The last weeks had been full of inspiring activities, and I enjoyed my time of reorientation, being free from professional obligations. It was a time of high tide and I didn’t find time for blogging. Over three weekends I was at meetings with my spiritual teacher, Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar, at seminars in Sant Feliu, Spain, and in Bonn, and last Sunday at a meeting of the Swiss group members in Hergiswil at the home of a friend.

Taking pictures of the Mediterranean sea in Sant Feliu

Reflection of the group during the group photo at the seminar in Bonn

Chatting with the grand-children, Hergiswil

In Hergiswil  we had a morning question and answers session for 3 hours, and my fingers nearly got hot while typing fast my notes 🙂 I’d like to share with you some of the notes from the introduction of Sri Kumar on individual consciousness and group consciousness. Of course there might be mistakes from my part, and in spite of the translation pauses I couldn’t get all the sentences. I  shortened the text a bit and did minor editorial adaptations of the spoken words:

“This is a gathering to be together, we as individual consciousness to be as group consciousness, to commune with the mind. The mind is a facility to know; it also has a higher faculty, to synthesise, to commune, to experience expanded consciousness.

When we live our individual life, unconsciously we build around us and we are the centre of our activity. Each one as he or she lives it becomes an activity around him or her and he / she becomes the centre. When two persons live together they find a common centre between them. Only then it is possible for two persons to live together. We can’t live in our own centre and live together. That is how we find from the centre within ourselves to a common centre. When three meet we all try to meet in those areas where we agree and be common. When there is something in agreement and in common, communication can happen.
Communication is communication of light, because every communication is through thought, and thought is fire. So there would be an exchange of fire and a communion of fire. There would be an expansion of the field of activity when two persons meet, because each works for the other, and when there are more than two there is still further expansion of consciousness.

This Sunday is different for all of us. We have travelled from our house in the morning to be here. It is not a routine activity as we do on a Sunday morning. Why? When we think of meeting, each one of us offers some of his activity to be together with the others. What we normally do, from that we have conceded in favour to meet here, to meet the human consciousness. Instead of living for oneself it is living together in consciousness. All have come out of our routine self-centred activity. We have come out of it to be in an activity where the centre is not any-more within oneself; it is in all of us together. We create a centre between the 15 of us through a common activity for a while. When we do that there is a group centre that forms. From being self-centred to group-centred there is a release of energy; from that which is self-circumscribed to the unwinding to the centre, from the self-circumscription. This unwinding of consciousness is already a release.

For days we live within ourselves. To go in such a living where we live for others, this kind of living in a group once in a week or in a month causes a movement which is contrary to the movement we conduct during the week. A work that we do for ourselves is self-winding, self-centring. Once in a while we unwind this movement of consciousness. This contrary movement of consciousness enables us to unfold our consciousness.

A plant – when it gives birth to a flower it is a different activity for the plant. It grows and grows for itself, but suddenly, after a point, there it gives birth to the blossom of a flower. Such an unfoldment is a relation to the surrounding. The natural fragrance hidden in the plant is given out to the surrounding.

Meeting in groups enables individual consciousness to grow and unfold, and eventually through such an unfoldment it causes fragrance to the surroundings. The fragrance is through the acts of cooperation that we express in such a group activity.

Each one of us has cooperated to be like this before. Those who are at home here have prepared something and those who have come have prepared early to come here. In that process the centre is shifting from them to a common centre. There may be many social groups that may also do a common activity on Sunday – cultural, social, political groups or clubs. But the difference is, when we try to group for wisdom, to live in wisdom, it makes a total difference. For the social, cultural and political groups, the thought plane is mental and intellectual. In a group that deliberates upon wisdom it is not only mental and intellectual, but also buddhic, meaning supra-mental, where there is a possibility for communion in consciousness.

When there is such a communion in consciousness every person sees a different release from oneself. And that enables them to re-join again at another group activity. A group activity should necessarily be an effort to rise beyond mind into that plane where we can experience a little unknown, something which is unknown that far. From known to unknown. That unknown is unlimited. From the limited thought activity to something that is unlimited, the consciousness opens to different possibilities.

Therefore there is a prayer or a meditation and also a talk and dialogue, not only a monologue by which we try to know something relating to us as humans. To know that part of us which is not yet totally know. It is not to dwell in the known part. To dwell in the known part is to dwell in one’s own. We try to live in the unknown, so that the unknown opens the known consciousness into the unknown. This effort is important. What we know is one thing; the very effort to open to the unknown helps us to help to know something more about us than what we know already…

In the world there are so many unknown things. There are so many unknown things in one’s own being. Be inquisitive to know. We know many things about ourselves. I only mentioned three, there are so many others. There are 7 planetary principles, and the 12 solar qualities in us, the 5 elements in us, there are cosmic intelligences in us, like cosmic fire, cosmic air, everything that is in the cosmos is in man. That is why it is said that man is a micro-unit. Each one of us can find this within oneself and concurrently within others.

Those who have known themselves gave certain guidelines. It is them whom we call the Masters of Wisdom or the Teachers of Wisdom. They experimented within themselves and found most of the things in common. What one found the others confirmed it. After thousands of experiments with themselves and having collaborated with their findings they gave out what it is in man, what is man constituted of. They found guidelines to know the inside story related to us. Engaging in such a field of unknown knowledge relating to man, our awareness, our consciousness is exposed to some new dimensions of wisdom.

That enables, and it relates to each one of us without exception. The agenda is common to all. Therefore there would be a communion of consciousness to know together. To know together is an age-old concept. It is a most ancient concept to know together. Because in every adventure togetherness is essential. An adventure by a team is helpful; every member is helpful for each other. Knowing oneself is the biggest of the adventures. To be together, to do it is given as a central agreement. In that context group formation and group study and group meditation has come to be. Group-sharing, sharing of food also forms part of the activity. That is what is contemplated even today in this group life. It so happened that I am here and I thought that we meet and relate and try to know. That is why we are here. So we now have some good dialogue…”

Sri Kumar at the group meeting

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