Peter on Yoga, Collective Consciousness, and What Lies Ahead
Details
- Interviewee: Peter
- Role: Community Member
- Community: Auroville
- Date: 2026-01-14
- Language: en
Summary
In this interview, the speaker reflects deeply on their spiritual journey, emphasizing the role of individuals and collective consciousness in achieving personal and social transformation. They discuss the conflict between traditional and modern values, especially in Western cultures, highlighting the need for mindfulness and spiritual awakening to address societal crises. Key themes include the importance of personal growth, the interconnectedness of human experiences, and the evolving nature of community as a means to nurturing a more harmonious societal structure.
Additionally, the interview touches on the history of influential figures who shaped the speaker's understanding of spirituality and ethics, including the philosophical and historical context of yoga and devotion to collective consciousness. With projections towards the future, the speaker voices concerns about current geopolitical tensions and the critical choices humanity faces in the coming years, urging a shift towards holistic understanding and compassionate action.
Key quotes
What comes to mind when I say sweet or open window? I'm impressed up all. He was the initiator of my new life I can say that you was dead.
But when it is becoming more and more complex and more meterior in more months complex, you need to use your mind, of course, to organize and to do the best you know, but in harmony with the others, which may have very different ideas.
It’s like relationships, a friend always does example a Hendy, because this... and what did me what it's means to let go to get in the fruits observe of these new possibilities and just forgot.
But this is stiggly on 3 steams, just at that moment, 2025. And so I'm, I'm really curious about what we can say at the end of this year, because many things are in front of us, very concretely, the atomic bomb, that means again something which was thought to be Controller.
Transcript
**Speaker 1:** Comes to mind and what comes to mind goes into various topics, so you repeat what my question
**Speaker 2:** Okay, I'll repeat your question.
**Speaker 1:** And then you speak free, and so we have someone look at the time, you can feel that.
**Speaker 2:** Thank you.
**Speaker 1:** We need to do 3 minutes of expectations for a minute for a question approximately, so I'm not gonna interrupt but I get I'm just gonna like, yeah, so when Audrey makes a makes a gesture that it means you should wrap up.
**Speaker 2:** Okay, yeah, okay, and when you finish those question, I should.
**Speaker 1:** You should just repeat, so that's one doesn't heal me, yeah?
**Speaker 2:** I just used to keep my progressive in me.
**Speaker 1:** Volume, this that comes to mind than I think of the moment today. So what comes to mind when I say?
**Speaker 2:** What host do mind
**Speaker 1:** That wasn't look at the sizing, because then you say what comes to mind when you think of oh him, how are you repeat?
**Speaker 2:** You repeat the question, oh yeah, what comes to mind when I say?
**Speaker 1:** When I think of our way
**Speaker 2:** Think about it say the same thing. I think what comes to in my mind when I say no, no okay.
**Speaker 1:** It doesn't matter that that's perfect, but it's always going to be the same question because you're always going to just hear you my carving. And then Google questions are going to be better than the morning. Yeah, but it's for the for the interview. It's nice when he just says the questions for those who so you you repeat after me what comes to mind when I think of our movie?
**Speaker 2:** What comes to mind if I think about all of you? I mean, I see immediately something like the landscape. Also which is enlightened somehow there's light, soft light.
**Speaker 2:** And of course it's a dream, it's a big dream. And and of course thinking about it, I have to be careful not to repeat mental conceptions or mental memories But many things anyway, they stay the same because they're still valid. And this dream.
**Speaker 2:** What's your stronous expression and vibration as a spoken word or as a printed word, did it make me move out of mind no one life into another 1 faraway from hope and and all of the exchange for the city I hear all the township of the war or sunrise of Morgan wait in German and and something that struck a number of people at that time because it wasn't the air, because I think many of us tried so many rose to find the promised land which promises more than what we got to know. Being becoming more and more critical about oahu, which is actually a strong emotions of attachment.
**Speaker 2:** Also instead you feel that cannot be, you're like for your the answer and for for your kitchen. So so I will come at the moment when I was finished with my leftist attempt to understand the contradictions and the conflicts in the world. And I can call it in psychological dimension, the psychedelic dimension, it all came. It is in 12 years.
**Speaker 2:** Cut the tucked and then came out over there that was, for me, that had the power or the I could embrace this image, or this feeling is, that's it? Yeah, I lend it. I'm at a new home, which I can embrace, and which will be Stand how to say which seem to be eternal, which is speed.
**Speaker 2:** You're honest the usual friendships, one transit to another 1, which is normal. And when you do it, can you do it with all your heart, then they have all their meanings, but from that point onwards, I knew what that is for life, it's like a lover. Hello, record, a song, which is not a lover pair the transit but something which is forever something like and uh and it was triggered by a book who's keeping it somehow to the name ohoe via it's not only dawn but also the the first half of our whole window, the Indian philosopher and freedom.
**Speaker 2:** The platter and you can call them all many things, especially poor the poor who is birds figures your lens slide. Ha ha, ha, yeah.
**Speaker 1:** Should we keep it in the same run?
**Speaker 2:** So I just feel a little, actually, I'm not talking about the President as a reality. You know, Odessa, yeah, also I didn't mention the collective dimension.
**Speaker 1:** There will be another question. So you repeat again the same question. Then I will just say now you repeat it what comes to mind when I say Shri albuddy.
**Speaker 2:** What comes to mind when I say sweet or open window? I'm impressed up all. He was the initiator of my new life I can say that you was dead.
**Speaker 2:** Since long. It was a book which I was saying touched in the n 60s in Germany, it was a simple monography of his life, basic key words and quotes from his philosophical or political, whatever work. And this was, I said, Michael, finally, somebody who tells me the order, who explains to me everything, not a detailed.
**Speaker 2:** But in the interconnectedness of the different levels of reality on different levels of me, life expression, from politics, the economics to the psychological psychology of men in the evolution of Mankind. Because he went beyond what I understand the others say. The search in the west of psychology and sociology into the meaning meaning of Mankind in its role on the planet and also even I feel eyan, say traditional yoga approaches, which are accessible to the Western mile because he was Because he grew up, he was educated in Cambridge from this age of 6 to 18, so he was more British nearly then Indian, because his father wanted him to have no Indian influence.
**Speaker 2:** So he was plunged into the Western world in all its depths, and that I'm saying no to reflect on it note. But What is for me? So amazing that even the translation of his key words in German lend it now, and since that time, even though I don't like to believe it, even I have not come across anything which goes beyond that yet, but that's the only way I think of where you choose to have your concentrational, not because What what kind of life development?
**Speaker 2:** This is most important for you now and all the levittes, which you can grasp somehow, but you can never experience them. For example, over mind Eba in German, I don't know over mind or over man or Superman, which is in German anyway, critical story as long as I'm not I fear as I cannot. Explore from inside alive.
**Speaker 2:** Yeah, as such, it tells me something, but all the levels in between that tell me not enough to have enough job to do this to explode into a note because you can't also the word Kama yoga, which is known. It's not only not only him and and, yoga is a means to mateolis and manifests in each gesture in your life and actions? Immediately not to separate the meditation, for example from zhou.
**Speaker 2:** Yeah, like I don't know not Alan watch but on that's even she said. Yeah, yeah, yeah, from Monday to Saturday now for Monday to Friday, no, Saturday and Sunday. You are.
**Speaker 2:** You're delighted in your yoga and from Monday to Friday, you do your job as usual and Hitting around the world, no, let's say it like that, it's not proper. What do you say sort of product inflation, but I'm only talking also about it, but he meant that he wants many people try, but they're split it, because there's too much to do it in any moment. I go with it, and that is a challenge of that yoga actually.
**Speaker 2:** Because ultimately you have no particular it's a simple to follow. It's up to you, just go for the truth, or for your feelings and find your mirror your instrument on your book, your friend or whatsoever in the world, from the flower on the road. You can learn something or and and that is I can say today at that time, I was just stunned by what he was saying.
**Speaker 2:** And that remind me that today and the only once coming here to orabate, which was founded by the companion of trio, but not a call it companion, because I have no other words for that spiritual companion, turn Uber time to the picture?
**Speaker 1:** We will repeat again, what comes to mind when I say the mother
**Speaker 2:** What comes to mind when I say the mother? Yeah, there was a beginning of a few.
**Speaker 1:** Or we could also, you decide or something like that would be interesting? Also to know, is it better to call her or maybe we do that.
**Speaker 2:** Yeah, we have a Mira, yeah.
**Speaker 1:** Supposed to mind when I when when I say Nita.
**Speaker 2:** This I could not repeat fully, because there are many mirrors in the world, but when I say Mira, which I usually don't do I know Mira arthusa because that was her buglish best name because she came from a Turkish Egyptian Jewish background family of positivists, nothing but religion. Nothing with any kind of that. Expelled from from Egypt so they went to France.
**Speaker 2:** It's okay. How do you want to follow.
**Speaker 1:** What are you found separated? Otherwise we both.
**Speaker 2:** I mean, justice to have a picture of her personality as a human being. She came from a valve team, a family from Paris, grown up in France. It's her mother tone end so you can say she is Egyptian Turkish background, but in France, uh, growing up and she was a young woman and already as a very young girl even.
**Speaker 2:** Experiences in the experience which we are quiet, extraordinary and there she is not alone in the world that happens to the number of people in the road and at that time, particularly, but she went her own way and she explored, she was searching for something she had her in. I want to say inner connections. And on the way to death, creating also circles of esoteric, one that say today, a speech study groups or study in the sense of experience and and she also went through 2 years of O cut training, which I don't know whether she chose that or her came together.
**Speaker 2:** And I don't like. Also, to talk too much about it, because authenticity has a very bad Image and it's so how to say, which is partly totally true but occurred in the sense of exploring the invisible words and the Western technique, mental mind has not explored that they're. They're always shying away.
**Speaker 2:** We were talking about city Jung these days, yeah, there were some people from the west who tried to get through that bear. To go beyond the mental mind or the rational mind, and therefore also go beyond the material world. As a reality, the only reality.
**Speaker 2:** So she was somebody of an Explorer introduced in a world of experiencing levels of reality and forces, this will not take walk, I mean, which was very tough, no, and so as a young young woman, she learned that already, and then she went to this occultist in Nigeria and And so elk, then there was something in her dreams. He's always came to her as an Indian guru or Yogi, she couldn't make all who that is and in 1 day back I mean, she went through her life and she married also, she had a son and because she was a painter.
**Speaker 2:** And artist she was, I would say she was moving a lot in these circles in Paris, but the artists and the philosophers etc. And he was a politician, also and he was sent to Pondicherry and she followed him, and he was the one who experienced what the 2 present not presented at the 2 wrong way around the word too, to make contact with the mother because it was very much Shree o'bendu poldor even in that role and
**Speaker 1:** Are we talking about the Sun? No?
**Speaker 2:** And and when she met the mother through him, she knew that was a Yogi, she met all the time, and she didn't know eh and there seemed to be. There was immediate meeting point based on it was just before the First World War and and she had to go back with her husband back to Paris. And it was the moment also where she opened to himself.
**Speaker 2:** It came out of his prison times because he was chased by the British. Because he was the most search for political anarchists or activists or dangerous person and was 11 year in prison. And in this one year of prison, he actually got initiated by something beyond his own search because he was first Just a freedom fighter on the Bay field was Africa, and they yeah, let's see and he has written then, during the First World War lux of in most of his books, human know how to say, OK, I don't know 2 books which were always my my favorite, because I could access them more than is really deep?
**Speaker 2:** Include the books of the divine life, or the sentences of yoga and uh, but that was the human, the idea of human unity, the idea of humanity and there was a meeting this all of it. And there comes a connect later on this UNESCO I mean, all these links are there. And they were prepared as such, that was actually 1920 around. And then she came back from parents, I split from her husband which was a tough, tough story.
**Speaker 2:** But she insisted that she has to stay low there and she took over you can say the worldly affairs or somethin drawing group of sandox is sale in India that meets these hypersia and and sugar. Wasn't made for that. He was just there.
**Speaker 2:** And but something grew around him and even some of his politics, from a companions, let me present, that sounds yeah, that's yes, so it was quite a magic connectivity where the woman from France with this background and the man in Indian, who was it has grown up in England lowering the Western mind through-and-through. Has created a new yoga, Richie called integradula and that is the base of all the actually, and from that pace, which is 10 translate it into the dream of the city of the future, which came through the meeting point with the mother, uh, even mostly into the picture, already in the 30s.
**Speaker 2:** And then it was always put back in the second World War. And then, but after the second World War UN and all these happenings, it was by example, Nicolas voyovich, also a very famous Russian painter. It's another story pilot, just to mention there were many movements, let's related to birthday.
**Speaker 2:** They brought towards and it was not a yoga, and I'm saying that now very consciously of strict non-violence. So he was not a new Gandhi. And he never took over the role of Gandhi and but Gandhi wasn't in politics, and he was too totally at the time in this week, in the 20s 30s, apple is passing away in the beginning.
**Speaker 2:** Of the 50s. Um, because he went inside for 25 years, I think only work out something to explore this in words in daily contact with the mother with their own contributions to no and out of this area, yeasting point is the important came out there, the dream of the city of the future, which is. Not a city.
**Speaker 2:** The city as a means in the put show a city of human unity. That means bringing humankind of diversity together to make yoga, which is nuts, limited to the cultural background of one culture or 1 religion, open philosophy. But bringing together all of that, because was logically The new Yorker, which was for the Earth for everybody and and there we are and then it was founded in 68, because her mother suddenly was eaten I poked nearby something happening in India and to go for it now what's the time and she had a dream even in the 50s, which is called the dream.
**Speaker 2:** It's worth to read it. It's one piece which is a beauty for a: from debt. Uh, what the future humanity can expect when they're doing when they make the effort to see it first wanting to see it, then go for it here and and there.
**Speaker 2:** We are with our little contributions and and at the moment, as already once? It's not easy and there's a crisis because human nature is very strong too to hold it back into your old securities and the it's yeah, I mean you must have a strong rear, and maybe also you can only step in you can only leave something which is close to you and dear to. You when you see already something Oh, something else we all know, otherwise you have no reason to leave it.
**Speaker 2:** What was it, huh? It's like relationships, a friend always does example a Hendy, because this, at least we know somehow, as normal humans, you can relate to that between also I love which which is La vast. Is it deep enough and open enough, be able to go slow challenges of ego?
**Speaker 2:** Let's Ringo since we all know from each other? And what did me what it's means to let go to get in the fruits observe of these new possibilities and just forgot. Now, if you can't or of course, pull them down when you don't let go of the world you have to, you have to do that and I know what you know after shoot such a long time.
**Speaker 2:** I know it very painful at times and we all do, it's a long life. It's a lifelong challenge to understand it. And not only understand it, because many of us know but to do it each moment in your area, you constantly pulled out up into the old nicetia or old, I don't know attachments, dreams or dramas, and Because we are so much it, not addicted by the addiction is probably the biggest catchword for me.
**Speaker 2:** It's the crisis of humility, the addiction to the old and particularly the Western society, because this addictive cause of money and power instantly. And it it points to really what is missing because much I listen. Communism, all of these issues can never do the job of what is necessary to even you can say, and I'm not dramatizing to save humanity as a race, because either we don't want to let go.
**Speaker 2:** All we will destroy ourselves and be on the way to that. And that's the word meaning of all of it actually And we are very much difficult is to look at ourselves and we are fantastic. The conditions here now and in the world where life is going on, as usual, it's even more tough.
**Speaker 2:** On the other hand it's more easy, so it's your choice
**Speaker 1:** It was the fourth one. What would I feel emotions?
**Speaker 2:** 2020.
**Speaker 1:** So what comes if you repeat again? What that's 2 more questions, and we'll have you with our timekeeper we keep it short at all exact. You repeat it after me, what comes to mind when I sync off 2025
**Speaker 2:** Ha ha, I say ha hats, because also what comes to mind when I think about 2025. Yeah, that you could have asked me already 2024 or maybe earlier. Yeah, but it's more and more pointed, actually I'd be overheated it on the, you know, everywhere and wherever beyond this word we think It feels instinctively or emotionally, or mentally, even that humanity is really at the crashing point.
**Speaker 2:** Because that it's a, it's 2025, more than all the years before, is uh, crucia, uh choice in the evolution of the human race and the chance a dramatic and big. No, but I mean it I can say it also in political terms, if we are not getting out the terms with you, truthful and sincere, not playing games. All the time and politicians are trained to play games because otherwise they couldn't be politicians and I don't blame them.
**Speaker 2:** It's a human nature, which needs these people still yeah, because the others we could not live in anarchy. We tried to live here anarchy. It was a beautiful moment here the first year to live in anarchy.
**Speaker 2:** But when it is becoming more and more complex and more meterior in more months complex, you need to use your mind, of course to organize and to do the best you you know, but in harmony with the others, which may have very different ideas. Eventually, in an anarchic state, each one is on the same level, at least potentially, because there are no laws. It's restricting, you know, so there's a mother term.
**Speaker 2:** I like it when she unlucky, you want, yeah, because I'm talking about anarchy as a divine anarchy, that means only when you have a consciousness, which is beyond ego. And that's fear already at home, which I try not to explain a little bit. I want to mention a little bit, then you can talk about divine anarchy, because then you don't kill each other.
**Speaker 2:** Yeah, but if you are still in the on the vital mental 11th, that's how we talk, yeah, then you are bound to to play the games. We see Ukraine, Russia, Gaza everywhere. Yeah, it's happening.
**Speaker 2:** At the moment some in some years, it's happened some bad because we are all at the same point actually v. U. Yes.
**Speaker 2:** And because we are still in that mind holding onto that and we believe, and that's a Western challenge for me, or was, and I am yeah, I say it always again because I love my culture and my at my home and my country. In the alakasha, the Western culture and I pre, I mean, I can acknowledge what has given to the word but they have to give up to leave with the mind they can find the new the new necessities. No way with the mental mind, they will run against the wall and they are already on the way.
**Speaker 2:** To run against the wall because they don't want to let go and the only people in our societies, which are a little bit closer to it as m. It's a collector statement, a more artistic or intuitive of musician. People who are not so much stuck in ovi in control.
**Speaker 2:** Because we know, at the scientific, it's telling us where to go, do the scientific, if horrific is saved in the English scientific profession, they can tell us a lot and we can do a lot with it. If we are so proud of it here this drone, but but we cannot. We cannot find the essential way to find the way to the others of the other and to go forward together and to develop the heart this, we've lost a bit on the way.
**Speaker 2:** So I'm laughing about, of course, there's some yeah, okay.
**Speaker 1:** A beautiful hour, the last question Audrey, would like to ask set you set a lot and you have this point of facial idea. So we add a question. Can you try for weather together and I try and then you can quit it what comes to my mind when I say devotion to the court.
**Speaker 2:** What comes to mind when I say the devotion to the collector what is interesting because devotion was a collective. I never heard before, I only know from the political social development and attempts in the human race is solidarity, right and and but we are talking about brotherhood. Which is something else in solidarity, the personal legality is something that you have to be few gifts.
**Speaker 2:** I get video with each other and we make cope impacts around it and so on. And so on, whereas brotherhood is like you can nearly say on the collective level, unconditioned, love and and and this has to sink in. More and more, there's more people, and we are all beginners, because we are so much damage to also by what I was telling before about hours, Western people bringing up apart from all the freedom, which we could also embrace partly or use usefully.
**Speaker 2:** We are also damaged, because either to get stunt percent belief systems. Start with certain structures, which only control production and material development and money and whatever and of course, all this is necessary. We need money for a long time to come.
**Speaker 2:** As long as we don't develop this other consciousness and it's not so far away, actually, and many people try, especially in the west, because many people are fed up But when you are when you're it takes the moment as a collective to show yourself, it's just happening everywhere, as you do it in a small circle, okay, let's a dual. There's been husky saying, German, no, the freaks and they, but when it gets earnest, because people will really try seriously, if they grow in numbers also Then it becomes more and more collective, and that it becomes soon to say, a social and political organism, or force, and then it depends how the larger society is reacting to that, and you see what's happening in the different pay.
**Speaker 2:** So snow that has communism capitalism, what is happening now, autocratism, and all the all the The cultures and nations, which are only now starting to relieve themselves from the colonial rule. Because we westerners v encapsulated the whole world with our understanding of the world, with our weapons, our money and our force, so we couldn't cross on them in the education to be other than they learned it. And that's why shamaniser, and that's why the old wisdom is coming up, because it has to, even though it's a different language, it's not scientific in the sense, but the test to tell us something, because it is not a thing to understand mentally what to experience so you have.
**Speaker 2:** To go into that, and that's the same as all of it, you cannot Understand it from outside you have to get into it. And I thought you had an open and then anyway, it will lead you. One need not to plan too much and then you landed, I was like, yeah, it, uh, oh, you landed all of it, all you do it in Paris burden.
**Speaker 2:** Vienna, Tel Aviv. Well, I don't know, it doesn't matter actually, and? And this is that's a, yeah, it needs courage.
**Speaker 2:** But the moment you taste more and more of it, I think you cannot but let it go no way because it's like a betrayer of something. Yeah, that's why people also talking, don't sell your shoulders in the common turn no in our language. No, you saw your soul, yeah?
**Speaker 2:** And I know from my country, the Germans lost not lost. But they covered up. There's who were because of 2 world wars and what happened with that, and they it was too painful and so here you hold on something tangible or Mercedes, Volkswagen, property money success.
**Speaker 2:** And so on and so on. And this is only part of your being because it's there. Of course, but in each each country, has to offer something particular and in Germany, I know it from inside very well, I was growing up in Berlin, yeah, and and something splitting you is literally literally split And then you have to go through it.
**Speaker 2:** And all the countries have to go through some table, there's nothing special with anyone and there's no one. No one ever somehow only buy free will entitled to lead others, but not by the pressure of OK, I give you 1 million, you do this job for me. Yeah, yeah, or something like that.
**Speaker 2:** And but this is stiggly on 3 steams, just at that moment, 2025. And so I'm, I'm, I'm really curious about what we can say at the end of this year, because many things are in front of us, very concretely, the atomic bomb, that means again something which was thought to be Controller, yeah, and several other things not to go I mean York, it's only better language. I'm doing now and yeah, I mean it's enough.
**Speaker 2:** There's so many, but if you want to look at that, you've had so many examples, no, from morning to evening and from small to big months world. And that's true, this I find fascinating from my mind too. In an esoteric philosophy also is known the big and the small is the same word you science can tell you that you have the laws in the the plant or in the flour are the same.
**Speaker 2:** Then yeah, so in the cosmos, and it may be necessary, or it seems to be necessary that the west explores the cosmos, because they have technical means And they learn from there to learn humility.
**Speaker 1:** It's beautiful. There's a beautiful quote that just comes to mind, because there's so another. It's he's you, you said and this is just off my corner, you said, shkaya orbin was your inspiration, hmm, I mean apart from you being my inspiration, there is another inspirational figure that I've never met.
**Speaker 1:** Only read and that is mule Jean Muir and he is he goes Scottish, and he was upset, his father was a big mogue. Starting with building big factories, it was before to the First World War and the turning of this, it's industrialization and he escaped to America. Have you eat just lived in the woods He used his weird living in the woods and he started writing a lot of books and he became very famous and he walked Roosevelt, the first Roosevelt and through the woods.
**Speaker 1:** And then Roosevelt created the first National Park in the world. It's Yosemite, and he said.
**Speaker 2:** And close the mother met by actually the wife of rouge, Bert, they met also actually
**Speaker 1:** But then in his "..."