Participants' views

Here are some thoughts that the partcipants shared in their written evaluations.

• This course has changed me on many, many levels of the physical, vital and mental. The process and repeated emphasis on self-observation as a tool has helped me profoundly. I have become aware of so many of my habits, behaviours, thoughts and feelings at much more subtler levels of physical, vital, mental, and thereby I'm better able to understand myself. The course has helped me tremendously in turning inwards and in living within. The entire psychological system of Sri Aurobindo puts consciousness at the centre as the substance of everything. So instead of neglecting or rejecting any part of myself, I have been encouraged to take up all aspects of my surface instrument and purify them integrally toward a higher purpose. Keeping the goal of the Divine Life on earth has broadened my horizons incredibly.
• The journey on many fronts has begun.
• World seems to be the same, but I seem to have become quieter and a silent observer.
• This course has also been a very humbling experience, definitely a dent on my ahamkara. Not only have certain personal insights emerged but I also understand many of my personal shortcomings and weaknesses and a slow glimmering of the level of my resistance. I learnt that other people were quietly engaged in this “technology of the self” and that there was this incredible connection between my yet to be realized divinity and the natural world. In simpler terms, I am not just an irrelevant ego in the scheme of things, but I can also make a difference.
• Each of us heard the pitch we are in tune with.
• The world, in general for me, has been a spectator, an audience of what I am doing, of how I am physically. This distorted vision of the world prevented me most of the time from seeing the beauty of this creation of the Divine. After this course I am able to realize that I am not a victim of this world’s or the Divine’s injustice. “I” am not different, “I” am unique just as everything and everyone who is a part of that One. I am a part of this diversity, this diversity which is the manifestation of that One. I can hence see that unique combination of physical, mental and vital in all the beings.
• The course has shown me a practical do-able way of working on myself — given me an insight into the possibility of growth...
• The course has helped me take responsibility for my self, my life. From a state of wanting things to change on their own with time or through agents outside of me, a willingness and a sense of responsibility for myself has come.
• There is a perfection in the now, and yet the possibility of a ‘higher’ equilibrium. So I can enjoy ‘today’ with as much love and yet aspire for something higher, wider and deeper.
• I believe there was something for everyone and the freedom and space to explore it at their level of being.
• This course has taught me the skills of life. It has put more meaning into my life. I would not say it has completely transformed my life. But definitely, it has taught me to understand myself better and know the tools that would help me to play my part in this cycle of evolution.
• Very importantly, I would like to mention that I have started to smile more than I used to. This I think is out of clarity in mind, an innate happiness that I am on the track.