Meeting with Baba - Prout Questions
Q. Traditionally, humans connected intimately with physical processes around them and lived in very great harmony with their culture. At one time, everything was within this kind of more localized sphere, including their food. There was an integration of their being with those energies. Now, planetary communication and transportation are changing those realities. What will be the healthy state?
A. You know, when you are twenty, is it good to wish you were ten? You cannot go back. You can only go forward. Human beings are an extension of the evolution of the earth, not separate from Gaia but a part of her. They are her evolution. These changes are the evolution of the planet. You cannot take it back and make it as it was. Each stage of development is beautiful. What appears in each stage is a struggle. In this evolution, human beings are attaining to a new state. They are moving from individuality and isolation into psychic collectiveness as a single organism. They have come from a single organism, the planet earth. They are moving again to be a single organism, a psychically-linked organism. The emphasis on individuality will grow less and less.
For example, people say, "The world is becoming small," because of the ways cultures and places are interconnected. It seems natural to young people today to fly here or there, to make international phone calls. In today's world, you can talk to anyone in the Philippines, in South America, in India as though they are just two feet away from you. You can call them any old time on the cell phone. You may be in the middle of the Amazon jungle rain forest, in China, in the Himalayas and by phone, people sound like they are next door. What a world! It is linking.
Now the technologies are crude. In time, they will become more and more subtle, more and more psychic. The linking occurring with the information network allows everyone to be on the same page with the worldwide web. We have cell phones and the Internet. You think you are going to turn the world back to the isolation that was there in the development of individualism?
Q. It is not so much that Baba, but still we need to build from the place where we are. Still we are living in a locale. While we are connecting globally, is it more healthy for us when we eat foods that are available locally?
A. Yes, yes I am getting to that. I haven’t gotten that far but it is good that you bring it up. I am getting there. So in this evolutionary change, the planet is linking, is it not? Not the planet but human beings as the further extension of development on the planet are creating this psychic link. As this linking goes on, empathy grows within people. This is because part of linking is dissolving barriers, those psychic and mental barriers that are like a hard crust around each part of consciousness. Those become softer and there is more empathy. With this, people realize more of the needs of others and of the earth itself. There becomes a more sensitive, holistic relationship.
Consciousness itself has evolved from the quiescent state of the planet to the active state of animal lives and now to the subtle state of more evolved, spiritual development. In this further evolution, relationships of many things are changing. Though there is much talk of going back to the way it was, the ideals that people want again are really images of the past. The past is finished forever, will never be again, and was perhaps not so rosy as it is painted. The future lies ahead, bright and vibrant. The images of the past come to mind to paint on a canvas yet unpainted for we are unsure of what the images of the future will be. So the images are imposed and they are images of the imagined past.
Should there be local economy? Yes. Should there be local autonomy? Yes. Should there be local development? Yes. Should there be any foods grown locally? Yes. Should there be isolation locally, as if coming into a separate group? No. The local part, the local root will be a kind of collective but it will be like this. So you cannot say that economies will not entirely locally based. If you live in Wisconsin, you can still eat bananas. If you live in Antarctica or in Iceland or Alaska, you don’t have to live without fruit. If you live in the desert, you don’t have to starve. You can actually live in Bahrain where there is no hope to grow a single carrot though there are other resources. People can still live there.
Sonoma County has lovely land and temperate climate so you can grow anything with a little work, a little effort on the soil, even importing some soils so you can grow anything here so why not have more sustainable local culture? Same in Oregon. Still should it mean no one should eat a papaya or a banana? Why could they not have papayas and bananas?
Q. How is it that we are going to regain our connection with the natural world?
A. Good point. Again not the way it has been for a new way comes. The technologies of human beings will grow in sophistication and development until the imprint left by technology will be very small. There will be other things to contend with as well when human beings are in active communication with other intelligent life forms around this. It will be a different matter altogether. The situation will change.
Regarding the other species of the earth. As an example, when you want to run a marathon or study for an exam, you exert tremendous energy. You give your body a certain amount of sacrifice to run the marathon or to study night and day for that big exam. When you run the marathon, the blood will come out to the lymph. It will sacrifice its engagement elsewhere for that engagement. When you study for a very big exam, all the energies go to the mind and very little are left for other things. In an emergency, a person may be able to lift a heavy vehicle they could not ordinarily lift, with amazing strength. No one would think they could possibly do it but at what cost do they lift that vehicle? It takes from the body elsewhere and puts all into that effort because it must. So it is with this earth. What is happening to the whole body? What is occurring? There is an evolutionary jump occurring. You see? Vital force is being taken from someplace to put someplace else. This is part of what is occurring.
If humanity cannot take this jump, it will destroy itself. If it destroys itself, the earth will be greatly damaged and seriously crippled and have to repair herself and start over again. She doesn’t want to do this. She wants to get through this stage and move to the next stage of evolution. There is a natural pull of the evolutionary flow and I have no doubt at all that it will be entirely successful but it is a little trying at times. So in the thrust for the outward expansion of evolution and consciousness, some of the less necessary activities are coming to a close.
Q. Extinctions of species?
A. Among other things, yes. The flow of evolutionary force will concentrate. The flow of life force of the planet is being concentrated. It is time of opposites. There is a tension held in it because it is a great push of evolution; it is a time of change. The current situation is out of balance. We know that the human population cannot be sustained. You do not need a scientist or psychic to tell you this. We know that life as it was is changing. This coming together of living beings, this feeling of protection and nurturance will grow in the collective psyche and the balance will be found. It will be found.
You cannot separate tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, climate changes, extinctions of species and evolution. It is a whole organism and you are not separate from this body. So now, this local development is a very good notion but the planetary movement cannot be undone.
