Wand of Mind Podcast

Here is the second video of my ongoing attempt to understand and process The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo, if you would like to read along with me! These are not teaching videos; rather they are slowed-down, sincere explorations of the concepts, using my own notes. Verbally articulating what I’m learning seems to (personally) be the best method so far when it comes to absorbing the material. Hopefully this will be of use to some of you who are interested in the book or who have been studying it. This session covers the mid-section of Chapter 2.

My plan is to go over one chapter a month (chapter 1 must be read on your own as I did not cover it!) I will cover three parts of Chapter 2, The Two Negations: The Materialist Denial, throughout the month of October.

The goal is to cover 12 chapters over a year and to take a little over 2 years to finish Book One. There are 56 chapters in total encompassing Book One and Book Two. These videos are also available to listen to on Apple Podcasts; search under “Wand of Mind.”

Crystallized concepts:

* The generality of mankind cannot fathom that what is known (our current lives) could a bridge to what is unknowable (a more divine life).

* The “real nucleus of truth” of what we really are and why we are here was, in the past, rendered nearly impossible by the accretion of superstitions, irrationality, distortions of religions and occult practices

* Science, rational thought, atheism/agnosticism offered a “clean sweep of the Truth and its disguises”—it was a natural reaction to the distortions of religions

* The Supra-physical can only reach its fullness when we keep our footing on the Earth, when we maintain “the touch of the Earth.” Rather than having, without preparation or discernment, wild spiritual experiences that are ungrounded and far beyond in other worlds and seem to go nowhere…we need to maintain our physical connection to the Earth, to become what we are meant to become.

* Half-truths are the “pathfinders and handmaidens on the way to the Truth.” Atheism and agnosticism are examples. Often these half-truths are truths that wear a disguise.

* Agnosticism has a great truth in it—as it says the Reality is unknowable. Sri Aurobindo says it is “a final truth of this reality".” But, we have it in our power as human beings to develop capacities to know the unknowable. We have just let these capacities atrophy.

* We can know the Unknowable by a “supreme effort of consciousness,” not by speech and thought. The ordinary mind only uses division, so it is impossible via thought. When we become identified with the Divine—we get closer to knowing It.

* When we make this supreme effort of consciousness, we begin to re-evaluate the symbols of the Divine around us.

I’ve been slowly reading The Life Divine by Sri Aurobindo for about two years now. But, I need to repeatedly return to my notes on the material in order to absorb it, so I am only still a few chapters in. I’m recognizing how it helps me greatly to talk the material through, and so here is a place where I’ll be talking through my own written notes, serving as motivation for me to continue reading and to offer a little island of mini-study for you. I’m starting today with the first half of Chapter 2: The Two Negations: The Materialist Denial.

My intention here is for those who are reading the book, to also slow down with me, to crystallize for themselves the key themes within each chapter. Breaking down the chapters into two halves, rather than attacking a whole chapter, I think will eliminate intimidation (it certainly will for me!)

My hope is that through my own embodying of the material through talking and sharing, those of us who are reading this massive and life-changing book, will be able to absorb the essential messages of the teachings and then share those crystallized concepts with others. Each time I post, I’ll list the crystallized concepts to take with us (listed below)

For those who are unfamiliar with the book, it is Sri Aurobindo’s very dense and intricate work, written 1914-1919, which explores the nature of consciousness, evolution, and humanity’s place within the unfolding of the Divine upon Earth. If you would like to start reading it, I plan to come on here twice a month, probably covering one chapter a month. I’ll be back in 2 weeks with the second half of Chapter 2.

The entire book can be found online. I find it very helpful to read it on a screen so I can copy and paste selections into an ongoing notes file. Also, read each chapter twice, and slowly. Don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense right away; it’s doing something to your understanding just by coming into contact with it.

Please also add your own questions and comments about the material!

Today’s video’s crystallized concepts:

LUMINOUS RECONCILIATION

ACTUALITY OF THE MIND

OVERLEAPING OF THE MIND

INTEGRAL HUMAN EXISTENCE

Interview with Yuli Smirnova, advocate of conscious procreation and rebirthing facilitator.

I had a wonderful conversation with my friend, Qi Gong master and teacher Grace Ishadai Jones. Her background in Chinese medicine, Christian mysticism, and Tibetan Buddhism, has led her to develop teachings on Sovereignty, centered around the rapid emergence of the Divine Mother in humanity. She is now writing about Sovereignty and teaching to groups of students. You can learn more about her offerings here and follow her on Instagram at @ishadai888.

I felt there was much overlap between Integral Yoga and Sovereignty in that both emphasize accessing the Divine so that one can attain a more and more sustained soul poise and become, in Grace’s words, “the host of your life,” seeing things from a Divine perspective.

In the conversation, I ask Grace how one who is not familiar with the concept of the soul can become more aware of his or her eternal being, as well as bringing in the Mother’s ideas of spiritual rebirth: freeing oneself from karma, when the union with your psychic being or soul is achieved—and how that is the ultimate sovereignty. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Jenny: I really wanted to speak with you, Grace, because I feel like the work you're doing with Sovereignty and the ideas and teachings around it, I find a lot of overlap and resonance with my path of Integral Yoga. And I wanted to start just by asking you if you could give a brief summary of what you see Sovereignty as.

Grace: Sovereignty is our true nature. It is something that we're actually born with, as we are divine. We have a divine nature. We have soul power. We have spirit power. We have energy, power and physical power. And this power is our inherent nature. We are born with it, and so that is true sovereignty.

So sovereignty, as it was defined in recent times, is about dominion over another, authority over another. But if we're actually looking at its true meaning and its original meaning, sovereignty means actually power, the true authority, the true power.

So what has true power? What has true authority? That which is divine, the Divine within which has true power over everything, right? So in the way that we then look at sovereignty, is honoring and aligning with that true power that is within us, which actually is an expression of the virtues and values of what it means to be truly human,

Jenny: So when you speak of the divine nature, I find a lot of similarity to the path of Integral Yoga, which is really emphasizing that the seeker gets in touch with the inner being, which is also called the psychic being, and that through surrender to the Divine in purifying one's nature, the psychic being comes more and more to the front and guides one's life more and more so that life isn't being guided so much by the lower nature—the ego and the impulses and the reactivity.

So what I'm wondering is, for somebody who is living in the world today, who might not be on a specific path, but hearing about this idea of sovereignty, how would you teach or help somebody explore that within themselves, to bring that more and more to the front— their inner divine nature?

Grace: I think in our world today, we're seeing really the letting go or release of religion and all of these different constructs of religion, which was associated with spirituality. But spirituality is not necessarily religion. So spirituality here is the spirituality of being, of spirit, cultivating at the spirit level.

So when we think about ourselves as humans here in this life, just going about our day, I think we have to keep in mind that there are three levels of being, three levels of truth. The three levels of being are the physical aspect, the energy aspect, and then the spirit or the soul aspect. And with that comes the three levels of truth, or three levels of reality.

So there's the lower level truth, which is more the physical, the tribal, the family, the cultural, the habits and programs, or, you know, at the egoic level; the way we are in the world, navigating the world, to survive, having an identity, etc. So that's a way that we exert power. We exert our sovereignty in creating that space. That’s the physical space.

And then there's the emotional, energetic space. Also, that's where we start to learn and grow and evolve, looking at, let's say, the habits and programming. And then we start to think and reflect—does that work for me? Is that true for me? Is that what I want to cultivate? And then starting to make a decision there—what do I want to cultivate? Who do I want to become? Who am I envisioning of becoming, or what kind of life am I trying to create? So then we exert power at that level.

And then even more subtle than that in the highest level is the divine, the soul level, the spirit level, the eternal being within us, the witness, the observer, that which is connected directly to the Divine, and then there's that power there to be able to transform everything back into light, into love, into union.

So I think it's important, as we're humans, we have to reckon with the fact that we're not just physical beings, we're not just energy, emotional or mind beings, we're actually also soul beings, and we have these three levels of power that we're actually wielding, and that is inherent within us. Life is an invitation to explore and cultivate through these levels, realize our potential at all three levels of our being living as we are now. We see this a lot of the awakened masters, whether it's Lord Krishna, Lord Jesus, Quan Yin, Lord Buddha. They talk about how this human body is a precious human body and and it is through being in this human body that we actually realize our potential, being able to actually align and be in coherent at three of those levels of power of sovereignty.

Jenny: I'm just thinking about Integral Yoga, and how Sri Aurobindo and the Mother talk about the mental, the vital—which is the emotional life—and the physical planes. And on each of those planes, there's an inner vital, there's an outer vital, which is like the egoic construct. As you go farther and farther inwards, you touch more of the soul within each plane. And so, when you're talking about the three levels, and becoming sovereign on each level, I'm relating it back to my studies on the three planes. In order for that [plane] to become sovereign, we need to open that to the Divine. We need to have the Divine come into that level in order to to purify, transmute, eliminate what's not needed, and transform, so it can become more of a soul-led way of living. That can happen for instance on the physical; you can start to become more of a divine physical body [through exercise and healthy eating.]

So would you say, in your teachings, that when you're working with a student who wants to become sovereign, and they're grappling with some repetitive looping thoughts or habits, do you lead them to open more to the light and to the Divine in order for that light to stream in? Walk me through it: I want to become sovereign, and from your path of Chinese medicine and Tibetan Buddhism, how would you start to transform those habits and those thoughts and those ways of life that are blocking you?

Grace: To answer your question directly- there are 100,000 practices and perspectives, because there's not one way to get to the top of the mountain. And so it isn't formulaic, like this is going to do it, and that's it. It's a living, evolving being, and so whatever you're needing in the situation that happened yesterday is going to be different than what you need today. Even though there are similar themes, patterns and habits that are perpetuated, there are different nuances.

It is to access the Divine in the moment, to access the soul being in the moment, to realize that in that very moment, regardless of what's arising and what's happening, that you're actually free, and that you have the power to transform whatever is arising—back into hosting, being the host of your life, Seeing that it isn't necessarily what's arising,…