 We will have a moment of silence and invoke the Mother's presence for the manifestation of crew order. I would like to take the opportunity today to talk about two issues that I feel are very relevant. They are relevant on three levels. It's on a personal level, for me personally I find them very relevant at this moment and they are also relevant for Oroville as a collective and they are equally relevant I think on the larger collective of the whole world if you look at what is happening today. The first topic that I would like to discuss is reality and the perception of reality. How do we know what things are and whether they are real or not? So in the context of what is happening in Oroville it's very difficult at this moment for people who are not physically here to understand what is going on because they hear a lot of things but they don't necessarily know whether that is true or not. And the same was for me personally before I came to Oroville. How did I learn about Oroville and what did I know about Oroville? I got to know about Oroville when I was ready to not board the airplane in Brussels when I came to India for the first time and when I came to the ashram I had booked six weeks stay in the ashram which was at the end, the beginning of December 2000 so almost 22 years ago and at that airport in Brussels at that time that flight got completely delayed was all kinds of troubles with the flight and there was an almost a little fight happening at the boarding gate because the airplane had been replaced by a smaller airplane and that smaller airplane couldn't take all of the people that had been booked so people were left behind, that was clear. And in that hall Kaffa 4 there was a German person who started asking me questions and he asked, are you going to Pondicherry? Yes, are you going to Sri Aurobina ashram? I said yes, how do you guess that? So almost people who fly to Chennai and who are prisoners will go there. And then he said, so I asked are you part of the ashram? I know nothing. In fact I had decided to make that trip by starting to read the book The Adventure of Consciousness by Satram of course it's a very very very famous book here that brought many many people to Auroville, to the ashram probably but many more even to Auroville as Auroville has a much higher number of foreign residents than the ashram has the ashram has only something about 1,500 foreigners, majority of the ashramites are Indian while Auroville has a lot more people from abroad. So at that moment this was the first person, I think it was the first time that somebody told me the name of Auroville and this was a German person who was standing there, who ended up being on the flight while I wasn't and he said certain things about it and since I was on a brand new adventure discovering things I had never heard or seen about I didn't even know what an ashram was when I came. I had no clue, I just, the book had somehow conveyed to me the idea that I needed to come to Pondicherry and figure out what that ashram from Cherubindo and the mother, what that all was about and this person started talking to me about Auroville but I wasn't really interested because I first of all had to discover the ashram yet, I didn't even know what the ashram was so I just very quickly heard something about Auroville a place and there's all interesting things happening and at the same time there are problems. So when I had come here and I was staying in the ashram in fact I think I landed on a Monday and on a Wednesday one of the persons in the guest house where I was staying which was an international guest house, that was a person from Bengal, his name was Amitabh and he at that morning asked me hey Liva I'm going on the bus to Auroville are you joining me and I said yeah sure why not I mean I had no clue what I was doing here anyway and thanks to him I had already figured out that I wasn't here to look at India and to visit temples and to go to Arunachala and do things like that I was here to just figure out what is the Cherubindo ashram and what is the integral yoga and where do I fit in and what does that all do to me and so I went on that bus with all of these people I was the only white person in the bus there have been about 20 people or so I don't know I can't record 20-25 people we went to the visitor center which at that time didn't yet have the expo hall so there was only what is considered the old part of the visitor center with the bricks or something of the sort and in there we got a presentation about Auroville so they showed us a short video of a few minutes and when I saw that video my mind was completely blown it's like I remember very vividly that moment when I was watching that video hearing the voice over talk about that project of the mother where everybody would live in a different way I mean it was heaven on earth it's the description of heaven on earth so I was really blown away by the idea that there is a place on earth that is actually trying to be that place or something or was supposed to be that place I couldn't I didn't know anything I had just I was here since 10 minutes or so what did I know about Auroville so I saw that video and time stood still and I was really taken by it and then we went with the ashram bus to sent a guest house we went to see Matimandir which wasn't finished like it is now yet there was all kinds of scaffolding inside stuff was happening there and when we went in the visitor center itself already I had an awkward feeling somehow that something was not really the way I had been told in that video so when I looked around first of all there was an exhibition about it and I saw the galaxy plan I saw the galaxy model and when I saw the galaxy model I was really like wow that's gorgeous wow this is a city wow magnificent and then next to that was a donation box where they were asking for money and I had the idea well that's very western isn't it I mean immediately I mean from the moment they see you they need money so I was a bit taken I didn't like that very much that there was immediately asking for donations for the lands of Auroville and things at that moment I didn't know much about the mother yet because the book The Adventure of Consciousness is mainly about Sri Urbindo its mother was still completely alive, Sathbrem was with her in the ashram and Sathbrem had taken up the book as an exercise to write at the one hand the life of Sri Urbindo and at the same time give an explanation of the entire yoga so these two combined so the mother didn't even though he quotes mother in these things her life doesn't feature in it and she as a personality didn't really feature in it so I didn't know much about it I hadn't even finished the book by the time I was on the flight I had I think I was halfway through the book also reading The Adventure of Consciousness for me was very difficult at that time because I had zero knowledge about India spirituality Indian philosophy, Indian traditions, Hinduism I knew nothing at all my closest thing to spirituality was probably some new age kind of things even though it resonated with me deeply inside the manifestation of the realization of these things in my life was nearly non-existent and everything that would go in that direction would be able to automatically new age there was floaty kind of stuff in Europe you don't really discuss these things much unless you're kind of floaty person so I had to discover a lot of things this is interesting I would love to drink it should I correctly drink it? am I committing a very very crime? they're very very very tiny ants I don't think I do a big crime if I drink them do I? okay and then they will find another place to go to now sorry for that so I had to discover about everything about the yoga itself when I was already for the first time in Oroville so we then looked around in the visitor center and one of the things that I remember very vividly because it made such a weird impression on me is that there were two western ladies having tea somehow got into a very short brief interaction with the group I was part of I don't even know how long and when the ashram did these bus tours I think they did them twice a week at that time it was in the morning and it left, well I don't know it left then 11 o'clock or so and then we ate something in Oroville I think because I remember that we went inside Vati Mandir which was a very short brief visit that went to the door of the chamber and there you can just put a peep inside I'm sorry I'm sorry you could peep inside and just people would stand with their arm in front of the door and you could just bend over and have a look at the chamber and once you had done that I think you can book for half an hour meditation at some times but you needed to come back then for these things so at that moment everything was new everything that I saw I hadn't had background about Oroville really I hadn't read a book I hadn't seen a documentary I hadn't read an article I didn't know really anything so what I saw was Oroville first hand for me so in the visitor's centre there were these two ladies drinking tea and there were these Indians saying something like how are you here and what is things and one of the ladies shouts back can't you see we're in paradise and I thought well but paradise is not just physical a few trees and a nice clean environment or something paradise for me is something totally different because paradise can only come with spirituality and consciousness the reason why I had started to read the book The Adventure of Consciousness because it was exactly that word of consciousness I was very very much interested in learning more about consciousness and the concept of consciousness and expanding consciousness and I'm physically never attracted to any kind of drugs or psychedelics or something so I never had had these what they call consciousness widening experiences or expanding the psychedelics kind of thing I never had done that and I've still not done it and I was never really attracted to it because it always seemed artificial it never seemed like this is a real natural state to be in but I was very interested in knowing what would happen when you are in that state of consciousness that is then expanded or you can see other things or you can I mean what everybody says in high school is that you can smell colours and you can see smells and stuff like I mean just mix up of our senses so when I heard these ladies say we're in paradise I thought well I'm going to suspend my judgement on that a little bit because I think that paradise for me is something where the main characteristic would be how people are and the happiness of people and how people behave with each other and what does that all do it's a society that would create heaven on earth and not just a few palm trees and a nice clean visitor centre so afterwards when we went to send the guest house also I also had that kind of an idea that I was looking at a lot of western entitlement kind of things where people claimed a lot of things that I had the feeling well I'm not interested in what you say it is I want to feel what it is and experience what it actually is on the ground after that initial day I came back to Auroville six weeks day in Pondi I came back to Auroville several times to have yoga classes I cycled up and down and I quite liked it somehow it was not as far as I thought it was when I think back of cycling up and down to Pondi by now I think oh my god it's so far away at that moment it didn't feel that far at the same time I was on a holiday and I had time so who cared whether I was cycling for half an hour or more I mean it didn't matter if I was cycling for an hour it was anyway the weather here it was winter it was quite summery for me so it was still quite sweaty but I liked it and it was mainly in the later afternoon that I would come here because these yoga classes would take place at five or six o'clock or so or four o'clock or something so I would not be in the heat of the day I had learned that twelve o'clock and two o'clock timings but anyway so I came here and I tried to figure out a bit but my initial interest was absolutely in the ashram and absolutely understanding the yoga of Shorbindo and the mother and learning about these things and in a very non-western way probably I don't know but in a very intellectual probably way I was not originally very attached or attracted to the mother herself because the book had been about Shorbindo I was interested in Shorbindo I came for the ashram of Shorbindo and so I thought what is a French woman doing there what do I have why is this a package here I need to take her as well I can't just have Shorbindo it was very clear from the beginning that whatever you read from Shorbindo is something you immediately have the mother there so it's really something you decide upon and it is one experience a small thing that I can quickly say even though I don't like to talk about these things is that I tried to learn meditation and things I mean I gave everything a try I'm discovering the ashram I know nothing so I'm just trying to okay what am I supposed to be doing so I'm supposed to be sitting in silence and concentrate and do things so I give all of that a try and there is one moment where I feel that my head is drawn constantly to a certain spot and I think what is this why is my head going there and then I opened my eyes and I thought that I was looking there was a picture of the mother and I really felt that she was she was pulling me she was like a magnet somehow saying me get into me find me something like that find me it's like I'm here it's a very personal I really don't want to go deep into these things but my relationship with the mother later after I had gone back I think it took me some time to digest everything and I think I understood at one point it's not a clear point I think this was a gradual understanding that I noticed that the mother in fact had been guiding me through all my life because I could see that in many instances already from years and years and years ago that there had been these things where like an invisible hand had done something in my life and had made me magically against my own wishes or against my own understanding or so I had made sure that I was at the right place at the right time and I did these things without consciously understanding or even wanting things consciously to go that way so I understood in the end that mother had been with me from the beginning and I very very strongly feel that I mean it's mother has been there and has been what I she has been in a sense the kind of practical part of what I had always had as a very close contact with God even in Europe of course I was raised as Catholic in Belgium it's very hard to escape that in Belgium Flanders as Catholic is very very strongly Catholic less now but at the time still because of the historical events that have happened Flanders was very open to Protestantism when it started but then Flanders wasn't in Belgium it didn't exist yet so Flanders was a part of Spain dependent on the Spanish Crown was territory of the Spanish Crown and the Spanish King Philip II didn't allow Protestantism at all and sent an army to kill everybody in Flanders that was Protestant and all of these people fled to the north to Holland and that's how Holland became Holland and is Protestant but so in Flanders only Catholicism was about and left and that's we're talking about five centuries ago so it's still embedded in that country that's very deep Catholicism so I had grown up with a very close relationship to God somehow even though I understood I couldn't really talk about that with other people because I could see that at school not everybody had that kind of relationship and I thought I would be considered quite insane if I would say that for me God was always there I would never be alone really there would always be a presence with me and so later on I could identify the closest part and the most practical part the part that really guided and saved me and did things in my life was the mother anyway that's for me how she is so now back to the topic that was about in fact what is the perception of reality then so I had experienced a little bit of Orofil and when I went back home I knew that I would come and live in India because I had felt here something I felt more at home than I had ever felt before and I couldn't really find that in fact I was very very very sad that I had to leave my biggest wish was to simply stay I didn't want to go back I didn't want to take up that old life I really felt like I want to be here there is something in me that has opened I've discovered something I want to remain here but when I went back I had the idea okay I'm going to come back and live in India because that's I don't I didn't know whether it was in Yashram or whether it was in Orofil or whether it was anywhere else also but very soon afterwards I had the idea no I don't want to be in Orofil I mean anything will be but I think Orofil is way to western way to hypocritical way to new age way to it didn't feel right it didn't feel authentic in a way and I was looking for something for authenticity and for real spirituality and real understanding of reality really what is the universe what is the world what is life what are we meant to do what is this thing and I had a very strong feeling that western people aren't really the ones that are able to to give that understanding or to explain that so when I had come back the funny part is that I was planning on being back within a year but it took me seven years in fact to get everything in order and to get the plan to come back here but in all of these years I was really more and more and more and more convinced that I would never come to Orofil because that Orofil was really not it then happened the 18th of September 2007 I was rereading the book Beyond Man by Shosh Van Flecken I had taken a whole I had shipped two boxes of books of when I had been here in 2000 2001 I chipped over a lot of books and I had started reading and I had read the whole agenda and things and at that time I was somehow I was rereading it the book I had come across the book when I was here he had just published it and I was rereading it and I was rereading on that day the chapter about Orofil and suddenly I had a very strange experience that I normally never I mean it's a very very unique experience in my life is that while I was rereading that or at the end of the chapter suddenly there was a kind of an epiphany I understood something and it was like I had a talk with mother it was like mother's presence was very much there and she was putting thoughts in my head and she made me see that my judgment of Orofil was completely wrong in the sense that well yeah it I mean whatever the reality is is the reality but there is another reality of Orofil and that is her dream the vision what she wants Orofil to be the real Orofil thing and she made me understand that it's so high and so far away it's such a very very very ambitious project it cannot just come in a few years this is going to take ages I mean long time at that moment I really felt like this is going to take 200 years and so before we are somewhere where Orofil is really Orofil and so I saw that and at the same time she gave me kind of she made me look at myself like look you're now judging what is there that very very crude early beginning of that humongous the high vision high ideal so what you're doing actually is you're waiting for these people to build a castle pull out the red carpet and then have you win they need to make it all happen already and then when it's there you're then you're willing to come and participate in it and so she made me feel like what is that I mean what do you want to do with this with all of this the reality is that it will need people to be executed it cannot fall from the sky it's a very high a vision and it cannot be just magically realized that's not how things go and it's not possible it needs people to actually see the vision and struggle through life and to to get that vision materialized realized and she gave me a challenge at that moment it's like and it was a challenge like only the universe can give you challenges it's a challenge without any judgment it's a choice in fact it's choice and there is no good and bad you cannot choose wrong it's just here is an option here is another option what do you like it's more or less like cookies no I have two two sorts of cookies which one do you prefer and there's no you can't choose wrong no there's not just two different varieties of cookies so she gave me the challenge what do you want to do with your life do you want to sit here on the couch have a little kind of ordinary life with your husband and things like that or do you want to spend the rest of your life materializing that vision what you apparently can see because you claim that it's so far off from the vision so if you are able to see that vision so clearly aren't you the ideal person to go and do that over there and that moment was for me not a choice in fact it was like I was gripped with an enthusiasm and it was like there was spirit in me suddenly I jumped out of bed it was early in the morning I was really in bed I jumped out of bed went downstairs opened my laptop and just started googling Oroville searching I didn't use Google already anymore at that time and I found the website of Oroville and I started reading about everything I could find and I took all of that as being real and it probably more or less is or was so from that moment I started to study Oroville and get to know as much about Oroville as I possibly could for two years because it took us two years to be able to come here because my husband needed to save up holidays so that we could stay for at least five weeks uninterrupted and so I started as much as I could about Oroville I tried to find every interview I tried to find every everything everything I listened to Oroville radio at that time on repeat it was ridiculous I was completely brainwashing myself with Oroville I was nonstop into Oroville I woke up got into Oroville just before I went to bed I was into Oroville so when I came here then after that I mean this was there's a very sad story about my husband not being able to be here and we had to split up we were not officially married but we lived a husband and wife and he could not come and I had to come alone I mean we came for five weeks together and he hated everything because he knew that I was going to stay and he was going to go back so when I came here I had very difficult experiences because the breakup from my husband was very emotional for me very hard and nobody here was there to be there for me nobody in Oroville everybody was busy with their own things everybody there was no real or I didn't find that maybe that's a thing but I had a very hard time and I really felt very much left alone but at the same time I was ready at that time to take that challenge on because I had felt very very strongly in the weeks that I was together here with him that this was my place and that there was something here for me and so I was going to take the challenge and I felt like mother is there she will her force is there there will be something but it was a very difficult time and I saw a whole different reality of Oroville then what I had studied over all of these I mean over these two years and he wasn't yeah it turned I turned against Oroville quite because of all of that because I I became very very disappointed in everything I had a very hard time and I saw that everybody else was in fact also having a hard time and I wasn't necessarily blaming them I wasn't blaming the Orovillians for the situation but I could see that in the situation where Oroville is in such a difficult space how can I expect other people to deal with my psychological issues that I'm going through my emotional difficulties while they themselves are struggling with the same thing of how do you do life how do you do life if you want to do an integral yoga how is that that whole thing is so difficult so I was more disappointed with the whole thing and I thought I had made a mistake I thought I have it all wrong I have trust something in me that wasn't trustworthy and I probably should go back and I did go back to get my one year visa, my entry visa and it was it was very hard to come back here I didn't really want to come back and my husband convinced me that I could come back for a few weeks and if it turned out to be so horrible I would not he would not refuse me to come back and we could start life again probably but we should have to talk about it because he had suffered tremendously from our separation also so I came back here very unwillingly I was convinced I would not stay at that moment I came back on an entry visa and I thought I would book my flight back tomorrow I can't stand any of this I find it so harsh, so hard and in the airplane coming back here I had I don't know if many people have these experiences I think everybody has these experience but you need to feel really at the bottom of the pit more or less for it I think I felt so bad I felt so horribly bad that I really prayed to mother and I said mother if there's anything that you feel I should do in Oroville I have to do that because I cannot I'm incapable of doing all of this this adventure of Oroville is way too big for me I am way too small I don't have any power for us or any capacity to do these things and I was very very very honest in telling her I'm out of here in a few days I think I mean I had my husband had told me if after a few weeks you still feel so bad but for me that was really like that's going to not be weeks it's going to be three days maximum the first flight I can get back on I'll be back so I told her in the airplane that if I'm not doing this I'm just not doing this I cannot do that I go there I'll be there a few days and I'll come back and take my life as it was before that Holy Piphany moment I'll just pretend that it never happened or so and we'll just take it from there now after I had arrived here that I arrived at lunchtime in Oroville back and I needed to somehow struggle myself through the afternoon because I didn't want to go to bed immediately because I would wake up in the middle of night I think so I wanted to make sure I didn't go to bed by before 5 or 6 o'clock and I had Marie here who was adorable she was totally adorable she was so happy to see me back and I've been working with her in Montimandia and she was just so joyful and I felt so horrible that I was like a blob of negativity and blackness and depression and darkness and I really felt so embarrassed that I couldn't be anything else but that at that moment while she was all joyful and this and this and that and so she had invited and she had asked to have dinner and her husband and I felt like I'm the party pooper here you know I'm just spoiling the joy you all are having and I should retire so at 6 o'clock or 6.30 or something after having that dinner as quickly as possible as soon as I finished eating I said I'll go back I need to sleep I'm way too tired when I went I was in Arca and I went to sleep and I fell asleep like a log and I just switch off of the battery or something I just total gone and I woke up from 6 o'clock in the morning and from the moment I opened my eyes and this is a moment that I will never ever forget in my life even though I can't feel it anymore like I felt it at that moment but that night a miracle had happened in my life that for me was and still is a real life miracle something that had never happened before that has never happened so far after and that is I woke up and I knew immediately that everything was different because during the night and without me having any memory of anything I didn't remember anything but I only had the result of what had happened it's like something happened during the night and I could feel inside myself the result of that and it was that someone somehow no idea how what were had given me shown me had given me the knowledge the certitude I don't know how to say it it was like it was more certain than I've ever been certain of anything it was more certain for me than the grass green or something it was more certain than the sunrise tomorrow it was the biggest certainty in my life that and it was again I had that choice there was a choice and it was again like with the cookies there's no judgment it's purely your choice and nobody else has anything to do or say about it and nobody will ever judge you you can do whatever you want you can go back to Holland you can do whatever I was my husband was Dutch so you can go back there you can do whatever you want but the knowledge that I had been given is Oroville is the best place in the world for you at this moment so whatever you choose just know that Oroville is the place that will be the best for you and for your growth and again from that in that moment it was for me no there was no choice really it was obvious just like the first time when I got that choice it was obvious and here also it was obvious that morning I woke up with an enthusiasm with a love for Oroville where I was more home than I had ever been home because I knew that my soul wanted to be here and I was doing what my soul wanted and that thing falling together was so I can't explain it it's an experience everybody will have to have for themselves it's indescribable it's a happiness that I was floating on air I lived on that happiness for two whole years more or less it took two years to fade out of my life for two years I could feel that being lifted up by that idea that I was exactly there where my soul wanted me to be and then over the years well yeah we need to somehow get back to the topic of perception of reality but so then well in fact for years after that I looked at the reality of Oroville from a completely different angle because all of a sudden Oroville what it was really didn't matter it was for me personally it was the place there was nothing else it was home it was everything that I needed was Oroville while Oroville in fact has the reality of the material reality that is there also so it took me in fact I think about four years to start to get completely out of that to have that whole experience worn off this is why at this moment I know that it happened that day but I know I think it was 17th of March 2010 but that feeling that I had that day I don't have that anymore right now I know it happened I know that was like that but I don't feel that happiness and that being so alive I mean that whole moment the feeling of that moment is gone now over the years working in Oroville I think everybody will come across many experiences that are difficult Oroville is a very very difficult experience and a very difficult experiment also it's very difficult place and you have to find a way to deal with it somehow if you want to remain here I mean people find ways to deal with it by just leaving because it's too difficult and it's not out of that mess so after four years I remember that I needed to go back to get my five year visa and at that moment already I had met I had met people here that I didn't know before but they were from Holland and one of these persons was young Peter Derickser who died in the past I think a bit more more than a year and he visited me when I was with my parents in Bruges and with my family and we had discussions about Oroville and my mother overheard quite one of these discussions and my mother told me afterwards she said look if it's so difficult you don't need to go back you know you can stay here it's okay and it's because we were discussing Oroville the way it is but it was I'm so sorry for that we were discussing Oroville and it just turned very very negative very normally very easily it turned extremely negative because everything was not happening the city wasn't being built I mean we were both very very much wanting to see the galaxy come up young Peter had been here in the late 70s already from 75 74 75 till 80 or so and he had given tours about I mean giving explanations about Oroville and came with the ashram bus also at that time I think he was on the bus in that famous incident where the bus was stopped by the Oroville the bus was stopped and the people from the society and the ashram were kicked out of the bus and not allowed into Oroville anymore with that daily or I don't know they had a bus coming from the ashram regularly and were not allowed and he was on the bus when that happened so he remembered that so now how can people today know what is happening in Oroville because it took me alone already more or less four years to start scraping the surface of something is really not as rosy here they make it seem so how do we exactly know oh yeah what I wanted to say in the early days when Oroville started Oroville was here on that deserted plateau it was extremely isolated it was even though it's only 15 kilometers away from Pondicherry it's not so far away still it is somewhere where there's nobody else in the middle of nothing more or less and so the only way people could know what is happening here is by physically coming here and having a look but who would come and have a look here for more than one I mean you come here there's nothing here what are you doing here so why would you come and have a look for more than a few hours if there's even someone like I forgot his first name who came and made that he made a documentary quite a long a lengthy documentary about Oroville he came here he filmed it all himself and still how much did he get to know about Oroville he must have been here only a few days a week how long would these people be here two weeks and what do they see of Oroville except everything that is shown to them specifically or I can't live here as an Orofilian he came to make a documentary so even though we have the documentary and we can look at the documentary and get an idea of what Oroville was at that time still it is the experience that Elkabach was able to have at that time with all of his willingness and then cut off an edited and shown to us afterwards so it's his interpretation of the information that he was fed what was he able to get to I'll always remember I don't know whether it was striking for other people but if you see the little sequence with Archbeth who is there as a 12 year old girl I think who looks I found it extremely endearing to see her say always mother will take care mother will take care at the same time it can look to somebody else like she's completely brainwashed the girl can't say anything else she can only say one sentence mother will do, mother will decide she's not capable of any thought but I found her extremely endearing to watch but still what is the reality of Oroville that we get out of these images was every child like that no of course not so how do we know what exactly happened and I'm convinced that one of the aspects of that early Oroville that people have completely overlooked is the isolation of that location here at that time there was more or less nothing around there were a few I mean there were villages with people in it would they have been believed if they had said the things they saw were they able to understand were they able to know the things how does one actually know exactly what is happening and how do we come personally and even if we come and stay here for a few months how much do we experience and how much bias is it by our perception and our wishing the wishing Oroville to be what we want it to be and so we read into what we see as what we wish it to be it's so difficult it's very very hard to know the reality as an objective kind of reality that is why people say everybody has certain things like that at the same time in the ashram when you go up to the rooms and you go on the staircase there is cling to truth Shrio Bindo called the Supplemental Consciousness the truth consciousness so what is that truth that these people are talking about if it's not graspable if we cannot get to truth if we cannot find is it not material do we have to discard material reality as not being part of the truth that's not that's completely counter Shrio Bindo's yoga Shrio Bindo specifically said that his yoga is for a material result and to change the material life and to have I'm going to do like this and to have the material manifestation of this world changed that's the whole point not to go to nirvana and to have that kind of a personal liberation and get out of this thing the whole point of the yoga was to make sure that the material manifestation on earth is changed so how do we how do we make sense of the fact that but you don't know you cannot know truth everybody has their own truth reality is ungraspable you cannot really and cling to truth and find truth and figure it out I have always felt that there is a way to find the truth of material reality you cannot claim that it's only about spiritual truth and high-up truth no there's also a material truth about these things the fact that I'm sitting here to do and having this talk is a material fact I think that we can verify we can figure that out we can figure out which flowers were on this table and which class was standing here so there is some kind of if I say there was no glass on the table then I'm lying because there is a glass with water on the table so how do we go about finding reality now at this very moment in time the reality of what is happening in Oroville is very important for very many people because if it wasn't important then there wouldn't be dozens and dozens of people in Oroville right now busy with doing nothing and spending all of their time and their money on exactly that making sure that there are people in the world who think certain things about what is happening in Oroville if it wasn't important all of that, why would they spend all of the time and energy about it I mean on that and fill their days with only that making sure that this statement goes there this many views many things many it's influence of perception so there must be there must be an importance to it so how can people know it in Oroville how can people that are not physically in Oroville know what is happening here we who are here in Oroville right now already perceive the reality of what is happening very differently we don't all agree about it so what is the solution here Maya so what is the solution here my idea is that we need to put as many facts on the table with as little emotion as possible and it's as far as I can see nearly a it sounds the most simple and most rational and normal thing to do and in reality I have the feeling that it is the most revolutionary thing to do because we are trained like monkeys to do the opposite we are trained to discard facts and to react very strongly emotionally that's the main thing we have to do is have strong emotional reactions about whatever we are being fed is reality and so I am calling on to everybody to try to find as many facts and I really hope that for me the only way out if there is going to be any reconciliation in Oroville it will have to come from trying to be as detached and unemotional as possible and put every fact on the table and put the whole picture on the table the whole timeline to whole things how much do we have and try to see from as many angles as possible and try to understand my understanding of divine consciousness is the consciousness that can see at the same time in the minutest detail of every person it's the consciousness of everything at the same time that's difficult we are in different bodies we have different perceptions I can only have the consciousness that I have the perception and the understanding that I have from where I am physically right now now if I could at the same time look at myself from your perception from your perspective through your if I could see at the same time have your understanding of what this reality in this little space here is can extrapolate that to everything in the whole universe and beyond everything that is real and if we can have the perception at the same time of everything, every standpoint every viewpoint, every experience everything that is conscious everything is consciousness there is nothing but consciousness even the stones and the wood on the stairs and the things have somehow consciousness so if we can have the perception of this space this moment in time from the space, from the consciousness as well as from the cushion and the staircase and everything together if we can experience all of that at the same moment then we have the divine experience I think that's the divine consciousness and I think that that is what we are absolutely meant to grow into we need to grow into an understanding let's first of course make it simpler and not involve inanimate what we call inanimate objects and things because that's more difficult but if we can already have the perception of more individuals of the same event at the same time and see and put that in and glow that in that would already help a lot to understand what the truth is and what reality actually is what plays along also very much is that I think Hollywood has been very very very influential in that is that we are trained to do movies to think of stories and happenings evolving things as linear we are trained to look at linear plots to have a story where there is one line of things and there can be a little bit of things next to the line there are some side plots in a movie and in stories there is something happening aside but there's always one main line that is not like that at all reality is like the ball of yarn completely messed up everything happens at the same time from all kinds of different things and it's not linear at all necessarily there's just a lot happening it's like a blob kind of thing where everything happens and everything influences everything else so things are not linear at all to really have an understanding of what happens wherever in the world at any time and place if you want to understand really a certain reality of how it was you have to have different perspectives and see how this was happening here and that was all influencing each other that was all influencing one another this happened here because these and these things were influencing that and almost all actions are always specifically big actions in the world and things like that big actions like what happens in order to collective actions, collective happenings are never a linear kind of thing where somebody did something and that had a big event it's always because there are more players and more sides to it that are ready to take this up and react to it and have a the event is always created from different players that create an event otherwise big events don't happen because people won't there's always that inertia against big changes and big events and big events can only happen when there are many sides that feel the benefit of it or have an openness towards it or they make it happen otherwise it doesn't anyway am I still making sense somehow thank you so much I have no clue about the timing I don't know how long how far we are what did you say I can talk for hours more that's not the problem so the question of what is reality and what will I do I mean everybody will have to figure that out for themselves now but I do feel it's very important that people know that it's very hard hard hard to know something and that they need to be careful by hearing something if they have no way of knowing even whether it's factual or not there's a material factualism that you could check and can know and if that is not even possible then it becomes very very slippery slope now the other thing that I liked to try to convey or give some thoughts about is what identity is and what people are this is also very much linked to the yoga because we are supposed to become more conscious of everything not only of the reality outside of us but the reality inside of us so these are the two parts of reality that we constantly have to search I find it a very very interesting topic to have the inner and the outer in Auroville it's a very big issue it always has been like we first need the city and the growth of consciousness the personal growth of consciousness it's always been like that so non-building the city has been excused by saying we are not ready for it we first need to grow and it's more important that we grow and then the city will grow out of our consciousness growth now for me living in Auroville and specifically living in creativity living in creativity was a blessing I didn't want it mother forced me to live in city more or less because I really wanted to live in citadine and citadine went wrong on all levels and I remember very vividly that the insight that something was going on was given to me by Gopal of all people of Darkali he told me like you see that mother is not giving it to you it's going wrong you want it so bad but it's blocked at every point so you better start taking what comes to you and even though I find it a very very harsh way of putting something in my face it was absolutely true he was right it's like that you have to the more you can let go of your preconceived ideas of what should happen or what needs to be and you can let make it just see what universe brings to you and gives you so I got creativity I didn't need to do anything to get into creativity it all came by itself I didn't even have the money ready everything went by itself while I had been struggling for six months or maybe a bit around I think around six months I pleased to get into Citadine and it just wouldn't materialize so living in creativity has shown me very much because I think when creativity was built it was probably one of the densest places in Oroville by now I think Sunship has completely surpassed that but Citadine didn't exist when creativity was built, creativity was built in 2000 started 2001 and at that time I think it was the densest place because there were 22 flats there were about 30 people intended to live there or for all the 21st years there have been about 30 people in creativity all the time and it's quite a small space if you look at how Oroville communities have been built creativity was rather on a very small space a lot of people so you have to live close together with other people and I found that a very very big eye opener and it made me understand my perception why the mother wanted to have a city of 50,000 people because for me if you don't live close together with other people and it's richly live it's not only working together it's also living together if you don't have that experience of having being confronted and having to deal with other people's lifestyles on a constant basis on a daily basis you don't have that push to grow and to look into yourself you're not confronted with the thing it is the fact that we live close together it makes you you have to question because you can't live close together with other people without conflict I believe it's not possible the state we are in that level of consciousness where we ordinarily live in doesn't allow for that it will hurt itself it will find problems it will have difficulties so we want to grow in consciousness and to grow in consciousness the confrontation constantly with other people is very very it's it's a big incentive it's a big encouragement to do so it's very difficult it's very unpleasant but it really pushes you to constantly be confronted with your own smallness why do I react like that why can't I let other people be I have felt that in the beginning when I came into creativity I was very much one of the reasons why Oroville has created that rather completely absurd policy of being allowed to choose your neighbors has come out of that because it is difficult and very personally unpleasant to be confronted with your own smallness if you live together with people who live in a very different way than you want who have very different opinions on life than you have all of these things are very confrontational and personal and it pushes you very hard to go through that and I think most people will naturally try to avoid these things because it questions who you are as a person in a very unpleasant way it really shines a light on your smallness working will do that also when I worked in Montreal I started working in the gardens in the garden team and I ended up also working in the access team and being inside and I remember very much the moment that I thought this is going very wrong is when I started to have a fight over a ribbon in Matrimandir and have a really bad fight over a ribbon I mean it was the most idiotic thing after that moment I really thought leave her how old are you I mean are you 5 years old that you are starting a fight over a ribbon so you can have these kind of things in work where you are confronted with your own smallness and your own things and you have to, I mean my understanding of the yoga is that you learn to see these things and to try to change that and not excuse it of course I can find 5 million to shut everybody up there was making noise after 9 o'clock and I was accepted in creativity it was all ok we can do like that we have these rules that everybody needed to just fit into the I mean there was a whole list of do's and don'ts and what they wanted people how they wanted people to try to avoid that personal growth that personal step, taking a step every time to avoid these problems you just tell everybody that they need to behave like this and this and that because then I'm not affected and I'm not offended all the time, if you don't do that then I'm not offended, that's fine for me I like that so these things are very very important now at the same time the building of that city has always been excused not to do because we need to grow the inner consciousness we are too crude inside and we are going to do yoga first and now we are going to do that yoga after more than 50 years how long is that yoga going to take another 500 years and then we are going to build the city because then finally we have gotten something it's very difficult so I understood by being in creativity little by little I understood it's needed we need to have a material outward and societal structure that gives us pushes us to go further because if that outward if we all live like 500 meters away from the next neighbor at least I don't know if we all have a big villa with the things there's no why change? I love it it's all fine, everything is great I'm doing fine here this is paradise like the lady said in the visitor center at that time so that whole thing is I feel it's not possible you need to have a reality a material a societal reality around you that helps you it doesn't need to be nasty of course we come from an involution of inconscience and we're growing out so far we haven't been in the negative half of the evolution everything has fallen on the negative part of the things and so everything we did that's why suffering is there everything is all of our pushes to go out have come from negative impulses we move out of things we grow in consciousness out out of negative experiences because we don't want this because this is uncomfortable we don't want that because from the moment we're comfortable in our comfort zone everything is fine let's stay here it's all perfect perfect, don't do anything so this is of course the most central part of the yoga probably is that we grow into a state of consciousness where we don't need suffering and negative impulses anymore to move forward we just want to move forward because we want to move forward because we see that it's beautiful to move forward it's the story that mother had the little play that mother had written of the voyage I think it's called the voyage where people go on a mountain hike and everybody drops off at one point because for them that's enough to move anymore and the real consciousness the real higher consciousness is a consciousness that will keep on moving keep on moving because that's what until we have reached really the divine we've not reached it so we will keep moving on now the inner and the outer so there has been a lot of excuses for not building the city by saying that first we need to have the inner ready and the inner will shape the outer well I've come to understand that no the outer will shape the inner also very much and you need to climb both it needs to just do this all the time you need to go a little bit higher inner that creates the higher, influences the higher to go a little bit higher outer pushes the inner to move higher and it just needs to both need to go together now what is my inner reality how do I go about these things and how do I influence that thing one of the big big big big problems not only I mean it's the same time in the three levels it's on the personal level it's on the smaller collective level and on the larger collective level so for me personally for Oroville and for the world the same issue is happening everywhere and it's very clear that people have been trained I really want to emphasize the conditioning, brainwashing if you want it's taught we are trained to not have a mature understanding of ourselves to not look maturely on ourselves to not have a good self-reflection but have it also completely linked to emotions and to be very attached to labels instead of to actions so what logically I would think that let me say another thing in between as a side, as an aside I want to say that I am convinced that if as I more or less ended that other topic with if we can put every fact on the table and we all can have the same very large viewpoint of reality I am convinced that 99.9% of the people would want the same thing also some logical consequence or logical decision to take I think that if we all can see reality as a large viewpoint as possible and as objective as possible we all want the same thing we all choose the same thing because it's obvious we all want happiness for as many people as possible we want happiness and the road to get there is obvious then I cannot imagine that there would be much choice left because the road would be it would show itself to us it would be clear now the back to in an outer identity the same thing I would say it's true for human beings I think 99.99% of human beings want the same things and feel more or less the same things we all want other people to be happy I think that everybody has had the experience that the most gratifying experience we have in life I doubt there are many people that don't have that but the most gratifying experience in life is when we can make our loved ones happy if we love someone and we can be the reason of their happiness it gives something that's out of this world it's another experience it's about the highest experience that we have in the low consciousness we are in so far it's about as close to a diviner kind of thing that we can get it's making our loved ones happy and it's an experience that we all share it's not something that you have to explain it's normal for almost everybody it's normal so if you don't have that or if that is pushed to be why is that not the central part of our society why is that not the central part of our life that understanding that we are not we're not at our happiest when we make ourselves happy we're not our happiest when we make our loved ones happy I would not even generalize to say anyone else happy because that's already a step further that's where Oroville is for to understand that making humanity as a whole happy is the greatest happiness we can have but in a lower already higher lower in the highest where we can go in the lower zones you would say it's our loved ones already which is already very altruistic it's somebody else it's outside of my personality so how is that not the basic the central part of our life is that we all understand that and work for that ok if we are the most happy when we make other people happy why don't we just create everything around us to make that happen so yeah our society is built on not making that happen and we trained very very with all kinds of money and time spent on it to just not look at that push that aside and pretend that it doesn't even exist with trying I mean our society really tries to say that love doesn't exist really as love while at the same time it knows how important love is and how deep it is and so it tries to turn it into some kind of greed some kind of material nonsense which it isn't now in such a setting how do we how do we assess who we are how do we feel who we are one of the big parts of of our society and our life is the fact that we are not able to have a mature understanding of ourselves which is the most silly thing in the world we are nothing but ourselves apart from the fact that we're the divine and everything I mean if you look at it from a very ordinary perspective we are just only ourselves there's nobody else we are and how can we then not understand ourselves maturely how is it possible that we are filled from top to bottom with insecurities about ourselves with not feeling okay about ourselves with not having all kinds of needs that are not even about ourselves but are about the perception of ourselves that are about what other people think we are why is that and why should that be there that can only be trained because if we are naturally living and normally living the way we would always do without having all of that influence we would figure that out we would look at ourselves and understand them while growing up in our teenage years and becoming very self-conscious we would figure out a way or society should help us to figure out a way to not be so insecure and to feel very confident and think okay this is me and I have these and these and these defects and that's fine that's okay I'll work on that then we see how I can change that oh it's difficult well okay I'm on the way we do but we're trained to be constantly more or less hysterical about who we are ourselves and that we're not good enough and that we're not doing this, that and that and other people think this and that of us and this and that and so at the same time to solve that instead of looking at but I do this what is the most logical definition of who I am would be well my actions in this moment would be a person over my whole life if I consider how I was 20 years ago I was a very different person why do I have to be that same thing I mean it's still part of my life but I don't identify anymore like that person I don't feel that that is me I would not be able to do any of these things anymore probably because I've changed now so I'll just wrap up very quickly but seeing what is very very important at this moment and very very much used constantly in Oroville is labels I am this because I have this label not because of my actions not because of things but because I have trained and I have been labeled like this all my life I am an Orovillian since so much I'm a pioneer I'm a new all kinds of labels that define people instead of their actions while the only thing we should look at is how do you behave what do you do does that not make you an Orovillian or not does that not make you a good or a bad person it's no good does that not make you valuable or invaluable or whatever I mean it's not your actions I mean let's just leave it at that I hope that the two things I wanted to say clear one was finding out what reality is is a very very difficult job and the second thing is persons are used we are trained to identify as labels instead of as our actions thank you so much I hope you're not falling asleep yet just before you finish I'd like to ask you a question which is all the new people that are going to come to Oroville is there any message that you want to give them please go welcome thank you please come join here come and build a city with us come everything is to be done here everything are we going to make it paradise really but it will be a societal paradise and not just material I mean not a few palm trees but please come please come to Oroville thank you we're going to have a moment of silence