What Can We Each Do to Support the Evolution of Consciousness?

0:00 Intimation, but it's starting. OK, so it's eleven O 1 Pacific Time. Why don't we begin the session just to avoid feedback and muting people.

0:46 So namaste everyone. Welcome to the Cultural Integration Fellowship and thank you for joining us. We were founded in 1951 by Doctor Haidas and Veena Choudhury at the centre of universal religion and spiritual practice and in keeping with the spirit of unity and diversity, we honour the spiritual traditions of diverse cultures and religions. Today's talk is by Santosh Krinsky titled What can we each do to support the evolution of Consciousness? Santosh has been studying Sharevindo's writings since 1971 and has a daily blog at sharevindostudies.wordpress.com and podcast located at Anchor dot FM slash Santosh Dash Prinsky.

1:48 He is the author of 20 books and is editor in chief at Lotus Press. He is the president of the Institute for Holistic Education, a nonprofit focused on integrating spirituality into daily life. Videos, presentations, interviews and podcast episodes are all available on the YouTube channel. The URL is youtube.com at Santosh Krinsky 871. More information about Sherbindo can be found at arbindo.net.

2:30 The US editions and links to ebook editions of Sherbindo's writings can be found at Lotus Press with the with the URL lotuspress.com. So before I formally invite Santosh to make his presentation, I have something from Doctor Hedad Choudhury from this book, The Prophet of Live Divine. Instead of reading from his writings, I'm going to read a paragraph.

3:14 There's a very interesting story behind this book. In 1998, even before I had gone to San Francisco, this book was presented to me by my aunt, who is a resident of the ashram. I pulled this book out from the shelves and I thought that I should read something from the book. It's from the section Individuality and Activity perceived as compatible with spiritual Illumination.

3:55 Doctor Anita shall rewrites. But is it not active cooperation with the creative impetus incompatible with the attainment of the highest state of spiritual illumination? Is not all action but blind movement of the ignorance? Or in other words, do not all works proceed from non discriminating self identification of the spirit with nature? That indeed is what the time honoured tradition of ascetic mysticism would affirm. Moreover, perfect union with the Supreme is affirmed to be destructive not only of activity but of individuality itself.

4:48 On the attainment of complete liberation, Nirvana and Moksha, there is supposed to be a total secession of all being in absolute not, or a static absorption of the individual self in the supra individual spirit. This removes even the remotest possibility of all action. Dissolution of individuality not only renders action impossible, but makes all talk of it meaningless. The philosophy of integral non dualism, however, exposes the untenability of this whole line of thinking.

5:35 It sheds a new light upon the concept of individuality and activity. It shows that they are perfectly compatible with the highest form of liberation or spiritual elimination. There is no reason why individuality should be dissolved at the drawing of the sun of pure knowledge. Individuality is emphatically not a product of ignorance or Maya. What depends upon the action of ignorance is the individualization of the lower nature, the ego, the limited and unsatisfactory character of the surface being.

6:22 This is a beautiful section. You know from this chapter the philosophical basis of Integral Yoga, and I already gave you the section from which these lines have been taken. Let's meditate on these words for a couple of minutes and then I formally invite Santosh to make his presentation.

7:09 1 BHK flat 1000 SQFT for rent in Kanpur, and that you could begin.

9:11 Namaste, welcome all of our friends and Guru by here on this auspicious occasion of being able to join with the Kundan and the Cultural Integration Fellowship and the spirit of Doctor Choudhury and Bina Choudhury, whom we very much love and respect for their efforts. Kundan made a little bit of a mistake this time and inviting me to talk and that is he said speak about whatever you like. And so we're going to cover a lot of ground today because I don't often get that opportunity.

9:57 And for anybody who has any thoughts, questions or whatever, I'm leaving some time at the end of the presentation for us to share and to raise questions, to share your own ideas and experience. And I encourage you, if you know something comes up along the way, make a little note so we don't lose it. And let's dive right in here. The question today is what can each of us do to support the evolution of consciousness? And the texture and background of that is that we start out as ego personalities.

10:43 We feel we experience the world, we grow up and get indoctrinated, if you will, into the idea that we are separate from the rest of the creation and that somehow we have to survive and thrive at the expense of other aspects of the creation. This is a dualistic perspective. It also permeates spiritual practice of the past, which Doctor Chowdhury and his paragraph so clearly illustrated. The idea that my meditation, my spiritual development is something I do separate from my life in the world and that I have to abandon the one in order to achieve the other. And that is a again, a form of dualism. And it remains rooted in ego, the idea that I am separate and I can be saved while the rest of creation can do whatever it pleases.

11:52 That creates for us a lot of confusion as we become awake and aware of spiritual development. We say, well, we want to meditate, we want to go on retreats, we want to do these things. And we create a duality in our own lives. We say, well, I don't have time to do the meditation right now because I have to go to work. We separate things into little compartments and that basically keeps us small, weak and helpless.

12:42 When we face the world, we come out and we see all the problems of the world. And we've gone over this in past talks about the existential crisis of humanity, all of the the myriad things that are vital and mental consciousness have created that are threatening to destroy our very existence and the need for an evolution of consciousness in order to save that. But we haven't yet understood the oneness, the non dual nature, as Doctor Choudhury points out of our existence. We are not separate from each other and we are not separate from the world as a whole.

13:31 We are those things that we see, we participate in them, whether we live isolated as hermits somewhere in a cave or a forest or a mountain retreat or a monastery, or we participate fully in the life of the world. And so the question then comes up, OK, we've tried political solutions. We've tried economic solutions, We've tried religious solutions, we've tried uniformity, trying to make everybody fit into the same bed of Procrustes that is somehow going to unify humanity.

14:18 And every one of these choices that we've made in the past, over thousands of years have failed. We are still faced with the same problems and the crisis has grown because we haven't yet addressed the core issue. One of the things that always impressed me about the philosophy and spirituality of India was the focus on the core conception of finding out that being known, what gives?

15:00 In other words, knowing what being known tells us everything about creation, that core principle. And that principle is that with the unity of our consciousness and our psychology and our relationship to the world, we have to find a way to make, as Sri Aurobindo points out, all life into yoga. And what does that mean from the grand perspective of the evolution of consciousness? Trior Obindo points out that nature is undertaking an evolution of consciousness, what he calls the yoga of nature, and it can take millennia. Human beings, as they awaken to their spiritual capacities, have the ability to consciously participate and help speed up the yoga of nature.

16:08 That does not necessarily mean that some individual is going to be able to escape the rest of humanity and somehow become enlightened and everyone else is still left behind. It really means that through individual practice and through our relationship to the external world that we experienced through our relationships with family, friends, acquaintances, work colleagues and our work in the world, that there is an interactive process that creates first of all, the texture of consciousness within humanity that textures our vital nature, our physical nature and our mental nature so that progress beyond into a new level of consciousness becomes possible.

17:11 And secondly, that through our evolutionary development, we vibrate back into that collectivity, that progress, and thereby help all of humanity gain the platform, if you will, of developing that next phase of consciousness. We are not separate. We require a change of human consciousness. People say it's impossible. You can't straighten out a dog's tail. They say, well, if we look at things, if we look at the history of humanity, we see that actually a change of consciousness is possible. It may be hard, it may take a long time. In the context of an individual human life, our 80 or 90 or 100 or 130 years, I think someone just died at the age of 117. The longest living person has now died, so 117 is where she was.

18:29 We don't see the change necessarily because the time frame of change is slower than the speed of our lives. There is a a difference in you can say time dilation as they would talk about in physics and astronomy nowadays so that the human life doesn't see the impact over time. But we can look back at history and we can see that huge changes in fact are taking place that represent a new level of consciousness. Look back 100 years and look to today. We see things that could not be imagined 100 years ago. I mean, think about it, 100 years ago, more or less women couldn't vote.

19:34 We didn't treat them as equal people in our society. They had to follow the dictates of the male direction. And nowadays we take the vote of women and the power of women for granted, actually, in many parts of the world. Is the change complete? Not yet, but we can see the change. Europe has changed, United States has changed, other parts of the world have changed. There's still change taking place, and there's still.

20:14 A resistance to it from those forces that want to maintain the status quo ante. That doesn't mean that a change of consciousness hasn't taken place. It means that it's still in process. We see a new awareness of people all over the globe. We see the Internet. We are able to join together in meetings like this. We're able to watch television and news cycles from all over the world, and suddenly we understand the issues, the sufferings, the opportunities, the cultural developments from all other places in the world.

21:01 When an earthquake occurs in Turkey and people are dying and rushed there, the world responds and sends aid. This is a new consciousness of unity of humanity that is slowly starting to permeate. We see the development of things like the United Nations as imperfect as it was formed because the powers that were wanted to maintain the powers that were. And so they set up things like, you know, the Security Council veto, etcetera, which has been a tremendous hindrance on the real power of the United Nations.

21:46 But nevertheless, the concept, the idea that humanity could work together to solve problems together, to avoid wars, to address worldwide issues became real. It used to be that one Kingdom would fight another Kingdom and one would become the emperor and one would become the vassal state and the emperor would tell everyone what to do, collect tribute, and that was it. Well, that time is changing. We see a new awareness of the environment. Go back to the 1950s only, which is 75 years.

22:28 Nobody really was talking about the issues of the toxic pollution caused by our industrial revolution, the issues of the chemicals that were going into the air, the land and the water. No one was talking really about the issues of climate change that we were greatly responsible for. And yet, Fast forward 70 years and the world is now recognizing these things as serious and real issues and working on it. We have the issue of increased interest in spiritual practice. This used to be something that was done by an individual who somehow in his local life and community woke up, became dissatisfied with what he saw as the goals in front of him, and he went and tried to find out what his spiritual purpose was, took up yoga or some kind of meditation practice or Buddhism or whatever it might be.

23:48 This used to be an individual phenomenon. Now it's a worldwide phenomenon, and we see people everywhere in the world wanting to understand who they are, what they are, why they're here, and take up some form of spiritual practice. We see new ideas about how we treat children. We see the abolition of slavery in many parts of the world. We see very, very serious issues of how we want to relate to each other, the sensitivity, the idea that there are new ways to relate rather than the former win lose psychology that has controlled humanity for how many millennia.

24:49 So these are all signs of a new consciousness, but there is actually another sign of a new consciousness that people don't always acknowledge, and that is the strength and the aggressiveness of the resistance to it. We see today an enormous resistance coming up, the idea of authoritarianism, the idea of dictatorial control, the idea of trying to roll back all these changes. And these resistances actually are a sign that this new consciousness is active. And those forces of the past, those forces of the status quo, feel it, understand it intuitively and reject it. And they feel like their existence is threatened. And as they say, a cornered beast is the most dangerous. And so instead of becoming concerned about, well, where is the change, we see all these retrogressive forces highly active in our world.

26:08 We can appreciate that they actually are a sign of the new consciousness. So once we recognize that a new evolutionary consciousness is possible, we have to look at, first of all, how does it come about? What do we, what do we do and how does that impact the situation of that texturing of consciousness of the whole world that needs to be coincident with our own individual action. The first thing is each individual, whoever you are, wherever you are, has the opportunity to work on the spiritual underpinnings of your life, change who I am, who you are, and then through the radiation principle of that energy, everyone else around us takes on some of that energy and over time we create change. I have an interesting example.

27:18 Back in 1973, I was residing at Trior Bindo Ashram in Pondicherry and for a short time I was working in the dishwashing section and I had the opportunity to meet and observe a man there by the name of Ram Krishna Das. Many of you have met him or heard of him. He was in his own right ahead of an ashram guru from Orissa, and he had come to the ashram and he was in the dishwashing section.

27:59 He was drying plates and he had such a peaceful and radiant demeanor. And people would come to him and they would touch his feet and they would ask for his blessings. And he was washing dishes. And yet he had an impact on many, many thousands of people, including people I know today, 50 years later in the United States. The impact radiates. We can't see it in our short human lives, but over time and over space, that change radiates.

28:42 Now, we've all heard about the butterfly effect, OK? And sometimes we laugh about the butterfly effect. Oh, the butterfly in Indonesia is going to flap its wings and the whole world's going to change. And we joke about that. OK, fine. Let's move beyond the butterfly effect for a moment and let's talk about the tsunami effect. You have an earthquake somewhere in Japan or Alaska or wherever it might be, and it starts a tsunami. And the tsunami starts out as maybe a one inch wave in the ocean. And by the time it hits a land mass on the other side of the world, it can be 10 or 20 or 30 feet high.

29:28 The impact at the point of meeting another part of the world is far greater than the observed starting point. We talked about the avalanche effect, how a small snowball or a boulder at the top of a mountain can roll down a mountain and create an avalanche that buries villages. Small starting point, large impact. We look at throwing a rock into a pond. Virtually everyone has done that. They've watched throwing a rock into a pond and you see ripples out and that's all great. That rock is very small.

30:16 The ripples are relatively small, but we don't internalize the impact of that. But go ask a dinosaur about the impact of a rock rippling in a pond. A rock that was .08% of the mass of the earth, came with sufficient concentration and force into one spot on the earth and wiped out most of the life on the planet, including the dinosaurs that had lived here for how many years?

30:59 How many hundreds of thousands or millions of years a rock .08%? Not even 1% of the mass of the earth had such an impact. Granted, it came with concentrated force, it came with momentum when it hit, but that is the type of work that each one of us can do in our own lives. As we develop in our spiritual practice and concentrate that force, we can have an outsized effect. I speak to people sometimes about what I call the 1% solution.

31:46 If you have a straight line of where humanity is going and you're able to change the trajectory in your time, even by 1% / 400 years, you're going to be this far different in terms of where you wind up. And so people say, well, OK, there's 8 billion people on the planet, what can I do? Well, everyone contributes to that texturing of consciousness, but people who are awake and aware and focused have an outsized influence. You don't have eight, 8 billion equally influencing people on the planet.

32:36 We look at. We have an example here in the United States of someone by the name of Johnny Appleseed. OK, now he was a a pastor and he ran a nursery and he went around a number of States and arranged to have thousands of apple trees planted. And even today people are eating apples in this country because Johnny Appleseed went out and did what he did. So we say, OK, well, we see many, many such examples. Obviously, names percolate to the top. When we think about it, Da Vinci and Beethoven and Shrioro Bindo and who knows who else is out there there. There's so many names, Doctor Chowdhury, who have outsized influence.

33:34 We see people that you may never have heard of. There was Catherine Long and the Lady Doubting in the United Kingdom, and back in 1963 they decided that they wanted to address the issue of animal testing of cosmetics, the torturing of animals so that we could have cosmetics. So they started a movement called Beauty Without Cruelty in 1963. And who's ever heard of these people? But everybody today knows about the cruelty free pledge of cosmetics all over the planet.

34:18 And most people have started to hear that there are countries all over the world who are banning the testing of cosmetics on animals. Who thought back at that time that these people starting a small concept company could have that effect? Now I'm a I'm a Direct Line of descendant from them because I wound up buying the Beauty Without Cruelty brand here in the United States some years ago. And I carry on their legacy in that sense. But other than that, who else has heard of them? So when we think about it, instead of feeling like I'm just so small and insignificant, what can I do? Instead of getting depressed about how big the problems are and how small I am, I suggest that everybody do whatever you can do.

35:24 And you will have an outsize influence compared to billions of other people on the planet just by being who you are and doing what you do and being awake and carrying that consciousness into your relationships, into your work, into your educational practice, into your retirement. Now I hear many people, you know, it's like I've worked my whole life and, and now I'm retired and I just want to enjoy myself. OK. When you really talk to these people, you find out that they feel like their lives are empty in many cases.

36:05 And the mother has said an aimless life is a meaningless life. So take your retirement and turn it into something beneficial, whether it's creating beauty in the world, whether it's raising beautiful plants, whether it's volunteering and doing something, whether it's just being a good influence and a peaceful, happy person relating to the people around you. It has an influence. We've heard about the 100th monkey phenomenon, and let's talk about that for a moment because that's really very interesting. Some people were studying a tribe of monkeys, I think it was in Southeast Asia or Indonesia somewhere, and they found that one monkey was washing its fruit before eating. And as they continued observing, they found that other monkeys began to adopt that practice.

37:08 And then eventually virtually the whole tribe of monkeys there started washing their fruit. What they didn't expect was that at a certain point, when all the monkeys in that tribe were washing their fruit, monkeys the world over began to wash their fruit. Now they didn't have the benefit of telephones, Internet, and all those other things. They had the benefit of what TR Deschardins calls the nuosphere, the the sphere of mental energy, just as we have a biosphere, the sphere of vital energy that permeates the world.

37:55 And when enough monkeys focused on the same issue, other monkeys who became receptive to that vibration somewhere else in the world were able to pick it up. And we see the same thing happening in humanity. So the challenge for each of us, when we think about how small and insignificant we are, is which one of us may actually be the 100th monkey for humanity. How do we know? We won't know, but that is one of the challenges in front of us that we have an opportunity for.

38:40 So what are the qualities we should inculcate? Because not all of us can do deep meditation and not all of us can do big works of some sort. You know, if you have the capability to do things that impact climate change or green energy or helpful food production or whatever else, then do it, please. But if you're living your life and that's all you can do, whatever work you take up, try to do it with the right spirit, that yogic presence. Radiate the qualities of peace, harmony, balance, light, goodwill, compassion, reduce egoism, respect for all beings and appreciate the power of truth. If we do that, we begin to see changes in the way other people relate to us.

39:50 And we see changes, in many cases slowly, albeit because people are dealing with their own issues in the people around us. And eventually we can build a culture of consciousness. So then we come to, OK, you can't deal with maybe climate change is too big for you, or stopping the Arab Israeli war is too big a thing for you to take on yourself. That's OK. If you've done what you can do, at least support those projects that represent the change you want to see happen.

40:39 If you can volunteer, volunteer. If you can support them with your goodwill and your encouragement, and that's all you can do, do it. If you happen to have money and you can give money to them, give money to them because they need money to operate energy in order to operate. That brings us even to the project of Oroville, which we've talked about before. Oroville is a mother's project to create a laboratory to tackle the human issues and the human issues of clean water, clean energy, the food issues because we see the collapse of the ocean, fisheries which are going to impact a billion people on this planet for their very survival. These type of issues are being taken up with various programs in Oroville, the dealing with how we can waste less doing things so that we're not creating so much toxic pollution in production and masses of toxic materials on the back end that we don't know what to do with. They're working on Desalina Tion, they're working on solar energy mini grid, they're

42:10 working on a high protein hemp and algae foods. There's many, many projects there, but beyond the projects, they also have the opportunity to face the one thing that humanity has never, ever solved in all of our thousands of years, and that is to address the issue of human unity in a way that isn't purely uniformity. It's highly audacious to say let's tackle human unity and bring people from all different backgrounds, cultures, countries, languages, mindsets, educational interests, etcetera, and let's bring them into one place together and let them figure out how to do governance of one and of of one community together. What do you think the odds of success of that are first time out?

43:06 You know, we have an apocryphal story of our The Invention of the Light bulb by Thomas Edison. And when I was a young child, I lived in a place called Menlo Park Terrace, which was right next to Menlo Park, NJ, where Thomas Edison did his work. So I got to hear all these stories, and they may or may not be true, but he once said that in order to invent the light bulb, he failed 1000 times. He tried one thing, it didn't work. He tried another thing, it didn't work. He didn't give up. And eventually we can flip a switch and we can have light.

43:51 And so that's a symbol for us of what Oroville has to do to succeed at figuring out how humanity is going to learn to live together in peace and harmony on this planet and solve its big issues. Take up the issues but also deal with the governance issues. And they are trying and have tried many, many of the different solutions that humanity has failed at in the past. And they failed equally as much because those are not the solutions. But what's interesting is they go back and they say, OK, let's see if we can find another way. And so they set up a group called Dream Weavers or Heart Weavers, and they bring people together and they look at their failures and they try to find a way forward.

44:43 They haven't yet succeeded, but the good thing is they haven't yet given up. And so to me, that's really one of the most important things, if you will, is we've got an opportunity there to contribute to the solving of this problem. Now people see that communities unify based on an external threat. And so now the popular literature is filled with alien invasions, and that's supposed to be something that everyone is afraid of, and that's going to bring us together somehow. We're going to all fight the aliens or whatever it might be that that they think it is.

45:35 But actually, I think the threat is closer to home. I think the threat is our own existential crisis, the 6th planetary die off that we are facing right now, right here, right now. We don't need aliens to wipe us out. We're prepared to do it to ourselves. And so this need to be addressed. And as we wake up to this, we have the unifying factor that can bring humanity together, the appreciation at some point that all of the wars, all the mass migrations, all of the toxic chemicals are things that really we have to face and confront and solve.

46:28 And So what can we do? OK, I mean, we've got address climate change, we've talked about, OK, what can you do about that? Well, you might be able to do solar vehicles, reduce your energy waste, etcetera. One of the big things that that people don't realize is one of the greatest causes of climate change, global warming, happens to be the raising and eating of animal foods. And OK, not everybody is prepared at this moment to go vegan, but just think, if you cut your use of animal foods by 10% or 15% and start to substitute in your diet, that has its impact, a positive impact on climate change, possibly also on your health. And reduce all those pains and sufferings that people have because of the animal food production, the deforestation that goes with that conservation of water. We have a huge water crisis in this world because fresh water is being squandered, lost and misused. And with the rise of the Seas and the melting of the glaciers, we're actually accentuating the

48:00 freshwater crisis. We have a similar issue with virtually everything you see in the world. You can do something about it whatever interests you. This is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Everybody finds their own things that they can do to fix something, to work on something to create beauty and harmony in the world. Mainly to focus your time, energy, and attention on being a benefit to yourself and others on the planet. So with that, let's open it up for conversation. I'm sure people will agree with me that I did not err in giving you the topic that you chose.

49:10 We should speak on anything that you want. Thank you very much. That was absolutely, particularly from the perspective of participating in the creation of new consciousness, which is the central pursuit of integrity. I see Margaret's hand up. So Margaret is a nature self and coming. Thank you so much, Santosh. I, I think it's always good to mention what's impactful for the person.

49:54 And for me, the fact that you mentioned the timeline upfront that well, first of all, that the actions are not always seen and that the timeline is such that it may occur after your lifetime. I think that helping people take that in at a deeper level, you know, we're so our egos are so much into I want to see my impact, right? So along with the shift in consciousness that you're advocating, that shift in consciousness will help us with that timeline issue, right? Also, I just wanted to mention that I think for myself and many others, we've had a real sort of in your face version of this in the United States of the outer looking bleak, put it this way or can't not not being able to face or handle what looks like what's coming.

51:22 And I really want to emphasize that working with force and mother and Triara Bendo's force helped Get Me Out of that orientation so that I could be functional. And so it's like a, a, a preview of whatever we are going to face that looks dire. If we've had an experience of making that shift, then it can become our way of being for the next crisis, right. So anyway, I wanted to thank you for your how you orientated us to these very important shifts.

52:12 Thank you. Well, thank you. And you know, Johnny Appleseed didn't get to eat all those apples. That's right. So there was just a big convention in Chicago, and I'm reminded that what we heard from many speakers was the same thing. They said do something. They didn't tell you what to do and they said do something and don't delay too long about it. Do something now.

52:55 So it just reminded me. Thank you. Well, it's not often that we basically talk people into silence here, so it's interesting, but anybody else want to add any points to our discussion here, Something that you found valuable or beneficial in your life to move things forward? I can fill in till people think about this question. What I really appreciated was at the beginning of your talk how you're talking about the shifts in consciousness that have happened in the last few decades, things that we have started taking for granted, but they didn't really exist that particular way.

54:07 So, you know, that sort of trajectory put us on a positive note, which I really appreciate. And then, of course, you know, you start talking about different problems that exist that we collectively face as humanity and then coming to how we can think about the changes. And what was very important was that we don't really have to think big. You know, we can make small changes and these small changes will have an impact in the future.

54:53 And if we are really concerned about the 'cause, if we are really concerned about the nature of transformation, the way I interpreted it was that it doesn't really matter whether we are alive in this body to see the change or not, but the fact that the change will happen, the change itself is going to take its new course. That was something which was very beautiful. Yes, and that's also something that Sri Krishna mentions to Arjuna in the Bhagwad Gita, that whether you participate or not, all these warriors on the other side are already destined to die because change is happening.

55:42 But you are a protagonist in your time in your circumstance to help that along. Don't take it personally, just deal with it. Yes, Sean. Thank you, Santosh, for your enlightening talk. I'm wondering whether you could share maybe about your own experience on maybe the difference of the contribution we can make at different stages of our lives. Because when we're, let's say in our 20s or in our 30s, we probably don't have the same kind of contribution to the evolution of consciousness as later stages in life.

56:32 And also finding this balance between being sometimes just being here with consciousness as a witness is sufficient to, you know, provoke change or provoke, you know, whatever. And sometimes we need to to do more the karma yoga. So could you, I don't know, maybe share on, on your experience or your point of view on these, on these aspects? Well, sure. You know, when I was in high school, I took jobs, whatever jobs I could get at that time because I needed to earn some money. I wasn't involved in any yogic practice or anything. But one thing I did take away from it and also in my schooling was I tried to give it 100% and I tried to do it cheerfully.

57:17 I didn't go to work grumbling and saying, oh, what a rotten job. This is why I just have to go make money. I went there and said I've been granted the opportunity to participate and earn some money here, let me do it with full energy, full enjoyment, full concentration, full involvement. And I got through school that way. And when I got to college, I got a little lost and dropped out of college after something of a, what you might call a near death experience. And after seeing the futility of a lot of the political and other actions that were taking place to try and stop the war in Vietnam and went to Europe and started studying and practicing yoga. And that's actually where I came in touch with Sri Aurobindo. But the attitude that I took as a young person is something I encourage young people to undertake, that I encourage the children of my family to do and they encourage their children to do.

58:26 And that is do whatever you do with a goodwill, with the best effort you can make, concentrate on it and and really try to make that work as you go into careers. It's the same thing. It may not be the ideal job of, you know, changing the planet, but do it with a goodwill and relate to people in a way that's respectful and honest and compassionate. And that will automatically change the texture of your community of people that are around you and how maybe they react to things.

59:09 If you become affluent through your work and you have extra money. Well, I always felt like trust fund babies tend to have bad outcomes. It's just a history. It's one thing to let your children have a certain amount of resources to to carry out their lives with. It's another thing to make them mega millionaires. We see how that's turned out on our political stages. Michael might point out to us having just gone through a convention illustrating what disasters a trust fund baby has created in this country.

1:00:01 They just don't have a perspective. And so if you've got extra wealth. Take some of it and dedicate it to the work that your children are doing. That's fine. And take some of it and apply it to whatever projects or opportunities or groups you find are doing a good work. And, you know, create a legacy that outlives you by forwarding the projects. If you're a retired person, make your life valuable to yourself and others. Don't just vegetate and think, I work my whole life.

1:00:45 And so now I just get to knock off. And if you're in a field that can do something, invent a new energy or find a way to be more economical of energy or help with freshwater, whatever it might be, then of course you're already doing something concrete. At. The inflection point. So I think I've covered all the different gamuts of life. If you're, if you've got health issues and you're, you know, you're bound to a bed and you're struggling and suffering and you feel like you can't do anything. Well, my wife actually tells a story. She was doing Hospice for a while and there was a lady in Hospice and she was always extremely cheerful. And then she decided she was getting close to her time of death.

1:01:44 And now she wasn't practicing yoga or doing any of these things. She was just there in Hospice struggling with her declining health. And so she said, I need a little help. I want to get some notes written. I want to give this to this person who can use it and this to that person who can use it. And she started distributing all the little things she had in her life to people who would find a benefit from it. And when she was done, she smiled and she said, I've completed everything now I can die peacefully. So even people in Hospice, even people suffering health issues that are preventing them from doing anything else, have the opportunity to contribute to the evolution of consciousness. Thank you, Santosh.

1:02:39 Thank you very much and thank you, Quinton Wayne. Please unmute yourself and come in. OK, well thanks for letting me speak. Just wanted to before I forget, I want to thank Condon for for his book. It fits so well in my spiritual practice. It's my framework now. It explained a lot of things to me. So thank you so much for the book. And Santosh, I want to thank you so much for that Sri Aravendo study that you publish.

1:03:25 I, I'm, I'm, I'm there every day. So it's great. So let me get to the point here. When I retired six years ago and I'm on, I'm 70 now, something ringing my, I've traveled a bit and I was in a Peace Corps in Ukraine. I've done a lot of weird things. And, but after I retired, traveling and doing something for myself didn't seem to be very productive, except one thing I could do was make myself the best I could be in body, mind and spirit. Now I don't know where that came from. I did practice yoga, but it's hatha yoga off and on for about 40 years. But that's what I decided to do best, best I could be in, in body, mind and spirit. And so that that's, that's what I did. And rather than travel or try to do things for myself and I put my faith in, in, in God and, or supreme being or whatever you want to call.

1:04:21 And since then, of course, I've, I've discovered arrobendo and, and I've found some other western philosophers, but not putting myself first above everything, realizing there's other things more important than me and that I can. And I'm, I'm the happiest I've ever been in my entire life. And my life has not been very happy. So I'm very blessed to be a member of this group and it's been a life changer for me. I've, I've, I've, I've really, but basically starting with yourself is the best place to begin. If you want to find something, start with yourself and make all the changes you possibly can that will make the world a better place.

1:05:06 And, and then, then you can branch out into other things. Because I, like I say, I'm kind of a professional volunteer. I can tell you lots of stories about that. Sometimes rewarding and sometimes not so rewarding and you really don't even want to do it for the reward. You want to do it for just the cause and forget about reward, but that's kind of my my two cents worth. And this is incredible stuff to talk about. I love it and hope we can all change the world. Thank you. Well. Thank you. Thank. You, yes, I mentioned mute yourself.

1:05:51 OK. Hi Santosh. First of all, I want to thank you for a very relevant and wonderful talk. I think the question that you've got is what one can do in different phases of life as somebody asked. It bothers everybody and one, everybody has to deal with it. I think you explain it very nicely that whatever we do, it will have an impact. We may not be able to see that in the short run. Thinking of that aspect, I think in the current world, information and data is a big power. We even if you're not doing anything, we always share information that different, different ways and different modes. So that itself is a power.

1:06:35 I think one point while sharing that, I think if, if we can use a lot of judgement and make sure that we share the data and information which is only constructive and positive, that goes a long way in bringing about small changes. I feel that personally when when interacting with people and also sharing the information. That reminds me of one of the quotation from Lao Tzu, a very beautiful quotation. Remember. So one man sits at his home and there's noble thoughts, beautiful thoughts and the reverberations are heard thousands of miles. There is so much true in the present world that we all share information and talk about it. So one big thing I think we all the way of doing whatever we learn is keep spreading it and share it with joy. That it said will create a field and domain. I feel that personally.

1:07:39 Thank you for a very wonderful talk. Well, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. OK. It seems that we are naturally coming to an end all this wonderful gathering. Thank you once again. Thank you so much. We really enjoyed it. It was absolutely. Thank you, Santosh. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Take care.

1:08:23 Everyone stayed at night for me. It's time to say goodnight. Take care. Goodnight. Thank you. Thank you.