is not only a state of awareness, it is also energy capable of movement and force. It is at once dynamic and static. The planes of consciousness permeate all layers of an individual. The exterior plane holds waking consciousness. The inner plane or being contains the subconscient, that which is below waking consciousness, and the subliminal, that which is behind consciousness. The higher planes hold layers of higher mind consciousness.

Superconscient, subliminal, and subconscient represent three hidden sources of an individual’s actions and behavior (Dalal, 2001, p. 38). Figure 2 lists the levels of consciousness, from higher (Divine) to lower (nature). The diagrams in Appendixes A and B also show the movement of consciousness within the individual. Sri Aurobindo believed these levels must be experienced and integrated in order for the Divine to fully operate in the physical realm. Overmind is the highest form individuals can attain through their own efforts.

Figure 2. Levels of Consciousness

Sat-Chit-Ananda = The Divine Supermind = Supramental = Truth-Consciousness Overmind

Intuition Mind Superconscient Consciousness Illumined Mind

Higher Mind

Conscious Mind = Life/Vital, Sense/Physical Physical consciousness Subconscient Inconscient

Note. Adapted by M. R. Kramer, 2008, from “A Greater Psychology: An Introduction to Sri Aurobindo's Psychological Thought” by A. S. Dalal (Ed.), 2001, p. 338.

Inconscient, Subconscient, and Outer Consciousness

Inconscient or unconscious. The inconscient is hidden consciousness that uses the field of matter. It is “the most involved state of consciousness below the subconscient; it is an instrument of a secret consciousness which has created the universe” (Sri Aurobindo as cited in Vrinte, 2002, p. 226). The inconscient may be likened to the realm Carl Jung called the collective unconscious (Sen, 1986). The inconscient is the plane of which only a fragment is conscious.

Subconscient or subconscious. Basic consciousness, chitta, is subconscious to a large extent (Sen, 1986). The subconscient begins at the edge of the inconscient, “where the Inconscient struggles into a half consciousness” (Vrinte, 2002, p. 226). It is below the surface consciousness, operating “in the purely physical and vital parts of the being”

(Vrinte, 2002, p. 226). It is the plane where the inconscient is working to become conscious (Sen, 1986). 52

[The subconscient] covers the purely physical and vital elements of our constitution of bodily being, unmentalised, unobserved by the mind, uncontrolled by it in their action….It covers also those lowest functionings of submerged sense-mind which are more operative in the animal and in plant life. (Aurobindo, 1990, p. 764)

The mind has no power or control in the subconscient, where habits and unconscious instincts dwell. The subconscient aspect contains all experiences and memories. It is the major reason that people cannot change their character or personality.

In fact, he strongly cautioned his students on delving into the subconscious realms and inner subliminal realms without first opening the psychic being and anchoring it into their consciousness (Aurobindo, 1993b; Dalal, 2001). The subconscient is the main culprit for the manifestation of illness. “Chronic or repeated illnesses are indeed mainly due to the subconscient and its obstinate memory and habit of repetition of whatever has impressed itself upon the body-consciousness” (Dalal, 2001, p. 33).

Sri Aurobindo stressed the importance of opening and strengthening the psychic being before opening the lower subconscious aspects of self.

[For] to begin by opening up the lower subconscious, risking to raise up all that is foul and obscure in it, is to go out of one’s way to invite trouble. First one should make the higher mind and vital strong and firm and full of light and peace from above; afterwards one can open up or even dive into the subconscious with more safety and some chance of a rapid and successful change. (Sri Aurobindo as cited in Sen, 1986, p. 50)

Sri Aurobindo was against early psychoanalysis for this reason, because psychoanalysis dealt with the subconscious without strengthening the other higher aspects of personality first. Early psychoanalysis delved into subconscious realms before ensuring the personality was solidly anchored through the psychic being (Aurobindo, 1993b).

None is more ignorant, more perilous, more unreasoning and obstinate in recurrence than the lower vital subconscious and its movements. To raise it up prematurely or improperly… is to risk suffusing the conscious parts also with its 53

dark and dirty stuff and thus poisoning the whole vital and even mental nature. (Sri Aurobindo as cited in Sen, 1986, p. 51)

Sri Aurobindo emphasized changing and focusing one’s consciousness toward the

light of the Divine first, before addressing the unconscious realms.

A descent into the subconscient would not help us to explore this region, for it would plunge us into incoherence or into sleep or a dull trance or a comatose torpor…but is only by drawing back into the subliminal or by ascending into the superconscient and from there looking down or extending ourselves into these obscure depths that we can become directly and totally aware and in control of the secrets of our subconscient physical, vital and mental nature. This awareness, this control are of the utmost importance. For the subconscient is the Inconscient in the process of becoming conscious [italics added]; it is a support and even a root of our inferior parts of being and their movements. It sustains and reinforces all in us that clings most and refuses to change [italics added], our mechanical recurrences of unintelligent thought….To penetrate there, to bring in light and establish a control, is indispensable for the completeness of any higher life, for any integral transformation of the nature. (Aurobindo, 1990, p. 765)

Outer consciousness. Ego drives outer consciousness (Dalal, 2001). Ego, initially, was an important aspect of the human being. Nature created the ego as a subjective way to provide the individual with a sense of individuality apart from the mass of humanity.

This was necessary in order for the individual to become aware of the connection to the

Divine and to desire reconnecting with the Divine. Paradoxically it is individual, not collective, evolution that evolves humanity. “It is because of the spiritual Person

[spiritual being, transformed from a human being], the Divinity in the individual, that perfection or liberation…has to be individual and not collective” (Dalal, 2001, p. 131).

Subliminal Consciousness and Cosmic Consciousness

Besides the hierarchical system of the Mind (as the vehicle of consciousness), there are also interpenetrating fields of consciousness—subliminal and cosmic.

Subliminal consciousness. Subliminal consciousness permeates nature and exists

behind waking consciousness. The subliminal touches every aspect of the lower nature. It 54 is also attached to cosmic consciousness and the superconscient. It is the silent watcher, the messenger. It is a doorway to the superconscient, accessed mainly through dream and trance states. The subliminal exists behind consciousness; the subconscient and unconscient are below, and superconscient is above. The subliminal is behind surface consciousness; it is circumconscient. The subliminal is connected to the universal consciousness, not confined to the material world (Aurobindo, 1970a, 1970b, 1990,

1996).

[The subliminal] extends itself into an enveloping consciousness through which it receives the shock of the currents and wave-circuits pouring upon us from the universal Mind, universal Life, universal subtler Matter-forces. These, unperceived by us on the surface, are perceived and admitted by our subliminal self and turned into formations which can powerfully affect our existence without our knowledge. (Aurobindo, 1990, p. 766)

One area of caution is when the subliminal mind begins emerging into the life and mind of the outer and inner being. Distortions of truth, knowledge, powers, impulses, and intuitions may occur (Aurobindo, 1996, p. 843). Sri Aurobindo recommended remaining detached from these potential distortions and focused on the spiritual goal as a way to successfully navigate through this phase.

Cosmic consciousness. This consciousness is everywhere; however, it requires a dimensional shift in consciousness—from one that is three-dimensional and bound by time and space to one that is multidimensional without time and space constraints. The jump from overmind to supermind initiates the shift to dwelling in cosmic consciousness, although one may experience glimpses of it for short intervals during the ascent. One can also wait until the descent of the Divine into the lower hemisphere to experience it.

Individuals enter the plane of cosmic consciousness when they realize they are one with the universe, merged in a unified and universal existence. It is the place of 55 sachchidananda. In the lower level of cosmic consciousness, duality still exists and can be experienced as the pain and suffering experienced by human beings on earth. The duality ceases as one moves up the planes (minds) of consciousness to the higher levels of cosmic and supramental consciousness (Aurobindo, 1970a, 1970b, 1990, 1996).

Intermediate zone. The intermediate zone is part of the cosmic consciousness.

Within the state of cosmic consciousness, one understands that each individual is connected, that all forms of matter and all existence are interconnected. The individual, however, has not necessarily purified and transcended “the human mind levels” (Vrinte,

2002, p. 268). Information, knowledge, and messages from the Divine begin seeping through. But the intermediate zone is also mixed with falsehoods and mixed truths that are not from the Divine, making it difficult to discern truth from non-truth.

Hostile forces are part of the cosmic consciousness realm (Aurobindo, 1993b;

Dalal, 2001). It is where other spirits of a lower nature can possess one. As in the world of the shamans, Sri Aurobindo believed in a zone of existence that held negative, hostile, malevolent forces. It is where one’s lower nature exerts its strength to prevent the individual’s higher spiritual nature from manifesting or being dominant. Sri Aurobindo called such forces “anti-divine” (Aurobindo, 1993b, p. 281). The hostile forces existing in the intermediate zone act to “prevent the growth of the soul into the cosmic Truth”

(Aurobindo, 1996, p. 185).

Energies and entities exist in this intermediate zone to test one. One must have personality strength to know of these potential pitfalls and therefore move easily through them. It is the reason Sri Aurobindo strongly advocated that the psychic being, not the ego, is directing the personality before entering the intermediate zone. If one’s 56 personality has been purified and cleared so that will and aspiration, which drive the individual to seek higher realms, and the psychic being are solidly in place, the path is safer and smoother. Several leaders in the New Age movement experienced what this author calls, “falling off the spiritual ladder.” These individuals experienced a piece of cosmic truth, became popular and famous for their teachings, and either developed outrageous egos or became sexual predators towards their followers.

Superconscient or Superconsciousness

The superconscient is considered the higher mental plane, where early contact with supramental consciousness occurs. Where the inconscient and subconscient are humanity’s past, the superconscient represents its future (Sen, 1986, pp. 192-193). “The subconscient and the superconscient are two different formulations of the same All. The master-word of the subconscient is Life, the master-word of the superconscient is Light”

(Aurobindo, 1990, p. 73). Consciousness ascends hierarchically through four minds before arriving at supermind—higher, illumined, intuitive, and overmind. Ascending and descending forces commingle in the superconscient realm (Dalal, 2001; Vrinte, 2002).

For a detailed presentation on the levels of consciousness see Figure 2 and Appendixes A and B.

1. Higher Mind—“thought-mind,” “mind of Spirit-born conceptual knowledge”

(Dalal, 2001, p. 144). “This thought is not acquired knowledge but a self-

revelation of eternal wisdom” (Vrinte, 2002, p. 242). One becomes detached and

an observer of one’s consciousness. 57

2. Illumined Mind—spiritual light, spirit-mind; uses vision instead of thought.

Thought becomes a subordinate process. The individual moves “from the power

of Truth-thought to the power of Truth-sight” (Vrinte, 2002, p. 243).

3. Intuition Mind—beyond the field of reason, truth perception, and “truth

remembrance” (Dalal, 2001, p. 150), a flash or impulse from the higher realms.

Intuition works on a higher, purer plane. Truths are directly grasped without using

reason or intellect. Intuitional thought uses a more superior process than previous

reason and intelligence. “Intuition brings to man those brilliant messages from the

unknown which are the beginning of his higher knowledge” (Aurobindo, 1990, p.

75).

4. Overmind—global knowledge, cosmic consciousness, highest level of spirit

operating in the individual mind; “the spiritual-mind plane”; raises the other three

levels to their highest capacity; the “highest power, of the lower hemisphere”

(Dalal, 2001, p. 156).

Supermind. Supermind is a totally different consciousness than mind. Supermind contains the force, light, and knowledge (ananda) of Divine consciousness (Aurobindo,

1993b, p. 216). Supermind marks the beginning of the transcendental realm, where union with the Divine occurs (Dalal, 2001, p. 221). Supermind is characterized by harmony, wholeness in thinking, joy and peace in feeling, and spiritual illumination. Entering

Supermind triggers a tremendous horizontal level of expansion in one’s consciousness from the vertical ascension path (Vrinte, 2002, p. 245). Only by experiencing it can one understand. It is nonduality, totally separated from nature. It can also be called “truth- consciousness” (Dalal, 2001, p. 159). A. S. Dalal perceived the supermind as the core of 58 the individual that is attached to the Divine. Joseph Vrinte (2002) described it as the place where the higher mind journey begins.

Kaleidoscope View III: Transformation

Transformation is a triple process:

1. Horizontal: Growth and evolution in matter to set itself up for more complex

transformations in consciousness.

2. Vertical, up: Growth in consciousness to higher levels.

3. Vertical, down: Transformation and integration once these higher levels have

reached the entire being—ignorance changes to knowledge, all that is

inconscient becomes conscient—the level of superconscience (Aurobindo,

1990, p. 733).

Transformation of the self involves three types of integration: (a) psychic transformation; (b) spiritual transformation; and (c) supramental, integral transformation.

The change, therefore, between mind and supermind is effected by the triple transformation shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Triple Transformation

PSYCHIC → SPIRITUAL → SUPRAMENTAL Horizontal → Ascent → Descent

Developmental → Consciousness → Evolution

The supramental change is what anchors the Divine into nature and allows the Divine to manifest on the earthly plane of matter. 59

Transformation need not take place in the same progression. All three steps may occur and interweave with each other, each step at a different place on its trajectory than the other (i.e., one being more advanced in its fulfillment than another. This concept reinforces the idea of individual uniqueness in sadhana. The process of Integral Yoga also consists of a triple transformation of consciousness—up (evolution), down

(involution), and inward (integration and transformation).

The three stops of transformation…should not be considered as strictly successive; the spiritual transformation may begin before the psychic transformation has reached its culmination, or the integral [supramental] transformation may intervene in the midst of the psychic or spiritual transformation in order to speed up its pace and shorten the way. (Vrinte, 2002, p. 217)

These transformations are not easy; each transformation contains its own challenges and pitfalls. Truths are mixed with untruths, illusions with true light. During the psychic transformation the subliminal being—the inner being, inner mind, inner vital, and inner subtle physical being—may have trouble discriminating that which is coming from the outer being from that which is coming from the inner being. The emergence of the psychic being is the field of battle where purification and illumination of hidden aspects of the outer and inner beings subsequently takes place. It is probably not a pretty place for a long time! However, purity, will, and aspiration in achieving the goal of yoga will sustain the individual during this time before the psychic being replaces the ego as the director for the individual. “Those who follow scrupulously a strict guidance or have the psychic being in front of their nature, or a central sincerity, pass safely” (Vrinte,

2002, p. 268). 60

Additional Considerations Regarding the Psychology of Integral Yoga

Integral Yoga and Spiritual Traditions

Union with the Divine, a merging into the cosmic pool of the eternal, is the goal

in yoga as well as for mystics (Chaudhuri, 1965; Underhill, 1970), known as samadhi

(Hindu Brahman), nirvana (Buddhism), and unitive or cosmic consciousness (Christian).

“Mysticism, in its pure form, is the science of ultimates, the science of union with the

absolute, and nothing else” (Underhill, 1970, p. 72). In Integral Yoga, it is not the final

level of achievement. Integral Yoga takes the concept of the Mahayana Buddhist

bodhisattva ideal one step farther. The goal in Theravada Buddhism is that once one has

reached nirvana, the spiritual union with the ground of all existence (in theistic terms, the

Divine), one becomes an arahanta (Pali), arhant or arahant (Sanskrit), meaning saint

(Goleman, 1972a; 1981). An arahanta, having reached the highest level of nirvana, may

chose to continue living as a saint. The arahanta can also choose to merge and dissolve oneself with the Source of all and cease to exist as an individual. In Mahayana Buddhism, the individual may also opt to continue as an individual and work to help humanity by reincarnating on the earth plane or working from the higher planes as a bodhisattva

(Conze, 1980; Harvey, 1990; Robinson & Johnson, 1977). In Integral Yoga, once the individual has merged with the Divine, and by the Divine descending into physical matter, the individual integrates the Divine into all aspects of being. The individual soul, thus, brings the Divine down to the earth plane to serve humanity through the human vehicle. Therefore, it is from the total integration of being and using it to serve humanity from the earthly plane that Integral Yoga enhances the Mahayana Buddhist attainment of bodhisattva (Chaudhuri, 1967; Vrinte, 2002). 61

Integral Yoga identifies different aspects of the journey to higher consciousness.

It attempts to verbalize what is ineffable in order for others to find their way. Since ancient times, and in monasteries today, individuals have relied on their teachers, their gurus, their priests, or more advanced practitioners to help them. Transmission was oral, or energetic, from teacher to student. Today more seekers are what can be termed

“mystics without monasteries” (Myss, 1987). Most do not have access to such advanced teachers, nor do they have the time to devote themselves solely to this pursuit. They have families, jobs, and responsibilities in the world. So it in this written form—in Sri

Aurobindo’s written guidance to his students, or in any published theory or structure of transpersonal development—that the noetic process is shared; hence, more of humanity has the potential to achieve their spiritual quest. The potential quantity of souls developing this way would ensure Sri Aurobindo’s goal of the evolution of consciousness.

Ken Wilber’s Integral Psychology

Ken Wilber’s (2000) Integral psychology model seeks to meld all aspects of the human psychological existence into one comprehensive picture. His vision is detailed and the scope is expansive. In a variation of Johare’s window, Ken Wilber created a four- quadrant model of Integral psychology (see Table 2).

Table 2. Ken Wilber’s Integral Psychology Model

Subjective Objective Left Upper Quadrant (LUQ) Right Upper Quadrant (RUQ)

I It

Individual Individual Spiritual Traditions Science/Human System

Left Lower Quadrant (LLQ) Right Lower Quadrant (RLQ)

We Its

Collective Collective Cultural/Behavior Society/Groups & Systems

Note. Adapted by M. R. Kramer, 2008, from “Integral Psychology: Consciousness, Spirit, Psychology, Therapy” by Ken Wilber, 2000, p. 62. Original terms are in italics.

Integral growth and human evolution must include hierarchical growth in all four quadrants. Wilber uses a reductionistic empirical approach to analyze the integral paradigm. He placed the spiritual traditions, including Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga, and what he calls premodern philosophies, in the Interior-Individual quadrant (LUQ), because of their focus on individual development and the solitary interior spiritual experience. But if one comprehends Integral Yoga’s psychology, the transformational and integral outcome, when successful, affects all of the other quadrants as well—

Exterior-Individual (RUQ), Interior-Collective (LLQ), and Exterior-Collective (RLQ).

The ripple effect has repercussions. Wilber does note that all quadrants “mutually interact” and “are imbedded in each other” (Wilber, 2000, p. 112). 63

Ken Wilber (2000) described a process similar to Sri Aurobindo’s, where the psychic being emerges into waking consciousness and replaces the ego. Both Sri

Aurobindo’s psychic being and Mr. Wilber’s transpersonally emerging soul are the intermediaries between the terrestrial human being and spirit. In Integral Yoga psychology, however, the conscious awakening and emergence of the psychic being may occur at any point in an individual’s life. It is of a different character than the transient peak experiences that may precede the psychic being’s permanent shift as the director of the self. Ken Wilber’s model has this experience occurring at the F-7/F-8 layer of self- development (Wilber, 2000, p. 103, Figure 10). Ken Wilber agreed with Sri Aurobindo regarding the importance of creating a strong personality base or foundation as the human being continues to develop along a “morphogenetic drift to deeper domains (ego to soul to spirit)” (p. 127).

Ken Wilber (2000) argued that Eastern traditions, part of the Great Nest of

Perennial Philosophy and consequently premodern, lacked postmodern knowledge of cognitive human development and evolution and were, therefore, not integral (p. 67-68).

From his writings, it can be noted that Sri Aurobindo addressed personality development from adulthood to spirithood, not early cognitive development. He also believed that the transformation in Integral Yoga from a human being to a spiritual being was the next evolutionary step. Michael Miovic (2004b) argued that Sri Aurobindo’s writings, as well as those of his students, show involvement and action in Ken Wilber’s intersubjective

LLQ and interobjective RLQ. Postmodern scientific study, cognitive and physiologic growth notwithstanding, seems to be verifying what premodern sages already knew. Sri 64

Aurobindo, therefore, meets Ken Wilber’s criteria for being integratively pre- and

postmodern.

Ken Wilber (2000) believed that the shortcomings of premodern perennial

philosophy of the East prevented its inclusion as an integral psychology. But he may be

erroneously pigeon-holing these traditions. What may be missing is in fact superfluous. It

may not matter where one starts on the spiritual path, or what cultural or theistic perspective one has, or what specific path one uses. Wherever one starts, if the individual makes consciousness growth a lifelong pursuit, all of the aspects identified in Ken

Wilber’s quadrants will be affected, influenced, and changed.

In summary, Ken Wilber’s Integral psychology (2000) differs from Sri

Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga psychology in several ways. Both value and include the experiential component of development. Both are comprehensive, containing the holistic integral view. Ken Wilber’s Integral psychology, however, seeks to collect all aspects of human development into one “integrated” single psychology. The thrust is from a developmental and personality psychology viewpoint that includes transpersonal levels.

Soul and spirit are not entities but aspirations. He also believed that human consciousness will evolve to the next level only by ensuring that the early or hierarchical levels of psychological development (the first tier is where a majority of the population operate) are resolved first. Concentrating on those individuals operating at a higher level of thinking and psychological development (the second tier, the transpersonal) will not work. However, Sri Aurobindo believed evolutionary change would occur individual by individual. 65

Integral Yoga Psychology, Psychology, and Transpersonal Psychology

Development occurs at different points in human consciousness growth in the spiritual traditions of the East. Eastern traditions start with where one decides to pursue a spiritual path and provides the assistance in achieving union with the Divine. Once one begins a spiritual path, work on oneself—the flaws and imperfections—are dealt with along the way. “Integral Yoga is not a system developed for psychologically disabled clients; Sri Aurobindo’s is primarily interested in the area of development beyond the ego” (Vrinte, 2002, p. 317). As such, Integral Yoga psychology does not address the developmental issues prior to adulthood. Integral Yoga psychology focuses on how one develops from adulthood. According to Joseph Vrinte (2002), some Western psychotherapies (probably found more in depth, psychoanalytic and humanistic therapies) attempt to strengthen the individual’s ego, or to use the ego in resolving psychologic difficulties, in order to better function in one’s life. Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga psychology aims to transmute the ego so that the psychic being is strengthened and guides one’s life. The ego “has its value at the lower levels of existence [nature], and it is indispensable for the evolution of the lower life but a hindrance for the development of the higher levels” (Vrinte, 2002, p. 321).

Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga psychology includes personality transformation as the foundation of its sadhana. The change in the lower hemisphere of the individual, where personality operates, is the first transformation and integration process. Unlike personality development in psychology, however, the process here is not primarily a mental one. It is directed by the soul (psychic being, operating in nature), thus making it spiritual and experiential. 66

The first step in the Integral Yoga psychology process is to become aware and know one’s inner psychic being; it is behind everything in the individual (Dalal, 2001).

Existential-humanistic psychology addresses the early stages of this process; it helps individuals discover who they are and assists in one’s search for meaning and place in the world—aspects of one’s outer and inner conscious beings. Transpersonal psychology stretches the individual further by exploring realms of consciousness beyond waking consciousness, where the spiritual aspect of the person dwells. These nonordinary states could be considered doorways to finding one’s inner psychic being. Integral Yoga psychology connects the individual even further, by way of the psychic being, to access one’s connection with the Divine and all knowledge. Joseph Vrinte (2002) posited that transpersonal psychology and Integral Yoga psychology are complementary, differing only in that they address different ranges of human development. “Transpersonal psychotherapy and integral sadhana take consciousness as the true subject matter of psychology. Both approaches are concerned with the development of latent possibilities of human nature, man’s potential for spiritual growth and higher states of consciousness”

(Vrinte, 2002, p. 328).

Spiritual psychology, as a proposed new field of psychology (Miovic, 2004a;

Taylor, 1997), is one term that points to the next evolution for psychology, the next developmental step within transpersonal psychology. Integral Yoga psychology presents another possible step. But where spiritual psychology continues to work in the development and progression of consciousness to another level, Integral Yoga psychology proposes a broader step by incorporating the transformation of consciousness into the process of human evolution. 67

Integral Yoga psychology appears to have commonalities with two transpersonal perspectives—spiral-dynamic and structural-hierarchical (Washburn, 2003). Integral

Yoga psychology integrates aspects of the structural-hierarchical (“a nested hierarchy”) and the spiral-dynamic perspectives, where deep and hidden sources of consciousness are waiting to emerge (p. 1). On one hand, one moves through the levels of consciousness above the higher mind in a sequential manner, each level embedded hierarchically into the next level (structural-hierarchical). On the other, the notion of involution is found in the spiral-dynamic viewpoint—that an individual can reconnect to sources previously hidden but always present. The movement of involution and evolution correlates with

Michael Washburn’s (2003) spiral-dynamic and Ken Wilber’s (1980) outward-inward arc descriptions.

With regard to the pre/trans fallacy discussion, Integral Yoga psychology’s subliminal level of consciousness seems to be more akin to the perspectives of Michael

Washburn and Stanislav Grof than to Ken Wilber (Grof, 1992; Vrinte, 2002; Washburn,

2003; Wilber, 1999, 2000). The pre/trans debate concerns the issue of whether consciousness prior to human birth is of the same quality as the transpersonal level of consciousness development in adults. Dr. Washburn and Dr. Grof felt both prepersonal and transpersonal consciousness are at the same level. Ken Wilber believed the latter is hierarchically more evolved than the former and is therefore different. The subliminal level corresponds with the pool of unconsciousness that individuals are born with and access for different reasons depending on whether one is an infant or adult. The subliminal contains the spiritual dimension where involution and evolution occur. The 68 subliminal level in Integral Yoga psychology is where prepersonal and transpersonal consciousness might dwell, and it appears to place them in the same or equal category.

If one had asked Sri Aurobindo, he might have agreed with Michael Washburn

(2003) that the solution to the pre/trans argument lies in making the distinction between ego functioning (structural-hierarchical viewpoint) and dynamic potentials (spiral- dynamic viewpoint) and their co-existence in the individual. The emerging predominance of the psychic being in Integral Yoga psychology can then be seen as a part of the transdynamic process (Washburn, 2003).

The definitions of transpersonal psychology coincide with characteristics of

Integral Yoga psychology: spirituality, transformation, holistic, experiential, states of consciousness developed beyond waking, integrative, transformational, having global implications, transcendence, and the highest human potential (Caplan, Hartelius, &

Rardin, 2003; Lajoie & Shapiro, 1992; Walsh & Vaughan, 1993). Integral Yoga psychology also appears to meet the criteria outlined by Roger Walsh (1999) on seven essential practices for transpersonal development: “redirecting motivation, transforming emotions, living ethically, developing concentration, refining awareness, cultivating wisdom, and practicing service and generosity” (p. 86).

Indeed, Integral Yoga psychology fits very well into the models found in transpersonal psychology. Its global potential and goal of transforming human beings into spiritual beings can be perceived as fitting into the next level or layer of development in transpersonal psychology, or bridging with the multidisciplinary dialogues regarding the evolution of consciousness. 69

Correlations Between Integral Yoga Psychology and Current Research

Interesting correlations exist between Sri Aurobindo’s psychic being and certain heart-centered healing and meditation techniques. Sri Aurobindo placed the psychic being behind the physical heart, in the heart chakra of the subtle body. Scientific measurement shows the electromagnetic strength of the heart to be the strongest of any organ, 5000 times greater than the brain’s (Childre & Martin, 1999; Oschman, 2002).

When the variable rhythms of the heart stabilize in a regular pattern (coherence), autonomic nervous system function stabilizes. When used in conjunction with mental and emotional thought imagery, or meditation, individuals have reported positive and significant increases in feelings of well-being and clarity. Meditative relaxation practices that use the heart as the focus (such as HeartMath’s Freeze-Frame technique) result in profound beneficial physiologic changes along with lowered stress responses and a greater sense of well-being (Childre & Martin, 1999). Sri Aurobindo might say that this technique assists the psychic being to emerge into consciousness in the inner and outer being. Integral Yoga psychology stipulates that the mind (higher chakra) and vital (heart chakra) centers must open to the psychic being (soul) and higher consciousness before transformation can occur. Mental and psychic planes must be opened before opening the vital; problems would occur otherwise. Heart-centered meditations use both the mental and heart centers.

Studies of individuals at the time of death using subtle energy devices have found energy concentrations over the heart area prior to physical death that leave the body’s energy field after death (Korotkov, 1998). Such studies possibly correlate with Sri 70

Aurobindo’s (1990; 1993a, 1993b) location of the psychic being, which leaves the physical body at the time of death.

Evolution of Consciousness

Individual destiny is intimately linked with society and human destiny. Ken

Wilber (2000) proposed that human evolution will progress as a collective endeavor of humanity. Sri Aurobindo, however, believed that the individual will shift human evolution, not the collective (Dalal, 2001). For Sri Aurobindo, transformational development is faster in the individual than for the collective of humanity. Jean Gebser

(1985) followed this line but believed it will be those few individuals in the new consciousness who will draw the rest of humanity from the old to the new (Feuerstein,

1987; Gebser, 1985). Others, such as Spiral Dynamics creators Clare Graves, Don Beck, and Christopher Cowan (Wilber, 2000), as well as Ervin Laszlo and Rupert Sheldrake

(Combs, 2002), have similar thoughts. Ken Wilber (2000) showed this pattern occurring in history later in his work.

Others systems of yoga are singular paths to the Divine —knowledge, action, devotion, synergy of body-mind-spirit—focusing on individual salvation. They do not address humanity’s development or evolution.

That is why in this yoga the ascent to the Divine which it has in common with other paths of yoga is not enough; there must be too a descent of the Divine to transform all the energies of the mind, life and body. (Aurobindo, 1970b, p. 1292)

Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga integrates these yoga paths to allow a total transformation and the accompanying effect of transformation of humanity. “Sri

Aurobindo’s Yoga is a yoga of transformation, and unlike the traditional systems of Yoga 71

not a mere yoga of realization and liberation from life. This transformation results in a

new species radically different from the present human species” (Vrinte, 2002, p. 194).

Conclusion

In the psychology of Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga, three experiences are expected to occur:

1. The transformation of personality where the soul (psychic being) is brought to

consciousness and effects changes in all aspects of the individual, purifying it

so that the personality aligns with the psychic being. The psychic being

replaces the ego as the director, the overseer, of the individual.

2. The psychic being, brought to consciousness, catalyzes the individual through

the mind vehicle to open up to higher realms of consciousness, transforming

and expanding the individual.

3. Once open to higher realms of consciousness, the opportunity for the Divine

to descend into the individual becomes possible. When it occurs, and the

Divine seats itself in the world of matter, and the individual human being is

transformed into a spiritual being, setting the evolution of humanity on a

faster course.

Sri Aurobindo’s contributions include: (a) transpersonal—steps and processes to connect with the Divine; (b) the psychic being—replaces the ego as the director of human life. The psychic being guides the changes in all aspects of personality. Integral Yoga emphasizes using the tools of preparation, intention, aspiration, and receptivity to help ensure successful navigation of the journey; and (c) evolution—evolutionary transformation of the human being to a spiritual being. 72

Integral Yoga and its psychology are easier to talk about, which is no small feat, than to accomplish. The Integral Yoga path is a lifelong commitment. Rarely, individuals progress to the final stage of manifesting the Divine in nature but it can be done. The next evolutionary step depends on this accomplishment. This path potentially shakes the foundational principles of some religions because it says that the Divine, God, can manifest and dwell in human beings on earth. “The bedrock of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga is the potential divinity of every soul. Spiritual endeavour consists in striving to manifest this divinity” (Vrinte, 2002, p. 327).

From a reductionistic paradigm, Ken Wilber’s (2000) view of Integral psychology makes sense. It includes all aspects that address human beings. From an energetic paradigm present in most if not all spiritual traditions, Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga psychology is equally comprehensive. Nursing theorist Martha Rogers (1970, 1990) posited in her theory of unitary beings that individuals are fields of energy interacting with each other while moving to higher levels of complexity and development.

Individuals in Integral Yoga are viewed as energetic forces (Aurobindo, 1993b) seeking higher levels of divine light and knowledge. Energy transformation in one individual field affects other human fields of energy. Thus human energy fields, when transforming, transform each other to a higher energy level, contributing to the population. Hence, Ken

Wilber’s integral psychology and Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga psychology both potentially result in evolutionary shifts in humanity, but from different epistemological paradigms.

Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga is a profound and groundbreaking approach to shifting humanity. It offers individuals the possibility of spiritual transformation in one 73 lifetime. How Integral Yoga is working in the Western world, and the experiences of people along the Integral Yoga path, would be an interesting field of study. For instance, if Integral Yoga seems impractical to follow completely, as some have observed (Combs,

2002), what is the highest level individuals have reached? What practices are they using?

How are these practices impacting their lives and spiritual progress in Western culture?

How is it manifesting in the lives of individuals practicing Integral Yoga, how has it changed their lives, what have they experienced along the way, and how far have they gotten? Comparisons between Integral Yoga and the spiritual traditions of other cultures with regard to consciousness would also be an interesting study. Another possible area of study would be how the levels of consciousness in Integral Yoga psychology fit in with the shamanic paths in various indigenous cultures. Data from these types of study might assist others on similar paths. Future study in this direction would have implications for the future of psychology as a science of consciousness, adding to a growing pool of knowledge on these noetic realms.

The psychology of Integral Yoga has a place in transpersonal psychology and deserves legitimate inclusion. Others have already discussed the contributions and influence of Integral Yoga on transpersonal psychology (Miovic, 2004b). Integral Yoga contains a rich pool of knowledge to contribute regarding consciousness, spirituality, and cultural and human evolution. 74

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHOD AND DESIGN

Transpersonal psychology continues to develop as a field of psychology since its emergence in the 1960s. It expanded the exploration of human experience to include spiritual dimensions and nonordinary realms of consciousness. Transpersonal psychology

“seeks to delve deeply into the most profound aspects of human experience, such as mystical and unitive experiences, personal transformation, meditative awareness, experiences of wonder and ecstasy, and alternative and expansive states of consciousness” (Anderson, 1998a, p. xxi). Transpersonal research methods were created to address these topics.

This chapter begins with an overview and brief outline of transpersonal research methodology. Organic inquiry is the transpersonal research method used in this study. It is discussed in greater detail. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the research process for this study.

Transpersonal Research Methodology

Transpersonal researchers respect the sacred quality of the topics and the participants (Braud, 1998b, 1998c). They also value the subjective impact that could occur in the researcher from conducting such research. “One of the unique properties of applying transpersonal approaches to research is the potential transformation of the researcher” (Braud, 1998c, p. x).

Transpersonal research methods utilize nontraditional sources of information and analysis. Transpersonal research methods allow and value very different modes of interpreting and discovering findings, such as intuition, information gathered in meditation, and channeled guidance. “These transpersonal research methods incorporate 75 intuition, direct knowing, creative expression, alternative states of consciousness, dreamwork, storytelling, meditation, imagery, emotion and bodily cures, and other internal events as possible strategies and procedures in all phases of research inquiry”

(Anderson, 1998a, p. xxx). The focus of this study utilizes nonordinary sources of knowledge.

Western transpersonal theorists accept the Eastern tenet that subjective experience of a spiritual practice is an important contribution to transpersonal knowledge.

Experiences of nonordinary realms of consciousness are not new, but empirical study of this topic is a new frontier for Western researchers. The study of subjective experiences provides unique perspectives but can be a drawback for any attempts to verify or generalize its findings. Transpersonal research requires a different method of checking validity because the topics of study do not allow or conform to standard uses of validity.

Individual experiences in nonordinary realms of consciousness, for example, cannot be verified except by the person experiencing them. It may not be possible to obtain the same results with repeated studies of the same experience as well. The aim of transpersonal research is rather illumination and transformation than insuring replication of data results.

Qualitative transpersonal research methodology exists. William Braud and

Rosemary Anderson (1998), along with teachers and students at the Institute of

Transpersonal Psychology, compiled a set of transpersonal methods of inquiry. Their book, Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences: Honoring Human

Experience, is an excellent resource on transpersonal research. William Braud and 76

Rosemary Anderson discussed five transpersonal research methods suited for the types and subjects of interest in transpersonal psychology:

1. Integral inquiry;

2. Intuitive inquiry;

3. Transpersonally informed phenomenological inquiry;

4. Transpersonal inquiry informed by exceptional human experience; and

5. Organic inquiry.

Drs. Braud and Anderson (1998) also provided a synopsis of each of these types (pp.

256-263), a summary of other transpersonally related research methods (pp. 264-269), and a brief overview of 17 traditional research methods (pp. 270-283).

Integral Inquiry

In integral inquiry (Braud, 1998b) the research question determines the method.

The complexity and uniqueness of human beings supports the idea that more than one research method may be necessary. Integral inquiry allows for the largest number of choices, based on a continuum of research methodology from qualitative (experience and conceptualization types of study) to quantitative (prediction and control types of study), from understanding and explaining to predicting and controlling, respectively (Braud,

1998b, p. 38, Table 3.1). Alternative ways of knowing, data analysis, and presenting findings are also aspects to consider. Ultimately, the methods contributing to the richest and most significant results are appropriate. Integral inquiry emphasizes the importance of intention in the research process (Braud, 1998b, p. 60, 63). 77

Intuitive Inquiry

With its ontology in heuristic, phenomenological, and feminine inquiry, intuitive inquiry (Anderson, 1998b) is well-suited for the study of transpersonal experiences that require the researcher to use the skills of intuition and nonordinary states of consciousness. Sympathetic resonance—the “immediate apprehension and recognition of an experience spoken by another and yet…true for the researcher, as well” (Anderson,

1998b, p. 73)—is a source of validation used in this method. Other significant qualities include the importance of compassion, the value and uniqueness of the individual, and the intent of helping “society’s disenfranchised persons” (p. 71).

Transpersonally Informed Phenomenological Inquiry

Existential phenomenology seeks the meaning and understanding of an experience. Transpersonal awareness adds numinous, spiritual, and transcendent qualities to the intention, reflection, meaning, richness, and understanding of the experience (Valle

& Mohs, 1998).

Transpersonal Inquiry Informed by Exceptional Human Experience

Rhea White (1998) observed that exceptional human experiences (EHEs) can begin as exceptional experiences (EEs). An exceptional experience is an anomalous experience, “one whose existence is considered questionable or impossible—in Western consensus reality. EEs are psychic, mystical, death-related, and strange encounter experiences that raise eyebrows” (R. White, 1998, p. 129). Such experiences shift to exceptional human experiences when they become significant, impact the individual’s life, and transform one’s existence.

EHEs occur when the experience relates to and is connected with that knowledge and its source in a transformative way. EEs spotlight new areas of the unknown to 78

be explored. EHEs are experiences of dynamic interaction and connection with that unknown. (R. White, 1998, p. 129)

Exceptional human experiences form a large body of phenomena to be explored in transpersonal psychology—psychic, encounter, mystical, death-related, and other anomalous experiences. The researcher’s creative insight is emphasized (R. White, 1998).

Organic Inquiry

Organic inquiry has its origins in heuristic and feminine spirituality research— characteristics common to other transpersonal methods of study (Braud & Anderson,

1998). Five colleagues at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology—Jennifer Clements,

Dorothy Ettling, Diane Jennet, Nora Taylor, and Lisa Shields—wanted to craft a transpersonal research method that “uses the personal experience of the researcher and coresearchers to create a sacred work that offers transformation and healing to all who engage in it, researchers and readers alike” (Clements, Ettling, Jennet, & Shields, 1998, p.

114). Other works on organic inquiry include If Research Were Sacred: An Organic

Methodology (Clements, Ettling, Jennet, & Shields, 1999) and Organic Inquiry: Research in Partnership with Spirit (Clements, 2002). Organic inquiry was also discussed in articles in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology (Braud, 2004; Clements, 2004). Dr.

Deah Curry, along with her coresearcher Steven Wells, wrote a guidebook to assist new researchers in understanding organic inquiry (Curry & Wells, 2003-04).

Contributions from feminist spirituality research incorporated into organic inquiry include: (a) the value of first person subjective inclusion; (b) equal status between researcher and participant, promoting mutual trust; (c) diversity and use of previously unstudied groups of people; (d) strong openness and curiosity to the experience and 79 experiences of the participants; and (e) the sense of responsibility to humanity, conveyed by the topics and participants studied (Clements, 2002, pp. 27-31).

Contributions from transpersonal psychology include using nonordinary sources of information found in the liminal and spiritual realms, and the value of experience as a vehicle for psychological growth and knowledge. William Braud (Clements, 2002) identified five key aspects that organic inquiry contributes to transpersonal qualitative research:

1. A transpersonal as well as spiritual emphasis and focus during the research

process.

2. Heuristic use of the unconscious, subconscious, numinous, and other non-

ordinary states of consciousness inquiry throughout the process.

3. Use of alternative and innovative approaches to data collection and analysis,

including creative activities, liminal processes, and nonordinary access to

information.

4. Effective and typical use of narratives and stories to convey research findings.

5. The addition of transformation as a goal in the research process for the

researcher, participants, and readers. (p. 4)

Contributions from heuristic inquiry include: (a) the use of research as a vehicle for personal growth; (b) the value of the researcher’s internal processes, especially intuition; (c) “Underlying all other concepts in heuristic research, at the base of all heuristic discovery, is the power of revelation in tacit knowing” (Moustakas, 1990, p.

20); and (4) a six-step process (p. 27), condensed to three steps in organic inquiry: 80 preparation, inspiration (from immersion and travel within the experience), and integration (Clements, 2002).

Organic inquiry, while establishing procedures prior to entering the research process, also expects and accepts the emergence of unpredicted processes or findings, incorporating them into the study as they occur. Organic inquiry’s flexibility invites spontaneous contributions to the research process.

The personal requirements of the researcher are an advanced and stable psychological and spiritual level of development (Clements, 2002, p .7). Inherent in these related qualities are an openness to explore and grow further as an individual, and an ability to explore deeper realms of oneself that carry some risk of losing oneself. One can view this as a qualification shamans must possess before traversing the many worlds they encounter in shamanic journeys. One must be able to get back “home” in one piece and psychologically intact.

Parallels occur between the research topic of this study and the organic inquiry method. Transformation is an intended outcome in both. Nonordinary explains both epistemologies and approaches. Spirituality and sacredness are present throughout. A dual transformation exists in each as personal and consciousness evolution. The processes for each require complete consciousness involvement, including exploration of unconscious processes. Each process values the waiting period prior to receiving information, knowledge, and inspiration from other realms.

Originally called organic research, the creators (Clements et al., 1998, p. 118) identified five characteristics, placed into a metaphor for growing a tree, added in parentheses: Sacred (preparation), Personal (planting), Chthonic (root growth), 81

Relational (growth above the ground), and Transformative (harvesting the fruit). The method changed to organic inquiry and was restructured into three steps in the transformation process: Preparation (using nonordinary processes of knowing such as intuition), Inspiration (the journey), and Integration (resulting in transformation). The original five characteristics remain essential to organic inquiry as the basis for finding information, accessing knowledge, personal psycho-spiritual growth, understanding from the experiences of others and therefore transformational, and approaching and conducting research as sacred.

[Organic inquiry] is a qualitative research approach for the study of topics relating to psycho-spiritual growth, in which one’s psyche becomes the subjective instrument of the research, working in partnership with liminal and spiritual sources as well as with participants who have had related experiences. Analysis, which involves the cognitive integration of liminal encounters, results in transformational changes to the researcher’s understanding and experience of the topic. These are changes of mind and changes of heart, which both inform and transform. In presenting the results, the researcher uses stories to invite the individual reader to a parallel yet unique transformative experience. (Clements, 2002, p. 14)

Intuition is a strong aspect of the feminine psyche in the Jungian paradigm.

Organic inquiry, having evolved from feminist philosophy, would therefore include, honor, and value intuition as a form of knowing. Other transpersonal methods, such as intuitive and heuristic inquiry, also value the role of intuition.

Studying spiritual topics logically and intuitively points to accessing spiritual realms in order to receive information and to understand the topic of study. “The inclusion of the influence of Spirit requires that the researcher who chooses the organic approach be willing to allow this influence to be an ongoing source of creative evolution”

(Clements, 2002, p. 139). 82

Dr. Clements (2002) identified these reasons for using organic inquiry: “(a) the approach closely mirrors the topic, (b) the method encourages the participation of spiritual influences, and (c) the method stresses the individual psycho-spiritual growth of the researcher and of the reader” (pp. 136-137). All three reasons concur with this study as well.

The organic inquiry researcher delves into nonordinary realms of consciousness to access information. Planes of consciousness beyond higher mind in Integral Yoga are described in the language of the spiritual. And the expectation of psycho-spiritual transformation for all involved is both exciting and at the same time anxiety producing.

The excitement involves the sense of awe, intense curiosity, and anticipation akin to waiting to open a gift. The anxiety stems from the possibility of failure because the skills of the researcher in creating a final narrative story (reflecting the findings and coresearchers’ experiences) may not effect transformation in the reader. Organic inquiry challenges the researcher to probe depths not previously encountered and discover aspects of the self previously unknown.

Dr. Clements (2002) distinguished between spiritual and liminal. She stated, while both terms refer to realms outside of egoic control (along with chthonic and unconscious), spiritual has a more positive connotation, beneficial to the individual.

Liminal is quality-neutral, possessing neither positive nor negative influences (p. 35).

However, another distinction, more suitable for this study, is that liminal refers to a

doorway to nonordinary realms of consciousness outside of waking consciousness.

Spiritual refers to one of those realms beyond the doorway, while chthonic is in another

realm, connected to the unconscious and subconscious states. Chthonic is the realm of the 83 shadow self and refers to the metaphorically murky aspects of the individual yet unexplored but exerting subtle influence on waking consciousness. In the psychology of

Integral Yoga, chthonic would be considered part of the subliminal, which includes unconscious and subconscious aspects.

Organic inquiry allows flexibility and creativity in tailoring the method to fit the unique features of the study as well as inventing new methods from such alchemy.

Jennifer Clements (2002) cited several examples of studies where the researcher varied the organic inquiry process (pp. 138-139). For example, Deah Curry and Steven Wells

(Curry, 2003; Curry & Wells, 2003-04) added the principle of numinous to the original five principles of organic inquiry—sacred, personal, chthonic, relational, transformative, and numinous.

Participants are considered coresearchers, emphasizing the value of their contributions and experiences. A significant intended outcome in organic inquiry is that participation in the study will potentially transform the people involved, including the reader. It is an intriguing concept, one that lends itself well to the process of human consciousness evolution. In short, organic inquiry creates an adventure for all involved, with the ending unknown but leaving them with the deep sense that they will be forever changed by the journey.

Limitations

There are different mechanisms of communication among living creatures on earth. For instance, communication between two entities can take place energetically.

Parapsychological abilities such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and medical and empathic intuition are examples of human abilities to communicate energetically. 84

Other forms of communication such as language, verbal expression, and kinesthetic expression operate in processes such as writing, talking, and demonstrating emotions, respectively. But how does one communicate to others one’s experience about a realm difficult to put into verbal or physical expressions? How does one communicate, describe, and share the experience of being in advanced states of consciousness? This dilemma poses a significant limitation to any transpersonal study of nonordinary consciousness.

Language is a significant limitation. Verbal or written descriptions do not come close to relating the experience of higher planes of consciousness and their transformational quality. Words are mental constructs in an ordinary waking dimension of consciousness, while the dimensions addressed in studies like the one proposed operate in realms different from language. Language may not substantially convey these experiences. Others agree that language can be restrictive and incomplete in explaining higher dimensions of consciousness (Combs, 2002; Goleman, 1972a, 1972b, 1978-79,

1988; Massad, 2001; J. White, 1972; Wilber, 2000).

Description is not enough. The liberated have continually stressed that words are only about truth, not truth itself. That cannot be known except through direct experience, through enlightenment. And often language is a barrier to knowing the truth because there is confusion between preliminary beams of nonverbal intuition and a learned arbitrary framework of language.…Language is symbolic; language-thinking is symbol-thinking, and symbols are always other than the reality for which they stand. As such, language constricts consciousness and places limits on understanding. (J. White, 1971, p. 15)

In an opposing viewpoint, Richard Trench saw language as a repository, a holder, of truths long forgotten.

[Language is] wiser, not merely than the vulgar, but even than the wisest of those who speak it. Sometimes it locks up truths which were once well known, but have been forgotten. In other cases it holds the germs of truths which, though they were 85

never plainly discerned, the genius of its framers caught a glimpse of in a happy moment of divination. (Trench as cited in Huxley, 1972, p. 67)

Somewhere between these two opposing views is an answer. As a personal belief,

borne out frequently, the larger truth is often found when both extremes of a paradox are

equally accepted, as if in accepting two opposite ideas as an integrated whole, one slips

into a higher dimension of awareness where duality does not exist and new knowledge is

acquired.

How, then, without the direct experience attained by those rare individuals who

can achieve these higher states of consciousness, can others comprehend or even

vicariously apprehend these realms if language alone is inadequate? One answer may be

nonverbal—using the energy of the experience and attaching it to the narrative

description of the experience.

The researcher presents an additional potential limitation. Research using organic inquiry relies heavily on the skills and abilities of the researcher. The researcher must be able to traverse multiple levels of consciousness—liminal, numinous, chthonic—to retrieve the necessary information that makes transformation successful. As mentioned earlier, a stable and aware psyche and a high level of spiritual experience are important attributes for the researcher.

Validity and Reliability

Validity is used to assess the accuracy of findings in the study, whether the descriptions of the findings truly reflect what the topic of the study intended (Braud,

1998a). Reliability allows for the same study to be repeated in order to determine if similar findings result. The standard for validity and reliability in qualitative research deviates from that of quantitative studies to such an extent that it continues to be an issue 86 in qualitative studies. Transpersonal research methods are more controversial. An important point to keep in mind when discussing validity and reliability in transpersonal research is that the topics in transpersonal studies:

1. Are unique and therefore individualized. Quantitative research, in contrast,

values topics that can be generalized and are capable of replication.

2. Often defy three-dimensional boundaries of reality because the majority of

topics deal with spiritual matters and intangible concepts such as nonordinary

consciousness.

3. Require a restructuring of how validity and reliability are measured because of

points 1 and 2.

Validity in transpersonal research simply finds innovation and alternative ways to assess accuracy, which may vary between studies. One way to look at validity is by how it transforms the individual. Organic inquiry carries a built-in criterion for validity: the goal of transformation. “What is needed is to ground the validity of spiritual knowledge, not on the replicable spiritual experiments that bring falsifiable experiential data, but on its emancipatory and transformative power for self, relations, and world” (Ferrer, 2002, p.

65).

Evaluation of transformation is inherent in the organic inquiry method.

Transformation occurring in anyone who participates can be confirmed by the narratives included in the final summary of the study, or somewhere near the end depending on the researcher’s design. The readers subjectively determine if transformation occurred, representing an ongoing validation, though not all who read the study are expected to undergo transformation (see Clements, 2002, pp. 222-225). 87

This study included measures directed at reflecting the accuracy of its findings.

Coresearchers were asked to verify written transcripts as correctly reflecting the dialogue that occurred during the interview. Coresearchers also critiqued their own narrative story to verify that the researcher’s findings reflect or approximate their experiences in higher realms of consciousness. Coresearchers did the same in reading material from their interviews for overall stories. Finally, coresearchers had an opportunity to describe how their participation in the study affected them.

Individuals are unique and so are their experiences. Replication of findings is unlikely to occur in transpersonal studies because of the spiritual and nonordinary nature of the topics, and because the foundation of transpersonal studies emphasizes uniqueness and values individuality. It is the uniqueness of the topics and the individuals in studies that help to generate the questions for study in the first place.

When looking at replicability, the best the researcher can do is to accurately and comprehensively detail the research process in order to provide enough information for anyone wishing to conduct a similar study. The findings may be similar, depending on the topic, but they are never expected to be the same.

Transpersonal research methods do not serve to contribute to the knowledge pool by replicating studies but to enrich knowledge the way a work of art enriches the visual field or music enriches the listener or literature enriches the reader. All who experience such works emerge changed from the encounter in some way. They are not quite the same. 88

Precautions in Profound Interplays Between Individuals

Jennifer Clements (2002), in addressing the inspiration aspect of the organic inquiry process, discussed the importance of attitude, receptiveness, the use of therapeutic skills during the interview, and setting boundaries (pp. 162-163). She cautioned that while ego loss can occur during the interview, the researcher must concomitantly maintain ego boundaries and control them sufficiently in order to keep them in a subordinate and silent status. “An interview invites an intimacy but not a merging with the participant” (Clements, 2002, p. 163). However, there is another perspective to consider.

In a typical psychotherapeutic relationship therapists and clients maintain intellectual, emotional, and energetic boundaries between them. In healing or energetic work, these boundaries merge, blur, and re-emerge. The therapist’s intent and energies must be positive and specific because that is what clients receive. Or, if therapists are channeling higher energy to the clients as, for example, in Reiki healing, they must create and maintain a clear channel in order for clients to receive what is most beneficial for them. Afterwards, therapists, especially those involved in bodywork, must develop ways to clear themselves so as not to retain any essences of their clients in their own energy fields and psyches.

The spiritual nature of transpersonal topics suggests a caveat about, if not a disagreement with, Dr. Clements’ contention. The researcher engages in a sacred interaction with the coresearcher, not a therapeutic relationship. In order to facilitate a potential transformation in consciousness, the researcher should attempt to experience what the coresearcher experiences. It is not necessarily a merging with the coresearcher 89 as much as it requires a merging with the experience. It requires the researcher to possess a highly developed ability to discern and walk this fine line. “This suggests again the importance of the researcher knowing her or his psychological and physical limits in order to care for personal needs while engaging with the material of the participant”

(Clements, 2002, p. 162).

Some Variations of Organic Inquiry for the Current Study

Organic inquiry uses the personal subjective voice of the researcher, which runs counter to mainstream research guidelines, including APA writing style and Saybrook

Graduate School’s requirements. In order to satisfy both expectations, the first three chapters of this study comply with APA and Saybrook styles, using the third person objective. The chapters addressing the research process, findings, analysis, and reporting of results switch to first person subjective in order to comply with organic inquiry’s process. Another minor variation to APA and Saybrook style is the use of first and last names or titles throughout the study when discussing individuals as a sign of respect in organic inquiry.

Organic inquiry, as Jennifer Clements described it, emphasizes the researcher’s personal desire to explore and share the topic as the primary motivator for the study.

Participants, as coresearchers, are seen to expand and affect the researcher’s experience.

In this study, the roles have been reversed. As the coresearchers’ discussions of their experiences are heard and described in the interview, the researcher attempted to apprehend those experiences personally. Integral Yoga practice represents a different path to advanced planes of consciousness for the researcher, one not previously explored.

Thus, the researcher attempted to use the coresearchers’ experiences as a basis for her 90 own experiences during the study. As Jennifer Clements (2002) stated, “we must allow ourselves to be so open to the story of another that we are willing to be changed by it” (p.

31).

Pertinent Studies in Organic Inquiry

Organic inquiry—by virtue of being an emerging research process and a fluid, intuitive, and responsive method—allows choice and variety in its structure. A wide latitude of design exists within its basic theoretical framework (a discussion of individual studies can be found in Clements, 2002). Two pertinent examples of studies with variations follow.

Sandra Magnussen (2004) used organic inquiry to study the effect on clinical practice of 12 psychotherapists involved in Tibetan Buddhist Guru Yoga practice.

Transcribed interviews “made into essence-stories” (p. 1) were analyzed, with three people reading the final story—each knowledgeable about Tibetan Buddhism, psychotherapy, or both—providing feedback as readers on the transformational quality of the study. A variation in the study is that Dr. Magnussen did not have the participants review the narratives of others for confidentiality reasons; three expert readers provided the feedback on the impact of the narratives. She chose pseudonyms for the participants rather than participants choosing their own. She used case study narrative to convey her information when she told their stories, with her story interweaving throughout the narrative.

This study also used three outside readers to evaluate the impact of the stories. It differed in that the overall and discussion stories are a compilation of the coresearchers’ individual narratives, combining specific topics and information they shared. Dr. 91

Magnussen’s (2004) study also addressed the energetic transfer of energy that takes place between the psychotherapist and the client, the guru and the student. The current study accepted the premise of energy exchanges between people. Having individuals read the narratives and comment on their impact on them could form the basis of another study, or at least a phase II study, looking at both current impact and its impact over time.

Another study combined collaborative and organic inquiry, and was multi- layered. Laura Cornell (2006) sought to answer the question, “How can the ecological roots of Yoga be brought to the present?” (p. 72). She gathered data from two retreats, one year apart, where six Kripalu Yoga teachers met to explore the possibilities of creating a Green Yoga community. Pre-participation interviews (which produced the biographical portraits included in the final narrative), the participants’ journal entries over the year between retreats, email communications, phone conferences, transcripts of the retreats, and written anecdotal notes were included in the data analysis. Several methods of inquiry were also used depending on the level of inquiry—case study, collaborative group action, theory building, and organic inquiry. Dr. Cornell integrated all of the data and distilled it into a summary narrative of the entire process of their collaborative efforts, including the outcome of their efforts and her own personal journal entries throughout. Her dissertation study is written as a narrative report, rich in detail. A variation in her study was that the participants chose to use their real names rather than pseudonyms. 92

Summary

Organic inquiry is the transpersonal qualitative research method chosen for this study. It acknowledges the sacred quality of the research topic. It utilizes nonordinary sources of information and encourages creative and innovative modes of data analysis.

Organic inquiry is not an easy research method to use. It demands a great deal of the researcher: a personal involvement with the research question, a very high level of self-awareness, and the ability to access alternative sources of knowing and information.

The expected outcome is no less demanding: transformation of the researcher, participants, and the reader.

Research Design

This section is where the language shifts from third-person to organic inquiry’s preference for first-person. Congruent to organic inquiry’s process, this section is organized to reflect its three major steps: preparation, inspiration, and integration. These steps are repeated throughout the study on several levels of the research experience. For instance, prior to the interview (preparation) participants, as coresearchers, and I individually prepared for the meeting. Each of us prepared our inner and outer sacred space in a way that allowed us to receive information and sensations (inspiration).

Afterward we cognitively integrated (integration) our experience into our waking consciousness in order to use it in the interview. “During an organic inquiry, the researcher repeatedly follows a three-step process of psychologically traveling to the liminal realm beyond ego, gathering experience, and returning to integrate it into the ongoing research process” (Clements, 2002, p. 113). 93

Preparation

“In preparation, one identifies one’s intent, brings one’s ego into partnership with

Spirit, offers oneself as the reverent instrument and screen of the study, and opens one’s psyche to the liminal realm” (Clements, 2002, p. 115). Organizationally, preparation includes setting my intention and establishing the process for approaching the study with respect for the sacredness of the endeavor, as well as setting up my sacred space. During the study, I lit incense and candles, and set my intent for the research through meditation and prayer prior to working on it. Participant coresearchers were also asked to prepare themselves for the interview experience in their own personally meaningful way.

Preparation also includes addressing measures that maintain participant anonymity and confidentiality throughout the study, and the selection and recruitment of participants

Confidentiality and anonymity. Anonymity is essential, and its continued emphasis is prominent throughout this study. The topic, its depth, its importance to the participant, and the intensely personal and sacred nature of the experience can be potentially threatening and anxiety-producing, thereby limiting the detail, depth, and outcome of the study. The questions being asked and the answers given are profoundly personal to the participants. As such, participant coresearchers were not asked to use their real names and the procedures to maintain anonymity were explained in writing in order for them to feel safe. Saybrook’s Internal Review Board (SIRB) guidelines were followed, especially with regard to protection of identity and maintaining anonymity.

Great care was taken to minimize potential recognition of the coresearchers by any readers. The Integral Yoga community is small and the interaction among its members is significant. The coresearchers were breaking unwritten taboos by talking about their 94 experiences. I wanted to protect them and affirm their confidence in me that I would. I let them choose their pseudonyms. I explained the measures taken in the study designed to protect their identity. I gave them two opportunities in the analysis process to point out any passages or information that might identify them so we could resolve it: review of the transcript and review of the narrative story.

Participant selection and recruitment. The participant coresearchers for this study represent pioneers in human consciousness. Their intent to explore consciousness is evidenced by the number of years of study—ten or more. They potentially have had experiences in deeper planes of consciousness. Their willingness to share their personal, profound, and ineffable experiences requires a courageous spirit.

Eight was an appropriate number of participants for the depth of information that would be generated from this type of study. Similar studies have used 8 participants

(Curry, 2003; Massad, 2001). A survey of dissertations using organic inquiry showed the participant number ranging from 1 to 29, with a majority in the range of 4-14. Fourteen individuals volunteered and participated in the study, exceeding my original goal.

“One chooses participants carefully so that the responses are unified and yet also sufficiently diverse to challenge and expand one’s understanding” (Clements, 2002, p.

141). Unified responses mean that the participants’ experiences fit together enough for the researcher to note patterns and themes and identify an outline for the stories. And the participants’ experiences are diverse enough to expose breadth and depth regarding experiences as well as displaying an appreciation and confirmation of the uniqueness of the individuals and their experiences. 95

I made an announcement of my study at the annual Integral Yoga AUM (All USA

Meeting), asking anyone interested to contact me. Two individuals voiced an interest at the conference. I emailed the flyer soliciting participants for the study (Appendix C) to three main Integral Yoga centers in the United States. An academic contact also forwarded my flyer to one of the centers. Within 16 days, 12 more people contacted me and offered to participate. No other individuals volunteered after that initial time.

Face-to-face interviews were organized to minimize travel, as all of the participants lived in geographically diverse locations. Four trips to specific geographic locations in the United States produced 10 face-to-face interviews. The last 4 interviews occurred by telephone. I was not able to travel to them because of financial and time constraints, and 3 of the coresearchers lived outside the continental United States.

I sent a letter of introduction to each volunteer (Appendix C). Recruitment and selection of participants were not based on gender or ethnicity, but primarily on interest and number of years of Integral Yoga practice. Participant criteria for selection included:

1. Regular Integral Yoga practice for a minimum of 10 years. Regular Integral

Yoga practice is defined as some participant-identified activity practiced daily

to weekly.

2. Willingness to participate.

3. Grasp of the English language in order to describe their experiences

accurately.

Choosing participants with 10 or more years of Integral Yoga practice increased the potential for richness, depth and detail, and the possibility of experiences in other planes of consciousness. The potential for frequent and sustained experiences in these 96 planes was greater, that is, there was an increased possibility of trait characteristics as well as state experiences. Trait characteristics signify an embodiment of these realms in waking consciousness (Goleman, 1978-79, 1988; Wilber, 2000).

Organic inquiry seems especially suited for allowing coresearchers to reflect on the question prior to the research interview (Clements, 2002, p. 157). Coresearchers were given the research questions prior to the interview—in the consent form and participation letter—in order to give them time to think about their answers, gather inspiration, and receive guidance. Dr. Clements suggested asking the coresearcher to “intentionally return to the most vivid experience of the topic, to relive it in the moment” (p. 159), and then bring it back or forward into the interview. Doing so potentially increases the depth, quantity, and quality of information shared in the interview. While this decision may bias other types of research studies, using it in this study enhanced the importance and value of coresearchers conveying their experiences. I encouraged coresearchers to prepare themselves to enter the interview in a caring and spiritual frame of mind, if not already doing so in everyday life.

Inspiration

Immersion in the experience and receipt of information and knowledge in the liminal realm is unique and distinctive for each researcher in organic inquiry (Clements,

2002, p. 115). Researchers develop their own confirmation signals, their own vocabulary, while in the liminal experience (p. 115). Inspiration is the activity involved in the interview process and preliminary data analysis.

Interview process. A consent form, approved by SIRB, was sent to participants after they agreed to participate. I also sent an accompanying letter explaining the study in 97 more detail, as well as the value the participant, as the coresearcher, brought to this study

(Appendix D). A date and time for the interview was set. The coresearchers signed the consent form prior to the interview.

A digital voice recorder was used for the interviews, along with an audiocassette recording for backup. However, interview 6 and the telephone interviews (11-14) were taped with the voice recorder only. The audiocassette recorder broke at the end of one trip and was not replaced until the next set of interviews (7-10). Recording equipment did not audibly record one face-to-face interview, which was later conducted by telephone.

I arranged the interviews so that they were mutually convenient and afforded privacy with minimal disturbance. I also considered my travel times around heavy traffic.

All but 3 of the face-to-face interviews occurred in the coresearchers’ homes. One interview took place in a public library conference room and 2 occurred in a quiet room at the coresearcher’s workplace. All but one of the telephone interviews took place between my home and the coresearchers’ homes. One coresearcher participated in the telephone interview at an office, well before the workday began.

The interview guide questions (Appendix E) served as a starting point. Each interview was unique in the direction, sequence, and type of questions discussed. I used my intuition to decide whether to follow a train of thought, thus maintaining the flow, with the intention of returning to further questions later. I also redirected the conversation if I felt it had strayed from the intent and focus of the interview, or was not pertinent. I used my intuition to ascertain when the interview “felt” complete or done, confirming it with the coresearcher. Hence, times varied among the interviews, varying in length from

1 hours and 12 minutes to 2 hours and 26 minutes. 98

Questions and discussion were initially of a general nature—asking coresearchers

to describe their overall experience of Integral Yoga, their length of time practicing, and

their individual practice routine. Discussion then progressed to focus on their more

profound and significant experiences in Integral Yoga practice. We then explored their

experiences in more detail. I did not ask some of the questions from the guide in a few

interviews. I made the decision not to ask them after realizing the content of our

discussion had its own journey and the coresearcher’s experiences were unique and

interesting with the current material. At times it seemed that asking further questions

from the interview guide were not pertinent to the experiences being discussed.

Having the coresearchers preview the interview guide questions prior to our

meeting proved advantageous. A few came to the interview with prepared notes to assist

them. Most were able to answer the questions readily, having had time to revisit and

contemplate their experiences beforehand. One or two coresearchers opted not to review

the questions, preferring to enter the interview less prepared. One coresearcher said it

gave the interview a sense of being more of a discussion and less regimented if he did not

review them.

Analysis of data—preliminary. The recorded interview was semistructured and included anecdotal notes that I made after the interview because I felt taking notes during the interview would disrupt the flow and sacredness of the meeting. Two individuals not affiliated or connected to the Integral Yoga community transcribed the interviews. My analysis incorporated the three processes inherent in organic inquiry for transformative change—preparation, inspiration, and integration (Clements, 2002, p. 52). A checklist of the steps, numbered in the following paragraphs, is found in Appendix F. Each time prior 99 to apprehending the interview experience, I consciously prepared myself for the experience, setting both the intent and space. I lit candles and incense and set my intention to focus on listening, receiving, and relaying the interview material in the best manner possible.

1. I listened to the tape while concurrently reading the transcript, noting editing

discrepancies, missing words, and so forth.

2. Each coresearcher reviewed a copy of the transcripted interview in order to

verify and clarify perceptions and thoughts.

3. I apprehended the interview three to four times. I incorporated anecdotal

notes, intuitive information, thoughts and ideas, and somatic knowledge.

4. The next step was a phase of meditation, incubation, and rumination prior to

identifying patterns, key words, phrases, and ideas. The material determined

the most appropriate schema for analysis, falling into one of the processes

found in qualitative research texts (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Tesch, 1990).

Dr. Clements (2002) suggested reviewing the data at least four times in order to focus on each of the aspects of the psyche (using Jungian terminology): feeling and sensation, intuition, mental thought or thinking, and somatic or physical responses to the data (p. 179-180). In understanding myself, I arrived at the processing sequence for listening to the interviews: thinking first, then feeling and somatic together, and intuiting last. I have a strong mental component and curiosity to my personality. I am also empathic and I decided that feelings and somatic sensations were inseparable for me and would be easier to perceive together. Finally, listening intuitively would tie everything 100 together for me and allow me to pull the insights from the previous runs into a larger picture, with the liminal information, perhaps, more accessible.

I found it easier to retain the pictures and impressions of the coresearchers by keeping the files in the order that I interviewed them, especially since the pseudonyms were the only identifying labels, aside from my code number, which had the date of the interview and the interview sequence in the study. The primary transcriptionist did not work in the same order and I did not, therefore, work on them sequentially parallel to the way I interviewed them.

I opted to analyze the material manually rather than utilize a software program. I felt a software program was more impersonal and would not provide the same energetics that I would receive by immersing myself in the data. Working with the material manually provided a more intimate quality, a deeper immersion into this rich material. It also followed the intent of organic inquiry that of approaching research as a sacred endeavor.

I began to see themes and patterns while conducting the interviews; confirmation and additional themes emerged while listening to the interviews. I made notes in the transcript margins during the thinking and feeling/somatic runs, and wrote them on 4x6 inch cards. I reviewed the transcripts and notes from the runs to identify and separate the experiences, quotes, and themes and patterns for each interview.

I waited until I had the essential information from the interviews organized before listening to each interview intuitively. I then wrote the narrative stories. 101

Integration

Integration involved final analysis of the information and presentation of findings in the form of narrative summaries or stories. The final assessment focused on a significant goal of organic inquiry: assessing the impact of the research experience to determine if any impact or transformation in the coresearchers, readers, and researcher occurred.

Analysis of data—final. I integrated the knowledge and impressions received so that the narrative stories incorporated the multidimensional and holistic experience of the coresearcher, and hopefully would positively affect the reader.

5. I distilled and created a narrative story from each interview.

6. Coresearchers reviewed their individual stories, which provided confirmation

and validation of the information. They also suggested their insights as well.

Presentation of findings. “The intent of the presentation is to convey both informative changes of mind and transformative changes of heart. An organic study aims at offering these stories…so that the reader…may participate in an experience of change”

(Clements, 2002, p. 116).

Stories are created for three purposes: (a) Induction—stories that are used to stimulate, to induce, a spiritual or liminal experience; (b) Integration—stories that help to make sense and understand the experience; and (c) Invitation—stories that create a desire in the reader to participate in the story’s experience, both “liminally and cognitively, to repeat the experience of the researcher, but within the context of the reader’s own experience” (Clements, 2002, p. 116). 102

7. I integrated the coresearchers’ experiences from the interviews to create one

or more overall and discussion stories.

Assessing impact. Coresearchers were asked to write a brief summary of their

experiences in this study at the study’s conclusion, particularly in regard to how their

participation affected them.

8. Coresearchers were asked to comment and validate the material from the

interview that was used in overall and discussion stories.

9. Coresearchers were asked to describe in writing how their participation

affected them. The impact of the study on me, as the researcher, is discussed

in chapter 5.

10. Three initial readers, selected from my personal acquaintances and not

associated with the Integral Yoga community, were asked to read a few of the

stories and comment on how it affected them. The transcribers were asked to

comment on their experiences as well. Their edited comments are included in

the study’s results.

Summary

Using the transpersonal research method of organic inquiry, the purpose of this study was to evaluate, analyze, integrate, and transmit the experiences of Integral Yoga practitioners in the higher planes of consciousness. The organic inquiry process of preparation, inspiration, and integration was used on multiple levels throughout the study.

Fourteen long-term practitioners of Integral Yoga were interviewed and asked to describe their profound, significant experiences. The interviews were semistructured and lasted 1-

2 ½ hours. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed for significant themes, patterns, 103 and wording, following the guidelines of organic inquiry (Clements, 2002; Curry &

Wells, 2003-2004) and recommendations made in analyzing qualitative data (Miles &

Huberman, 1994; Tesch, 1990). I created stories from their experiences, along with overall summary stories on a common theme or pattern. Coresearchers were asked how their participation in the study affected them. Three readers reported their experiences from reading some of the stories. The impact of the study’s experiences on the coresearchers, the readers, and me formed the basis of assessment for determining transformation, a major goal in organic inquiry.

The study’s findings reflect, to a significant extent, an accurate sense of the coresearchers’ experiences. Construct validity and the uniqueness of the individuals and their journeys may defy replication of findings but the process to acquire such findings can be replicated.

The transpersonal research method of organic inquiry is not only concerned with contributing to the pool of intellectual and professional knowledge, a common goal in academic research, but its emphasis on creating an opportunity that positively transforms anyone who participates is also a goal richly suited for making a contribution to human consciousness evolution. Organic inquiry uses nontraditional approaches to research study; it contributes new sources using different venues for acquiring the knowledge and understanding of the topics studied. The topics are often spiritual, transpersonal, and unconventional, creating new and unexplored areas of study. The uniqueness of the researcher and coresearchers’ experiences also expands both knowledge and understanding of the human being within the context of topics explored in organic inquiry. 104

Organic inquiry researchers represent a new breed of explorers. They utilize nonordinary sources of knowledge. They seek dimensions of information that few realize much less acknowledge. The topics and subjects of study are important in understanding complex layers of humanity.

Organic inquiry has strong similarities to elements found in the shaman’s journey.

For example, both experiences involve preparation, often as a ritual. They include traveling to liminal realms for inspiration and to receive answers. Both require a return from those realms to integrate the experience and knowledge received prior to sharing with others. However, it does not embody the characteristics specific to particular indigenous cultures, thus allowing a generic process to develop. In a way, it describes what Jürgen Kremer (1995) advocated, understanding through one’s own spiritual indigenous roots, but in this case indigenous translates to individually innate.

105

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS

Integrating the data to produce the findings in this chapter required another layer of preparation, illumination and integration. Preparation involved reviewing the notes taken while listening to the interviews. I gathered information each time I listened to the interviews, finding the themes and patterns emerging. Illumination came throughout the analysis process, ranging from sudden insights to an outline evolving from repeated immersion in the material. Integration resulted in the findings presented in this chapter.

Up to this point you, the reader, have been preparing for this chapter by following my journey. Now begins the opportunity for you to begin your own journey with the material. This chapter represents my integration but your illumination. The next chapter represents your opportunity to integrate my findings. The coresearchers’ stories

(Appendix G) allow you to interact with their experiences in your own way and, hopefully, come away somehow changed.

Analysis of Findings

I knew that I am first a mental/thinking individual, with a sentient ability second, in working with information. I knew that listening to the interview first from the mental/thinking perspective would remove a major layer of analysis for me and allow the feeling/sensation and intuitive layers to be less contaminated by it. My decision to conduct the analysis is this sequence proved accurate.

I realized as well, during the first interview I listened to with the focus on somatic sensations, that my feeling sensations were connected but separate in perceiving information. It seemed easier and more expedient to combine them. I held off the intuitive review of the interviews for some time. I brought interviews to this point before 106 starting the first intuitive review. I realized, eventually, that I intended to wait until I was ready to start writing the story before listening with my intuitive sense. I somehow felt that doing it this way would help me to write the story. I reviewed all notes from the previous runs, my anecdotal notes from the original interview, and my deconstruction notes. I listened to the interview one last time from the intuitive focus and then drafted the narrative story, hoping the intuitive focus would trigger the content and flow of the story, which it did for the first interview. But I discovered, in listening to subsequent interviews, that the intuitive information I received was not related to that particular interview; it concerned the entire study. I stopped the intuitive run after the tenth interview, when I made this discovery. I also realized that I had used intuition throughout the study.

The experiences and ongoing spiritual journeys (sadhanas) of each coresearcher harbor the most potential for impacting you, the reader. Each time I listened to the interviews I returned to the energies present in our original dialogue. And each time I felt a little different after listening to them. Each time I felt enriched. Each time felt special.

My intent is to somehow convey the same to you. I placed their stories in a separate section, Appendix G, in order to concentrate the essence of this study in a smaller packet that you can retrieve easily, or read solely, if that is your choice.

Schema Used for Analysis

I began noticing patterns and themes during the interview process. Those patterns and themes remained present while listening to the interviews and reviewing the transcripts. New patterns and themes emerged as the transcripts were deconstructed into 4 sets of data: Themes and Patterns, Experiences, significant Quotes that would aid in 107 creating the narrative, and Planes of consciousness the coresearchers discussed. I printed each of the sections out on different colored paper and separated them by these categories before final analysis. I used 4 x 6 inch cards as well, each one having a pattern or theme I had identified, to keep track of the coresearchers’ information in an outline form, as an overall picture.

I identified keywords during the deconstruction process and created a template list. Using the Find function on the Word software program toolbar, I identified the frequency that the word appeared in the transcript. Keywords are listed for each interview in the section introducing the coresearchers below, with the frequency in parentheses.

The template keywords were: bliss, energy, insights, love, force desire, divine, limitation, planes, challenges, intuition/intuitive, cell, light, vibration, physical, vital, mental, aspiration, surrender, intent, dark, concrete, realms, supramental, overmind, realms, ascent, descent, presence, intense.

Coresearchers and Pioneer-Explorers

From the beginning of the interview process I felt awed and honored to work with these individuals. I began seeing them as pioneer-explorers as well as coresearchers.

Pioneer-explorer conveys the true sense I have about them. They were courageous in becoming involved in this study; their experiences are spiritual and sacred to them. And they continue to push the envelope in exploring the consciousness path to the Divine that

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother pursued.

A majority of the coresearchers were male, numbering 10, along with 4 females.

The years of involvement in Integral Yoga ranged from 10 to 35 years; 9 had at least 30 years. Eleven coresearchers lived in the continental United States. 108

I struggled throughout the implementation, analysis, and presentation of findings to maintain the balance between protecting each pioneer-explorer’s privacy, fiercely at times, in my mind—maintaining their anonymity in the small Integral Yoga community—and my desire for you, the reader to become acquainted with them, to know them in a personal way so that what they impart becomes meaningful. It is a paradoxical situation; I want you to know them but I do not want you to know who they are. My attempt below is to make them real for you.

1119

His peaceful and serene countenance is evident after 30 years of experience in

Integral Yoga and the lessons he has encountered in working with others, led always by his intuition to the next crossroad in his life. A graduate student suggested he look into

Sri Aurobindo. He was teaching Eastern studies at the time and, “Having read a lot of other theology and philosophy, [they] paled next to Sri Aurobindo.” He had some initial reticence regarding the Mother but embraced the concept of Auroville. Important books include Sri Aurobindo or The Adventures in Consciousness (his first book), The Agenda,

Savitri, The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, and Letters on Yoga. 1119’s spiritual practice and previous training over the years included Western theology, Zen Buddhism, and other spiritual teachers. He has spent the last few years working with another spiritual teacher and honing his artistic skills. Aspiration, consent and consecration are important aspects of his sadhana. His current sadhana also includes meditation, prayer, and involvement with spiritually oriented groups. Keywords: Knowing (6), letting go (6), intuitive (5), death (5), aspiration (4), consent (4), consecration (4), crossroads (3). 109

Akroyd

Serene and quiet, his experiences over 25 years in Integral Yoga continue to unveil new horizons for him. Akroyd was introduced to Integral Yoga through individuals from the ashram and Auroville while attending school in India.

My whole adulthood and spirituality was completely formed by The Agenda. I felt a really strong affinity to that aspect of the sadhana, which is really Mother’s exploration of the physical. Mother's voice is at its most intimate in The Agenda; it was the intimacy of Mother voice which first drew me in.

He is also drawn to The Synthesis of Yoga, Savitri, and Satprem’s books. His sadhana began with Hatha Yoga and then progressed to mantra meditation, walking meditation, and paying attention to his dreams. He has experiences in both dreams and meditations.

His sadhana has had a positive impact on his artistic work. Keywords: Physical (43), strong (24), spontaneous (17), impact (9), natural (7), energy (10), force (6), light (7), mental (8), presence (6), dark (6).

Annie Dutts

A vital, articulate sadhak or student of yoga (Pandit, 1992, p. 222), with over 30 years Integral Yoga involvement, Annie has accumulated wisdom based on profound experiences both in the inner/higher realms and the earthly plane. Annie considers herself a mystic. She was interested in religion and mysticism as a teenager but was also later influenced by existentialism and atheism. “One day I had the typical conversion experience of God everywhere and I instantly knew that atheism was not correct. And I had started having mystical experiences and reading everything that I could Eastern.” Her introduction to Integral Yoga occurred through a lecturer from the Pondicherry ashram.

“As soon as I heard the talk, POW, that was it, instant. I knew that was my path for life. It was just obvious.” Her primary training was meditation. Her current sadhana still 110 includes meditation but is focused on integrating the spiritual with the physical, healing the physical, and cellular transformation. Annie has read “everything that the ashram ever printed” at one phase in her life. She is specifically drawn to Savitri and The Agenda.

Keywords: Inner (36), Divine (33), outer (16), descent (16), bliss (15), love (12), mental

(12), peace (11), absolutely (9), light (9), physical (9), force (9), planes (8), supramental

(7), vital (7), will (7), focus (7), surrender (6), realms (5).

Cathleen Carmichel

Cathleen’s involvement in Integral Yoga began over 35 years ago while traveling in India. A series of synchronous events occurred, starting with attending a lecture, which led to being invited to the Integral Yoga ashram in northern India, and discovering a link between a relative and the creation of Auroville. Her curiosity about Integral Yoga and

Auroville led her to reading a great deal at the ashram library and deciding to visit the ashram in Pondicherry and Auroville, where she experienced darshans with the Mother.

Her spiritual practices consist of Hatha Yoga, being mindful in every activity of life, meditation, contemplation, and singing. She works on integrating intention and aspiration into physical life. Karma yoga, working and being of service, is a strong part of her sadhana. Keywords: Love (25), intuition (19), grounded/grounding (13), energy (13), light (9), force (7), aspiration (7), challenges (6), vibration (6), intention (6).

Devotee

A long-term practitioner for over 30 years, Devotee was introduced to Integral

Yoga through an acquaintance while in college. “I had been seeking for a year and a half, getting interested in spirituality, a search for who I was and the meaning of life, an inner searching.” He started reading Sri Aurobindo’s books and “within a month I felt this was 111 my spiritual path.” He was interested in Zen Buddhism prior to his exposure to Integral

Yoga. Reading is a strong part of his sadhana, as well as his intention that his daily work be an offering to the Divine. He’s drawn to The Synthesis of Yoga and Letters on Yoga, but he reads Savitri daily. “It’s considered a mantra. It has a certain power when read out loud.” He also meditates daily. Keywords: Divine, (26), love (21), light (16), intense (13), force (10), desire (8), vital (5).

Gopal

A sadhak for over 30 years, he began his journey by attending talks given by Dr.

Chaudhuri and reading. Gopal started reading Savitri (Aurobindo, 1950) twice a day and meditating. He also worked with other practices, such as dreamwork, self-hypnosis,

Western therapies and bodywork, as well as taking classes on developing intuition. He has had significant experiences that have taken years to integrate. His current sadhana is now focused on cellular transformation. He feels his spiritual practice improves with his visits to Pondicherry.

Pondicherry ashram is ideal for me to bring about these changes. The atmosphere is magnificent. You can sustain what you gain day after day. If you’re in the work-a-day world you’ve got so many interruptions. That’s the beauty of it.

Keywords: Physical (19), cell (14), physical (10), intense (10), vibration (10), energy (9), light (9), bliss (9), intuitive (9), force (8), surrender (6).

Janaka

A mystic soul, he is trying to live life in society and trying to reconcile his desire to pursue a spiritual path with the reality of making a living and raising a family. He also possesses abilities as a leader and a desire to be of service to humanity. His involvement with Integral Yoga began over 30 years ago. Prior to learning about Integral Yoga, 112

Janaka had “been involved in some psychic development stuff. It was the nearest thing I could imagine to any kind of spirituality, although it was very much occultism at the time.” An individual whose life was transformed by the Mother asked him to facilitate setting up a yoga class, which never occurred. But Janaka began attending other yoga classes given by this individual and reading.

When I [began reading about Sri Aurobindo and the Mother] I felt like I was coming home. Everything made so much sense. A lot of it was stuff that I had thought and the rest of it was stuff that I wish I had thought.

He is drawn especially to Savitri (Aurobindo, 1950). and he often quoted it during the interview. His sadhana began with reading, then meditating, which has evolved to a daily practice that also includes contemplation. His life has a strong karma yoga focus, of work being offered to the Divine. Keywords: Fire (22), true (12), consciousness (12), power (12), Divine (12), aspiration (11) force (11), descents (11), love (8), light (8), surrender (7), energy (7), concentration (6), rejection (5).

Lizzie

A quiet but powerful individual, she has maintained a steady faith in the Divine that has allowed her to weather challenges in her life. She has been involved with Integral

Yoga for over 30 years. Her introduction was through a friend who told her about

Auroville and she knew she had to go. She was discouraged by the lack of desire to change in the people of her church at the time:

I found myself often arguing with religious people because I just couldn’t ever conceive of a creator who would create this world of such complexity and multiplicity and variety and then have only one religion. It made no sense to me.

She began attending classes, reading and discussing Savitri (Aurobindo, 1950),

The Life Divine, and The Synthesis of Yoga. “All of it spoke to me very concretely. Sri 113

Aurobindo just made so much sense to me.” Initially, she was cautious of The Mother, but her later experiences changed her early reticence. Lizzie recently attended a shamanic training workshop where she realized, “This is what we’ve been doing all along in a sense.” Other training included meditation. Her sadhana now involves meditation, daily contemplation, and removing the veil separating the spiritual and physical realms.

Keywords: Light (19), challenges (12), awareness (11), energy (10), trust (8), resistance

(8), presence (7), thinness (7), concrete (6), veil (5), Divine (5).

Om Shanti

“I grew up in India and I was naturally drawn to spiritual activities. I remember as a child being more drawn to these kind of activities than my other friends and brothers and sisters.” He continued to seek such experiences after he came to the United States.

He started attending regular meetings of the Integral Yoga center in his town over 20 years ago. He also now visits Pondicherry and Auroville every 3 years. He continues his involvement with other religious and cultural events—Hindu, Jain, and Hare Krishna— but remains settled in Integral Yoga. His sadhana is based on daily meditations, reciting mantras and prayers, and active involvement with the Integral Yoga community. He likes

Letters on Yoga and Savitri but he is especially drawn to Essays on the Gita. He continues with Integral Yoga, “Because the philosophy, the affirmative philosophy of Sri

Aurobindo, that the goal of life is not to get out of life but to bring the Divine actually working in our lives, that resonates with me.” Keywords: Divine/divine (30), prayer/pray

(16), philosophy (15), meditation (13), force (9), faith (8), surrender (6), calm (11). 114

Pancho

Pancho is another individual with a mystic soul struggling to balance his spiritual yearning with his everyday life and responsibilities. He has been involved with Integral

Yoga for over 10 years, but his first encounter with Sri Aurobindo was more than 35 years ago. An individual suggested he check out the lectures by Dr. Chaudhuri. A voracious reader, he started with Savitri, Letters on Yoga, and the The Synthesis of Yoga.

He then proceeded to read everything else on Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. At certain points in his life, before and after his introduction to Integral Yoga, Pancho explored H.

P. Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society, Sufism, Christian mysticism, and Rudolph Steiner’s

Theosophy. Reading remains part of his sadhana, along with spiritual exercises that strengthen the psychic being and allow peace and higher forces to descend naturally.

Aspiration is a key component. Keywords: Physical (42), presence (38), concrete (33), supramental (30), force (28), aspiration (23), descents (18), Divine (17), intense (16), vital (14), surrender (9), bliss (9), ascents (7), energy (5).

Rishi

Rishi is a quiet individual with the soul of a mystic who is trying to reconcile his outer and inner beings. Rishi’s entry into Integral Yoga was through books. He desired to improve his mental skills, which led him to an awareness of spiritual traditions. He found only Sri Aurobindo’s writings could be applied or used in his daily life. Integral Yoga impacted him more than anything else, especially its applicability to his daily life. Rishi has been practicing 11 years.

Important books for Rishi are: Synthesis of Yoga, Life Divine, Letters on Yoga,

Mother’s Questions & Answers. Other spiritual training includes meditation and 115 meditation retreats. His father used to take him to spiritual places and lectures by other spiritual gurus. Rishi brought up the issue of talking about these experiences, as it is considered an unwritten taboo.“It is a very unusual thing to talk about to anyone else who is not familiar with it; I cannot say that I have some force working.” Rishi’s spiritual practice incorporates meditation (more in the past), aspiration, a desire to learn, and asking for intutitive guidance on everyday decisions. Keywords: Force(s) (27), love (26), desire (25), planes (24), insights (21), Divine (19), challenges (18), quiet (17), limitation

(12), energy (10), intuition (9).

Rose

Rose came to Integral Yoga over 15 years ago, initially through Sri Chimnoy (a disciple of Sri Aurobindo), while searching for a meditation group. She grew disillusioned with the discrepancy between the teachings and the actual behavior of its members. Rose happened to come across one of Satprem’s books and it left a “very deep imprint” upon her. She left the movement and has been a solitary practitioner of Integral

Yoga for the most part since then. Her primary sadhana practice is meditation and contemplation but she considers reading, maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle, shadow work (derived from Ken Wilber’s works), and volunteer work part of her spiritual practice. She continues to work on herself. “The real important work can’t be seen by

[the] mainstream.” Rose has always felt different, that she does not quite fit in anywhere, but is not bothered by it as much now. She feels a strong affinity towards the Mother.

Keywords: Meditate/meditation (17), light (14), grateful (12), energy (11), insights (7), opposites (6). 116

Running Water

A spiritual warrior, he feels a responsibility for the nonmainstream groups of humanity who are struggling with life issues. He battles nonlight forces in the inconscient realms for them. His own physical challenges, and finding solutions to them, form a major impetus to his spiritual journey. His involvement with Integral Yoga spans over 30 years. Running Water had spiritual training in other traditions before Integral Yoga: early

Christianity, Sufism, and Tibetan Buddhism.

I believe I was led through this process by the Mother. I read about people being interviewed by her, that she sent people away from the ashram to study with other teachers. Almost like their being needed to study with different gurus before they’re ready for this. And this is a wonderful thing to me. So that was one of the early things that said they’re not a cult, they’re a true spirituality. She’s giving people what they need, she’s kicking them out if they need to be kicked out, she’s telling them not to come here because it won’t be easy. But she makes it clear that if we came to her we were called and that we came into this life as souls to take on the work. And, it’s a work that resonates to my core. Everything about my life has this resonance, that this human species needs to evolve. It needs to develop into what it truly can become because it’s really not too human yet.

His sadhana consists of reading Savitri (Aurobindo, 1950), walking meditation, meditating while gardening, and working in the inconscient realms during sleep, what he calls conscious dreaming. Intention and aspiration are important keys. He is drawn to

Savitri and Sri Aurobindo or The Adventures in Consciousness. Keywords: Energy (59), physical (46), force 42), real, (18), Divine (17), love (16), surrender (12), mental (9), concrete (8), dark (7), presence (7), realms (7) vital (7).

Sphinx

Introduced to Integral Yoga over 30 years ago, he began as a restless soul who wanted to be more than he saw himself becoming. His early spiritual practice was so focused that he concentrated too much on the inner planes to the exclusion of an outer 117

life, which he eventually returned to in order to earn a living. There were times when he

would think about giving up Integral Yoga and each time he had an experience that

brought him back to it. He has found a way to integrate his spiritual practice with his life

and his work is focused on service to the Mother’s vision. Keywords: Divine (32), love

(20), willpower (15), concentration (12), intensity (12), mental (10), imagination (8), will

(7), quiet (6), aspiration (7).

Themes and Patterns

I immersed myself in the interviews, listening to them 3 or 4 times, taking notes,

receiving insights, and noticing patterns. Three major themes developed, with

accompanying patterns, during analysis: (a) Each sadhana is unique, just like everyone

else’s; (b) significant experiences account for half of the journey—the other half is

integration; and (c) we never get off the spiritual path—sadhana is a lifelong process.

Theme: Each Sadhana is Unique, Just Like Everyone Else’s

Each coresearcher’s journey was unique and their experiences helped to move

them along on their spiritual path. Yet there were commonalities and patterns in their

journeys that united them in a single purpose for Integral Yoga: Changing humanity by

changing themselves, by concentrating on what they were becoming and being more than

doing, and being of service the Divine.

Pattern: Individual sadhanas. A seemingly innocuous suggestion from a friend or acquaintance to look into Integral Yoga served as the introduction for a majority of coresearchers. Some found themselves drawn to a lecture by a follower. Others were introduced through books. Most had a quality of synchronicity, and perhaps fate. 1119 and Lizzie heard about Auroville and went to a talk on it. Cathleen, Annie, Rose, and 118

Gopal went to discussions or presentations by Sri Aurobindo’s disciples. Akroyd and

Devotee saw acquaintances’ pictures and books. Running Water was led to Sri

Aurobindo’s bookstore. Rishi’s search for self-improvement led him to Sri Aurobindo’s literature.

All of them solidified their connection from reading Sri Aurobindo’s and the

Mother’s works. Significant works include Savitri, The Agenda, The Synthesis of Yoga,

Letters on Yoga, Satprem’s books, and The Life Divine.

Integral Yoga does not have a specific system or training, and the coresearchers’ spiritual training reflects this freedom in the eclecticism of their practices. Training in other spiritual disciplines included Sufism, Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Christian mysticism, and Hindu traditions. Coresearchers learned varied forms of meditation practice and studied with other spiritual teachers. Hatha Yoga, dance, and singing comprised the physical embodiment of their spirituality. And Western practices included dreamwork, intuition, imagery, self-hypnosis, shamanic and psychotherapeutic training.

Some, Om Shanti and 1119 for instance, continue to participate in other spiritual activities and do not see a conflict with Integral Yoga.

Sadhanas are as unique as the individual. Coresearchers continue to seek what works best for them that allows the Divine a greater presence in their daily lives. Reading remains the strongest practice, followed by some form of meditation or contemplation.

Prayer, recitation of mantra, working with dreams, hatha yoga, and mindfulness activities are strongly present in many practices. Walking meditation is important to a few.

Volunteer work and work related to Integral Yoga were an important aspect of sadhana to

Cathleen, Sphinx, Rose, and Running Water, for instance. Rishi categorized his sadhana 119 as a “natural progression of knowledge,” viewing the higher planes of consciousness as

“different stage[s] of development.”

Pattern: Identification with Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Many coresearchers felt a greater affinity to either Sri Aurobindo or the Mother. Others felt no difference.

And Satprem had a strong influence on several sadhaks. I gleaned this from how often a coresearcher would talk about Sri Aurobindo or the Mother, how often their encounters or experiences included either, or which books strongly influenced them. Rishi, Lizzie,

1119, Janaka, Cathleen, Om Shanti, Sphinx, and Devotee showed equanimity in our conversations regarding Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Gopal, Running Water, and Rose tended to speak of a greater affinity in working with the Mother. Annie and Pancho showed a stronger pull to Sri Aurobindo, although Pancho is seeking more experiences with the Mother. And Satprem had a strong influence on Annie, Akroyd, 1119, and Rose.

There appears to be a difference between how Sri Aurobindo and the Mother worked. The Mother’s influence was more personal, related to the psychic being and psychicisation, and appeared often when coresearchers were in desperate need. The

Mother is a strong and important force in their lives. She interacts, comforts, protects, and surrounds them with Divine love. Sri Aurobindo’s influence was of a more intellectual nature, offering advice and redirecting them when needed.

Other forms of yoga—jnana, raja, karma, bhakti, and hatha—appear throughout the coresearchers’ sadhanas in varying degrees. Some practices possessed a strong influence of karma or service; others showed a predominance of bhakti. Most had more than one form. 120

Pattern: Dynamic of intention, will, aspiration, and surrender. The strong key to success in one’s sadhana is the combined use of intention, aspiration, will, and surrender.

Coresearchers’ sadhanas emphasized one or two. Certain ones were more important to them. Rishi’s desire to know about everything, his aspiration, is strong and his practice of awaiting insights, surrender, is consistent. Running Water’s emphasis is to “offer,”

“consecrate,” and to surrender to the Mother. For Gopal it is being open, aspiring, but surrender is strongest. Sphinx believes will is most important in Integral Yoga; for 1119 it is “consent and consecrate.” Janaka interprets the process as one of aspiration, rejection

(of what is not true), and surrender. All coresearchers felt that surrender was an important part of their sadhana. In listening to Running Water’s interview, I began to see these faculties more as forces that operated from the individual out to the Divine.

Theme: Significant Experiences Account for Half of the Journey; the Other Half is Integration

All of their experiences impacted them in some way to a greater or lesser degree.

Each one then worked on integrating the experiences into their lives, determining the reason for the experience, attempting to hold onto the feelings it produced or reproduce it, or using their new awareness to change the way they viewed and lived life. The experience and its integration were equally important. Sometimes the experience simply validated to them that they were on the right path. Other times it maintained them on the path despite opposition in their waking lives or prolonged periods of time between experiences. These experiences also comforted those who felt the isolation of their chosen Integral Yoga path. A few sought out others to help them make sense of their experiences. I think it also helped them to validate their experiences as meaningful. 121

Pattern: States of consciousness with experiences. Experiences occurred in sleep, meditation, and waking states. Coresearchers could wake up during experiences in their dreams, become aware of the experience, and then go back into it. Running Water became aware that he could actively move in the realms of his experiences, calling it

“conscious dreaming.” Pancho would have experiences while reading. Some found walking meditation and running elicited experiences.

Others simply focused their awareness and the spiritual world was there for them.

Lizzie described the dual awareness as the “lightness of spirit working with the concreteness of the body. It’s an awareness of them both there at the same time.” Akroyd described it as the awareness of the outside and inside worlds at the same time. 1119 called it a “split consciousness,” or an “observer consciousness.” Devotee feels the

Divine presence around him and it only requires a slight shift in attention to unite with it.

For Rose, it only takes an awareness and focus to feel the Mother’s presence.

Pattern: Ascending. A majority of the coresearchers related an experience that carried a sense of ascension, or a dual process of ascension and descension. Several carried the quality of an out-of-the-body experience. They simply left their bodies and floated above whatever they were observing below. Rishi described it as being on the 12th floor of a building and looking down. The rising of kundalini energy through the chakras of the body was another common experience. Gopal believed his experience was of the subtle physical body. The experience of ascending up out of the body into higher planes was rare and the term confused some because they could not relate to it. Their descriptions used terms such as bliss, light, joy, floating, and a widening above the head of oneself. Pancho and 1119 associated aspiration as a path of ascension, “aspiration 122 naturally takes you there” (Pancho). Annie related having more ascent experiences than descent. Devotee, 1119, Pancho, Lizzie, and Rose viewed ascent as the first part of a two- step process, connecting ascent with descent.

Pattern: Descending. Descent experiences of force, light, and energy were common. Janaka and 1119 noticed humming or ringing in their ears in these experiences.

And whatever was felt was either very strong, very forceful, or it carried the sensation of being showered. It was almost too hard to bear for some. Pancho asked the force to stop when it became too uncomfortable, which it did. Descents of energy and force occurred in group situations as well; Janaka relates two experiences, saying, “If you could even imagine going against it and trying to reject it, you would be swimming up from a mine shaft, through dense water, but who would want to?” Another descriptive term used was the feeling of being enveloped in silence. Other descriptors included being “ravished by bliss” (Annie), “blissful energy” (Running Water), a feeling “outside time and space”

(1119), and “a spiritual waterfall, like a firefall” (Janaka). A few had experiences of being enveloped in a column of light.

Pattern: Psychic being. Experiences of the psychic being were powerful. The

Mother was often associated with these experiences by her presence, or their sense of her presence, and her force. Aspiration and surrender seemed to be the catalysts for psychic being experiences. The coresearchers knew the psychic being was involved in their experiences because they involved the center of their chest and the heart area, where the psychic being is located. Shakti, the feminine force of the universal, seemed to be associated with such experiences. Gopal described it as having the quality of sweetness,

“a psychic presence of the Mother.” And Pancho knew during his psychicisation 123 experience that he was feeling his own soul’s presence, not Sri Aurobindo or Christ or the

Mother. Janaka after sensing his psychic being becoming more active over time, said,

“All of sudden it wasn’t me seeking the psychic being, I was the psychic being, and an identity was forged.” And for some the experience carried a soft quality rather than an energetic force. Coresearchers described feelings of being purified and cleansed, and of harmony, calmness and peace. Yet the aspiration, the sending out of prayers, the intention and surrender involved in opening to the Divine carried the characteristics of the agni, the mystic fire.

Pattern: Encounters with nonlight forces. Several coresearchers were aware of the presence of forces committed to preventing Divine light from entering the earth plane. Sri

Aurobindo was aware of their presence around the ashram, waiting for a chance to influence the sadhaks. He also understood that the second World War was a strong push by dark forces, which he called asuric forces, to assert control of the planet (Nirodbaran,

1973; Purani, n.d.; Roy, 1984; Satprem, 1970, 1980). Akroyd experienced them in a town in India. Cathleen knows of their presence from her work with clients, calling them

“energy vampires.” Gopal encountered them in spiritual environments. Pancho and Annie encountered them during hallucinogenic drug-induced experiences. And Running Water actively engages and battles them during sleep, during conscious dreaming, seeing it as his work for the Mother.

Pattern: Planes. When I started this research, my primary interest was experiences of higher planes of consciousness, the planes above higher mind in Integral

Yoga. My interest has changed and expanded as a result of my findings. Six coresearchers related experiences in these higher planes. Others did not tell me of these 124 kinds of experiences, and still others had experiences in places other than the ones considered higher planes of consciousness. Coresearchers labeled the planes they experienced, often finding similar descriptions in the Integral Yoga literature or comparing their experiences with another sadhak who reported similar experiences. The most frequently reported experiences were of the intuitive mind plane—Rishi, Akroyd, and 1119. Rishi and Annie reported experiences in overmind. Pancho and Annie reported experiences in the supramental consciousness. Devotee believed he experienced the plane of sachchidananda. Sphinx felt a “superhuman power” enter him. And Running Water is very clear that he works in the subliminal and inconscient realms, which I believe are back doors to higher planes.

Akroyd, Devotee, Lizzie, 1119, and Rose related the ability to apprehend the thin veil between the physical and spiritual realms by simply focusing their awareness on it. I had the sense that they could coexist in both worlds simultaneously, and were delighted to do it. They actively work to stabilize the spiritual side more permanently into the physical world.

Several of the coresearchers related the experience of being inside a column of light. Annie had the experiences of what she called the “Golden X” and surhomme, which do not necessarily fit into the descriptions in the Integral Yoga literature on higher planes. Gopal and Annie had experiences of what they described as the subtle physical.

Annie also called it:

The awakened divinity of the physical, of matter waking up to the Divine. And that I tell you, you know all these spectacular experiences that I have been talking about in the inner and higher pale in comparison to matter waking up to the Divine. Because it is absolutely solid, absolutely concrete, absolutely holy, peace, it’s just unbelievable.

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Gopal related an experience of the supramental in the physical body, which he found in the literature but is not ascribed to a distinct plane. Sri Aurobindo said the higher planes were not distinct and real or actual locations in space, “only a correlation in the consciousness” (Aurobindo, 1970b, p. 1155). Each is merely a space in a multidimensional frame of reference known as consciousness.

Theme: We Never Get Off the Spiritual Path; Sadhana is a Lifelong Process

I realized this theme during the interview process and it became clearer when I created the coresearchers’ stories. Each interview addressed issues and challenges they were currently dealing with, sometimes years after an experience. None voiced being done. All voiced the intent to continue moving forward on their journeys, working on their sadhanas, and wondering how to help humanity and how the Divine wanted them to do it. As Lizzie put it, “There’s no going back, you know too much, you can’t go back to an ordinary life…There’s no endpoint in spiritual development, is there?”

Pattern: Challenges. Several issues emerged that coresearchers currently faced or continued to resolve in their sadhanas. Some were the result of their spiritual progress.

One issue was how to bring the spiritual into the physical world. Cathleen said,

“Transformation is physical work. It isn’t ethereal or abstract, it needs to be real in the body.” Another challenge was finding new or additional ways to serve humankind, how to be of service. All expressed an aspiration and intent to progress spiritually, seeking a greater involvement and presence of the Divine in their lives. A few expressed an urgency to continue the evolutionary work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother—cellular transformation to a spiritual being. 126

I mentioned earlier that some coresearchers seem to live a dual reality between the physical and spiritual worlds, between the outside and inside worlds. The veil between the two realms is thin enough that simple focus and awareness reveals them. But it remains a challenge for them to operate in a dual consciousness for longer periods of time, working to blend them and stabilize that connection.

Some issues continued to periodically appear despite earlier resolution. A major difficulty was how to handle desires. While the ego might occasionally interfere with their experiences, requiring simply an awareness of its intrusion, the more frequent and perhaps hardest problem to resolve permanently for some coresearchers was sexual desire. The preferred behavior, enforced in the ashrams, is abstinence of sex, a rule of asceticism found in spiritual traditions. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother did not insist on sexual abstinence but felt it would assist one’s spiritual progress. Some coresearchers did not have a problem choosing abstinence, called brahmacharya. Others chose not to participate and continued meaningful physical relationships. And others continue to grapple with the issue, unable to resolve it permanently or encountering situations that made them revisit their decision.

And others had lifelong concerns that had not been completely resolved. The most significant issue in this category was the conflict between wanting to pursue a spiritual life only and having the obligations of being in a marriage or partnership, raising a family, earning a living, and relating to people not pursuing a spiritual path. Carolyn

Myss used the term, “mystics without monasteries” (Myss, 1987). It has been hard to find a balance, to feel at peace with their choices. Most of the spouses and partners were not involved in Integral Yoga. Some provided coresearchers with a stability that allowed 127 them to pursue their spiritual growth. Conflict arose in some coresearchers’ lives when the partners resented their involvement in Integral Yoga and forced them to make choices.

Pattern: Feeling isolated, not fitting in, involvement in the yoga community.

Another pattern correlating with the previous discussion is feelings of isolation from families, from others who do not understand being on a spiritual path, and even the

Integral Yoga community. They voiced being unable to share their experiences with others and feeling misunderstood by others. Some were geographically isolated from an

Integral Yoga community, others felt as if they did not fit in, or that the community was too narrow-minded and not truly spiritual. However, whether by choice or not, several voiced that being isolated benefited them a significant degree. They felt they worked out their sadhana without the interference or influences of other sadhaks. They were not confined by the limitations of others. Despite their reservations and sense of not fitting in, these coresearchers felt it important to maintain at least some contact with the Integral

Yoga community because of the importance of the Integral Yoga’s work for humanity.

They also hope to eventually find a place where they can feel they belong.

Other Findings

I observed a few miscellaneous patterns. One pattern was that a few of the coresearchers had profound experiences triggered by some sort of crisis or trauma that led to a significant experience resulting in important changes in their sadhana. And several coresearchers expressed support for the study, believing it to be a timely contribution to the Integral Yoga community; that it represented a shift from previous convention or taboo to talk about one’s experiences. They felt it appropriate to change 128 that practice and Integral Yoga’s presence in the world, beyond the community boundaries. Annie described it as, “the post-ashram yoga, because it is yoga in the world.

It’s like the material world is going to get a new landlord, the Divine is moving in.”

In many of the feeling/somatic runs of listening to the interviews, I experienced vibrations, humming sensations, and pressure in my body. The pressure sensations seemed to occur between my eyebrows in the center of my chest. I often went “under,” where I was aware of the interview and the voices but not the content because I felt as if I were somewhere else. I believe there must be an energy in sound, especially when talking about spiritual subjects within a sacred space. Japa, the exercise of repeating mantra out loud, is based on this premise.

Impact of Study: Coresearchers

Several coresearchers mentioned that preparing for and participating in the interview helped them clarify their experiences and gave them an overall picture of their journey, especially about the progression and path of their sadhana. The interview questions were helpful, illuminating and beneficial, creating new insights for them. They expressed support for this study, believing it timely for Integral Yoga and its community.

After reviewing and approving their stories, I asked the coresearchers to tell me how their participation in the study affected them and 10 replied. Their comments follow:

1119

To tell my story is to put it out there. Oh, am I saying that? Is that really the way it is? How will it be interpreted? These questions helped me to realize more deeply who I actually am and what really matters. Participating in this study has opened some different windows into my soul.

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Akroyd

I found it very interesting to review my sadhana for the past 30 years. Some dreams that were very important were revisited, and I was able to gain a better understanding of them in context of my evolving practice. I also began to see hidden threads passing through my yogic life.

Gopal

As far as the effect on me from the interview, I don’t recall anything in particular. However, recalling the incidents always produces some emotional impact, some more than others.

Lizzie

This has been a great experience for me. It was interesting to see the broad view of my life, spiritually, and I think it probably helped me identify that journey as my prime motivator in life. It might not have been as easy to recognize had I not gone through it all with you. Thank you.

Om Shanti

I benefited by participating in the study. It made me reflect on what Integral Yoga means to me and how it may have changed me. Thanks for raising perceptive questions.

Pancho

This interview penetrated to a reach that is rare in my experience. In it I inhabited some of the profounder peaks of this personal human journey; those experiences that have touched me, that I will carry on beyond all this, in my soul. I need to say it was also very validating, by virtue of the interaction from this interviewer, who helped me better understand myself as a “mystic soul” attempting to live [and] be motivated from inner depths. I feel it may be necessary for some of us to break that age-old proscription, wise and necessary in the past, against such sharing— putting forward one’s profoundest experiences, rather than always keeping silent about them—so that there can be more mutuality in what is moving us all forward to something beyond the mind, into a future we have felt not only before us, but in us, in many more of us than we yet know.

Rishi

This had been my first time talking so openly about my intimate spiritual experiences to someone. I learned two things from this: (a) I need to improve my English so that I can properly express my spiritual aspirations and experiences and (b) I realized from that day onwards there is no reason for me to hide my love 130

for God from anybody (I found out that people do really like talking about the deeper aspects of life).

Rose

I’m very grateful for the deep conversation we had; you telling me that there are some more Integral Workers out there. I mean I knew, but hearing it from you made it so much more real for me. Which resulted in a shift. A clear break with the frequent searching in the past for other familiar souls to a very stable recognition of: this is my work, I’m guided, and I’m meant to be in this place. This acceptance was there before in my mind, but now it permeated through many more layers inside of me. After all it was an important confirmation of my work. Yet it brought me to a simple understanding on many layers: That’s my work, don’t fuss, don’t ponder over it, just get on with it.

Running Water

Participation in this study has affected this being in several ways. As is typical in life, a relatedness from one action touches another aspect and that yet another and given ones capacity and receptivity yet more may grow toward blossoming. To begin with this study, I have been asked to interact using technical awareness, software and skills, which require an intellectual growth. Subsequently I find myself engaged in several more exchanges of an academic and intellectual integration of insights garnered by me during this lifetime. Which touches also, a new self-appreciation of the work and explorations and developments now beginning to enter a more “mature” stage, possibly. Expressed as a horticulturist, I have also gained a deeper appreciation of humbleness and the need of it to trim the wild growth of ego...but to remember that one can call and ask for interaction and help toward a specific goal...that little is accomplished in a vacuum if anything. I am also reminded of how much is yet to be planted sprouted and nurtured to realized fruition. I see the most [e]ffect in a stepping up of social interaction in areas of life development, which interests me with a renewed “zeal”. Thank you for creating and including me in this opportunity of growth.

Sphinx

Well, looking at [it] objectively, I am grateful that you weaved my story and that it will be published anonymously. So I derive some gratification that it will serve the seekers of light, that it might guide the seekers, perhaps even inspire them on the path and in that way it may serve the growth of light and consciousness in the world, and the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Giving [an] interview to you for your research was also a part of my work to serve the Mother. Thank you.

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Presentation of Findings: Stories

Creating Summary Stories and Narrative

The individual’s own words create the story (Clements, 2002). After listening to the first interview intuitively, an outline for each story emerged consisting of three parts:

Sadhana, Experiences, and Current Issues and Challenges. I drafted the story by distilling the essential information—experiences and messages—gleaned from the deconstruction and analysis of each interview.

While previous dissertations using organic inquiry placed the stories within the results chapter (Cornell, 2006; Curry, 2003; Magnussen, 2004; Murray, 2001), my intuitive sense remained from the outset to place the stories together in an appendix

(Appendix G). I personally found it difficult to read through the findings in the aforementioned dissertations because the researchers’ comments leading up to each story, and the explanation of findings after each story seemed to interrupt the flow. I wanted to separate the stories from my findings, placing them together for easy access. I believed it also created a better flow and was more conducive to fostering reader impact.

My criteria for choosing the material to include in each story rested on positive answers to the following questions: Is the identity of the coresearcher protected? Would it help the reader? Would it be interesting to the reader?

I enlisted the help of my second reader to provide initial feedback on the first story draft. The feedback was positive, helpful, and confirmed my original sense of the appropriate structure for each story. Additionally, the discussion brought up the idea of providing an overview of Integral Yoga to the readers, along with some definitions that would help the reader better understand what they were reading. I included them in the 132 readers’ instruction packets, which also contained consent forms that they signed prior to reading the stories.

Impact of Study: Readers

I deliberately chose three readers from my acquaintances who I viewed to be on different points of a spiritual path continuum, giving each a pseudonym. The first reader

(Ariel) was not consciously pursuing a spiritual path and considered herself agnostic. The second (Beth) was beginning her spiritual journey and attempting to integrate her newly acquired information with the teachings of mainstream Christianity. The third individual

(Cassie) was very advanced in her spiritual path and a minister trained in a Western mystery school. All were unfamiliar with Integral Yoga. They read four narrative stories

(Annie, Janaka, Running Water, and 1119) and three overall summary stories (Descent,

Psychic Being, and Nonlight Forces).

I asked them the following questions: What story or stories were you drawn to the most? What about them appealed to you? How did these stories affect you? What did you get from them? Do you have any suggestions to make reading these stories better for future readers?

Ariel

Ariel was drawn most to Janaka’s story because of his relationship to his spouse.

He felt it was important to share his life with another person, his wife. I believe our relationships with people are essential to our well-being and reason for being here. I don’t agree with the separating or lack of intimacy that is encouraged with the yoga.

She had a strong negative reaction to Annie’s story, which fascinated me knowing that

Ariel knew people like Annie when she was younger. 133

The first story, Annie Dutts, turned me off to the topic and the project. Unfortunately, it was the first story I read [and] it colored my view of everything I read afterwards. She reminded me of being 20ish and in college. I felt like she was saying, “my acid dealer is better than yours, my trips are better than yours” and every time she told about another experience it felt like she was saying, “oh yeah, I did that but better than you.”

Ariel suggested having more information on Integral Yoga and demographic information on the individuals.

Beth

Beth was drawn to 1119’s story, specifically his experiences at age 4 and meditating along the river.

In the 1119 story, he seems to have known from the age of 4 that there was something very powerful going on in the universe. When he talks about his experience of mediating in the foothills along a river...his comments after his experience are: “This anchored me into a truth. So after that I didn’t have to believe in any philosophy or religion or system because I had the actual experience. It’s moving from faith or believing into knowing.” I found that comment to be very “WOW”—profound. At the end of his interview he states: “Every soul comes in with the abilities needed. A spiritual practice only enhances what happens in your everyday life.” This, I’m learning is true—difficult, but true.

She also found Annie’s story very interesting, saying that Annie seemed “a bit on the wild side,” or perhaps eccentric.

I LOVE her mantra...”Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.” I think that I’m going to adopt that as my own. She speaks of being very grateful for her yoga and her “vision.” It gives her life meaning and “something to organize her life around.” For something that powerful to make her feel that her life is important and gives her that much meaning...hey, I think that’s what life should be all about.

Beth found that reading the stories gave her validation, “that these experiences really exist. I’ve read about them in books and discussed them with other people. And then I read these stories and now I know that they are real, that they really exist, and they aren’t fictitious.” 134

Cassie

Cassie called her reading experience “radical!” It provided a glimpse into “this very rarefied world.” She had thoughtful and insightful comments about her experience.

They are truly divine humans holding, I know, the earth in precarious balance…somewhat like Buddhist monks do. Bless them. Each story affected me and helped me to understand on another level, experiences I have had and has prepared me for experiences I may have. I read some of the words and said to myself, “So, that’s what that was!” It was empowering knowing that what I experienced had a “name”, and a specific purpose that moves one closer to one’s goal of being divine while still human. And it’s not just in your imagination.

There is a consistency of experience that runs through all the stories that make them more “real” and valid for me. Reading these stories has somehow given me more confidence in the work I am doing and in owning the experiences I have and realizing that work or a path has to be walked in order for experiences to occur and to have awareness and appreciation of them.

I believe that in the appreciation of such experiences one builds the matrix for such experiences to continue to happen. But one must even know they exist before one can appreciate their value. And [that] to me is one of the many values of these stories.

Let me address the stories that I related the least to first: Dark experiences. I personally have had very few such experiences. However, I am of such a temperament that I have had to struggle with fear my whole life (according to my mom I was born that way) and I think that is part of the reason I don’t really run into such situations. I cut them off at the pass, so to speak (it wasn’t always like this. I had to work at it). So, reading of them, reading what others experienced was amazing. It also helped give me a greater appreciation for those in my circle that do experience such events. Also encouraging was the point that there is always a way for such events to be controlled. There is no need to flip out.

The stories made it abundantly clear that achieving divinity while yet still human is a process and it involves many parts of us; all parts needing to be recognized, processed and incorporated. As I look over the stories I can’t pick anyone that is better than any other. They all are so real and you can see the clarity and integrating that is going on as they speak to you.

I got the feeling from reading their stories that anyone that wanted to incorporate their divinity could do so. I did not get the feeling that any of these people thought they “were all that”, that they were unique or special. They sounded like hard working, dedicated humans wanting with every fiber of their being to incorporate their divinity…now. These are my kind of people. 135

What appealed to me about the stories was that it becomes clear that reaching for divinity, for these people, was as imperative to them as breathing, food and water is to the average person. I believe these people would not survive if they did not continue to reach to incorporate themselves. You can tell from the stories that these people work on this virtually every moment of every day, even if it is just through intent, desire and will. I am so impressed. I did not realize that such people existed…aside from the few that I am privileged to know in my personal life. Being a staunch believer that “light workers” (people searching for their souls) are essential to the survival of our planet I am heartened to know what it is that Integral Yoga purports.

Supplemental Findings

Face-to-Face versus Telephone Interviews

Ten interviews were face-to-face, involving travel on my part to meet them. I was unable to travel to four of the coresearchers and our interaction was over the telephone.

One of the interviews I conducted face-to-face, Lizzie, had to be repeated over the telephone when I discovered that my digital voice recorder, which I had set in voice activation mode, had not picked up either of our voices. Additionally, my backup cassette recording was too low in volume to decipher any conversation. The gift from this situation was that Lizzie was able to compare our conversation from our face-to-face meeting with our telephone meeting and provide feedback.

I think there was a little more energy between you and me in the face-to-face one, more tangible energy. In terms of my being able to reach into my experiences I think it’s very similar. I think in terms of the conversation, it did come out. We built up a sense of camaraderie that carries over so I really feel like in many respects, in terms of our conversation, it’s been very much the same, in terms of the helpfulness of it. [But] it’s nice to have you right there (laughter). I think whenever you have a second conversation things go off on different tangents. [It] is just the human fun of having someone there. But I think in terms of spiritual, I don’t think it matters. I’ve done coaching, in which you have to create a sacred space for people, and I’ve found that it can be as strong over the phone as it can be in person. You can create that if there is an honoring of not having things interrupting the conversation, but that’s true either way. It can be very powerful, just as powerful over the phone. I think there’s a connection such that if you are working sincerely on yourself it has a profound impact on all those along the web 136

of that connectiveness. And, I don’t think that’s a physical proximity element. And certainly I don’t [think] Mother did. She talked with people about seeing things in New York through someone else’s eyes; she’d travel and be with that person. And experience things through their experiencing them.

One dynamic missing from the telephone interviews was the depth of interchange and information. I felt as if I missed a wealth of information and a personal connection that meeting someone in person and talking informally engenders, both before and after the interview. I personally missed the energetic exchange and information that comes from a physical meeting.

An interesting observation came from Sphinx regarding telephone interviews. He wrote:

Had the interview been in person, I would not have been able to open myself and say all that I said. So it was good that it was over the phone. This was the first experience for me and I hope it will be the last.

Impact of Study: Transcribers

I asked the primary transcriber how she was affected by her work in this study.

She wrote the following:

I have studied various religious practices, but never had really heard of [Integral Yoga]. After the first couple of interviews and looking up some of the terms so that I could become more familiar with them, I did become more enlightened and more interested in [its] beliefs. What I found interesting is the way that each individual had such a different way of incorporating them [beliefs into] their lives and I found myself thinking of the thoughts and ideas long after the transcribing work had been completed for that day. So I think that it opened up a facet of something that I had not known about that will stay with me and [I] am better for the experience.

The third reader, Cassie, also transcribed one and one half interviews. She found an energetic difference between listening to interviews and reading the stories.

In the oral interviews there is an energetic frequency that is transmitted while they speak and when you [the researcher] verbalize with them. A lot more comes through with the spoken word because you can actually feel the energy shifts as 137

they describe their experiences. The frequency touches the listener stronger than with just the written word. But you can feel it in the words, also.

Conclusion

In organic inquiry the process of inspiration, illumination, and integration encompasses data collection and analysis. The process began when I contacted 2 participants at the annual meeting for Integral Yoga practitioners in the Untied States and identified the major Integral Yoga centers. The Integral Yoga community is very connected electronically. I sent recruitment flyers to the centers and to an academic contact who forwarded the flyer to the nearby center on the West coast. I received 12 responses within 2 ½ weeks. No one responded afterward. All respondents fit the eligibility criteria.

I organized four trips to interview 10 coresearchers in person. I was not able to meet four individuals and conducted their interviews by telephone. Seven interviews took place in the coresearchers’ homes, one in a public library conference room and two in an empty room at the coresearchers’ workplaces. The shortest interview was 1 hour 12 minutes; the longest was 2 hours 26 minutes. Ten coresearchers were male and 4 were female. The range of years involved in Integral Yoga was 10 to 35 years, with 9 coresearchers having at least 30 years experience.

I hired a professional transcriber who was not affiliated with Integral Yoga to convert the recordings to written text. She transcribed 13 interviews. A friend not affiliated with Integral Yoga transcribed one and a half interviews. She also became the third story reader. 138

I listened to each interview for accuracy prior to sending them to the coresearcher.

Coresearchers reviewed the transcript for accuracy in our conversation and to alert me to any material that could potentially identify them or made them uncomfortable.

Following the analysis checklist (Appendix F), I listened to the tapes three more times using a mental/thinking focus, a feeling/somatic focus, and an intuitive focus respectively. I stopped listening with an intuitive focus after 10 interviews because no new data about the interview was ever elicited with this run and I realized I had been using an intuitive focus throughout the research process.

Listening to the tapes, reading my notes, and reviewing the transcript aided me in identifying four categories for deconstruction. The categories evolved after analyzing the first four interviews and remained consistent with the rest of the interviews. They were:

Patterns and Themes, Experiences, Planes of Consciousness, and Quotes.

The feeling/somatic review of the interview recording elicited some information and insights. The main result appeared to be my reaction to certain areas of conversation.

I went into an altered state while listening to a few of them; I was not asleep because I heard the voices on the recording but I felt as if I were somewhere else and did not follow the conversation. I am not sure how these reviews contributed directly to my findings unless it was to enhance my understanding of the coresearcher’s journey.

The outline for the coresearchers’ stories evolved from the deconstruction of information emerging from the patterns and themes and experiences categories. My criteria for what to include in each story rested on asking the following questions: Will the information be useful to and potentially help the reader? Will it hold the reader’s 139 interest? Could the coresearcher be identified by the story? I excluded or generalized information that might identify the coresearcher or did not seem important to the story.

Coresearchers reviewed, revised, and approved their stories and additional material used for other stories. I created five overall summaries that combined similar experiences among coresearchers. Additionally, I developed three discussion stories from two interviews about topics that seemed important for future dialogue in the Integral

Yoga community.

I conducted a small pilot phase to assess whether the stories could potentially impact readers. I selected three acquaintances representing different points on a continuum along a spiritual path. The first reader was not on a spiritual path, the second just beginning her spiritual journey, and the third reader was well-advanced along the spiritual path. All were unfamiliar with Integral Yoga. They read the same material: 4 coresearcher stories and 3 overall summaries. Each of the readers reported some effect from the stories. One reader reported a very strong negative reaction to one story that affected her subsequent reading and view of Integral Yoga. And although her reaction was negative, it was a strong reaction and affected her.

I organized the interview data in a similar manner to the steps Renata Tesch

(1990) outlined for unstructured data: (a) Get an overall sense of the interview; (b)

Identify topic areas in the transcript and where they shift; (c) List the topics. I used 4 x 6 inch cards to note emerging themes and patterns, adding to them with each interview; (d)

Review the interview, adding new topics as they emerge. I revisited the interview at least three times; (e) Refine and relate. I identified four categories to deconstruct the interview data, marking the areas with a color-coded highlighter; (f) Rename topics, themes, and 140 patterns to better reflect the context, an ongoing process; (g) Cluster the categories to note similarities and their importance to the creation of the story; and (h) Review the organization and titles, renaming or recoding as needed (pp. 142-145). Some patterns were revised. The themes were refined to reflect the true nature of the findings.

I organized the patterns as conceptually ordered displays (Miles & Huberman, 1994), shuffling them around until the themes clearly emerged and organized the patterns associated with the appropriate theme.

Results paradoxically showed uniqueness and commonalities. Each coresearcher’s story is unique but has features in common with other coresearchers. The resulting themes were: Each sadhana is unique, just like everyone else’s; Experience is only half of the journey—integration is the other half; and One never gets off the spiritual path— sadhana is a lifelong process.

The stories are placed together and found in Appendix G of this study. They reflect my findings in a personal way and are told in their own words. The next chapter discusses the results as they relate to the research questions, supplemental issues evoked from the study findings, suggested avenues for future research, delimitations and additional limitations of the study, and how the study impacted me.

141

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION

This chapter discusses interesting features of the study’s findings and elaborates on unexpected ones. The research questions are revisited in light of these findings. A short elaboration of the Mother is included, briefly mentioned in Chapter 2, enhancing the reader’s understanding of her significance to the coresearchers, which was an unexpected finding during the interviews; her influence was stronger than I originally believed. Supplemental discussion of the findings are addressed. I include an account of how conducting the study impacted me. The study’s delimitations and additional limitations are presented. I suggest ideas for future research generated from the study.

The chapter ends with a summary of the significance of the study’s findings.

Research Questions

Research Question 1: What Is the Experience of Being in Higher Planes of Consciousness in Integral Yoga?

Six of the coresearchers described experiences or having traits they identified as higher consciousness planes described by Sri Aurobindo. None of the coresearchers actively sought them. Most did not know where they had been until they researched it afterward, comparing their experience to Sri Aurobindo’s description in the literature, or the Mother’s, or to someone else, who had described it in a publication or Internet blog.

The experiences of higher planes impacted the coresearchers when they occurred, significantly imprinting on them. But the outcome, the consequence, the reason for the experiences served different purposes. For some, they validated that they were on the right path; it kept them going, kept them on the path even when years would pass without another significant experience. For others, it instilled a drive to re-experience the planes. 142

And for others, it became a journey of finding a way to integrate the experience, to make something so profound fit into their lives.

Coresearchers who did not subjectively experience higher planes had profound experiences with similar results. The psychic being opening was a major turning point for some of them. So perhaps it is not the place, the experience of higher planes, over other experiences that are key. It is about what experience the Divine sends them at a specific point in their sadhana, and how each individual incorporates and uses that experience in the sadhana—how it changes the individual and the spiritual practice. What is more important then is not the type of experience or the experience itself; it is the integration of it that carries the ability to permanently transform the individual.

It became evident from my interviews that one does not seek the higher planes of consciousness; they came to the coresearchers. Some, like Pancho, understood that the process must be allowed to unfold naturally. In the meantime, preparation of the physical, mental, and vital aspects of their being—purification of those parts—was important in order to handle the energies when they descended. Opening the psychic being is essential in order to create the doorway or channel for these energies to descend. The psychic being also helps to stabilize them in matter. The sadhanas of the coresearchers reflect this process. The other important factor is the presence of intention, will, aspiration, and surrender. These qualities maintain the energetic focus that allows Divine interaction and eventual integration.

Being “up” in higher planes is the direction commonly held when talking about higher planes. But I began to wonder, after listening to coresearchers relate their profound and significant experiences, if perhaps those higher planes actually came 143

“down” to the individual. How would someone describe being in certain planes and realms during dreaming or sleep? How did the individual “get” there? It is difficult to discern. The planes appear to descend more than the coresearchers ascend, affecting them physically, mentally, and emotionally as well. The intuitive plane was the only plane a few coresearchers accessed and engaged with regularly—particularly Rishi and 1119, who displayed characteristics of a trait experience.

My original goal was to analyze the coresearchers’ experiences with the intent of fitting them into specific higher planes. During the course of my journey through this study I realized that doing so would violate the respect, trust, and sacredness of our discussions. It would signify some kind of negation of their experiences for me to place them in artificial boundaries. I decided not do so unless they identified them.

This research question, I found, was restrictive. Integral Yoga emphasizes change or transformation of the total being in all aspects of life. Higher planes are only one avenue to experience change. My conversations with these pioneer-explorers showed me that transformation occurs from different directions, that the uniqueness of their sadhanas and their experiences along their journey are more important. If I were to repeat this study, I would change this question to, “What are the experiences in consciousness in long-term practitioners of Integral Yoga and how are they integrated into their spiritual practice?”

Research Question 2: Using the Research Method of Organic Inquiry, Can Sharing This Experience Somehow Impact or Change the Reader?

Each reader reported some effect, although Ariel’s, the first reader, was negative.

She experienced a strong reaction to one story that influenced her subsequent readings, which nevertheless qualifies as an effect. The size of this phase of the study is too small 144 to draw conclusions or generalize findings. It represents a minor pilot study. Future studies using a larger number of readers will yield more reliable findings.

As a parallel, a few coresearchers remarked that sharing their experiences with me shifted something in them, validating their experiences or encouraging them to share them. Some voiced an interest in reading all the stories.

The Mother

At the start of my study, I was unaware of the Mother’s influence in the Integral

Yoga community. However, in my interviews with the coresearchers, the Mother exerted a tremendous influence and represents a strong presence among the majority of them. Her significance is hidden from the world outside Integral Yoga even though her impact is equally powerful to practitioners. She continues to strongly influence and aid the lives of those who aspire and surrender to her. She is the Shakti, the Divine force, behind Integral

Yoga. It is because of her strong influence that I elaborate more on her role.

Her impact was often described in books from other members of the Integral

Yoga community (Bloomquist, 2001; Nunnally, 2004; Roy, 1984; Satprem, 1970).

Satprem, a Frenchman devoted to the Mother, recorded weekly conversations with the

Mother, and published them in a 13-volume set called The Agenda ( 1979-2000). He later condensed the material into a trilogy: Mother or The Divine Materialism (1980), Mother or The New Species (1982), and Mother or The Mutation of Death (1976). He also wrote

The Mind of the Cells (1999/2002). Satprem also wrote about Sri Aurobindo and the

Mother’s work in developing Integral Yoga, Sri Aurobindo or the Adventures in

Consciousness (1970). 145

Mirra Alfassa Richard (Sri Aurobindo called her the Mother, seeing her as the physical embodiment of the Divine Mother) joined Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry in

1920, after first meeting him in 1914 and recognizing him as the person she had dreamed of early in her life. She knew she was destined to work with him (Bloomquist, 2001;

Satprem, 1970, 1980).

Few outside the Integral Yoga community would know about the significant efforts of the Mother in advancing human consciousness evolution. She was the force behind Integral Yoga. Satprem (1970) described her as “a Force in movement” (p. 282).

This aspect of ‘force’ or ‘power’ of the consciousness is what India has represented in the form of the eternal [Divine] Mother. Without consciousness there is no Force, and without Force there is no creation—He and She, two in one, inseparable. (Satprem, 1970, p. 264)

She had the day-today responsibilities for the ashram in Pondicherry after Sri Aurobindo went into seclusion in 1926. It was through the Mother that Sri Aurobindo was able to help his disciples and students (Satprem, 1970, p. 282). She was the force behind the creation of Auroville, a global working village, providing inspiration and wisdom during its birth and early development. She mentored and taught students and children at the ashram (Nunnally, 2004).

The Mother was an advanced occultist in her own right before coming to

Pondicherry. She had experienced the supramental consciousness before meeting Sri

Aurobindo (Satprem, 1970, pp. 282-283). She experienced many other dimensions and planes of consciousness beyond earthly existence. She and Sri Aurobindo were united and of like mind in their service to humanity. They worked fiercely to lay the path for humanity’s advancement. 146

My understanding from reading (Bloomquist, 2001; Satprem, 1980) is that Sri

Aurobindo realized around the year 1949 that he or the Mother had to leave the physical

body and work to bring the supramental consciousness down to the earth plane from the

other side. Sri Aurobindo left his physical body in 1950. In 1956, the Mother announced

that the supramental consciousness had descended to the earth plane. She accelerated her

work on cellular transformation after Sri Aurobindo’s death in 1950 until her own

physical transition in 1973 (Bloomquist, 2001; Satprem, 1970, 1980).

The Mother’s work, requiring a tremendous effort and force of will from her, was

to anchor the supramental consciousness into the cells of her body in order to advance the

final evolution of humanity—the transformation from a human being to a spiritual being.

She worked on the transformation until her physical transition in 1973.

In my interviews with several coresearchers, Mother played a significant role in

their sadhanas. She is the one they called when they needed help. She and Sri Aurobindo

interacted with the coresearchers in varying degrees along their spiritual paths, depending

on the coresearcher’s need and affinity, that is, to whom they resonated most. Sri

Aurobindo often seemed to appear with messages, advice, or words of wisdom. The

Mother seemed to work through the psychic being the most and appeared to them in the

most dire times of life as a comfort, force, and protector. She emanated and filled them

with Divine love.

Supplemental Discussion of Findings

Experience of Higher Planes

Prior training did not seem to be a predictor of whether a coresearcher had an

experience in higher planes. And having these experiences, I believe, did not make the 147 individual more spiritually advanced. There is no linear progression that an individual can necessarily follow.

That’s the puzzling thing about the yoga; there isn’t really any methodology except in a broad sense. And I think the reason for that is because as you go along you have to adapt that for transformation of the body. The Mother did not like any methodical practice and the only time she got into any kind of a mantra was when she was going through the transformation of her own body. (Gopal)

Gopal said it took years to integrate the experiences he had. Annie had many experiences in higher planes but has not been able to physically integrate them. Rishi appears to use his encounters with the intuitive and overmind planes for apprehending the knowledge he seeks and becoming closer to the Divine. He continues to grapple, however, with the delineation between his spiritual and daily life.

This study presented a small sample of long-term practitioners in Integral Yoga.

Several identified experiencing higher planes of consciousness. The experiences appeared spontaneously, seemingly random, and without a buildup of prior training and experiences that might indicate having these experiences was a cumulative or hierarchical process. Sri Aurobindo instructed that one had only to open to the Divine and then wait for its descent. In the meantime, other work on the self—purification of the mental, vital, and physical aspects of personality and the opening of the psychic being would help to hasten the descent (Aurobindo, 1970b, 1990, 1996)

Certain experiences, unlabeled by coresearchers, might fit Sri Aurobindo’s descriptions of higher planes. I could have categorized the experiences based on the descriptions given by Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, and Satprem. And I did for the planes of the illumined and intuitive minds because they were easy to recognize. I was not comfortable ascribing experiences to overmind and especially supermind. Sri Aurobindo 148 stated that language in supermind was useless to describe the experience (Purani, n.d., pp.

238-240). However, I am not sure if knowing the planes they experienced would help or make any difference to the ones who did not seek out the information on their own to confirm their experiences. The Mother did not subscribe to conformity of experiences.

That is why religions are always wrong—always—because they try to make the expression of ONE experience into a standard and impose it on everyone else as an irrefutable truth. The experience was true and complete in itself, convincing— for someone who had it. The expression he [speaking about a sadhak] derived from it was excellent—for him. But to try to impose it on others is a fundamental mistake, which can only have disastrous consequences…each person is a special manifestation of the universe. Hence, his true path must be his own. (The Mother, as cited in Satprem, 1980, p. 205)

Movement from the Head and Heart

Two pathways—one going up through the top of the head and one coming from the center of the chest—were described by some of the coresearchers. Pancho described it to me first, and I looked for an explanation of the difference. Sri Aurobindo described the difference between the experiences as the psychic realization (chest), or psychicisation, and the spiritual realization (head), or spiritualization.

The power of the concentration in the heart-centre is to open the centre and by the power of aspiration, love, bhakti, surrender remove the veil which covers and conceals the soul and bring forward the soul or psychic being to govern the mind, life, and body and turn and open them all fully to the Divine….This is what is called in this yoga the psychic transformation. The power of concentration above the head is to bring peace, silence, liberation from the body sense, the identification with mind and life and open the way for the lower (mental, vital, physical) consciousness to rise up to meet the higher consciousness above and for the powers of the higher (spiritual nature) consciousness to descend into mind, life and body. This is what is called in this yoga the spiritual transformation. (Dalal, 2002, p. 103)

Sri Aurobindo also characterized the movements as two systems: the movement around the psychic being involved a concentric activity, “a series of rings or sheaths with the psychic at the centre,” and the movement in the head was vertical, involving ascent 149 and descent (Aurobindo, 1970a, p. 251). Another explanation is that from the head one is sending out and receiving from the jivatman, the spirit, the higher spiritual aspect of the central being. From the chest, one is sending and receiving from the psychic being, the soul, the lower spiritual aspect of the central being (Bloomquist, 2001, p. 268).

Prior and Synchronistic Experiences

Coresearchers found Integral Yoga somewhat synchronistically—a friend or acquaintance suggesting they look into it, or an intuitive “nudge” to go to a certain place or lecture, or finding books on Integral Yoga at a meaningful time in their lives.

Some coresearchers had significant experiences early in their lives, or before they were introduced to Integral Yoga as an adult. Integral Yoga, as a philosophy, may not create or cause spiritual experiences. Perhaps it is the spirituality of the individual embracing Integral Yoga that creates the meaningful sadhanas expressed by these coresearchers. As 1119 described it,

Every soul comes in with the abilities needed. A spiritual practice only enhances what happens in your everyday life by connecting from that higher place of knowing into your daily life, it just illumines it. But, your spiritual practice is necessary even if it isn’t the real source of your spiritual experience. It’s as if it just feeds into who you are, and then as you’re going about your daily life what you need comes because you are in tune with your soul by “practicing” spiritually something or other.

Experience and training outside of Integral Yoga enhanced the coresearchers’ spiritual path as well. For some, they encountered Sri Aurobindo or the Mother prior to their introduction to Integral Yoga. Pancho, for example, many years before his introduction to Integral Yoga, met Sri Aurobindo in a vision. It was only afterward that he realized the man who visited him many years before was Sri Aurobindo. For others,

Integral Yoga made sense of all they had learned. 1119 said, “[Integral Yoga] really 150 impacted [me] because it gave me the vessel to contain it all. Because Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are wide enough to bring it all in; whereas any other approach is too exclusive.” Another disciple of Integral Yoga said it well:

What I have learned from all these paths is that each approach leads to a particular inner experience, and that each experience contributes to a more total, complex and rich spiritual realization, which can be a more solid basis for Sri Aurobindo’s yoga of transformation. In short, all these spiritual paths have helped me to understand Sri Aurobindo’s yoga in greater depth. Buddhism leads to the silent mind, Christianity to devotion, Islamic Sufism to the science of the heart and Hindu Tantra to the effective manifestation of the Divine’s Will upon the earth, i.e., the Shakti. (Amrit (Howard) Iriyama as cited in Nunnally, 2004, p. 261)

Incorporation of Other Yogas

A majority of coresearchers had elements of other yogas—bhakti, karma, raja, hatha, or a combination—in their sadhanas. Integral Yoga includes all systems by not prescribing any particular one. Sri Aurobindo (1996) described them and explained their incorporation in Integral Yoga.

The full yoga, Purna Yoga [Integral Yoga] means a fourfold path, a Yoga of Knowledge [Jnana] for the mind, a Yoga of Bhakti for the heart, a Yoga of Works [Karma] for the will, and a Yoga of Perfection [Raja] for the whole nature. (Aurobindo, 1970b, p. 1622)

Sadhaks incorporate and use whatever particular path is appropriate for their sadhana, which can change as their journey evolves. Gopal mentioned that the reason a particular regimen was not prescribed was for that reason—to allow the sadhana to evolve with the individual. Rishi’s sadhana, for instance, began with a desire to become a better person, so he read and gathered as much knowledge a he could (jnana yoga). His sadhana now includes being in love with the Divine, learning to see the Divine in all aspects of his life (bhakti yoga). Janaka’s sadhana began with a jnana yoga orientation and now emphasizes service and action (karma yoga). Sphinx’s sadhana began as an 151 urgent desire for an emotional connection to the Mother (bhakti yoga), progressed through intense concentration (raja yoga) and now integrates physical asanas (hatha yoga), imagery (raja yoga), repeating mantra (mantra yoga) and devotion to work as service to the Mother (bhakti and karma yogas). I understand the integral nature of Sri

Aurobindo’s philosophy and psychology from the coreasearchers’ journeys.

Issue of Sexual Desire

The subject of sexual desire and activity in Integral Yoga deserves further dialogue. Although Sri Aurobindo was quoted as saying sexual activity had no place in the yoga (Aurobindo, 1953, 1970b, 1993b), in other passages he delineates that love between two individuals stemming from love of the Divine and from the psychic being can be a positive expression of the Divine (Aurobindo, 1953; Nirodbaran, 1973; Purani, n.d.). Jenny Wade (2004) found evidence that sexual activity can evoke transcendent experiences. Tantra yoga merges sexual energy with the Shakti force, moving it up through the body, changing it into a spiritual experience to access the Divine (Feuerstein,

2001). Jeffrey Kripal (2001) suggested that there are homoerotic and heteroerotic references towards the Divine in the writings of mystics, and allusions to such in the works by scholars of mysticism.

I believe there may indeed be a more spiritual use of the act of physical love from my readings, but the concept is a fine thread that is left for those more advanced and purified in the yoga, individuals who operate out of the psychic being and in higher planes, at least in overmind. Sexual energy is easy to misuse and abuse in advanced spiritual practitioners, in whom spiritual energy is stronger. Further discussion and exploration may clarify Sri Aurobindo’s understanding about this topic. Sri Aurobindo, 152 on first glance at his writings, appears to subscribe to no sexual activity if the spiritual aspirant/sadhak wishes to be successful. But there are more subtle double messages in his writing that hint at the possibility of a divinised form of physical expression and procreation, which occultists historically have known. And he leaves open the process for procreating as supramental spiritual beings (Aurobindo, 1953, pp. 43-55).

Taboo Against Sharing Experiences

Annie noted the following reasons for the taboo against talking about one’s experiences: (a) It was deleterious to one’s spiritual practice; (b) it dilutes the experience; and (c) talking about new experiences before they became stabilized in the individual risks losing the experience. Perhaps the taboo exists because it may be difficult for a sadhak to tell when an experience occurs in the intermediate zone of the supramental consciousness planes, where truths are mixed with untruths. Speaking prematurely without integrating the experience and confirming its Divine imprint may predispose an individual to incorrectly understand or interpret the experience. Long-term practitioners are less likely to make this error. Their wisdom, by sharing their experiences with others, may assist other sadhaks in avoiding these pitfalls, and offer them solutions to make the spiritual journey less difficult.

Sri Aurobindo noted that in the early stages of one’s sadhana, speaking about the experiences stopped the experience. So a number of yogis made it a rule for sadhaks not to speak of them. He added, “But latterly it had altogether ceased to be like that” (Sri

Aurobindo as cited in Roy, 1984, p. 46). The other reason may be that until the experience is integrated, talking about it—because language is a mental construct—may bind the experience into the mental being, precluding its integration. Janaka mentioned 153 another idea when he described his experience with the psychic being, saying, “I didn’t want to mentalize it because that would be coming out of the experience.”

Another possible reason for not sharing experiences is that unless the psychic being is operating rather than the ego, the person sharing the experience could end up on an ego trip and the person hearing it could experience vital feelings of envy, jealousy, and self-doubt.

Perhaps the caveat is that it may be time to share experiences but the sadhaks must be sufficiently far enough in their practice so that the factors previously mentioned are less likely to occur. Long-term practitioners, like the coresearchers, can be mentors by sharing their experiences with others. They can also support each other as a peer group.

Sharing Experiences and the Ripple Effect

An important point is the covert gain for humanity from the coresearchers’ advances in their sadhanas. Integral Yoga is an experiment, and every sadhak is an experiment. Each one has experiences that contribute to the overall pool of energy/ vibration that will further the evolutionary shift, the human transformation. Each time they shift, each time they access planes closer to the Divine, they help to draw all of us to the Divine. The descent of the supermind “will do so to those who receive the

Supermind, who are open to it; for example, if there are thirty or forty people ready it could descend” (Sri Aurobindo, as cited in Purani, n.d., p. 32). Satprem discussed the ripple effect on the other disciples whenever Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had experiences that advanced them (Satprem, 1970, pp. 327-328). Rose experienced connecting to a man on a mountaintop geographically miles from her. 154

There was [a] soul sitting somewhere in India on a mountain meditating, connecting to me. I have a stronger feeling that we are connected inside, all of us, doing whatever sadhana we do, even if [we] don’t know each other.

These examples point to a spiritual web of connectedness. Any advance on the spiritual path by one sadhak represents an advance for all of us. This idea places a greater importance and significance on one’s spiritual path.

Sharing their experiences, I believe, will benefit others, both within the Integral

Yoga community and those outside it. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are not physically present for sadhaks to bounce their experiences off of them, to dialogue with them, in order to validate and verify them. Sharing with each other may provide a substitute in their sadhanas for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Impact of Study: Researcher

I am always changed by experiences in my life and this study is no exception. The difference is how much I changed. This study was an enormous journey not only by academic standards, as it is a dissertation, but by spiritual and life-changing standards as well. The transformation in me has been subtle, cumulative and hopefully permanent.

I have increased confidence in my abilities moving from a student to a graduate and then to a teacher. I had not realized how much self-doubt and lack of confidence hindered me. Part of the reason was that I hid a great deal of my spiritual nature and intuitive abilities from others, so I felt that people did not really know me and judged me according to what I let them see. Using a research method that allowed and honored my abilities, where I no longer had to hide them, effected a large shift in confidence. The flow and ease of the research process aided this confidence because when my life and 155 workflow I know I am in my spiritual groove, moving along my spiritual path; I am synchronistically in tune with Divine guidance.

I gained confidence in my research abilities by listening to the interviews several times, eventually pleased with how I was able to elicit important information, guide the interview, understand the coresearchers’ experiences, and figure out the larger pictures of their spiritual journeys.

I discovered that setting the sacred space enhances or opens my intuitive abilities.

I realized I was using intuition throughout the study, not where the organic inquiry method placed it. Intuition is one of the modes of apprehending knowledge that I use in my life; it could not be compartmentalized. Organic inquiry simply encouraged me to use it overtly.

It was not a smooth journey. I do not think transformation of self is ever easy. The chthonic aspect of organic inquiry appeared a few times during the research process, primarily in the forms of self-doubt, panic, anger, and impatience. If nonlight forces work everywhere, I believe they may cloak themselves within these negative emotions. Having to work on self-doubt was important because it slowed down the research process. I acknowledged their presence when they emerged, ferreted out their causes or origins— part of the chthonic process—and cleared them. Doing so helped to continue the study’s flow at a high level of focus and intensity throughout.

Organic inquiry is flexible enough as a research method to allow unique variations in processing by the researcher and still effect a successful outcome. My study benefited from it. Organic inquiry gave me “permission” to make slight changes to the process in order to maintain my focus, intention, and aspiration throughout my research. 156

Once I decided on the topic and research method I knew I was meant to do this study. And everything flowed, especially finding participants, as I had been warned not to expect many because of the long-held taboo against sharing experiences. The interview trips fell into place, the dates and times scheduled smoothly and efficiently, and everyone cooperated easily. Throughout the study I continued to feel this was important. I believed it would greatly benefit the Integral Yoga community and open new dialogue for its sadhaks. I knew each time I interviewed a coresearcher that the interaction was mutually significant and helpful. And I had a strong sense of responsibility to maintain the honesty and integrity of the study. These coresearchers took a big risk in participating in the study and trusting me, which helped me maintain a solid focus and intention to see the study through.

Other changes included an increased capacity in my intuitive abilities, a sense that my findings would benefit the next wave in Integral Yoga evolution, and an increasing awareness and intent that will flavor future writing: Written words can change the reader.

I have a clearer vision of my spiritual and academic paths. My abilities as a transpersonal researcher improved. I also discovered that research studies require the same process of intention, will, aspiration, and surrender found in Integral Yoga.

An unexpected bonus for me was the chance to meet an amazing caliber of individuals who became my coresearchers. I remain awestruck by their strength of character. They possess an unwavering devotion and focus on advancing their sadhana, which helps Integral Yoga’s goal of advancing the evolution of human consciousness. I admire the grace and equanimity they had in facing daunting challenges in their spiritual 157 journeys. I am honored to know them, grateful for their contributions to my study and to humanity’s service. They inspire me deeply.

My personal reason for researching the topic of this study was to compare my spiritual experiences with the coresearcher’s experiences of higher planes of consciousness. I wanted to find out if I could have the same experiences. I discovered that my experiences were as unique as their experiences, and as significant to my journey as theirs were to them. Having experiences in higher planes was only significant to the ones who needed the experience to move them along their path. Integration of the experience was as important as the experience, perhaps more. Experiences in higher planes are not the only experiences that advance coresearchers. More important is their connection to the Divine, the connection to Divine guidance, the presence of the spiritual realm in the coresearchers’ lives, and the awareness and opening of psychic being as the doorway connecting them to higher spiritual consciousness. They are all working in their own way to bring the Divine down and anchor it into earthly existence.

It is impossible to confine one’s “yogic” experiences in the yoga because all life is yoga and all aspects of the being have to be taken up at some point in the process. We can’t really realize the extent of it until we’ve gone through it. (Gopal)

Delimitations and Additional Limitations

Delimitations

This study specifically sought Integral Yoga practitioners with over 10 years of experience. Gender, age, and ethnicity were not important. I accepted any volunteer who met the eligibility criteria. Although I sought 8 participants, I did not limit the number and would have interviewed every individual who voiced an interest. Geographic 158 distance and finances determined the coresearchers I interviewed in person. To date, the

14 coresearchers in this study have been the only volunteers. Sending out another recruitment flyer seemed unnecessary as I had more than the number I initially set.

I also chose the readers from my pool of acquaintances, basing my choices on the level of their spiritual endeavors and their willingness to participate. I believed the range of spiritual practice would broaden the range of impact despite the small number of readers and increase the potential for validating narrative impact.

Limitations

I did not solicit demographic data because I was concerned that it would help to identify them. I am aware that this prevents you, the reader from knowing them better, a limitation in this study. But I hope that the experiences helped you to know them more than statistical information.

I did not feel I had enough information to determine whether any coresearchers’ experiences in the higher planes were state or trait experiences. Rishi and 1119 appeared to have intuition as a trait judging by their ease and frequent use of that plane. It was not obvious that anyone else showed the same abilities. However, several explained how they could easily move between the spiritual and physical world by simply turning their awareness to it.

I also did not feel comfortable categorizing their experiences into certain planes unless they identified them as such. Language is a mental construct and cannot function in supermind (Purani, n.d.). I believe, however, that some of the coresearchers experienced supermind and knew it. 159

Not all questions from the interview guide were asked in some interviews. I intuitively flowed with the conversations and some questions either did not occur to me, seemed inappropriate, or we ran out of time and I felt I had enough information.

The sample size was adequate for this study to identify patterns and themes and to create a number of narratives. More participants would, of course, further validate my findings.

Confidentiality, and my efforts to maintain it and the coresearchers’ trust, created sufficient maneuvering of the data that it may have lessened the personal aspects of the coresearchers’ stories. The tightness of the Integral Yoga community was a significant contributing factor, since I was unaware of how much the coresearchers had revealed to others about themselves.

Another possible limitation is that some coresearchers who may have had experiences in higher planes appeared reticent to talk about them. I had some difficulty getting a few coresearchers to elaborate or acknowledge that they had such experiences.

They preferred instead to talk about their spiritual practice.

The choice of readers was deliberate and subjective. I felt that my choices would provide a greater range of responses despite the small scale of this phase of the study.

Any replication of the study might approach solicitation of readers the same way coresearchers were recruited and include more demographic background to show a broader base of interest.

Having readers as acquaintances may have biased their responses. One reader,

Ariel, was concerned that her remarks would be detrimental to the study. I encouraged her to be honest in her responses. Her comments reflect her true reactions. 160

Directions for Future Research

Any study would benefit from replication. Recounting of experiences by other long-term practitioners will add to the pool of descriptors for the spiritual realm. Sharing such experiences may lessen the sense of isolation others might be experiencing, showing others that they are not alone in their sadhanas. Given the nature of the topic and the research method, however, other studies will not be completely alike. Each coresearcher’s journey is unique to the individual, despite some commonalities of experiences. My skills and abilities, as well as my personal challenges, as a researcher are different from another’s. Ultimately, each study contributes to the knowledge of experiences in human consciousness.

Future studies in Integral Yoga may serve to break the current silence by increasing the sharing of experiences and wisdom among sadhaks, assisting each of them in the growth of their own spiritual practice. Perhaps sharing would expand the morphic field of spiritual resonance, the intangible field of connection that Rupert Sheldrake

(1988) described.

Planes of Consciousness

I offer some ideas to consider before attempting to explore higher planes in depth.

First, it is important for practitioners to overcome their reticence and sense of breaking rules. Conducting further studies on significant experiences in the spiritual realm would expand transpersonal psychology’s understanding of these planes. I wonder, however, if such studies would be successful given that language is often insufficient to describe them. The coresearchers were able to provide descriptions that conveyed to only a small degree, I am sure, how their experiences felt. Could there be an energetic dynamic that is 161 generated by describing such experiences? I was able to close my eyes and imagine a majority of the experiences they described. Listening to the interviews frequently triggered physical sensations in me.

Finally, a researcher must locate the practitioners who are willing to discuss their experiences. I was fortunate to have 14 coresearchers volunteer for this study. A better future study would be to find the rare individuals—and locating them will take some intense research and networking—who have experienced supramental consciousness and explore their experiences, as this consciousness dimension is the next evolutionary step for humanity and the goal of Integral Yoga.

Nonlight Forces

A few coresearchers had experiences with asuric forces, nonlight energies. Asuric forces are nonlight, negative influences attempting to exert control on humanity. They work to prevent light and Divine force from establishing on the earth plane. Sri

Aurobindo stated that Adolf Hitler was possessed by a vital asuric being; Joseph Stalin was under the influence of an intellectual asura (Nirodbaran, 1973). The coresearchers encountered them accidentally; one, however, chose to continue to battle them for others.

Future dialogue in Integral Yoga might pursue solutions on dealing with such forces from a united group stance.

Focus on Readers

Expanding the reader impact aspect of this study is another avenue of investigation, constituting a second phase for the research topic. Readers could be limited to being within the Integral Yoga community, the general public, or transpersonally or 162 religiously oriented. Findings would enhance the idea that stories have impact, or that spiritual stories have a spiritual impact.

Face-to-Face and Telephone Interviews

Interviews in person are richer. I strongly recommend them over telephone interviews as the first and primary source of data. The secondary benefits also support my contention. I established more interpersonal relationships with the coresearchers I met in person. I think I received more insights and more information that proved mutually beneficial. While I was confident of establishing the sacred space to the same degree in telephone interviews, I lacked the visual and energetic overlays that may have generated a stronger interpersonal connection and elicited more information. Future research using both types of interview methods may shed more light on, or confirm, my observations.

Sphinx shared more in our interview than he would have in person. Perhaps certain individuals are more comfortable revealing personal experiences without a physical presence—it enhances the anonymity and is less threatening—especially with topics that are personal and sacred. Future studies might incorporate a choice to participants.

I did not have the readers compare the stories from the telephone interviews to those done in person. It would be an area to explore—whether stories derived from face- to-face interviews differed in their impact from those stories derived from interviews conducted by telephone.

Summary and Significance of Findings

This study was unique in several ways. Others have written and recorded Sri

Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s experiences (Nirodbaran, 1973; Purani, n.d.; Satprem, 163

1970, 1980, 1985), about sadhaks’ relationships and memories of them (Nunnally, 2004),

and included descriptions of their own personal experiences (Bloomquist, 2001; Roy,

1984). I have not found any research that directly addressed sadhaks’ experiences in

higher consciousness planes, which was the intent of my study. Additionally, I used the

transpersonal qualitative research method of organic inquiry, a method ideally designed

for spiritual topics. Organic inquiry views research as a sacred endeavor with the intent of

transforming all who are involved in its process, including future readers of the study.

My intent initially for this study originated from a personal curiosity to see how

the experiences of planes of higher consciousness described by Sri Aurobindo in Integral

Yoga compared to my eclectic background of experiences in spiritual planes. Higher

planes in Buddhism have been well studied and published. The sacred literature of India

mapped out higher planes experienced by the ancient Rishis. But Sri Aurobindo’s yoga

was radically different in its goal and I wondered if Integral Yoga experiences were also

different.

Experiences in other planes of consciousness are important and often result in

profound shifts in consciousness and knowledge. But just as profound are the more subtle

emergences, Lizzie called them shifts in being, where the other spiritual planes begin to integrate into our physical existence, deeply changing the way we view and live life.

Interestingly, I found that coresearchers’ experiences outside of the higher planes were just as profound and transformative to them. I could not separate the planes based on their descriptions unless they told me specifically. And I found that I did not want to dissect, analyze, and compartmentalize their experiences into specific planes. I did not want to pigeonhole them. Their experiences affected them, influenced them, and 164 impacted them beyond the boundaries of a specific plane. Sri Aurobindo said these higher planes above the head were “only a correlation in the consciousness—not an actual location in space” (Aurobindo, 1970b, p. 1155), a mental construct to refer to a specific realm of consciousness experience. I realized that I limited the reader and myself if I kept to my original research question. I decided to include all experiences of the coresearchers’ sadhanas because I felt they were important, life-changing, and could help the reader in some way.

The experiences of these pioneer-explorers are holistic and comprehensive in their impact on their lives. In between profound experiences, they maintained faith, will, intention, aspiration, and surrender, which allowed them to integrate their experiences and continue on their path. Their faith in the impact of the experiences sustained them until the next experience or the next change occurred. They also took a risk in participating in this study because they revealed important occult experiences that several stated they had not told anyone before our interview, considered taboo in some Eastern spiritual traditions.

Cathleen’s interview emphasized to me that the experiences I was seeking to hear about, those of higher planes, were not as important when compared to how the experiences themselves affected each coresearcher’s life—how they permanently changed the day-to-day activity, how they become integrated.

Upon reflection, perhaps there are specific purposes to experiences in supramental and subliminal realms of consciousness. They can:

1. Open a portal or door that allows us to see another world, new energies, and for

knowledge to descend into our present condition. 165

2. Start a process of transformation by energetically connecting higher vibration to

our physical, vital, and mental movements.

3. Bring up or out some aspect of our shadow self, our muck, to the light, allowing

us to clear it.

4. Allow us to experience, really feel what we are seeking to feel and be, providing

us a glimpse, sustaining us until we can again feel it. It renews our aspiration,

strengthens our will, and inspires our faith to await its return.

5. Provide an opportunity to integrate and ground these experiences into the earthly

plane of our being.

6. Alter our current spiritual path and redirect it with a clearer vision.

It is wondrous to have these consciousness-altering experiences but then what?

I’m reminded of the Zen saying, “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.” The greater emphasis should be how sadhaks integrate their experiences into the flow of their spiritual path, not the highest plane one has encountered. How they renew their intention, will, and aspiration in order to enhance their surrender to their own unique and natural process is the focus. Because it is the paradoxical forces of aspiration, fed by intention and will, side by side with surrender that moves one along the spiritual path. It is the awareness of the impact, the significance, of the experience as they relate to each sadhana, how each individual immerses and integrates them so that they make a difference in who we are, who we are becoming that is important—how the experiences transform one’s being. “The experiences by themselves are not important. It’s the way in which they get integrated 166 into the larger self, and then manifested into transformation, into what we’re actually doing, why are we even here” (Cathleen).

These coresearchers represent the American version of gurus, of teachers. Instead of living in ashrams, secluded from outside life, they are out in the world living everyday lives and also pursuing a spiritual path. Their wisdom, both individual and accumulated, is valuable. They are the trailblazers who continue to further Sri Aurobindo’s goal of shifting humankind to the next level of consciousness evolution—the transformation of human being to spiritual being.

A majority of the individuals involved in this study was affected to some degree, a valuable contribution of an organic inquiry study. Future readers will derive some benefit from it. Exploration of the experiences of long-term practitioners in Integral Yoga resulted in a wealth of knowledge about experiences in spiritual realms and also unique spiritual journeys of the coresearchers. As a whole picture, it gives the reader an understanding of the complexity, difficulty, and rewards of the Integral Yoga spiritual path. From a transpersonal viewpoint, it contributes to the growing field of understanding humankind’s spiritual quest. And from the standpoint of human consciousness evolution, it suggests potential avenues of investigation that contribute to further the next shift. 167

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Appendix A: Alternative Depictions of Integral Yoga Psychology

Figure A1. Cycle of Involution and Evolution

Spirit→Involution→Physical (realm of Matter) →Subconscious→Mental →Spiritual →Supramental →Spirit/Divine→Evolution→Spirit brought down to realm of the physical (Earthly existence)

Figure A2. Lowest Plane (Matter)—Outer Being

LOWEST PLANE

PHYSICAL MIND VITAL MIND THINKING MIND physical-mental mind life-mind mental-mind

Figure A3. Process of Evolutionary Transformation

Divine Divine ____Divine ↓ ↑ ↓ Descent \___Human Being___ /Ascent____\Descent__ Spiritual Being

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Figure A4. Triple Transformation Pyramid

Consciousness

Superconscient Conscient Subconscient

Human/Nature Being Mind Psychic Vital Inner Physical Outer

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Appendix B: Integral Change of Consciousness in the Individual and Humanity

Figure B1. Integral Yoga Process

(←―――――――――――) ←—————————————————————— Involution to Human Beings Below Waking Consciousness ↔ Waking Consciousness ↔ Superconsciousness ↔ Truth Consciousness↔ The Divine Subconscient Physical Mind Supermind Existence, Inconscient Life/Vital Higher Consciousness, Mind Illumined Bliss Intuitive Over (――――――――――――→) Evolution to Spiritual Beings ———→——————→————————————↓↓ ←————←————————————————————————————————

Note. This presentation of the Integral Yoga Process by M. R. Kramer, 2008, is based on "A Greater Psychology: An Introduction to Sri Aurobindo's Psychological Thought" by A. S. Dalal (Ed.), 2001, p. 338, Figure 2.

Figure B2. Triple Transformation of Integral Yoga

Spiritualisation

Descent Ascent

Psychicisation

Note. This presentation of the Triple Transformation of Integral Yoga by M. R. Kramer, 2008, is based on the "Letters on Yoga I" by S. Aurobindo, 1970b. 181

Appendix C: Letter of Introduction

**********SEEKING RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS**********

I am a Ph.D.candidate in psychology at Saybrook Graduate School and Research

Center in San Francisco. My dissertation study focuses on the significant and profound experiences of long-term practitioners in Integral Yoga.

Participant criteria for selection include:

1. Regular Integral Yoga practice for a minimum of ten years. Regular practice is

defined as some participant-identified activity practiced daily to weekly.

2. Willingness to participate.

3. Grasp of the English language in order to describe your experiences accurately.

Initial interviews will take place at a mutually agreed location. Interviews may also take place over the phone at a time that is mutually convenient. The initial interview will be approximately one to two hours. Two to three follow-up discussions will occur in order to solicit feedback after reviewing materials. Participants will be asked to write a brief summary of their experience in this study at the study’s conclusion, particularly in regard to how participation may have changed them.

Organic inquiry, the research method used in this study, approaches research as sacred. I am aware of the intensely personal nature of the subject of this study. I honor the sanctity of your experience and will ensure that your anonymity and confidentiality are strictly maintained throughout and after this study.

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Appendix D: Participation Letter and Instructions for Coresearchers

Dear ,

Thank you for accepting my invitation to explore Integral Yoga with me and to participate in this study. As a co-researcher, your contributions are extremely valuable and I am honored to have you participate. The experiences we will be discussing are special and sacred. This study’s exploration will be approached in the same manner.

The experiences you have had often transcend words. You are invited to bring to our discussions any other means of preparation, expression, or description you feel is both appropriate and will help to convey your experiences more profoundly than verbal description.

Our interview will be audiotaped and will last approximately 1-1/2 hours. I am also asking for your time and assistance in reviewing the transcribed interview and summary story developed from the interview, as well as providing feedback on your experience with this study.

Shortly before the interview, I suggest that you prepare yourself for the experience, spiritually, in any way that suits you. You may want to revisit and re-experience your inner Integral Yoga practice close to the interview, time-wise, in order to refresh or evoke your physical, mental and vital memories of the experience. Also, feel free to bring any items to the interview that you consider important in creating and maintaining your personal sacred space.

Again, thank you for your commitment of time, energy, wisdom, and presence in this study. Please let me know if you have any questions. 183

Appendix E: Interview Guide

“I consider it a great honor to be here and engage in this experience with you. Before we begin our discussion, I would like each of us to take some time and prepare ourselves by entering into those spaces that have grown with our spiritual practices and which will assist us with our topic of discussion.” (5-10 minutes).

1. Could you describe what you are experiencing now?”

2. Tell me how you became involved in Integral Yoga. How many years practicing?

3. Describe your practices, your routine in Integral Yoga. Tell me about your spiritual

practice.

4. What significant experiences have you had?

5. What impact have these experiences had in your daily life?

6. Tell me about your most intense experiences.

• Most profound.

• Challenging.

• Enduring.

7. Do you have one that you would like to elaborate on in greater detail?

8. Have you ever experienced a feeling or sensation of ascending? Descending? How would

you describe them?

9. What range of experiences you have had—joy, frustration, profound, exhausting,

pleasant, confusing…?

10. What have you found to be challenging in your spiritual journey? Where in your Integral

Yoga journey have you felt stuck, experienced breakthroughs and epiphanies, received

new insights, felt despair, etc.? 184

11. What profound transformations in yourself have you noticed? How have you integrated

these experiences?

12. Is there anything else you would like to share? What have you experienced during and as

a result of this interview? 185

Appendix F: Checklist for Analysis of Information

CR*1 CR 2 CR 3 CR 4 CR 5 CR 6 CR7 CR 8 1. Researcher listens to the tape while concurrently reading the transcript, noting editing discrepancies, missing words, etc.

2. Each coresearcher reviews a copy of the transcripted interview for review after the first run in order to verify and clarify perceptions and thoughts.

3. Researcher apprehends the interview three to four times. I incorporated anecdotal notes, intuitive information, thoughts and ideas, and somatic knowledge.

4. Phase of meditation, incubation, and rumination prior to identifying patterns, key words, phrases, and ideas.

5. Distill and create narrative story from each interview.

6. Coresearchers review the their own summaries, providing confirmation and validation, suggesting their insights.

7. Coresearchers’ experiences from their interviews are integrated to create one or more overall and discussion stories.

8. Coresearchers are asked to comment and validate the material from the interview that was used in overall and discussion stories.

9. Coresearchers are asked to describe in writing how their participation in this study affected them.

10. Three initial readers read selected stories and comment on their experience. Edited comments and results are included in the study’s results.

Note. *CR = Coresearcher 186

Appendix G: Stories

Each coresearcher has a story. The stories are in their own words, gleaned and

edited from the interview transcripts. My comments or edits are bracketed. Each story is

similarly sequenced into 3 sections: Sadhana, Experiences, and Current Issues and

Challenges.

Additionally, I created overall stories centering around a particular topic. Not all coresearchers were involved in these because it depended on whether the topic appeared during the interview in sufficient detail that it could function as a small vignette or carried potential significance. The topics are: Ascent and Out-of-the-Body, Descent,

Psychic Being, Encounters with Nonlight Forces, and Issues of Isolation.

A couple of interview discussions were interesting enough to stand-alone. I made them into discussion stories. I believe their content is important and unusual. The discussion story titles are: Intuition and Group Dynamics, Cosmic Consciousness, and

Getting Integral Yoga Out There.

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1119 – Story

Right now I feel quite relaxed. I’m very grateful to have a chance to review, and I feel always that reviewing life is a good thing to do from time to time, especially in a structured way, which this is.

Sadhana

The crossroads come up all the time. I have to get up in the morning and get going everyday. I make a decision and then it’s there for life. It’s a state I have to get into, and I have to keep nurturing that state and then living with that. Yet it’s not about being judgmental about myself or anyone else. There is a gift in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that helps so much, it’s called the “sunlit path.” Sri Aurobindo wrote about it, the Mother wrote about it. Basically in the sunlit path, it’s actually from an ancient Vedic tradition, is that everything that happens to you happens for the best, even though it appears perhaps as a disaster. Everything is working toward, let’s say, the good or the true or the whole, or the oneness. That’s the way the universe is; so to be in tune with that is the goal of my consciousness. People use different expressions like: “something I’m manifesting,” or

“you create your own reality,” all these kind of things. There’s truth in all of that, but there is a more fundamental basis where creation is good, beautiful, whole, one, love, or any of those words you want to use. I have a consciousness; we all have our own consciousness, our own soul. So, do I line up with that or what? Some people say yoga is difficult or the spiritual path is difficult. It is in a certain sense and in another sense it’s not because it’s our true nature, it’s who we are. So, it’s the natural thing, and if I resist who I am or my natural thing, then I suffer. 188

The yoga does have a structure, it does have a movement, and those movements are written down, anyone can read them. But I found that in myself for it to be true.

Mother always used that word “aspiration”, so if there is an the aspiration, that aspiration always receives an answer, it always receives a descent. So if I open up, something comes. If I don’t open up, then nothing really happens. I take the step and then things play into that step that I took. That’s my sense of evolution, that it’s programmed by

Divine love or whatever you want, but we have to become conscious, co-creators of that.

There are two other states—consent and consecration. What enabled me to do what I am doing now was a consecration retreat. That was a very powerful experience.

That was to be fully, wholeheartedly, connected into that spirit, that aspiration, that truth, that I had, that I knew was there. But still I had to align myself with it even though I knew that it would have consequences. Surrender and letting go, that kind of idea is very hard; it was a very hard thing for me to do. There’s the intuitive knowing that this is right, but there still has to be an element of, I’ll use the word “faith”, to do it, to take that leap.

And then it works

When I meditate, I use the breath. I concentrate on the breath. And then thoughts come and then thoughts go, and empires rise, empires fall, that kind of thing.

I’m just there. And then this one group that I meditate with, it’s very nice because we do this meditation and then we share afterward, then we pray a little bit, and sing a little bit, and then go home. It’s nourishing, always nourishing.

Crossroads: Meeting a Spiritual Teacher

I had reached a certain point where there was still something missing, I couldn’t really get to it. It was no longer anything to do with Integral Yoga as such, but there was 189

a missing piece that I needed. When I came here to help my mother who was dying, I met

a spiritual teacher, which was totally outside of anything I ever expected to happen.

When this woman came around the corner, she put out her hand, and I looked at her, and

then all of a sudden I knew that there’s some work I had to do here. And I didn’t want to

do it; I really didn’t want to do it. I had my plans, I had my life, and so I resisted, I

resisted for some time. But then I realized I had to do it. What I received from her was

what she received from the Mother. She’s a mystic with no connection to any particular

religion or philosophy.

Intuition

I operate out of intuition. Because if I logically analyze my job and the way I live

and the things that I do, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s the intuitive knowing, knowing

that the thing is on course. There were of course times when it wasn’t all on course, or it

appeared like I was not going to make it and then I would make it. I had an intuitive flash

on my death, my actual death. I have the place and the date. I go with it because my other

intuitive flashes ended up happening, so is this going to happen too?

Experiences

Two Most Significant Experiences

The real basic things for me are the experience of oneness, and then the experience of the one as many.

Four years of age.

I was prepared my whole life for Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, for Integral

Yoga, because of my experiences in life. I had an experience in childhood when I was 190

about 4 years old on a summer day in a field. I sat under an oak tree and felt the oneness of reality. And it was just for a few minutes, but it made a deep impression on me.

The one and the many.

I went on a retreat up in the foothills of a mountain range and I was meditating along the river. I was sitting on a flat rock right at the level of the water, just sitting, meditating. Suddenly my consciousness left my body and split; half went up the river to the first drop of the river and half the other way, all the way down the river to the ocean into the immensity of the oneness. So there was this flash experience of the one and the many. That had always been an incredible philosophical problem for me: how everything is one and yet how everything is many. So when I had that experience of the one drop and the ocean, there’s the connection, and there is this flow going on between the two which is the river, the river of life, and all the analogies that you ever want to make. This anchored me into a truth. So after that I didn’t have to believe in any philosophy or religion or system because I had the actual experience. I felt what it meant or what it is.

It’s a moving from faith or believing into knowing.

Crossroads Experience of Past and Future Life

A lot happened to me when I was studying theology. I met a woman while helping her with a retreat for some students. After the retreat, we hugged, and the intensity of this hug opened up a past life, it opened up behind her, like on a wide screen.

I saw us in a past life on a boat. Later, she came to India to do some studies and she came to visit me. She thought that we should get married, and come back and live happily ever after in America. That triggered another experience with her. I saw our life, our future life, how it would be, the three children and the house. I saw all of that. Also it was clear 191

to me that I could take that path and it would be all right, yet I knew there was something else that I needed to do. So I told her, and she went back. She married another guy and had the three children. I went to visit them nine years later and the amazing thing was, when I got off the bus, the house that they were living in was the house I saw in my vision, except that this house, their house, didn’t have a fence around it and the one in my vision had a little white picket fence around it.

The Void

I had an experience of the void, maybe it was a Buddhist void and the emptiness and all that. I was hiking on a trail and I was going uphill and suddenly at a certain point I just fell down, just fell down on the trail and started sobbing, and said, “I don’t have anything, there’s nothing, it’s all gone.” It seemed the complete loss, the loss of life, and there’s no place to go. Nothing to do, nothing to do. So all of that washed over me. Then

I remembered the Mother, and it was, well, you’re loved, the Divine Mother is here.

The Mother

During the short time I lived on the oceanside, I used to go down to the beach and

I was trying to work out the thing with the Mother. Because at that time, that was before I went to India and I just heard about her. Sri Aurobindo was clear enough, but the Mother was a hard one for me because it sounded very much like a maternal fixation returning to something infantile, a dependence on the Mother. I was reacting to someone I met who had come from Pondicherry and from Auroville, and this guy had these huge pictures of the Mother and all he spoke about was the Mother and I was totally turned off by that. So it wasn’t until I was looking at the ocean and I had an experience there: It was “le mer”, the sea, in French, and “La Mere,” the Mother—Le mer and La Mere sound the same in 192

French and this Mother in Pondicherry was French! I understood that the sea is nourishing all these fish, all this life, it’s the womb of the planet and we’re all in that, and

I have to respect the sea, otherwise I die. And the same with the Mother. The Mother is the earth, and you have to respect the earth. If I abuse the earth then I go extinct. I got a feeling of what the Mother was. I got that the Mother is an essential part of the creation and I’m part of that creation, and she is my Mother, I am the child, and I am cared for and

I am loved, and that is all I need.

Zen Meditation

I had an experience when I was in Japan doing Zen meditation. You have these, these kind of illusions happen and these weird things happen because you’re sitting there all day long and you’re not moving, and you’re focused on your breath and so weird things start to happen. When I did the little walking meditation between the long meditations on the cement floors, which had a cloudy look; it wasn’t all gray, it was kind of gray and white. And then as I started to step there I realized that in between there’s the white part where it’s solid, but the gray part you could fall through, and so I wondered how I could walk on this floor without falling through. You get that kind of stuff. Then I had this experience there of getting up from a meditation, running out of the place, and running up this hill that was next to the Zen monastery, falling over, having a heart attack and dying. And then suddenly I’m still sitting there. That was so real.

Current Issues and Challenges

My experiences are cumulative or evolutionary. Just talking about these things creates another threshold. Those experiences are permanent but they’re also for a time.

The death experience has to be there. Because without that, then the next leap, the next 193

steps are inhibited. Because that will come up, “Okay, this is going to kill me to do this,” you know, “But, no, it won’t kill me because I’m already dead.” I’m still working with this concept that I’m going to die someday. It doesn’t work because it has to be now as

Eckhart Tolle and those guys say. The only thing that happens is in the now. I was talking recently with a woman who has twice beaten ovarian cancer. But now it’s coming up again for the third time, she’s got a very limited time, I mean, who knows? But she still speaks, “Well, when…” I mean, it’s always in the future, and that future is not there for her. That’s what I’m feeling so much that the future is not there; I am doing what I need to do in the present.

Integral Yoga gave me the vessel to contain it all, because Sri Aurobindo is wide enough to bring it all together, and the Mother too, of course. Any other approach seems way too exclusive and limited. Sri Aurobindo wrote all this stuff at the turn of the century and it’s still extremely rich but still there’s even more. And I no longer believe in, you might say, the conceptual extent of words, because there is so much more, and especially systems. Somebody said a long time ago, and it just resonated, all systems end in death. I like these evolutionary thinkers, the futurists. It’s another approach. But even their stuff, of course, is limited; each one gets a little take on it. Jesus too said it in so many words,

“I came to give you life and you can do it more abundantly than I did. Everything that I did you can do better. If I did it you can do it too.” I mean, every spiritual teacher says that. I benefit from all of those, all of that, because as I bring every one of those persons, every one of those teachings, every one of those energies into the now, well then, I’m the one who carries it on then; because they’re in another dimension, most of them. They can only manifest in this dimension through you and me, through us. And we’re not separate 194

from them, it’s all one thing, but then we go back to the one of the many… so I’ve got to hold the energy, the particle and the wave. Science gives a lot of clues to these things too, because science is of course part of it. To do the new mathematics, for example, you have to be a mystic anyway, to hold all that stuff in your head and to put it all together.

My outer experiences verify the inner planes: Because on the inner planes a lot of things are illusory, or I’m not sure. When there’s a manifestation outwardly that confirms something it helps. That’s why I mention my experiences, and everybody has them, some people just don’t or won’t notice them. I always liked the verifications in reality; it makes me smile. It comes in so many circumstances, the people you meet, the things that happen. Amazing.

Impact of Sadhana

I keep going through it, I keep going through the process, and it’s the process of letting go of the resistance. It’s in the thing that needs to be done that it all works out, and all the other stuff comes along too. But it’s really hard for me to do that. Because I get into these emotional things with people, with friendships, with relationships, with all that, so there’s a whole complexity there. The more important thing is, “Okay, now what’s next, where are my next steps?”

Every soul comes in with the abilities needed. A spiritual practice only enhances what happens in your everyday life by connecting from that higher place of knowing into your daily life; it just illumines it. But your spiritual practice is necessary even if it isn’t the real source of your spiritual experience. It’s as if it just feeds into who you are, and then as you’re going about your daily life what you need comes because you are in tune with your soul by “practicing” spiritually something or other. 195

I feel now that I’m kind of always in a spiritual state. I mean, I’m more in a spiritual state, but I’m also here and able to function pretty well. It feels like a dual reality at the same time: The two things at the same time. Things are porous, the event is porous and I see through.

I’m very grateful to have a chance to review; it is a good thing to do from time to time, especially in a structured way, which this is. Because my perspective is evolutionary, what happens to me when I do this is, I see more connections. Like why

I’m here now, doing this interview, so more and more opens up as a result of doing something like this.

196

Akroyd—Story

I want to be helpful. I guess I’m feeling the physical, maybe; and maybe a little nervous, a little anxious.

Sadhana

Since 1978, my whole adulthood and spirituality was completely formed by The

Agenda. I felt a really strong affinity to that aspect of the sadhana, which is really

Mother’s exploration of the physical. Mother’s voice is at its most intimate in The

Agenda. It was the intimacy of Mother voice which first drew me in. This level of intimacy is not found in The Conversations, although it is found in Prayers and

Meditations, those being her conversations with the Divine. In The Agenda it is with humanity via Satprem. And then I started reading Satprem’s books. I related to him very personally inside The Agenda, and I have a very strong connection to him.

In 1983, I was really in a very stressed situation. Some [ignorant] people in India where I was living were doing black magic against me. At a certain point I had a dream, and I saw this Burmese Buddhist monk that I knew. I had nice a connection to him, and

[in the dream] he said to me if I wanted to “unravel the snake” then I should use this specific mantra. And then that’s where I got this mantra I have that I’ve been using ever since. This is kind of an elaboration of Om Namo Bhagavate in a way, I mean, (nervous laughter) we’re not supposed to talk about these things in that sense. And it’s been this sort of key to my sadhana ever since.

A few years ago I started to do silent meditation and then after about a year or so doing silent meditation I went back to doing the mantra, and it really had a strong impact. 197

It has a nice impact to doing walking meditation as well. It’s really my sort of key to that, the key to my sadhana.

I mean initially I had some contact with people here and there sometimes, but essentially I was really inside The Agenda, just cocooned inside the atmosphere of The

Agenda, a marvelous sadhana; truly, a most intimate contact with the Mother. After reading it four times I also read and reread The Synthesis of Yoga, so I’m kind of taking a break from The Agenda. But I am rereading all of Satprem’s books and just reading Sri

Aurobindo. Anyway, from reading them [being alone with the books of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother] and seeing those ideas and grappling with them and behind that, the shakti behind it. I just think that whenever we read them we are having darshan with them, we’re making that link, that connection.

[Until recently], what I had been doing for the last few years had been a lot of

Vedic astrology mantras. And I found that was very helpful. That was kind of like having a nice vacuum cleaner inside your brain. It really just helped clear up the space so that the central being could start to emerge more.

Experiences

Heart Chakra, Forehead, and Crown Chakra

And after finding my mantra and just by reading their books spontaneously my heart chakra opened. [In the beginning] I would just feel this pressure here [in the center of my chest], and then later on I saw that was what was happening—even though the first initial chakra experience, which had been the opening of – I believe the chakra between the eyebrows. This [one] is a difficult space, especially if you’re prone to headaches. So in the heart, the anahata I believe the Sanskrit name is, it’s a pressure, it’s easier. So the 198 heart chakra started opening there, and then I’m trying to think, it must have been in, when I came back to India. I went to [the ashram] for Sri Aurobindo’s birthday and went for the darshan, and in the meditation before that, then the chakra above the head, the sahasrara, opened up. [But] there was a long period between those initial openings and maybe coming into touch with them and meditation and then reading, [and it] becoming a more spontaneous experience. Meaning instead of just something like going into meditation and then focusing energy in the heart or above the head, it was the just, you feel it spontaneously, like walking down the street or whatever, in a nonformal manner

[where the intent wasn’t necessarily placed there?] Yeah, and later on it really came more above the head.

As I said, initially I had some experiences with the ajna chakra. I tried to avoid it because of the headaches; it can be hard on the head. But, I haven’t really had any sort of like reversal of consciousness sort of experiences, like being plunged into another consciousness through that. It was more of – it was kind of like something that’s opening.

I feel energy, the energy at the top of the head flowing through it, in a very subtle manner. Almost as if someone was blowing on the top of your head, gently blowing. So, there is a physical sensation.

Psychic Being vs. Being in The Physical

You know, it’s hard to describe those things, [the psychic being], it has qualities; the feeling is so central. That’s what I guess I was thinking when comparing to the feeling of the psychic being to the feeling of the physical, whereas the [feeling in the] physical is like, “Oh, I’m aware of the, the shakti here,” or in my legs, or sometimes in my face, or different parts of the body, or sometimes the whole body, almost like a cloud, 199 like a pixilated sensation in the body in a sense, it doesn’t feel hardness or a kind of concreteness. Whereas the feeling in the heart is very focused, very focused and then all those feelings are like, bhakti, and just, sort of spontaneous love, a loving attitude, all those sort of qualities. They’re there, they’re part of that one’s presence there, but it could be, it could be a certain spontaneous experience.

These experiences in the physical are spontaneous. It is not that I would seek them out, but rather I would suddenly become aware of them. I mean, once you’re in the physical you know you’re in the physical, it’s so…tactile. I mean, it might be happening in the brain, the brain might be, “Oh, this is what’s going on in my body.” But there’s that, that sort of spontaneous identification with being,

Often at night I’ll feel things while sleeping. Like recently, I saw Sri Aurobindo stirring my matter in my body, or also a lot when walking too. But, these experiences in the physical are spontaneous. It is not that I would seek them out, but rather I would suddenly become aware of them.

For this project I’ve been working on, I’ve been going to some very remote parts of India and it’s some aspect of the sadhana. I initially started to even take experiences in the physical more seriously. After I’d gone to this place at 14, 000 feet, it’s a very important Buddhist pilgrimage area where they have these sacred lakes, I was reflecting on how rich an experience it was. And an energy in my calves said wordlessly, but still clearly “said” it was a rich experience for them as well! And then I could feel swishing, an expanding energy, in this area around the shins, in the calves. It was spontaneous and the body was saying it was also was happy with that experience. It felt like it was from the body, it just feels that way. 200

[The experience of being in the physical] must carry through because [now that]

we’re talking about it, I’m feeling it going into the physical and that we are focused on it.

In a different way than the spontaneous experience and it has a certain quality of it.

Infinity

Sometimes, I feel like infinity in the body. These things, as you know, are hard to

articulate. It wasn’t like infinity in the sense of, say, when the Mother says when you

become conscious of the world at all once, then you can become conscious of the body,

not the body, but of the Divine. (“When you are conscious of the whole world at the same

time, then you can be come conscious of the Divine,” Mother’s New Years Message,

1973). What I am trying to say that – although I felt infinity in the cells of my body – it was not as vast an infinity as say the above experience of Mother - it was a “little infinity,” it wasn’t something so vast as they talk about…it was just like that, but in a very teeny way.

I feel very connected to both Hinduism and Buddhism, and so once the body started to identify with the lotus in which the Bodhisattva stands on. These experiences are like a mutation of the form of the body’s own conscious identity. For a few seconds it was like I was physically the form of that lotus, by identifying with it I mean. You feel that shape, [you become it]. But then at the same time the mind is going, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh what’s going on?” and you have to kind of quiet the mind [to keep it from] analyzing the experience, so it’s not totally mentalizing [the] experiences, and usually they’re not that long. You’re feeling it, but I find it very tactile, very tactile but feeling—in a way I’m not feeling like Akroyd anymore at that point. And Akroyd in this shape, the shape would change, or like I said – with the feeling of infinity once or 201 twice – I’ve felt it in the body, it just was like this incredible openness. I felt very open, even though it didn’t feel vast. I didn’t feel like I was identifying with the universe, it was just open space. It felt like open space. It didn’t move; I was sleeping. I woke up and my body was in this space.

Central Being

[The central being] has that quality, the feeling here, in the heart. You have a really strong physical, or nonphysical but as if it was physical feeling, like a solidity is there that is just not comparable to anything else. But, it’s very interesting because here, above the head, it becomes very light, clear. Whereas in the heart it’s just, maybe because it’s behind the emotional center, it has that sort of, you can see the emotions almost being a perversion of that because it’s just very deep, a very deepness.

Like the very interesting ancient metaphor for light and fire, like agni in the

Vedas, a fire of self, a candle burning. Because when you go into those spaces, I guess it’s the fourth dimension or whatever, it’s called something, it’s as if it is this external space but somehow this external space seems almost flat compared to the internal. The internal spaces seem much wider and larger and truer and more intimate, more deep. And of course there is that love that is there. And it’s just a sort of sureness, and it carries you further. But the Mother said that you’d know it when you’re there, and that’s one of the things, you do. That’s probably the reason it’s hard to describe because you just know.

For me, I have a sense of there, but it’s the beginning of there, you know, the front door or whatever. But you just know it. There’s just something about it that is, you try to be honest with yourself and I think it does, it does work. I mean that integrity, that sincerity that she speaks of, and then you take that and you apply it to everything, and in applying 202 it to everything, because you are applying to yourself as well as your relationships with people, a constant sort of outflow of thoughts or whatever that goes with the rest of the day. And so that feeling is just there, it’s just, it’s just, there’s just a feeling it’s there, you just know it. I think what I am trying to say is that if you are sincere, aspiring towards perfect sincerity, then you know when you have that experience versus just fantasizing.

But the central being is really strong, strong, like an axis, you know, like, like a wheel axis, it really has that sense of [solid core]. Sort of like the axis mundi, hollow, almost.

[Are you finding that too, at the same time?] Yeah, I think [that the quality is becoming more solid], the sense of unreality is growing stronger. So, that sense of unreality is coming with a sense of another reality that’s truer.

Being in Higher Spaces

[How do you know when you are in a higher space?] You just know, and you know when you’re not there. I mean, there are certain qualities, soft and more detached, you just feel that. Well it’s easy to see Mother and Sri Aurobindo, it’s very easy. You’re just so attuned that you think about them and you see them, spontaneously too. I see a lot of them in the dreams, and in walking around [So they are actually visual; they show up for you, it’s not a sensing when you’re awake?] Yeah, visual. And then even with the physical sun and walking down the street, I see them. A bunch of diamonds, light, and the

Mother, for just a second I saw glimpses, I don’t know where I’m at, at that point, you know. You see it, so you’re internalized but you’re externalized, you’re both, you’re living in both spaces at that same moment. I mean I am walking, so I am not asleep or in meditation, but I see them also. So I guess one is partially in trance, but also one is 203 present in the body. One is in another consciousness, far less mental, that is why it is so hard to explain.

Ascents and Descents

The ascents, descents, I’ve felt not really ascending, you know, maybe a little bit descent; I noticed that question in your notes. Not really. I was fascinated by that too, but

I think that probably I experienced those things but was not conscious at the time. But I don’t necessarily feel, say, water coming down in the inside of your body, or something sort of shooting out of the top of the head in that. In one of Satprem’s later books, The

Tragedy of the Earth, a very nice book, he really talks about this strong sort of shakti that comes from below the feet all the way up and then it starts shooting way up for a while, but these things I’ve really haven’t experienced.

Dreaming of Sri Aurobindo and Mother

Whenever you dream of Sri Aurobindo or the Mother, one has to take that dream seriously. In 2001, [around August] I dreamt that Sri Aurobindo asked me to be his eyes, to watch things for him, to note them down, but not to draw any conclusions. And then about, a month later, 9/11 happened and everyone, you notice, it was an interesting thing, a lot of hysteria, on the one hand, very scary. But for me the whole thing was, I just remembered Sri Aurobindo’s dream. And I just wouldn’t let myself get absorbed in that hysteria and general anxiety because, like I said about feeling the benefit of isolation in my practice for so many years, again, it was better for me to “not to draw any conclusions.” So I could just sort of watch what was happening and not take all those raw emotions that was so much in the atmosphere here in the U.S. absorb that and become part of that. I can’t deal with politics at all, otherwise I just become a hot head and totally 204 imbalanced. So I really felt he was saying, “Don’t get involved with this.” And again, also with the tsunami, it was the same thing.

Dream, Warrior

The dynamic of the dream life I have has totally changed. So very recently, around the time of Sri Aurobindo’s birthday of this year, I had a dream, a very archaic kind of dream. I was like a Sumerian warrior in this very white space, it was a completely white space. I had a club, and I came to this rich brown-like bronze colored stone temple of the Goddess, a particular kind—because I know iconography and all the basic temples styles and there is a particular type that I only know, three buildings and they are all for the Goddess Devi, the primordial Mother. I heard this sound and I saw this snake that was meant for me to destroy. I heard the sound, it was a direction from the Great Goddess in the form of a buzz, and then I saw this snake, a black cobra twisted around a white pipe.

And then in the process of the story, it twisted itself around my neck and I just clubbed it into two pieces—it looked like sushi—and what I felt, one of the things that fascinated me about the dream, was that when it twisted itself around my neck I wasn’t scared.

[Before this time in my sadhana I would have been afraid.]

Current Issues and Challenges

Meditation versus Being in the Physical

They [experiences in the body] don’t really last that long, and might even last just a few seconds, but then sometimes some things would come up, especially walking meditation. And then it can be hard to sustain. At times, I sort of I put myself in a semi- trance state, but what I find is that it’s different than other sort of meditations. Like if you meditate in your heart and you go deep in that chakra, or in that space towards the 205 psychic being or trying to bring that out and veil it less or whatever, that’s a deep experience. And then, let’s say, if the phone rings or something calls you out of it, it’s just a bigger sort of leap of space. But in the body one can feel really absorbed and really inside the experience and if something external happens it doesn’t feel like this huge leap across. Or, it takes you out of it, or it doesn’t, it’s not as jarring. It is not like when in meditation when one can go deep into trance. The physical seems to feel just below the surface, very nearby. More like surfacing as opposed to being in one space and going into another sort of a link after the meditating for 20 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever, and it sort of, two or three transitional minutes. And it evolves.

Being in the physical.

So then, in the last few years the experience started going into the physical; that’s hard to explain, it’s, it’s starting to get more and more established. First it was just a little bit here and a little bit there, I mean, once you’re in the physical you know you’re in the physical, it’s so…tactile, say, it’s so, it’s not happening here [in the chakras or in the head] anymore.

So with the physical, it’s like, then the world can sometimes seem so false as it is.

[Just by this the experience of being in the physical?]. Yeah. And also I think that my experience of it must still be very mentalized, because it’s so early on and the way the mind has been such a dominant among other things of the body. But, there is a certain kind there, it’s like, on the one hand sometimes it just seems, everything just seems so false; but not in a depressed manner where it’s just futile. But just, it feels so false, the world feels false, and yet also there’s a real strong faith in the future. [As if it’s an illusion], a very tenacious illusion. I haven’t physically felt the illusion. The external 206 world feels simply false. So it’s one of those spiritual concepts that I have faith in. The other thing is the mind is very calm, so calm. In fact, I think that is one of the qualities of being physical is a very calm space. And spacious, one feels spacious in the body, making the ordinary experience of the body feel flat or 2D[two-dimensional].

But, with things like with my life, that all this traveling I have to do, and it always takes a while for it to return to the calm enough space where I could let these things happen. . But the interesting thing is that I find that in the physical, my faith gets even more firm, more strong. And the psychic being has that psychic connection, which is beautiful, and so, so real. Which also has a calmness to it. I’m trying to think, it’s like almost as if, like meditating on the psychic being, getting that connection, focus bringing one’s consciousness there, not of the brain so to speak, it goes very deeply in it. Whereas in the physical it seems to be less centralized because when I am focusing on the psychic being it’s like going to the core, and almost experience the self as being the central experience.

Intuitive

I think intuition has grown as a side effect of the sadhana. I see it as being the ranges of intuition in the sense of yoga. In The Life Divine he talks about this intuitive plane and that sort of thing. For me it’s more of a quality of the heart, through the psychic being. [In my work now] you have to work very, very intuitively.

Impact of Sadhana

I don’t think I would say these things [we have talked about]. I mean for my friends [I have], in bits and pieces. My partner knows a few of these facts, but they make him feel uncomfortable. [But] between friends, I wouldn’t say these things. 207

After this year, especially after Satprem’s dying, [the connection to him] became much stronger. It was hard for me when he died, and I find he is still a really important influence on me. The feeling was that as long as Satprem is alive, the yoga of the world is going forward, and then suddenly he left too. It was really pulling the rug from under one’s feet, as the saying goes. You see Mother had already left (the external physical, that is) when I began my sadhana, so it was just Satprem for me. There was never any talk of him being their successor, how could anyone succeed them? But he was the most important disciple; there is no doubt about it. His departure puts a lot of responsibility into all of our hands, on our shoulders, our bodies. Since his death, I have made just a stronger connection to him than I had before. And then with that came more experiences in the physical.

Also with the tsunami, it was the same thing [as 9/11], that’s what I guess I’m thinking, feeling, especially with the physical, it’s like these things are happening and they have a big impact on the earth. But since I began having experiences in the physical they just do not seem that real. Personally to be detached from it, it was fine, to be detached and not be involved. Because that would just bring me out of it and what was really important to me is to follow, to nurture this thing, this sadhana in the physical.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, it’s a very tumultuous period outside; I just don’t get caught up in that. The experiences in the physical have made this external

"war on terror" so-called reality even less real. Really since 2000, things really started to congeal, the power of my sadhana.

That’s what I guess I’m thinking, feeling, especially with the physical. Once I am feeling the physical, it’s tactile, but it’s being in the physical that feels real. And I would 208 say that it’s not so much that in force of being an observer, is that, actually being an observer is almost a survival way to do it, because there is a certain experience at my stage in my sadhana that has to be, I guess, more internal as opposed to within time, within the now. Those sort of external pressures are not for me to get involved with. They pull me out, they pull me in a different direction as opposed to being anchored into my own space. I think history now pulls me out of myself. I feel like what he was directing me to do in that dream was to not pay attention to external global events. It’s almost like it’s a duality, it’s another duality, I suppose, if you have to keep in dualities until we really become one. And it’s sort of like a duality that there’s outside and there’s inside, and it’s better just to pay attention inside. I see the direction we are going externally, but it’s given me a really strong faith that there’s nothing to worry about.

One of the things that fascinated me about the dream [fighting a cobra wrapped around my neck] was that when it twisted itself around my neck I wasn’t scared. It was like nothing at all, no reaction. It just was part of the process. So that’s why I can say that there’s a real sort or progress over this time. [Before] I would’ve, at that point, probably even saying Mother’s name out loud or whatever to get out of that space. And it was really very confirming about my sadhana and my surrender to them, and the progress of it, in that way.

And then the other thing is my sense of smell, I have a very poor sense of smell and very recently it started to develop.

It’s amazing that Mother could articulate those experiences of her body. And whatever she would say. In The Agenda, the Mother would say the words seemed so hollow compared to the experience, and yet she was able to convey something hugely 209 powerful, even in translation!—saying it’s a good yarn. And it’s keeping me attentive to her energy somehow, but the fact that she could talk about it—cosmic creative dust of the universe being identified with that gold dust of the supramental and further—quite amazing.

It had a strong impact in my art. It’s kind of a combination working very intuitively, and it’s also increased that sort of openness to just letting it happen.

The only [challenging] thing I can think of, especially this year, was this need to be home. It’s a nice environment, it’s a very good environment to be in, so one could really go into a psychic space and maintain it outside of the meditation throughout the day, you know, keep referring back to it. But then, the whole impact of the world is very harsh; it’s very difficult. I feel that for about five months this year I really sustained a very, for me, a very high space. That was really a wonderful accomplishment because otherwise I would go up and down, being in it and then I would be pulled out of it and back into it. And then I was really sustaining it, but part of it was I didn’t go out much, and going out would have its challenges. And actually what happened, basically, I got attacked by disease entities in the doctor’s office, and I lost my balance. But in the last 6 weeks I’ve been rebuilding that space, and I’ve started finding what I need in order to go into the psychic space. It’s such an openness, it’s all about the openness, it’s all about not having walls, and trying to be able to do that and still go outside and not go into the supermarket and get a migraine because someone’s got a bad thought and you just get to that thought and you come back [with it]. Now I have found a “trick” of protection when

I leave the house, thanks to their Grace.

210

Annie Dutts – Story

Five minutes ago I was completely dispersed and in my frontal consciousness and now I’m reconnected to the higher consciousness and the larger self and the divine and it feels just great. Very sweet.

Sadhana

[My] practice changes all the time. But in general the one thing that I [do], which has remained constant throughout, is brahmacharya. That was one of the rules that Sri

Aurobindo had in the ashram, which was celibacy, no sex. And I did that right away and that wasn’t really much of a problem for me. That of course has impacted my life. [It] means no relationships with people who want that. So that has been a shaping factor.

And then I’d say another constant, the main constant in my yoga has been working in the inner consciousness. Some people do karma yoga. And I’m really bad at karma yoga. But I’m a meditator and so I explore the inner planes of consciousness. I have a really good facility with those experiences in the inner planes and I know the different planes and I can negotiate them and know where I am going and bring in those incredible experiences and change the consciousness and stuff. So that has been a context. I’m a mystic, major mystic. You can call me a poster child for the old spirituality. Because, even knowing Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, where they talk about these wonderful spiritual experiences and how they don’t change matter and they don’t change life, even knowing that and even saying I want to do my yoga in the world and I want to change life, even knowing that these experiences are so spectacular and so profound, they’re just incredible and you just sit there and you’re so happy when you’re in these experiences and they’re so vast, and you think it’s just going take a tiny little thing and 211

they’re going to come out and change the world but they don’t. And so as a result, my outer nature is not transformed. I have all kinds of problems with my outer nature.

Going Through Inner Vital

[I accessed these inner planes] through rock and roll and through love, falling in love with people. You know, the vital, the emotional being, which is the higher vital, is right in front of the psychic being. So for me, I think that’s probably my most default, awakened part. And music is in the vital and if you get psychic music—it is just very easy for me. It takes me right in, the music gives you something to concentrate on, it’s like a mantra that quiets the mind and it focuses you. And I go into the inner vital, which is the force, the power, the feeling, the wideness, the love, the emotion. And it just goes… POW! out into the universal, into the cosmic vital. It’s not that localized, you just feel like you’re getting out of the surface consciousness into a wider identity. You just kind of go from your surface back. It’s like your surface is a little point and the further back you go the wider it gets so you get hugely wide.

And at a rock and roll concert these universal forces they’re just massive. That’s the universal vital. You get 18,000 people in there all focused on inner consciousness and magic. It’s just huge. And so I learned how to do that [initially through rock and roll] and

I then learned how to do it through any music. I can basically get it through most music now, classical music, bluegrass, rock and roll, ragtime, whatever.

And then love, also, I have the ability to see people’s psychic beings and the divinity in them. And in men especially, I see the Divine. It is harder to see the Divine

Mother. The Mother has always been harder for me but I can at some point see the Divine

Mother. So I can look at people and see their true being and that again just puts me back 212

into the consciousness of the Divine. So that’s through the emotion and through the heart, especially if I have a deep relationship with someone and I go through the heart. And that is really confusing because you see that and they don’t. And what do you do with that?

Usually you don’t do anything. You just sit there and see the Divine and nobody else sees it. But anyway you can do it that way. So that’s going in through the vital.

Meditation Technique

For me meditation was easy. You just sit down and then you start looking and you see a little vibration that’s interesting and you follow it. You look and you see a little thought or a feeling or an idea or a little vibe or something and it looks kind of interesting and you follow it. It’s basically a concentrating. You see something and then you zoom, you zoom the lens up, you increase the magnification and you just increase, increase, it’s like increasing the concentration. You just sit there and you go, “I wonder what’s happening above the head, let’s look.” So you kind of send your awareness up there and then you just start looking and then you feel, “Oh yeah, it feels kind of like champagne coming down on the top of my head. That’s really neat, let’s just open to it.” You just concentrate and it just opens and opens and opens. I learned how in the ‘60s when we were all smoking grass and it was like going down corridors. You’d see a hall and you’d go down the hall and you’d go deeper and deeper and you’d follow it to see the secret at the end. So that’s my technique of meditation, you just jump on a little vibration and follow it to the end wherever it is. 213

Experiences

Matter Waking Up to the Divine

I have experienced a number of times in the body, probably the true physical or the subtle physical, the awakened divinity of the physical, in Hatha yoga class for instance. And then I’ve also had that experience that Satprem talks about and Mother talks about in The Agenda, of matter waking up to the Divine. And that I tell you, you know all these spectacular experiences that I have been talking about in the inner and higher pale in comparison to matter waking up to the Divine. Because it is absolutely solid, absolutely concrete, absolutely holy, peace, it’s just unbelievable. But, I haven’t had that experience as often, maybe only 8 times, but it’s a really good one. It’s been a long time since so I can’t really remember. It’s just mental remembering. No, just that the

Divine is here, and the Divine is physical and concrete.

Psychic Being and Surhomme Column

I’ve had the [experience of the] psychic being, that sweet innocent purity of the psychic being, which is the heart totally surrendered to the Divine and bowing to the

Divine. I’ve also had an experience, which may be something similar to what the Mother talks about in The Agenda in 1973. She said she saw the psychic being of Rijuta. And it was taller than Rijuta was; it was like a couple feet taller and a couple feet down it was maybe 12 feet. And I’ve had that a lot, this feeling of this column of psychic identity in me that’s me but it’s much taller than I am and it’s built of the psychic being. And I also had what I was convinced was the experience of the surhomme, the supramental, the superman consciousness, that Mother talks about in ’69. And that again was that column, this huge maybe 15 foot high kind of identity built on the psychic being, just one, just a 214

foot back from normal reality. It’s not like these descents of force, it’s very calm and very

humble and simple but totally awake and bright and full of bliss and power and

everything. I only had that once. But this column business I’ve had that more than once

and I think they’re related. [It’s] just kind of a cylinder, just kind of a column of

awakened identity. It kind of feels like, you know how when you feel the shape of your

“you” is the shape of your body? Well, it feels like that except you’re a cylinder instead

and the cylinder is about 15 feet tall; so you feel like this column of identity.

I would like to see that surhomme experience come back, because when it

happened I was absolutely convinced that it was the superman consciousness. It was at

AUM [All USA Meeting] and I was in front of this fellow. He said something and this

bolt of golden energy just came and hit me. Our psychic beings merged and then it went

“brooooww,” you know, and it turned into this column. And this new consciousness

opened up in me and it was completely based in the psychic being. It was this sweet, utter

humility, pure, sincere awareness of the psychic being, but it was 15 feet tall and it was

just behind surface reality, it wasn’t like one of these experiences of the inner, it was

right here, and it was absolutely clear, and it was really, really strong, and it was full of bliss, and I was just absolutely certain that it was the superman consciousness. It was just vast, but it was so humble. And it was so here, in the manifestation. Mother said it’s the psychic being that will materialize the supramental body. And I felt that I had that experience and that this was what was going to manifest the supramental body. I was utterly certain that it was this supramental, the superman consciousness of the transitional being—not the full-fledged supermind, but the consciousness of the transitional being of a person who is born human but had the supramental and was making the transition. And 215

it only happened to me once, and it stayed for three full days and then it kind of, was sort of present for about a week and then it disappeared. But the thing is, when it happened I was utterly certain. I've never had it since and I’d sure like to. I think that would be neat.

Jivatman

I’ve seen the jiva, jivatman, which is the central being Sri Aurobindo talks about.

Before incarnation you have a central being that sends down the psychic being and the psychic is in the manifestation, but the central being is above. I’ve had that and it was huge. After I experienced it, I said was that the jiva? And I looked it up and it was. So it’s like this enormous entity outside of manifestation, before Annie Dutts incarnated. And the whole Divine is up here and it starts to individuate like a stalactite going down. And that’s the central being, but it’s above manifestation, and it’s one with the Divine but it’s individualizing and then it sends down the psychic being. So I had that. That was pretty cool. And I only had that once.

Golden X

And then there’s another consciousness, when we are talking about higher planes and consciousness, that I don’t know what it is. And I just call it the Golden X. When we’ve been talking of descents of light, descents of force, descents of peace, descents of bliss, this is like that but 10,000 times stronger. It’s massive. It’s just obliterating. It’s something up there and I’m not going to worry about what it is. But it’s got a whole different quality to it of absoluteness. You know like in [the movie] Twister when they’re in the tornado? Or like if you hear a train going by and it’s going [makes train sounds].

It’s like that. It’s just obliterating. It’s like being there at the birth of a galaxy or something. So I’ve had that. And every once in a while it comes back. I think I’m 216

assimilating. Also, I was with someone who died once and when she died it came down. I think we were kind of [in] the same thing. I was identified with her and I was seeing what she was seeing. I was seeing her make the transition. And she just ran into the arms of the

Divine and the force was everywhere. So I just call it the Golden X.

Mukhti

Mukhti, that’s a great one. You know how I said I’m not a very good karma yogi, when you surrender action, and I’ve never been very good at action. I’m kind of a loser at action. But every once in a while for this task or that task or because of ferocious deadlines or real impossibilities I’ll get into a total state of surrender. I’ve done that a number of times, and what happens is every single thing you do is utterly surrendered to the Divine and you surrender the fruits. And you do it and say, “I don’t care what happens it doesn’t matter, this is the Divine.” And I’ve been in that state for 6 weeks at a time and what it gives you is absolute peace. It’s mukhti. You don’t care about anything.

You are absolutely invulnerable, you are absolutely incorruptible, and it gives you peace from all those desires. And the frights, you are not afraid of anything, you’re just immune to fear. That’s hard for me to do, but I’d like to get that one back. I do that when I give

[public] talks, because I am so scared. So that’s happened a number of times.

Trikaladrishti

Once I think I had trikaladrishti, which is the triple time vision. It’s the vision of past, present, and future. It was at an AUM and I kind of got back out of my supraconsciousness and it’s like I saw all time as a river, but it was all there at once. It was like block time, like they talk about in physics, where you can see all time at once and you could just put your finger in wherever you wanted but it was all simultaneous. 217

And so you understand how the supermind can understand everything all at once because it’s all synonymous to it. It was just a little vision of that one day.

Divine Mother

I’ve seen the Divine Mother, which is a hard one for me. I see the Divine a lot but it’s harder to see the Divine Mother. I’m not really personal about the Divine. It feels like a state. And I don’t usually see it as Mother or Sri Aurobindo even though I am totally devoted to them and they’re my gurus. It feels like a presence, a being. But, you know, it doesn’t come like Krishna. It feels like an intelligence, a being, and it feels personal but maybe not “qualitied” except for bliss and power. When you see the Divine it just has a sort of a he cast, sort of, not really. But, if you had to give it a gender it would sort of be a he, sort of. And the Divine Mother would sort of be her. And I finally saw the difference once. It took me a long time to see the Mother and when I finally saw her it was a lot closer, it was a lot more creative and it was full of power, whereas the Divine is more like love and peace and ananda and bliss but it’s not so creative. But they all kind of blend in.

If I didn’t have Sri Aurobindo telling me, I probably wouldn’t have had that experience that way. But I ha[ve] to work hard to get the Mother.

And then Mother, I finally got in touch with her through [someone] who was telling us stories of growing up with Mother in the ashram. And after that, I shot through the top of my head and got in touch with Mother’s personality. And that lasted for a year or two and that was really nice, but I’ve kind of lost that again. Mother’s hard for me. I don’t know why. So now I’m thinking in terms of the evolutionary Shakti. That’s how I think of it. So I go up through the top of my head and think in terms of getting in touch 218

with the evolutionary Shakti that’s what I call it. And it’s this creative power that will come down and transform.

Easiness of Accessing Planes

[What planes can you go right to and which are the ones that are coming in periodically that you either visit or you feel that they come down to you but they aren’t permanent yet in terms of anchored?] The ones that are really pretty easy are ananda and the wideness up here, the wideness and the truth and the light and the bliss in the ananda, that’s real easy to get. Just (snaps) like that. The Golden X, that’s a little harder to get, that’s that massive crushing one that doesn’t come as often. And the awakening of the

Divine in matter, I don’t have that one at all.

Current Issues and Challenges

For the first 12 years [of my sadhana I was around incredibly vital devotees whose beliefs were] that “we’re going to do the yoga, until the end, we’re going to do the transformation and it’s possible.” That is what the vital brings. I believed that. That was stamped on me, that transformation is possible and we’re going to do it. And of course

Satprem is the same thing. He is this vital, completely Western, take no prisoners, scale the peaks, transformation is possible, do it now. So that it indelibly stamped me with the feeling that transformation is doable. It’s a doable goal. We can do it. It’s possible now.

Because, when you talk to a lot of people, especially the Indians they say, “Oh, no, no, we don’t think about transformation. Don’t be egotistical. Don’t even think about that.

Just get in touch with your psychic being.” But I have been indelibly indoctrinated with the idea that total transformation, the supramentalization of the consciousness is possible.

So that’s been the whole focus of my life. That has been the most important thing in my 219

life, the yoga. More important than everything else, this total belief that that was possible, and that was the one thing that mattered.

That’s the thing with [my nervous system dysfunction], I have no shields at all.

[So many things then] bother me. [If] I go into a restaurant it takes me 5 minutes before I can get to a table that’s not dangerous with all the vibes coming at me. People think I'm a nut case. I took classes in transformational healing and new age techniques and stuff and the shields thing; I just never could get it to work. But what is working is I'm actively concentrating on bringing peace and strength into my nervous being, into the outer nervous being, consciously building that bridge between inner and outer.

And right now I’m lifting weights trying to get stronger in the body, which is not the inner consciousness. Actually I don’t have any physical consciousness at all, I’m just trying to get the physical to be aware, because I’m just so spacey. I just don’t have a sense of my body. I would say the dreamy-land, space-out land, isn’t the inner consciousness, it’s a mental zone, which is just kind of dispersed. I would just call that attention deficit zone. Just kind of little thoughts. The inner consciousness still for me takes will and sitting and purpose, which I do when I meditate. I'm still working on it. There are times where, you know, it stays for a long time, but then it goes back.

For 20 to 30 years I was working on these inner planes building up experiences and doing basic work on the outside. But for the last five years now I’m realizing that the bridge needs to be built between inner and outer. So that’s what I’m doing now. [These other planes] don’t come across, there is a split between the inner and the outer. And 220

making a bridge is tricky and I’m just starting to work on that now and I think I’ve got the key.

There’s still just a big division between my surface personality and my inner consciousness, and so most of the time I’m in my surface personality. And when I activate the inner consciousness it’s hard to speak and it’s hard to carry that around activated. So usually I still have to kind of sit down and go in a little bit, I haven’t quite mastered it in dynamic action. So that needs work.

This is new [in the past 5 months], because you know, I told you how the inner and the outer were not connected and I never knew how to do that. Because I go into the inner so easy and then I come out so easy. And it’s like a wormhole, I go swish-swish.

It’s like, it’s like a stargate. There’s no connection between the two because it’s instant.

You have to build the bridge. And how you do that is you have to go slow. You’re here and you slowly come forward and you bring it with you. You don’t go swish-swish, which is what I’ve always done because it’s been so easy for me. So you go real slow and you consciously bring that inner consciousness into your surface awareness. You don’t just do this Dr. Jekyll/ Mr. Hyde thing. You’re in your frontal awareness and then you try to remember it and you have to consciously bring it in. And I didn’t know that, I thought it would just magically happen, like a fairy godmother would just come in and go swish and presto you are transformed, but it has got to be an act of will.

It’s the same thing with the evolutionary Shakti above. What I do is I go up there and then I concentrate on slowly bringing this Divine Mother consciousness down into all the parts of my being that need transformation. So in other words, you do it real slow up and real slow down. That’s how I’m working on it. And it’s working. 221

It helps to have a little technique too, because Integral Yoga is really low on technique. They don’t have a lot of techniques. Everybody’s got to invent his or her own techniques. So I have all these problems with my surface nature. And I have all these experiences [but] I can’t ground them. I can’t sustain them. They come and they go, they come and they go. My bills are all late and all these things in my outer nature are just not yogic. It’s like India, you know, the electricity doesn’t work but they have a great inner consciousness.

So I came across Emile Coue, who was the faith healer in France around the turn of the century in 1900. Sri Aurobindo and Mother both talk about [him]. He did this mantra. I’m sure you’ve heard the mantra. He was a faith healer and he cured tens of thousands of people from asthma and paralysis and everything and the mantra was

“Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.” You say it 20 times in the morning and 20 times in the evening. I’ve been doing that for a couple of months now and my God it’s working. And Sri Aurobindo and Mother say why it works. Because it is a suggestion placed on the subconscient. And the subconscient is a consciousness, but it’s very opaque. And it will respond to a higher consciousness. It will respond to the vital and it will respond to the mental and it will respond to the spiritual, and also it responds to repetition. So if you do that over and over and over it starts to have an effect. So I’m experiencing some good results in the outer nature now. [It’s almost as if I am creating a channel into the subconscious by direct will and intent].

It is a tool of the psychic being. It’s not a tool of the hip GenX, post-modern mentality. It’s too sweet for that, too innocent. You just sit there and it’s so sweet and so childlike and it’s full of faith and you can do it, “Every day, in every way, I’m getting 222

better and better.” And you can feel the consciousness start to change and you can feel the higher consciousness start to come in and start to work. And my health is improving.

[It] totally has to do with the mind of the cells and yoga in the body too.

[The following] is what [my sadhana] looks like for me now. The Transformation

Academy, that’s what I call it. I saw this movie called Equilibrium. It’s a science fiction movie, and they do this thing called the “gun kata.” A kata is like a movement, a form in martial arts. So they do this thing where they can predict where the bullets are going to go and you’re going “pop, pow, pow, pow,” you know, and they’re just dancing. So this is a kata developed for me. There are three parts to it. There’s inner aspects of it where I’m doing inner activities, there’s working on instrumental parts of my nature, and then there’s some little mundane habits and methods and routines.

[In] the three inner ones, the first one is, “I open to Sachchidananda and bring forth the psychic being,” and that’s the most important. It’s this thing of opening consciously to the evolutionary Shakti and bringing that down. And then the second part is bringing peace and strength down, and the third one is offering everything, getting into that state of mukhti and surrender. So those are three inner things that I’m working on these days.

In terms of nature, the two things I’m working on is mastering my emotions, which I don’t master, they’re very jumpy and I’m really emotional. And then I’m learning how to focus. So those two things [are part of] my nature [kata]. And then the little routine methods, I’m journaling, because that gives me understandings, and it shows me where I am in yoga. And then I’m working on the things that we all work on, exercise, eat right, go to bed on time. Then every night I plan the next day. You learn to 223

adapt and don’t get into too structured a conventionality. That’s what my yoga looks like.

The opening to the world and the psychic being and the bringing down of peace and the strength, that’s in the meditations. And then the rest is outer nature stuff. That’s mostly where my yoga is these days, [in] outer nature. Right now I’m not concentrating on inner experiences.

What I’m grateful for is that I’ve got this vision, that I’ve got Mother and Sri

Aurobindo, that I’ve got the yoga, that I’ve got the books, that I’ve had all these teachers and trainers. I’ve got this vision for the future. I feel that this is kind of like post-ashram yoga because it’s yoga in the world. It’s like the material world is going to get a new landlord, the Divine is moving in, and we can go out there and we can wear jeans and we drive cars and we can go to Panera’s and have a cup of hot tea and a sandwich and be doing the yoga and be experiencing the descent of the supermind so we can take the world for the Divine.

I’m grateful for that vision and I’m grateful that I’ve had something to organize my life around, because that gives a unification and a purpose and a meaning for your life; I’m really grateful that I've got that because life has to have meaning and if every moment you feel that your life is important and it means something and you’re trying to do something, that’s great.

Two points: One is just to reiterate that point about how spiritual experiences are only half the ride; it’s the day trip. That’s old spirituality, having all these experiences, that’s only the trip one way. And Integral Yoga needs the trip back. So getting excited about these spiritual experiences is not where it’s at in Integral Yoga, you have to transform your nature. 224

Benefits of The Study

The second one is I really want to thank you for doing this because this is really important. And I think that this is the American contribution to Integral Yoga, that we treat this as a research area and we get the knowledge out and we start sharing, because that’s how you grow. In science they publish their results. And I think we need to do that in the yoga, and I think that’s how we’re going to go forward. Because just sitting here and having all these experiences, you don’t know what they are and you don’t know if anybody else is having them. And hearing that other people are having them, it gives you such joy and such hope.

[Preparing for this interview] gave me a good overview of my life. It made me realize that I’ve had like six or seven big periods in my life and each period was devoted to one particular purpose in the yoga. So it kind of put everything in focus, so that was very nice, that’s good.

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Cathleen Carmichel – Story

I feel like I’m being seen or being known on this level that I don’t usually put out there in a very overt way. But it feels okay, I feel comfortable, it’s just an awareness.

Sadhana

I practice a breathing pattern that envisions the chakras opening from above and descending down the base chakra. And I find that very centering and meaningful. It just feels related and good to me.

I also practice hatha yoga that’s based on the Iyengar style of hatha yoga. I have a very specific set of exercises that I do with a teacher, and there are times during that practice where I again feel through the body an incredible boundlessness, or boundarylessness, I should say. The boundaries are not there. So that the breathing, the position, the getting into the asana itself and then holding the pose and being in that pose and breathing—especially in some of the poses that you stay in them for five minutes, more resting type poses—I find those to be just very liberating and very physical. It’s different from [being in] nature but it’s also still very much in the body. And I think that’s something that I feel really was a strong message from Mother and Sri Aurobindo,

[that] was “It’s in your body; it’s in the body.” And it’s in the body that all of this makes any sense at all.

The transformation’s a physical work. It isn’t ethereal or abstract; it needs to be real in the body. And being somewhat of an intellectual type of person that is always a challenge for me to be able to be experiential and not always having a process clicking away. In the mind we could map out all kinds of things and, with words, come up with a common ground. When I talk about the body and how it can become, I guess the closest I 226

can come to it, to an experience that most of us have is where that sleep state, between wake and sleep, where you know you're falling and drifting asleep. And sometimes you’ll jerk yourself awake thinking, “Oh, darn, I was almost asleep,” and then you have to get back into that state again. It’s almost like that state, it’s a very, you're in the body, but your mental configurations are gone. The other thing I again have to go back to [is] just being so blessed by having early contact with the teachings of Sri Aurobindo. The basis of yoga is the silent mind, and I go, “[Well], I mean, how many years now and I still haven’t even got that far!” It’s always been reminding me, “Get back to the silent mind, and don’t be attached to everything through your mind.” That’s an important part of the practice.

I think the other part of my practice that’s really quite strong for me and always has been has been work, I’ve always worked for different organizations related to Mother and Sri Aurobindo. I work for a grant endowment organization, and that is also challenging because you’re doing something that is such a draw of the ego. It’s like your ego can just jump in on anything, of course, anything that has the “I” attached to it—the,

“I do it this way, I will get this recognition,” or “I will be able to do this and therefore this person will have to do that.” It’s the “I” in relation to others or the “I” in relation to the big outside world. And how do you really have pure action and pure work? That’s the true karma yoga, the work of offering, consecrating the actions so that whatever is the outcome is offered and I’m not attached to the offering.

I find that to be quite challenging, I feel like I’m getting better and better at that, I mean, you have to keep going back and trying over again, especially when something fails. Successes we’re much more willing to accept, failures I don’t accept as well as my 227

successes. But karma yoga is quite a powerful way of doing the yoga. For me it’s the way to bring the yoga more and more deeply into every part of my life. It has a parallel with

Buddhism, the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, right action, right effort, right thought, right speech. So I would begin with a day, this day, this day is consecrated to the Divine.

“May all the things that I do today be bringing forth Mother’s work and be for the good of the transformation of the work.” Okay, so if you could begin a day like that, and even if I never think again about it, even if the rest of the day my mind is totally taken up with the busyness of my work and the thoughts and concentrations and communications and work, I’ve at least made that intention clear at the beginning of the day. Well, that’s a place to begin. And then at the end of the day one reflects back on, “Okay, did I engage, did I disengage, did I get my ego tangled up, or did I, was I able to bring my psychic being forward? Did I consecrate my day fully or did I get lost?” And then throughout the day, I’m much more conscientious about certain activities being in a spiritual nature. For example, reading Savitri or reading a spiritual work seems to be pretty clearly, “Okay, this I can focus on and intend this.” Lighting a candle in front of a meditative symbol, that can have that.

But I also take care of my plants. I like polishing wood, bringing forth beauty, and that is another place where the conscious thought can be there. It is a thought though, and that’s another area to work on. Because it isn’t a mental activity, the body is working or scrubbing vegetables or chopping. How do you bring your conscious moments of transformation, a still mind and a devoted open heart to the actual moment [of] your activity and not be attached to the outcome? That’s sort of a karma yoga approach I think, and I do a lot of that because right now that is certainly the stage of life I’m in. 228

With my work being involved in the intense emotional [milieu], that’s a whole other world in which we have transformative work to do. People can pull us into their dramas and you can get caught into incredible swirl of negativity, vampire-like behavior where people suck off your energy or hostilely attack you and I’ve felt all those things.

And I feel the importance of protection and meditation and creating an inner place that is safe, I think that’s very important.

I find my emotions are probably my least able to articulate of all the other experiences. [But the idea for the picture on a brochure] came out like that and so to me, this is yoga, this thing right here. I mean, I didn’t do this all myself but I’m part, one of the creators, of this. So then all these projects and stuff, I mean these things are so strongly in my life and so important, it isn’t other, it isn’t other than me, it’s a really full, full part of the life. And how do you show things like, “What are emotions?” Your emotions are joy and happiness and justice. Do you have a feeling for justice, is that an emotion?

I mean, I feel like our ability to share wealth and to release wealth from hostile forces, this is an example of that. To be able to use our spiritual vision to create, to create this world that we’re seeking to create, it’s going to require us to use our vision, use all this, everything we have to make it happen. It’s not an easy work, [but] it’s really an important and big work. So I read things like Savitri, and I’ve read it many times. I just read it beginning to end, and then I read it, do it again, and that’s a part of yoga as well.

It’s a little different part of it.

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Challenge: Sex, Money, Power, Nonlight Forces

[Life changing moments and experiences have] all sorts of dimensions to them. It is a vortex of very powerful energy. Whenever there’s powerful energy around there’s always negativity, the bright and the dark, there’s no light and the darkness, there’s the polar opposites, and there are people who almost swarm around a certain energy, [for example], sexual energy. In [working with women], there are a lot of issues around sexuality, and how to approach that with a high level of consciousness and a goal towards transformation and transcendence, and that is really an interesting thing.

So, I’ve had an interesting opportunity to incorporate that into my practice of yoga, which is somewhat contradictory. I would imagine there would be some people who would find it actually outside of how would you say, the ordained work of Mother and Sri Aurobindo. Celibacy is an important element of the ashram, but I don’t think celibacy was ever encouraged in Auroville. It was never imagined that you would have to be celibate to live in Auroville, or that you had to be celibate to be a devotee of Mother and Sri Aurobindo, but that at some point in an individual’s spiritual path it may come to pass that you do become celibate. And some of the ashrams do have that as a rule, celibacy is a rule if you are a member of the ashram. But it isn’t for everybody and it isn’t within my life. So I’m going, “Well, this is my life, this is what I’ve got.” And it seems to me that we have to bring our highest level of understanding and consciousness to this topic until we are transformed and no longer reproducing through our sexuality and through our bodies. If and when that occurs, we won’t need to be clear and clean about sex because we won’t be having, well who knows how we’ll be having children and what the future holds, I don’t know. But until that time, I think we deserve, we all deserve a 230

chance to understand ourselves and know our sexuality identity and have a pleasurable joyful sexual life.

Now, how that all fits into my practice of yoga is that I have a very loving and strong marriage that has a very alive and meaningful sexual component to it. So, I guess I have to say that I haven’t actually set as a goal to have celibacy, it just never really fit into my life. I mean there had been times before I met [my husband] but he and I have been together for [for a number of] years, so it’s been a long time since I’ve ever even thought about being celibate. I don’t engage in it real mentally. I try to think of it more from the point of view of, “This is work” and it just so happens that there’s this conjunction, this overlap.

Because Mother put a lot of importance on sex and money being transformed to the Divine purpose. That sex and money were very strongly linked, they were held by the hostile forces, which I can really see. I mean sex is definitely held by the hostile forces. I hope it doesn’t sound too weird to talk like that, but it does appear that way to me. When

I see children around the age of 12 to 14, they are just at the verge of sexual awakening, and it’s an incredibly exploitive time of life. There are a lot of purchasing, marketing, money [issues] around [them], there’s a lot of predators around them, there’s a lot of exploitation of their bodies and the way their body looks. And [it] is the point where a person first enters into the world of sexuality that, to me, I think is the hold in our culture.

And the United States seems to set the cultural trend around the globe. It’s pretty [much] held by hostile forces. And it is power as well, absolutely.

[In terms of bringing our spiritual path into the whole arena of sex, money, and power,] I think [it would be] on a level of practice. It’s a very personal practice and in 231

some ways, we don’t talk about it very much. I have no idea how people who are practicing yoga are bringing their intention of yoga and of the spiritual light and the psychic being into their day-to-day life that includes an intimate sexual relationship. I have no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to anybody about it. [I was discussing this with other people.] We were realizing, why do we have taboos? I mean, that it’s a taboo itself should alert us to the fact that we don’t have control there. Somebody else has control, some other forces are in charge there, we aren’t as in charge there. Whereas, if I were to talk to you about my singing, I sing classical music, if I was to talk to you about how open and how I feel and how the energy is when I’m singing in a large choral group, and the eternalness of some of the beautiful music of Mozart, that would be something that would flow so sweetly and nicely into your research project. How do you take that down to the lower chakra and say this is through sexuality I’m able to see this. I don’t know that we’ve done such a good job talking about that yet. But from the point of view of how I would approach it in a system the way I think about myself and my life and my practice [would be] how Mother and Sri Aurobindo always said open your top chakras first. It’s always from above. You open these top chakras before you do anything below, because that will take care of itself. If you start at the lowest and try to go up, you could come in[to] trouble. And I don’t particularly want that to happen to me, so I am pretty conscientious about that. So the idea of money, power, and sex, how do I approach that in a yogic sense and with an effort to bring forth the psychic being and psychic influence on those activities in my life? I would say it’s similar to the same thing I do everyday where it starts off with [saying], “My intention is that this activity will be reflecting my spiritual self and my highest aspiration.” 232

And I feel pretty, pretty successful with it. I don’t know that I have a lot to say

about it. I guess it seems like we haven’t totally opened ourselves to the supramental. We

haven’t completely opened the upper centers really totally and, speaking of myself, I tend

to have more awareness here in my heart, in my will, but certainly the lower chakras, I'm

not a big expert on that. I guess it hasn’t really been incorporated, it’s part of my life, it is

part of my life and in that sense, all life is yoga. I know this is part of my yoga; it just is.

And then I take what’s there and that’s what I work with.

Experiences

[Regarding significant experiences] that is much more of a complicated [subject to] answer. I think there are probably significant experiences in terms of the descent of light or the opening that one can perceive of higher chakras opening or, you know, perceiving activity and motion through the chakras. I do practice that.

As far as actually the depth of my spiritual experiences, I would say [they] are more related to equilibrium and groundedness and balance and harmony, so that at different times I’ve really pursued a particular meditation type or breathing pattern just to clarify to have an experience of a certain thing. But by itself it doesn’t mean very much.

From there I still have to go back and not be irritable, crabby, short-tempered, disorganized, selfish. From what I really learned from studying Mother and Sri

Aurobindo, the inner experience is one thing, but to be able to have that all the way through all the layers of your being so that all the layers of your being are enlightened by that, and that the psychic being or that inner aspiration of yourself floods through all the things you do, that’s what I'm interested in now, that’s where I’d say I’m at. And so what are the experiences from which I move forward or what have the experiences that 233

enlightened my day-to-day work of transformation? I would say they have mostly to do with silence, seeking silence, deep peace, a sense of silence and peace and nature, that

I’m able to shed my ego in nature and, really feel full and quite universal in those moments. And that I guess, I would say has been some of my most profound experiences.

[When I’m in nature, I experience the feeling of fullness and universalness.] It’s a feeling of boundlessness really and of being free, shedding the ego, that is I guess the way to describe that. It is not being self-conscious in the small sense of self but getting like a universal consciousness of oneness and harmony with the natural world.

Life as a River

I feel like it’s the day-to-day reality that really makes the difference. It’s the enriching of the texture of my everyday life that’s going to matter, no matter what other experiences I have. I have experiences, visual, sometimes really visual meditations where

I have a vision of my life as a flowing stream going almost of mythical proportions of life where there’s a flowing, a coursing river, a flow of life, of many lives, where the avenue that sort of splits and changes and then refigures again. And it’s always in the same direction. And being brought into the path with Mother and Sri Aurobindo has always been a very powerful, grounding, very, very important element of context, giving context to the experiences. The experiences by themselves are not important. It’s the way in which they get integrated into the larger self, and then manifested into transformation, into what we’re actually doing, why are we even here.

I draw some of my meditations too. I have that [drawing of the river] actually, I have it. That was actually a river even though it looks like a green, it was a river. And it was above and below, you know, the higher and then the physical body but that the light 234

was, there was something very, very serene about the flow of life. I don’t exactly know how to describe it, but that was the image that I had. When I had the experience that I kind of did this drawing of, it was that I had many, many lifetimes and that they were serene and flowing but that there was a lot of complexity and light and also very grounded. I feel really physically placed.

Current Issues and Challenges

[The most challenging aspects of my spiritual practice are] probably discouragement, depression, boredom, feeling disconnected. To me, boredom is feeling disconnected. I’m rarely bored, I’m just not that kind of person, so when I find myself feeling blah or not energized, low energy, depression, despair or discouragement, looking around our world, the discordancy between the spiritual aspiration and the reality of our world right now is very powerful; I find that who wants to be a Pollyanna? Who wants to be a stupid idiotic girl who is unrealistic, ungrounded and not going anywhere, just deluded? I suppose that’s probably the biggest bummer of all. The most difficult is to feel that there is a vision that one is aspiring towards in a world of transformation. Mother says these wonderful worlds of delight are waiting to come down. Well, yeah, says who?

You know, so perhaps lack of faith. But I don’t feel that way most of the time.

Most of the time I’m pretty, I’m a pretty upbeat, happy person.

I'm a big believer in routine things and also that if I change my behavior if I smile, if I get up and go walking, if I do my yoga, if I do the things in my daily life, even sometimes if it’s [pretty] bad I just start my day with I wash my face, I put on this cream and I brush my teeth, I'm on the path. It’s like, “Get going, get moving and get into it.”

There’s so many ways in which the practice over all these years is very deeply ingrained 235

in many aspects of my life, the consciousness with which I do my grocery shopping, the consciousness with which I grind my coffee beans. Because there are times where I'm very, very consistent year after year at a pretty even keel, being very concentrated on my aspiration and concentrating on offering and aspiring.

And that works. The aspiration doesn’t go away, the candle doesn’t go out. In the book The Hour of God, Sri Aurobindo talks about it’s the hour of the unexpected and you can go years, he is sort of more talking in the big grand sweep of human existence, but there are times when much effort goes into the making of a little result. So the Dark

Ages, for example, you could have been a wonderful, spiritual, kind, gentle, peaceful soul and you could have been surrounded by the plague and horrible hellish life with no light in sight, right? Well, that was a bad life, but it was there, we all experience different levels of that. If you keep the candle trimmed and you keep the temple ready—it’s a tradition all around, in all spiritual paths—you keep the temple clean so that when the god comes you are prepared and ready. And I'm a big believer in that. I believe it is important to do daily practice so that when an awareness comes, when a grace is given, when a spiritual experience comes, it doesn’t come into a chaotic life, it doesn’t come into a place, into a heart that’s closed. It doesn’t come into a person who can’t smile, laugh and express joy. It comes into a person who has been striving and aspiring and sincerely working for the transformation. So that there’s days and days and months and months sometimes, although I have to say that isn’t quite as a bad, I don’t experience it in the depth that I used to. That is something of course that probably goes with age as well, becoming more deeply and consistently harmonious with my whole personality. And now 236

my life is much more smooth and I’m really enjoying this stage in my life where I can be,

I think, much more deeply integrated. I don’t struggle much with discouragement.

I guess I feel pretty blessed all the way around, pretty lucky to think that from a pretty young age when a lot of times people are sitting there trying to find their place and what/who is their teacher and what is their spiritual path and I had it handed to me on a silver platter. I mean how many people [met the Mother at a young] age?

So that was always right there and it always felt to me like that was without question a part of who I was. I never felt like I needed to make it happen because it had already happened and I feel that it probably it was a result of past lifetime stuff. Mother says those of us who are working on this path, we have worked on this before, this is not the first time that we have worked together to bring light into the world. So I am thinking, well that’s probably true, not that I’m a great, you know, I don’t have past lifetime experiences and stuff like that, other than in the terms of universal consciousness or how you can get the feeling from a historical era or something like that where you can just get this vibration of knowingness of a particular human time. So what’s to look back? If anything I feel that there’s so much more to do, there’s so much more to be done. I don’t know how that’s going to shape up. I have a different sense of things in my life and where I’m going, what I do, but it all seems to be right on, it all seems to be…

And Mother talked about there’s two ways you can be in the world. You can be like a cat or you can be like a monkey. I’m sure that was an overgeneralization on her part, but anyway. So the idea or image she was conveying was if you’re a cat, you’re like a kitten, and the mother cat picks you up by the scruff of the neck and takes you along.

And Mother is the cat, the mother cat, and she said, “Indians are like a kitten, they’ll let 237

me just pick them up and I can take them along. Westerners are like monkeys, they grab a hold and they hold on for dear life,” like it’s all on them. We believe we’ve got to hold on because if we don’t hold on, it’s not going to happen. It’s harder for us to surrender and to let it be that, let the Mother, let the grace, let that universal, uplifting love and light carry us along. And I’m totally characteristic of that as an American, I’m a very driven, goal-oriented, active person. But that’s what I am. I’m not going to be anything other than that because that wouldn’t be my path—talk about being difficult. I mean, why totally transform, why don’t I transform what I’ve got. My plate is here, it’s quite full. I’ll work on transforming and start right here,” [rather than changing who I am, transforming who I am already]. Because we’re all part of Mother’s play and of this Divine experience of existence. And it’s just quite miraculous that we’re even here, and that we are even able to use our mind to such an extent, that we can even articulate and imagine such things as consciousness and the cells and the transformative world and a brain that could be a total receptor for cosmic knowledge. It’s all there, we just have to open up to that, which I do think we will do. I definitely feel that way, my positive Pollyanna self.

I think the most significant thing [in my sadhana] is being really grounded, really grounded. There were times when I was younger where I really enjoyed being ungrounded, out of my body, having out-of-body experiences and things like that. I would almost pursue them as if those experiences in and of themselves were meaningful and there was something to be learned from that, those experiences. And I’ve since been able to, in the years of my life, become much more reality-based I guess, reality with a capital “R,” you know, really seeking reality, what is reality? How is it that we are 238

grounded? What does it mean to be present and grounded? And it’s not presumptuous, it’s not flashy, it’s not a sparkly thing. It’s really pretty simple.

What Is Divine Love?

The other thing that I’m in the process [of working on in my spiritual practice that] I’d like to learn more about is love. When Mother or Sri Aurobindo would say,

“Indeed, it is all love; the Divine is love,” what does that mean and how do you feel that?

How does it feel to have the awareness of the experience of love, of Divine love? What is that? I guess that would be something I would like to explore and learn more about.

[Even thought one can view karmic yoga as love, that the service to humanity comes from that source] it doesn’t feel like that. I have a really strong vital, and my energy of manifestation is very strong and I feel that it comes more from that. When I talk about love or Divine love to me that’s something, I mean it must be very powerfully real, it must be very, very, very real, and not at all wishy-washy. Or maybe you feel it and maybe you don’t, maybe it exists and maybe it doesn’t. It’s as real as any of these realities that we have in this room right now.

It is a palpable real thing. I think the Divine consciousness of love, the Divine love is a very powerful thing. I think of the ancient mythologies of India and the gods and goddesses or the goddess of love. They were embodied in a cosmology, it would seem, that is such an entity of love and compassion. Kwan Yin, from the East, [is] another example of the goddess as love. What does that mean, what is our awareness of that?

But the more interesting question to me is the one about the love and what is it that motivates a person’s actions. So the question is, are these altruistic works motivated by love? And I have to say that, not in my most conscious mind or at least in that most 239

active talking superficial mind, I would say no. My interest in life and the actions that

I’ve taken in terms of my [work] or my donation of time to the projects for Mother and

Sri Aurobindo have been, it’s like it comes from a forward moving energy of a dynamic force and that’s what I feel. I’m sure that could also have an element love in it, and if we were to truly understand Divine love it could be something way beyond any understanding. That’s what I’m sort of grappling with, because love in some ways has an emotional ring to it. But I think Divine love may be so far beyond our emotional framework that’s it probably beyond that. I'm seeking that, that would be my next level of what I would feel to be enriching and meaningful on my path. There’s time when I’m really seeking more wisdom or more groundedness, more peace, more silence. And I feel like those things are still there. But I’m still challenged by the idea of really embodying love, with being conscious and consciously experiencing it and then radiating that back.

What a powerful thing that could be.

It’s an interesting subtle distinction between knowing that you’re on a path and being committed to that, to the path of a spiritual life. I don’t know that there’s any, to me there’s never really been much choice about it, it just seemed very much a fit, not like something I could ever have left. I could’ve gone away from that path. I think what I’ve accomplished to me feels very grounded and there’s still a part of me that—maybe that’s something too, is the idea that one can be on a lifelong spiritual path. And that is what I feel is definitely a part of my life. And a very grounded part of my life is I am on a spiritual path, and that is a reality of my life that I don’t think is going to change.

Therefore, that is an accomplishment right there. The knowing of it and the commitment 240

to it too, I guess that’s another thing too. I don’t feel flamboyant about it at all, I don’t feel here one day, gone the next. I feel deeply committed to that.

Everybody has a different starting point or a different place where their path is the strongest and the most, most intuitive for them, the path of least resistance. I feel supported in where the path of yoga opens up before me this way. I guess I would say probably [my path is] through action, a more dynamic karma yoga, and then secondary to that, intellectual, then mental. It’s been, it’s really been quite a wonderful context for understanding human existence, the rich beauty of human life. Mother and Sri Aurobindo always emphasize that there are beautiful things in our lives and as human beings that you can go get connected to the Divine. And so I’ve always felt there's no reason not to do things that are beautiful and not to have things that are beautiful, like the classical music. I mean, I just finished doing the concert at the cathedral. There’s no reason not to go to a cathedral and sing in a beautiful arching space where the acoustic is amazing and you sing with these voices and you create a vibration and community. Beauty, that’s one thing about Mother and Sri Aurobindo, they never were narrowing in that way at all.

There was a place for everything, all life, all those that are complex, a richness of life. It isn’t a sterile thing at all, it’s very, very rich and full and meaningful.

241

Devotee – Story

I’m calm and just interested to see how this goes, just kind of looking forward to

it; otherwise I'm calm and relaxed and in a good place.

Sadhana

I don’t have too much of a set practice. I have a little bit of a routine. My [daily]

work is related to the yoga. That’s one aspect of it. In the true kind of karma yoga, one

should consciously do work as sadhana, as an offering while one is doing it. And I

wouldn’t say that I’m always conscious that I’m offering this to the Divine while I’m

doing it, that’s still an intermittent thing. But just the fact that I’ve made a decision to do

this work makes it an offering in some sense, whether I’m always conscious of it or not.

Beyond that I keep fairly immersed in the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and

that’s helpful and supportive of the sadhana. I think the writings keep me in the spiritual

aura [of], or some close spiritual connection to, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

I also engage in regular meditation and devotion, mostly every day, generally in

the evening usually for about 30 minutes or so. [It has] been my routine for [several]

years. Before that I [would] meditate occasionally. [Reading has been the constant]

throughout [my] sadhana, but I think much more now. That has been my mainstay of

connection with the yoga. I read quite voraciously in the beginning for a period of time

until I think I had like a pretty good grasp intellectually, at least, about these things.

Experiences

Differences in Experiences

I’ll just say at first that there’s a distinction between significant experiences and ones that are startling or particularly interesting. And I’ll talk about both of them a little 242

bit. But I think probably the most significant experiences I’ve had are a growing quietness of the consciousness that’s less disturbed by things that happen, and secondly a consciousness that has with it a growing sense of closeness to the Divine.

So, I think those two things are probably the most important. Then, there has been also an awakening to the aim in life and the direction in which I want to take my life. And

I think that’s also a very important, fundamental thing that happened, but that came quite early on, just by learning about this path a little bit. But to know where one is going in life gives [an individual] a great degree of clarity and comfort in life that probably many people don’t have. And then, as part of that too, I’ve developed a good understanding about the nature of existence and consciousness and life and death, which is also very comforting and helpful. So all of these things really give [me] a great deal of peace and clarity and understanding about my life, which is very helpful. These are things that have gradually evolved and started to develop relatively early in the sadhana.

Quietness and Protection

The development of more quietness in the consciousness and this growing communion—that is clearly something that’s evolved slowly over many years. And I think [I] can continue to deepen in that as I go forward. The quietness is what Sri

Aurobindo talks about as the first stage, where there is more or less an absence of disturbance. So I’ve become very tolerant of other people and what people might say to me or things that happen. I don’t really get upset about things very much. I’m on a pretty even keel most of the time. There are times when I get upset still, but not often and so my life is fairly quiet and settled in that sense. 243

Then, with the growing communion with the Divine, I feel like I can at any moment just turn within a little bit and feel some sense of the presence of the Divine there, which has an immediate comforting effect and a feeling of inner fulfillment or a sense of peace and deliverance. It gives a feeling that one is really in a safe place and is protected and is being guided and led forward in life, and that it’s moving in a positive direction where that feeling of security and happiness and growth will continue to become more strong.

This sense of protection is a strong element of that [sense of Divine presence]. For example, when things become a little unsettled in some way, or I’m not real sure about what will happen, sometimes I can turn within and then feel or call on this protection and then feel really protected and safe within that. [It’s] there, it’s just at the fringe of my consciousness, and all I need to do is turn my attention to it a little bit and I feel that support and that protection and presence there around me. [This is actually the impact of

Integral Yoga in my life. [The Divine is] there all the time and I have the sense that [it is] there, but it’s when I tap into it that I become more aware of it being there all the time.

And then when I bring my attention to it, that experience actually deepens.] I think it has permeated my life and my consciousness. But that’s my normal state and it gets, well let’s say, it gets mixed with my own identity, but then if I can just concentrate outside a little bit then I feel that other presence there.

All these things are very enriching. It’s always a delight to have any kind of touch of the Divine or experience of the Divine, whether it’s some aspect of the Divine or image of the Divine or whatever. That makes life really interesting and adventurous and fulfilling all at once. 244

[The following descriptions are] spiritual experiences that sometimes just happened over a minute or two or sometimes a little bit longer, but were intense. A number of those have occurred over the years, and how much impact they’ve had on my life I don’t know. In some cases maybe they were part of a process that was going on and that opened something. In other cases they maybe just pointed towards some state of consciousness in which eventually we need to evolve towards. So I’ll talk about them.

Dreams of Sri Aurobindo and Mother

One of the things, especially when I was first starting with the yoga, but which have happened intermittently over the years, [is that] I would have dreams of Sri

Aurobindo. It was as if he had come to visit me. He would come and I felt that he was actually coming [from] the subtle world. In one of the most intense and memorable that I recall, he was sitting with me and then he looked into my eyes; I think he might have taken my chin and was looking directly into my eyes as if he was looking deep into my soul. And then [he] said some things to me about my condition, the condition of my consciousness or something, which I won’t talk about. But I had a number of those dreams over the years of seeing him.

And I also saw Mother in a number of dreams. I think one of the most important things that these dream experiences did was really confirm my faith in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother and the path. I mean, not that I had any real doubts about it at any time actually, but these experiences, these dreams came soon after I had started. So I think they really locked me into the yoga and really confirmed/made a strong base of faith in me. But other effects they might have had by being close to them, I don’t know. 245

I had other dream experiences too. I mean I’ve had probably many of those, and not only just with [Sri Aurobindo and the Mother] but different things. Those are always delightful when they happen and one remembers it. And it’s always a joy when that occurs because it’s just a wonderful thing to see them or to talk with them or interact with them in any way. It’s a really enriching thing in life I think to have a personal relationship with the Divine like that, that one can actually see and feel and touch, and that’s something very special.

Flashes of Light

And another kind experience, during the early years, [was] before I would fall asleep at night I often had or would see flashes of light with my eyes closed. Generally it was a white light, as if there had been flashes of lightening. Sometimes, even when your eyes are closed and there’s a bright flash of lightening outside, you can see that flash. It was like this except there would be no lightening. And once there was this diamond- colored light, which I read about later in one of Sri Aurobindo’s letters, [that] represented some action of the Divine consciousness. So I had that early on but now that doesn’t come.

Infinite Space

One other [experience], this was kind of early [in my sadhana], was I had this sense of the Infinite, some experience of that. It was a very intense feeling of outer space, just this blankness of outer space that surrounded me on all sides. I was surrounded [and living in it] and my life on this earth was just a tiny thing compared to that. I was experiencing the power of that emptiness around, of outer space, of the universe. And it 246

was very overpowering. And it lasted maybe an hour or so and then slowly faded during the next two or three hours. So that was something.

Sachchidananda

I had another kind of intense experience of the Infinite that was very short that lasted maybe about a minute, but this experience was very different. It had started in sleep with an intense aspiration. It was as if this intense fire of aspiration [was] going upwards, towards the Divine, much more intense than I ever experienced in my outer life.

It was something going on in the inner consciousness, which I’m not normally aware of.

There was this ascending force, this strong aspiration going upward, and then it culminated into some kind of transcendental state in which I entered. I think it might have been some brief experience of what’s called Sachchidananda, which [Sri Aurobindo] translates as a trinity of infinite existence, infinite consciousness, and infinite bliss.

It felt like a state of complete fulfillment, something that was infinite but a conscious infinite. It wasn’t conscious in the sense of knowing facts, but it just felt like everything was known, and that there was nothing else to be known. And you could say it was delight or bliss, but I would describe it more just as a feeling of complete fulfillment at that moment. This was something quite different than the earlier one, which was like a blank or this experience of nothingness around. This was of an infinite, but some consciousness-fulfilled infinite.

Those are some of the most intense, short-term experiences that I had, [including] these next two experiences, [which happened] at a turning point in my life. 247

Divine Force

I would call [this] an experience of the Divine force. This also began during sleep, but I probably woke up during the experience. And it’s difficult to describe except that there was this whirlwind of very intense powerful force working in me, or I was just taken up by it. And I had the feeling that it could just tear me apart or drive me mad or something; it was such an overwhelming intense force in which I was caught. All my bearings were lost and I was just helpless in its grip and at its mercy. I think I was conscious that it was the Divine power or force and I didn’t really become terribly frightened of it but I started calling the Divine Mother’s name and repeating that. And then I think it just did what it had to do in me and then subsided. It probably just lasted a minute or two, I don’t know.

Divine Love

And then a few years ago, I had another intense experience of what I would call

Divine love. This experience also began in sleep and lasted a few minutes maybe. In this experience there was kind of a rhythmic beating and with each beat this powerful outpouring of love was released. The quality and the substance of this love was interesting because it was just pure love, nothing else, unmixed pure love—very powerful. The purity of it I guess was the thing so striking. There really is a thing, love, which is not some kind of thing that’s constructed by human beings or their relationships or anything. So this beating and these big pulsations of this love were passing through me and actually out towards someone who I loved. In a sense it was directed towards somebody but it wasn’t at all anything personal to me, it was just something that was passing through me. It was some universal force or quality or something. Continuing like 248

that with each successive beat, this thing would pour out and through me and outwards,

and again come, and it just went on for a few minutes. It was one of the most beautiful

experiences I think I ever had.

I think probably the experience of the [Divine] force came first and so it might

have been preparing something in me, I don’t know. Then some time later, I came to

Pondicherry on a visit and while I was visiting I met this woman and fell in love. And it

was right around that time that I had this experience of this [Divine] love. It was directed

towards that person, but then that relationship for various reasons didn’t continue

anymore. I think there was some kind of opening of the heart center with that experience,

because afterwards love came to me much more freely and easily. Maybe my heart center

had been more constricted or something before and then there was some opening and a

freer flowing of love from me afterwards. It was easier to feel.

But like I said, especially those early [experiences], they showed me the reality of

things that I would read about and they just gave more of a concrete sense of what that is

and towards which one is moving in the sadhana. So instead of it just being an

intellectual concept, I have some kind of feeling of what that is. It’s a guide that’s there.

[As well as a confirmation.]

Dream vs. Waking States of Consciousness

The experiences of the [Divine] force and the [Divine] love occurred/started when

I was asleep. But because they were so powerful and intense I then became conscious of them. And then when the experience was finished I was awake. I think I became [aware] during [the] experience. Perhaps I was still in some kind of inner consciousness, but I was very alert and awake and watching the experience. The same with that experience of 249

Sachchidananda, if that’s what it was. Those flashes of light that I used to get, that was before I fell asleep, so I was still awake when I had [them].

I was completely awake when I had that first experience of vacant infinite. And then of course I had these dreams of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and they were dreams but [not dreams]. They had a more distinct quality generally than a normal dream,

[I was] more alert during those dreams. They were very clear, powerful dreams; they weren’t really dreams, they were something else. They weren’t images of something,

[they were] experiences of the consciousness.

All these things are very enriching. To have any kind of touch of the Divine or experience of the Divine, whether it’s some aspect of the Divine or image of the Divine, it’s always a delight. That makes life really interesting and adventurous and fulfilling all at once.

Movement of Energy/Force

[As to how the energy or force moves in these experiences, how they entered me], they came completely spontaneously, kind of unasked. I think in [the experiences of

Divine force and love] they started actually while I was asleep. These are things happening in the inner consciousness. When we sleep we can enter into that inner consciousness more and so become conscious of it. These things are so powerful in that they just kind of take over. I’m not conscious of what was before them. At some point they started and that was it, that’s all I’m aware of. I think in a sense they are Divine powers, I mean, whether it’s force or love or whenever these things come from the

Divine. They come into the inner being, and then from there they come out when one becomes conscious with the outer consciousness. So I think they descend in something 250

that happens quite quickly. I don’t think there is necessarily a long building up to it or anything.

The [experience of Divine] love was associated with these beats, which may be related to the beating of the heart or something. It was a rhythm, [a] beating, but the heartbeat is faster than this was. These were really powerful beats and then it would sort of go out. I think it was a slower rhythm, but with each beat, this powerful love would come, and emerge from that. Through me and then out, it was something very vast. I was like a conduit; it was just something passing through me. I don’t think there was any sound. What was impressing itself mostly upon my consciousness was this quality of love. We talk about love in our interpersonal relationships, but these are very pale reflections of what this felt like. It was so full and so perfectly itself. Only love, there was nothing mixed with it. That was the thing that was impressing me about it. Whether it was kind of flowing out, whether there was any kind of vibration with that, I don’t know, maybe a little bit, because it took some time. And there was a distinct feeling of it passing through me and going out and directed towards my concept of the other person or something.

The flashes of the light that I would have in the beginning, that was coming from above, from above the head and into the head. That was clear and felt that way; it looked that way. I’ve also had other experiences where [I was] feeling something coming from the top of the head too, like when meditating. It’s a delight, some kind of movement of force but [with] a very pleasurable sensation along with it around the head, almost circling the head. So I think that also was something coming down from above. 251

The experience of Divine love was probably centered in the heart but I can’t actually recall it being associated with a locality like that. It could have been coming from there, but I don’t know. It is hard to know.

These other experiences, well the one I had, there was an ascent of the consciousness and then it emerged at the top somewhere like in some kind of transcendental state. So there was a definite kind of rising and climbing up and shooting out through the top of the head, and then there was this experience in which it culminated. That other, that one of the blank infinite, it was this kind of like pressure, where the emptiness of everything just became more and more real and powerful.

So that was like something coming also from above and down, because it was so much bigger than me, it was like the universe or something. But, more above than below

I would say. I don’t know that I was so conscious of it below me or, it was more above like the sky, I mean, it was actually nighttime and I was outside and feeling the infinite of space above me. [And I just kind of merged with it then.] I don’t know how you’d describe it, but I felt it.] Its reality impressed itself upon me, very strongly.

Current Issues and Challenges

Impact of Experiences

Maybe it’s impossible to gauge what effects [my experiences] really had, but my work with the writings of Sri Aurobindo and Mother are now my main work. Their writings have always played an important part in my life. I have a natural ability or a facility with [them]. I never had any difficulty understanding them. So [the experiences] might have opened up something in me or at least facilitated some kind of integration of the thought process with some kind of intuition and with this knowledge. 252

The [experience] that I recognize more as associated with an ongoing process was that experience of [Divine] love. Because I felt some kind of opening then, more of the heart center during that period. Maybe it wasn’t only related to that experience; that experience might have been symptomatic of something that was going on in the heart center. I don’t know if it caused it or was a part of it. [But that opening is still there in me.

And] I did sense that even these flashes of light that I used to have in the early years, that it opened up something in the mind.

Challenges: Dealing With Desires

I see myself as still very much a beginner in this, but I feel that maybe those experiences had some effect in that they still may bear their fruit in the future. [I feel like a beginner] because there is so much more to go. There are the difficulties in really purifying the nature and getting rid of the ego. These things are still there in me so there is still a great deal of work to be done.

These [experiences] are just kind of bright moments in the yoga, but actually the day-to-day thing is quite different. The most challenging things have to do with rejecting things in the life that are incompatible with the yoga, that’s ongoing. When I first started, from all appearances I was maybe one of the worst candidates for this yoga because previous [to] that time I had been immersing myself more and more in alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes. I was pretty close to the bottom of all of that when I learned about Sri

Aurobindo’s yoga, quite psychologically addicted to alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. I was taking all different kinds of drugs.

I tried to quit all these things when I started the yoga. That was very difficult and I struggled with it for about 5 years. There would be periods in which I would stay away 253

from it for a while and then I would fall into it again and be totally immersed in it. And

I’d fight my way out again. What finally helped me to get out was that I decided to move to [an Integral Yoga] center and out of the environment conducive [to] drinking and doing drugs. So I got myself into that center and was finally able to put it aside, at least temporarily. I did a little bit more later on, but never again was I really addicted to it and allowed it to overpower me. It was more controlled after that and then that eventually faded altogether.

A more formidable desire was sex. I think that’s probably the strongest human desire and it’s not easy to give up. I don’t know, maybe it’s even more so for men, I'm not sure, but I’ve struggled with that right from the beginning. In fact, I wanted to give that up right from the beginning.

At that time when I was starting the yoga I had been involved with a woman for a couple of years, and we had talked about getting married. But when I was struck by these ideals of the yoga and brahmacharya, I thought that was what I should do, and I decided to end this relationship. That was probably naïve because it wasn’t too much later that I became involved with somebody else and then in a way also refused to totally commit myself to that relationship, which led to its dissolution after some time. [After] another couple of years and I found myself again in another relationship. [I] started realizing that there was a pattern going on and that maybe I wasn’t going to be able to leave these relationships at this point. [I] finally resigned myself to getting married, but even in married life the sexual desire continued to cause [a] disturbance in my consciousness. I continue to struggle with it. 254

So that’s been the nature for those obstacles or difficulties that I’ve had, that most intense desire. I have other desires of course, but they’re not really quite so disturbing or powerful in my life. For example, money would be [an issue] for many people. I never particularly felt a great drive to earn and make a lot of money, or have a lot of things that was never [a] real focus in my life. Ambition is another thing that drives many people; I never really had that as a difficulty. There are little things, little desires, that are there, but they're not really too important and I could do without them, more or less. I could live a fairly simple life; it wouldn’t bother me. But with sex, I don’t know, I’ve always had to struggle more with that. [These are forces of desire] they’re perfectly normal human things, but in sadhana we’re supposed to get rid of desire. So when you work against these things, then you feel the struggle.

I’ve experienced this as often a disturbance in the consciousness where it will take over, to a certain extent, or take the center field of my consciousness. I feel it interfering with this other. It’s a disturbance of a field of a consciousness of peace, of harmony, of light. There’s this intrusion of selfish, pulling-towards-oneself something, and it’s nagging, it doesn’t go away. The clarity of the consciousness and all of that gets disturbed for a period of time. So there are these continual breaks, let’s say, in the clarity of the consciousness, interruptions, and then that clarity will come back. So it’s not like it is overcoming it or erasing it or anything, but it’s a temporary clouding that takes place, and not only clouding, it’s more grating than that for me. I don’t know. I continue to observe it and try to understand it and try to work with it.

I understand it more and more. I was thinking about it in the [past few] days [that] it’s really this part of the nature, this lower vital in people. It’s very egoistic; it wants 255

what it wants and it wants it now and it doesn’t care about anything else. It doesn’t care about the rest of the being, it just wants it. So there’s this part in me, I don’t know if it’s the same in other people or not, but it’s like most of my being is quite focused on the

Divine and committed to the yoga. I would say my higher vital, my mind, my heart to a great extent, are all focused on the Divine. And then there’s this rebellious lower vital that still wants to go its own way. I think it needs to learn on its own, this more obscure consciousness, to surrender itself and to lend its energy, to the sadhana, instead of just taking for itself and doing what it wants. It has to fall in line but it doesn’t like to do that.

I understand it’s a universal phenomenon. I mean Sri Aurobindo is writing about this in the 1930’s. This was there in all the sadhaks, or in most of them, and everybody was having trouble really converting this lower vital. It is very difficult to convert, but I think it needs to agree on its own. I don’t know that it is really possible to impose anything on it. In some sense you have to impose some kind of discipline on it and force it, but it can’t be completely that. It also has to learn on its own and agree on its own.

Probably what happens in this struggle that goes on [is] that the light touches it, or it touches the light, and some kind of softening process goes on where it becomes a little more conscious and a little less self-centered and selfish. And slowly something begins to change through this kind of struggle that goes on. And then finally it gets to a point where it is able to say, “Okay, I agree, I see that my ways aren’t going to lead to anything, it only leads to misery or unhappiness. And if I could lend myself to the Divine effort, I know I could really help and contribute some real energy to it and so I’m going to go along.” Something like that, but it seems like it takes a long time for it to actually learn to do this. It’s a little bit like what is done in psychotherapy. People work on the shadow 256

part of the personality and then it gets to know the light side of the personality and the two sides come into more agreement or conversation. And then gradually that dark side gets enlightened, but there is this going back-and-forth for a period of time until that occurs. [Until all the light gets in there and switches it.] So that’s been a part of my sadhana and my life over the years, the less enjoyable aspect of the sadhana.

An important aspect of my life with sadhana has been service. I want to give myself more and more to the Divine. That’s sort of the aim, one gives oneself so completely until there’s nothing left, right? You just give yourself completely to the

Divine and then you’re the Divine. I try to do that more and more in my life. I mean it’s a real grace to be able to do that, to dedicate myself to doing work for the Divine. Because

I feel that this is a part of the work, that the Divine, that the sadhana is not simply in me, this is a work that’s being done in me and that’s being done in the world. And to whatever extent I can participate in the outflowering of the Divine in the world, I am grateful to have that opportunity to do that. It’s a joy.

I try to do it as much as I can. I still could give a lot more than I do. I continue to try to do more though, to be smarter in my individual sadhana and overcome whatever obstacles I might be facing, to grow inwardly more and more. I see a general progress occurring over the years and it seems to be going okay, but I recognize there is so much more to do. [I guess that’s what keeps the aspiration and intention going too.] There [are] also periods of greater intensity and then one gets more immersed in the physical or something. And then one can sometimes come out of that and there will be a brighter period and things seem much lighter and more progressive. There is some fluctuation or cycles that one goes through. 257

Gopal – Story

[Right now I’m feeling] just a little apprehension. [But when I get ready to go into

those spaces of my sadhana], I just try to be quiet and usually concentrate in the heart

center. And then occasionally I also kind of take a bath, over my head, bringing down the

force. It’s a little bit like they do in vipassana Buddhist meditation. There’s a center over

my head and I visualize it coming down washing through my body. This is related to the

Mother’s practice when she was going through the transformation and she would recite

om namo bhagavate. It’s essentially aspiration and surrender. Those were the two

principles she always worked with. She worked them on herself and she said eventually

they combine and they work together.

Sadhana

It is impossible to confine one’s “yogic” experiences in the yoga because all life is

yoga and all aspects of the being have to be taken up at some point in the process. We

can’t really realize the extent.

That’s the puzzling thing about the yoga; there isn’t really any methodology

except in a broad sense. And I think the reason for that is because as you go along you

have to adapt that for transformation of the body. The Mother did not like any methodical

practice and the only time she got into any kind of a mantra was when she was going

through the transformation of her own body. And that was the om namo bhagavate.

She would repeat that until that point when she said the cells would repeat it. Other than that you won’t find anything that I knew of.

The Mother, she’s the one that gets involved. She’s kind of like the personal contact. I don’t know why. That just seems to be the way it works. 258

In my interpretation of the yoga, it’s two phases, to make it easy. First is to realize

your psychic being that rids you of your karma and sets you free and it’s probably the

most pleasant and warm thing that can ever happen. The other is if you are going on for

the physical transformation, the bodily, then there’s another whole other set and that’s

why in my view they deliberately left the methodology so loose and broad based, the

aspiration and surrender.

Experiences

Floating in Space

I was in Pondicherry in meditation, nothing in particular. And I was in this space where there are no structures and no features, nothing. It was very blissful. I would move this way and as I moved it seemed like it created a path or line. I would move this way and that way and I would get to a “station” and I then would go farther. But there was nothing physical about it. No forms, no colors, just feeling of moving in infinity with a great sense of freedom.

Initiation

I was [lying in bed] and this intense light came up through my feet to above my head, then it exploded downward and everything was light, I was absorbed into that light.

It just filled the room and I just became the light, I guess you could say. After that I started to sob. I was by myself and I was lying there for a couple of hours just trying to comprehend and absorb it. Then I got up, and everything changed, just like that.

Everything fell in place. [I saw a friend over a month later] I walked in and we saw each other and he noticed my eyes. He saw the change. Ever since that experience, the connection never left. The expansion, I never felt that again, never returned. [But the 259

connection to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother never went away] Very strong; it wasn’t that necessarily I felt them but I knew they were there. But it changed the whole outlook of my life.

Kundalini Energy: Energy Moving from Root Chakra to Head

One Sunday evening I was in bed half asleep, just in transition and all of sudden I felt this intense energy in the gut down here. It was like a fist and it was pushing up this way and pushing that way. It was like it was painful but it wasn’t. It was like a pressure. I remember I was groaning. It went like that for a few minutes and up to about here and then it stopped. For the following week I was very aroused sexually. That subsided after the next experience. The next Sunday night about the same time it started in again from there. I was just lying in bed I think and it started again and went higher but it wasn’t as painful or as much pressure and then it stopped again. And then, I believe it was three weeks later, on a Sunday again, evening, it started right from where it left off, like a balloon, it and went up and it got up to right about the heart level and a voice said,

“That’s far enough.” For years I thought it was my voice but it wasn’t. And it stopped and it never came back again. [It actually follows the lines of the chakra centers. It started in the lower one, then your solar plexus and then your heart] to the heart center and then it stopped.

Kundalini Energy: Lower Chakra and Sexual Desire

I had ceased to have any sexual desire for years. After reading Sri Aurobindo, I found that purifying the vital was important because as we progress everything intensifies including sensations, feelings and desires. So I hadn’t had any issue with this aspect of my sadhana. And then one time when I was flying home, I got on the plane [for the first 260

leg of the trip. The trip involved a change of planes at one point] and sat next to a young woman. Within an hour or so we talked and we became good friends. It’s very emotional even talking to you now. Just before we [landed] I had the most intense pleasure, not pleasure, intense feeling. I didn’t know if, it was almost like it was going to drive me nuts. It was more down here [in my pelvis]. It really threw me for a loop. I was still recovering from this and [on the next flight] we had different seats, and she came up and wanted to sit by me. I was eating and didn’t offer to have her [sit down]. And then we landed, she came over and said goodbye. It took me a couple of weeks to recuperate from that. I don’t know how to describe it. It was just so overwhelming. Anyway, I didn’t know what to make of that and I talked to [a psychic friend] about it. And she channeled the Mother and Mother said I needed a little spice in my life. It’s very strange. I don’t know how accurate that explanation is.

The reason I am bringing this up is because no matter where you are, there is always something to work on in your body. You never reach perfection, at least, not until you get supramentalized and it may not be in our lifetime. The Mother gives you what you need, and I had no idea what was going on. I think it brought up something that might have been repressed that needed to be expressed and that is as far as it goes. [How were you able to process it?] I don’t know, just time. It happened in my body and it was fine and that was it. I think too, the psyche itself, reorganizes things because there are so many parts of your being, particularly in this yoga, that advance at different rates, speeds.

It’s easy to get out of whack. That’s why when I had [my initiation] experience, it took six years before I had any more [experiences]. It took six years to assimilate that and let the body, and it does it on its own. There’s nothing I do. 261

Vibration and Expansion

I’d go down [to the Samadhi at the ashram] and there was this vibration. The

Mother had just been put in. I would lean over and you could feel the vibration coming

through that marble. I just felt this vibration. And then one evening I walked out onto the

street and I felt this incredible energy, electricity, throughout my body, and it stayed with

me. It diminished, but it stayed with me for about 3 days. I could feel the energy coming

out of my fingertips for 6 minutes and it was just electrification. And then my

consciousness separated. I was in a circumference of several feet. I don’t know how far out it went. It’s like there was no more I and the ego, what I would associate with ego was something like down here and just something very small and insignificant. There was no definitive point in my consciousness. I later concluded this was separation of the

Purusha (spirit) and Prakriti (nature, energy). My consciousness was off to the side and down, it was like it was separated. I was in that state for about 3 days until it diminished.

No separation there. My senses were the same except that I had expanded. As I recall there was no color. It seemed to me like it was just energy. Instead of here [in my body], I was several feet out in circumference. I guess you could say no ego, no egocentric position anymore. I couldn’t work for 3 months I was just so diffused. I had to deliberately bring my consciousness to a point—to focus. It was still with me.

Dream: Infinity of People

I am getting more into the body now. And this was a vision. It was a dream experience. I was in a space where I was seeing people and I could see their auras very clearly, which I generally don’t see. And then I was told to stand in a particular spot and as I stood there, there was this alien being in front of me with almond shaped eyes and I 262

looked into the eyes and I could see into infinity. And there were people, I could see people in there and I could see around the people as far as I wanted to. The person in front did not obstruct my view of the person behind.

Subtle Physical vs. Supramental in the Physical

[In the other experience where I felt the subtle physical I was actually walking.] I was walking, but it was in a vision, more like a—I was walking but it was an out of body experience. I didn’t see myself walking. I was walking, but I was still in my room.

[Almost like bilocation.] I was meditating. I was sitting there and I just drifted off. But I didn’t leave the room. This other one [the experience of the supramental in the physical] actually happened. I was out there in the dining room and the atmosphere changed and I felt an increased sense of bliss and peace that was so natural. I’m glad you brought that up. The subtle physical experience was not related to my material surroundings. I was just by myself in my room and just went off. The feelings were similar—in the atmosphere. I was actually in the body physically relating, walking. But the feelings were similar. I think they were similar but one is not in the physical, one is in the subtle physical and one is in the physical but like it was superimposed. This is what the Mother was experiencing. She was exploring, experimenting, and things were happening. She was trying to put these into words. So when I got back and read this, I said that’s exactly what it was; otherwise I would not have known what to make of it.

Current Issues and Challenges

Impact of Sadhana

Transformation of the body and the cells is different. You don’t have the grand experiences. It’s what I call the blue-collar labor with the cells. You don’t know what’s 263

going on until you have an experience. In this phase of the yoga your body cells have to be purified and cleansed so that the light and energy is released. Ultimately this will lead to an enlightenment in the body instead of the traditional out of the body, nirvana.

A lot of people will dispute this and say it’s not possible. What helped me is

Satprem’s book on embodying the vibration of the supramental. It is a vibration. And this is what the Mother was working on. She was trying to bring this vibration into the body and have it established there so it stays. She could do it but it wouldn’t really stay at first.

It would leave and so the idea was to get it fixed. She did this – that is her gift to humanity. This is what I felt in the 90s. I felt the vibration continuing more—until it stayed. It could be misinterpreted but when it first happened it was very strong. You know you just feel the vibration. Now it’s more subtle, but if I reflect on it a bit, it’s there. It makes your body feel alive, Mother says it feels like a fever but it’s not in a negative sense. It’s just a heightened awareness, a “rush.” And it’s still there, for me this was the goal, it is the goal.

264

Janaka – Story

I’m feeling some anticipation, some uncertainty, just as you would when you're entering a path in the forest, wondering what this is going to bring. But while we were meditating, I was basically asking Mother for her permission for our conversation, and I felt a very strong “yes” from above.

Sadhana

In his booklet The Mother, Sri Aurobindo really articulates the central process of

Integral Yoga as far as I’m concerned and as far a lot of people I’ve spoken to are

concerned. And that’s a threefold movement of aspiration, rejection and surrender:

Aspiration for the change and for the light to come, rejection of all that which stands in

the way of that change in consciousness. And then surrender to the Shakti and the

consciousness that wants to manifest. It’s just this beautiful cycle: aspiration, rejection,

surrender, aspiration, rejection, surrender. And I think they’re not equal and you work on

different ones at different times. I mean, in the beginning you have to work on your

aspirations or else you’re never going to go anywhere, you’re not aspiring. That’s really

the fire, the agni, that moves you along the path. And the surrender is really responding to

that which comes as a result of the aspiration. And then every so often you get knocked

off the path and that’s when you have to do the rejection, and say, “No, no, that’s not

where I wanted to go.”

Since then I’ve heard it summarized even further as remember and offer. And

that’s really kind of more getting back to the karma yoga: focus. They’re not separate,

they’re related in many ways. So remember and offer, I mean that will take you all the

way. 265

Sometimes, in the early to mid ‘80s, I began meditating once a day, first thing in the morning before getting dressed. Later on, probably a few years after that, I started meditating at night before going to bed as well. And the evening meditation was more just sort of a review of the day, you know, not even a mental review sort of, “Okay, here is what’s left over, the unprocessed stuff from today, and please take it.”

[My sadhana has] evolved over time. Mother has described different meditation practices—actually, she distinguishes between meditation and concentration. And what I do is more concentration. Meditation opens you up and takes you to a lovely space and then you stay there and then when you leave it stays there and [then] you’re back in your life. Concentration is more, is more dynamic. So she described specific types of concentration, either focusing in the heart or in the forehead, the center or above the head, each one having its own particular strength. Basically she would say whichever you're drawn to, and that’s one of the things I love about this yoga is the freedom. Neither Sri

Aurobindo nor Mother laid down any kind of creed or set of distinct practices that must be followed to be saying that you’re practicing the yoga. They just laid down the broad outlines, central, I don’t know what you would call them, truths I guess—principles, principles—and then let each one put them into practice then in the way that suited them and drew them. So Mother talks about concentration and different ways of doing this. I tried the different ones and ended up focusing mostly on the heart, but even there it’d vary from day-to-day. I’d mostly be focusing on the heart and then I’d feel an energy above the head, and so that’s where it would be that day or that week or that month.

The other thing Sri Aurobindo writes about in a different place in that booklet The

Mother, he talks about the Mother, the Shakti, the Divine Mother, actually doing the 266 sadhana, doing the yoga, And that part of the spiritual growth in the yoga was learning to be able to see that. Not that it wasn’t happening but when we’re deeply involved in our ego it’s always, “I’m doing this, I’m doing that.” And the idea/concept of having the spiritual force actually moving me along without my knowledge is so alien to that egocentric awareness, that it’s one of those things, well, you take it on faith.

So part of my practice, then, in the meditation/concentration would be just trying to look and see, and feel really, where that force is leading me now, and just sort of trying to follow it. And then, say I felt it moving into a particular aspect of my life, and saying

“Okay” and moving there myself and just trying to relax, trying to will that part of me to open and to receive, and then just sort of following it.

So it’s just a combination of those different, whatever you call it, techniques, modalities, processes, you know, combined with the karma yoga during the day. And then, at a certain point, there was a realization about the difference between experience and realization. It was probably some time in the mid 1990s that the psychic being opened, only I felt it being more and more active over the years, you know, and being more and more palpable. It felt like there was a place there where there hadn’t been one before. But at one point, what both Mother and Sri Aurobindo referred to as a reversal of consciousness came and all of a sudden it wasn’t me seeking the psychic being, I was the psychic being, and an identity was forged.

I don’t know if there’s a direct correlation, but I guess it was around that time [of this experience or the waterfall of light, bliss, and fire] that there was a shift. Previously, I had been on what Sri Aurobindo calls the path of jnana [yoga] of knowledge, inner knowledge, of wisdom, philosophy and inner experience. That was kind of my natural 267 bent up to that point. But at the same time I had, a few years earlier, rejected living a life of the mind, feeling like that was just too narrow and too dry and I needed more, I needed something more in life. My focus began to shift after reading The Synthesis of Yoga to more of a focus on the karma yoga, putting it into practice rather than simply thinking about it; and kind of daydreaming about [the] spiritual, you know, about supermind and

Mother and Sri Aurobindo. So I remember I got a series of real dumb jobs. Sri Aurobindo writes that there is no work that is more spiritual than another. That any work can be made to be spiritual depending on the attitude you have, the right attitude. And I think it began when I was working for a copy place, just making endless copies (that was before the process became mechanized). I remember just opening the thing, changing the paper, putting the new paper in, closing the cover, hitting the print button, and just saying, “This is for you, this is for you, this is for you, this is for you.” And for me that really helped to ground the process. It was a real struggle at first too, because I would think, “This is for you… oh that’s stupid. This is for you Mother—Oh God, you don’t want this. You want something great; you don’t want this dumb thing.” So I’d keep doubting it and questioning it and fighting against it, but I kept at it. And probably I wouldn’t have had the stamina and endurance to do that, to stay with if it hadn’t been for that [waterfall

(see Experiences: Descent of Light and Bliss)] experience. Because I just somehow knew that, well, I don’t remember what made me think that that was what I needed to do. At one point it made sense, but then it was trying to put that inner knowing into practice. I guess part of me knew that that’s really where the rubber hit the road, you know, trying to put it into practice, but the vast majority of me said this is stupid. And so it was just kind of working that out. And trying to develop the habit of 268 referring everything to the Divine, referring everything to Mother, and that’s a habit that is still being worked on. I mean, it’s endless, because you’re always finding new places that haven’t gotten the memo yet, but that’s the process.

I kind of gave up, I don’t know if I ever totally gave it up, but I stopped thinking about moving [to Pondicherry or Auroville] probably in 1990 or so. And part of this is because I had met so many people here in the States who had been either told by Mother or felt an inward push to leave India. They’d been at the ashram, they’d been in

Auroville, and felt like their work was in this country and/or in some cases Mother had told them their work was in this country. And so I felt like America needs this yoga too, so I just had to decide that that was where my path lay. And I have a very deep love for this country, although it’s sort of like the love for a sibling who has gone astray,

(laughter), and drinks himself under the table every night, pretty wayward. But I just know I love this person and I’m never going to stop loving this person, and maybe if I just keep holding that space of love, that eventually will work, get through to all the people you love, him or her, and help to reawaken the soul.

Integral Yoga and Being in a Relationship

Symbolic of my whole relationship with the yoga [is that] it’s kind of competed with my relationship with [my spouse, who is] not a devotee. She has her own unique spiritual path, which involves the Divine Mother. So we meet at Mother and we respect each other’s path as well as possible. When I would have dreams of going off to live in the ashram or joining Auroville or something like that, she was having none of it. And I had to make a choice. And, I always thought it was significant that I met her pretty much around the same month that [I was introduced to Integral Yoga]. To me that’s the 269

message – that they’re both to be in my life. So I've just had to somehow make

accommodations with both.

Difference Between The Mother and The Divine Mother

There’s the Mother, Mirra Alfassa, there's Sri Aurobindo, then there's the

consciousness that each one of them represents. Then there’s the Divine Mother. It gets

confusing because Sri Aurobindo named Mirra Alfassa Richard the Mother, so you refer

to her as the Mother. But then, and he said, she, that French lady, was the embodiment of

the Divine Mother, in pure form, more perfectly than had ever been embodied in the

world. I don’t know that, but I know that I trust Sri Aurobindo. And if he says it, I'm

willing to take it on faith. She said that he was the representative of the Divine, the

Avatar. I don’t know that, but I trust most of what she says so I’m willing to take that on

faith. So when I refer to the Mother, the Mother’s workings, I’m referring to that Divine

Mother, who is everywhere, who is the representative of the one Supreme, and does his

works in the world. And in fact is the creatrix of the world.

Experiences

Each [experience is] profound when it comes, each one feels like it’s the most important thing that’s ever happened to me.

Descent of Light and Bliss

I had this experience, which I’ve had repeated a few times since but this was the first time I’ve ever felt anything like this, and which I have heard other people describe having these experiences.

It was an experience of that greater self coming sea-like, as if someone had opened the floodgates in the ocean pouring in, and it not only filled me but it was as if I 270 was standing in the middle of a waterfall, and I was just completely caught up. I didn’t want to draw myself away from this experience, which went on all day and night. I felt it filling every fiber of my being, it was bliss, it was power, it was light.

I mean when I say a waterfall, I’m trying to get the image, but it wasn’t watery, you know, it was on fire. It was a warmth that was burning and cleansing, cleansing fire, purifying. It was amazing. I guess, to use more direct language, you could say that it felt like a stream of energy pouring down from above. The word descent truly describes it. I think there were colors; I didn’t notice them so much. But when I think back on it I think about colors and lights. Bathing is too mild, I mean, it filled me and took my breath away. And it was just a constant movement like that, filling me, pouring into me. It bathed all the cells and fibers of my body and my being. My only effort was to try to stay in the center of that, to stay and to just offer myself for that, as a way of surrender, surrendering totally.

I remember sort of seeing the world around me as being kind of dream-like, and sort of a dim shadow. It wasn’t the kind of spiritual experience where your perceptions are completely altered. I could still see everything, I could still relate, react. I just wasn’t interested, because that wasn’t the interesting stuff that was going on, [it was] this inner experience of just this constant descent. What’s interesting about doing this interviewing process with you is, since I’ve contacted you and we started talking about this and I was thinking about my history, that I realized that that moment was the beginning of Sri

Aurobindo’s centenary, 1972. And I never put that together before. And Mother said that

Sri Aurobindo’s centenary would bring a new transformative light and force into the world. 271

And, I remember, we even went to a party, and afterwards [my wife] said, “You know you’ve got to come back. I can’t have you leaving me like this.” And, I did resist, but finally, I mean I kind of remember sort of asking permission from that inner light and feeling like, okay, well this is something I need to do, stay in this life and in this body.

And, so anyway, that pretty much ended that experience.

[Spiritually, how did that affect what you did from then on?] It was the first tangible proof that this was real. So it strengthened my faith immeasurably, not that I had a whole lot of doubts before that, because, like I said, [Integral Yoga] fit like a glove, the whole philosophy and the spirituality of it. But this deepened it to the point of, there was another quote I had thought of earlier, the phrase from Savitri is, “And leaves its huge white stamp upon our lives.” So it was that kind of a feeling. I was the same person but I had been changed from it. So I guess you could just say that it solidified me on the path.

Current Issues and Challenges

That first one [experience of the waterfall of light and bliss] we talked about [was the most challenging] because it was completely, completely unexpected-well, they’re all unexpected, [awaited, but unexpected]. That’s right, that’s right. [Expected, but unexpected] Right. I like awaited but unexpected. This was neither awaited nor expected.

And I had no idea what was going on except the word descent, which I had read so I tended to that word, but just the absoluteness of it. And then what do I do with it? Does this mean I have to go out and buy a plane ticket to India, which is what I wanted to do?

And then there was that choice to be made, well it’s either the yoga or my wife, so pick a choice. Not a pleasant choice to have to make. [I can see how that would the most challenging] Yeah, and, you know, it’s not the only time I've been faced with that 272 over the years, it has come up over and over, but that was first time. [Does it get easier?]

No, well, it didn’t up until recently and I feel like I finally resolved it. But yeah, that was an ongoing struggle, you know, do I follow the yoga or do I follow daily life? Do I want to go join an ashram, any ashram? So it was that idea of just wanting to completely pour all of my life into this spiritual quest. What I finally realized is it is a much more difficult choice to accept daily life and follow a spiritual quest, than that’s really where the work is.

I’ve learned to avoid words that expand, like big, major, and significant. Because it’s not helpful to me, it tends to draw me off. And it feeds into the mind’s tendency towards, what’s the word…grandiosity. For me, the word I'm most comfortable with is true. There are degrees of being true, you know. True is a moving target.

And sometimes you’re in the outskirts of true, and sometimes you're kind of coming into the suburb of true. But I feel like I'm in downtown true right now.

273

Lizzie – Story

I’m just trying to sort of be in the moment. I've been tired all morning, sleepy and sort of wrestling with, I don’t know, checking back to sort of, the vision that I’ve had of being in the airplane and flying and being kind of drowsy, and then instead of stopping we went to a second thing to launch off and I kind of stirred myself and said I have to be awake for this, because it’s too spectacular.

Sadhana

In terms of actual [spiritual] practice, well, before my kids and then after my kids have gotten older, meditation has been a part of it. Nowadays I try and spend probably about half an hour in quiet right after I get up, before the rush of the day begins, sitting quietly. And these days it’s going through sort of a visualization about the crystals of the chakras, going [through] the fire, earth, air, water cycles with them and then putting them in the light and then the light being back inside me. Specific meditation has varied tremendously. I’ve done vipassana. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother don’t teach a particular type of meditation. And so it’s just kind of sitting and being aware, and sometimes it’s spending the whole time realizing that there’s been chatter in my head and sometimes I come out and go, “Oh, wow, that much time has passed,” and I've been quiet. And so there’s not a particular focus except just being there. It’s always been my intention to carry the spirit world into my physical world. I mean even before I was involved with Sri

Aurobindo and the Mother that seemed to me that there wasn’t any point in having a spiritual life if you didn’t make it integral with your physical life. 274

Experiences

Early Experiences That Led Her to Integral Yoga

[I have] memories of always having a sense of there being a God. I remember at one point [while attending church and] going, “Okay, I really don’t know enough to pray for everybody in the world, (laughter), I just have to let God take care of that part.” And then at age 13, being in a class and we were going to do a debate and the debate was

[whether] capital punishment should be abolished and I didn’t know what I felt about that. So I just kind of offered it up to the Divine to tell me what was the correct answer on this. And every time I’d start to think about it, I’d go, “Nope, I’m offering this, nope I'm offering this, nope, I’m….” And after about three days an answer came very, very clearly, and from that perspective then I went and did my research and was able to argue both sides with quite a bit of conviction, quite a bit of success. From that came to me the very concrete understanding that if you trusted the Divine, the Divine would take care of you, and it took self-discipline, not trying to wrestle with it and figure out and solve it yourself but trust, which is a good reminder for me right now.

Animals as Guardians and Shamanic Elements of Her Life

I’d had experiences as a child [of animals as guardians. My] family had moved into a big house and if I had a bad dream, it was a decision of, “Do I want to get up and walk all the way to the other end of the house to see my folks or do I want to just find another way to deal with it?” And what emerged was a lion that would come and walk with me and, whatever terror had been there, take us both to a woman called “the washing lady,” a woman in the middle of a forest with a washing machine and a dryer, who would resolve our differences and make it safe to go back to sleep. 275

It’s interesting having gone to this shamanic workshop [recently] and realizing how much of that element is there, described as shamanic, has been a part of my life, the idea of animals as guardians. At one point it was interesting, we did a journey to meet an animal guide, and I met this animal, I think it was maybe an oryx. And I kept going, “But it’s supposed to be a lion. It’s supposed to be a lion.” And eventually I saw that there was a lion there. I went over to it, and it basically told me, “But for right now, the oryx is going to show you something. I’m here, I’m always here.” [So I’ve had] that facility with the animals, with their presence, with their being, with calling on them and working with them, moving into different worlds, finding different ways. [A friend] was talking about how people tend to pick one or the other. But I feel very comfortable going in both directions, going up to spirit guides that are more human form or going to lower worlds with the animals, which is not in a negative sense but just a different level.

So seeing that and feeling that. I’ve collected rocks because they were beautiful colors but I've had dreams of being shown caches of jewels and being told, “They’re yours when you're ready,” and knowing that I wasn’t ready [before but] suddenly now realizing “Okay, I am ready for them now.” And so now [I’m] working with crystals and stones.

Animals in Healing

[Note: This excerpt is from my interview anecdotal notes with Lizzie that explains

Lizzie’s following comments. Interesting synchronicity—I’d known for the past week that the recording from our first interview wasn’t useable and agonized over what to do and how to tell her. A few days ago I decided to give her the option of doing the interview over the phone or not participating. I was a little anxious about this. I kept putting off 276 calling her, “forgetting” to do it. Finally, yesterday afternoon I knew I had to call her. It was a type of inner knowing that this was the right time, for whatever reason. I called and she didn’t hesitate about redoing the interview. It worked out best for her to do it the next day. She had had a biopsy done on (one of her abdominal organs), which has been the cause of abnormal tests and thought to be associated with her tiredness. We talked a while about what had been happening to her. She related her experiences with a shamanic journeying class. Her brother had been diagnosed with cancer this year and in thinking about how she might help him she just imagined sitting with him and putting her hand on his arm, just to hold a healing space with him. Suddenly, spontaneously, she was pulling a long snake out of him. She didn't know what to do with it, so she tried killing it by snapping its neck. Smaller snakes came out of it, and one went into her. She was aware of it, and chose to let it stay, without really knowing what would happen. The others she put into the ground, since she couldn't kill it. She’d had no shamanic training at that point, but figured maybe she should get some, if this sort of thing was going to happen. She remembered “clearing” herself but something made me ask if she had checked to make sure the snake was gone completely. I somehow wondered if her health problems stemmed from that encounter.]

By the way, I wanted to thank you for asking me yesterday if I was sure that all the snake energy was gone. Because I went back and looked and there was a nest under a rock, with the hatchlings coming out. [I got it in time] and then I called in a mongoose to make sure, just basically to make sure that everything had been cleaned out. It followed them into the stream. I really appreciated your bringing that up. I probably was not as 277 thorough, just thinking, “Oh there was only one going in.” I didn’t think about it laying eggs.

Experience of The Mother

My experience of her [the Mother] never quite gelled in the physical. We were there for a darshan, maybe two, and I was never able to connect with that physical presence. But I did connect very strongly on a nonphysical level. The particular experience that I’m thinking of – she was still in the body at that time. We had written at one point about doing a group thing here [in the States] and her response was “Well, how does it help the work? My blessings are for the work.” And I just absolutely loved that she wasn’t going to make a decision for us. That she said this is what you want to be concentrating on, and it really doesn’t matter what your outside form is. And that felt very honest to me. That was what I needed to remove the sense that here was somebody setting herself up to make decisions for other people,

I had, actually, two very strong experiences. Both [revolved], around my son. He had a serious concussion [when we lived in India] and we had to be in the hospital for a number of days. Indian doctors are not very communicative with their patients, and they’re just terribly offended if you ask them questions. So I felt very much alone in that sense, but also very much surrounded by the love and protection and good wishes of all the people who knew and cared about us. We were in the Women and Children’s

Emergency Room part of the hospital, on the children’s side, which was a bunch of little cribs, and the mothers who stayed generally slept on the floor underneath the things which was just cement. I would sleep on the mattress next to him. And at one time we asked if there was another place. He was throwing up, he wasn’t taking anything 278 internally and he was sleeping all the time. And we said, “Is there is a private room we could have?” Because I was right at the door and even at night there was a spotlight shining on me. It was really very intense, and all these Tamil women who didn’t understand English and I didn’t understand them. And we went to look at this other room.

It was a large room, there was only one patient in there with a burn tent around them.

And I stood at the door and kind of went, “We can’t be here. This room has death in it, we can’t be here, we have to be at the other place.”

And I don’t know whether it was that evening or the next evening, I was trying to express my milk because he wasn’t nursing and my breasts were really uncomfortable.

And the ladies let out this big “whoop” of a cry, telling me to give it to the baby, and I was trying to say, “The baby doesn’t want it,” and it came out, I realized much later and with my terrible Tamil, that [I said] I didn’t want the baby. And finally the night nurse came in who was this lovely woman. She knew English, and so she listened to them and then she turned to me and I explained what was happening and she explained then to them and they then settled down. So we had a good conversation and she told me what I needed to do to get my breasts to relax and release the milk, and she also said that he needed to have glucose water cause he would be getting dehydrated. And, I thought,

“Why hasn’t anybody told me this? He has been seen by the doctor twice and the doctor didn’t say anything about glucose.” So the next day we managed to get glucose water and he’d take it and keep down, and immediately he started getting better. So part of his problem was he was just really dehydrated.

So I felt like staying in that room had been listening, listening internally to the guidance of where to be. And though it was far more uncomfortable for me to be in that 279 room, it was still the correct place to be. I had that inner trust and the ability to listen and say, “Yes, this is where I have to be, even though it’s not comfortable for me to be here.”

So I found that very interesting, that intense support, both from other people but also I felt very much from the Mother, the guidance, the clear direction from her, knowing you need to be here, not there; that was very strong for me. And I think that had begun to develop even before we went [to India], that I’d begun to trust.

Then the next time was when he was older [but] still waking up in the middle of the night and it was exhausting. And one night I just felt like I couldn’t bear [it], couldn’t take it and I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t feel like I could force him, and so again

I just prayed, with tears coming down, “This is just so hard for me. What can I do?” And she came physically, a light and physically there and basically said, “You have to do what you’re doing. You don’t get to choose what the right thing is; you’re doing the right thing.” But in saying that it took away all the pain and the suffering and the agony and the wrestling and the, the attachment and I just was in a place of total surrender for about three weeks. It was a magical place. Things got done without resistance, they just happened. I’d get up, I’d do what I needed to do, I didn’t wrestle with it, I didn’t have any angst about it, I just did it and things just flowed, and it was wonderful, absolutely wonderful, and I felt protected and cared for. The house stayed clean because there wasn’t the resistance there.

And eventually my ego came in and thought, “Oh, well let’s see if we can do this,” and, you know, once it came in then it all came [to a halt]. But I have often felt that this was sort of showing me what’s possible and [what I can] do to get that state back on a permanent basis or even on a semiregular basis, that I had been shown what was 280 possible. I tried very hard to make it happen again. You know the trying is not what makes it happen. It’s the not trying in a way. And I certainly had the understanding of what was possible. And I’ve had moments and they’ve come for periods, not as clearly, not as perfectly as that particular first one, but just a sense of being in, in the flow of things, of trusting, of understanding, [and always feeling the

Mother’s presence.] But then, of course, some very deep personal struggles where I felt like I’m losing ground, I’m falling, I’m slipping. And yet the fundamental understanding was there’s no going back, you know too much, you can’t go back to an ordinary life, you can’t. I mean, it’s just, it’s not possible. So even if you feel like you’re stuck in the mud you know what it’s like to be on those mountain peaks and you can’t just stay in that mud, you have to keep trying to get out. And trusting that, yes, the time will come when you do.

Dual Awareness

I talked a little bit about that divide between the physical and the spiritual thinning such that I can go and feel, experience both at the same time. I mean a presence, awareness of the spirit world and that seems, let’s see, how would you describe it?

Because this sense of both happening at the same time for an ongoing thing [is] fairly, really recent. I guess it’s the light, the light both in terms of weight and a visual light, there alongside the concreteness of the physical world and a sense that the veil between them is very thin. It hasn’t gone away and totally fused, though there’s elements of that,

…. And it’s not about individual guides or gurus particularly but just the lightness of the spirit working with the concreteness of the body. I guess to be most accurate, it is an awareness of them both there at the same time and it’s probably certain 281 chakras up, maybe from the heart chakra up, that has that consciousness and the lower chakras not so much yet. It’s sort of enveloping me, it’s sort of a feeling of almost like there was a line down through my body and half is on this side and half is on the other side. And probably, in terms of my functioning, it’s more outside than inside, but the awareness is very much part of me. [It’s as if this sense of the being in the spirit world, on the other side of the veil. I can feel it in me and then from there, I move around in the terrestrial world taking it with me]. It moves with me and it’s an interesting sense. And it’s not constant by any means, but it has been more in the last year or so. [And it doesn’t carry a sense of mass or heaviness, but] it’s a lightness. The physical world is the mass and the heaviness. The spirit world is light, both in terms of visual light and weight. It’s light in every sense of the word, light. It’s a spontaneous thing. I mean, I have been continuing to concentrate on making sure I get in a daily meditation and I think at one point I am sitting down [in] that sort of waiting period, and going, “All right, what’s coming or what do I need to do next?” That and looking and saying, “What has been most important to me in life?” and realizing that this spirit, bringing the spirit into fullness in my life is the number one most important thing that carried through for my life. And to acknowledge that has been, well, interesting I guess, because in looking at that, I mean, it’s always been there to my awareness. There’s always been that duality as well. But you also have to function in the world and what do you want in the world, and da, da, da, da. And suddenly I’m going, “I don’t have to separate those two.” What I want in this world can be spiritual growth and development and integrating into this life, and that can be a reason for being just as much as doing some thing concretely in the physical world. 282

[That if I can get the being down, the doing is effortless]. It’s more than what is done. As long as it isn’t something that goes contrary to that spirit, it doesn’t matter so much what the actual doing is. [It would translate to flow.] When that awareness, that sort of double awareness thing [is present], there is very of a much a flow and a joy; it’s very interesting, very interesting. It would be kind of in and out for a period of time, days or even a month. It was very strong [for the past few months] and it was a very big challenge physically in many respects.

I haven’t sat down and done [shamanic] journeying particularly because it’s so easy for me to slip back and forth to be in touch and to feel all these levels at the same time. And maybe that’s part of what is emerging in terms of this dual thing. I don’t need to go into an altered state, it’s there. That altered state is just with me. And I do sit in meditation and I do try and be quiet and I think there are certainly states of being that I could cultivate. For example, [if I want to] go and visit, go sit at Matramandir, I just, I find that I'm there, I just feel [without having to physically be there. I just picture it and

I’m there]. I mean if I can be in a quiet place. I can go and be there. And really be there as much as I am if I am there physically. That’s kind of nice. And it helps, oddly enough it helps, I mean, it seems a weird thing to say, but it’s sort of a grounding thing as I wrestle with the physical world. [Knowing that you can be in both worlds at the same time] and that the other one is there for me at any time. I don’t need a separate place or ritual or anything, it’s there and it’s part of who I am. It feels like a very big shift to me in, in many respects, and yet it has sort of emerged subtly. And the thing that I find interesting, we often think of grounding ourselves in the physical but I feel more grounded in the spiritual. 283

Light Ascending and Descending

I have mostly ascending I think, aside from sort of the animistic thing, the shaman thing, because those are both ascending and descending. But just a non-thing of descending/ascending into the light and having light descend into me is a fairly strong thing that’s been happening also recently. And it’s mainly to go up, and once you’re in that light then there’s nothing that concrete that comes back with you. I mean, you’re just there. So it’s going up and just being filled and being there and not having a sense of a body and not having a sense of anything else but this light. I usually come back with a great sense of calm and peace and/with a sense of it staying with me, but I don’t have particular emotions or sensations. Actually, there is sort of a physical tingle as I come back.

[So I’ve had pretty much the feelings of ascending more often than the descending and then just the experiences of the light just happens to be there, I’m emanating it, rather than it coming or going. Actually, light appears three ways: I ascend into the light, it can descend into me through a column and then it can emanate from me.

Lots of choices. For someone who wants to have choices, that’s great

]. It’s funny, I think probably the only time that I do that intentionally is the emanating from me times, particularly if I’m trying to send it to someone else or some protection of some sort. And honestly I can call it in whenever I feel the need to send it out, sometimes one way, sometimes the other. Sometimes I have to call it in first, but sometimes it’s just there. 284

Widening of the Etheric Body

And I’ve also had physical sensations of expansion physiologically. I talked to

[my spiritual mentor at the ashram] about that. I’d had that since childhood. And he said,

“That’s you experiencing your etheric body, growing out and experiencing the wideness of your etheric body.” I would say [it expands] two feet out probably. Sometimes it

[happens when I’m meditating]. I think as a child it would be when I was just lying in bed. Sometimes [at work], just all of a sudden the body feels really big, just feeling the outer limits of that, as the outer limits of my body rather than the physical form.

Communicating Soul to Soul

Frequently people have told me subtly, I mean on the spirit level, that they were going [leaving, dying]. The first time I was aware of it was [from] a 14-year-old child and

I was just shocked, and then a month later he did go. So at some point, I was wrestling with this as a knowledge, and I’ve finally come to the conclusion that we can communicate on a soul level. And it doesn’t just have to be about the transition of no longer seeing a person but it can be a welcoming someone in, as in the consciousness of conceiving, or meeting someone who’s going to be important for some reason in your life, and it can just be to ask a question in the awareness such that a friend is going to go through a challenge.

[And] I had the sense of my sister telling me that this was it. And I just kind of went, “Uh, do I resist this?” and then stopping and saying [to her soul],“Is this what you want?” and getting a very clear “Yes” from her. And that was about 6 months before she died. So a lot of the challenge was, yes, the pain of letting her go but also just being aware of the spiritual aspects of it, that she was making a choice, that probably the best I 285 could do was be with her in that choice. Because it wasn’t something that her physical was conscious about and she was resisting it in every way she knew how. And it just called on me to be my highest self, to be with her in that. It just demanded that. And I appreciated that experience. [It’s almost as if the best way to handle it was to be directed to stay in the spiritual.] It made it a little bit easier.

It can also be about meeting someone and having a recognition that this person will have a role to play in my life. One night I asked a man in the coop a question and had this feeling of recognition/connection. We didn’t exchange more than a few words, because he didn’t know the answer to my question. I hadn’t seen him before, and didn’t see him again for a couple of years or so. But then one day he showed up as the father of one of my students. He became involved in school, and we got to know each other and found we shared a common view of the world.

I also had the notion to ask a friend, on a subtle level, if I were going to see her again. It was scary to do that, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know if the answer were going to be “no,” but I did anyway, and the answer was “many times.” Then, a few months later she had a health crisis and it was touch and go for her. I remembered our

“exchange” and believed she would recover, and indeed we have seen each other again many times.

It was a challenge for me to grow beyond the view that this soul communication was always about dying because so many people I cared about died during the 90s. But I have come to see it is much more than that. I have also had a brief conversation with someone else who experiences this type of communication, not just in connection with dying. 286

Current Issues and Challenges

I feel very much this very sort of thinness between the physical and the spiritual, the veil being thinner than it has been for me in the past, frequently a sense of the parallelness and the consciousness of them being there together. [Both at this moment and lately]

I think [the] physical challenges that I’ve taken on [recently] have sort of bogged me down and I was focusing on those and forgetting about the other part and that made it hard. So it again comes back to I think resistance. It’s the resistance that makes the pain and the suffering. I think it’s the human emotions of struggle that are the resistant sorts of things, and then those are what create the difficulties. Resistance comes down to “I don’t want to be doing this.” That’s sort of the basic fundamental resistance.

The hardest part [of my sadhana recently] has been that for a long period of time;

I didn’t have a very high energy level and I felt guilty. Then I stopped eating gluten and just changed my diet with the intention of becoming radiantly healthy; I was. And I had energy to do things and I had enthusiasm. And to come back, essentially what I have done is—the lack of energy and the lack of radiant health that I had, that had been there for a while—to then go back and say, “Okay there’s something more that needs to be done.” And I see it in terms of the transformation of the body, in terms of learning to let go of attachments to food and be able to learn very precisely, and eat very precisely, what the body actually needs, not what you’ve been enculturated to want. It was so nice to have all that energy to get up and be able to go and keep your house clean and get things done. So just like having been shown what was possible spiritually, I’ve been shown what was possible physically and now I’m going to have to—I’m just saying this as I’m 287 understanding it now. I have to work on this, to sit down and go, “Okay, there’s a deeper level that needs to be worked on for this particular body’s sake.” And, wishing it were otherwise doesn’t particularly facilitate creating that other you. I very much do have experience with: the clearer you are in what your intention is, the clearer it is that the universe can give it to you. And the Mother even talks about that, she says,

“You can just let the Divine take care of it.” I’d like to have a little bit of a hand in it.

So it’s again coming back to that physical in spirit and allowing that veil to be thinner and thinner and thinner, and create opportunities for them to merge. [It’s simply a matter of allowing and intending. And then knowing it’ll happen.]. And trust, trusting and truly surrendering that it will happen. And, as is often the case for me, I flip around this whole issue over and over and over. I’ll just go, “Okay, I get it,” and be with that and then 5 minutes later, the struggle again. But I see it [as] this stirring of the pot, you have to stir it up in order to truly clean it out. And see what’s really there and pick and choose what’s going to stay and what’s going to go ….[There’s no end point in spiritual development, is there?] And I don’t know why it is that we expect there to be.

[I think a lot of times we talk about bringing the spiritual into the physical. When in fact you just ground yourself in the spiritual and then dissolve the veil. You’re still seated in the spiritual but acting in the physical.] The experience is fairly subtle. And I don’t think anyone ordinarily walking down the street [would notice anything.] I certainly am not behaving like anyone differently. I think it makes me lighter in terms of dealing with stuff, less inclined to wrestle, less inclined to agonize over certainly human emotions and human feelings. And all those things come up, but they’re there in parallel with the other. And I’m not trying to get rid of them, I’m not trying to wrestle with them, 288 they’re just there. And I think they resolve themselves easier, and perhaps a little less intensely.

And in this time that I’ve been aware of this, I’ve had times of forgetting too, just forgetting all about that as a possibility, of just [being] focused on the physical, tangible world, and that’s harder. I find the reminder triggers are coming through easier, the support from different [parts] come up. But again, there’s still a lot to be worked on, and as that comes up and if you focus in on the issue to be worked on then sometimes that becomes all-consuming, for a while. [And then something happens out of the blue, I’ll get a phone call from somebody, that would remind me to refocus on being grounded in the spiritual]. If there’s a reminder, then it’s there. [It can be that fast]. Now how long it stays there sort of depends on where the concentration’s been I guess. I think the reminder shifts the awareness and it’s a matter of then, “How long do I maintain that awareness?” And that I think is something where I can work on, “All right, what is it that

I really want to do? How much do I want to maintain?” And the amazing multiplicities of possibilities that are always out there, and I think that can set up kind of a nervous energy of having to choose, and the ego coming up and the desires coming up and just, old habits and patterns and “Here we are again” and, “What do you want the outcome to be?”

I no longer think I’ve gotten rid of anything, the patterns of issues that I’ve dealt with in my life have repeated and repeated. They get less intense and it’s probably a bigger stretch to say that they’re the same patterns, but I think they are. And one of the things that really was obvious to me moving back to the States was you carry your issues wherever you go. You carry your consciousness wherever you go; you can’t run away from anything. So that’s not a good reason for doing anything, you have to be 289 going to something rather than running away from something, because if you’re just running away it’s all coming with you.

I feel like [Integral Yoga] has become an element in the fabric, the whole fabric of my life. If you think of a tapestry that it’s, I don’t know which way the warp and wolf go but it’s one of those, just woven in through everything. And I think it very quickly became that way because it just, it made so much sense to me. Sri Aurobindo’s writings just have always made so much sense to me. And his concept of life as an experiment and us as scientists, and that we need to be observant and we need to test theories and we need to toss them out if they don’t work and we need to explore and experiment and learn from each other but not try to tell each other what to do. And then the Mother’s more, more of a gentle loving, maybe more on the emotional level, [with] Sri Aurobindo on the intellectual level, but again all over peace.

And I think one of the elements that I’ve found very important lately is the understanding that through the reading in Savitri, the sort of the recognition that he was describing. It seems to me that he was describing his yoga in the yoga of the King and he was describing in her yoga in Savitri’s yoga experiences. And they were so different from each other; so different that the first time I went through it, I was going, “She’s not doing it, what’s she doing? She’s not doing it like he’s doing it.” And the recognition that nobody does, but each one is going to be so unique and, that there isn’t any way that it could be the same. Because each of us has such different experiences and all of that is integrated into the whole of the of the yoga. 290

Benefits of The Study

A lot of this stuff is just coming to my awareness. This is why I wanted to do [the interview] again, because I knew it would help clarify a lot of stuff. And I’m just kind of recognizing it and putting words to it right now.

291

Om Shanti – Story

I’m experiencing a sense of calmness mixed with a bit of anticipation on account of the kind of questions that you may have for me. Yet, I’m centered, I’m not distracted.

The Divine is with me, I’m being watched over and I'm surrendered to the Divine Will.

Sadhana

What my practice is based on is regular meditations. I get up in the morning, have

a cup of tea and then go to my prayer or meditation room that is set aside in my home. I

go to that room and sit in meditation. Sometimes I do japa, which is recitation of spiritual mantras. At times, I sing certain religious hymns or bhajans. I always light a lamp and burn incense. I sit in a meditation and do these practices from 30 minutes to an hour. It varies, it’s not fixed; the time spent depends on what schedule I have and what mood I am in.

The second important part of my sadhana is to regularly attend meetings of a study circle based on the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I seek to apply their teachings to my everyday living.

Sri Aurobindo’s teaching is not otherworldly; he teaches that salvation or moksha does not lie elsewhere outside of this world. Sri Aurobindo’s teaching is affirmative. The goal of life is not the attainment of heaven in afterlife, but to bring down the Divine shakti actually working in our lives here and now. The goal is to lead a spiritual life in tune with the Divine Will. The more we are surrendered, the more the shakti works. This philosophy resonates with me.

I do not subscribe to the Mayavadi philosophy, propagated by the great

Shankaracharya. He taught in India in the 7th or the 8th century. As popularly 292

understood, Shankaracharya says that life is an illusion or maya. The only reality is

Brahman and all the rest is Mithya or falsehood (Brahma satya, jagat mithya). When I was growing up in India, these ideas were quite popular. Things may have changed in

India in the recent years. I have been in the U.S. for four decades. Sri Aurobindo negates

Shankrara’s teaching—he says that this world is not an illusion, that if God is real, then this creation is also real. The Buddhist philosophy is also negative like Shankara’s philosophy. The goal in Buddhism is nirvana, which is a void. Sri Aurobindo’s affirmative approach to life resonates very much with me.

The greatest influence in my life is the teachings and the philosophy of Sri

Aurobindo. But I am quite ecumenical. I visit other ashrams and temples for pujas

(worship services). On a number of occasions, I have visited the Hare Krishna temple [in another city]. I do not like the very elaborate ritual that Hare Krishnas follow in their pujas, but I admire their devotion, their bhakti. From their dress and shaven heads, Hare

Krishnas may look strange, but I open my home to traveling Hare Krishna devotees as they pass through my town. I also visit other Hindu shrines and temples in other cities.

There is no Hindu temple in the city where I reside. I also participate in the few religious activities organized by the Indian community in my town. Such functions are rare. I have been instrumental in bringing to town some teachers of yoga.

Sri Aurobindo says [that] aspire is a two-way movement. You move upward, you try to move upward, then also call the Divine to come down and descend. I think if you take one step the Divine takes two. And it’s at the meeting of these two forces, your own aspiration, the force born of your aspiration, and the descent of the Divine, I think for some people it happens and they have epiphany and they have great lightening. It just 293 hasn’t happened for me in that sense. I have not had any epiphanies, sudden bouts of spiritual energy. I call on the Divine to come down and fill me, to guide me, to be with me. I have faith that the Divine surrounds me, and guides me; otherwise my life will not be as good, as fulfilled as it is.

[One of the ways I aspire is by using] prayers. In the past during my morning meditation period, I used to write out a daily prayer. “Divine Mother, come into my heart.

Divine Mother, please reside in my heart. Fill me with your light. Give me a bit of your shakti.” Then, I will ask for strength to meet the challenge that I may be facing that day.

I live in the faith that the Divine is around me. The faith is solid. I truly do believe that I'm being guided, that the Divine Mother is with me, that I’m being supported and that everything is quite all right. I do not claim to have had any visions or revelations.

Faith in Divine guidance is part of me; it is part of who I am. I’m leading a wonderful life. And I think the reason for this is faith in Divine guidance.

Following Sri Aurobindo, I also believe that we’re on a progressive path, individually as well as globally, that one day the Divine will manifest here on earth. Sri

Aurobindo and the Mother worked long and hard to bring down to the earth plane the

Higher Light from above. The social and political conditions as they appear presently are negative and destructive, but this will pass. The negativity and violence are a temporary phase. We’re going to come out of the present mess. A happier state of affairs will descend on mankind. It’s that kind of a faith that I live with, in my own personal life, and about the society and the political system at large. 294

Psychic Being as an Intellectual Exercise

[I do not indulge myself with worrying about the psychic being. It doesn’t have any impact on my sadhana]. I would say that it’s more of an intellectual exercise. There is the psychic being and it’s affected and influenced by the forces above (by the Divine forces above).

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother

I don’t distinguish between Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I think they are a manifestation of the same force, the same power. The Mother is more approachable. Her writings are simpler, especially her book on meditations and prayers. She wrote a prayer each week or each day; those have been published in the form of a book. The book is a great help. I model my written prayers on the Mother’s book.

And often I would write down my prayers. I used to do that regularly a few years ago, I don’t write down my prayers at the present time. The Mother’s book on prayers and meditations is a model for me. I would cry out to the Mother to come into my life. I would write about a page or a couple of paragraphs each day—and that was very meaningful to me. I’ve gotten away from that practice. Now that I’m talking with you about writing down prayers, perhaps I’ll start doing that again. That was very meaningful to me in the past.

When I pray, I pray more often to the Mother than to Sri Aurobindo. I invoke

Mother’s Shakti to come into my life. “Mother do this, Mother do that.” The idea about female Shakti was not difficult for me to accept. The idea of Feminine Divinity is very prevalent [in India]. The Divine is Shiva and Shakti together. Shiva is the male principle 295

and Shakti is the female counterpart. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says “I am the

father and the mother of the universe.” The Lord is the Mother-Father God.

Experiences

I’ve read your interview schedule and I knew the kind of questions you will ask me. And then I was wondering, “Am I the right candidate for you to interview?” I can’t say that I have had profound experiences that you might be interested in investigating. I have had no epiphanies, no visions, no out-of-body experiences.

Some other people might have had such experiences. Some people say that they this feeling of either the ascending of the consciousness or the descent of the consciousness. I haven’t had any of those experiences other than the fact that when I sit in meditation—and that comes and goes, it’s not regular—I have a feeling of the rise of the kundalini, from the lower chakra up to the head. I have a feeling, tingling sort of a feeling, of the rising of the shakti or kundalini (vibrations) up along the spine. That kind of experience I’ve had, off and on, more so in the past. I used to be more stable in practicing meditation, more concentrated than in the recent months. But I do lead generally a peaceful, calm life without getting perturbed at all the ups and downs that life throws at you. But in terms of concrete experiences, you know, like visions or like a bolt of lightening that has hit you, those kinds of experiences I haven’t had.

Current Issues and Challenges

[The impact of Integral Yoga on my sadhana and my life has] been gradual. I cannot say there is any one single outstanding or great moment. But I find that I’m calm;

I'm calmer and accept life as it comes. I have had certain losses in my life, some dear people, very dear people whom I have lost. I could have gone to pieces on the loss that 296 occurred. It turns out I handled the loss very well; I accepted it and moved on in my life. I was not negatively impacted either at work, or in personal relationships. So it’s a sort of a general calmness about my life’s situation that I possess as a result of my sadhana.

I don’t get perturbed a great deal; I take things as they come. I try to stay in a state of surrender, I inculcate the feeling that God’s will be done, that there’s an order, as Sri

Aurobindo says in Savitri, “This world is not made with random bricks of chance, a blind

God is not destiny’s architect, there’s a meaning in each curve and line.” I’ve come to imbibe the philosophy that there’s order, there’s progress. Things are getting better, they're getting better for me, for the globe, and for the world, although, you know, a great deal of evidence seems to suggest the contrary. But I think things are getting better. We are on a progressive path.

The Divine is around us all the time, supporting us. I feel there’s a Divine hand in what I do and how I conduct myself. I do have faith. I do believe that the Divine hand is there and I’m being guided by the Divine, that I’m being supported by the Divine, that things are the way they’re supposed to be, that I’m not going to end up in a mess anywhere. So that kind of a feeling I have, it’s a subtle feeling.

There is a Divine order; all this is not accidental happening like the materials scientists would have us believe. These feelings have become more entrenched in me after I got into studying Sri Aurobindo and practiced meditation. So that’s the kind of a profound feeling that I have. There is a whole lot of negativism that surrounds everybody, especially in the global arena and in the social and the political subject matter. It seems that things are going downhill, that we might blow ourselves up like we used to feel back in the 1980s at the height of the Cold War. But the Cold War has come and gone. Now 297 it’s the Islamic terrorism, radicalism that confronts the globe. It seems like we are plunging towards the abyss. But I have faith that we’ll come out of the present slide, it’s just a phase and a period, a dark period before the ensuing dawn. So that kind of a faith and a feeling is what guides me.

Then I’m also moved by Sri Aurobindo’s writings on social and political subject matter. Sri Aurobindo wrote quite a bit on Indian culture, The Foundations of Indian

Culture. Another volume is on human unity and still another on India’s rebirth. I’ve read these. And they influence me greatly. You know, he was writing during the height of

British colonialism. One of his goals was the political independence of India. He wrote on how Indians could raise themselves to confront the British for independence. People who follow Integral Yoga do not usually read his social and political writings but these writings have been very important to me personally.

[I believe that the practice of Integral Yoga has provided me with the optimism not to be dragged down into the muck that occurs in political and world events. Through all of the turmoil there’s always this optimism that things are getting better.]

I spoke earlier about general calmness that pervades my being. It’s seldom I’m in conflict with [anyone]. I don’t make waves, but I’m solid. I’m not a performer, far from that. Sometimes I’m short of words, and don’t articulate quite well. I’m kind, I’m generous, I’m helpful. The practice of Integral Yoga influences my relationships with my colleagues. I get along well with my colleagues, even with the difficult ones. I have been selected into leadership roles by my colleagues and coworkers. Integral Yoga helps me a great deal. It’s not evident, it’s not something overt, but seeps through you, or seeps through me. 298

Pancho – Story

I feel a sense of openness and some joy to be able to devote myself to something directly connected with the sadhana that I do. I feel kind of a spaciousness inside me that is growing. I can’t say that it’s exactly the psychic being but from the inner being anyway, which includes it, and some kind of an opening to a force above. And when I am not doing anything I usually feel something like that. It is harder to bring that when I get real involved, but when I am by myself, I usually do feel some of that, some kind of inner feeling of joy with no particular reason that has nothing to do with my situation. You need solitude [in this sadhana] and some people just don’t understand.

Sadhana

One of the main practices is aspiration, but to me it has kind of a concrete reality.

You can feel it coming out of you and rising above, this connection with the Divine.

Aspiration and rejection can lead you to surrender and they’re all connected. And I have always used a lot of effort in aspiration. I don’t call light and force except when I really need it. I’m mostly am working on the aspiration and the psychic [being].

And I let those things happen because it seems like people can go a lot further in the spiritual transformation in the psychic [being]; it seems more ideal to get the psychic

[being]. I think it’s cool to work with the peace, because I need definitely need peace, and even artificial exercises to work with peace and calm. I don’t want to call down too much of the higher light and force and bliss, but [rather] let them come in a natural sequence through the psychic being and through the peace and equanimity being there. Aspiration, you’re not asking for anything, it happens naturally. It’s going up, it’s going out and up.

And it’s calling things down, probably calling down the things of the higher 299 consciousness. Calling down peace, and, and bliss, and light and force, but in a natural way. It’s not like there is a specific demand, like I’m aspiring to you because I want you to give me higher light and force. [You’re sending out aspiring energy to receive whatever it and is to connect]. Exactly, to have contact with the Divine, that’s what you really want. And the other stuff can come naturally. What I am trying to say [is that] will and intent are going out both ways, and aspirations.

And there is a way of actually working with that stuff, where you can, you sit there and you put your consciousness above your head, put your awareness there. And you allow peace, you connect with this peace above your head and it’s concrete, it’s real.

So you connect with the peace, and you feel this substance. They say it’s like liquid; to me it’s flowing but it’s not exactly liquid. It comes in down there and it goes into your head and your neck, and then you go up again and connect with this source and feel a fresh stream of it and going into your middle of your chest and out your arms. And your arms can get heavy, if you want to play with imagination, and then go up again and then, like a vase it fills your whole being and body and extends outside the surface of your skin. And you open up and you give a silent prayer always to have this peace.

And that’s the basis. That’s just an exercise. The peace happens anyway, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with an exercise of peace. I don’t ask for the higher stuff too much because I mostly want the psychic being to solidify [as well as having] peace and calm. Without equanimity, as I’ve experienced, they don’t stay with you forever because you don’t have enough of a foundation built, enough of an equanimity. I find that the exercise does help a little. You call down the peace and then if you can get the peace solidified then you can open up to light and force and then Ananda [bliss]. I 300

would rather not call on the higher bliss and call on the supramental. The natural

sequence I think is that you get peaceful, you get calm, you open up, the light can come

down, some force can come down and then maybe the ananda. And I have these things

happen. The exercise helps a little bit, I mean, I think it does.

That’s another thing I do and I also call down the supramental light sometimes,

Like you see a symbol of Sri Aurobindo about eight inches above your head, you call

down the supramental light, and mix it with an om namo bhagavate (the heart, the surrender). And then I bring from the bottom, from below the earth, maybe hundreds of miles or whatever, from the inconscient, Mother and Sri Aurobindo back here. It’s the

Star of David, well the Solomon Seal, and the symbol keeps the ascent and descent going so you don’t get crushed by the ascent, by the descent or lose everything by the ascent.

It works, but sometimes it’s mechanical. All those sayings can be, can become mechanical. Sometimes they’re really working. But I will or imagine. Sri Aurobindo said,

“It’s not your imagination.” There really is a supramental world like they say there in the supramental, subtle physical, so they’re pretty close.

Another thing that really helps, if I had the time, [is to] read Savitri. Right now, I am concentrating on The Synthesis, but reading Savitri out loud is really powerful. It does seem to bring it into the physical, and also the Mother’s presence. Because it’s (Savitri) about a feminine Divine heroic figure that conquers death, and the Mother—Sri

Aurobindo put a lot of stock in the Mother just like the Mother put a lot of stock in Sri

Aurobindo. She really is the one that does the yoga.

Sometimes a lot of these things just come on me and that’s my practice for the day, but sometimes I set time. I might think of the phrase—this has worked several times 301 anyway, The Mother talks about burning all in The Agenda, burning all to offer all. She

[talks about] this experience of the agni. I really, really get that mystic fire, and Mother’s force means a lot to me. So I think of the fire in the middle and burning all to offer all.

And the Mother also talks about that agni was coming to her at that time, which could have been [in the ‘50s], not so much a god as a state of being of the Supreme. And it’s just a state of solid aspiration. You feel this thing in here, and it connects you with the

Divine. A lot of times I just think about that passage or the agni, or think about that we’re here to evolve. There is a fire that evolves in that kind of thinking [and] brings me to an experience where I am inhabiting aspiration. I try to take everything from below and bring it into the heart. And offer it up and feel without any intention. It’s concentrated, it’s intense, but not overly vehement, although it can be pretty intense. The will is there.

Part of the will is connected with the Divine will, you connect yourself up with that. It’s connecting; it’s aspiration. You are calling to the higher consciousness and the Divine presence, the Mother.

There’s one simple way to look at it, overly simplistic, is the mystic fire, is aspiration going up, and the Mother’s force is what comes down from above. Now, the

Mother’s force includes all those things of the higher consciousness. It also includes supramental things and things beyond the supramental because the Mother is in all those worlds. But mostly in the yoga a lot of what they worked with is the higher consciousness. So in a sense, to conceptualize it, the peace and the bliss and the light and the force, you know, are the Mother’s force. Seeking the presence of the Mother but not saying, “Give me this or give me that,” unless you know you really need it. Trying not to 302

put a vital demand into it, but letting it just be. Or as it’s said, it’s fine to gently draw, but

not so wise—not wise at all!—to pull down those higher energies.

That’s where your real being is, above there, and it’s connected with your psychic

being. They’re not unconnected, there is some connection between the deepest within and

the high above. And, I’m not saying it’s supramental because it’s not exactly that, but it

had gone up there and I thought, if I could, you know, practice this and get some grace

with it maybe I’ll be able to follow it some day and not lose the thread. So there is

aspiration and then there is opening up, there are descents from above and I just try to

open to them and let them work.

Experiences

The Mother

One night I went back to my place and I was like thinking about what [had been said at an Integral Yoga lecture that night], or maybe I was working on one of the exercises from [a devotee’s] book, which are really from the Mother. Somehow this experience just happened. I never really ask for them. I mean sometimes you might be involved in mediation or prayer or reading, but you might be going to the bathroom or watching a TV show.

This is the experience that didn’t quite happen. I felt this really physical, like subtle physical but it feels physical, a really strong presence and I knew it was the

Mother. And it was above me, it was in my heart, and I felt like, “God, are they giving me iodine or something?” I mean it was pretty powerful. Something came down, and then something was inside me, inside my heart, but it was so physical. I’ve never felt anything quite like that before or since. And it was really intense love, but it was very soft, it was 303 very gentle. At one point I just said, “That’s enough.” And they respect that. She, it stopped. But I think she might have been saying, “Yeah, you want me, I accept you,” or something. But there weren’t any words, there wasn’t any vision, but it was a powerful presence, I had no doubt that this was the Mother. And I have read about others [who had something similar happen to them], like Dilip Kumar Roy. She said, “I’ll come to you,

I’ll bless you,” and he fought it off because it was so physical. People think this is spiritual, but this is so physical.

[What were you feeling that you realized you couldn’t take anymore?] Almost like they’re putting some substance in you, like iodine shooting through you. You have this weird sensation. [In the center of your chest?] Yeah, yeah. It was this physical sensation and it was a little too much. I think I would be fine with it now. [What was it that made you decide to stop?] The intensity of it, I guess, it was too much at the time, or it was as much as I could take. But I think it might have been her giving her acceptance.

And it wasn’t like I shut it away. Maybe I could have gone deeper. But if you say stop, they usually will stop. That’s the only time I ever said stop to anything like that. [So it became physically uncomfortable?] Yeah, but you can feel love and bliss. But to feel it physically in your heart like they’re pumping with some fluid.

But I was used to some of that. When I was in [a mystic Christian order], one of the greatest things they had was the Devotion to Mary. And the Mother has talked about this too, that is one good thing the Catholics have. I would open these Mary altars. They found that the male presence of God coming through Jesus was too much and that the female presence could open it up. So I was used to feeling something in my heart. I was used to feeling it. It could have been in the psychic being or the inner heart, it could be 304 the emotions. And definitely it was tenderizing me and getting me ready to experience the psychic being. But I guess this thing I had, this experience I had of the Mother was a little too concrete. What I experienced before was more ethereal, and I liked that, I was used to that. But this was almost physical, you can feel it more, you could feel it so concretely, like a physical substance. And that was surprising to me. And then I came to understand that a lot of people have those experiences with Sri Aurobindo and the

Mother, this almost physical presence of the Divine. They talk about it [occurring] at the

Samadhi, and I have had that too, but at that time I wasn’t used to it. Because these descents from above are, they are really great. [But] this was just more in your core.

Experience of Christ: Cosmic Presence of the Divine

I had an experience [in 1974 when] I was in [a mystic Christian order] that to me was an experience of Christ. [I was] on this Greyhound bus and I was feeling really low. I was doing my evening prayers, and I said, “Oh, Lord Jesus, come and bless me with your light,” and, “Please bless this mission that I go to,” and, “Don’t forget about me and send down your light.” We worked a lot with Christ’s light, which I never saw, but I felt it.

Suddenly I felt this being, and it was kind of like he had dropped out of the sky. He was there all the time and he decided to come in, somewhere in that central area [of my chest]. It really felt like Christ. I felt his presence—I’ve had a lot of experiences where I feel presences and connections and descents but this [experience] stuck out—this was like the cosmic presence of the Divine. I guess it was like he was there, I’d felt that presence before but this was much more intense. It was almost concrete. Not as concrete as the Mother’s presence, but very concrete. And I said, we were supposed to stand things in the light of Christ because you can get a lot of false experiences, “Stand in the Light of 305

Christ! Go away if you are not,” and he said, “I have no problem standing in the Light of

Christ.” This was extremely intense. It was like this feeling of cosmic all-prevailing love in the center of the heart. It was very powerful, a force, it was more powerful than the soul experience I had, because I’m just a regular human, and this was—and I don’t even think that it was his full presence or anything like that.

So he talked to me. I heard words that I picked up. Not in exactly a distinct voice, but [something] like, he said, “With what you have taught, you could rule the powerful kingdom,” because we were taught the laws of creation. Kind of like The Secret but a little higher than that. I mean, use the law and get what you need. (laughter) Of course you have to do it right, you better not do it selfishly, and do it for God and Christ and all that, and the Light, and the Godself because this was a order that had connections with the Eastern teachings. It was a pretty strange group, but it was the way to grow at the time. But this wasn’t anything connected with that order, this was the real thing. I realized there’s something different about this. And I should have had a list of questions, but it didn’t matter. So he said, “With what you’ve taught you could rule a powerful kingdom, but the greatest King is he who has conquered himself, for He ruleth his own kingdom.” I think I read something like that in Marcus Aurelius later, and it was [on] self-mastery, but it was put in pretty good words. And I think if I had been a little more receptive there might have been more, but he said that, “I have experienced everything a human being can experience, I think it’s safe to say. And I really understand you.”

It can be hard to talk about these things, you know [tears well up]. That’s why you want to keep a distance. But I didn’t have any tears at the time. I was on the

Greyhound bus and I didn’t shout out or shout Hallelujah. It was very compact, very 306 calm, very real. He said something about one act of love outweighs many mistakes, I heard that. And, “I appreciate your efforts to serve me.” It really was, Jesus, if not Christ,

I think full Jesus Christ is more powerful. And I felt [the] psychic [being] in the sense

[of] the soul, but it’s not the same exactly as your own psychic being. Because he’s a powerful enough being to appear to me, seeming to be coming in the center of your psychic being. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo I guess can do that. But it was, it was just intense happiness, and there was life force too with it, and it lasted about an hour.

Experience: Transcendent

I had an experience of Sri Aurobindo in ’71 but I didn’t know who he was and I didn’t find that out [until a few years ago] that this being that came to me was Sri

Aurobindo. And I hadn’t really maybe valued it enough that [it] was a transcendent

[experience]. I was at kind of at loose ends in 1971. I had some things to work out and I hadn’t really given up the drugs of the ‘60s and the whole ‘60s things. So I said to myself, “I need a religious experience,” as I put it, or maybe we’d call it a spiritual experience today. “I need something; I’m just not going to make it.” I said, “I’m going to have a religious experience, I don’t care how, please help me, I can’t make it any longer”

[A friend suggested we camp out, as a type of vision quest.] And I said to myself, “Well this is when it’s going to happen, it has to happen.”

So I took some peyote and, I’d never really vomited with it before [but this time]

I just felt awful, dry heaves. I was never was so low in my life. I thought, “You came out to here to have a religious experience” and I was at the bottom, it was awful. And then suddenly something happened, maybe the peyote kicked in, and I started seeing these visions with my eyes closed. It was really intense. I thought, “I’ve really struck pay dirt 307 now, this is the real thing.” I saw all these dancing Tibetan devils and women in orgiastic postures, these symbolic things, and I was closing my eyes and thinking, “Boy, that’s a switch.” And then I heard this voice, and it said, “That world is a circus,” you know,

“there is nothing there at all that isn’t what you want. You haven’t experienced anything of any value.”

And then there was a third part of the experience. I was flushed clean, I don’t know why, because I was supposedly on peyote but I didn’t feel it at all anymore. And then I had this thought. One of my favorite people was Yogananda, and I thought, “Boy that guy really had it together,” and then I hear this same presence, and it said, “If one can do it, all can do it.” It was like that same thing as I had said before in ’74, when this being was around and just came down. I sensed him and I felt [his] guidance. And it was above me though it wasn’t inside me. But I could feel a feeling in my heart and I felt this feeling of hope. I look back on it and I think, “That’s how I learned, at least in this lifetime, what aspiration feels like.” It was like all of a sudden I was living in absolute hope. Everything was possible. I could feel this solid presence of some kind and it didn’t blow me away.

And then this voice, this being said, “You have to find a spiritual path right away.

It’s a matter of life and death for you. You’re not going to make it any longer. You can’t depend on anyone else to find this, you have to go look for it.” And he said, “The presence you feel will go away in a very short time and you’ll be left completely to your own devices.” And then I thought, well I need to start the spiritual path, okay, and then the voice said [pause], he said that I work for him [teary]. Well, I just took it all in. I don’t know how much credence you can put in things that happen when people are on 308 drugs, but I realized that when I experienced those things I was totally clear. This voice had said, “What you are looking for is bullshit.”

The thing is, I never really thought too much about this experience I had, this being [who] said, “You work for me.” The guy was kind of macho in a quiet way. He didn’t have any doubt. And I thought, “Huh, there was something to that. What was that?” It kind of reminded me a little bit of Sri Aurobindo, but I’m not sure.

And then I was on the beach one day taking a walk. I would try to have these conversations with Sri Aurobindo, this was [around the year] 2003 or 2004, and I felt like

I wasn’t really able to contact him, even in my imagination. And then I reached down and picked up this rock, and on the back of it, it said “I carried you when you were alone.” I thought, “What does this mean?” And I thought, “You know you’re a little dense, trying to say it’s important for you to know that that was Sri Aurobindo.” It was intuition through this thing, this gray rock with black writing on it. He was the most spiritual person that ever came to earth. And then I realized he didn’t have an English accent and he didn’t talk about Integral Yoga, but so what? I realized, “Wait a minute, the feeling, the feeling is the same you get from aspiring.” Aspiration can be a concrete thing, it’s this thing in your heart that connects you with higher [planes] and brings [them] down. There’s a, descent, ascent, and your consciousness can rise up and then it can even go above your head. And, but I learned how to do it when I was in his presence, that being’s presence. I realized, I just thought, this is a pretty strong, wise being. He answered a cry a distress [that time on my vision quest].

Christ’s experience was pretty strong. It was a cosmic, all-prevailing love, to use the words of Rudolf Steiner, but it was really a powerful, cosmic experience, with the 309 transcendent behind it, but mostly universal. And it was very strong and I wasn’t on anything at the time. The feeling was really powerful [with the experience of Sri

Aurobindo] and it was like totally from above. That is why I say the experience was] transcendent. I think it was something like what he calls the master of the yoga in The

Synthesis of Yoga. I think that’s either him or he’s connected with it and it felt like the master of the yoga. And then I read that he said sometimes the master of the yoga comes to a person early to give them something needed and to give them a foretaste of things to come. [After that experience in 1971] I moved physically to get involved, but inwardly it’s taken me a long time.

Sri Aurobindo Through a Picture

People in Integral Yoga sometimes use pictures. There was a picture of Sri

Aurobindo that I really liked. It was one of the two pictures taken at his Maha Samadhi when he died. People have felt a lot of power in those pictures. There was one of them

[that I like that has] some kind of power that comes through [it]. I look at that and I get this feeling. The Mother said when he was lying there in Maha Samadhi she was standing there and she felt from him this intense supramental force that she called the mind of light. She said it was the supramental force acting on the physical mind and being received by the physical mind that it was like a frisson, a sensation. All of this supramental force came into her. Apparently he was passing something on to the world through the Mother while he lay there, and then went on to do whatever he’s doing now.

And I have had contact with him, contact with that picture.

I look at this picture and I feel this intense presence. It could be centered here [in the heart], but it’s in the body too. And it’s more physical, but not physical like the 310

Mother’s presence. I can’t really describe it but it’s concrete, and if nothing else, it’ll totally change my consciousness when l just put it on my chest for a while and look at it.

It’s a concrete presence, it’s physical. And I experienced him in other ways too, but this isn’t psychic per se. I don’t know if it’s exactly supramental but it might be. I think it’s something like what the Mother was talking about because it was there, it comes from him. I talked [to someone] about that picture, who said, “I have the same picture in my room and I look at it all the time. It’s physical. I feel it in my body.” I said, “Is it the supramental?” And she just smiled. And I said, “Well, maybe it’s the psychic becoming more physical.”

The Mother does say it’s the psychic manifesting that will produce the supramental being. Nobody knows quite how that works but it puts even more emphasis on the psychic being in the yoga. [The feeling] was just oneness and power and some kind of love. It must have something to do with the supramental and the physical, I don’t know, but it encouraged me to keep doing this thing. And Sri Aurobindo does sometimes, he comes and talks to me. It seems likes he knows all about me. And sometimes I can feel things working on different parts of me, and I just say, “Go to work,” or “Let it happen.”

Sometimes I’ll feel things in my legs and it’s like that presence [is] in the legs, but it’s different.

Current Issues and Challenges

My hope is that [my sadhana] will get to where it will work in my outward life more and manifest more. I still think I’m on the right track because I feel like it starts within and it works without, and that if we have an experience and it creates some intense 311 aspiration and it lasts 30 minutes and we feel this great presence, and [even though] it might dissipate we’re still building up that muscle to a time when we can.

These things I’m talking about seem like little openings, little beginnings. And I just hope that I can get to, at least in this lifetime, where there is some real firm psychic connection. I hope to take these to where the experiences become realizations. Then they’re really worth something.

I think a lot of [my] path has been building up an inner life. It’s real hard to build up, to be inward, really inward in this country, and it’s not even that easy for

Aurobindonians. A lot of them think, “Well, I’ll work and I’ll offer it up” and that’s great, but to build up an inward life takes time and it’s taken me time to really appreciate these experiences and others.

I don’t know what it is but I think it’s—the last thing [Sri Aurobindo] wrote about was the supramental manifestation on earth and the mind of light. If you read The Life

Divine he’s always saying, “the physical mind prevents people from understanding more and ties them down to earth.” And so something had to work on the physical—the physical mind, the physical vital, the physical physical and even the cells. And so I work with this when I can.

[The Mother said] if you can aspire for longer [periods of time], aspire and surrender, the movement eventually will get stronger and become bright. Grace has to be there too. And I think grace is what’s making you do it. The supramental is what’s making you do the effort. I still think that working from within [is important]. The

Mother said that it was the work of the dark forces to tell you you’re not that much changed, because the outward that everybody sees is the last thing to change. So you just 312 have to have faith that if you’re on the right track, it will eventually [change], because in this yoga we do want things outwardly to really change. 313

Rishi – Story

My mind is quiet. I would like that any answers that I give to you, they come from, above my mind, from higher planes, and I prefer that I be a channel to those answers. So that is a prayer that I said before we started the interview. Now, I am all ready to answer your questions.

Sadhana

It was only [in] Sri Aurobindo’s books that I noticed that yoga can be applied to one’s daily life. It can be made into a concrete force in one’s day-to-day events. It seemed to understand the place of spirituality as well as the place of materialism in one’s life.

That was the starting point for me to get involved into Integral Yoga in a very serious way. So getting to a point where one has to surrender oneself and become an instrument of the Divine was almost a 180-degree change.

In the [next] phase, gradually it started happening that my mind quieted, just trying to observe something coming. And it started coming in. I started getting more and more of those experiences of energy coming in and it became a very normal thing. It is a very unusual thing to talk about to anyone else who is not familiar with it. So the second phase was more of meditation. And when I found some challenging situation in life, at that point I would try to get into a meditative frame of mind and let instructions come to me, to determine what I needed to do.

In the last 10 or 11 months, I believe my practice has gone through another change, entered into a third phase of practice. My sadhana became more emotional in nature; I sort of fell in love [and] when I fell in love my sadhana became more of a joy. 314

So this phase has become more of an effortless phase. It is like I am having fun, I am just

enjoying doing my sadhana.

I would say that there is no practice except that the desire, the desire to learn the

truth. The desire to learn who I am, the desire to figure out everything. It is probably a

curiosity, a certain amount of will, and a certain amount of courage to go this way. That

is what I think leads you to find ways to be able to get to that object that you were after.

Experiences

Love of Divine Began With Love of a Woman

It began with falling in love with a person, with a human being. A few days after I fell in love with her, I suddenly saw Krishna in her face, in a photograph of her. I have never personally interacted with her, never physically met her, it has always been on e- mails. So when I saw Krishna, I realized that whenever I used to think of her, it would just increase some spiritual energy within me. I felt more spiritual. It kind of made me very energetic, made me feel very happy, and it seemed to be in tune with the goal I had set out myself for, to become a perfect instrument of the Divine.

Suddenly, there was one point where I intensely felt like I wanted to be with her. I knew she was involved with someone else, or maybe she did [not] think of me in terms of a potential partner. I felt quite hurt with that, this intense hurt was within me that I am not being able to get that reciprocation from the person I feel so strongly about, that one night as I experienced this, I suddenly saw, I believe it was, the Virgin Mary with a baby in her arms. I saw her there, in front of me, and I saw energy coming out of her and to me and all my hurt and frustration just went away. It was like I got healed, and at that point it no longer mattered whether I was with that person or not. It just stopped being of 315

importance, that physical craving of being, getting that which you love or which you like, that craving went away. It was as if I became free.

And, then another few weeks passed by, and suddenly I experienced Krishna within me and at the same time experienced that it was Krishna, it was this kind of a force that had entered me and made me fall in love with this person. It was as if something was forced on me. It never, it was not something that just came out from within me, it was something that came out from somewhere else that kind of occupied me for that time being and made me feel like this for this person. And simultaneously I felt it was Krishna that had occupied me.

So it was very interesting for me to see that how Krishna took over me and I fell in love with Krishna, whom I saw in the other person. And this all happened in a matter of 8 or 9 weeks, all of these experiences.

So after all of this, then my mind, my heart, my entire being kind of relaxed a little bit and then that is when it got to the realization that God is probably there everywhere, God is there everywhere, and the love that I felt for this person is something that I could feel for everything in life. And along with that grew the intensity to know everything there is to know in life, to know more and more about all the people I interact with everyday, all the news that I read everyday. I feel like everything I know, every new thing I learn, I am learning a little bit more about that, about the god whom I have fallen in love with. My falling in love started with one person, it eventually took me to the realization that I have fallen in love with the Divine, whom I have started seeing in everything I see I my life. 316

Somatic Experience of Force

Since I have been practicing this yoga I can very clearly see if there is any force acting on me. Sometimes I feel the force enter from the crown of my head, sometimes it seems to enter from my forehead. Whenever it does that, it’s as if it wants to occupy my brain. But it’s a very tender force, it’s not like a brute force, a very tender force. And it lets you decide whether you want to let it occupy you or you want to force it away literally. It’s so delicate in nature, a mild whisper, it does not want to disturb you if you are sleeping. It can vary anywhere between a minute to 8 or 9 minutes, usually there’s a timeframe, where it just does its thing on me. When it does come in, I feel very lightheaded. I feel the need of being still.

If I am in a conversation with someone I like to just become quiet. Sometimes my forehead cringes when it happens and sometimes my eyebrows droop a little, as if it is kind of relaxing. Sometimes I close my eyes. Mostly I prefer closing my eyes, but if I am in the middle of a meeting or if I am talking to someone, I [try] not to give the wrong message to people. For that reason, what I end up doing is just putting my fingers around my nose on the eyes, as if I am thinking about what that other person is saying (laugh), to show that I am still in the conversation. Or maybe I might just put my forearms on the table and just cover my eyes a little bit, maybe one of the eyes, so that I can be still. I feel as if I want to lock myself away from the world, not to be disturbed by anything from the outside. So whatever way I could do that, I would do that without being disrespectful to the other person, so that that other person doesn’t think, “Are you not paying attention to me?” or things like that. 317

So I let it do its thing. And then after the force stops, at that point then I try to internally explore various parts of my being, the emotional mind, and see what has happened and what work has been done there. At that point I start getting some ideas, the idea of some problem I had five years back or some grudge I may have had on someone a few years back and I totally forgotten about it. Suddenly I remember that, and I realize what was wrong with my behavior with so-and-so person, or maybe learn something more about that other person.

Visions of Spiritual Beings

When I have a vision of [Krishna], I feel some kind of energy coming out of him and entering me. And then the next thing, I start getting insights about certain problems in my life. So along with Krishna I have also had visions of Sri Aurobindo, Mother,

Vivekananda, and Yogananda

I feel like it is more like energy, it is more like light, when you switch on a torch.

The light travels and then falls under the wall, so that it is like rays coming from your source and the torch, and [these] rays [are] what goes through the wall. So, my special experiences are more like rays, not projection. It starts with sensing the rays, I believe. It starts with the rays because what usually happens is I am busy doing something and suddenly I feel as if my mind is being occupied by something. [As if] someone is pushing me, making me divert my attention to something. I become aware that something is going in my mind, and then I see a person. And the person does not necessarily appear with a perfect outline, with very well-defined features sometimes. With these people I sometimes don’t see very clearly those pictures. For example, with Krishna, I do not very clearly again see his face sometimes, but I can see a strong blue light. I can see the kind 318

of dress or the jewelry that I have seen in the paintings of Krishna. And there is a certain pleasantness about that person I perceive, a certain smile, a certain niceness and a wiseness that I perceive, that makes me trust that person.

There are also times when I am feeling depressed, frustrated, and then I would certainly think, you know, I want to get out of this frustration. Then at that point, I consciously close my eyes and think of Aurobindo and Mother, [that they would] help me out of this and do something about this. Another point or situation is where I try to quiet my mind and pray to Sri Aurobindo to give me insights, tell me which direction should I put my efforts [regarding] the dilemmas of life.

So there are two different ways this happens to me. [One] comes all of a sudden without me expecting it, and another where I can constantly want them to come in. And usually what happens is when I do consciously call them I become quiet. I try to make my brain quiet. And obviously if I am anxious or something, or frustrated, when I try become quiet, it relieves me of it. Even if no guru turns up, I still feel better because I have just quieted myself. I think when I experience something negative or strong, that is when I end up consciously feeling that I should do something about this. I do not consciously think about it; that’s okay, let me quiet myself. It is usually a problem that forces me, something about it, and that something to be done is to become quiet.

Current Issues and Challenges

Planes

What I am beginning to realize is that there are certain intuitive planes and all of the gurus, all of them go through those planes. So if I reach the intuitive plane though Sri

Aurobindo, or if I reach it through Vivekananda, or through some other guru, or through 319

someone whom I have never seen in my physical life, it is still the same. The basic lesson that I am learning is still the same, whether it is [from] one source or from another. I guess the main source is the plane itself, that is, an intuitive or an overmental plane. That is what I believe one needs to get into touch with, whoever it may be, through your guru or through anyone.

I have been able to make a [distinction] now between different planes. I definitely feel I have been in touch with the intuitive plane. If there is a subject that I need to learn about, I pick up a book, I go through the table of contents. I read the words and suddenly sometimes my brain goes quiet. I put the book aside and I suddenly start having these insights. I literally see what [the book is talking about but on a grander, more worldly scale], various aspects about that subject. It just starts flooding into my brain. And, then when it subsides, I again start going through the next pages of the book and I suddenly see what I want and that I learned all of this already! I don’t need the book and that’s good. In 20 minutes I figured out the entire subject, some basic thing about the subject. So that kind of convinces me that this is real, and I have started trusting it more and more. One can learn about anything one wants to. You need some kind of a prop, maybe a book becomes a prop, just a catalyst, something that just makes the process start, then it begins. The intuitions start coming in.

Sri Aurobindo has made a distinction between different planes. He talks about higher mind, an intuitive mind and an overmind and the supermind. At first, it becomes difficult to know what plane you are in, in your sadhana. But when you start progressing to higher and higher levels, then it becomes much easier to know what level is where. As

I look back over my past 10 years, I now realize that maybe at that [earlier] time in my 320

life that only the higher mind was active. Now I get a feeling that I am probably entering the overmind area. I mean, I think I am in the overmental mental area because I feel that what I am experiencing is similar to what Sri Aurobindo mentions is overmind. Such as getting a huge chunk of insight at a time. It is not like just one single thing you know, but huge chunks and they are spread across various aspects of life, fields literally, all connected. And then you see at the same time, you understand the pain of people going through cancer, you understand Saddam Hussein and his dictatorship, and suddenly you see the whole picture at the same time, a bunch of things at the same time.

When one gets to that point, I now realize when I look back in my life that earlier on I was not getting these chunks of insight in the sadhana. I was not getting chunks, but a little bit of insight here and there. So then I came to know that, okay, this is a different stage and that was a different stage. And that is how I could say that, okay, we are probably getting in touch with different planes. I wouldn’t even say different planes, just a different stage of development. I’ve not been able to, I would not say that I would be seeing some other world where I am going and getting insights and bringing them here, I have not had that kind of experience. What I have experienced is just that my brain gets flooded with lots of insights. To me, my sadhana is more of a going through stages. I’m becoming more receptive.

I wouldn’t define my sadhana based on planes, so to speak in a way. And I could say that, okay, I have experienced whatever he has described about the intuitive plane, I experienced whatever he described in the overmental plane. But I would not call it in terms of plane. It is a terminology that I am not comfortable with. I would just say that [it is] like one is learning the mathematics from grade 1 to grade 10. So you are just learning 321

more and more about mathematics, you are just understanding the various aspects about it. So it is like a natural progression of knowledge going from one point to other points. I find it very difficult to really distinguish the specific planes. Even when I think about planes, I sometimes feel as if it is like some kind of a physical, some floor is there somewhere and everything is set up there, some intuitive floor and then an overmental floor. Somehow I cannot imagine that plane concept. I would say that I am learning more and more about the person I love. Sometimes I learn a little bit, sometimes a lot. Sometimes as he reveals himself, he makes himself known through so many things, whether it is Saddam Hussein or a cancer patient. That is all I care about literally. I just want to know more about him through all this.

Aspiration

It seems that [my sadhana] is based on the desire of mine to know more. It seems be a very big driving factor behind this. I just feel like I want to know a lot more about the world, why the world is, what is there about this world. I desire to know and I am then granted that insight. My desire is to learn about everything and that desire itself starts providing those insights and change in me.

But I think I may eventually get to a point where I might be conscious of spiritual reality at all times, progressing in that direction where I let the decision come from above. So I might not be in a situation where I am so focused on work that I am forced to become awake. I think that situation might reduce as I become more and more conscious throughout my day. Right now I am not always thinking about spirituality and I get distracted about things. 322

I think that what is happening is actually the frequency has become more frequent. I mean the intuitive planes, intuition is out there, all the insights are out there. It is just that people are not receptive to it. For me, I am becoming more and more receptive. I think it is more of an issue of removing your personal limitations. So as I continue with my sadhana, my effort will be to become more receptive [and work on removing] my personal limitations. And with that, the intuition is out there, it will come to you. Let me put it this way, I believe as I succeed in doing that, more and more I will automatically have access to deeper knowledge, the worlds of knowledge.

So my focus is more on, “guru, help me to remove my limitations.” One may not be thinking about God [when going about one’s life]. One may think about God when they are reading a book on yoga, not when they are filling in the bills or checking the receipts. So that is a limitation. That is a limitation because one has not been able to find out what is there to know about the Divine in these receipts and one starts making the receipts itself a tool to know about the Divine. And [one can] remove the limitation because that intuitive knowledge is there in those receipts, in those numbers. God is there in front of you. Just as you are looking at numbers, you are not seeing the God in those numbers.

[I would summarize my current sadhana as] just falling in love and getting lots of insights at a time. Those have been so far the most profound intuitions. And this constant desire to know. I want to know why my life is like that. So I think that is the very profound change or the feeling, the intuition that I’ve become aware of. It is like a source of energy that drives you to do things; you are no longer complacent and satisfied with what you have. You want to know more, to explore. 323

There are a lot of challenges that are coming now—should my desires, my aspirations create conflict [with my relationships, my family, my work?] Should I let things flow and if people expect something from me, let me meet them? If there are certain other pressing issues that need my attention, I should let go that I want to find the

Divine only in this subject? Should I be open to finding Divine everywhere? So I have had a lot of challenges in terms of being able to develop the right relationship. Anything that allows you to get closer to the Divine is right. This is the toughest part for anyone who wants to do yoga in today’s times. You cannot necessarily leave this world and go into a solitary place to do your yoga. Rather, [it is to] do it here in the midst of all these challenges.

Everything has become very interesting. It’s fun, actually. It’s like I am looking forward to everyday, looking forward to going to work, looking forward to challenges. I no longer am afraid of challenges or any hardships. All I want to do is learn about life. 324

Rose – Story

Right now I feel peace, I feel happiness inside. I feel it is a great day outside, but I feel a lot of light inside of me, calm.

Sadhana

Meditation is definitely the focal point of my practice, meditation, contemplation.

I don’t meditate on a thing, more contemplation. Sitting in silence and clearing the mind, that’s what I mean with meditation. Of course reading is a big part for me, reading the spiritual books. A healthy diet [and] physical exercise [are] a part of it too, having a balanced moderate lifestyle, trying to balance out everything. The less you have those shoulds and shouldn’ts, the more you can stay in the flow of things. [It’s finding the balance, integrating opposites].

Then I do volunteer work; this is something left over from [my years with] Sri

Chinmoy. I learned there that volunteer work nurtures your soul too and it sure does. [I] just try to be my best consciousness as much as possible in daily life and actually using every minute, every second where I remember the higher purpose, I go back to it, focus, try to contact the Mother, try to go back in a higher consciousness.

I’m very creative, that’s another thing that came from my Integral Yoga, I got so creative. Besides painting once in a while, I do jewelry and I sell it [locally], I’m very fortunate. And the ideas just bubble inside of me, they bubble inside of me. I sell twice a week at [my booth] and you wouldn’t think it’s a spiritual place, but it’s a very spiritual place for me. When I’m there, if nobody is there at the table, I either read some spiritual books or I just sit there and go into a higher consciousness, focus on the light, do some japa (repeating a mantra). The Mother gave the mantra, om namo bhagavate, and that’s a 325

very familiar one for me. I picked [it] up the first time I read [Satprem’s] book. He mentioned that mantra and ever since that mantra keeps coming to me and I’m using it. I will sit there and repeat the mantra or meditate and focus on the Mother. Sometimes I feel like, “Oh thank God nobody can tell what I’m doing right now.”

Then shadow work is part of [my sadhana.]. If problems arose in my life I always looked inside [for] how I can solve [them]. And I learned some more different practices about shadow work [from] Ken Wilber. His work helped me a lot. It really helped me to put into place developmental stages of people. He helped me to see where I am, to see where others are, to finally learn that people don’t understand what I'm talking about.

They’ve never been there, they just don’t understand. Even if they're very willing to understand, they just can’t. It’s wasted energies to explain. That helped me [to understand] the developmental stages people go through and to respect and to acknowledge where they are in the[ir] development. Yet, when it comes to more spiritual things, the Mother or Sri Aurobindo, they can nourish you with much more insights in the nonvisible world.

Not Needing to Belong to Any Group

[When I am in church] I just sit in the back of the church and do my own meditation; it’s all part of it. And it can be any temple. There is a Hindu monastery

[where I live] and right next to it is an ashram of that guru, A. So [one day] I thought,

“Hm, there is a master. I’ll go there and drink of his energies.” So I went [to the ashram], and of course I wasn’t allowed to go into the ashram because I’m not a disciple. In between the Hindu temple and the ashram there was a driveway [and] so I sat down in the grass in the silence and started to meditate and open myself for the energy. After a while 326

a Hindu monk walk[ed] up to me, [he was] very nice. We got into a conversation and he asked what [was] I doing and I said, “Oh, I’m just meditating. I heard the master, the guru is here, so I’m just meditating to receive some of his energies.” And as soon as I mentioned the other party’s name, his face just shut down on me. He just shut down towards me because I was meditating to the other party and not to his party. So I thought to myself, “Isn’t it nice if you don’t belong to any group, you can be open for all?”

I always had to deal with bringing together opposites in my life—living the opposites so much. That’s probably why at this point I feel comfortable just in that opposite world to live in and I always was. Even when I was with Sri Chinmoy and would go meditate in the evening, he wanted his disciples to be dressed in Indian saris, the women had long hair and look kind of like the Indian women. So of course you adapt to it when you're in the group because that is what guru said. But in the day I would work in an advertising agency. I had to dress up in modern life, with makeup and deal with a neurotic advertising agency world. And [switching back and forth] was not really a problem for me. I kept wondering about myself, “Am I not loyal to myself? What is wrong with me?” Saint Teresa of Avila, a mystic from Europe, she once said—it was a feast day in the monastery and they had pheasant to eat, and somebody said something to her—“You know, when there is fasting time, then it’s time for fasting, but when there is a feast, it’s time for pheasant.” There’s a time for everything, and there’s so much to it.

Mother Theresa once said, “It doesn’t matter what you do, it’s only important how you do it.”

I do have a good part of Eros in me, the one that just wants to sit in the mountain and meditate. I’m doing my best to go back to [experiencing the light, being in higher 327

consciousness] and if daily routine takes me away into what I have to do, what I should do and all the daily thinking, it’s fine with me. It’s part of the Integral Yoga. If I would have been supposed to meditate all day long I would have ended up in a monastery or in a cave, but I’m in a Western life. So I’m really in peace with it, I’m not looking for a monastery anymore or for a cave or a secluded ashram. Integral Yoga really means to me to bring it into this world, to bring the light, to bring whatever I can into my body, into my mind, into this life wherever I live, whatever people I’m with.

[A few years ago [if] you’d asked me what’s [my] biggest wish, I’d say, “I just want to go to a monastery for a week, [I don’t] care what denomination or what religion,

I just want to stay in silence for a week and be fed three times a day and go for walks and do some work.” But now that has changed too. I do have my meditation; I don’t even have regular mediations. For a while I was beating myself up, “Oh I need to mediate on a regular basis, everyday a certain time, once or twice.” But with my life with a little child, and all the work I have, my life is much more spiritual if I let go of that concept. But then whenever the time comes up, I’ll do it. And I notice the inner guidance is there more and more about that. All of sudden this half hour opens up, “Ah, I can sit down and meditate right now!” At times where I would not have expected it, I would have not thought about it, but it sure does make me so much more flexible and much more open to receive the guidance. Reading Mother’s Agenda and especially Sri

Aurobindo and the Mother never giving specific spiritual practices and exercises you have to do on such-and-such intervals or daily or whatever, it made me more aware that there must be a bigger picture. Even so, I experienced it’s tremendously important to be regular, especially in the beginning. 328

But right now in my life it is more important to open up, go with the flow, be

focused on the Mother’s flow. And it’s an obedience too, [in] a way, [to resist if] my

mind thinks, “But I has to be this way, but it has to be this way!” And Mother even [says]

that your morals or ethics can [get] in your way.

Experiences

Sri Chinmoy

I really have had many significant experiences; my diaries are full of them. I thought about it and I collected a few. The very first one was [when] I saw Sri Chinmoy the first time in person. It was this huge concert hall and I was way in the back/top in the balcony. He came onto the stage, didn’t say a word, and he folded his hands and started to meditate. I felt a power I’ve never felt before. That was definitely the first experience that changed my life, to experience such a power, such a power.

Marathon

Then, I [ran] the New York marathon and in the second quarter of the marathon, all of a sudden I saw Jesus on the horizon. And for miles and miles I just ran completely effortless in a different state of mind. The body just kept going and Jesus or the Christ was just present there. That was another one.

Krishna

Then, Krishna was very close to me too for a long time, his presence. When I would go running his presence would just be right there with me. Or I would go for a walk and his presence was there. I’d look at the dirt on the road and Krishna was reflected in the dirt. 329

Light

Often in the car when I drive I just go into that higher consciousness and there’s so much light and just the spirit. More and more it’s just part of my daily life whenever I remember it or whenever my mind calms down. For a few years I was always complaining to myself about not being able to hold it for longer in daily life, but I’m at peace with myself now. It’s just the progress.

Sometimes, I feel the crown chakra, I feel a lot of energy there. Sometimes I even look around [asking myself], “Did the sun come out?” It’s just in a blink of an eye. It’s almost in the moment you think about it, it goes away, or you can grasp but you can’t.

Sometimes, I feel the light coming out of my eyes, it’s coming through me. I guess there is an inner light I see. Sometimes, when I go on a walk and have that experience it feels like the air gets [clearer] and even gets [lighter] and vibrant, more shiny.

When I’m driving, there’s light just coming inside me. [It comes through] the crown and in the heart chakra [at the same time]. It doesn’t change what I see. [It just stays there]. What I’m seeing is getting [clearer] and more vibrant. The light has an energy flowing, going out through my eyes. My perception is that it’s always there for me, it depends upon me, whether I can receive it, whether I open myself for it.

Actually, I usually think the Supreme [does] it or the Mother. I almost think now it’s actually the Mother or my psychic being that is helping me from the other side to go through the blankets of the daily thoughts. I think more and more it’s not even me; it’s the other side helping me to break through the veil. It is definitely when I’m by myself.

Sometimes it’s just doing the dishes, but sometimes it’s not doing the dishes. I don’t know as to what percentage it’s me or it’s the other side working on it. It’s just always 330

there as soon as the layer between the busy mind and the quiet mind, as soon as the layer gets thinner, it breaks through. I think the other side supports and works 24/7, it’s right there.

And I’m at peace with it too because when I do certain things I do need my mind to focus on certain things and that’s part of it too to me, [the other side isn’t] excluded.

Helping my daughter get dressed and get ready for school, helping her with homework, it’s part of my sadhana now too. It’s [not] excluded. A few years ago I met a very spiritual person who could easily go in higher realms, a very delightful being, but she told me she can hardly go to the bank, it makes her feel so uncomfortable and she is so affected by the energy. At first I thought, “Wow.” But in my sadhana, I am grateful that I am very capable of functioning in this world so I can really bring it into this world, into our Western busy, busy daily work world. So I’m grateful for it. That’s why I feel for me; it’s part of sadhana in that [it’s not difficult now].

Of course I’m seeking [more experiences] but it’s not a seeking like “Oh where is it? Oh, please, please.” It’s more like, “Have a minute, let’s meditate.” It’s me, the work is more to prepare myself constantly, open myself as much as possible, and it will come.

It’s there anyway, it’s right there for me, open. And I’m not addicted to it, whether I feel shakti, it’s right there anyway, it’s my consciousness. [It’s more of a confidence and a faith that it’s there]. It’s right there. The Mother is right there.

Shiva and Shakti

Another experience more recently was when I went on a walk I had Shiva and

Shakti in their eternal embrace and ecstasy in front of me. Not with my physical eyes, but in front of me. Really big, really present, with tremendous ecstasy in everything that is. 331

It’s just an ecstasy in all manifestation. All manifestation has an inherent ecstasy of

Shakti and Shiva uniting. [I was feeling them] in me, around me. Sometimes it is just the

Supreme, the Eternal, the unmanifested manifested, and sometimes it’s more the Mother, to me more the concrete Mother. [I can see them and feel them.] It’s always the feeling that comes first. And then the pictures come too, but it’s always the feeling that comes first.

Body vs. Mind Handling Energies

Running marathons, I noticed that my body can handle much more than my mind; it’s always the mind first that tells you, “Oh I can’t anymore, I have to stop now, I'm at my end, I can’t anymore.” But if you break through that, your body is still going. And even if it’s in pain, your body is still going. It keeps going; it’s always the mind. And I feel that too when I feel those energies, when I feel that tremendous happiness, ecstatic happiness, joy, it’s always the mind that goes, “Oh, I can’t take anymore, oh that’s too much!” And then I consciously stay with it and then I say, “Now I can take more and more” and I can, I can. I am aware that I can more but I’m aware of the limits of my small consciousness, of my small little mind. [Or just the immediate blocks that your minds wants to put up]. The running experience was always a very good thing for me to be aware that I can take much more than my mind. The experience is in a very physical way, with running, it’s very convincing. The mind always wants something [it] can touch, [it] can touch and feel and then you feel those breakthroughs; your body can feel.

[The mind also has a tendency to want to assert control, and these are experiences where control is not an issue.]

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The Mother

And then the Mother [is] becoming more and more present in everyday activities; she is just there. There is just a thin veil of my ignorance between her and me and my daily life. And it goes back and forth between the Supreme and between the Mother. I would say the experience of the Mother has endured the most. I was always attracted to the Mother, but for many years the only means I had to look for her was in Christianity in

Mother Mary. Now when I look back on it, I just see the Eternal Mother coming to me in whatever picture I'm capable of approaching. Kali was very close to me for awhile too and I just grew so much in Mother Kali’s facet of destroying energy, destroying what’s in the way of the higher, which is not very present in Christianity. But I see everything coming together in the Mother. I would say this is the most enduring.

It’s always coming together. I was attracted to the philosopher, Goethe. [He] wrote Faust, his biggest epic. I felt attracted to it when I was 18 or 19. I didn’t even know why, I just felt attracted and I read it. I didn’t even understand what I was reading. Every

10 years I picked it up and started reading it again. A few years ago I read it again, the whole thing too, and gosh, it’s so spiritual. And at the end the whole dedication is all about the Mother. If you look at the last few pages, it’s all about the Mother. It’s the female/the woman he has betrayed who is praying for him so that his soul will get saved.

He is always looking for the female too, in different stages, and at the very end it’s the

Mother again for him and he says something really about the Mother, it’s so interesting, having a child, the goddess, the Mother, the manifestation.

My most enduring is always the Mother. [The energies of the feminine and the

Mother and the force of manifestation, Shakti.] And the Mother, that’s the one that 333

manifests. I make pictures once a while and I drew a picture with a hula dancer and she is in one hand grasping up to the sky, touching the fabric of the sky, bringing down the stars and the stars transform into flowers and fall on the ground and she is having a rainbow coat around her, all the colors. It’s the Mother that manifests in this world; that is the manifesting power. Even so, I do have a part of Eros and Agape.

Dream That Helped to Remove Fear

I once had an extremely interesting dream, which was very, very intense, and I could consciously go back in my dream. I was in a tunnel and I got executed, I got shot.

The dream started out that my executioners bring me to the point where I [am braced] against the wall and then they stand across me and they shoot [me]. And I was in complete horror and fear. So the bullet got fired, and while the bullet was on its way, a being came from above and just took me out of the body, and when the bullet reached my body, no problem, I was out of my body, I didn’t feel anything, I was not attached anymore, I was detached already from the body. And then in my dream I said to myself,

“Wow, so there was no reason to be afraid. Let’s do it over again.” And I went back in my dream and had the same kind of like repeat. And my executioner walked me again to the place on the wall where I had to stand, and I was not afraid anymore; I was not afraid anymore. They shot again and the dream stopped with the feeling, “I’m not afraid anymore; no big deal, they (the beings from above) take you out.”

And then years later, I met a very interesting soul in my life and I saw in an inner vision that I’d met [him many] lifetimes before [where] we had been killing each other, thousands [of] years ago. We kept killing each other. I saw this one time when I killed him and I had so much hate towards him and I think I had a sword and I just beat him up. 334

[I] wanted to kill his whole being and I felt I can only kill the body, I can’t kill the soul, I can’t kill the Supreme inside that being. I can’t kill the eternal in that body. And it was a big revelation. That vision really taught me that even killing can teach you. So what is there to judge for us, it’s all a great teaching, for consciousness to get conscious in matter. [I felt] extremely grateful [knowing this.] Even though he didn’t treat me very nicely on the outside [in this lifetime], but I’m extremely grateful. [Our connection] doesn’t matter anymore, but I’m just extremely grateful for that soul to go through those experiences with me, to give each other the opportunities.

Current Issues and Challenges

Seeing The Divine in Others

Sometimes it’s amazing and I look at the plants around [my booth] and they get so vibrant and I can see the Supreme in those plants and the spirit in those plants. I’ve had many, many hours of wonderful sadhana there. Yesterday I got the idea to— wherever it came from, I don’t think it’s me—just look at the people. I had eight or nine people around my table, and I got the idea [to] just see the Supreme in them. And I looked at them and focused on seeing the Supreme. There was so much light in there and there were no more thoughts about, “Well are they going to buy it or not?” It was just

[the] Supreme there in every soul around me, a Supreme light in the consciousness and the eternal and it was so fulfilling. So you can really see, whenever you go, there’s no limit to sadhana. It’s uplifting and the more you do the more it comes to you and you can do it wherever you go.

Sometimes with some people I have the most wonderful talks and I feel so happy afterwards. And I’m getting more aware that I’m consciously searching for that little light 335

in them. Somehow even if the conversation [is] about the weather, I feel there is a content there that makes me happy beyond just a simple conversation.

And I really love people more and more. I really start[ed] falling more and more in love with people. It’s not a romantic falling in love, but it is kind of a merging or diving. Sometimes I dive into their beauty, it’s so funny!

Sometimes I have such beautiful people coming to my table, and [by] beautiful, I don’t mean the mainstream beautiful. It’s harmonious, [their inner] beauty shines through, or it goes hand-in-hand sometimes with the outer beauty. I remember this one gentleman, you would say he was an ugly person, but there was something shining from the inside, shining to me [and] I perceived it [as]. “Oh what a beautiful soul; oh what a beautiful human being.”

I feel I can drink out of [people’s] eyes sometimes. That’s what I felt a lot with Sri

Chinmoy’s disciples as well as other disciples or spiritual beings; they have so much light in their eyes. I look in their eyes, I feel like as if I'm drinking their light. It almost seems openness. To me it just seems an openness and the only thing that’s in our way is our mind, our concepts.

More recently I have felt more comfortable now with that I really do have needs here. There was always that ascetic feeling inside of me—like living in a monastery. You have two pairs of habits, whatever they call the clothes, and you don’t have much of your own possessions, but then of course the monastery cares for everything else you need. I took that simplicity or that ascetic thinking a lot with me into my life and thought I shouldn’t have all those needs. [And] recently it dawned on me, I am not living in a monastery that takes care of me. I just have to generate that myself and it’s completely 336

okay to have a decent wardrobe in this society. Can you believe I studied fashion design when I was in my 20’s? I have a degree in fashion design. Now I enjoy colors, I enjoy fabrics, and I do enjoy a nice dress, but I'm not attached to it anymore. The key is detachment, absolutely. And I don’t want to stick out, I don’t want to get clothed in rags to be a nuisance to my family or to people in a society. I don’t need to do wear the nicest dress to church, to be the nicest one or whatever, but yet when I wear a nice dress,

I’m happy about it.

And then we talked about shadow work, and Ken Wilber supports [doing] shadow work. You can meditate for 20 years, you will not see your shadow. You can’t approach the shadow from the inside. Everybody else can see your shadow from the outside, but you can’t see it from the inside. And that’s why he said it’s so important to do the shadow work. And doing it helped me a lot. We live in a society with a lot of greed and it kept bothering me. I finally said I should do the shadow work with it, and you know what? I have that part in me too where I want money, where I have greed. And just to say, “Hi” to that part in me, [to] say, “You know what, that’s part of me too,” it freed me so much, it freed me so much. It made me stand on my two feet more and more. It opened the lower chakras. So now, when I’m selling my products, I focused on that again, telling myself,

“Yep, I’m greedy too. Hey, people, I want your money! I want your money, because I want to buy this and this and this.” I don’t feel ashamed of it anymore. I'm not pretending to be holy anymore. I don’t share it with people, but I'm sharing it with myself and it relaxes me a lot in my lower chakras and I feel much more honest. [It makes me think of the aspect when we talk about purifying ourselves and how Sri Aurobindo had talked about that it’s important to purify yourself at the same time you're aspiring to connect 337

with the Divine. I think the whole term purify usually means to find something and get rid of it. I’m wondering whether purify really means to just find those hidden parts of ourselves, acknowledge them, but don’t let them control us? And that’s a totally different definition of purify, but it also makes sense because we’re human too.] The work [of] getting rid of it once, of pushing it aside, that won’t solve it. But when you acknowledge it, and you start liking yourself a little bit for it, maybe you take it with some humor. I like when Mother in her Agenda talks a lot about those forces that can give us thoughts that can affect our feelings and thoughts, our emotions. [This way] takes the individual guilt or blame off of all those different negative emotions we have, the negative parts. We are all connected together and that each force is working on us too, so at the end we don’t need to beat ourselves up about it.

You asked about getting new insights, I’m getting new insights all the time. And

I'm looking for them too. I’m looking for them inside. I know that I ask [a] question and if I can’t understand it or answer it right away I’ll get the answer sooner or later. Even if I don’t ask for it, I will get it anyway.

[With regard to] profound transformations in myself I have noticed [that I am] definitely more simple, more grateful, hopefully more humble. Even so, the moment you think about, that you’re humble, I think you’re not humble anymore. I feel more being in the moment. People tell me that I always seem very calm and serene to them, which is not always the case, but at least I give the impression that I do have way more serenity and calm inside of me as I used to have. I easily bounce back from problems, from difficult situations. 338

Of course, my focus in life completely shifted than when I was 20. My top focus is just helping the Mother to bring down the force, I think that’s the most important,

[that’s] why I’m here. And then everything, [being with and] raising my family and all the means to keep that going, it’s definitely being an instrument for the Mother for her work. And there is not an “I” in it. There is no “I” for me that I have to reach something; it’s really about the supramental. I’m just more attentive than I ever was; I live happier, more content. I live a real simple life—[family] and my sadhana— everything else is really not that important anymore. Vacation, or going to the movies, or going out for dinner, all of that, it’s just not that important anymore. I enjoy it, I’m grateful, [and] I’m more balanced.

Feeling Different Yet Connected

What’s challenging over last few years, I felt less and less not understood by anybody else around me, and that for a while gave me some suffering, but not anymore.

It’s about 0.01% of Western society on that level we are, 0.01, so never mind, anybody around? But they’re out there.

Once I had the intense experience that there was some kind of soul sitting somewhere in India on a mountain meditating, connecting to me, connected to me. And since that experience I have a stronger feeling that we are connected in the inside, all of us, doing whatever sadhana we do and on whatever stage, we are connected and we do support each other, even if [we] don’t know each other. And that’s a big comfort for me to know that and I do feel connected. We’re all connected and we all support each other, and every one of your insights helps me in my ascension, can help the supramental on its descension, every single little bit helps. Even the little insights, what seems to be a little 339

insight for a very fundamentalist religious person, helps the whole world, it all helps. And now I’m at peace that I have nobody around me. But on the other hand, I feel more helpful. Now if I have people with whatever problems coming to me, I want to be an instrument for the Supreme to help them, I’m not sacrificing myself. I’m listening inside what I have to tell them, how much I have to help them; I’m more open to guidance from inside.

Being vs. Doing

[I think there are a lot of people that don’t understand that just by being, we are doing more for the planet and for humanity than by doing.] Sri Chinmoy said, if you want the world to change, change yourself first, and that’s hard. I gave my daughter’s teacher a little gift today, and I tried to tell her that her work is more important than any big athletes, stars, or whoever the big people in the mainstream. Her work is more important to me. The real important work can’t be seen by mainstream, the real important work.

The Mother said something really interesting about it in her Agenda. In the very first book, April 1954, she says, “Because truth is not linear, but global, and not successive, but simultaneous. Truth is simultaneous. It can therefore not be expressed in words, it must be lived.”

Impact of The Interview

When I thought about all your questions, it made me aware how really different I might be from [the] mainstream and most of the times I’m not even aware how fortunate

I am. Thinking about your questions made me aware of that. During our interview and right now I feel immensely grateful for everything in my life, really everything – for the 340

interview and for the whole world, I just feel so grateful. I feel very grateful for what you’re doing; I’m very grateful for your work 341

Running Water – Story

[Right now] I’m experiencing a sort of pressure between my eyes, brows, and in my chest, and sort of a pressure. It almost feels like a pressure but it’s a widening in the skull.

Sadhana

[My sadhana is] not just a sitting down thing because at a certain point in time I do a lot of walking. The body is included, this is not just about mental states of meditation, and I’m inspired to walk and to remember this while I’m walking so that the meditation is taking place on a completely integral level, that, not just sitting.

An everyday ritual would be to read Savitri, chant it, which means to read it out loud as a mantra, and then to focus on contacting what is the psychic being or the soul,

Divine Mother, by surrendering to the Divine Mother, to actually the image of the Divine

Mother as not necessarily visually but by sense of the Divine Mother, Mirra Alfassa, and that is the ritualistic practice.

And, as far as a method, I’ve come to, to find focusing is important. Focusing, trying to focus as I mentioned is often an interference, but the sense of “Oh, gather yourself,” is important because there needs to be, you need to gather yourself in to bring these energies to it, that’s to almost to attract these energies, to silence the forces, the laws themselves and release you. But, the trying and the focusing require an immense amount of energy, and a long period of time to become exceptionally effective. I’ve worked at it a long time, but what I’ve found to be even more effective is once I make this sort of symbolic centering and focusing, is then to offer surrender, consecrate it, to give myself to the Mother. I know she’s there, I know she’ll be there, and I know her 342

force will take me there, and that’s the processes. Just doing that, breathing, remembering, and offering.

And if I can’t, if that’s not that effective, I repeat a mantra. And it could be a variance of things; it could be Thy Will Be Done, or Ma Ma, om namo bhagavate, which is sort of I bow to thee. It’s really, they’re all on consecration, the tones; and then surrender. For that, for that will, to that energy, that is that higher aspect that’s free to then permeate. And it does affect the cells, long-term wise. Now I know the changes that are taking place and the emotions. When they talk about purification.

There is so much in me that doesn’t want to let it in, the habituation. So many habituations, so many fixed identities and attachments. The memory, as I’ve worked with it and experimented with it, and in yoga and in psychology for my studies, where I’ve come to is it’s, it’s locked in the physical inertia of the matter of the universe. That each moment may be eternal in and of itself, but we psychologically have formulations, forms take place, that are possessed, controlled by, primarily held in place by the tamas, the physical inertia in the universe that does not want to change or move. They’re colored by, they’re made enticing by the emotions that are impulses that are not developed, the animal aspect in us, again is so affected by the memory in the physical cells, the genes, that fixes it this way, and thus when we get to the level of wanting to grow psychologically and intellectually, most of what we want to look at or do is colored by those two other things, the lower emotions and the memories. And they fix it, they make us fearful to go ahead, they make it fearful to widen, they make us see only things in one way, things like that, hold on, attach. [Getting a somatic or kinesthetic sensation with it, the bodily type of feeling?] Both. 343

[I have figured out how to move from tamas.] It is in the moment that it changes, as I experience it, there is not a permanence to it as we’re constructed, as I’m constructed,

I believe that, that, there must be more the massive change and that massive change takes place drop by drop, I as an individual am not going to change all of the formation of matter, so that, I can release myself somewhat emotionally, somewhat mentally from the throngs of it by bringing this experience of the Mother in, by meditating, centering on what I call the psychic being, the soul. These things bring in energies and forces, I can’t say what those are specifically, I can just say that as experiencing they free one from the grip, the attachment, the law of those forces as they exist in the dimensions we live in normally. So it’s a transformative process.

Unfortunately one of the difficulties as it originated is that I was going down into the realms that were the darkest, and this is where my battle was. So in some sense, I would say, I’ve come to say, “Well this is what she’s brought me here for. She brought me here to battle and to embrace the transforming of the lower emotional, particularly, and physical worlds of myself.” My physical being and my emotional, lower emotional being, nervous system is an interchange between them, a communication between them.

From a very early age [I was] concerned with justice and what is right in the world and, and, and what is painful in the world and who is painful and taking those

[disenfranchised] populations on and people to become simply human in society and accepted—from working with racism towards [minorities] in public high school when I was there, to working with dying people and AIDS. And I did work with the elderly for a long period, and pain patients, all these different things. When you take them on, you don’t know how many energies you’re taking on. I see, particularly in the mental health 344

field, how many people become unstable and people say, “Well yeah, the people in that field are unstable.” But, no, I don’t think it’s so much that but that they embrace unstable energies and they don’t have the means of working with it that are fully effective as much as can be a lifelong yoga, which harmonizes and balances and works with energies and dissipates [them]. I don’t think we know much about what are called formations, thought patterns. These are not only mental but physical. They become physical, that is, in a crowd when you see people get excited you see how it tangentially moves out.

But the same thing happens with diseases and with thoughts, when working with the dying, people around dying people, with all their fears. I was absorbing up with it quite a bit by offering myself in this manner to work with this. Not fully knowing everything, because I had been brought to the point near death numerous times, with many of these things and it’s not just in a room with people, but the buildup of these energies. You absorb them because something in you is taking, that’s what I mean by embracing, really embracing, you really absorb them. And, it can bring you to, it can collapse your being. And I think I’ve reached that point numerous times, and if it wasn’t for the yoga and the Mother and this whole higher process, she is bringing me through that, I’d be a done fellow.

[It’s as if you have embodied, not only did you come into this world with a physical being that felt it but you have embodied the energetics of the others as well that you then take into your own physical consciousness and do battle there.] Yeah. [It almost seems as if you have taken on the responsibility within your field, your energy field. To clear out the muck, the dark forces, of the nonmainstream populations.] I didn’t leave the walls up. I still won’t leave walls up, but, there are, there are awarenesses that know how 345

to work with the energies. You step away from certain things. That doesn’t mean you’ve

decided not to work with them. You don’t immerse yourself in the most dangerous

situation and let it destroy, you take a posture, and that posture could be physical distance

or it might not be, but, yes, I do believe that I made a decision. It’s an assignment I took

on.

Experiences

Gold Light

I’ve had some of the most profound experiences actually when I’m gardening.

The most powerful one I can describe, and it’s one that joyfully inspires me to want to repeat it because I know it is a signpost, but when I’m gardening and when I’ve let go of all busyness which it takes me to and it grounds me. It can be momentarily happening.

When I notice it often it breaks up, but there is an energy and a permeation of peace and delight and the light literally changes to gold. The hue of everything is gold. Through my eyes, my eyes are open. This was a struggle for me for a long time, expecting to go in and discover all kinds of things when very often what happens more is when I’m in my everyday life, in functioning, particularly with physical things that, in a nonmeditative state, are spontaneous.

The primary thing that is different is a lack of cognitive analysis. The mind, I believe, has fallen silent. And the awareness is there, but it’s momentary, it’s, it’s right with what is being done and there is a physical emotional feeling of joy, of calmness, like that moment itself is an eternity, and there’s a great deal of energy. I feel incredibly renewed. And it’s not dramatic, I, I don’t consider it dramatic except that afterwards when I reflect on it, I go, “Oh, wow.” It definitely slips in, in that sense, when we try to 346

meditate or we try, with the lack of trying it’s, it’s being, and it’s being—for a long time that was the most [frequent] occurrence, that was a signpost of my knowing that I was centered in my deeper self as I was functioning and not scattered.

[How long would it last when you have, go into these, or be in these places/ states?] That’s a very difficult one for me to know. I would guess that sometimes, this has been going on for 15, 20, 30 minutes and when I notice it, it ends. It’s like a part of me that’s used to a particular habit of being in a certain way, which is neurotic or lethargic, or hyperactive, discovers that it’s not being that and it wants to know what’s going on.

And literally I find myself saying, “What’s that? What’s happening?” And in a sense, that is again the resistance, our habitual resistance, that comes in, and doesn’t allow the state, ends the state. And then it’s useless to try to get back there unless I just let go of it and continue to garden because again it’s that, it’s that, hungry ghost thing in Buddhism where it’s the vital, it’s “I want that back, I want that back, I want…” and then the mind trying figure out how to get it; and it’s, you can’t do it.

The Mother

The most profound [experience] has to do with the Mother. The most profound experience that I’ve ever had I believe is of the Mother appearing to me, and my not knowing whether she was here in this physical world or whether I was in some other world. It was so concrete and so real. I say that this is the most profound in the sense that, that at a given moment’s notice, if I need to try to rescue myself from, or need to, want to go in where I can’t reproduce that other state that I was speaking about [that happens when I’m gardening], this can come instantly and at any moment I can return to this sense. 347

And in this experience, I was in a very, very desperate place. The universe is just amazing in this sense, and I appreciate the paradox of the universe because of this experience. But I probably was in an emotional state then of collapse. I had gone through so much pain and I didn’t know where to turn. All, anything that I had learned or known didn’t suffice and wasn’t enough energy or nurturing, so that I was really in that moment and in that day on the verge of possible breakdown completely, emotionally, mentally.

The stress factor was so great. And there was this appearance. I was in my room and I was on the floor. I was possibly going to meditate but I was distraught, and on the wall across from me something caught my attention. And I started to look with a curiosity which started to pull me out of wherever I was, and I was, I believe I was crying at the time. And a light started to form and take shape, and out of this light, which was a yellow-green light, the image, bodily image, whole bodily image of the Mother appeared in this room that I was in. And she looked at me, and it was very ethereal, the imagery was, she was there, but, and the energy was there, so it was like she was floating, coming out of this wall and the light, and, she was floating there, not necessarily off the ground.

And she just looked at me. She had this sari on that was, all these beautiful flowers and butterflies, very, everything was very light, very beautiful. And with this incredible compassionate look, she spoke to me and said, “My darling little child, never worry.

Simply remember I’m always with you and call.”

And as she said that, a mist traveled across the room, through me, it penetrated, it felt like it penetrated every single atom of my being physically, so that as it passed through me I was no longer in the state that I had been, so distraught. I was completely at peace, completely. And to this day I could, when I recall that, it’s amazing the 348

penetration that it has into all the cells of my body and to every part of my body, and that her force could do that. The contact with that force literally in this physical world and my physical body had that effect. I can’t reproduce seeing her. [But that feeling in your cells?] At will….By calling her and remembering that experience…I can’t always do that, but when, when I sit down to do it, when I know I need to center myself, and I don’t think about doing that and I’ve been busy or something and, I say, “Why don’t I remember” and say, “Why don’t I just…” and I call her, and I recall, not only call her but

I recall that moment and my body starts tingling in the peace of her.

Opening Up

There was one experience where I was reading, traveling across country on bus and reading Savitri. I was reading it day in and day out, every hour of the day, every minute of the day as I was traveling. This was about 25 years ago. And I started wondering, “Well, who are you?” almost as though I was speaking to someone. I was reading, and pausing, and I wasn’t aware that I was, what I believe now was in trance, sitting on a bus with people around me, reading Savitri, not aloud, but I was reading it.

And there was this incredible pressure as I was reading it, and I felt like I was dozing off, but I was wide awake and I felt, “Well, who are you then? Who are you then?” And this answer kept coming to me, and it wasn’t someone speaking to me, it was just an answer,

“Well do you know Christ? Well, do you know Christ?” And I said, “Well, I’m confused about who Christ is and who you are.” And I was having this dialogue go on. And I said,

“Are you Aurobindo or are you Krishna? And are you Krishna or are you Christ? Is there is a difference?” 349

And this whole dialogue was going on and the bus had come to a stop, I’m in this trance state seemingly, but I’m able to function and get off the bus. And people are going into this little shop and I’m standing there and all of a sudden there’s this feeling at the top of my head and there’s this light and something is dancing on my head. And I’m like,

“What is going on?” And I’m trying to look up and there’s this little fellow dancing on my head that was a little boy, and he said his name was Krishna, and he was all gold. And

I said, “Well who are you?” And he goes, “I’m Krishna,” and he giggled and he jumped down and he said, “Maybe I’m Christ now. But don’t you like the way I look? I’m gold and isn’t it funny?” And this laughiness. And at this point I see the commonality, the divine love, and the joy and the wisdom, all is one, you know. So the forms are so, they almost, they meet some sort of cultural and individual needs that people have. And so the forms will come in whatever forms you can relate to. So that experience I think was about opening up to what’s there.

Experience of Forces/Beings Coming Through Him

It depends on the intent. I’ve only recently been intelligent enough to bring that intent to everything I do in writing. Generally there’s an energy, and that energy is always the same, but depending on the specific moment and purpose they may be different forms. And this is something more recent that I've actually begun to experience and see, which I normally don’t see, but as I say, that this is progressing seemingly at a rapid pace in the last several years and more so month-to-month.

And I’m pleased that I wasn’t able to see forms. We grab [things like that] so much and I look at people that have grabbed it, certain images and things and get locked into them, and they’re abstractions. It seems again this pattern that I’ve been put to, it’s 350

very concrete, it’s right here; so I feel it here. I feel myself opening, the physical body, that everything is in the action as I’m being with it, and when that stops then it stops and I don’t necessarily go to higher realms or go up through the top of my head, and out. I can feel the pressure here and an energy, a warmth and a tingling on the top of my head, and I have a sense sometimes when things may be issuing forth from there or from the between the eyes or from the center of the chest. And then sometimes it’s just the whole body that is there with it. But there’s a sense of me, and again, it’s the nondramatic, it’s like, it’s just there, and, aren’t I supposed to be seeing people and hearing voices and talking to angels, and it’s just there. So there’s a sense of it just being that, that almost says maybe I haven’t reached anything, but it’s been wonderful because it’s something that’s forced humility. It’s something that gets to the point better than, rather than being preoccupied with fancy little trimmings that aren’t relevant to anything but my own ego.

However, there are faces that come forward, of beings, and although I don’t hear voices or so far have not let in that close enough contact that they speak to me in a verbal or, maybe I don’t need to because thoughts and feelings and things come to me. They just, they’re just there. It’s coming from the Divine Mother in my soul, presence of the

Divine Mother primarily. And I believe that she calls from above, sometimes to Sri

Aurobindo, who has a presence, and sometimes to other beings whether they’re in what’s called the akashic realms or wherever. At one point I thought that these were too angelic.

But sometimes I believe, I’m opening and called to be opening to the Divine force in my soul which is the Mother, and she is bringing these things through a personality, a gnostic personality, that is being formed. So one of the reasons why I only, or usually say that

I’m sitting here and there’s this pressure and this energy and this stuff, and I’m just 351

writing or I’m just saying or speaking, I believe, and it’s something I’ve never even said before to anyone, that maybe there’s a personality that has been formed in me which might be called a psychic being that might be formed enough so that it is my divine personality. And it can’t come forward fully yet because I’m not totally harmonized or fully harmonized. I don’t have, I’m not developed enough yet fully. And the spirit of the

Divine Mother, she doesn’t have to be the formation of the teacher each time. She can bring these other beings to me at times and they, it’s almost like a salutary introduction, but again it’s that embracing. It’s, I let them, I let myself embrace who they are and the force that the Mother brought through them to me. And it’s there in me, and it’s my personality expressing it. It’s not that person with lightening and tablets chipping away and saying say this, it’s just there. Why I don’t know, [maybe] because I need to develop more or not, or it’s just a style, I don’t know, no clue, that’s what is there. And interestingly with that, it can, it can change in numerous ways.

Current Issues and Challenges

Trauma→Crisis→Asking for Help→New Experience

The negatively, and I say that relatively speaking, intensive experiences that take place, such as the near death experiences, create a crisis, the trauma creates a crisis, which in a nonevolving way says, “How can I protect myself if the protection can be so much of a [nervous overload], a constriction, that it really kills you?” It defeats its purpose. At that same time, it, because I've been fortunate to have something in me that calls out for help and has reached a particular vibration/entity, which I call the Mother, it, each time, has served as cracking the cosmic egg open more in allowing the new birth, a deeper, a deeper living. 352

Unfortunately it takes sometimes, the pain sometimes creates more, more death, more birth from the death, than if, we tend to waddle along a lot. I hate to say it, but they may have sped things up, the near death experiences, more than slowed them down.

There are times when I’ve been so overwhelmed I thought it, I couldn’t go any further.

Then boom! It unfolds because I’m crying out so much, so deeply, so intensely, and it’s that, it’s that intensity of practice, the intensity of the call, the sincerity of it, which I mean is the consistency, the consistency develops more, concentrated intensity, I really want it, I really want to surrender, and, and, there’s no fooling around. Otherwise I might be dead. And, with the [overloads] and the near death experiences, but particularly the

[overloads], it has been a concentration of that force, those near deaths and intense aspiration. It creates my, it created my aspiration.

Change in Sadhana

Now what it has come to at this point is that I believe and it is very concrete in the sense that if I don’t do that daily practice, I have not realized the psychic being, I have not what they call realized, has a true, has a real meaning to me now. It’s like a plant needing fertilizer and the daily practice is this fertilizer that allows the roots to feed on the Mother, which is the soul. She is the Divine Presence in/as the soul which becomes in my personality the psychic being. There is an operative force of that working.

What it does on a daily basis is, in given moments I'm prompted to be more alert to remember to surrender and call, moment to moment, when things are happening, instead of getting/allowing myself to get caught up. If I’m in a grocery store and someone is being really obnoxious to me in line or something, instead of getting caught up or wanting to argue, there’s a presence there that, I breath out, I center, it’s there, and I let 353

myself, I let that govern what I’m going to do. I step out of the way, the ego steps out of the way, and that’s there more and more and more, particularly, it’s a realization that I need to foster it. When I don’t, it’s like falling off a cliff. It dissipates quickly, and that’s a wonderful lesson. Circumstances and stresses, they are multiplied a thousand times, maybe because I’m more sensitive, but also I think as you move along the path, your capacity draws more energy and so if you’re not tuned in to the right part of yourself, the force that’s there as an energy multiplies the impact of the negative things that will come at you, it attracts more negative to you.

But when it’s there, it doesn’t matter how forceful some of these negative things are, you might, it might attract some negative things and again it’s, it’s sort of like a laboratory when it says to you, “See, you’re centered. This doesn’t touch you.” And sometimes some of the most amazing things that are negative are happening and it’s like,

I’m in this state of calm and it’s like this is new, this is good, this is really developing.

And it allows me to be that, again back to the practice, more relaxed and calm and surrendering, accepting that it’s real. Again, it all regenerates itself. It comes [out] more, the way that you’re working with the outer world, each thing. How it feels, how you cope with it, and your practice. It renews inspiration by its continued effect, blossoming, radiance. It’s been a lot of work, and a lot of grace.

But I’m beginning to notice more in the last 5-10 years deep emotional changes and even physical changes that are taking place. And I know that because I’ve had a lifelong [nervous system] disorder, which is dissipating. And it went through a period where there was both the most chaos and the most change taking place where they increased and this was only just five years ago. [The overloads] had become worse than 354

they ever had, and part of that I believe was a physical resistance to this energy. I don’t think this body was capable of absorbing some of the energies, the nervous system was overtaxed, and interestingly for me I believe that this has been a lifelong process. It’s not just matter of wanting to bring down energies and they’re overtaxing me, but a very natural process to me that I am here for some reason to insist on embracing the physical world, that it’s real, that it’s not the illusion that the American Buddhists particularly talk about. And that I have really embraced some of the things that people in spirituality see as below them.

What I’m trying to get to here is that, often you hear people speak when they’re in spiritual circles and they can very, “oh it’s this way,” or “it’s light,” or it’s this or that.

But there’s a call if we really want to transform the world, that we have to love the world.

We have to really embrace the world physically, we have to love the plants, the earth, even the muck. And it’s by loving this muck, the worst aspects in ourselves, you enable the possibility of transforming. It’s not a matter of going to the heights, it’s the heights coming here and enabling them. The heights need to be grounded here in some way to work with them. I believe the soul does that. So there’s a lot, I believe, the Mother wants me to take on, and anyone that’s probably called to her is not going to have an easy time necessarily if they’re really working with what she wants to work. I think I’ve taken on some of the more difficult things in human nature, in me, in myself. I’m talking about the vital world, I’m talking about the physical world, I’m talking about the animality in me, and the naturalness of it, and my physical body, the cells, the atoms.

I think in many senses that’s part of what my [overloads] were, I wasn’t able to work with the energies. And I was struggling to work with the energies, and struggling to 355

maintain and, as this Integral practice really radiates through me more and more, I'm not doing it at all. It’s the Mother’s grace, it’s just filling my body, and my responses to things, and taking all of it and doing all of it. It’s a divine energy that’s there that has the capacity to do it all. The ego can’t manage it, and that’s whether it’s the physical body

[or] emotional. At the same time those things are stronger and calmer, there’s an equanimity in the physical, and a stronger energy, but still, it doesn’t have the capacity to work with these things, has a capacity to be a channel.

It’s happened for a while, but about 6 or 7 years, but it’s, the working with it more clearly [that] has only developed recently. For a while, as I was saying, I just thought I was having [an overload] all the time and it isn’t that, although the [overloads] may be a part of that happening, I can’t say for sure. I know I was having [overloads]. Maybe there was an unconscious person called Running Water that was having [overloads] up to a certain point and then just realizing that they were just forces around, and now he’s operating in a way that manages those forces more and more, which could very well be.

And physically too, and now what’s beginning to emerge in this sleep process is even if I go deeper I go, it’s lighter, I travel more quickly to a place I call home, I get home, and I go up as well as down. There are moments where there are, there are explosions of light and I can see Sri Aurobindo or the Mother, and it’s not always just them, but it’s, it’s what I call light beings that permeates. So now, something is coming in and I have dramatically noticed a change in me and my life.

So it’s a very concrete practice. You come to know that you’re working with forces that are powerful, that are dangerous, that aren’t all so nice necessarily, and it doesn’t matter what circles you’re in, they’re all around. And if you’re opening to 356

working with them they’re going to come at you, and they’re going to come at you even harder because they don’t want you to change necessarily. Or change them, or change the status quo. I say I don’t necessarily believe in morality and things like that, [but] I believe in an innate goodness and in the soul of the universe. I’ve widened my perspective of what is good and what is bad. I’ve widened how I see numerous things because of the, the forces that I’ve experienced. I’m not so much of a pacifist, although I believe in the path of love and peace and harmony and tend to extend that from myself.

I think there are forces that need to be stood up to at times. I think that the world is a battlefront of change as well as a garden to work with in another type of manner. In that I think I’m trying to address working with things physically and that my [nervous system disorder]. Interestingly in a really scientific approach of yoga in working from a say a vipassana point of view, trying to be aware by the grace of the Mother, when I offer myself, I offer to know if it’s useful, not to be attached to knowing.

But I have gained insights of this idea of possession and I think Aurobindo writes about it pretty clearly in that he says that all of the world is possessed by the states that dominate and all of the things in the world are possessed by those, so you’re possessed by the physical, you’re possessed by the vital, and the mental, and those control us. I’ve come to see how the resistance and the vital energies, life energies, lower life energies, that are chaotic, that are not in the moment but spontaneously attractive by their release of energies by being in the moment, what we would call impulsive. Energies, they’re nervous energies, restless energies, and this inertia, which is a closeness to death. But, the physical matter isn’t alive, it’s the life energies in them that brings life so, I’ve actually had to work with my [disorder] as a yogic therapy. 357

And I’ve come to experience that there are real forces that are dark, that don’t want to change, within me and me only, as example, as one crystallization of this world.

[Within the microcosm and the macrocosm then] Yeah, exactly. Both places. Because one’s aware of the other, we’re just working with what’s in the whole.

I read more. I developed practices, which have changed, that they’ve evolved over a period of time. I went to graduate school. I wanted to integrate what I was learning from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother in the work that entailed afterwards.

And that meant bringing it into pain work, bringing it into working with the dying, bringing it into working with psychotic or autistic children. And it was brought to each of those things in different ways, but always with a sense of centering, being present to the

Mother and asking for her guidance.

And that’s a lot of how I’ve integrated. It’s developed from just being meditation to working with it as a physical exercise or bringing into a body more. I began bringing it in more, I tend to be naturally physical but particularly when I worked with dying patients and before that with pain patients. The pain patients taught me so much about this balance of awareness that can be worked with that if you own the body, if you’ve learned a methodology and practice to own the body, how you can bring something into the body that’s so concrete and real. And my sadhana was being rewarded by having this work to do with pain patients, which then made it so concrete for me. If these people can, who, aren’t on this path of yoga in the way that I am, as a conscious practice, if they’re just learning to do techniques that I’m working with and it can become so real, then it can be done. It makes it real for the physical world, and it makes the yoga itself more concrete, makes it permeate more into my physical, as a physical practice. [Working with 358

these people in the capacities of, probably some of the most intense human life experiences that you can have, it taught me to realize that my meditation experience can be embodied in the physical at the same time rather than it being a mental exercise].

[It then became absorbed into the physical one, in vital form, I guess, emotional as well.] Yes. And as well with death. Both with pain patients and with dying patients.

When you see the surrender, when it’s the emotions and the fears that have surrendered, the physical body might be in pain, might stay in pain for pain patients or it might die.

There are energies that are released. There are hormones as a result of that, enzymes as a result of that that are released, but it’s triggered by this letting in. It’s letting go and letting in of these energies, and it’s very concrete.

Mandala as a Reflection of His Personality

When I was in graduate school we had to create this mandala for one class. I

[later] created a [large] garden that was the same mandala, at the center of which was Sri

Aurobindo’s symbol and then radiating out from under it was the Mother’s symbol. It was surrounded by a couple of whales at the top, and where the whales met there was a rose. And at the bottom was there was the earth with a snake around it and the Mother’s symbol was a rainbow of colors on a light blue field and out beyond the whales there was a dark blue field with stars. [Anyway,] we were supposed to write a psychological understanding of the mandala, and what I wrote and submitted instead was a poem. And the reason why I’m bringing it is because I wrote this about 15 years or so ago and it still feels as essentially, I touched something about who my mandala is, who I am, and, it’s probably sort of like just this whole conversation in summary.

I am divine love. The world’s spirit moving towards harmony, moving, moving, moving. Into form, out of form, moving out of stillness. 359

In time as the snake sheds its skin, I am moving, evolving, shedding each seed pod to unveil ever new forms of divine love. I, harmony, am ever present, in different robes, lent by divine love, til human eyes have shed enough tears, that they may finally see through the paradigm of paradox, witness in full splendor the rose robe, unobstructed by the pendulum swing, resting, moving, in a culminating balance, delicate as the morning’s glory, yet unshakable as Hanuman’s love. My violet boundaries, though dark deep containing, an infinity of light beings ever present, to lift the traveler to some previously unknown, fully appropriate delight inspiration truth. I am mystery, grace force, who seems so far and are never more distant than a heart’s beat. Without me there is no world movement. Indeed no world and thus I contain by my shapes squared off all the rest of me, both outwardly and inwardly. I am mandala, mini picture window of the self mystery, a vision key of the harmony to be, and mana of the ever present truth. If I am known so is the future’s blossom, and the love filled path of least obstruction. Though not so apparent, almost hidden by my circle’s spheres of harmony, I am the great cross of sacrifice. Give way, give way, give way oh little mind selfish attitude and fear-ridden body. I am the father -vertical. Relative- absolute, always separated by the seed. Seeking its blossom root. I am the archetype, always available, never diminished, immortal union of equally balanced poles. Only by accepting of my brown, red earth humilities, only by skillful identity, with my healing yellow-green life energies, only by conscious organization of my blue mental networkers, only by surrender to my violet intuitive self, may the while light of gnosis, my divine self permeate and unite the golden triangles of the upper and lower personality poles revealing the tranquil joy of the Lotus-Rose Wisdom-Love form. I am the Mother-horizontal, limited-infinite, linear in ignorance, spherical in illumination. The selfish selfless actor of vertical laws. I am the drop and the ocean of grace which shatters resistance and connects the unconnected, the contained and all-containing. I have seduced the forces of the seven levels of being into action, and as they blossom and radiate across the ocean of earth reality, so shall compassion spread its wings as the vertical is united, so dissolved are the strings of suffering and pleasure. It is I who reveals the true joy of a divine world action. A giant power in the waters of extinction. Moving all, crying out for love and empathy, as the whale, sentient fish. All the elements I balance on the border of the known and the unknown. Hunt me, wound me, eat of my flesh, never shall I disappear, though to the borders of extinction I allow myself to fade and so am I here, a mystery, vision form, to be witnessed by, but not reduced for, the eyes of the understanding mind. Struggle not, oh mind, simply surrender me, to your heart, the heart, there we will laugh in wisdom. 360

Sphinx – Story

[Currently] I am in a completely normal state, quiet, peace[ful], and happy. I just invoked the Mother, the Mother’s help, and requested her to express herself through me.

Sadhana

During the first few months [of beginning Integral Yoga], I had such an intensity of concentration that I was living in a lot of peace. I acquired a totally different personality, what they call the inner being, which is always calm, peaceful, quiet, which can never be disturbed. So this would be my starting point with Sri Aurobindo and the

Mother. Mother says that, “I am in your heart. You can find me in your heart (not the physical heart, but the deep down in the solar plexus).” So, I wanted to find that, I wanted to live within in the right consciousness, in the Mother’s consciousness. So I concentrated from morning to evening. I concentrated to go deep into the heart, [to focus] on Mother, deep within, on the presence of the Mother. Because I found that I needed a personal intimacy and answers to all my questions about life, which I could not find anywhere. I was just 20 at that time and utterly frustrated. [So you poured a lot of those emotions and feelings into, it sounds like a meditation of sorts, where you would focus on your heart and the Mother coming into your heart?] Yes, yes. And that made my mind completely quiet. Not only my mind, but my whole being, my entire being was completely calm, peaceful, and this continued for weeks and weeks and weeks. That was the turning point. But I must say that those initial intensities subsided after a couple of months. Then I became more active, and [I got] involved in some work. I could not manage that level of concentration. 361

To tell you the truth, several times I gave up the yoga. And it was only some unusual experiences that brought me back. Sometimes I wonder that my fate and my interest in yoga and in serving Sri Aurobindo and Mother would not have been as firm had there not been some unusual experiences. Because those experiences convey [to] you that [the] Divine sees possibilities in you even when you don’t see them in you. They also convince you of the living power of truth behind the teaching. [A confirmation of sorts, and an affirmation.] Yes.

Current Practices

Now almost three decades have passed, [and] I would like to retain, I would like to recover those levels of experience and concentration. But I have my work. And I am trying to use the work as a means of realization. And this is very, very difficult. Because when you work, and when you have the right kind of will, the right kind of spirit, then it becomes the means for progress in yoga. But if you don’t have that kind of will, right kind of will, right kind of spirit, then you just are carried away by the work and you get involved in so many external realities. When you work, you throw yourself in human nature. And you lose your inner intensity; you forget your concentration, your goal. Not your goal, but you could not manage the same level of intensity as when you concentrate, when you exercise something inwardly.

So right now I am trying to combine both, the concentration, inward concentration, and external work. Because [with] the work, I feel a lot of responsibility on my shoulders, [that] I could do something significant and I cannot give up this work.

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Exercises

In the beginning when I was a novice in [Integral Yoga, the] man who introduced me to Sri Aurobindo told me a story: That there was a man who wanted to realize his self, his true self. So from morning to evening he did only two things. He would do physical exercises, warm up exercise and then he would concentrate or meditate. He did nothing but these things. I have [an] inclination for that kind of lifestyle—to do nothing but meditate, concentrate, and then to do exercise. But I cannot do that because I feel a lot of responsibility to carry on the work that I have undertaken. So I am trying to do three things. I concentrate, I do exercise, and then I work. So now I work nearly 6-8 hours, sometimes 9 hours. And then I do exercise, then I do concentration, exercise imagination.

[I do] nearly 3 to 4 hours [a day] of physical exercises, which I combine with imagination. And that helps me very much. It helps not being carried away by external things or lower mind and nature.

I combine images with physical movement. Physical movement is, for example,

Hatha Yoga asanas. So you identify various body postures with a particular image. And if you concentrate for 4 or 5 minutes on that particular image, sooner or later it may settle in[to] your consciousness.

For example, there is a particular asana, which I don’t know what it is called, but it gives me the image of a sphinx. So with this particular body posture, the image of the sphinx, I concentrate for 4 minutes on the visual image of this sphinx looking towards the new world ruled by psychic qualities—a new supramental world, Mother’s continent, the psychic being, the new world, universal, vast, full of light and peace, calm, Mother’s presence. So I look through the sphinx image [and I see] myself, and the world going 363

toward that inevitable future. After all, through all the struggle, all the humans in the world, everything is going towards the new world, the new continent. And that helps me to concentrate very much.

I have something like 10 or 15 kinds of imaginations connected with body postures (asanas). One is a sphinx. Another is a boat, a ship. So in that particular asana, I imagine that a boat is going towards the new continent, just as Columbus who was determined to reach the new world. In the same way I imagine with my body, I make my body into the shape of a boat, it’s a particular asana. And then continuously for 4 minutes

I imagine that I am in the ocean and I am going towards the new world. Through my daily work, through my sleep, through my eating, through all the experiences of life, through all the people in my world, physically, inwardly, I am a boat sailing towards the new world, which is within me, the Mother’s continent, that kind of image.

So, I spend 90 minutes daily in this kind of exercise of imagination. And, if practiced persistently, this helps the mind to become pure, free from all disturbances, free from ordinary mentality, from attachments, and from the movements of the lower vital.

And if I do these imagination exercises regularly, they establish [themselves] strongly in the consciousness. And then I have noticed that to work in right spirit and will becomes possible at times. But otherwise it is very, very difficult to work in the right spirit.

[Another sadhana practice involves] autosuggestion, self-suggestion. Here, you tell yourself what you want to become. So I remind myself that my goal is to become a completely transformed human being, like a blank page lifted up to the Supreme. I want to become a tool in the hands of the Divine, a flute in the hands of the Divine child, because Integral Yoga leads to complete surrender to the Supreme. 364

I have come across so many texts where we know what the Mother wanted to

become; in one of her Prayers and Meditations, texts she [writes] that she wanted to

become a blank page before the Supreme. In another [part], she said she wanted to

become a being of pure love, complete love, from the top of [her] being to the very cells

of the body. She wanted to become a being of love for the Divine. And in Indian

terminology, I do not relate very much to Indian terminology, but Sri Aurobindo has

given the name Radha, which is a being of total love for the Divine, not human love but the Divine love. I do not relate very much to the religious thing, but I imagine that I am growing that personality of total love, or that I am a flute, a flute in the hands of the

Divine. There is an aphorism of Sri Aurobindo’s that says that he is not a gnani (jnani), a man of knowledge. He is not a man of devotion, he is not a bhakta. He’s just a tool in the hands of his master, a flute in the hands of the Divine, a leaf driven by the breath of the

God. So while breathing in, I imagine at the time becoming a tool, a flute, a leaf driven by the breath of the God, a blank page, a child, a torch, a torch in the hands of the

Supreme Mother, or a sea of sincerity. There is a line in Savitri, that says, “Her mind, a sea of white sincerity.” So I imagine all these images. Each time when I breathe in, I think that I am taking in a capacity to become all these things. And then I breathe out and imagine that I’m giving up ego, desires, and imperfections.

So I have divided my time into four parts—three, six, seven, eight. Seven hours for sleep, 8 hours for work, 6 hours for exercises, and 3 was lunch, dinner, breakfast, bath, rest, going to office and all that. And this I find very balancing. If, because of work or some other reason, if I [get] busy and do not practice those 6 hours, after some time I find that my mind gets attached to a lot of other things, which is not desirable. So this is 365

very much like what the Mother said, what Vivekananda said, to give a bath to your soul.

Every morning we take a bath. In the same way, you give a bath to your soul, to your

consciousness, to your mind. And that is very, very helpful. And I think every seeker

should give a bath to the mind and consciousness in order to keep pure in life and work

and, and the right spirit in work.

Experiences

Superhuman Power and The Mother

In 1979, I was [in a] business [that] was not succeeding. [It] was losing money and I didn’t know what to do, what the future [would be]. I am telling something [that I do] not share with many people.

One evening I felt a strong calling from higher consciousness. I had to [stop] work and retire [into] myself. I closed my office earlier [than usual] and I returned home.

All along the way I felt a lot of peace. There was a smile and sweetness everywhere.

There was some sort of a serenity all around. I reached home and went to sleep after dinner. While in bed, I saw with my open eyes the Mother come towards me with a smile, a very intimate smile. And I became a child, immediately I became a child, and I merged in[to] the Mother. During the night, I woke up and found a superhuman power entering into me, and it possessed me. [This superhuman force] was a being, it was a being from the higher world.

Externally, [my] mind was quite active, thinking, “Okay, now something is happening in me,” [and], “A very, extraordinary thing is happening with me, that now a superhuman power is entering in me, and now the world will know who I am. It was basically the activity of surface arrogance of the mind, a lower mind. This superhuman 366

power, which came into me, could not tolerate the least activity of mind and it would hit on my head until all the mental activity became quiet and ceased. It would not tolerate the slightest mental activity. Finally, a voice came from the bottom of [my] leg, “Mother, I will change, Mother, I will change.” Only then the beating stopped. And this superhuman power, which was nobody else but the Mother, walked into the room, bowed down at the feet of a photo of Sri Aurobindo, came back and spoke in a mighty voice, “My strength built to reach the heaven.” Mother spoke [this] sentence in her mighty voice, through my voice! Then I, rather this being of the Mother, sat on the bed for sometime and then I retired to sleep.

When I woke up next morning, I felt that my life was fulfilled. Because when you turn to yoga, you expect certain things. But I never expected that such a superhuman power – the Mother herself – would enter into me, possess me totally, and even speak through my voice.

I would [not tell] this experience to other people [because they] would not believe it. But that started a turning point. It brought me back; it convinced me that I have spiritual potentiality. And again I started on the journey. So this is one of the very, very, very [significant] turning points.

There is an aphorism of Sri Aurobindo’s that says that in whom the Kali can descend, in whose system Kali can descend with her strength and might, then he answers, that only [in] the man whom Krishna possesses. So, I can say that in whose system the

Mother, the Mother in her aspect of strength, can descend, and the obvious answer is

“only [in] the man [whom] Sri Aurobindo possesses.” Which means that my inner being is something that Sri Aurobindo possesses. And the Mother, the Mother of Pondicherry 367

Ashram, in her aspect of strength, descended in my inner being, in a very critical time [in my life], when I had given up all interest in conscious spiritual progress. [She spoke in] a mighty sentence, which anybody could hear. This was extraordinary, and I don’t believe that Mother has left me ever since. She is there, ever present in my inner being. The promise, which my mind gave to her, that I will change, is still there after 25 years. But my mind is not yet completely quiet. It does experience quiet and peace, but it is still, it has still to keep the promise that it will change. It was a turning point. It brought me back on the path.

Mantra

Part I: Stopped eating, speaking, working.

The second turning point—had this experience not occurred, I don’t know what I would have done. I might have started to improve my economic condition, I might have turned towards another business, I don’t know what I would have done. But I don’t think that I would have turned again to the spiritual path in a very intense way had this experience not happened. That profound experience eventually led to repeating the mantra. Yes, one thing, which made a lot of impact after this experience, was the repeating of mantra. I got completely into a new life pattern after this turning point.

I started experiment[ing]. First, I had this overwhelming sense that Mother wanted to [resume her] transformation work through my body. I felt that she found my body very appropriate for the continuation of what she was doing in her body.

So, I stopped eating, I took only fruit, I stopped speaking, I stopped working, I stopped all activities, [and] I confined [myself] to my room for 4 months. I did nothing in order 368

that I [could] give support to the Mother. But after 4 months I found myself in a chaotic and confused state of mind.

Part 2: Began repeating mantra.

So I gave up all those four months of silence and started repeating mantra. And that produced remarkable changes. I decided to repeat one mantra. I was dreaming of my future plans of action in the world. And in order to make myself more fit for [my future] work, I decided to repeat a mantra every afternoon for one hour. The mantra [I used] is a message that Mother gave when India was in the Bangladesh war. At that time Mother gave the message, “Supreme Lord, Eternal Truth, let us obey thee alone and live according to Truth.”

So I decided to repeat this prayer, this mantra, daily. Then after 1 or 2 weeks, it started to make a tremendous impact [on me]. I [started] to become bigger, bigger, bigger. And when I finished, I became a totally different being, some sort of superman, I would not call it a superman, I [would] call it a great uncle, which was completely peaceful, completely free from ego. There was a tremendous stability. when I would sit and repeat [this] mantra, I [would characterize my beginning] state as that of a mouse, a normal human state with a normal human mind. And at the end of mantra, I would become a lion. Vast, calm, completely free from mental activity.

Tremendous stability, my God, it was, it was a new being, a new human being, a superman.

So this was very effective. And then I got more and more involved in repeating the mantra. I would repeat it for a full day, I would repeat the mantra, “Supreme Lord,

Eternal Truth…” And I felt that this is the best thing one can do in life. If you follow [this 369

mantra] there is nothing [else] to do. This is the only purpose of life, the best, the

supreme joy of life, to repeat this mantra.

Part 3: Mantra of Sri Aurobindo.

One evening, I had been repeating this mantra for continuously 4 hours.

Suddenly, I felt a voice coming from my heart. And it spoke a different mantra, a

Sanskrit mantra, “Om Sri Arvind Sharanm Mamh!” Only one time it spoke with this

Sanskrit mantra. The next [thing I know] I woke up from my chair, from my sofa, and

suddenly I found myself [surrounded by] galaxies, galaxies in the sky whirling around

me.

So [to me] it meant that the mantra, “Supreme Lord…,” came from Sri Aurobindo

through the Mother, that he was the originator of this mantra. That was my

understanding. [I also understood] that Sri Aurobindo has conquered the world, that he’s

somebody universal, infinite, eternal, with the stars moving around him. So I found

myself there. And that’s [how] I got the [this] mantra. Many teachings say that mantra

comes from within you, that you get mantra from within, from your heart. It says

something from your heart. So [the] English mantra came from the Mother, [but] this new

mantra came from my heart, “Om, Sri Arvind Sharanam Mamh!” So. I received this mantra from within my heart, which also convinced me that my inner being, my soul, is totally a part of Sri Aurobindo.

Selecting a Mantra

[While reading Sri Aurobindo,] I made a great discovery—that one needs to develop willpower to progress in yoga. I realized that the most important thing in yoga is willpower. The Mother says somewhere, without will, one is not even a human being, a 370

jellyfish. I had not realized that before. [Without willpower] one ends up moving in a circle. One does some service to the Divine, but one does not progress. So I used to repeat various lines from Savitri, which are connected with willpower. [And] I started on a journey of developing willpower by visualization. There is a whole passage [from] the

Mother [on] how to develop your will: That you do one thing and you insist that you will do the same thing again and again and again. In that way you develop your willpower.

So I started practicing all that. And during the initial phase, I had a remarkable success. I felt a strong presence of will power. But gradually it dwindled too.

Another experience: I went deep into analysis of human life in the world, all the disciples and those who live in the Pondicherry Ashram people who turned towards

Aurobindo and Mother and do not progress in life, they remained stagnate. I thought deeply [about] why people [did] not progress in yoga. They end up working but they do not really change their consciousness, they do not really progress, they remain the same. I came to the conclusion in my reflections that it is only when people get ablaze, fired up, with the Divine Love that one can really progress.

This conclusion was like a great revelation. I immediately started repeating a line from the Mother’s Prayers and Meditations, “Sweet Mother, Mother Divine, may we be all ablaze with thy Divine Love.” I felt that this is the only thing that can make progress in yoga possible, not meditation and work and so many other things. That if you want to progress in yoga instead of moving [a] circle, the only solution is get ablaze with the

Mother’s love. There was such an intensity in that call, as if this is your last resort in the ocean to swim and not sink, that after 2 or 3 hours, I found myself in a different world, 371

which was full of Divine Love. All that was there was pure love; every atom was filled with Divine Love. It was the Mother’s Love. So that became my other mantra.

In that state, I even felt Mother’s presence very close to me, closer than she could be in front of me! So, this was the other mantra, a line from Mother’s book, became my mantra. And then when I realized the importance of will, I started to repeat lines on will from Savitri. So [when I had all these four or five mantras], I had some sort of a sweet struggle which ones to choose, because all were working . My final choice was the Truth mantra, because where there is Truth, there is love. To be frank, I felt that if I repeat the Truth mantra I would not disturb the Divine Love that was my feeling. It was so easy for me at that time; I felt that it was completely easy for me to realize the

Divine at that time. But I felt also that I should not disturb the Divine Love, that I should first realize the Truth, and that love and everything else is the result, the outcome of the

Truth. So I selected the Truth mantra.

Current Issues and Challenges

Discipline and self-control [are the most challenging part of my sadhana]. There is a sentence from Sri Aurobindo’s letters to a disciple where he says that to realize the possibility of your life, self-control and discipline are indispensable. It is [also] a question of willpower. If you have willpower, if you have self-control and discipline, that opens up strong possibilities. [But] that is difficult. Sometimes I feel that if I could work, if I could do my exercises accurately without stop and at the same time work, that I could do great things in the world and within my inner being, a victory of the Divine within and without. So I try my best but sometimes it is difficult to develop that kind of willpower, to follow regularly all the practices, to attend to the work. And sometimes work is too 372

much. So I have come to the conclusion that to develop a very strong willpower is most important.

There is one sentence of Sri Aurobindo that the Divine answers, not according to the measure of the sadhana or the practice, but in the measure of your soul and its aspiration. So even if you practice daily for years and years, you may not have a new experience. [But] if your soul is ready, if your soul and spirit are ready you get an experience without doing anything, or doing very little. That is the thing, that readiness of the soul. That can explain so many experiences that happened to Sri Aurobindo and the

Mother. That when somebody told Sri Aurobindo to sit and watch his thoughts and discard the thoughts, in 3 days he achieved the state of nirvana, complete peace, because his soul or inner being was ready.

And there are people who do yoga for a long [time and] still [do] not get there because their inner being is not ready. So Integral Yoga is basically not [done by] your own [external] efforts, it is the inner being, the soul, how much it has evolved. And by our practice, by our imagination, by our aspiration, you give support to your inner being.

The first time I [read] Savitri, [I opened to a page that contained the following passage:] “Our words become natural speech of Truth. Each thought is a ripple on a sea of light.” Today, after 30 years, I believe that is true, that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother’s vision of the future, their teachings, the path, the light they have brought to the world is an “natural speech of Truth” and that each of their “thoughts” is a “ripple on a sea of light.” 373

Overall Story Ascent and Out-Of-Body Experiences

[Gopal]: Subtle Physical

There was one example, kind of like ascension. [I was talking to someone] in

Pondicherry [once]. She said she was leaving the next day. Later, in a vision, I saw the ashram car driving down the highway. I was overhead, looking down and I assumed she was in it. And in Pondicherry, all of a sudden I was in what I would call the subtle physical. And I don’t know how to explain this. Being above all that, just strolling down the street with no effort or other feeling and no other people, feeling fantastic with the energy and consciousness. Like there was no friction or gravity. It’s difficult to explain because it is so simple and natural and at the same time such a fantastic feeling. I was just feeling like me, no difference. [I was] just walking, but in another dimension. Blissful.

[1119]: Out of Body (OOB)

I had the experience of going out of my body in a relaxation massage workshop. I began to really relax really deeply for the first time, because I had been pretty repressed in my life up to that point. After several hours of giving and receiving massages, pretty soon the body is starting to let go more and more. So what happened to me was I started to sob and I started to convulse, and then I started to breathe deeply, but I was breathing so deeply that I thought I was going to crack open all my ribs. I started to convulse and turned the whole mattress over and of course disrupted the whole session. When it got too violent I left my body and I went up on the ceiling. So then I’m looking down on my body, and I’m in tune with everybody’s thoughts; I knew what everybody was thinking.

There were people who wanted to do the same thing, and there were people who thought,

“What’s going to happen to this guy?” I mean, I knew everything. And at a certain point, 374

I just went back down into my body. But that experience gave me the sense that we’re not our bodies. And I had the clear experience that I can be outside, I can know everything, and without a body. To really know that physically makes a huge difference, it changed me.

[Running Water]: Ascent

To clarify, there’s a difference [between] ascending through planes and an ascension like [a floating sensation when I run]. Going through different planes of consciousness and being aware of those, that I don’t experience so much of, if at all.

Things tend to be right here. But, when I’m here, I’m always laughing about this sense of, when I spoke about the running, about those lamas who have this practice that they don’t touch the earth, they run, they float, as a specific practice. Some program has tried to scientifically film that and they weren’t successful, but, I jokingly believe that some day

I’m going to run a marathon and never touch a foot on the ground, because of that experience and similar experiences when I’m running or even when I’m sitting talking to you or when I'm in these, types of exchange, I almost feel like I’m floating. There’s a lightness, life becomes light in so many ways, it’s a lightness, in that sense, yes.

Ascension: Leaving Body and Floating

One time I was playfully [experimenting] with asanas, postures, partly to work with pain patients, partly just exploring. I studied a lot of Egyptian stuff when I was younger. So I placed myself on the floor and spontaneously decided that if I placed myself on the floor in a particular position like a ladybug that I would be a scarab, the scarab was really an asana. I put myself on the floor and did it; I hadn’t read anything about it, I just did it. And I left my body immediately, just flew. In coming out, I said, 375

“Well that’s the answer, it’s an asana, [designed] to secure the body [before] the leaving the body—flights into other worlds.” Because, the spirit can actually literally leave the body and [then] you’re in a dangerous position. The teachers talk about, you know, what can happen and it can be dangerous and you need to make sure you’re protected. That’s why they did certain rituals and different things. So that happened in that position and I did feel that, leaving the body and floating and go right up.

Another time, my [brother] had been making fun of me, and I happened to be staying in the house that that person was living in. It was one of my brothers and it was my mother’s house. And I went to bed that evening, and there was a part of me that was shaking my head at my brother and saying, “If he only really knew the reality of my practices and what things,” and he was joking about it, “Oh, you know, woo, woo, wicked, spiritual.” Interestingly enough, something wanted to teach him a lesson that evening. I left my body and there was screaming heard in the house. It was my younger brother jumping up out of his bed and running around the room because evidently he saw me floating and flying around the room. He woke everyone. There were three other people in the house, and two of them saw the entity. I heard all the yelling, and I was lying in bed and couldn’t move. I wanted to get up to help, but something in me was, had some awareness, but I couldn’t move, and then something happened. I felt this sort of, energy, and I felt stiff, but I started moving and I got up and I opened the door and everyone was in the hallway and they were staring at me. There was a dual consciousness, which is very surprising. I’ve read more about that recently, though.

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[Pancho]: Ascents

I can follow it mostly to the top, I can’t always follow it above the head. It gets, it seems to get lost. But aspiration I think naturally takes you there. You’re centered here, you do it for awhile. Sometimes I just try to aspire and not much happens. Obviously, it doesn’t always work. But when it’s really working, it does start to ascend. It’ll be up here

[up in my forehead]. And it will be at the top of the head and then above, and it might even bring on a descent, I mean they work together. But you do feel, yeah, there definitely is an ascent. Because I think that fire, that agni fire state of being of the

Supreme, the Divine will, the brilliance in force, whatever you call it, it tends upward, just like earthly fire only goes up. And so when you allow that fire, or you stoke it, or it just happens, then an ascent naturally happens.

[Rishi]: Ascending

The word [ascending] is something that I don’t feel comfortable using. I think what Sri Aurobindo meant by ascending is probably you move your consciousness from your brain, from the mind to something higher. I believe that is probably what he meant.

And I have felt, thinking or looking at things from above as an observer, and trying to put things in the perspective, not just as an observer, but also being able to understand what is there. Like something that is very dynamic it can bring about a change in your behavior and can suggest dynamic solution. It is like someone really smart is up there and looking at things below and gives you a real smart solution. Literally, I feel as if I am up on the

12th floor and looking at a bunch of people down there, including myself as I am up there, and I can see everyone’s heads from the top, and I see what is going on. It just happens. 377

I think about this word ascending, I think about that word. Ascending somehow to my mind means like you going up there, your body is going up or something. Which does not sound right. I mean, I do feel I can see from up [above], I do see that, but it wasn’t like there was a time that I kept on going up, up, up, up and then I stopped. And then I guess my focus has always been down, the world, the life. I never wanted to leave everything and go up. I never had a desire to do that. I always wanted some proper solution from my real life problems, some real solutions.

[Janaka]: Ascent: Kundalini

It’s interesting because I had read about the kundalini experience, both in Sri

Aurobindo and other literature, and it seemed to me like that was the key experience, that was the one [that] proved that you were on the spiritual path, that you were making progress. Because one of the biggest struggles is just that feeling of, “Am I making any progress? I’ve been doing this and doing this, and, you know, is it getting me anywhere?”

So one of things people look for is seeing visions.

Another thing people look for is having kundalini experience. So it was something I really wanted, something I really thought would be great and it would really transform me. I’d done all my reading on it. I also included it in my aspiration, because aspiration can be connected to fire with agni and the Vedic prayers and fire. And so I would try to [picture the] image [of] the fire in the root chakra during my meditations.

And for a long time nothing doing. And then, over the years, I would start to get a little experience here or there. I would feel a little bit of heat or I would get almost a finger of fire, very slender, coming up but it wouldn’t necessarily rise all the way through to the top, to the crown chakra. It would just go a certain distance and then just stop, and it 378 would be there for a while. I would feel a warmth, almost a burning, a rising from below, coming from the root chakra, through the abdomen, really behind the abdomen, and usually stopping around the second or third chakra, the solar plexus.

And of course I thought there was something wrong with me. I wasn’t able to experience the full, you know, the full experience of it. But after having several of those, there did come a time when I’d been having some fairly strong descents, which again, Sri

Aurobindo says, it’s better to be open to the descending force first to help purify the being and then that opens that way for the kundalini to rise naturally. It doesn’t have to force its way.

And so at one point, I just felt this opening and a widening, it was as if I was sitting on a pillow that had all of a sudden gotten to be five feet wide, and that pillow was of course my root chakra, it was me, where I was sitting. And then that gradually began to rise up through me, began filling me with a very fiery energy that slowly rose through me. It wasn’t a rushing at all, it was very gentle, but it felt like a fire, and I pictured it purifying me. I was willing to let it purify me; I was offering myself to it. And, again, it rose in stages. So first it rose to the solar plexus, and then it ascended from there probably through the heart I believe to about the throat and then stayed there for a little bit, or maybe it was below the throat—it was the heart center, but it filled the chest cavity entirely. It stayed there for a bit, and then it continued to rise and I don’t remember the details but I do know it rose up until I was entirely within it; my body was entirely within this fire. It was surrounding me, this wide, five-foot wide thing was rising in a shaft, both filling me and surrounding me. It finally got above my head and then I lost track of it. Sri

Aurobindo writes about it opening all the centers as it goes, and I don’t [know] about 379 that. I felt that there had already been some purification up to that point, or I wouldn’t have been able to experience it. I guess they got wider after that, but there was nothing dramatic. And then after a time, maybe 20 minutes afterward, maybe a little longer, it just began to subside. It’s not like it went back down again, just sort of evaporated slowly, very slowly.

[Annie Dutts]: Ascents

There are ascents too, and that’s one of my typical practices. Sri Aurobindo says one way that you can go into the spiritual consciousness is you go up above your head.

And so you just go up and it widens out and it feels, there’s different ways, you can feel like the lid is taken up off the top of your head. Or you just feel like you go up about a foot above your head and then everything gets wider and wider and wider. It feels like you can see for hundreds or thousands of miles, it just opens, and I think when you look at the different, like the mind, the higher mind, the illumined mind, the intuition, the overmind, I think it’s maybe, you know, it’s very dangerous. What do I know? I know nothing. I’m not a master. But, it’s not thought. There’s no thought there and there’s no concepts there so I think that it’s probably not higher mind because there’s no formations.

I think its maybe up there, above that. It’s just light and wideness and revelation and truth with no form.

[Cathleen Carmichel]: Ascent

I would have experiences of ascent where I would very specifically feel an ascending energy. I think probably in the old yoga school, it would be a Kundalini-kind of energy, because it does come from below. It definitely, I mean I did have that experience of it coming from below, as if it was taking away a layer of reality so that the 380 way things seem—the external ho-hum, day-to-day life—suddenly was torn away, and all that was there was just this sort of blissful experience. And that went on probably for about two or three weeks of that kind of experience. I was in the ashram and there wasn’t a lot that I had to do. My life was very organized around this is where you stay, here’s the library, here’s the dining hall. I was lucky in that sense. And it just seemed that the day- to-day life was no longer what it seemed, there was a lot more behind it. It was as if a veil had been moved away.

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Overall Story – Descent

[Gopal]

I had descension with a force, a consciousness. There were times in India I was electrified so much I couldn’t sleep all night. I was awake all night just vibrating.

[Running Water]

I’m experiencing a sort of pressure between my eyes, brows, right here, and in my chest, and sort of a pressure, what I’ve come to describe as a, it almost feels like a pressure, but it’s a widening in the skull. It’s as though my brain wants to think and the rigidity is causing a resistance. And there’s a part of me that is wider, that is a higher part of the mind that I’m opening to but the resistance is the feeling of the pressure. When that’s there, I know that I’m actually moving to a higher place in the mind. It’s almost as though I’m feeling, people describe it as a feeling the energy coming down or through, but it simply feels the way I was describing it. That I’ve widened but since I can’t let go of my body and be here at the same time, it feels, the body is feeling the pressure and I’m entering into those states. What changes is I become less focused on it and it becomes more blissful, the energy is a blissful energy. I begin to become clearer when I’m speaking. The activity almost is the, motivation to bring its force forward, and it permeates more and the resistance dissipates but the energy is still there. I can feel the energy, but I don’t pay attention to it as much. I just let it take over and activate me. It’s something that seems to be a theme of how this personality works with things. When there is a purpose and I’ve made the attempt to center, it’s there. It dissipates or breaks up its contact when I’m abruptly interrupted or when I’m off course with my purpose or the purpose ends. It seems consistent when it’s there. It’s not usually there during everyday 382 circumstances except for when I’m gardening. And I take it that that’s because that takes me to a place where I’m distracted into what I consider lower or disorganized or disharmonious.

[1119]: Aspiration →Descent

[Have you had other experiences where you have felt the descent or sense of descent or had the sense of something other than the answer to a question?] Yes, it doesn’t work that way with me, it’s not a question. The aspiration is not a question. And what comes is not an answer. It’s not in such a framework. It’s more that an opening is filled; it’s a fullness, and a completeness, a sense of completeness and fullness. [And that sense of fullness, where do you experience it?] Physically, I experience it; I can hear it like a hum in the ears. I can hear that sound. I can step into that zone, we’re in it now, so you can feel the presences; you can feel that we’re outside of time and space. Then what happens in terms of the words or the emotions are more or less irrelevant, and then it gets to the stage where, and you know this from meditation, where there is only the silence, but the silence is, has that quality of fullness or completion. It is complete, and so is it,

“Where do we go from here?” There doesn’t even need to be that question, because we are there. [So I guess if I asked you about if you’ve experienced the sensation of ascending, that’s still a structure in the linear type of thing.] Yeah.

[Pancho]: Descents of Energy

One of the things – for years – that I had been feeling [were] these descents of energy from above. It was really pronounced sometimes. It never was totally strong, it has never been a torrent that just stayed, some day maybe. Energy, like higher energy, different kinds coming down through the top of the head and into, mostly feeling it into 383 the head, but it goes into the rest of the body. And sometimes it feels like light and sometimes it feels like strength, sometimes like joy, sometimes peaceful.

Sometimes I would read [The Life Divine], just read it intellectually to understand it, but I would feel descents. Like I would have read that he was experiencing unending descents in that period between 1914 and 1921 when he was writing all those books. And they were more from what you would call the overhead planes than directly from the supramental, but they were pretty strong descents, and I was feeling them from reading the book.

I would do more than just feel, I mean, I was understanding it, too. And every time I read I understand more. There are all different levels of understanding, but one of the ways I understood [it] was these descents would come down and open up the lower understanding too. It’s actually in The Synthesis of Yoga, he kind of talks about a sequence, descents of light and force and energy. First, is calm and peace and equanimity, because that’s the beginning of everything in this yoga. It helps if it does; it doesn’t always. There is no rule, but that is logically the first thing. And then there is light and force, light is next and then force; although he doesn’t always say it in the same [way].

And then there is ananda, there’s those four.

[Janaka]: Descent in Groups of People

I’ve described the descent experience, the spiritual waterfall, like in Yosemite

Park, like the firefall. That’s occurred on a few other occasions, and interestingly, it’s been in group sessions.

The first time, well, I should say the next time after that first experience that occurred, was in the early 1990s. I had been asked to join the board of [one of Integral 384

Yoga associations] and we [were able to finally meet together.]. Five of us were talking about [the day]—things that we had seen, how we were feeling about it. And I felt this energy beginning to, almost bodily, come and seize us. And we felt less and less like talking and more of this silence, just a massive silence pervading the room. We slowly stopped speaking kind of by mutual consent also because we just couldn’t talk. We just started sitting in silence and before we knew it (and later, just sort of checking in with everybody, everybody was feeling the same thing) this massive descent, this influx of shakti, of Consciousness-Force (Sri Aurobindo calls it Consciousness-Force). [It was definitely an energy and it was] powerful, powerful; it was the power of silence, it was energy….

There’s, there just aren’t really words to describe it, I’ll do the best I can. It was as if it filled up all of the space in the room. There was no other space left. It was as if it took your breath away. It was almost like you, you lost interest in breathing; it felt like you were holding your breath even though you weren’t. So, I felt it very powerfully in the area of the heart and the solar plexus, I should say especially in the heart and the solar plexus but really everywhere, everywhere. And even in places I didn’t know I had. It made me aware of the space above my head and the roots going down into the earth, and the space around me felt like it was filled with fire, the fire was everywhere. [It just enveloped me outside the physical boundaries.] It expanded several feet beyond my body, and above my head and below my feet. And like I say, it was literally a palpable silence that you could touch, you could feel it; you could almost knead it in your hands if you were so inclined. It felt more like the air had almost gelled, so that really nothing could move in it. And I know I'm using different metaphors and images that in the ordinary 385 world aren’t compatible, because they’re trying all to reach the same experience from a different direction. And when I would read about experiences or descriptions like that, I found that I had to sort of let my mind, set my mind aside, and, and not try to bring physical images to bear, just let them kind of wash over me. Because the physical descriptors are really symbolic, not really meant to be physical as such, not concrete anyway. So that’s just an aside to, to explain why fire and water, air turned into jelly, you know, they're all trying to approach the same experience, they’re not separate things. And so that was the second time. And that had to go on for a good 45 minutes, feeling almost powerless before this massive descent of Consciousness-Force. And when it subsided we all knew, we started moving around again. We said, “What was that?”

And then I experienced that same experience in a hotel [at a] conference on religion. It was my last day there, and we had organized an open house. A handful of people came, three or four, and were sitting there quietly, talking on couches like we are now, when again, this experience of descent just took over. And when it comes it’s like there is no denying it. I mean, it’s like if you wanted, if you could even imagine going against it and trying to reject it, you would be swimming up from a mine shaft, you know, through dense water, but who would want to? And so almost mid-sentence we stopped speaking and sat there again for over half an hour while, this power and light and fire washed over us. And then it receded and, like the tide going out and we were able to talk again, and we went “Whoa, what was that?” I’m pretty sure that the others in the room had some sense of what was going on. Anyone who has had a powerful experience of meeting the Mother in person, while she was still in the body, will give a 386 very similar expression of just, almost their mind being taken away, just being in this completely other space, yeah, so we just thought of it as Mother.

And interestingly enough, both with the Kundalini and with the descent of the

Shakti, one common experience I’ve had, almost universally, has been ringing in [both of] my ears.

[Annie Dutts]: Descents

The first experiences that I had, I guess, were descents of light and bliss. It would be these showers of light and bliss splashing down on my forehead and you could just feel them here it would just go pachoo! And oh, it is just gorgeous. That is very constant and very easy to have. And the second one is ananda, I think that’s my basic experience, of being just ravished by bliss, these descents of bliss.

[There were no visual sensation] no visuals. I’ve had several were Sri Aurobindo was present, or that it was the Divine or the Divine Mother. And it’s just extraordinary ecstasy and love and happiness and joy and everything is beautiful. You start to tremble because it is so powerful.

And then sometimes it comes with power, that’s another thing, shakti, descent of the force. That feels like power just like crashing, massive descent of crushing force and your body just starts shaking. When it first happens your muscles tense up, this is the rigidity that the yogis used to talk about, but you learn not to do that after a while because your body learns to adapt to it. Or you might twitch. The people who are unripened, they thrash around, but if you know you can widen yourself up.

It’s like basically riding on a tornado or an earthquake. You’re just shaking. It’s just crushing and it can be hard to bear, like super adrenaline, but its lots of fun. It comes 387

down at different points. I’ve had it come all the way down to the muladhara [1st chakra] and down to the feet. So there’s power that comes down, bliss that comes down, love, and there’s light. And the light is more like a widening.

Talk about descent of force, once I was seeing Sri Aurobindo and the descent of force was so strong and the devotion was so strong that it knocked me to the floor. That is what they call a kriya. It flattened me. And I tried to get up and it would keep pushing me down to the floor. My head was on the floor. So that was interesting. That was only once that I had that experience.

[Lizzie]

The light, when it descends into me, it’s there sort of as my core. And it’ll go down, but instead of individual chakras, it’s a whole column of light [coming] through the center [of my body, the way the chakras are aligned]. It’s just there and then when I start doing other things I don’t notice it anymore and it probably recedes. I wouldn’t say that’s happened often.

[Cathleen Carmichel]: Descent

As far as descent, I think the most, most prolonged experience that I’ve had of that is where I’ve had this, this chakra right here, the third eye chakra, just pulsating. It went [on] for months. I mean it was to the point where I was like, “Well, I guess I’ll have that for the rest of my life,” but I didn’t, [but it] would come and go for long periods of time. I never thought there was anything to do about it, it’s not like in and of itself what does it mean?

388

[Rose]: Descent

I feel descending sometimes into my body and I sometimes feel a power descending into my body. Of course, I’m focusing on it too, but I do feel a power too then descending, yeah, yeah. It comes through my crown. There’s a lot of energy, some days it more and some it is less. Sometimes I touch my crown chakra because it’s there for longer times. I feel it coming in sometimes in meditation, coming into the body. And it feels like it’s just filling out the body and then my body feels more harmonious afterwards, like it’s rearranging, very subtle rearranging, that’s what I sometimes feel. It fades. Sometimes I meditate in the evening and then go to bed. Of course in the morning it’s all different. [And it feels the same way every time coming] into the body. It’s always has the same feeling of the energy of the body [and the sensation coming through.]

And then I wonder sometimes, during running especially, when I get the longer runs, after your mind gives up control and settles down with “Okay, then we are running,” it kind of, I don’t know if you feel elevated or if a higher power is carrying you for a while. Because if you feel elevated, it would be an ascension, but if a higher power is coming down into your body, then it’s a descension, so I’m [wondering if it can both, that both can coexist at the same time]. 389

Overall Story – Experience of Nonlight Forces

[Akroyd]: Dark Experience in India / Most Important Experience—Receiving Mantra

I started at [one] point to meditate because [I was] doing all this physical activity with the dancing. And I was meditating and I had this really dark experience where there were people doing black magic against me, which is not very uncommon actually. This happened to several other Westerners I knew studying at different locations in this state

[in India], two of them died due this occult abuse. Xenophobia [among certain factions in the town], essentially, is what it was coming from. And it would manifest in terrible, terrible, dreams. The most scary dreams I [have] ever had. I would have a terrible nightmare, and then wake up and then would not be able to go back to sleep.

The one nightmare I remember was that a big blue head floated down from the staircase in my house, with these sort of ribbons against it, hanging from it, and people

[were] chanting, “We’re going to kill you, we’re going to kill you.” And so I was really in a very stressed situation, completely desperate. And then [at] a certain point I had a dream, and I saw this Burmese Buddhist monk that I [personally] knew and I had a nice connection to him. And he said if I wanted to “unravel the snake" then I should use this specific mantra. And that’s where I got this mantra I have that I’ve been using ever since.

There was a big rock with a carving of a snake on it. Immediately I took the mantra [I believe he told me the mantra, unless I saw it written on the rock], and I started to say it, and I woke up for a second and then that’s where I made the external connection to it.

And then I went back to sleep and I saw myself doing pranam to Krishna, a particular type statue of Krishna, in its plainest form. This form is known as Natwaj, his temple is in

Rajestan and he is the patron of a powerful royal family. I was dressed as a warrior doing 390 pranam to it. I know offhand two other people, one who I went school with from the ashram, who received their mantras in a dream.

Shortly after that I had another of these nightmares, maybe some days later maybe later that evening, and I did a dance pose, a dance pranam, and I said the mantra. And that was it that was that broke that. [It broke that curse] I [had been] desperate, at my wits end, and then a movement of pure grace and blessing [occurred]. This was one of the most important experiences in my life. And it was weird; it broke that connection with that negativity. And [this mantra has] been the key to my sadhana ever since.

When I had that experience when I found the mantra, I was 23 at that time, so it was an early experience. I think after that I was so desperate; I was so haunted by these really nasty, nasty things that were disturbing my mind. And I would wake up, just totally flipped out, and couldn’t go back to sleep, and so I was also suffering from sleep deprivation. This was at the same time [that] I was doing intensely physically grueling dance training and it was very unpleasant. But after that there was this feeling that it was stronger, my faith, as I was completely desperate and I needed a solution, the solution.

When you [go] through anything [like this] eventually somehow you’ll break through it. I think it’s a sign of progress; [that] the inner being starts to take more of a focus than the outer being.

[In] The Agenda there was discussions about people doing that on the Mother, so I was aware of that. And there [were] external politics between the Muslim league and the

Hindu right wing, both in competition to see who could be more asuric (anti-Divine) in this town I was living in [India]. There is a long terrible history of Muslim domination of the indigenous culture in India, and many sacred places were trashed and destroyed. 391

Buddhism was driven out of India for centuries. But some Hindus can stand up to the plate equally as evil. Also [the state] is known as a center for black magic. [It] is a center for great things as well. There was a [Hindu] temple in the town and the priests were fine with me going in there, but the Hindu right wing people were objecting to a “foreigner” going into their sacred space—a certain faction, not the whole town, it was loud political group.

[It] was a very big temple, and on one side of the temple there was the gate of the temple and [this radical group] would practice in [in that area]. It was a sort of hilly area because it was an old town. There was a high wall and maybe about 20-25 feet above it and there was a house to rent. So I needed a place to stay as I was studying dance in that place. And my friends said, “There’s a house for rent, go take a look at it.” So, I went and looked at the house, and then I went back and was staying at the school, which was in another big house that was nearby there. It was hot [and] I had decided that I wanted to sleep out on the porch that night. The school was in an old aristocrat’s mansion. And that gate was open. So I had dreamt that I had gone, I had wandered into this sort of demon’s lair, and he [looked like the cook at the school]. I knew it wasn’t the cook—it looked just like the cook at the school. He had this sort of gnome-ish look about him and he had a big machete. It was a very threatening situation and I woke up and was very disturbed because the qualities of these dreams were much more powerful than a normal nightmare.

It was much more turned up [in] volume, much stronger.

So, I woke up and was very disturbed and I saw this receding light, a reflected light on the door. And my intuitive impression was at that someone had been there, did something, and that would set up the whole series of being attacked sort of thing. I didn’t 392 go to anybody about it, it didn’t occur to me. I just knew. Also, I mean, [this state and I another one I spent time in and experienced it there] is known for black magic, so I knew about it. It was just at a level that was more intense. My first feeling was “I don’t want to move into that house” [near the temple] and I didn’t move into that house. I found out afterwards that the house was broken into just after I had seen it.

I guess that [experience] was when you see the light behind the darkness. The desperation drove me into a condition where I had to find a solution. But that is my spiritual destiny. Because I think if there wasn’t obviously this external negative force making a desperate situation that I found this, because the mantra is so important to me, it is a key device, it is the vibrational gift for my sadhana. The other thing about it is that I think there was a spell cast on me or someone did something and I was feeling the result of it. But I don’t think that they were perpetuating it. They might have set something in motion, because after a while they weren’t perpetuating it. Because I ended up being 2 years in that town [and] I think the xenophobes were less threatened by me. And, so [the mantra] definitely protected me.

Dream Confirming His Sense That Chaotic Forces Were Trying to Dislodge Integral Yoga Globally and That it Wouldn’t Affect Him

Around ’83, ’84, so probably around the time when I got the mantra, a little later than that, I was about to go to [Pondicherry] and I had this dream that this big sort of mammoth, it was more of a cow, that this primeval, gray, huge thing, like a giant yak sort of thing, was rushing towards me. And it would rush towards me and I would step aside and it would pass me, and it rushed at me again, and I stepped aside a second time and it would pass, it rushed past me again a third time, and then it stopped And it stood on its hind legs and it pulled off its head and there was a man underneath it, sort of a shaman. 393

So I saw that as a representative of the forces trying to dislodge the yoga on a world scale, not just personally towards me, just everyone. And then I was reassured [because] I wasn’t pushed, that I wasn’t affected by it. It didn’t push me from the course of things.

[Gopal]: Negative Forces

There was something that seemed kind of significant to me that started to happen,

I might say in a negative way, in a way of attacks. When I got out of my own personal practice and started to expand, reading books and going to the center and giving conferences I started to have accidents. There were at least three times it happened. [One of those was related to a spiritual teacher. A friend told] me about this woman, and how she got introduced to Sri Aurobindo and he still had communication with her and I thought I wanted to meet her. She was very occult, very controlling. She had a practice where you lie on the floor and one of her people presses near your navel. They press pretty hard and then this other person talks to you and asks you what s going on. This went on for about 4 hours and pretty soon you are going here and there, it’s like through a vortex, like birth and death that I could experience, but some other experiences were blocked. She would say, “You’re blocking,” and I was. The interesting thing was in this room while this was going on, the energy, the consciousness was so strong that it was a protection for me. [Because] when I would walk into the hallway it was like night and day, from my room going out to the hallway. It was like being at [the ashram] Samadhi in my room and coming out it was ordinary. Anyway, it was an experience for me and in one of the sessions down in her room she said, “When are you going to surrender to me?”

She said, “The Mother’s consciousness and mine are the same.” Well, when she said that it put me off completely. I figured she was wacko. I saw her at a conference and [one of 394 her young wards] was there, playing outside my room, and then I tripped and fell. It wasn’t anything the child did that was really so overt. It was just this thing, part of the falling and attacking thing that had been going on. What I got out of that was just because you feel good doesn’t mean it is a positive thing. I was manipulated by [her].

[Running Water]: Fighting Dark Forces in Conscious Dreams

For a long time when [the nervous system overloads] were getting worse, I was even afraid to go to sleep. For 4 or 5 years, I didn’t sleep, seemingly, and then it became apparent to me that I was actually become conscious in sleep. The irony of the Mother, what we think is the worst in the world and what we think is just the problem, is actually the door. And what she had done in this fear, in this tension and this stress, was awake me to myself in an unconscious state, so that now for the last 5 years I’ve been consciously dreaming throughout most of the night. Unfortunately one of the difficulties as it originated is that I was going down into the realms that were the darkest, and this is where my battle was. So in some sense, I would say, I’ve come to say, “Well this is what she’s brought me here for. She brought me here to battle and to embrace the transforming of the lower emotional, particularly, and physical worlds of myself.” My physical being and my emotional, lower emotional being, nervous system is an interchange between them, a communication between them.

And in numerous incidents while sleeping I’ve entered into what would be called these realms, these darker realms, and encountered many beings and forces. I think I’ve encountered asuras and I think I’ve encountered this because I’ve been forced to take on this approach and this work, nothing that I knew about choosing, it just was there, I was led there. And what was happening as things got worse for me, is that it became, 395 interestingly it [was during] the hours between 3:00 and 4:30 in the morning, almost 10 times a month [that] I was having severe [overloads]. I would actually in the midst of these [overloads] sometimes get up and leave, after the worse convulsive part, [and sometimes] I would get up and leave my bed.

As I became more conscious [I realized that] I was actually roaming in these realms of where I was wandering when [I got] up. And [after I realized it] I was no longer getting up because I didn’t have to. I was conscious enough in sleep to be traveling to these worlds, which aren’t very pleasant. They’re full of the worst, all of our worst fears, all of our worst, everything that we’re afraid of, or that we think is horrible. Smells, thoughts, animals, beings, dangers, there’s always a feeling of darkness, traveling at night, trying to find the right vehicle, the right, which is, I took it as the right method, trying to find light and trying to find home. And in the meantime forces are coming at you in the forms of people. There could be pleasant things—parties, spiritual gatherings even, like a false aura—and they lead you in the wrong place. You’re not going home you’re going further away, you’re going to a deeper tunnel. And it smells worse, and it feels worse, and it’s more uncomfortable, and people come at you to try to kill you. [In] one of the deepest experiences of this type of thing happening in sleep, I was sound asleep, was a being that was ripping at me. I had seemingly entered this deep cavern, and it appeared as a man, as a human, at first. And it was enticing me for something, which I can’t fully remember, as a way home I believe, which was death if I followed it would be death. And I said, “Wait,” as something struck me, it was something from deeper in me. I probably had a [nervous overload] at the time, I could feel something like an electric shock within me, in this deep state, in sleep. I wasn’t feeling it, but my guess was that my 396 body was going through this. And I was trying to find a way, something in me was aspiring to bring something in that could not allow this to happen. And as this happened this creature revealed a different form. It was very terrifying and it just wanted to eat the life out of me. And I sensed it as on the border of the vital world and the physical world, which is death, inertia.

So I had gone pretty deep, but this is, this has been for last decade my part of my yoga—this conscious dreaming and this work, inwardly, battling the forces. So I’ve had to learn a way before I go to sleep to call the Mother, for guidance, protection. I think what the Mother does is to leave you to feel your vulnerability until you can open enough to call. That seems to be the structure of the physical universe. We’re here; we seem to be caught in it until the mechanism of calling, until the light gets in enough to wake us up enough to call. So, I’ve been woken up enough in sleep to be conscious of going through this. It’s almost like my sleep is my daily life, a human’s daily life, that I’m experiencing what people experience in the waking state even while I’m asleep, but only more intensely, and physically too.

Now what’s beginning to emerge in this sleep process is even if I go deeper, it’s lighter, I travel more quickly to a place I call home, I get home, and I go up as well as down. There are moments where there are explosions of light and I can see Sri Aurobindo or the Mother, and it’s not always just them, but it’s what I call light beings that permeate. So now something is coming in, and I have dramatically noticed a change in me and my life. 397

Descent: Experiencing the Void

There is one other place, and it interacts with the [the nervous system disorder] again, because I was very afraid of it at first. But I’ve come to some understanding about it but not fully. I could be in a particular room or particular place, it could be a restaurant or say a barroom or subway, it could be in a garden, I was in a barbershop the other day and I was reading a newspaper, and I was jolted, I felt a shock. Not a vibration or anything, but it’s what I call the rug [being] pulled out from under me. And of course this triggers the fear [of whether I’m] having a [nervous system overload], which is interesting, because when I’m having [an overload] I don’t usually notice it. It’s after the fact that I become semiconscious and start noticing.

But in these circumstances, there’s a sensation like the rug is pulling out from me, and there’s a void. Everything goes black. It can close up into a whoosh-whoop, like to a single thread, and then if I let go again, it immediately starts. It’s like it’s pulling me into this nothingness, and there’s a part of me that’s terrified at that moment. If I'm in the right place and the right circumstances I've learned to let go and to center and let be what may.

And it dissipates as far as being a black void and I start sensing the environment. And generally it’s because there’s something in the environment that doesn’t represent higher forces; there’s something in the energy that is death – that is very negative. And it can be anywhere, because this force is anywhere, but for some reason it wants to touch me. And so in a sense it may be some kind of lesson that I'm to be learning about being aware of forces or something that wants to attack, and I can’t fully explain it. There’s something in me that has the metaphor that contacts that, that sees that, and then is alerted. For a while

I was wondering whether it’s a passageway also, whether I was going through a path, 398 where the void was a passageway through something that you had to go through the void.

And it’s not so much that I'm letting go and that it’s the passageway, the void, [but] that there are two different black voids that have different qualities, it seems to me. When I go inward and upward, it has a certain quality, there it becomes a void or a darkness. But when you’re going down, there’s a power or an energy that’s an ultimate likeness that feels smothering in a taking-away-your-breath, your energy, type of manner. So I feel that something in me has touched that, in that energy, in that field, and I don’t know fully why.

And it’s hard to tell sometimes [because] both things can happen. Sometimes forces come, it depends upon where you are and things, there are formations. I can tell the difference. [It’s as if I went into another realm, another dimension, to do one or the other, a weigh station]. And if I don’t do that then the circumstances can be negative.

There’s so much energy in that they can, either residual energy that I absorb or the circumstances in that environment, magnify in their negativity. When working with a dying patient or a pain patient or a diseased person, when those things happen, if I’m not open to dying with it, open to being with it, and [having a] fully open sense of not fearing whatever that formation is, then it becomes stuck in me as well as in that person, because

I’ve united with it in some way. So I’ve had to become, to be fearless, to, as the Mother said, never worry, to just refer back to opening to her. [How I get out of it is] I give it to the Mother, every moment, but sometimes the consequences of the moment are a little bit more intense. I can’t work with these things, I don’t have the ability or the power. The only power that I have is to remember to surrender to it, to let her do it. And it’s literal, 399 it’s not figurative, “Oh, let the Mother do it.” [It’s] very physical, very, very physical, very psychological.

[Annie]: Negative Forces Through the Subliminal

I’ve had the experience of going into the subliminal, into the dark neighborhoods, and that was terrible. That was an accident. When I was doing drugs and stuff in the ‘60s.

I had this wonderful experience of my soul merging on acid once and love, love, love.

And then I thought, “Okay, I should quit now, because now I’ve found the ultimate.” Did

I listen to my soul? No, I did not and kept on. I did five more mescaline trips and each one got worse and worse and I started getting into the demon realms and finally, the last one, I’d get into this realm and have these grotesque hallucinations. It was the horror realms, just horrible stuff happening, I won’t even go into it. So, then I stopped.

Seventeen years later, I’d been doing hatha yoga for 3weeks and I was way out here in the subliminal, in the inner consciousness, huge, just spread out. [I was physically and emotionally exhausted from an illness] so I got really sick in my outer being. The fellow that I was living with, I told him that he had to leave, and he was furious. I was under all this pressure and stress and all that. You know, when you talk about the nervous envelope that protects you, [my nervous system] had holes in it. So, I sat down to meditate and I looked up. And in those acid trips 17 years ago, the ceiling would open, this crack would open and this dark stuff would come down. So, that night, 17 years later, when I’d been spread out for 3weeks and I didn’t have any strength in my nervous being and my partner is furious at me and I go to meditate. Bad mistake, don’t do it!! The ceiling cracked open and the demon realms came in and I couldn’t get out of it for a year. That’s why I won’t go to horror movies. If you want to know what it’s like just go to the horror movies, 400 where you have those supernatural horrible things. [I dealt with them for a whole year in my waking consciousness.] It’s like schizophrenia, terrible voices, electrocutions, spikes driven through your brain, axes—I won’t even go into it.

[I was able to move through it by doing] lots of mantras, lots of calling on the

Divine. It happened in the mental substance, it was insanity in the mental substance, so I had to stay out of mind, I couldn’t be in my mind. So, if you go down into your vital and you go GI Joe, you know the will, that would work. If you go into your psychic being, that would work. So, I would go down into my psychic being or into my vital [and work from there] and not even be in the mind. And the other way is – don’t look at it, just do the laundry, go shopping, just you know don’t look. [Don’t give it energy] Don’t look, if you look at it, you’re dead. A friend who had gone through some psychic healing came and he brought a nice energy into the house and so slowly it kind of patched over. But that was a terrible one, you know. And I still, when I get real tired, I know where that [is].

It’s a bad neighborhood in the subliminal and I really have to be careful not to go there. I was afraid; for a year I couldn’t meditate because I couldn’t go into the inner consciousness because that’s where it was, that’s where they attacked you.

[And I didn’t think I had the strength to move through it.] I mean, God, you know, these are major asuras, ooh! And I didn’t go to the psychiatrist either, because in the West there’s no model, they would just give me Librium, or Thorazine or Stelazine. [And label me a] nut case, yeah, schizophrenia. And back 20 years ago, they said schizophrenia couldn’t be cured. They know better now, you know, Nash [in the movie] A Beautiful

Mind and all that. But that’s what schizophrenia is in my mind, you’re seeing things in the subliminal that other people can’t see. And they’re there all right. It’s the yogis who 401 know how to deal with them, not the Western scientists; and the shamans. So, don’t do drugs, because that’s what it was, this is what they call a bad acid flashback. And that’s what made the rent in the first place, and it was that, it was the weak will that broke again. [It’s going into those realms without the psychic strength for it].

And, you know, that’s one time that my psychic being did come forward, like major one night in the middle of that. It was just this huge emergence, like Wonder

Woman, it just burst forth. That was interesting. One of the first times that it came forward that strongly. So, that was a help, and Sri Aurobindo came one night, and that was one of those times that he came and he showed me how to throw away thoughts before they got in, put out a big perimeter. You could feel those guys coming, those nasty influences. You can just put out a perimeter and before they even get into your mind, put the silence there and keep them out. So, I learned how to do that. [It’s a perimeter] a room of silence. Because once they’re in, you’re dead, so keep them out.

[Rose]: Dreams of Hate and Horror

I did have dreams of hate and horror, but I have always been protected so much in my life. A few times, when I was with Sri Chinmoy, I don’t know if it was a dream but

[there was] a nasty being trying to get me in my dreams. It was very vivid too, so I’m not sure if it was really there or if it was just a dream, it could be both. But, whenever that appeared I had the awareness to call out for Sri Chinmoy or for Jesus, for Christ, so then I always woke up. Sometimes I couldn’t even say it in my dream, I couldn’t get that word out, so I had to focus so hard to get the word out and then getting it out I would wake up and hear myself saying the word. But I think there was always that protection. 402

Overall Story – Psychic Being

[Gopal]

One time while leaving the Samadhi, you could feel the sweetness. It wasn’t a smell or taste, it just felt like a sweetness. This is a quality of the psychic being, a psychic presence of the Mother.

[Running Water]

At the same time outwardly my practice has developed, the psychic, I can feel this thing more. It’s come alive. And that has been, I believe, at nighttime. That nightly thing has been a productive yoga to bring my sitting meditation and yoga and outer life to more fruition. I don’t know where and how far it’s going, but my [nervous system overloads] have diminished almost completely in the last year and half also. I think it doesn’t have a hold on the nervous system. I don’t know if it’s the physical nervous system that is involved with the battle between higher forces and lower forces, light energies, and certain forces of matter that can’t hold the light, but as it’s purified, as it’s harmonized, as it’s lifted, as light is brought into it, it has a different capacity.

So, I believe I’m evolving in a certain sense, and I don’t know how much. In reading, in writings I understand that as you bring forward the psychic, as you contact it you bring it forward. The purification takes place inwardly first, an inner vital and an inner physical, an inner mental, and I think something has gone on there. There have been more changes in my outer life too. I won’t go so far as to claim that there is a mutation in my physical being. I think that’s the very last things that take place in any human being, but I believe, a lot, there are so many sustaining energies that we are not aware of or 403

familiar with that something is being cleared, something is being harmonized, and it took

a long period of time to do that.

[Pancho]: Close Encounter With My Soul

The place I was staying at, I had this room, which I liked, it was a big room. But

then the owner of the house asked me to move to the basement, he was giving my room

to his visiting son. And so, what I thought was the last night in the room, I was kind of

mourning, “Well this is my last night in the room.” I think I was reading The Mother, that book by Sri Aurobindo, and then suddenly, well yeah, suddenly everything started getting really bright. I could tell it was much brighter, it was like something had bloomed. [At] first I thought [it was] from within me. I thought, “God, somebody gave me some psychedelic drug. I’m in trouble,” Then I realized that wasn’t what it was.

And then I realized that it was the soul. It came from the center [of my chest], but this wasn’t specifically the Mother’s presence, this wasn’t Christ or Sri Aurobindo, this was me. I think Sri Aurobindo wrote something about the lotus, the deep lotus of the heart bursts, irradiating the entire being. It was like that except it was all around me too. It filled the room and everything was infinitely precious. I could feel concretely the presence of the Divine, it was definitely bliss for no reason, and really intense so I believe that the heart was involved in it too. You can have an experience of the psychic being that’s just still and calm and peaceful, austere joy. This was more, it was the whole ball of wax. And I kept reading the Mother. I did a mantra, I wanted to keep my mind quiet. It wasn’t like your mind couldn’t move, but it was like it had no purpose and you didn’t want to write it down, you wanted to allow this to happen. This was you coming out. It’s transformative. 404

The vital being and the physical were fine with it. But the vital, it will start saying, “Oh, you must be some really high being, look at this you’re experiencing. No, no, keep still, I want to identify with this psychic being, I want to identify my outer everyday being with this psychic being.” And I just let it happen and it got more intense for maybe it lasted 45 minutes. I wish it would’ve stayed, but it was something. It was like something permanently had changed, even though the intensity of it didn’t stay, and it didn’t stay in the same way in my outer consciousness, I can feel the psychic presence, but I can’t always, and it’s like it was a foretaste of something to come. It wasn’t the whole ball of wax, although it certainly seemed that way.

[Sri Aurobindo once described the psychic being to a disciple as] “a feeling of

‘velvety softness’ and an ‘ineffable plasticity within’”[Roy, Dilip Kumar. Sri Aurobindo

Came to Me, p. 472] that rapidly became something so concrete that [he] could almost touch it with my fingers. And then he [said other things, like] all your anxiety goes away.

You can’t be anxious or depressed while you’re feeling the psychic presence. [And] It was the same thing. And that gave Dilip Kumar Roy some hope that somebody is experiencing something, [because this was around the 1930s]. And you know that it works, because I feel Sri Aurobindo says that this can, it changes the substance of the consciousness. And even if it doesn’t stay, it makes for a steady change and it can help bring about the transformations. The actual substance of your consciousness can change and eventually will permanently change, and Sri Aurobindo said this feeling, this velvety softness and feeling of ineffable plasticity can be nothing else than the psychic being.

Only it can bring such happiness and inward solace. The point being, my experience was 405 very much like Dilip’s and, later, sometime after my experience, reading of Dilip’s experience in his letter and Sri Aurobindo’s reply was confirmatory.

[Afterward] I felt changed. I felt closer to the psychic being, but I felt that I had a lot of work to do, that [this] wasn’t my everyday normal state. And I realized there are a lot of kinks in my mind and my vital. Physical is usually more open to it. Physical has no problem with it, but the vital wants its way. And the mind has its ideas. But this was totally non-mental, it was not the vital, and so it was something to aspire to and realize. I know [now] what it feels like, but I’m sure, it can happen even more fully and it can stay.

I don’t usually call these things. The Mother says it will get to the point where with just a little concentration you can have a full psychic presence just by turning yourself there. I can feel aspiration, and I think it’s connected with the inner being, inner heart, but not complete psychic. I feel more a sense of, there is an inner being here and

[the] psychic is there. But that’s sort of changed, I realize that just by putting your consciousness a lot in this area it tends to open it up and it develops.

And some people, a lot of people, don’t have the psychic opening and they mostly get the stuff that comes from above, and that can produce the psychic opening, they can 406 work synergistically, like Sri Aurobindo preferred people [to do]. After a certain point, he realized the natural sequence was the psychic opening, calling from above and it’s natural process, but then a lot of people didn’t have that, they were mostly open in the mind. And there is some question he himself seems to have gone more the mental path, you know, and found out more about the psychic later or realized that he had it but didn’t pay much attention to it, because his innermost lotus was already so open, so that people, the light, they just kind of get in their inner being and they try to get connection to the force from above and let it come down. And that was the way they did the yoga originally before he realized the full significance of the psychic being. But you’re hoping it’s where the inner psychic, you’re hoping it’s the psychic doing the aspiration. I’m sure that, the inner vital is there. But there are different ways to do it and they all work, but it’s a little safer if you can go through the psychic because it has a sense of balancing everything.

[Janaka]: Opening of the Psychic Being

It was probably some time in the mid 1990s, that the psychic being opened, only I felt it being more and more active over the years, [becoming] more and more palpable. It felt like there was a place there where there hadn’t been before. At one point, what both

Mother and Sri Aurobindo referred to as a reversal of consciousness came and all of a sudden it wasn’t me seeking the psychic being, I was the psychic being, and an identity was forged.

The image just came to me of a salmon swimming upstream and just knowing instinctively it’s goal. It’s just constantly having to leap and struggle and swim and fight against the current, swimming over rocks and dams and all the obstacles, sometimes being stuck for a long time, but sensing the goal as it came closer and closer. [Which is 407 why aspiration is so important.] Absolutely. And finally there comes a moment when the last rapids are conquered and you come into the wide-open lake of your birth, and there you are. There is no more struggle; you’re there. That’s what it felt like to me. All I can recall is just a huge lessening of tension. You realize it later, I mean, at first you’re just in the experience. And I think it probably took a day or two, you know, I didn’t want to mentalize it because that would be coming out of the experience. So, I just let myself be in that experience, letting it fill me in. And Mother would talk about an experience that she would have and then she would just cling to it, as if it were life itself because she didn’t want to lose it. And that’s how I felt, and I don’t know if I needed to but I felt like

I needed to. And then afterwards, after it receded a bit and I had a mind again,

it was clear to me that this was the psychic realization. [And] that changed everything.

The description Mother gives of the psychic, Mother really says it when they talk about the psychic, is naturally turned to the Divine. It’s not struggle, it’s not questioning, it’s not “Well, is it this way or that way?” The psychic has an inherent knowledge, an inherent—I think of it as the philosopher’s stone of the ancient alchemists. It’s the touchstone that makes all else pure and true. It has an innate purity, and an innate truth and awareness. It doesn’t have the power of the supramental consciousness, the power to transform, but rather it has the power to know, to be able to distinguish between true and false. Between that which is Divine and which is not Divine [So spiritual discernment].

Absolutely. So, previously whenever there was a choice between movements to be made,

“Well do I want to accept this thought that’s come into my mind or do I want to reject it?” or “Is this the right thing to do or is that the right thing to do?” And I would just have 408

to really use all my awareness, offering up and praying and this and that, and even then I

could be fooled. I could just start going down a slippery slope, one of the many mud pits

that frequent the path. All of a sudden it was possible to just say, “Oh, it really feels right

about this, “ or “There’s something off, off about that.”

So, it’s seeing and it’s feeling and it’s knowing. An the interesting thing about it

is that, I mean it’s hard to sort of draw a map of it, but the way I think about it is that, and

again I'm referring back to Sri Aurobindo’s letters mostly, there is a central realization

affecting who you are, who you think of yourself as. And all of a sudden you're that,

you're not the person who is born in XYZ state, to such-and-such parents and such-and-

such religion and race and so on. All those other things are secondary. [It] is that core

identity. There are so many different parts of you, but they’re each going their separate

ways. I think of the psychosynthesis model that has all your subpersonalities, you know,

and they’re all sort of spinning around the I, the letter I, not e-y-e. And so once that I,

[the] true self, is realized, then it becomes so much easier to integrate the different subpersonalities one after another. I mean it’s still work, it still takes time, it’s not instantaneous by any means, but that becomes the beginning then of another level of the path. I think of a climber coming to a plateau on a hillside, and all of a sudden a steep ascent has ended but then huge vast vistas open up. So it’s an end but it’s a beginning.

The first stage of the transformation that Sri Aurobindo delineates in the Letters on Yoga is that psychicisation, it’s almost, as hard to pronounce as it is to do. So, then that can begin in earnest at that point. So something comes up in your life and either an outer circumstances or inner part of yourself comes into focus. Like when you’re driving at night [and] the headlight beams pick out a tree or a bush or a rabbit crossing the road, 409 or something and that becomes your world at that moment. And previously it became a very long process of, really, identification with that but with the spiritual awareness present, and then slowly trying to tease out the different aspects of it, and then slowly letting that sort of soup boil to the point where it would gel and it would become integrated. And there would be a sense of relief and release, and a healing if necessary, a little bit of a sigh of relief and then the next one would come along. With the psychic identification, all of a sudden that was just made so much easier and really a natural process then. The sense of struggle’s been taken away, the sense of doubting and the need for discernment. That’s why, when I’m talking about the tension, it’s that first release.

Because there’s a knowing, and there’s a sense of having arrived. All of a sudden you’re home. And then the transformation, the spiritual practice, becomes a question of simply bringing all the different parts into relation with that central truth, that central knowing, and letting that develop, letting that do the purification, letting that do the reorientation.

I think a better image, more apt image, is one similar to, when you asked about my early practice it just came back to me. One thing I used to was to do was to imagine the fire, because reading about agni and (something Sri Aurobindo would write) of pouring all your doubts and all of your negativities and so on, just throwing them into the fire. And so I would imagine a fire. And I would imagine myself pouring all these things, throwing these logs on the fire. That was also my aspiration, and I later learned that that was also the psychic being, but again it was always very distant, at a distance. And now I was the fire. So all I had to do was just bring all these things into my heart and the fire was there and it would do its work of purification. And, again just, from the readings, all 410 that’s negative is burned away and all that’s true is saved and reconfigured to become integrated with the truth that’s seeking to be manifested. 411

Overall Story – Sense of Isolation

[Akroyd]: Isolation From Integral Yoga Community

One thing I do feel is I wasn’t spending much time with the local community, partially because it’s taken the community time to sort of solidify over the years, for different reasons, and because of my life, where it was leading me was far away from

Pondicherry. I felt that there’s a lot to be said about just being alone with Mother and Sri

Aurobindo, and being alone with their books and being alone with their thoughts as well as contemplating them. But also just being away from a community where you have all these different people interpreting it. On the one hand, there’s a community and it’s a part of a collective aspiration. And there’s a lot to be said about it, but for me, to just be alone with their books and pictures really created a stronger link, the all important inner link, with them directly. I feel like if I had been more connected to the community when I was younger I might have, to use the Buddhist metaphor, taken refuge in the Sangha instead. I

was easily influenced 30 years ago. It was really a blessing to be alone with them,

because I had to figure my sadhana out myself and really make that connection in that

way, and the purity of that. [In retrospect I believe, I would’ve been influenced by other

people.]

And for a long time, there was no one I could talk about it, in my life anyway.

And so, it was just all sort of internalized. Anyway, from reading them, and seeing those

ideas and grappling with them and the power behind that, the shakti behind it, I was able to grasp it in a purer way than if I depended on the admixture of the latest intellectual d'jour. I just think that whenever we read them, we’re having darshan with them, we’re making that link, that connection. I am speaking here about making a direct inner 412 connection with them, rather than through the local talking intellectuals. Of course

Satprem is an exception, but he is the only intermediary that I have accepted, because the politics got so ugly after the Mother left. [Circumstances prevented a stronger connections to Integral Yoga community] Part of it was that, in ’79, I think at that time I would’ve been interested in some place like Auroville or the ashram, but it was all very much in turmoil. And Auroville, where most of my friends were, it was really under siege at that time. People were getting beaten up.

[Gopal]: Fitting In

I don’t fit in anywhere. I don’t even fit in in the yoga.

[Running Water]: Isolation From Integral Yoga Community

I’ve stayed away from a certain part of the community aspect of this. I don’t know if I’m meant to really interact with this community in this way. I interact with all communities. My intent and my sense right now is for me to maintain a connection with the Mother and the community that maintains the connection with the Mother in some way so that the cord is there, that there’s the connection and there’s an energetic. I’ve struggled with [this], and it didn’t resonate with me. There’s something that felt too orthodox, too cut off, too religious in the sense of, “Oh the oneness, it’s abstract,” yet, you know, “We’re better than this group,” or, you know, “This group isn’t up to par with the best group. We’re with the Mother,” things like that. I can’t relate to it. There’s a falseness to it. [But] I want to be in touch with that community, because I believe they’re in touch with something very beautiful that’s happening here on this planet. And I have a sense that I’m moving back towards more interaction with it, but I had to do a certain amount of work. The work that I do individually in the areas I do it has been 413 overwhelming enough and the forces have been overwhelming enough. I think there is some pretty powerful forces around that community that are both positive and negative possibly. Satprem was a good example of experiencing some of them. And I think that

[the Mother’s] kept me at a distance for a reason, why I don’t know fully, to do the work here.

[Annie Dutts]: Finding a Community to Live In

I regret that I haven’t [found a spiritual community to live in.] I lived in a few different communities, three different communities, and the communities always seemed to be kind of narrow and moralistic and small. And the mental framework was too narrow. So, I had to be out here in order to have a wider mental freedom and Sri

Aurobindo’s huge grasp of the world. But I do regret that I haven’t had company, that I haven’t had more company, people to live with and stuff like that. I would’ve liked to have gone a little deeper and closer, but that hasn’t worked

[Rose]: Feeling Different, Not Understood, Isolated

It’s really funny to talk about those experiences because I gave up [talking] to anybody about those experiences. It takes away talking about it. You can’t explain it anyway, and most people get that “deer in the headlight” kind of fear in their eyes when you talk to them about it. So it’s a little bit unusual for me to talk about it [now]. I don’t feel uncomfortable about it; I’m just not used to it. I feel comfortable talking to you about it. And I do feel the sacred space too, I can feel it.

I would like to have a few close contacts with other people who are familiar with the Mother and Sri Aurobindo; I didn’t find anybody here [where I live] yet, but sometimes I think it would be nice. But on the other hand, I’m aware too, how much we 414 limit each other with our human limitations and that’s what I found a lot when I was with

Sri Chinmoy. I wonder if he was even caught in all the human limitations of his disciples.

Mother in her Agenda talks a lot about it. Since I’m a little bit out here all on my own, I think maybe it’s a real blessing [that] I don’t have to deal with those limitations, I wonder. Because when you’re in a group you’re very much under the pressure of what the group okays or not. [The sense or that urge to conform or the power of others to want others to conform.] And remember we talked about all the different things I integrated in my life. I don’t know if I would have been able to integrate those in my life, being in a group that dictates a lot about what you have to think or not, or how you have to do things. Which I’m not saying that a group is not good; some people really need to be told,

“Do this; do that.” They thrive on it, but it’s probably the best that I went on my own and was capable of integrating on my own all those different aspects in my life.

415

Discussion Story – Intuition and Group Dynamics

[NOTE: This discussion occurred during Cathleen Carmichel’s interview.]

Cathleen: I’ve always considered myself a pretty intuitive person and I think that a lot of that has to do [with my work]. It’s really important to be attuned to the nonverbal communications and I think that it’s a hard thing for me to articulate much. I honor my intuition. I think it’s really important to have a way to recognize when you are getting an inspiration and when something is clear and true and right. But how do you act upon it?

And how to follow it and remember that one person’s intuition is probably still only just a part of the whole and how do you allow others’ intuitions and others’ part of the prism to come together to create the whole? I used to think my own intuitions, even though I was really quite intuitive and often quite correct about people and circumstances and dynamics of what was happening, how important is it that I have that intuition. To what good, to what good is intuition, what benefit is it to have an insight or an ability to understand, or pick up what’s going on at a subtle level, what if you don’t have that?

How is it useful? How is it useful and how do people who are very intuitive work together? That’s not always an easy thing if you work with others, which I do. I work with a lot of people in the yoga on the different projects that I’m involved in and we are all in our various ways spiritually in tune, whether it’s through intuition, through a very enlightened mind, through a type of intuition that may be very different from mine.

Michele: Does intuition come from the same source? If it comes from the same source and people are picking it up even though there are differences of intuitive messages about maybe one topic. Especially when you’re talking about these meetings 416 and group dynamics. What have you found then, what have you come to the conclusion about it?

C: I’m not sure that I have any conclusions other than to recognize that it’s another level of our ego if you’re not able to let it go. Say, for example, [you are] working on a project, I mean, I’m very specifically thinking of a very recent thing. The other people are yoga practitioners, for many years, and [some]one’s feeling and sense is, “You know, I just get a feeling that this is the way it’s going to be if we do this.” And then out comes this sense of, from that perspective, “This is what I think is happening,” Then my own feeling, my intuition of the thing that we’re talking about was so far removed from that, that it was like, “Okay, well, here’s my take on that.” So you have the devil’s advocate sort of thing, it’s not an uncommon thing, but yet we think of it much more perhaps in mental or academic argument—you would certainly expect the devil’s advocate, right?

But somehow if we think intuition has to be above and beyond and it’s a universal truth we’re tapping into, then how could it be that your universal truth and my universal truth aren’t the same? Well, it is, that does happen, and I think it’s one of the big challenges for all of us who work with Mother and Sri Aurobindo together and are seeking this level of collaboration. Certainly, Auroville is struggling with it all the time, because when we seek truthfully and I sincerely believe that that is what we’re all doing, I don’t doubt that.

I just know that we’re all still engaged with our egos and we’re all, I mean, it’s the rare person who’s egoless, and it’s the rare person who can, while they may be able to sustain their psychic connection and their center in certain instances, to have it continuously throughout the whole being is rare. 417

So we’re all working together and I think that’s part of what our job is right now is to say “Well what do we know together?” Because our largest truth is going to be what we all know together; it’s all collaboration. It’s not a single person that’s going to experience a transformed world, it’s the world that is going to experience transformation.

Well, we are the world and what we think and how we intuit and we perceive and decide and envision and embody, something as simple as a brochure or a [meeting or an organizational] decision, all of this stuff, you bring to it what you have. So if you have intuition, if you have intellect, if you have money, if you have wisdom, if you have history and know the people and know the facets, we bring all of that as individuals quite richly to the table. How able are we to embrace the richness of the other? That’s how the intuition would be just like anything else. It could be [maybe me], one person who’s very strong artistic, right? So I could never have done this part of this thing, but I was the one who had the vision of [the picture on the brochure], so that was like an intuition. It was a very strong vision of how this subtle thing can be communicated. And the other people had these other elements of that intuition and of that sense of what is the way. So I don’t know, I mean, it’s not an easy thing to talk about because intuition is so subtle, nonphysical.

M: Well, and the whole aspect of intuition, too, is they’re bits of truth, of Divine truth, that are filtered through our beings. So we interpret them depending on how they come in. And I guess that’s where you see the differences come in because of the differences in beings that it comes through. But who’s also not to say that this intuition and this intuition and this intuition and this intuition in a group even though they sound as if they are opposing, in fact when all of them are put together and accepted, a larger 418 dimension changes. I see this with paradoxes, I finally figured this out about paradoxes, that when two opposing viewpoints are accepted as equal and valid, somehow the dimension shifts where there’s a plane of existence where they coexist equally and are accepted. It’s a nondual type of thing, but it lifts us out of our ordinary into another dimension.

C: Right, exactly, that would be it.

M: So, then the key would be how to integrate all these different intuitions, even if they, uh, on the surface look like they’re opposing, knowing that there’s truth in it.

C: Yes, right. Well, one of the things I have in my work, I’ve just recently gone through a period where I went out of being in power and I resigned. That was an interesting thing, talk about power and dynamics and how those things work, there were a lot lessons there. But what I would always to take to meetings, and I still have this but I definitely really used it a lot. There’s this description from Sri Aurobindo from his

Letters on Yoga, which were wonderful, very practical ways to understand how to behave in life while still practicing yoga. I won’t be able to quote in any way; it’s just about how to be with others in conversation. That you say only what needs to be said, without too much force, without too much demand or insistence that are you right, and you will just put your thoughts on the table to be considered as part of the matter and then leave it there. I guess if more of us were able to do that, and it’s not easy for me, I tend to be very passionate, I tend to say, “Don’t you guys hear because this is real?” I always felt like I was hitting my head against a wall, and I still feel that way, I feel like the walls are still so strong that’s it hard for all of us to find the table upon which we can even place our thoughts and our insights and our intuitions. The table’s not even clear, it’s not even 419 present. People arrive at these meetings with their armor and they’re not in a position of open-minded acceptance and the table being opened for all of our thoughts to arrive. And that’s a real challenge for all of us, or in any meetings and dynamic decision-making things.

But, I always remember that from Sri Aurobindo. I mean, I can’t tell you how many things in my life have just been so powerfully influenced in my day-to-day work. I would try to read that over and just remember that whatever my truth is, you know, as you were describing how we all have the bigger picture, it’s by bringing it forward again and again and again. Whether it is or not, whether it actually gets manifested through the institution in which I work, I’m not in control of that. I have to really surrender. So that would be an aspect of karma yoga where I have come to this meeting, I have done the work, the intention is to bring forward this element of whatever it is and the work I do, and here it is and I’m offering it, even though it might get the big kabosh, it doesn’t matter. I’m not in charge of that, I still have to continue to bring forward the issues that I believe are important for the health and well-being of the people I work for.

M: Well the other aspect I was thinking of too when we were talking about, especially with group dynamics and the fact that people were saying that this is my sense, their intuitions, coming through. It felt as if Sri Aurobindo accurately described what I always sense about truths. He talked about the intermediate zone where truths are mixed with untruths. And some people, when they get these intuitions, it may be coming from the intermediate zone, that place where it’s all mixed up. But the idea then is to filter those intuitions through our own truth to see if it is, in fact, truth. I feel that psychics and 420 mediums are working in that zone. So, at least for me, I’ve learned to just filter it through my own truth system in terms of, “Is this, does this feel, divinely true?”

C: Discernment, it’s a spiritual quality, to be able to discern.

M: Right, and, that actually adds a whole other layer of group dynamics if we’re talking about everybody coming in with intuitive truths and then finding a way to create the concept that accepts all those truths, or come to a decision that accepts all those truths. Plus then having to wonder which ones are bringing in truths that are actually truths with a capital “T,” versus truths with a little “t.” And as a leader of a group that would be a challenge. I never thought of looking at group dynamics from this standpoint either. But, also when you’re working with a very spiritual group of people, I’ve noticed that group dynamics still are group dynamics no matter how highly evolved spiritually they are. There’re still those glitches that seem to occur, but that’s a new paradigm to look at.

C: It’s the way we’re trained in the West particularly, to value our individual perspective, that “That is my identity, it’s my right, it’s my God-given right, and who are you to tell me anything?” There [are] some strengths to that, there’s some incredible advantages to that independent thought, and that ability to say confidently, “I can think and go as far as I want in this direction and go wherever I want.” The down side to that is then when you’re at this table that we’re at, trying to recreate our selves and transform our world, once you put your thing on the table and really truly let go of it and relinquish it, your truth may find it’s place. And it may be over here in some small corner of some very vaster reality that really never had occurred to you. And you, as a leader or as a 421 member of that group may have to just recognize [the possibility that] you didn’t even have a clue what it was you were working on.

It’s like the story of the elephant and the blind man, where the one is grasping the tail and the elephant is long and has a stringy, and has a tuft at the end. Or, he describes the trunk and says that’s an elephant, that the leg is an elephant. That’s the essence right there, we could all be them. My idea could have only been that little scruff of the tail, but it’s part of the elephant. But who actually has the whole vision of the whole majesty, of the huge body, full-bodied, live elephant? That would be the rare person. That would be the rare person who could actually even see that it had four legs and two tusks and a trunk, because we’re see ego-bound. I think that when we get beyond our ego we’ll be so much better off and we can so understand all of this. But, boy, group dynamics and the yoga is a big subject, huge subject.

422

Discussion Story – Cosmic Consciousness

[NOTE: This discussion occurred during Annie Dutts’ interview.]

Annie: Cosmic consciousness. I forgot about that one. Cosmic consciousness is when it’s the enlightenment experience, it’s when you go out and you become everything around you. And it’s the one self and all, the one in all and the all in one. I look over there and I’m the bookcase and I am the notes, I am the musicians on the stage. I just love that one, that’s truly fun.

Michele: I’m getting technical here, because when I was trying to understand

Integral Yoga in the higher supramental consciousness, I was trying to figure out where cosmic consciousness was. And my sense from the reading was that it started at higher mind and actually went all the way up through illumined mind, so it was as if it were a palate behind or immersing all the others.

A: That is the best question and I’ve been trying to figure that out and I’ve been talking to my friend about that for a while. I think it’s generally understood that it is a part of the overmind. It is up here. There’s no ego in the cosmic consciousness. It’s like above the illumined mind and below the supermind.

M: So it’s in those strata.

A: I think so but the thing is you can get into it through different channels. Like, you can get into it through the vital. There are different floors and you could go in. I think, I usually go into the vital. So, the question is if it’s the vital cosmic consciousness, or you go through the vital and then you leap up to the overmind. I’m not technically quite sure.

M: So now we are talking about if there are even layers of cosmic consciousness. 423

A: That’s the question and if you find out let me know. Because that’s a technical question and I don’t quite know the answer to that.

A: That’s a damn good question.

M: So that’s my sense of it…was that it’s behind…but also immersed…

A: Yeah, here’s my sense of it, the metaphor that I would give to it. It’s like an elevator. So you’re outside the elevator, that’s your surface consciousness. You push the button, the elevator opens and you go into the elevator and now you’re in the subliminal.

So, I’ve gone and I’m on the floor of the vital; there’s a vital floor, there’s a physical floor, there’s a mental floor. I happen to be on the vital floor. And I go into the elevator so I go into the subliminal through the vital and then I take it up to maybe the overmind.

M: So it’s like an elevator with a sub-elevator?

A: No, you go in this way and then you just shoot up into the conscious kind of like that. That is a very homemade metaphor, so I’m not sure if it’s accurate or not.

M: We all get our sense of it and eventually put it all together and it becomes more of a picture.

A: That’s the thing about this when you get into Sachchidananda; it’s a trinity. Sat- chit-ananda. But it’s one thing and it’s not divided. So you get into the cosmic consciousness and it’s not divided.

M: It is. And that’s the part is that my sense of overmind is that now you are getting into the nondual realm from overmind up…maybe illumined mind.

A: No, not nondual. Because the supermind is not nondual. The supermind has all of multiplicity in it. It’s unity but not nondual. Nondual is no differentiation. Supermind has 424 the nondual and the multiplicity. So supermind has differentiation, supermind has the nondual and the multiplicity.

M: It has it all.

A: It has them all, yeah, right.

M: Right, but there’s a point where one’s consciousness experiences nonduality that there’s not an either/or. And, cosmic consciousness also has that element to it as well.

A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

M: When people talk about cosmic consciousness, there’s an aspect, and again, I think we’re back to the fact that there may be many layers of cosmic consciousness.

A: Right, it’s true.

M: Which, as I said, I still go back to this picture of cosmic consciousness kind of permeating the minds above higher mind up to overmind, and then, as you said, supermind encompasses everything. So, it now takes the superconscient consciousness and the lower consciousness and then it all becomes one.

A: Right. Yeah. Okay, so, so, so if you go into the cosmic consciousness through the vital, how would you describe that? I mean, is that true, you know, because I know I’m going in through the vital, I’m going in through here.

M: And what does it feel like when you do it?

A: And then it just feels like I’m one everywhere. Right. So, if you’re looking at it in terms of the layers, I’m one everywhere so I must be in the overmind somewhere, but I went in through the vital. 425

M: Right. And people go in through it through the subliminal at times too, because the subliminal actually encompasses—actually to me the subliminal is the backdoor to the higher minds. I mean to the superconscient.

A: Yeah, right, right, right. So I go into the subliminal through the vital.

M: I have a feeling… That makes sense to me

A: Yeah.

M: But because the vital has so much intensity to it that there’s still so much underneath the surface. So the vital to me is part of the subliminal, but you’ll get a surface one where you can see it and then you have an unconscious subliminal, because the vital is senses, and, to me, the subliminal is always sensing.

A: Subliminal actually is behind… subliminal means the inner consciousness. And there is the higher part of the subliminal and then there’s this, the icky part too, so...

M: I know. Right, it has it all.

A: It’s vertical, yeah, so you can go into the subliminal through the mind, through the vital, or through the physical.

M: Exactly. That makes sense that the connection is feeling, sensing…

A: Or through the subconscious. Yeah.

426

Discussion Story – Getting Integral Yoga Out There

[NOTE: This discussion occurred during Annie Dutts’ interview]

Annie: There’s this book [that talks about] the danger of premature claims to enlightenment. It’s a horrible book. I despise it, I’ve been trying to read it for 6 years, I’m halfway through and I just cannot finish it. It’s the whole thing about you shouldn’t talk about your experiences, all your experiences are nothing, your experiences are worthless, you’re having bliss, that’s not enlightenment. You shouldn’t talk about it, you shouldn’t think you’re so great, and you should only talk to your guru about your spiritual experiences. Okay, all of that for Integral Yogis is wrong, wrong, wrong. Number one, we don’t have an embodied guru, there is no one to talk to anymore. And all those gurus out there don’t make it, they’re so much less than Sri Aurobindo. And nobody understands Sri Aurobindo’s yoga. Ken Wilbur doesn’t understand the yoga, nobody gets it, you cannot ask anyone, any of these gurus who are so small compared to Sri

Aurobindo about the yoga, you cannot. So you can’t talk to [a] guru about this yoga and

[the book says] experiences are worthless. All those compact discs [that are sold], you know [those feelings] you have, experiences of ananda and bliss, there is nothing in there.

The book talks about a guy is sitting in, in Zazen and he goes to his doroshi and he says,

“I’m experiencing a wave of bliss, I’m one with everything.” and [his teacher] goes,

“Don’t tell me about it, I don’t want to hear, go sit and meditate.” So it happens again and he goes to his teacher, and he says “I’m full of bliss,” and he says “Don’t tell me about it, go meditate.” Third time he goes and the teacher says, “You’re wasting my time; you’re taking the place of someone who really wants to be enlightened. If you can’t stop talking

I want you to leave.” 427

Okay, so all these experiences and these traditional spiritualities are considered worthless because they’re to get into total nondualism, outside of manifestation.

In Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga, these are powers that are part of the supramental nature and they are valid and they are unavoidable and, and they’re good. So, if you have the experience of ananda that’s good, [although] you shouldn’t get caught in it. And if you have the experience of being able to send out shakti and influence happenings in the world, that’s good, that is power, and all these things are going to be powers of the next species. So these experiences are valuable.

And then finally, this business about not talking about experiences to anyone, that comes from a younger age in humanity I think, when these experiences were very rare and humanity was in the animal stages and the spiritual people were in the caves. Right now we’re on the edge of an evolutionary leap where there’s going to be a massive jump forward. And these spiritual teachings are available all over the place now, and I think now that we’re up to the universal mind level, we have become sophisticated and we can use the mind. Sri Aurobindo said use the mind, it’s the highest part of your being, you can use that to bootstrap yourself up into the higher consciousness. So this business about sharing findings and talking about the Yoga and collaborating in consciousness, I totally believe that that is what we’re supposed to be doing. [And so] that is a bad book.