The session commenced on day 1 with a brief concentration and meditation, followed by an exploration around the yogic truths we know. Yoga itself refers to union with the divine, a state of being. However, until our various parts of the being are mastered and surrendered to the divine, the fruit of yoga is not possible. Hence individualisation is the first key step which gives us a sufficient level of awareness and independence / mastery over the various parts of the being. Divine is the all pervading truth of our existence. It is in Divine that we can find the true Knowledge, true Beauty, true Harmony and true Love. So naturally finding and surrendering to the divine is the way to true Knowledge, Beauty, Love and Harmony.

Then the discussion proceeded to the various parts of the being: At the bottom is the matter, above which is physical consciousness which is marked by habits and inertia / tamas, above which is life force or vital, which is the seat of feelings, emotions, desires and so on. Above vital plane is the mind the seat of thoughts and reason. Above the mind are higher layers of consciousness. Ankita also discussed about ego, which is the quality that differentiates one from the rest of the creation. As such ego is necessary for individualisation but when centered on itself it can make us narrow and rigid.

This discussion was followed by an experiential practice of non-dual witness consciousness:

Drop everything else and become aware of the happenings (feelings, emotions, sensations, thoughts, images of events) and the part of you that is watching them or recognising them. Become aware of both the dual aspects of happening (prakriti) and the observing consciousness in the mind. Raise above both the image and the one who is watching the image. Keep coming back to this. As you get identified with the image, step back and repeat the exercise again and again. The moment you separate from both the object and the observer, it is a total collapse of thinking and complete Silence. There is neither subject nor object and only happening.

Getting into this state and staying here requires practice. Here, we touched something profound, an inner being / inner Presence, a state of pure consciousness, which may appear as awareness and deep peace to start with. With repeated practice, gradually that part begins to guide us and brings discernment, intuition, subtle knowledge. All our outward actions have their seeds deep within us and by being honest with ourselves, we can seek the answer to it in this pure consciousness.

Ankita followed this with a practice to offer past experiences to the Divine:

Connect with a situation in your life, and turn the situation towards the pure consciousness. First identify where in the body you feel it when you think about that situation or difficulty For example, disturbing thoughts may be felt in the forehead, issues with expression may show in the throat region, things such as guilt, shame, insecurity, safety may show up in the naval or pelvic regions. Ofcourse, physical difficulties show up wherever they are. Inwardly turn the this part in your body in your inner sight towards a flame or a representation of Divine within you. It can be a deity or an image of Mother and Sri Aurobindo or other Masters or the sensation of deep peace and Presence inside you. Without any mental intervention, let the part to offer itself to the Light. Let the Divine Mother, the pure consciousness, do what needs to be done. In this way we offer our life part by part, gradually and progressively by turning and offering everything towards this inner light, inner truth.

This was followed by a brief discussion with the participants about their experiences. Participants felt the inner peace and one was wondering how to handle with thoughts bombard us. Ankita explained that the pull we feel is that of the outer nature, prakriti. With repeated practice of finding the inner Presence and offering the part that gets pulled with sincerity and transparency, we make progress. With repeated practice we may reach a state of no-thought or even nirvana but its not the goal. The purpose is to use that divine Presence to transform all the lower nature.

“First of all, knowledge must be conquered, that is, one must learn to know Thee, to be united with Thee, and all means are good and may be used to attain this goal. But it would be a great mistake to believe that all is done when this goal is attained. All is done in principle, the victory is gained in theory, and those whose motive is only an egoistic aspiration for their own salvation may feel satisfied and live only in and for this communion, without caring at all for Thy manifestation…”  

This was followed by a discussion with the participants, where one participant made this subtle observation that there exists some attachment with the disturbances that we feel. Ankita appreciated this honesty / transparency and reiterated that for surrender to work, we need to be very honest and transparent with ourselves to acknowledge things as they are. Only then we can seek for their transformation.

Day 2 started with a discussion to not get lost in mental rigidities and let the mechanism find us based on the need of the time. Ankita shared two affirmations as we commenced the session followed by practices for higher consciousness. 

1. Let us free our consciousness from the ego, from the limited mind and allow our consciousness to do its thing.
2. Allow our consciousness to connect with the truth behind the words.

Practices for higher consciousness:

Ankita led the participants to a progressive deepening of consciousness and led them to take the seat of awareness to above the head to the region of higher consciousness. (For detailed instructions of the concentration, readers are referred to the summary notes for day 2). Open up your qualities of mind and emotion to the light of the higher consciousness above the head. Let this higher light suffuse every single cell in your brain, every single quality, vibration that you felt. Minutely observe the subtle change in vibrations as you open to the vastness. Hide nothing and put everything that pops up under the light.

At this, Ankita read a prayer of the Mother (Prayer made on June 13th, 1914 in her The Prayers and Meditations):

Maintain this double concentration - one on the higher consciousness - your god or vastness of the cosmos and one on your mind. When you hold both simultaneously in your awareness, you are uniting the two and letting them do what they want to do. Let the light lead with its wisdom. Just remain aware of the tiny sensations or change in quality of thoughts / vibrations. Once you establish this connection with the light, it is set for your whole life. It depends on us, our openness and our connection. But the light is forever and ever there with its own qualities. In your own words, make a prayer concentrating on your highest aspiration for your mind, for your thoughts.

Ankita led the group with an addition to the above practice:

Again station yourself above the head. If it is vague, use a memory of the time when you felt the wideness, peace and freedom and relive that experience. Now imagine yourself sitting there as your future self and you have full freedom to choose the qualities you want to have in your thoughts. Whichever quality resonates with you, whether clarity in thoughts, wisdom, discernment, freshness or  intuitive ideas project those qualities on your mind.

Dwell upon the image of you seized by the higher state. Make this image as vivid, as alive as possible and see it from all sides and zoom out and zoom in. Do not allow doubts to creep in. You are the creator in this space. Create what you want for your mind and ask for it with humility, faith and a prayer.

Once again come back to your body. Feel the sensations in the body and become aware of the difference between now and what was before this practice.

After this concentration, Ankita shared a few affirmations:

• “I am not a fragmented nature; I am a complete and whole being. Under the light of pure consciousness, all my past actions and reactions melt away and I enter into a divine light. I emerge as a pure light flowing with the will of the cosmos, the divine, the Mother. Fear, guilt, inadequacy, comparison, inadequacy, jealousy don’t define me. I rise above them. I rise above all that tries to pull me down.”
•  “I lead not from my limited outer nature but from my true inner being or soul. I see in other beings the same nature playing out. So I judge them not. I open my heart and wish for the upliftment of everybody.”

• “As I am awakening to my inner light, outer appearances and forms affect me not. I bow down to the Supreme and slowly gradually untie the knots of my ego.”

Ankita explained that even when we are engaged with work, we can be aware of this Presence above our head or deep in our heart. Ankita reiterated again and again the importance of staying with these practices and applying the light and  wisdom received to transform our nature in day to day life. Little by little, slowly, gradually, progressively, we can apply the light, to transform negative factors such as anger, impulsiveness, etc.

This was followed by a recap of discussions of the previous day and a detailed discussion on ego and vital. The obvious lower vital movements like anger, jealousy, desire, hatred, etc., need to be eliminated without debate but before the subtler aspects of the vital can be transformed, we need to first feel the push and/or pull from the inner being.

Ankita mentioned that vital is relatively difficult to tame than the mind as it is difficult at times to find the root causes of our vital movements. Without purity in the vital, there is danger of us abusing any powers that come in the way of the yoga and hence it is absolutely essential to have our mental and vital movements subordinated to the inner Presence. Ankita provided some suggestions for transforming the vital:

1. Do not judge.
2. Approach it with equality and equanimity.
3. Apply the processes we learnt earlier regularly.
4. Finally only the Divine can make the transformation. So offer to the divine Shakti deeper inside or above us.
5. Always check the quality of movements in the vital or the mind and then offer them.

This was followed by a discussion with the participants. Responding to a participant’s question, Ankita talked about vital modulations, and how true / pure vital and pure mind flows from the psychic.

Participant:

What do you mean by quality of thoughts or feelings. This participant mentioned difficulty in identifying the quality when checking the sensations in the body.

Ankita:

While feeling the sensations in the body, a sense of freedom, sense of stifling are example of quality of movements of vital or the mind. So we are looking at the vibrations. We will look at these more in the upcoming session tomorrow.

Ankita ended the session with a reiteration to imbibe the knowledge discussed and practice it in our day to day life and not keep them as mental concepts. The discussion and practices for the psychic were kept for day 3.

Ankita commenced day 3 with the importance of living the knowledge: If we don’t embody the truths that we already know then how are we going to invite more light, more knowledge, more force, more beauty into our being. How will the higher consciousness descend into various parts of our being in that case?

At the same time our vision of integral healing can make us forget the small victories that we win every day. How do we keep our inner gaze focused on the bright luminous future and yet celebrate the small victories from the practices in our day to day life?

The higher wisdom, light, knowledge are also of a substance that descends into our body. The substance of higher consciousness is not something entirely alien to us. If we are well aware of our body, we can feel the higher substance dripping down as a honey-like substance. For more such honey to pour into our being we need to embody all that we have learnt in our thoughts, emotions, reactions, behavior, in our physical activities and in our senses. Think of the one thing that you would want to embody after the workshop, something that you already know, convinced about or something that you picked up from this workshop. And set an intention to embody that knowledge, wisdom in your whole being.

What is the soul?

Soul is our true self. It is deep within our heart, behind the physical, emotional heart. In the deepest depths there is stillness, purity, deep gratitude, lightness, holds the knowledge of past, present and future, full of luminosity and splendour. The soul has waited for this moment to arrive where the outer parts begin to seek for something deeper, truer, vaster and more beautiful, more harmonious. Soul is a spark of the divine. And it is only the soul in us which really knows who and what the divine is. This discussion was followed by an interiorisation and concentration to dive deep within the heart.

Exercise: Concentrating on the Psychic:

For detailed practice readers are referred to the summary notes for day 3.

All your life, everything that you did, must have carried a subtle essentiality, essence in the background. A very subtle, not so loud quality must have driven all your actions. It is also possible that you were very much aware of it when you were a child. Aspire to get in touch with that quality and if it doesn’t come, pray in great devotion and it shall be granted.

Allow your whole life to flash in front of your eyes if you have to. Behind all that you did, all that you were, all that you said, all that you desired, what is the one quality that was standing, supporting your true essence, your truth? That's who you are and that is exactly what will take you back to your soul.

If you want you can imagine all this imagery to come together: Your whole life, all life experiences are coming together and turning in a small ball. Holding that one essentiality behind let go. Do this a few times. Allow this image to become hazy and clear.

Make a prayer to your angels, deities, Gurus, Masters and Gods who have been supporting your soul whether you are connected with them or not. Invoke their presence with gratitude and love. Whatever you are feeling, receiving, let it drip down from the heart to different parts of the body. Let it flow. Turn all the different parts of your being to your inner heart as if telling, “this is the true leader of your life, your sadhana. This is who we have to obey and follow”.

After the participants had emerged from the exercise, Ankita shared three images one after the other on the screen. For each image, she asked the participants to concentrate on the image and feel in the heart the vibrational change and the sensations, and feelings and subtle changes in the thoughts as we saw each image and as we moved from one image to another. Ankita suggested that as we focus on the subtle vibrations from image to image, we can note that even our blood will flow differently and our breathing will be different.

Ankita enquired the participants to share what came to them.

Participant #1: In the first picture, a sense of empathy came up. The third picture evoked certain heaviness and curiosity about the shadowy figure (figure of Death)

Participant #2: First image evoked lightness, calm, care and love. Second image evolved a sense of grace, peaceful and fierceness and angelic presence.

Ankita- All these images were drawn by Huta, guided by the Mother. We did this exercise to check if we can feel the consciousness behind these images. These are drawn for specific lines in Savitri which correspond to the levels of consciousness of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother ascended. It is an exercise to see how deep we can go.

In all these, the mind has nothing to do. Rely on your senses. Become aware of your senses first. Our senses have a potential which we haven’t tapped.

Exercise to deepen our senses:

Get in touch with your ability to hear as if it is only the ears that exist. See if you can become aware of more than what you could hear before.

Now let us move on to taste. Now taste the taste in your mouth. Taste the quality of the taste. Some image may come up..whatever the image is telling us is ok.

Similarly you can practice with your various senses.

This was followed by an interiorisation and concentration on the breath and how our left and right side of the body breath differently at different times. The participants were encouraged to breathe a little more consciously on the side of the body that is breathing less, just by shifting their awareness.

Once you are done with it, check your body again and see what has changed. Now slowly and gently you can open your eyes.

This was followed by a discussion on mudras and a concentration on one particular mudra of keeping fingers of left and right hand gently touching each other, and the effects of it on the energy flows in the body.

Ways of mastering the vital:

There are three ways of mastering the vital. The first approach is to deprive the vital, which is very difficult and also has its drawbacks. Second way is using the quality of the sensations and vibrations  to educate the vital. In any situation, we can tune into the quality of the state of the vibrations in our system and offer them to the Mother. Once we are aware of it, we can do something about it. Practicing mudras and breathing with awareness are tools in the second approach.

Participants were asked to share their experiences:

Participant #1: I felt a caring, compassionate or parental energy enveloping me, soothing me.

Ankita: Were you able to feel the flow of energy on any part of the body or were you focused only on the quality?

Participant #1: Mostly the quality. The overall body was feeling calming, comforting, like how a mother would comfort a child.

Participant #2: I was hearing some music which I haven’t heard before. Then I saw a picture of a mountain and the music was synchronised to everything that was happening in the picture. I started to feel the flow go through the entire body and I felt like oneness with everything. I couldn’t feel my body, it felt very light and I wanted to stay in that state.

Ankita:

We constantly engage with the outside world and the mind and vital push things down into subconscious and unconscious parts of us all the time which pop up later in various ways. As we grow in consciousness, we can stop the suppression which will come back and haunt us later on. Even childhood traumas, confusions, troubles, anxieties can lodge in the subconscious and those feelings may suddenly pop up anytime. One of the effects of Yoga is that such random things cannot lodge in our subconscious or memory and swing back any time in life.

When we do these practices any such thing can emerge. We also need to be careful that it is not any imagination of the mind.

Ankita then led the participants through a quick practice to understand the third method to gain mastery over the vital. It is to turn the vital movements towards the Supreme Shakti. The force, the power of the vital, can only bow down to a Shakti that is larger than itself.

Exercise to master the vital (Third way):  

Close your eyes. Feel the divine Mother - the energy of the divine Mother is the energy that is everywhere, vast, incomprehensible, loving, nourishing, nurturing my energies. If you sense a quality that is not helpful for your progress, turn it towards the divine mother and offer it to her, like how you would hold river water in your hands and offer it to the river.

May the Mother bless us all.

May we march forward in our journey with deep gratitude in our heart, for Her, for her creation, for these different instruments that she has given us.

To Her, we bow down, we take Her blessings and we make a resolve:

We offer our everyday practice to her. We offer this workshop, this effort to her.

Participant #2: Which practice do we do everyday?

Ankita:

Do the practice that resonates the most with you. First take some time to reflect and stay in the inner silence. Today we touched the heart and asked what is the essential quality that has driven all my life. Sometimes the practice of witness consciousness may resonate. We can do any of these or all of these. In every day work as well we can practice feeling the quality of emotions, thoughts, environment, etc. We can even try opening to the vibrations of flowers and their quality of vital energies as the Mother used to.

Ankita and James thanked everyone and concluded the session.