Cultural Integration Fellowship Talk: Challenges We Face, Individually, Collectively and in the World at Large in Light of the Mother's Work

0:04 So the Cultural Integration Fellowship, which is sponsoring this program, was founded by Doctor Hari Das and Beena Chowdhury, And I have a personal relationship to that. When I came to the United States to take up this work actively in the 1970s, there were a few centers around run by forerunners, you could say, who came here and presented the teachings of Shrioro Bindu and the mother and developed various things. There was the Sedona Center with AB Purani. There was Mata Giri with Eric and Sam, and Doctor Tieberg in Los Angeles and Hari Dawson, Vina Chaudhary in San Francisco. And what's interesting is that all of those forerunners had their own unique perspective on things and started various centers and programs and lectures, whatever. But Doctor Chaudhary had a larger vision. He didn't found a center, he started an institution. And that institution is vibrant, active and powerful in the world today through the California Institute as well as the Cultural Integration Fellowship,

1:36 in bringing this new light into the world. In the 1970s, I was living in Southern California. I had a much closer relationship with the East West Center at that time. But whenever I came to San Francisco, I would meet with Doctor Chaudhary. I've stayed at the Fulton Street address at the Cultural Integration Fellowship when Pondici gave his talks there. I was present at that. And at various times I assisted Dr. Chowdhury to my great benefit in running his book table for him when he was giving lectures at various places.

2:20 So the relationship was very close and very formative for me as a young person to come into the sphere of influence of such a a luminary. And so I am so grateful and so moved by the work that he has done and that Bina carried on that It's my pleasure to introduce our speaker today, which is Santosh Krinsky on the platform of the Cultural Integration Fellowship. I don't have any wise words or sayings or poems from Doctor Choudhury which our friend Kundan normally presents. So with that, I think we'll just get started. Oh together may He protect us,

3:53 together may He possess us. Together may we make unto US strength and virility. May our study be full to us of light and power. May we never hate Ohm. Peace, peace, peace. So the topic today is we live in challenging times. What do we do about it? How do we face that? People think that there are so many dangers, so many risks, so many problems in the world that it's impossible for little people like us to do anything about it. And on the same token, we often feel victimized by those forces and we feel stress, we feel anxiety, we're worried. In many cases, those macro forces impact us in our daily lives, whether we want to recognize it or not. We think, well, I don't get involved in politics and I'm not involved in the whole economic thing and I can't solve war and peace, so I'll just go and do my little thing somewhere and try to pretend it doesn't exist and doesn't affect me, but it does. The pollution of our

5:26 environment, the microplastics are entering everybody's body and changing the DNA of humanity. We may think that we're immune to that, but we're not. It's affecting us and the issues of war and peace, with the mass migrations, with the destruction that's taking place, the climate change, that some people simply say that if we ignore it, it will go away. But the effects are real. Several years ago we had a pandemic and the whole world basically went through a trauma and societies virtually shut down and every person on the planet was essentially affected by it. Some of these things happen because of changed disease vectors that occur because of climate change. Some of these things occur because of the chemicals that we're putting into our lives and into our world. Some of these things happen through pure greed and mismanagement of the vital nature of humanity. Where some people just feel like they have to take over and control everything and everyone else can just starve and suffer and die.

6:52 So it affects the world, it also affects us. And we say, well, these are unique challenges, and in a certain way they are, but in a certain other way, they are part of the pressure of the birth of a new consciousness. If we look back when things are going easy, when everything's fine and, you know, we've got money and we've got our lives and our friends and our family and we feel good, we frequently forget sadhna. We frequently forget to focus on the spiritual efforts that we need to make.

7:39 Life is too easy. We want to kick back and enjoy it, and that's OK. That's that's human nature. But it takes that pressure of circumstance to force us to do something different. In the darkest of times, we find that the greatest spiritual progress can take place. Just think about it. The Bhagwad Gita, one of the greatest texts on how to live human life and take up a spiritual standpoint in life, was presented on the battlefield of a great civil war where teachers and disciples were going to be killing each other, where elders and grandparents were going to be killing their grandchildren and vice versa.

8:40 And yet this great spiritual text was brought forward at that time, coming a little closer to our age and time in the 19 teens we suffered through the war to end all wars, World War One. It was terrible. It was horrible. I don't remember it personally, but I've heard a council of it. And if we look and see, Shrioro Bindo was alive at that time and he didn't feel victimized. He didn't feel like there was nothing he could do. He was writing the Life Divine in the midst of that darkness. Think about that.

9:38 He was writing the Life Divine. In World War 2, another one of these major disasters, the Mother took up the challenge and started what eventually became the Mother School, the education facility that we see today in Pondicherry. As a result of taking in families, changing the entire nature of the ashram and expanding her work dramatically. We can say, well, OK, she responded.

10:21 She didn't look like a victim there, she responded to it. I won't get into the action that Trioral Bindo was taking from his room. The focus he made on bringing down and focusing a greater light to confront that greatest darkness. But it was there he rose to that challenge, and he met that challenge with spiritual development and growth, not just for himself, but for humanity. During that time, Trioro Binda was writing Savitri, a legend and a symbol. What better answer to the Nazi Holocaust than to bring down the light that Savitri represents for all of humanity and its future?

11:20 During the 1950s, we had the Cold War, we had nuclear bombs being tested. We had the Korean War, we had all kinds of cataclysms that were intensifying the pressure in our world, and during the 1950's the mother declared the descent of the Super mental consciousness into the material world. How do we understand these juxtapositions between great darkness and consciousness? During the 1960s, worldwide upheaval.

12:01 Societies were thrown into chaos. There were riots, there were mass protests, there was the Vietnam War and its effects all over the world, and the mother founded Oroville. In each instance, people experienced tremendous pressure, and the response was to go deeper, to dig deeper, to focus more intensely on the birth of the new consciousness that needed to come about. You know, I'm reminded of Charles Dickens in his Tale of Two Cities. He wrote, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

12:47 And that pretty much summarizes it for us. So we think that we're living in a time of great upheaval and disaster and difficulty and we don't know what's going to happen. That's true. We are. And that's our opportunity to step up to the birth of the new consciousness. The the challenges we face are unable to be solved by the physical consciousness, by the vital consciousness, or even by the mental consciousness. When we try to do that with the mental consciousness, we come up with gridlock.

13:37 We come up with conflicting ideas that essentially stop each other from acting. And then the solution to that in many people's minds is let's have a dictator who can just tell us what to do and we'll all just follow along. That's not a solution. It doesn't solve humanity's problem. It's simply creates another mental opportunity for unintended consequences and failures. So at the same time, if we look around the world, we see particularly young people yearning for something new, something different, for a new consciousness, for a spiritual realization.

14:31 They abandoned the traditional churches and they take up spiritual practices, whether it's yoga or Zen or the Chinese martial arts or whatever it might be, because they are seeking. They feel this urge to do something different, to grow in a different way. And this aspiration leads to what Trior Obindo called the adventure of consciousness. However people take it up and whatever method or practice or option they choose, they are exploring consciousness and they're doing it because they can't do otherwise. They feel that pressure.

15:25 The Mother called for people of goodwill, whoever they are, not devotees of Srioro Bindu and the Mother necessarily, but people of goodwill. She said the world is preparing for a big change. Will you help? What is that change? Is it a new economic system? Is it a new political system? Is it a new way of creating technology that's going to magically solve our problems? No, it's none of those things. It's the birth of a new consciousness that is based in what Trioro Bindo called the Super mental. Essentially meaning it is the consciousness at the next stage above the mind.

16:25 And this process is part of the evolution of nature. We see life evolving out of matter, we see mind evolving out of life, and we see the Super mental evolving out of mind. And this is the natural progression. The the issue, or the problem if you will, is that the pressures we're under are existential pressures. They're pressures that lead us into what we currently see as the 6th planetary die off. In.

17:11 The world, it's an enormous, fast changing, powerful destructive force that can destroy humanity and we can't wait for the long March of evolution to accomplish this. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother recognize that, and they said that through conscious participation, through yoga, through the individual focus, we can speed up within ourselves the natural, slow evolutionary process.

17:59 And therefore, to meet the challenge of the times, we are all called upon to help to practice the yoga, to integrate this spiritual principle so deeply embedded in our lives that it radiates out from us. We've all heard of the 100th monkey phenomenon, where a monkey was washing his fruit and another monkey took it up and another one in the same group, and then at a certain point enough monkeys were doing it in that group that the whole world's monkey started washing their fruit. Now whether this is factual or some kind of urban legend, it doesn't really matter because the principle is the same. We live in one unified sphere of consciousness, and the more people that take up this practice, the more people who actually try to live according to the force that is descending, a supra mental force, who try to understand the principles of harmony, the principles of collaboration, the principles of oneness, and who try to live

19:33 according to that, the more chance we have of creating a shield for the world from these destructive forces. Each evolutionary stage involved tremendous cataclysmic changes, and some people say, well, what can we do to stop all these changes? Actually, some of these changes are part of the evolutionary process. When life evolved out of matter, various forms of matter were.

20:15 Radically changed. They were no longer what they were when they started. When mind evolved out of life, life also changed and matter changed. And now we dig into the genetic code and we do all kinds of gene splicing and we design new things, we create new things, we create new forms of matter. Microsoft the other day came out and said they've developed a new form of, of matter other than the ones that we're used to. Someone else found out that light was now able to be observed in 37 dimensions, not just the three or four that we're recognizing.

21:07 So mind changes life and matter, and we have to expect that the Super mind, the Super mental force will change mind, life and matter itself. How is it going to do that? What impact does it have? We saw in World War 2 that the cities of Germany were totally destroyed through day and night, carpet bombing, total destruction. And out of that total destruction arose a modern, new powerful society. That doesn't justify the suffering, but it points out that in some cases, in most cases, you have to remove obstacles that our habits, that our ways of doing things that our institutions have created that are no longer solutions to the problems we're facing.

22:20 They say that humanity is always fighting the last war, not the next one, and it's the same way with the developments of societies and consciousness and our role in them. We're trained as young children and all through our lives to live a certain way based on the institutions and the forms that have accreted over time and become solidified. And yet these very forms, in many cases are are the obstacles to the next evolution. And so our challenge is, can we find ways to evolve without necessarily disrupting the whole world with suffering and change those institutions?

23:22 Or are the cataclysmic type of changes we're seeing today the the way of the divine to clear the deck, so to speak, so that the new consciousness can manifest? Now there's probably some truth in both sides of that. So it's something for us to to reflect on. Not all destruction is bad if it is taking away things that are hindering the next step. It needs to be done now to to give sort of a gruesome example of in the 1700s in France they had a king and they had aristocrats who controlled everything and the people were starving.

24:18 They were totally destitute. They had no political power, they had no economic power. And the aristocrats lived a life of ease and joy, with endless amounts of money they could spend on frivolous things. And eventually the people became so aggrieved with their own poverty and destitution and suffering that they undertook what we know of as the French Revolution. And they employed a destructive technique called Madame le Guillotine to ensure that those aristocrats could not retake and regain that power over them.

25:10 Now, I'm not a revolutionary in the sense of lopping off people's heads, but I use that as an example of what happens to forward change in the world. Now we can see and we can we can even argue that the people who took over after the king and the aristocrats were gone had their own problems. In fact, they reproduced a lot of the abuses at their level that the former king and aristocrats had because they grew up in that system. They didn't evolve beyond the system. They simply replaced the rulers of the system. And so that was not a solution.

26:02 We see today in the world retrogressive forces, forces that say we want to go back to the way it was 50 years ago or 100 years ago. That was such a better time. Well, what they're really saying is that change has moved so quickly in our society that they cannot address it or adapt to it. They have a conservative mindset, habituated and acculturated in a particular way of seeing and doing things. And the fact that life in the 1920s and life today are so different than people born in the 1920s who are still alive, find it virtually impossible to recognize the world and and deal with it.

27:01 They feel lost. They feel like what is going on? Everything is moving so quickly. We've got rocket ships, we go to the moon. We've got atomic weapons and we've got threats. We've got genetic engineering. We've got pandemics. What what's going on here? We've got technology we can't understand. We've got AI that is able to, I'll think most of us. So of course, people who grew up in that cultural background, in that societal background, in that economic and political background find it impossible. It's like, well, back in those days we didn't have black people running things.

27:59 We didn't have women out there making themselves known in the society. We didn't have all those things. These are just terrible things. These people think they're not terrible things. They're progress of humanity recognizing our inherent oneness and the oneness of our mental, vital and physical capabilities, regardless of the physical form that we happen to take. But that resistance creates a lot of problems. And the reason it creates problems is that essentially these are the people with the power. They've got the government in their hands, they make the laws, they enforce the laws, they've got policing power, they've got economic power.

28:59 And those who have used that and developed and implemented these new technologies have tremendous powers of control over all of the workings of society. And so they think the solution to all this is to suppress all these progressive things that are going on and create a new aristocracy and a new dictatorship. And they think that by doing that, the world will be a better place, a better place 100 years ago. In today's world.

29:40 It isn't going to happen. It's not the movement and trend of history. So the mother says the world is preparing for a big change. We recognize that. We see the change. We see the opposition to the change. And so the question then is what can we do? And the first thing is sincerity in the practice of the yoga within ourselves. And the second thing is radiating that into whatever spheres of society you're in. In a time of great darkness, we need to spread light. In a time of ignorance, we need to bring forth knowledge. In a time of ugliness, we need to manifest beauty. In a time of disharmony, we need to manifest harmony. In a time of hatred, we need to express love. If we do those things, we will have an impact. We think we're just small people and we're hidden away. Well, consciousness is universal, and the more powerfully we integrate these things into our awareness and consciousness, the more

31:11 powerfully we act upon them. The more powerfully we stand up for these principles, the more impact it has. You may not see it with all the chest beating and trumpets blaring and drums drumming everywhere of the vital consciousness trying to hold on and hang on in its last gasp of trying to manage the world. You may not see it, but it's active nevertheless. That is why the mother could declare that the Super mental consciousness has manifested in matter and we see the changes over time, the evolutionary changes that are happening with revolutionary speed, the yearning of the young people for spiritual development, the growth of a movement around the world towards understanding and oneness and mutuality. Despite the control of oligarchs and Dragons who sit on huge piles of money and let everyone else starve, we see this. We can't control them, but we can be true to what we see, what we understand, and what we know.

32:42 The new consciousness is farther, seeing wider, harmonize conflicting ideas, and able to see a way forward that we cannot see with our mental consciousness. It's able to resolve imbalances. And so if we align ourselves with that, if we begin to try to widen our perspective, become more inclusive, look at the habits that are ingrained within ourselves, that maybe just breathe these instant reactions.

33:23 And as we look from within, we say, oh, maybe I can change that reaction within myself. And who knows? You or I or some other person we don't yet know becomes that 100th monkey who flips the script unconsciousness on the planet. We see the catastrophic forces. I look at it as the birth pangs of the new consciousness. Any woman who has undergone birth of a child knows what I'm talking about. The birth pangs, I know it's sort of vicariously because I was there when my wife gave birth to her two children and it was pretty intense.

34:21 It was very intense. They say that the pain threshold that women undergo in childbirth is greater than the pain threshold or virtually any other pain that we undergo. And yet they they do this and bring forth new life and New Hope. Swami Vivekananda tells us be fearless. The mother asks us to collaborate in the changes, side with the future. If it seems impossible, if the existential threat seems bigger, it's because the opportunity is bigger.

35:08 So what can we do? We need to not surrender to the darkness. We need to not give up hope. And the Mother confronted the forces, and they brought light, and they brought harmony. And they've told us the way forward. The Mother set the stark truth before us. We have an existential choice, she said. Truth or the abyss.

35:49 And that's our challenge. So thank you. Let's open it up for discussion and questions. And I'm not really experienced with all these hand raisings and callings on people. Let's just try it. Let's see what happens. Good morning. Thank you so much for the overview.

36:32 Two things came up that I thought might be helpful for references for future thought and that is some of us are familiar with the human cycle. And for me, I just say a lot of what you have expressed the the dilemma of the everyday response versus the opening to the descent, what I think Shrier Bindo, first of all, many of us didn't know, we know the spiritual side of Shrier Bindo, We know the poetic side.

37:16 We don't necessarily know his genius with understanding the movements of civilization, especially political. So for me, it just gives you that Longview so that you can see forces like you were saying when just in our time, but in a longer period of forces coming together, what creates that tipping point? So it it helped me, let's say context, it really helped and and I'm just putting that out to the group. And the last thing that you were quoting a lot about from the Mother in her view of what's happening and, and how to prepare or how to do your practice in the Mother's vision, there's actually a passage about how to deal with catastrophe, which mirrors a lot of what you've said today. That and, and she says she uses it specifically and says Sri Rabindra did this during World War 2. So what I'm trying to say is that you have brought through a context and a view that is really practical and can really support not only our individual

38:47 practice, but our collective. And as someone who it is not given to a calm temperament or is not given to being objective, the practice of yoga makes life so much more doable. And, you know, that's, that's very true, that the human cycle is powerful in its understanding and widening of our view of the movements of civilization. Actually, in tomorrow's blog post, which I was writing this morning or or maybe this morning's blog post, I sometimes lose track of time.

39:35 There's a passage from the mother in there and she's talking about does the best always happen? OK, Is everything that happens for the best? And what she says is very interesting. After the fact, what happened is what had to happen. But at the time of the event, depending on your standpoint and state of consciousness, you can impact that. And in the blog post I pointed out that in quantum physics they say that the observer changes the result and so.

40:22 If you look at yourself as a participant or observer and you see that the event coming, you can change that. And so the mother was more or less describing in human and yoga terms the what we see the scientists describing in quantum physics, and that is that you can change the event by your state of consciousness. That's exactly what she says in this writing at the end of the mother's vision on catastrophe. One last thing, you may recall this more accurately, but I think I recall that the mother said to Shri Rabindo was kind of complaining why did it happen this way?

41:12 And Shri Rabindo said it was the best the grace could do in the circumstances. Exactly. It's it's really true. We're living in a world that is very complex with forces working over millennia, and we can't simply wave a magic wand over it and expect it all to transform magically and instantly into a land of rainbows. I mean, it just doesn't work like that. And so you take incremental development. You take sometimes unseen incremental development and that's why they say you have to have the faith that what you're doing is going to have that longer term benefit.

42:02 And that's why I always talk about what I call the 1% solution. And that is, you make 1% change today, and over 3 or 400 years, you've got a huge difference in the slope of the change. So we're not expecting that magically the greed and the bullying and the anger and all those other things are magically going to go away and we're going to have a world of total harmony. We're expecting that over time, humanity will come to recognize that that is not the way to live and coexist and thrive.

42:47 And they will make that change because you and I and so many other people are expressing that. And exactly. Thanks. Thanks Santosh for for the whole framing. I very much agree with all of your analysis or or presentation. A couple of different things came up. You know, one of them maybe we'll we'll come to this if there's more time. But I'd like to hear more from you later about what you said about mind changing life and matter.

43:30 And I'll rephrase this in a, in a, in a way. But before that, I just wondered, yeah, what Margaret was just saying. I think part of part of this is also the fact that what we call good or bad is, is, is not that simple. You know, it's more like an egoic framework, you know, that we use. I, I remember Tibetan Buddhist story, I won't go into it, but there's a whole series of events happen when one person tells the other, Oh, it was so good that this happened. And then, oh, it was so bad that it happened because as time progresses, a new context develops and you look back at what was good and what was bad, and you see it in terms of the consequences. And you say, oh, by the way, it wasn't that bad, You know, and a lot of us do this in our lives, you know, we look at what we think were difficulties or problems or turning points in our lives which were difficult.

44:33 But once we see the new consequences, we can say, oh, after all, it wasn't that bad. So I think it's kind of hard to for me to kind of make those judgments. I sort of suspended as much as possible. But one thing that I'm very convinced about for some reason, and I want to hear from you on this, is that I, I want to hold on to my own little version of truth consciousness as much as possible. In looking at all these things, I actually see very small people in these great figures in politics and, you know, all the news and stuff like that. I don't see great human beings. I see angry and unhappy people.

45:16 I, you know, they have the reins, they have the power, but I feel no jealousy whatsoever for their condition and their state of mind. You know, the only thing I'm concerned about is the harm that they do to others, you know, and, and, and so, so is there any use in, you know, by the way, I should also add that I also see what's going on right now as a new manifestation of the Prince of Falsehood. I think I see every sign of that. I won't go into that, but do you think there's any chance in our little yoga to, to do some opposition to these forces by sort of maybe holding on to truth consciousness to begin with? Because much of the world is in such delusion about what they're seeing.

46:10 That seems to me that holding up the truth, even in your own mind is a great exercise. You know, 'cause we might, we might wobble from that from time to time as well. But any opposition actually from a yogic point of view, in our small ways, do you, what do you see about that? Do you recommend that? Well, I don't recommend anything particular to anybody. What I recommend is you look in your own heart and see what your moved and what's your mission and what your focus is to do. And if you're called upon to do that, I would wholeheartedly support that.

46:55 But not everybody can take up opposition. Some people are not meant to be spiritual warriors in that sense, and they will just get basically beaten down if they take it up. Others have a stronger vital capability of withstanding that, and they can take that up. But if you're not prepared for it, don't go there. Do something in a field where you are prepared. If you're an artist, do art. If you're a musician, do music.

47:36 And if you're a spiritual warrior in the political and economic world, well, so be it. You'll have our blessings and support as much as we can give that. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly my concern, you know. But I'll, I'll wait for my second question because I see Roger raising his hand. I'll I'll come back if there's time. OK, thank you. Hi, this is I really appreciate it, this conversation and it's been up for me a lot. You know, there's so much doom and gloom out there amongst people I know, people I don't know out there in the Internet, a lot of doom and gloom. People have very dreary responses to all this. And I've been responding without getting deeply philosophical. I mean, even the 12 step program has bottoming out. You have to bottom out before you can transform. Dark Night of the Soul.

48:40 You know, we, we, these concepts have been with us all along. And sometimes it's just a, a slight change in perspective. You know, we talked about those polarities before disharmony to harmony and hate to love. And I was thinking how sometimes the opposite of love is not hate, it's fear. And there's, there's and sometimes just a little change in perspective could have such a big impact. I, I saw something on the Internet this morning. There was a woman in pre World War 2 Germany and, and during the war, I forget her name, she was an American that went to Germany before things started to collapse to study some discipline. I don't remember what it was.

49:37 And she stayed there as the whole thing was devolving. And she created a little mini movement. She brought together a very diverse group of people, artists, politicians, writers, philosophers. And they created a resistance movement. They got a lot of Jewish people out of Germany. And she had a a big little impact. And eventually she was arrested and she was convicted and Hitler overloaded the conviction and instead of sending her to prison, she was executed. And I was thinking of people, look at this story sometimes some people and, and it's oh, how terrible. But I'm thinking what a satisfying life she LED. I have, I have a, a feeling, my projection is, is that she died with a certain sense of satisfaction. And I and I see it as a positive story and the kind of impact that her life and her activities and other people kind of helping this movement along.

50:46 And so, yeah, I, I, I don't know, sometimes when I'm not caught up in the doom and gloom is, is that my kind of Reichian armor and my, my denial and my kind of male insensitivity or by seeing things in a, in a deeper kind of appreciation. And sometimes it's hard to tell, but I appreciate that, that this conversation is something anybody can appreciate. It, it, it, you bring in the, the deep philosophical context, but most any bright person could, could be participating in this conversation and get the message.

51:30 So I, I, I like the way you're able to kind of, you know, balance those those elements very nicely. Thank you. Well, thank you. That was that was actually a very motivational story you told. And I'm very much in favor of people doing what they see they can do. You know, I said somewhere recently there's some people who are called to feed the hungry. Well, please do that. There are others who are called to clean up the environment. Some are called to fight against big oil. Whatever it might be, if that's your mission, please carry it out. Do it with goodwill.

52:18 Don't do it with falling into the energy that you're fighting. Don't become that. Because if you become that, then just like in the French Revolution, you're just trading one set of oppression for another. But actually do it without hatred. As Sri Krishna told to Arjuna, your job is to kill all of these relatives and respected elders and and teachers, etcetera. But don't do it with hatred, do it with respect, goodwill and love and understanding that your job is to help clear the field of retrogressive forces and that he was the spiritual warrior of his day and he carried that out. So not all of us are called to be Arjuna, but we are called in whatever field we act upon to bring that new vision, bring that new consciousness and manifest it. Not just meditate and then turn into something else when we go out of the meditation, but actually begin to manifest it in every way we can, as much as we can, given that we are human beings and we too are part of that evolutionary change that's got to take place.

53:58 I see Ted has his hand up. I do, all right. Do you hear me? Do you hear me? OK. Oh, you're great. OK this this laptop sometimes works. If you lose the sound let me know. I just reboot it and it'll work fine. I really enjoyed this talk. You can't imagine how much I enjoyed this talk. I miss hard as Chowdhury, I miss the ashram, all the things that I used to experience, particularly the wonderful Indian lunches after the program. So what I'd like to do is just the reason I, I enjoyed this so much as it's such a refreshing view. You know, I'm running a homeless shelter. So I'm in an environment that is extremely challenging. And this is really a breath of fresh air. I, I thank you so much.

54:55 I just thought I'd like to go over quickly. To me, the universe is working just fine. You know, we're about four and a half billion years into it. The universe is about 50 1/2 billion years old. Everything that we look up and see probably is totally different now. You know, it's taking a long time for light to reach us. So whatever the universe is, totally is, is obviously something quite different than what we assume it is now. The planet Earth has experienced 3 total catastrophes where nearly nearly all life was destroyed and in 15 to 16 billion years, 15 to 16 million years, it came back even better. You know So what you're what you've noticed is that in catastrophe at the the catastrophe has some purpose because everything in the universe is working as it should.

55:54 I, I really firmly believe that, you know, when we get up in the morning every the, the, we are a visitor in a body that's working as well as it was the day before. And we, you know, if we went through deep sleep, then we wake up, we're still what we were. We still have that experience of being, which is the essence. So my take at the moment is that I feel very privileged because I may witness in my lifetime whether or not the human species is going to survive. I'm not sure, you know, I don't, I'm not, There's nothing I can bet on this one. But if the human species does destroy its planet and itself, I'm very, very sure that in 15 to 16,000,000 years it'll be much better.

56:53 So that's what I tell my friends, Don't, don't despair. You know, things look really bad right now, but in the big picture it's really just fine. Well, that's a great perspective and let me say I I thank you for your efforts of running a homeless shelter. The issue of homelessness is a serious one that affects everybody and it's a human created issue. I, I, I can tell you the, the fundamental cause of all the homeless people that I've encountered. We, we shelter 20 and we have over 90. You know that we service, we have service from six days a week and we do free Sunday dinners and a lot of things. We have showers and bathrooms and laundry, you name it. But every single individual that I have spent time with has what we call ACE, that's adverse childhood experiences. They can be 4050, sixty years old. You sit in a car with them for 45 minutes on the way to an appointment and the first thing they will talk about is how horrible their childhood was.

58:11 Yes, these are human caused issues and it's good that people are taking that seriously and working with those who have these issues and who as a result experienced tremendous physical and vital and mental suffering. So thank you somebody else, Andy. Yeah, I wanted to first say thank you, Santosh. It felt so good to be here, not only the content of your talk, but the way you deliver such a calming energy. Even though we're talking about quite challenging topics and I do, I have a question.

58:56 It's a sincere question. It might be a bit complicated, but going back to the beginning, like right in the beginning you talked about all the forces and things going on in the world and the way in which we can fall into victimhood and feeling victimized by it. So I'm curious to dive into that a little bit. And as some context, I recently listened to a lecture by an R Bendonian who is Indian and has lived in India their whole life. And he kind of made a point that said, you know, Westerners often ask me a lot about self esteem and how to build people's self esteem.

59:38 And he kind of broke with the entire paradigm and said kind of cutting to the chase, like when you're rooted in your Sababa and your Saba Dharma, like self esteem is not really even a relevant concept because you're really in alignment with your own soul and with the divine. And I think similarly, I'm sure I've been doing the mother often are constantly offering us this like much deeper and deeper and deeper and layered. Nuanced view of the world. So my question around when do you feel like a victim? I, I myself think about this a lot. Like, how do I on one hand, surrender to the mother and be in alignment with that, but also how do I on the human level, step out of being a victim and be more assertive? And the other piece I'd like to say is like culturally, I feel particularly probably since the 60s, maybe it's a timeless thing, but because of social justice issues like becoming more and more and more front and Center for people. But like most social justice issues in a way always involve a group or a person being victimized. And so I think there's just from from my perspective, that could be right or wrong or incomplete.

1:01:01 Like the sense of being a victim is more alive in culture for both very valid and good reasons. But also it can be like a really slippery like to identify as the victim can be this profoundly slippery, disempowering place to become identified with and fall into. So thank you for hearing all of that. Coming back to the question, like, you know, in light of Shere I've been to and the mother in the same sense of like, in the way in which self esteem is like valid on one level. And on a deeper level. We can, we can dispense with it from your from your view and life experience of intrical yoga.

1:01:41 Other than like, I think we all align on like faith and the mother. There's something deeper going on here. Like, is there anything else you might draw on in your own life to, you know, if you identify feeling like a victim in a yogic way, how you step out of that? Well, let's let's try. I appreciate your question. And my view is that if you're in a space where you can identify with your deeper Dharmic mission and not the ego personality, then you don't have that issue. But not all of us are there or there all the time. And so we still have to struggle with and deal with the day-to-day stuff and it's sometimes very oppressive. And to deal with that, part of it is seeing if you can just shift your standpoint enough to recognize that that is the ego and the external nature and sort of play with it rather than feel like you're controlled by it.

1:02:55 That may help sort of the separation of the witness consciousness from the active nature. And the other thing is that if you're called upon to address this, I, I look at social justice issues not as being more prevalent now, but if you look at the history of humanity, there's always been all kinds of oppression in most societies. And the fact that it was accepted and normal to have slaves to treat women as commodities.

1:03:35 I mean, you can go back into some of the scriptures of some of the religions and it's it's like these are just normal things. And over time, as we grow in awareness and grow in consciousness, it's no longer normal. And that's where you become awake to the feeling of victimhood because you say, well, OK, I'm being oppressed. That's great. That's the first step of awareness to say that this isn't the way it needs to be, This isn't the oneness and the harmony that we're working towards. And therefore it motivates you to action, to be what you want to see in the world, to step away from your victimhood.

1:04:27 Take that as a challenge and work to create a place where nobody needs to feel like a victim. And that's going to take possibly more than your lifetime or my lifetime. But you can see it changing radically in front of us. And you can see the reaction to that in today's society around the world, where people who are used to the old ways of looking at things, the patriarchic and the controlling ways of looking at things are gassed. And they want to do everything they can to beat this down, but they can't succeed at it. Because once people wake up and realize that the system, the habits of society, the habits of humanity are based on a wrong premise, you can't put that toothpaste back into the tube. Thank you.

1:05:38 It seems to me that hi everybody and I'm sorry for making making lunch noises at the beginning. If you heard that I didn't, I wasn't muted. Seems to me, you know, given know thyself that, you know, as Roger mentioned, powerlessness and helplessness, which are, you know, part of the victimhood experience. And we're all, I don't know, I'm speak for myself, feeling victimized by the current regime that's coming in like a blitzkrieg.

1:06:23 But there you have a feeling that isn't readily delighted in, let's put it that way, in our culture. And yet here it is. You know, it's like when it shows up, especially at a time of introspection, a time of quiet, when you can really explore it or let it speak, you know, in its language and prioritize the feel of it rather than the message. You know that gets merged with it from the mental, You know, I, I. Don't know of any other way and. Yes, in the 12 steps, you know, admitted we were powerless and that our lives had become unmanageable as we try to flee that feeling or fight it and then, you know, moving on, made a decision to turn our lives over to a larger context. So it's that it's the.

1:07:31 Same work I. Think yeah. I mean. Awareness and and fineness. Allowing permission. It's hard work, but it's good work well. Thank you. I think that's a good response to Andy's question as well. Well, I see we're getting close to time here. If there any other people who want to chime in here, please do so. And then if not then we can wrap it up for today. And ahead of that, I want to thank everybody for your efforts and your the shining light that you bring here into our collective gathering, our Satsang together. And I very much appreciate that.

1:08:32 Thank you so much. Thank you, Santosh. Thanks everyone. Great to see everyone and feel. The force working within us. Bye. Wellman OK, bye bye bye. Bye everybody. You try to find my way.