What Does the Coming of the Subjective Age Mean to Us?

0:06 Good morning once again, everyone. Welcome to the Culture of T Nation Fellowship and thank you for joining us this morning. We have founded in 1951 by Hydas and Veena Choudhury as a center of universal religion and spiritual practice. And in keeping with the spirit of unity and diversity, we honor the spiritual traditions of diverse cultures and religions. Today's talk is titled What does the Coming of the Subjective Age Mean to us? The stock is going to be presented by our own Santosh Krinsky. Santosh, as many of you would know, has been studying Shurabundo's writing since 1971 and has a daily blog at shurabundostudies.wordpress.com and podcast at Anchor dot FM slash Santosh Dash Krinsky.

1:13 These details are there in the announcement that I sent out. Santosh decided at Sharbindo Ashram from spring 1973 to winter 1974. He is author of 17 books and is editor in chief at Lotus Press. He is president of Institute for Holistic Education, a nonprofit focused on integrating spirituality into daily life. He has spent more than 48 years building and developing infrastructure for publishing, distributing and educating about the spiritual path of Shore Bindle, as well as developing and guiding companies at the forefront of publishing books and distributing books and products to support the natural market as well as the metaphysical market in North America.

2:12 For more information about the the writings of Sherbinder and the Mother, you can visit lotuspress.com as well as visit the daily blog postings. I've already mentioned the URL of that page and the web page aurobindo.net. Before I hand over the screen to Santosh, I want to read a poem from Doctor Adas Choudhury from the collections The Rhythm of Truth, and this poem is titled Know Thyself.

3:00 The profound word of wisdom that rings through ages declares unambiguously one supreme message. Know the know the secret of thyself, thy own inmost center. Discover in thy inner temple the world's greatest wonder. In one tiny atom is reflected the whole of matter, in one negligible drop is hidden the mystery of all water. In a single leaf of the tree is outlined its unique pattern.

3:42 In a single line of a book is contained its special design. So also in every finite soul dwells the Infinite Supreme. In the inmost recess of the heart shines the Eternal undemned. To know the secret of the Self is the Master key to possess to unlock the mysteries of being with sovereign ease and success. To discover the Self of Self is the Master Light to attain that dispels all darkness and doubt, the last harmony to regain deeper than intellect and ego.

4:39 The The Self is the principle of unity, connecting man with man, each with all. It is the bond of universality, deeper than conscious and unconscious. The self is the center, super conscious, uniting man with God, part with the whole. It is the Infinite's unique focus. To know the Self is to discover the unit, the individual's unique mission, the purpose of the Divine in life, and the secret of final fruition.

5:31 Let's take a minute to meditate on those words.

6:49 Over to you, Santosh. Thank you once again for doing this for us. Well, thank you. It's it's always a pleasure to join you and so many of our friends in the yoga for these sessions. So thank you for the opportunity to meet with everybody once again. I have a little bit of a different plan this time than normal, and that is that I'd like to present some kind of concepts or ideas or observations and finish up a little bit early and open it up to an interactive dialogue. The age of reason and individualism which built modern day society has been reaching what I would say are its limits. We see that in many different ways. Shrioro Bindo set forth the concept of the subjective age in his book titled The Human Cycle, and I recommend to everybody, if you really want to dive into the subject of the subjective age and its significance, read that book. He does a much better job than

8:20 than I could ever do in terms of organizing the mass of information. And certainly in an hour. We can't dream of covering everything. So what I thought would be useful is not to try to cover the ground, but to focus on what it means to us, how our lives are impacted, how we experience what's taking place in the world today, and how that relates to the transition to a new age of consciousness, the subjective age.

9:02 So the first question is what do we mean by the subjective age and the word subjective? A lot of us think, well, it's just our own individual feelings. So everybody's right and everybody's feelings are their own. And there's no objective factual basis for anything. And that's actually an inaccuracy. There is an objective reality that we share and that we live in, and the subjective age doesn't mean to abandon the objective factual world of science or measurement or mathematics or any of those things which we have tested over time and determined to be reproducible and able to be shared among people, whoever they are, wherever they in the world, if they're willing to do the measurement, they can get the same result.

10:10 The idea that first people have when they think about the subjective age and the abandonment of the logical intellect and reason, which is what that implies to them, is to create what we've heard in our political arena are alternative facts. We don't like the facts the way they present themselves in the outer world, so we create alternative facts. This is actually an attempt to retreat to an earlier phase of human development, a phase where we're sort of sub rational or infra rational and we're not moving beyond the rational, we're moving backwards to a space where we just react. It's all vital reaction.

11:17 The, I guess the period early in the 20th century, we saw a number of movements where people, philosophers tried to develop something that wasn't as constrained as the mental organized rational, fact based society that we were living in that had started to become encrusted with fixed norms. And so you see people looking for the will to power, the attempt to go beyond the limits of the mind.

12:05 And this was misinterpreted to a great degree. It was, as Nietzsche was saying, the superior man is not bound by the rules of society. And this was interpreted to mean that if you defined yourself as a superior man, you could do whatever you're pleased and be destructive or whatever else. That's actually not what is intended by that. The superior man is the evolved being who has gone beyond the strictures of the mind to actually appreciate and understand the spirit for which the rules of the intellect and the codes of the vital nature were developed.

13:02 In other words, to have a deeper insight and not need to be bound by a rule because you're beyond that rule in a in a very positive sense. So quickly the idea of the subjective age is to move to a new form of knowledge, a new form of knowing. We see in and, and I'm just going to take us very briefly into Sri Aurobindo's organized statement of the types of knowledge and their relationship to the different ages of humanity.

13:48 So you have, putting aside the very early ones, the symbolic stage, the one just preceding the intellectual rational stage, was the conventional age of society. And that builds institutions. So we see the great churches of the world, we see the great monarchies and empires of the world. These are the fruits of the conventional age, and they're ruled by authority, somebody who assumes the mantle of authority and control and tells everybody what they should believe and how they should relate to things and controls how things happen. Now, initially that may have arisen naturally as people gain certain new forms of knowledge and began to communicate it, but eventually it became fixed and immovable and became a limitation to further growth.

15:04 The reaction to that was the development of the, what we might call the rational or the intellectual stage of development. And their knowledge came through the use of the mind, through reason and logic and development of science. And so we saw in society the great battle between religion and science, Religion saying you have to believe because we say you need to believe this, and science saying, well, we want to study and find out what the real underlying facts and truth are and find out more or less for ourselves individually. This worked up to a stage until it too became fixed and immovable.

15:58 And we got to the point where people were bound by reason and logic to the extent that they couldn't understand the spirit. We became law bound and we saw that. If anyone has read Charles Dickens Hard Times, there's a story there of a man who was all like everything has to be measured and fixed and mathematical and mechanical and organized and fixed rules and ways of doing things. And this too became an obstacle to further growth.

16:43 And so we then come to what Trior Robindo calls the next phase of knowledge, knowledge by identity, because the other forms are knowledge through separate of knowledge. It's I am the perceiver and I perceive an object outside myself, but knowledge by identity is I am one with the object of my knowledge. So subject and object are one and you know it because you are it. You vibrate with it, you intuit with it. It's an intuitive inward form of knowledge and that is the direction of the coming of the spiritual and subjective age.

17:33 So with that background, we can then move to what is our current situation? How do we understand the world we're living in? What do we observe? We see in our political world? Gridlock. Everyone is fighting with everyone else. Nothing can move forward. Everyone has their own opinion, their own way of looking at things, and it's all stopped. And so things deteriorate through gridlock.

18:16 We see at the same time people becoming frustrated and questioning the very framework of Society, of religion, of the economy, the way the economy is structured, the way we interact with each other and the way we interact with the environment. We see very few people becoming mega billionaires and we see 70 or 80% of the people in the world struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table and and live a decent life. Somehow we've gotten out of balance, and that out of balance is a sign of the limits of the rational, intellectual, mechanical ways of the current age, and it's a sign that we need to find a new way forward.

19:27 We find that as much as we believe in the intellect and its powers, and it's done tremendous things in the world, it's uncovered the sources of diseases and helped to cure them. It's found how to create food for 9 billion people. And it's found how to do so many things, explore the universe, send people out into space and do so many things. But we also have now begun to see what I call the law of unintended consequences, which is that the mind is so limited in its framework.

20:16 It's linear and fragmented. And as a result, every time it pushes forward, it doesn't see the global impact and consequences of what it's doing. And therefore it creates more and more unintended consequences that we're living with right now. Climate change, pollution, the collapse of the ocean, fisheries and what that's going to do to billions of people on the planet who rely on that as a primary food source. The fact that scientists are now telling us we're in the midst of the 6th mass planetary die off, the mass extinction event. We have species disappearing every day. And some may say, well that's OK, they're old fashioned species, we don't need them anymore. OK?

21:22 I mean, who needs a rhinoceros? That's you hear this sometimes. What is it all about? Who cares? Well, the planetary die off also includes things like bees. And we may not understand how important bees are, but without bees, they're one of the major pollinators to create the foods that we eat. And if you ever saw one of the studies that showed what would happen to our grocery store if there weren't bees anymore, you would be shocked. In fact, we might all be on the quick path to extinction ourselves. So these type of pressures are forcing people to re evaluate how they relate to their own lives and guiding them towards this next evolutionary development. The mass migrations, the wars, the suffering, the starvation, the increased disease vectors, the pollution, the climate change, all these things together are creating the pressure for change.

22:46 Sri Aurobindo describes that nature tends to make its transitions under pressure, and I think we all can relate to that in our own lives. If things are going well, we just want to sit back and enjoy. And yet at a certain point in time when progress is needed, things happen in our lives to pressure us, to force us to get up and do something and change the way we look at things. And nature works like that. So we're under this intense pressure right now, which shows us that it is time for a change, for a transition to a new way of seeing and dealing with things. Now, we then come to the idea of what are the signs of the coming of this new age, a subjective age? How do we recognize that this is what's happening? First of all, we see a breakdown in reliance on external authority, and we see people rejecting the idea that politicians, judges, religious leaders can simply tell us what to do.

24:13 We don't want that. We want to find our own truth, our own inner truth. We see a vast uprising, people seeking for spiritual guidance, for yoga, for new directions, for direct relationship. The mainstream churches are undergoing a crisis and they define the crisis as people are leaving the church and they're defining themselves as spiritual, not religious. And that is a sign of the subjective age. People want to have a direct experience. In the 60s, they were given the idea that they could have a direct experience of God through hallucinogenic drugs. And so there was a big LSD movement and mescaline and peyote movement that took place without judging people one way or the other.

25:21 It's a sign that they wanted to find what the reality, what the truth was, without someone just telling them that out of a book or a classroom. We see people seeking for a new way of knowing things. The alternative facts we discussed at the beginning are a fall back to an attempt to react more spontaneously to life. But we also see a forward movement with people looking at developing a higher intuition of trying to really understand what the Nexus of life, what the world is that we live in, how we can be 1 human family within a larger context of a world environment and sharing the planet with all the beings we share the planet with.

26:29 You get a sense of unity and oneness of connection. And these are signs in my mind of the development of the subjective age. And when we get to the next section of our talk with sharing with each other, I invite everybody to share your perceptions and insights along these lines so that we can together get a better and fuller picture of things. So let's look at some of the forces at work in the world and see how they're impacting this.

27:11 We all rely on the Internet. We're having our get together on the Internet today. It's brought people together from all over the world. You can see it as an advance towards a deeper communication and building of a net of oneness between people. And at the same time, the powers that are resisting the change, who have the control of the past, are using the Internet to become a weapon of manipulation and control through the way they feed information, the way they skew information, and the way they play upon people's emotions through what they put forward with massive amounts of power.

28:04 So the question is, how can we understand the Internet and use it as a positive force of building a new consciousness? And how can we avoid the snares of the past masters of the universe who want to enslave us using the Internet? It's an interesting question. This will be a major task for us as we can't always rely on what we see anymore. We have artificial intelligence now and they have computers that can recreate things and make them look so real that we no longer can use the adage seeing is believing, seeing and hearing our perceptive sentences. Senses no longer tell us what the truth is from the falsehood, so how will we determine that the mind, with its reliance on the senses cannot do that?

29:24 And so we now come to the question of can we develop an intuitive sense that can disclose the deeper inner hidden truth behind the appearances that our mind has become ensnared in through the Internet and through artificial intelligence, we have quantum mechanics. Physics has now gone beyond the stage of the ability to measure and define physical reality. The deeper the physicists have gone, the more they have realized that matter is not real. It is energy, condensed, solidified, brought down to a vibration that holds it in a form for a period of time. And as they went further, they started realizing that energy isn't real.

30:37 Energy is consciousness, and we have scientists today who are deep in the field of quantum mechanics, who talk about spooky action at a distance, who speak about quantum entanglement, where 2 things, whatever they might be, separated from one another, automatically react to each other instantaneously at a distance and without direct physical or other observable connection. What does this mean?

31:20 How is this happening? In a rational, logical, mechanical world? Such things can't not happen. And now we have computers being developed that no longer just measure ones and zeros, which is the rational, logical, intellectual way to do it. It's either on or it's off, one or zero, on or off. That's no longer the basis of computing. In the future, they're going into what's called quantum computing, and they started using things called qubits, which, without getting too deep into quantum physics, basically says that there is a superposition where both on and off are coincident with each other. And it's only at the moment of observation that you can determine which way the switch has moved. This is the famous story of Schrodinger's cat, who's in a box, and you don't know whether the cat is alive or dead until you observe the cat.

32:36 And so until the observation, the cat is both alive and dead. And they turn this into computing now. And now they've gone beyond that to what's called Q modes, and they have a computer now that can solve in a microsecond problems that would take standard 10 computers, 10s of thousands of years to solve. And they're able to do it without the logic of the rational intellect of ones and zeros. They've gone beyond that.

33:16 And this to me is a sign on the physical plane, if you will, of the kind of transitions that we need to make as we move into the subjective age. Another sign of the of the subjective age is actually what I would call an opportunity. It's space exploration. And you say, well, how does space exploration bring us to a subjective age? Well, our viewpoint on the world is all based on each ego individual looking at the world and relating to it from that standpoint, and we don't see the bigger picture.

34:06 But when you go outside the earth and you see the Earth and all of its beings and its operations and everything else has one small, fragile, unified existence, it automatically changes your viewpoint away from the ego standpoint to a more unified global standpoint. And we have reports from various astronauts, like Neil Armstrong, for instance, who came back and his life was transformed and he went into the field of the study of consciousness and how to move beyond the limits of the logical intellect. So now we come to what I would call a negative sign, but an important one.

35:07 Whenever there is a transition from one structure to another, from one age to another. Just as we saw a conflict between religion and science, the fact that there is an ever increasing resistance to change is itself a sign that a change is coming. The powers that control the intellectual, rational, mechanical automation age of humanity feel threatened and they are vital beings.

35:48 They, they feel the energy change and they're trying to preserve their power. One of the reasons they're now trying to harness and control the Internet and manipulate people is for this reason, but also the way they, you know, they, they try to stop people from voting. They try to tell people how to live their lives. They try to control all the finance and influence in the world. These are all external things, but they are very big signs that somebody doesn't like the feeling of where things are going. They're afraid. They're afraid they're going to lose their power and influence. And so this very resistance to change is itself a sign that the subjective age is coming.

36:44 It's pretty clear from my view, and that's what we're going to be sharing here in the next few minutes, that the coming of the subjective age is actually inevitable. Human evolution, or the evolution of consciousness going larger than just the human, moves in an upward spiraling direction to increase the power of consciousness over time and through development. So when we see physical and then vital and then mental, we see that there has to be a next phase because the current phase is reaching its limits.

37:33 And the pressures of the existential crisis that we've spoken about are more or less forcing us to look within ourselves to try to understand why it is we're here, who we are, what we are, what our lives are all about. Or, as Hari Das Chaudhary so beautifully said in the poem the The Quest that we're really seeking the self. Who? Who and what we really are. The natural process of maturing as a species has LED us to the edge where we really can't go much, if at all, further without moving to a new way of knowing and a new understanding of our role in the universe and in this creation.

38:36 And that is the inevitability of the subjective age. So with those thoughts and that background, I wanted to engage a dialogue here because we're, you know, we're all guru by we're all learning and growing together. And while Kundan has been kind enough to ask me to participate today, as far as I'm concerned, we're all able and should be able to share and develop this further.

39:17 And so let's open it up. Thank you, Santosh. That was a wonderful introduction to the dialogue. I see Baman sand up. So Baman, please come in. You're on, you're on mute. Please unmute. Sorry about that. Just wanted to thank you very much. It's just very intriguing and and I think you covered a lot. Sorry to jump in real quick here because I need to leave at 3:00. So I'm sorry for that. And now, but regarding the question of how things are right now, one possible way that I can look at things is that I see.

40:08 Like to be broad categories of, of, of people. And I keep in mind that, you know, even we're though we're talking about collective movements here, that there's large individual differences among human beings always. So within these categories there will be a lot of differences as well. But one category seems to be that, you know, people who embrace either evolution or change or progress in general. Now some of the cutting edge of these people may be actually evolutionary thinkers and, and even Mystics and so on. And then some could be just, you know, modernist scientific progress type of people and all of that. And then the the other category, having been exposed to the dilemma that's upon us right now that you outlined very well, seem to be reverting back to mythical consciousness and to religious consciousness and conservatism and, and all that. And a 1/3 category that I think used to be smaller but is increasing right now, unfortunately, is the people that are caught in between.

41:20 I don't know which way to go. You know, they don't know if they want to go back to probably not, but they're unable to get themselves together to create a life situation. Like you said, sixty, 7080% of people are just trying to, you know, live a decent life. And if anyone fails in the modern day, especially in countries like the US, you go down really quick. So there's no chance to, you know, sit down and and decide what you want to do. So that creates a kind of a framework for mental illness. And that's what's what's, you know, expanding. And just one example of it is despite all the decades of treatment of depression, now we're having, I know all these drugs and, and methods for having the most amount of depression and spreading into the youth and, and the young and the teenagers. So having said all of this, I just don't know which of these forces are going to win and, and what's going to happen. I just don't see the possibility. So I'm putting this out to the group as well as a question. I don't see one group winning and, you know, settling the the matter.

42:39 But I just wondered how how these tendencies are going to pan out and, and how they do to me determines how fast we're going to move into a subjective age, at least for a certain number of people. But anyway, I just leave it out. I don't have any particular answers. Well, I'm very intrigued by your insight here. And at some point Trior Obindo actually discusses this question and points out that the attempt to go backwards to a more vital age is doomed to failure because nature in and of itself wants to move forward. And so there will be retrogressions, there will be resistance and obstructions, but eventually that transition takes place.

43:37 And of course not every being moves forward at the same pace, as you're pointing out. So there will be many people who take each of the positions you raised and it doesn't mean that humanity as a whole hasn't moved itself forward and that specific individual souls who are maturing haven't themselves shifted their awareness. It's a progression over time, not sort of like an on off switch.

44:26 Yes, Michael, please come in. Santos, thank you so much. I particularly appreciated your introduction or for me reintroduction of quantum physics and the whole concept of the pressure amounting pressure in nature to produce change no matter what forces may be up, may be resisting it, but the the nature seems to always win. I notice that you use the word consciousness several times and I usually when I'm in a conversation and people are using the word consciousness multiple times, I, I want to know what they are, what, what?

45:08 And in this case, particularly you, Santos, what what do you mean when you use the word consciousness? Well, consciousness is the principle of awareness, and Rene Descartes said that I think therefore I am. But that was a limited construct of consciousness. Awareness is larger than thinking, and it can eventually embrace the oneness of the whole manifestation if you're looking at the consciousness of the divine.

45:55 And if we associate ourselves with that, we begin to shift away from the thinking consciousness to the larger intuitive or super mental or whatever levels of awareness we can move into over that evolutionary period. It's a very broad definition. It's not like Descartes or Nietzsche or some of the others who had very specific narrow definitions. This is generally awareness.

46:37 Thank you. Wenji, please unmute yourself. Wenji, can you hear me? Please come in. Maybe I'm not able to reach him. Michael, why don't you unmute yourself and come in, please? So my thoughts are along the lines as Baumann brought up, although he was referring to the individual level, I'm thinking of the social level.

47:30 We would think that with all the problems we're having globally, that a commonality of global consciousness would be the national response. But we're actually seeing a very different thing nationally. I mean, to be liberal has become a bad word or to be a globalist is a bad word. You know, in this country we have America first all around the world. That sort of thought is emerging in Hungary, in Italy, you know, my tribe. So we have this, this conflict and you know, I, I wish, I wish the future was as cheery, but we're having some strong forces in the other direction. I totally agree with you, and that's why I tried to point out that in a period of difficulties, those who hold power want to maintain their power and resist change. And they raise up fear of transitions and change in the people they can control and manipulate with today tools that have never before been at their disposal, like the power of the Internet.

49:00 And so the resistance to change is enormous, and it manifests itself in the ways that you're mentioning here. And it just means that the power of the change itself is also enormous because you wouldn't see that level of resistance. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction if you look at the world of physics, traditional physics. And so to me, that's a sign that there's a powerful, as yet very much unseen power of change that's taking place.

49:44 And you associate that with the necessity of the change. Because the mother once had a, a, a brief saying it's truth or the abyss. That's really the choice that humanity will eventually have to make. And the more stark and the more resistant the forces are, the more they try to recapture the past to prevent the future, the more that stark choice rises up. Because we're not solving it. And at some point, we as a species either have to decide to survive or die. And I guess my money's on survival. You know, I, I want to chime in a little bit here. I feel that there's one positive movement which is occurring that we have not spoken about, and that is the movement of postmodernism in academia.

50:58 Postmodernism also has negative sides. You know, we can definitely dwell on those, but I feel postmodernism contributing immensely to what Shurban has has called the coming of the subjective age. Why is that? Postmodernism is critically examining, you know, the age of reasons and individualism. So it's basically critically examining the entire framework and field of modernity. Unfortunately, it has a limitation. It has, it has a limitation because after a certain point of time it begins to define itself or it begins to get defined by the same contours that it is trying to deconstruct. Let me explain.

51:59 You know, we said that it is attacking the cornerstones of modernity, Objectivism and objectivity is, you know, our two major pillars of modernism. Now, after it does its entire thing, and by that I mean the deconstruction, it comes up with certain consequences or results. Earlier, you know, we're looking for truth, which was objective. Now what postmodernism has done is that it has made truth subjective, subjective with respect to paradigms and individuals, cultures and so on and so forth. Now the problem here is that when we say that truth is relative, we are making an absolute statement about the nature of truth.

53:06 When we are saying that that truth is subjective, we are making an objective statement about the nature of reality. So postmodernism takes us to a particular point, but it is not able to make the quantum jump which is required to go further. And I personally feel that within academia, after a certain point in time, there will begin to get a language developed which is talking about going beyond the realm of subjectivism and objectivism, beyond the realm of relative and absolutely and so on and so forth. And that in my understanding, can only happen through a deep subject, subjective exploration of the truth which is in which is in common in communication with the objective nature of reality.

54:10 You know, there are there are certain truths that are out there, but all of us individuals are having our unique relationship with that nature of reality and truth as well. You know, the from from the Shurabindonian perspective that one reality begins to gradually get broken into multiplicity and every component is in a unique relationship with that ultimate that will in eventually will have to be will have to be found out. And for that I think, you know, postmodernism is making a profound contribution.

55:07 It has not been realized, you know, at a greater level, but I think it will be. In fact, long time ago, you know, right at the time when I came to CIIS, I had written a paper called Beyond Modernism, the Meeting of the East and West. You know, I sort of refined that and it got published as relativism, self referentiality and Beyond mind. I have, I have taken the approach of the philosophy of science here. The results are very quantum like. You know, I can, I can share that article with the group.

55:49 I'll do that, you know, maybe tomorrow, but I think that, you know, that there is one very positive movement which is occurring. And if we really look at this, this trajectory, and if we also begin to look very closely at the limitations of, of postmodernism in order to not resurrect the paradigm of modernism, we will be able to get into a framework which transcends both modernism and postmodernism. Or let me put it this way, you know, it's transcends and integrates this binary divide of modernism and postmodernism. And, and that is the future, you know, and that's, that's, that's, this is a profound movement which is occurring in academia.

56:44 So with that, you know I will, I will step back. So those I was wondering, you know how you would respond to this? Well, I totally agree with the idea that education and this movement is part of the essential transition that's happening. Certainly there are many, many, many signs of positive direction taking place in the world. And of course, some are moving forward a lot, some are moving forward a little bit, some are just preparing the ground. But the the entire movement of education is somewhat mixed. But the movement of individuals who are seeking for a deeper truth, whatever path they choose to follow, is itself creating a new paradigm for relationships.

57:51 Whether it's the environmental movement or the yoga movement or the spiritual movement or the changes in education. They all are part of this larger transition where people are seeking for something real and authentic, not something that gets predigested for them by elected leaders or church leaders or or others who have assumed the mantle of authority. They want to actually experience things for themselves and find out what their lives are about. And that's happening all over the world. Even if it looks like the authoritarians are winning, they're not winning the hearts and minds of the people. They're just controlling the outer machinery. Right.

58:47 And, and it will also depend upon, you know, the, the vantage point from we are looking at these things like, let's say, you know, let let's take one more example. And this is very similar to this conflict, you know, which is occurring between modernism and, and postmodernism. You know, if we go back 200 and 200 years ago, there was this conflict between Enlightenment and Romanticism, you know, and of course, you know, this conflict led to the the creation of two world wars. And in terms of the consequences, you know, for Europe, the results were absolutely devastating. But what is the positive that came out of the Second World War?

59:45 Most of the colonies got liberated. You know, most of the colonies before in four years after the conclusion of the Second World War, you know, most of the British colonies were liberated. So there's, you know, there's this definite churning which is going up going around at this point in time. And I personally feel that you know that as the practitioners of integral yoga. You know, we should be looking at things, you know, from a cosmic perspective. We will need to take into account many different that many different vantage points.

1:00:26 And I think that may, you know, even intellectually give us a more comprehensive picture then we may have at this point in time. You know, of course, the ultimate is to go beyond the intellect and sort of tap into this intuitive understanding of things that Santosh brought out so eloquently. So with that said, you know, I will just step back. Arvindji, please unmute yourself and come in. OK, Santosh, thank you for a very nice talk and giving us a perspective on subjective age and see Arvind those ideas. Yeah, my, my question is probably related to little bit what Kundan was telling in a larger perspective. I think looking at a practical level, as some other thinkers also have said, if you look at the centre of gravity of the the population of the world, it is still at the conventional stage or mythological stage.

1:01:34 And still the the centre of gravity has yet to move to the rational stage. And there's no doubt that the ideal stage is subjective age or age of consciousness. But looking at the current situation, I wonder if many of the problems, whether it's environmental problems or political problems or growth of authority, authoritarianism, is it not related to that? The forces want to regress in the sense that they want to move away, regress from rationality to conventional stage so that their control is not lost for the bosses. So within the rational population itself, let's say if the centre of gravity move to rationality and the whole world is of more, more people in the rational level, within that itself may not then be integral approach. Rationality taken to highest level. One can have the integral solutions for all the major issues that the world is concerned about, whether there's a food crisis or environmental issues and other things. So is it not the first order that the world has to move to become more rational?

1:02:53 Moving to a subjective age looks like a tall order and there's no doubt there's an ideal stage. But what is the, what do you, what do you comment on the nest city for moving the whole humanity going towards more rational stage, a more rational level of consciousness? Well, I would jump in here. I, I agree with your analysis. First of all, and the, as I started to try to describe at the beginning, I don't see that the development of a subjective age means the abandonment of the rational intellectual powers, but the application of them in the field where they can be useful and the recognition of the place where they reach their limits and need to be guided and tempered by the guidance of that next level of consciousness.

1:03:54 To the extent that the world is still mired in the conventional stage, yes, they need the rational, organized approach to create solutions that they can live with. Not everybody moves at the same pace. And as you rightly point out, the center of gravity is still very much stuck in the conventional phase, and there is pressure still between that phase and the intellectual phase. But the leading edge of the intellectual and rational phase is meeting its limits and reaching its unintended consequences, which means that a certain amount of that next transition needs to begin to temper that, to utilize it, to organize it, and to ensure that it's used in its right place as a benefit and not simply allowed to create all those unintended consequences we spoke about.

1:05:09 Yeah. Thank you. Yes, Berlin, Linda, please come. In follow, following up on what Santosh just said, we, we have to remember as, as Debashish said so wonderfully before this group, that this is vijana, this is integral yoga. And we have to do our best to, to hold those two things at the same time to, to live in this world, to, to do what we are instructed as best we can discern to do in this world and, and still hold that cosmic and even transcendental view. And in that context, I, I just want to remind everybody, as I was recently reminded, that every four years doesn't just bring an election in this country. It it also brings a celebration of the supermental manifestation on earth that that golden day celebrated on the 29th of February when the mother, as she

1:06:43 described it, pounded on the golden door and, and things changed. And I, as I've told some of you fairly recently, I, I, I remember a day at the 20, let's see the 2011 ALM at Spiro Dendos Adnapita, where an Aster Patel had a group of people at her feet in the meditation room describing how substantially she felt this super mental manifestation around her. And it, it was transformative to me because I suddenly was aware of something new.

1:07:33 And it is, there is something around us where we, we don't bear this burden on our own individual shoulders. There's, there's, there's force around us that we can and reach out and, and, and touch on, on our, on our best days, perhaps. So just wanted to, to bring that up following some somewhat intellectual discussion. And it's all part of the same same weave, all part of the same fabric. We, we need to address this in so many different ways as best we're able, yes. Hey, Margaret and Jim.

1:08:35 Well, perfect timing, Earl. I will. First of all, thank you, Santosh, because it's such an important topic and how it's approached is so important and you're your focus and how you presented this and giving us an opportunity to weigh in. And I'm following Earl on my perspective where Jim and I are in a group, A Zoom group where we were just reading Chapter 22 in synthesis of yoga on Vigyana and Gnosis. So just what Earl was saying and in that there's a discussion of the intermediate steps from the rationale to beyond mind. And I want to encourage all of us to share resources, whether it be Shira Vendo or others of support for developing the intuitive mentality so that we can take in these subjects like the subjective age and the push back. And as Earl was saying, stay in the consciousness of the intuitive mentality so we can evaluate and take action from a wider, higher consciousness that

1:10:09 can supremely make a difference and work collectively as well. So. Thank you, Margaret. Before I invite Charles, you know, I just want to read something from Shiravinder's The Human Cycle Conditions for the Coming of a Spiritual Age. And he says on page 233 of the book that I have. And here the first essential sign must be the growth of the subjective idea of life.

1:10:51 And I personally feel that's already occurring, you know, in the in the human civilization and human collectivity, the idea of the soul, the inner being, its powers, its possibilities, its growth, its expression and the creation of a true, beautiful and helpful environment for it as the one thing of first and last importance. The signals must be there that are precursors of a subjective age in humanities thought and social endeavour.

1:11:39 It may take time, you know, but more and more people are gravitating towards these ideas and they're doing things in their own ways. Charles, over to you. Thank you so much, Santosh, for bringing this particular topic, you know, to us today, this morning or this afternoon. Something I was reflecting on on as you were speaking and then sort of connecting and meditating with. And then sort of goes very much in the line of what Earl was saying and Margaret, that when we think of Shrier Bindo, Shrier Bindo, when he was writing these things, he was writing seven books at the same time and he saw the picture.

1:12:34 He didn't want to write about it until he saw the whole thing and he was literally writing the whole thing at the same time, right? So he had this many sided view and connected with something that was a deeper truth, which is what he writes about from the consciousness he was experiencing. The very gnosis that he's describing is something that he was living in. And so I, what I was reflecting is like for me to sort of take in something like this a subjective age. Well, subjectively, how do I ally myself with that very truth consciousness for which it's the way that he actually sees all of this coming from, not from the perspective of the human.

1:13:31 And then the thoughts and the mind and the emotions and the ignorance, trying to figure out what the truth is, try to work it out somehow reach or use our minds to sort of have concepts and think about it, but connecting with our very highest consciousness first, where all the problems are already not problems, they're sorted out from there. When you see from that place of calm, when you see from that place of truth where it's not a question, it's not something we're struggling to figure out, it's there.

1:14:15 It is that from that space, we are in a different position subjectively to sort of work out even what Shri Rabindu is writing for our minds, right. We have this nice, it looks like nice philosophy and you know, scholar chomp into it, right, But it's that's not really what it is. What it is is what is that truth itself that is getting worked out. And we I we yoke with that through yoga to our psychic being to our highest consciousness. That is possible.

1:14:59 Maybe that is our job for us to work out in as we trans. We are humans in transition, right? It's like that that inner out from the highest imagine it's it's done like you're in that space. When I'm in that space, when the when I feel that force down, there's not a there in a way, there is no problem to speak of. It is all at once one truth 1 Ananda. So what would it be for us to work from there to learn to connect with that and work the other way and then to then from the, you know, really read and understand what he's talking about. It's a working out for the the race, but all of that is within us.

1:15:54 The resistances are inside of us. It's in our parts of our being. So it's sort of like. So anyway that a little bit of the contribution when we talked about the subjective aids, I'm thinking, no, me like my subject, like this other part of me, this highest part of me. What if I put that in the censor and work the way up? And then how do things look from there? Because that's what Trier Bindo did. He he, he wasn't coming from working it out. He wasn't hacking his way through. He saw it, He saw the vision, he had it, the darshan.

1:16:35 It was there and he was just expressing it with words. But I really appreciate your talk 'cause I think it really kind of inspired me to think in a deeper way about this. Thank you. Well, that's wonderful. And I have to say that the reason I wanted to open things up today and not just be a speaker was because we're all sharing this subjective development that we're all going through. And it's good to share that and not just have one viewpoint on the table, so to speak.

1:17:20 And I wanted to add one other thought for for us to to think about. The mother talks about the truth consciousness coming out and we see in the world around us unprecedented exposures of what used to be hidden underlying truths about everything being manifested and being brought before our eyes so that we can see it. And as you mentioned, Charles said, what we see outside ourselves is also what we are inside ourselves, that we vibrate to that. And by seeing that, it's not to judge that badly, but to internalize that and work to remove those resistances, to harmonize those inconsistencies, to work through those falsehoods within ourselves as we shift to that awareness that you're speaking about.

1:18:24 Wonderful. I very much appreciate that. Barbara, please unmute yourself. Thank you. Thank you Santosh for generating this generous discussion and appreciated what everyone had to say. And ending with Charles too. Words often get in the way in different definitions, so I may be giving different definitions, but first I think of kind of generalize that we have three vehicles of intelligence, emotion being one of them, and then body experience being another, and they being related.

1:19:19 Anyway, everything's related and our minds take over so much. The thinking that the experiential, which I understand the mother had a lot to do with trusting the mystery, trusting, not knowing, trusting that information is coming from in a different way. And so this and ego has to stand back and listen from a deeper perspective. So I just wanted to say that one thing that I think is really positive in terms of the evolution of at least this culture and I think and. Hopefully, and in other places too, in in psychology, there's now an A budding understanding.

1:20:19 Most people aren't trained in it, but a budding understanding is how people become more superficial and how how that is different from someone who is more anchored. And the anchoring comes from, I mean, if we're lucky to have parents that can really see us and feel us, it's different. What I'm, what I'm trying to get at is it seems with social media and we have a culture so based on grasping and owning and you know, those are real superficial values and you know, the, the media amps them up. And so apparently the, you know, we're all kind of on a narcissistic continuum.

1:21:16 You know, we need some narcissism. So we don't stand in front of a bus that's moving and and then all the way on up to very, you know, unhelpful places for community. And so psychology, at least some like lone voices, and it's becoming more prevalent on a large level anyway, that the culture doesn't understand that these people exist. And they're very hard wired, often like a Mr. Trump, very hardwired.

1:21:59 He is not going to change. And if he ever went to therapy or somebody, you know, midway on the continuum, say went to therapy, they might be able to make a tiny change that's temporary, you know, and would have to watch it like a hawk, would have to really be like an alcoholic that goes, that recovering alcoholic that goes to meetings all the time and doesn't forget. That's a real tall order. So to really understand who's in the world. So we don't marry them, we don't neglect them.

1:22:41 So, and to get that there is a superficial and depth difference to people. And unlike James Madison apparently who, you know, had everything to do with how our constitution would be constructed, said, you know, he really warned, warned against the what did he say? The morbidly rich and how they will mess up a Republic and community. And we, we are seeing that rise, you know, into the like 7 deadly sins kind of place. And so perhaps we're becoming just more educated in it and you know, not only from those in the realm of consciousness, we're looking at this and then for our own education, inter subjective.

1:23:45 We're kind of learning how to hold, you know, the OK we are the silence behind all the moving notes. And the moving notes are made-up of thoughts and feelings and sensations and a jangly nervous system. Sometimes it's a tall order. And I think also that we're really called to step it up, all of us. Anyway, thank you everybody. I really appreciated everybody's contributions. I can't find my mouse.

1:24:28 Thank you, Barbara. Yeah, mute me. Seems like we have naturally come to an end of this conversation. Aparna, Andy, I'm seeing you here for the first time. Do you want to chime in? Oh, nice to see some friends and familiar faces.

1:25:09 Thank you, Santosh. I don't have anything to contribute. Thanks for allowing me to be present and thank you for all your thoughts. Thank you. Thank you for joining in. Thank you very much, Santosh, once again for this wonderful talk and the stimulation that you created within the community for people to come forward and share their thoughts. I appreciate it very much. Thank you very much. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Santosh. Thanks for any. Thoughts. Good to see you. Thank you. Thank you for for gathering the usual suspects. It's been so marvelous to be.

1:25:55 I'm going for more, trying to buy more. Thank you. Thank you, Linda. Thank you most everyone. It's wonderful to see you all. Bye. Bye. Bye bye. I.