 The Matrix of Peace show hosted by Think Tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Billus Blyce, and CEO of Peace Through Commerce. Our guest today is Nelima Bhatt, the Distinguished Professor in Gender and Conscious Leadership with Technology de Monterey, Mexico. She is also the founder of Shalki Leadership Mission. We are discussing part one of the show entitled I want to get this right. Terror, violence, and the impulse to destroy, which Nelima will address with the transformational path and practice of Shalki leadership. Aloha, Nelima. Namaste, Phyllis. Thank you for having me on the show. Oh, you're so welcome. And we have a lot to cover, this Ergo, this is part one. And just to begin with, since we're going to address the problem of pure violence and destruction with Shalki leadership, could you tell us what it is and how we could learn more about it? Shalki leadership is a book I wrote with my co-author, Professor Raj Sosodia. We were looking to offer the world a leadership model that is for conscious leaders that works for all genders, not just for men, and also for all peoples from around the world, all cultures. So that's Shalki leadership. We talk about true power because leadership is an exercise of power to get things done. So if you want to be a conscious leader, you want to exercise conscious power to get conscious outcomes. And that conscious power, the true power, where you do power with rather than power over each other, that is from the Indic knowledge system called Shalki, that there is an infinite universe and it's infinitely creative. And there's power for all because it's a creative power out of which we are created, sustained, and transformed. So how to know what is our Shalki and how to access our Shalki makes us Shalki leaders. All right, and just so the audience knows, I am certified Shalki leader graduate from your program. And what I learned is that it is also a follow-on practice from integral yoga. And I wonder if you could, so we all know a little bit about yoga, is your background in yoga, in integral philosophy or integral theory? Could you speak a little bit to how you entered this world? Yeah, so I certified as a yoga teacher and my relationship, well, the current philosophical ground from which I work is the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the mother, who are my masters. Okay, good. Cause we had a picture of you as a yoga group. Maybe Mike could show that and we kind of covered that in slide three, I think, Mike. And you created this. So this is you as a yoga and yogini? Or yes. Yes. And you got started with this at this level of your life. So you're in your teens or early twenties? Yeah, so my life with yoga and Shalki began, who knows, before you can even join the dots, it goes back a very, very long way. When I was just a child, my father was a naval officer and he got posted to Germany to build a ship for the Indian Navy and oil tanker. And the ship was called INS, Indian Naval Ship, Shakti. So my life with Shakti began very early. And then I joined Philips as head of corporate communications, the multinational Dutch company. And then I had to make a presentation of the Indian company to the global board of Philips and the theme of that was Shakti, the power of India. And then a few years later, when we'd moved to Hong Kong, I started a dance company with a group of other Indian classical dancers. And that dance company was called Sri Shakti. And then years later, of course, by now my life with yoga in earnest had begun. And the integral yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the mother, which basically says all life is yoga. And finally, our transformation doesn't come from our personal effort so much as this great power of the universe which takes us over that we should be able to give ourselves to. And that is Shakti, the great mother, the great creative principle, right? So integral yoga would say take Shakti and surrender yourself to your Shakti and then let Shakti lead your yoga and create a divine life out of a divine body. And so, yeah, it's a long, long journey, but that's what it is in a nutshell. But bringing Shakti to leadership is kind of a very powerful thought which I want the world to receive and work with because all leadership is the exercise of power. And typically we've been playing all kinds of power over win-lose games. And my premise is that there's enough power for all. So the only win is a win-win. And if we learn how to tap into our Shakti, there's enough power for all. So as I hear you, we're talking about archetypal entities and powers, Shakti and Shiva. And then you started to talk about Sri Aurobindo and the mother. And so they're more modern, 1920s through 50, 60s. And are they, so do they hold a thesis and philosophy around integral yoga that feeds into where we're going today and learning about Shakti leadership? Who are they? Yeah, so they are among India's great masters. Sri Aurobindo was a freedom fighter, but more than that, he was an enlightened master. He was a real Rishi, a great yogi. And his spiritual partner was Meera Alfasa, who came from France. She was born in France, but her mother was Egyptian. Her father was Turkish and she was actually Jewish by birth. But when the two of them came together as spiritual masters, they were working for the transformation of the body, for the evolution of consciousness on this planet. And all that required, in a way, the end of the world wars, understanding that there were all kinds of transpersonal archetypal forces that were anti-evolution. And the only way to move through them and the forces that were allowing world wars on this planet, the only way to work through them was the path and practice of an integral yoga, which is you understand what are the forces that drive you and then learn how to master them or learn how to work with the power even greater than them so that they no longer control you. So that is integral yoga. And you just set up for us the two pillars of our talk today. You talked about war. Yes. That wants to interfere with consciousness and presencing, and then consciousness and presencing and the elements of Shakti leadership. So let's start with the shadow side and bring up a slide about a book that formed the basis with the title of the show today, which I wanted to get right. So title, violence and the impulse to destroy. This is where it feels like we are today with the wars around the world, not the least of which began most recently in Ukraine and now are showing up in Israel, Gaza and into the Red Sea along the Sinai as well. So talk to us now about what brought you to this, and I know we can read the book. Talk to us about this, please. So even before Ukraine and Israel and Gaza, this book came out in 2016, Shakti leadership. And sometime in 2012, there were these fate of rapes in India that made global headlines. And I remember being very, very concerned, saying, what is it in human nature that leads to such incredible capacity for misogyny, for violence, for not just killing, but brutally killing in a very perverse way? What is the perversion in human nature? And when I started looking up the psychology of violence, trying to understand what are the roots of the violence that we are capable of, I came across this book, Terror, Violence and the Impulse to Destroy by Jungians who called a conference after 9-11 because they were in search to understand what is the psychology of violence that lets people do that kind of enact. So I was deeply impressed and the insights I got from that then informed my understanding of misogyny as well. So understanding our inner nature and the origin of a psychology of violence and terror, basically saying that we are made up of these four drives. We may think we are very conscious beings, that we are thinking creatures, we are no longer animals, but actually what the Jungians know well, and this comes from many other ancient traditions and understanding that we are made up of two selves at a minimum. We are made up of a somatic self, which is our body, and our body has two drives. It has eros, which is the life drive, and it also has Thanatos, which is the death drive. So we have this from our animal nature, from our animal evolution, right? That to procreate, you need eros. When you know, when you see a male mount or a female out in nature, you think it's perfectly fine because that's just laws of nature working out. Or when you see a tiger run after a deer and attack it and kill it with just pure Thanatos because it needs to feed itself, there is that death instinct as well, right? So we're showing that. So you've got two of your four drives here on the horizontal axis. Yes, okay. And in the Indic tradition, they are called Kama and Mara, right? So Kama is the eros and Mara is the death, right? So in Buddhism as well, they talk about how Buddha had to overcome the three-fold fire in order to achieve his Buddhahood, no Kama, Mara. And the next is actually the other axis that as humans, we are also churned by two more drives, which come out of our mental nature. So when mind appears in evolution in the human, it's the first time that you have two new drives on the scene in evolution. You have the logos, which is the left brain, which is the rational self, but you also have mythos, which is the right brain, the intuitive, imaginative, creative, circular self, right? The linear versus thinking in a circular way. So suddenly you have in nature a creature, which is human, which is churned by four drives. Each has its own powerful instinct. That's why they're called drives, they drive us. So the Buddha, his Buddha, which is like the logos nature, had to overcome Maya, which is the imaginative mythic self, right? So in Buddhism, they would say Buddha had to overcome Kama, Mara, Maya. Whereas in the Jungians, they were saying, the logos has to learn how to be in control of eros, Thanatos and mythos, right? So here we are on the evolutionary ladder. As a species, this is our job. This is how we earn our particular niche in evolution and to be able to hold it in a way that is harmonized and reconciled. Now the thing is our mind, and we haven't yet mastered ourselves sufficiently to have mastered our drives, right? And this is what's at work. So these four drives drive us, the self, and the Jungians call it the four-fold self. And what Carl Jung says, inside each of us, these opposites come together in conjunction, right? They either confront one another in enmity, or they attract one another in love. So these are archetypal polarities inside us, eros, Thanatos, logos, mythos, and they are kind of at each other. And this is our inner churn, our inner battle that is seeking harmony, that is seeking to be harmonized. And then you understand that our conflicting inner drives lead to our outer wars, right? Unless we understand and reconcile our innate human drives, we cannot create lasting global harmony, because that which is within is what is expressed on the outside. So in some of my circles, there was a teacher in leadership talking about the crocodile brain, or the crock brain. And he said, this small down at the base of our neck, and he said, we are programmed when we come up with a new situation to either kill it, eat it, or mate with it. And that's a very basic way, you know, you have, and just to slow it down a little, we talk about logos or the word, this is both, they're Latin and Greek derivations of the logos, and then the mythos or mythology to get it into the English. And then you've got, what is powerful is that we have the yoga, interval, Buddhist traditions, and they're all identifying these same drives. So you're definitely, I feel like you're focusing us clearly mainlining on the most important drives that we need to navigate and be in charge of as they don't drive us, so that we don't look like these Russian soldiers in the next slide. What's going on here? So that's what I'm saying, right? That our conflicting inner drives lead to our outer wars. And therefore my subtitle to today's show is global peace through inner peace, of global harmony through inner harmony, until we harmonize one life at a time, these four drives that drive us around our anchoring center, our presence, until we do that, and until we learn how to alchemize these four drives into something that is a higher expression of each of them, we will continue to act them out in the world, and you will have the wars in the world because the macrocosm is nothing but a reflection of the microcosm. Well, and I just have to say all of this drama and all of this driving can be going on unconsciously until we name it and then claim it, very human of us to need to name it before we can even see it. So you've named it and you call it out and now you're taking us on both a path and a practice to navigate it, manage it, evolve it, transform it with love, right, with consciousness, with agency, to take back the age and you think and definitely your Shakti leadership methodology does give us agency. And what else is going into this practice and path? So let me show you, I've been fast, everything I teach, I first have worked on myself and my life has been the perfect laboratory to really work these things out. So I was deeply attracted to the idea of alchemy that Jung worked very hard on as well and his book Mysterium Caniunctionis, right? He says an inquiry, that's the next slide, an inquiry into the separation and synthesis of psychic opposites in alchemy, right? The transformation of our nature into something higher, purer, more fully divine. And then he says, often the polarity is arranged as a quaternion, a quaternity with the two opposites crossing one another. So if you go to the next slide, this is the fourfold self that, but becomes the fourfold Shakti that Shri Aurobindo talks about and that the Jungians talk about as the four mature archetypes in leadership, right? So there is a book by Shri Aurobindo on the mother, Shakti, that power, which has four aspects. There is harmony, which maps on to the lover. And this comes from the book King, Warrior, Magician and Lover by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette. And then you have warrior, which maps on to strength. So harmony is the Mahalakshmi energy. Strength is the Mahakali archetype. Then wisdom is the Maheshwari archetype and that represents the sovereign king or queen. And perfection is the magician archetype, the Mahasaraswati energy in integral yoga. So there are these fourfold Shakti that there are four powers of their mother, the Shakti, that represent wisdom, strength, harmony and perfection. And they map on to the four mature archetypes of leaders as sovereign lover, warrior, magician. And if we can actually play from these archetypes, then they are the same lower drives that are transmuted and expressed as necessary energy and power needed in leadership. So I just want to point out to the audience that this overlay didn't happen automatically. This is your gift, Neelima. You are doing the heavy lifting of bringing in together wisdom traditions that support each other and reinforce each other. And then you were just talking about the lower drives and just to finish out my little brain scenario when I was taught is it's very hard for we human beings to get past this crock brain and get up into our frontal cortex so that we can think and transcend our instincts or those drives. So hold that thought because right there is our next slide, the next slide, which talks about the four conscious leadership qualities that can turn our drives into our power bases, right? So I'm showing you a beautiful color wheel and this is the logo, the symbol of the mother of Shri Aurobindo Ashram and the teacher from whom I feel inspired and from whom I actually feel receiving and channeling all this understanding. So she's basically saying, look, this is the symbol and the symbol captures the 12 qualities if you see in the outer circle, if we can simply practice, okay, getting to wisdom, strength, harmony, perfection is like trying to become God goddess, right? Which we can't. But as humans, the outer wheel, the outer petals, the 12 on the outside, those we can, those are very human endeavors and capacities that can be practiced. So just because they're so important, if you just walk us through it, read it for those only listening. So these are attainable, these are values. Yes, yes. These are 12 conscious leadership values or qualities, sincerity, humility, gratitude, perseverance, aspiration for the divine, receptivity to the grace, progress, courage, goodness, generosity, equality of mind, which is like an equanimity towards things and peace. And then we get to the four inner virtues. Actually it's very simple. My understanding is if we can simply practice those 12 qualities, take one quality a month, we are in January now, okay? This month, if I only practice my sincerity as a leader, I catch myself when I do self deception and I remember to keep applying sincerity in every situation. February, let me work with humility, just practice humility, just whatever the situation, apply the superpower of humility and see how that works for you. March, let's go with gratitude. Whatever happens, can I find something to be grateful for? Make that a practice, right? And I want to, unless you get more, I want to get, I want it before we're out of time in five minutes, I wanted to take a moment, I don't think we've covered in the show yet. And if I may, I'll just state it because I want to make sure it gets said that Shakti is this power in the world and Shiva represents the, it's not wisdom, but consciousness. And you've taught me that consciousness without power is flat, is powerless, sterile. That's what I was going for, because there is such, there is the sexes that we're gonna get to in the next slide. So it's sterile without the power and power without consciousness is chaos. And then you bring, so that's the Shakti, Shiva powers, we want both and to bring them both into a union, we can step into our frontal cortex and have a marriage with our basic instincts and drives. And become one happy family. Provided we know how to presence them and exercise them consciously. This is what this wheel is showing you. It's saying, you don't have to try and work at your drives directly, that they're too difficult, they're archetypal, you can't control drives, but what you can do is work on your nature. Work on becoming sincere, humble, grateful, have perseverance, aspiration, receptivity, progress, courage, goodness, generosity, quality, peace. If you simply put in the work there, very naturally, your drives will reveal and express as wisdom, strength, harmony and perfection. Okay, so we have a payoff for getting this far, your last two teachings and which position us for our show in two weeks, part two, but bring us to where are we going when we do navigate and get into this balance. Yeah, so let's move to the next slide. Finally, where we are getting to is called the inner wedding, the dance of love and power, where you're basically, Shiva and Shakti aren't two, they are one, but when it's expressed as consciousness, it's Shiva, and when it's expressed as energy and creativity, it is Shakti, right? So when we're saying be a Shakti leader, we're saying you have to achieve that inner wedding of power, which is Shakti and love, which is that magnetic principle of Shiva that keeps Shakti in its true and pure expression, right? So you got to get your heartful man married to your mindful woman, this is the next level of chunk, your masculine, feminine tendencies that are in all of us, eros and Thanatos, someone would say Thanatos is more masculine, eros is more feminine, even logos and mythos, right? There is a way of saying one has a more active energy, one has a more receptive energy. So the first level of psychological integration, it looks like this, it looks like the Dao, your heartful man gets married to your mindful woman, and then you move to the quaternity, the psychological wholeness comes from becoming that holy family reunion, this is the next slide, where your parent self and your child self are organized around your center, your presence, and your inner woman, your feminine side, and your inner man, the one is the anima, the other one the animus, they are two, they too are organized around your presence and your center, they are integrated, they are held by that centering axis in you. And we say you have to become the wise fool of tough love. Now this is something Shakti leadership offers the world, saying you want to understand what is psychological wholeness, it's very simple, you have to become the wise fool of tough love, wise is the parent self, who is that curious, wondrous inner child, tough is the masculine and love is the feminine, and the human inner experience of Iroh, Thanatos, Logos, and Mythos has long been a veritable battlefield, a Kurukshetra of a war between masculine and feminine for supremacy over the other, tragically canceling and destroying each other, but it's time to end the battle of the sexes and become fully human and be leaders who are conscious, meaning they show self mastery and selfless service of a higher purpose and they're integrated, they express mature masculine and feminine values and behaviors, using the 12 qualities of the mother. And that's what we say, it's time to become the Ardhanarishwar and this is that picture where you say the last slide. Yes, the last slide where that inner harmony where the right side is Shiva, the left side is Shakti but they are one and the same being. And this iconography is called the Ardhanarishwar, the half male, half female God. So we are all equal parts masculine and feminine and that is what psychological wholeness is about, architecturally. That is so wholesome, Neelima. Thank you for giving us the fast one-on-one on this important path in practice of Shakti leadership and we're gonna have to leave it there on January 17th at 12 noon Hawaii time. We will be revisiting part two and taking the seeds that we can all become with Shakti leadership practices and apply that knowledge base to the matrix of peace whole systems model of society which provides the soil in which the seeds are safe to grow. And we'll have to leave it there. You have been watching the matrix of peace show at think tech Hawaii. I'm your host, Phyllis Bleece. We've been discussing the topic of terror, violence and the impulse to destroy which Neelima has addressed with the transformational path and practice of Shakti leadership. And Neelima is the co-founder of the Shakti leadership mission. Mahalo, Neelima. I'm your host, Phyllis Bleece. We'll be back January 17th for part two. And with that, I will leave you all with Aloha.