"The Longest Story Ever Told"
And there are new communities all over the world which seek to practice these principles of the New Age. The importance of a community is in the mutual support that like-minded members provide to each other. There is a hidden connection between all the members and no one person can rise too high without pulling the community slightly higher with him. Even externally seekers can draw the experience of others, exchange views, and that gives a certain sense of support and confidence. This is the advantage of a community of sadhaks.
When communities begin to come together and help each other, or at least remain in touch with each other, then there is a radical change that takes place. For the first time a global community begins to form. And that is precisely the process which we are witnessing today.
All around the world there is a breakdown that is taking place, a breakdown of the artificial hierarchies which had been built up over the centuries. The superstructures, which had been created out of a certain need, are now falling apart: culturally, socially and economically. In their place what we see is an horizontal networking that is beginning to establish itself at the level of individuals and group of individuals, which is far more powerful, far more effective, swift and far more united in its working.
Q: The difference between the soul and the psychic being?
A: In a sense it is the same thing. The psychic being is an emanation of the eternal Self. It is the part of the soul which is involved in evolution. The Self by itself is in its pure consciousness, quite untouched by what happens. The psychic being is an emanation of it which is involved in the process of evolution and which carries the memories and experiences of the different lives and grows through those experiences. That is why Mother said [that] when you contact your psychic, then your past lives become part of your normal memories because that is where the memories and experiences of earlier lives are stored. And that is the key in this sadhana: the contact with the psychic.
Q: How do you identify the different levels of your consciousness?
A: By the results and by their properties. First of all you have to experience and identify yourself with the consciousness. You feel that state, you are that state, you see what happens in that state. From those properties, you can identify the level of your consciousness. After all, these names which we give, "the thought mind", "the mind of ideas", "intuitive mind", "illumined mind", these are all merely labels which we give to certain natural categories of states of consciousness which we identify by certain unique properties. A consciousness which has certain specifics, we choose to call the "illumined mind". It is a label that we have attached.
Ultimately the name does not matter as long as you differentiate between one level of consciousness and another and feel that one of them is higher. That is the most important thing. Once you can distinguish that this level of consciousness is higher, you try to remain at the higher level. You will slip back, quite naturally, because you are not used to that higher state. But then again you rise with an effort. Again there is a slip-back but this time the rise is easier. And over a time you find that you are more comfortable in the higher consciousness than in the lower consciousness. And then you wonder how you could have spent so much of your life in that lower state, how you could live there at all. And that is how the process of a conscious spiritual evolution continues.
The end
