As within, so without
Keeping the legacy of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother alive, Roy Posner explains to Pradeep Krishnan the concept of changing our inner life to manifest a beautiful outer life
Spiritual masters often proclaim that our inner and outer worlds are not two separate entities; one reflects the other. We often blame our failures and misfortunes on bad luck, fate, or karma. Instead, if we are courageous enough to introspect a little, we would discover that negativity, doubt, wrong attitudes, fear of failure, etc., are the causes of our predicament. Conversely, when we act out of an inner certitude, we manifest unqualified success in the outer world, bringing joy and abundance in its wake. If we are ready to change our attitude, Life shines in its full glory.
California-based Roy Posner, inspired by the life and teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, devoted more than three decades unravelling the complex milieu of the inner and outer worlds and how it permeates every aspect of one’s existence. His experiments with Life, his own and others, resulted in discovering that Life responds in seemingly miraculous ways to positive human effort or initiative, which he calls ‘life response.’
This understanding made him evolve as an author, writer, software developer, corporate instructor, business consultant, human development researcher, musician, personal mentor, spiritual guide, and philosopher. His trials in ‘miraculous’ outcomes in hundreds of instances all over the world resulted in several books, including the internationally acclaimed The Miraculous Phenomenon of Life Response. In his books, Roy offers startling insights into the human condition and the emergence of a new consciousness and way of living based on the vision of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. He has been an instructor and consultant in and around Silicon Valley for over 25 years and has worked closely with the Mother’s Service Society (MSS), Pondicherry, India, in developing his ideas on human evolution and transformation. Roy says: “Though our senses tell us that there is a world outside that is separate from our own selves, from a deeper view, there is no such division. Because we share this continuous stream of existence. When I change the inner me, the outer—which is really inseparable from me—instantly responds. In other words, the inner and the outer are one.”
Strangely, this online interview itself happened in a unique way, validating ‘life response.’ Though Roy had initially agreed to do the interview, to my utter dismay, he suddenly announced backing out of the project due to personal reasons. However, having read some of Karmayogi’s books by then, instead of becoming restless or desperate, I immediately consecrated the project to the Mother, mentally praying, “Mother, let your will prevail,” and sent an email to Roy requesting him to reconsider his decision. After two days, to my utter delight, Roy agreed, substantiating the power of life response.
Below are excerpts from the exclusive online interview Pradeep Krishnan had with Roy Posner:
Q. Could you please tell us about your early life?
I was born on January 17, 1950, in Brooklyn, New York City. Strangely, many of the people who were born on that day became famous black athletes or entertainers, like Muhammed Ali. As a young boy of five, I saw African-Americans gathered in dozens in another building on ‘the other side of the tracks,’ perhaps the first instance of duality and division I noticed. Later, we moved into a big house in the region of Queens in NYC. After attending Syracuse University, I headed out to California and settled in the San Francisco Bay Area for the next 35 years. It had the vibration of a higher consciousness I did not experience elsewhere. In Silicon Valley, the birthplace of advanced electronics, personal computers, smartphones, etc., I taught at many renowned companies for many years.
Q. How did you come to the spiritual path?
Led by M, my college mate, many mornings, we read together lines from Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri before beginning our work. One day, seeing my friend growing a beard and carrying a book of Sri Aurobindo’s, I asked him the reason for it and he said that The Mother had attained Mahasamadhi (leaving the material world). At that moment, I felt Their consciousness entering my being. It was reported that many people around the world had similar experiences when She left. Twenty years later, one of my friends told me that on the day of Her departure, he saw a vast light emanate from Pondicherry and spread around the world. Several others had similar experiences, and it is believed that She entered the hearts of each devotee worldwide.
Q. How did you come in contact with late Sri Karmayogi (a spiritual master who lived in Pondicherry and was the founder of MSS)?
That was the next stage of my journey. In 1974, my intention to start a house-painting business in San Francisco, California, did not bear fruit. After a series of events, including a journey across Europe, I returned to California, in Santa Monica, Los Angeles. There I met Dr Judith Tyberg, an eminent Sanskrit author and a disciple and friend of The Mother at the East West Center and came to know of Mere Cie Imports and MSS. This meeting, as well as encountering Garry Jacobs, an American devotee of Karmayogi, who had just returned from Pondicherry, brought together my life’s purpose. I not only entered a deeper stage of my journey but was able to apply the spiritual wisdom to the work I was involved in. Thus, it was the single great turning point of my life.
Soon, I formed my own sales company and started applying the principles of Karmayogi to my work through the method of ‘consecration,’ i.e., opening up to The Mother, the Supramental Power. In fact, I applied many of his principles to my business training and consulting activities, including in Silicon Valley, beginning my life of ‘instantaneous miraculousness’ in earnest.
After several years of deep study with Garry Jacobs at his home in Napa, California, I began direct email conversations with Karmayogi in the late 1990s that continued till 2003. We discussed many topics, including his vast array of spiritual insights, my personal journey and progress, and conditions in the world. We also took up studies in literature, particularly Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice, where Karmayogi revealed the subtle workings of life and the ways to evoke sudden good fortune. I applied many of these principles to my daily work and experienced miraculous results!
Q. How is following a spiritual life connected with growth, accomplishment, prosperity, etc.?
A spiritual life simply means rising to a consciousness beyond our normal status. The more one grows, the more one can expand in consciousness by moving away from the surface of life, going deeper within, connecting with the inner being, and culminating in experiencing the Evolving Soul, one’s Psychic Being. Thus, one climbs ‘up’ beyond the ordinary mind to the spiritualised mind, enabling one to have experiences of illumination, intuition, and the revelation of knowledge, culminating in what Sri Aurobindo referred to as ‘Supramental Perception’ (i.e., Truth Consciousness).
Following a spiritual life requires true dedication and sincerity to go beyond one’s current status and existence to something deeper and higher. It helps to develop spiritual capacities: silence, peace, harmony, goodness, self-givingness, wisdom, empathy, creativity, compassion, and the ability to live beyond ordinary conceptions of space and time. Ultimately, it is to experience bliss, joy in life, and to feel deep love for others and the world. As one comes in touch with the Spirit within and the spiritual Force around, one’s nature changes leading to their growth in consciousness. When this expanded consciousness is applied to Life and work, it certainly elevates one’s efforts and thus attracts all manner of positive outcomes, from enormous accomplishments to infinite-like abundance and prosperity. There are so many startling examples of these dynamics!
Q. Did you not record these on the website Growth Online?
All the knowledge and experiences others and I had as a result of living a spirit-oriented life were chronicled to show how reversing a negative attitude or opening to the spiritual Force, which we call ‘consecration,’ opens the door to enormous possibilities; even attracting sudden good fortune. There were so many true-life response experiences that I wanted to record and publish so that viewers could see articles on personal organisation (like how to raise one’s level of cleanliness and orderliness) and see how it would take them to a higher degree that evokes sudden good fortune, what we call a response from life—a ‘life response’.
Later, realising the importance of social media, to have a more robust platform with interactive possibilities, we launched 20 Facebook groups on various subjects, from Supramental Life, and the Spiritual Future of Science and Money, to the Inner Keys to Work and Business Success.
Q. What are the key factors that enable people to grow and evolve? Please describe the processes and principles for accomplishment and growth?
Anything that helps to elevate one’s consciousness as well as the physical, vital, and mental capacities enables one to grow. Personally, overcoming negative attitudes, subscribing to high personal values, and opening to the Spiritual Force, to The Mother, have been central to my own personal and spiritual growth. Each time one takes these to a higher degree, one grows in consciousness and experiences a corresponding positive response from the world around them. That ‘instantaneous miraculousness,’ helps one develop a new-born faith, as well as a new level of inner strength and determination to seek even greater, personal and spiritual growth in life. And as this process intensifies and deepens, one not only grows but also evolves. If one takes this endeavour to the very centre of life, one can even transform into a new type of person, even a new species—the vision Sri Aurobindo offered the world.
To truly accomplish this, one has to consciously apply these spiritual qualities to the field one is engaged in; work, business, or any creative endeavour. As one engages in activities and experiences, one receives spiritual feedback from the Universe, pointing to those factors that lead to great success. In addition to the normal qualities we attribute to success, having the necessary skill and knowledge, practising punctuality and reliability, being organised, applying spiritual methods like consecration, not reacting to others, taking another’s point of view, and remaining still and silent from within will surely lead to great levels of success and accomplishment in life.
Q. How does one bring about change in one’s consciousness to attract success and accomplishment in Life?
Life response is to evoke instantaneous miraculousness from out of thin air. You do something of a higher order, higher consciousness, and life suddenly brings forth good fortune, seemingly from out of nowhere. And yet, it is our reversal of consciousness that precipitated it. If I shift from reluctance to do a job to willingness to do it, then quite often, good fortune suddenly lands on my doorstep in the form of a huge sale or vast opportunity or the sudden dissipation of a serious problem.
In essence, life on the ‘outside’ will respond in kind to one’s shifts in consciousness ‘inside.’ This dynamic ‘inner-outer correspondence’ is the basis of all life response events. So, if one continually raises the level of orderliness and cleanliness, shifts a negative attitude to the positive, and opens to the Spiritual Force before undertaking an activity, Life will constantly respond on the outside with corresponding miraculous-like outcomes.
Q. Please elucidate the principle of inner-outer correspondence which states that ‘if I change the inner me, the outer instantly responds in kind’.
Along with the power of the Mother’s Force, this was the great understanding of my life. Years ago, Sri Karmayogi had asked me to collect 100 life response incidents so that I could truly begin to understand this inner-outer correspondence principle. The more I collected such experiences, my own and others, the more such new instances started happening to us. After a while, these incidents became so compelling that people were attracting work, jobs, money and wealth in quick response to their shifts of consciousness, often without them doing ‘anything’ on the outside. On every occasion, the outer result was initiated, created, and enabled by very specific shifts in one’s consciousness from within. These incidents have been recorded in my book The Miraculous Phenomenon of Life Response.
Q. Could you please tell us about your in-depth analysis of The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo’s magnum opus?
As devotees of MSS, the collected works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother are our primary sources of wisdom. The theme of His work is that man aspires for light, love, and joy but fails to attain it because his nature is divided. He inherits the unconsciousness of his lower nature, which is the physical, the material legacy of the inconscient, the stone. However, when man discovers his higher nature, he breaks the bonds of his old lower, physical consciousness and comes into the light, thereby fulfilling the human aspiration for light, love, and joy.
Sri Aurobindo does not stop there. He tells us that we can evolve our nature to the spiritual peaks, culminating in our attainment of an ultimate gnostic, Supramental Consciousness. And if enough individuals reach this lofty peak of awareness and power, they can become the forerunners of a divine life on Earth. While reading each page of the book, I highlighted some points and noted down specific ideas. In the late 1990s, I brought out the book An Analysis of Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine, exploring each chapter in depth.
Q. What are the spiritual principles advocated by the website Romance Eternal?
The central principle of The Life Divine and the Romance Eternal is that evolution takes place by moving to higher levels of harmony. He Himself emphasised that “all problems of Life are problems of harmony.” Thus, if romance is to sustain itself, the partners need to grow in harmony. The greater the giving up of the ego, the more the self-givingness; the less the ego dominates, the deeper the bond and association between the partners. In that sense, romance has endless scope for love and mutual affection; hence the title of the site, ‘Romance Eternal.’
Q. You once said that the power of living in the depths enables one to live life from a deeper consciousness within so that one can function more effectively in daily life, which opens the portals of the spiritual domain. Please explain.
At any moment, one can ask, “Where is the centre of my consciousness? Is it on the surface, caught up in the whirlwind of the day, or is it stationed deeper within, in a stillness and silence, in blissful openness to what is unfolding?” A serene status helps one to meet the challenges of the day easily. The deeper one goes within, connecting to the evolving soul (the psychic being), by being open to possibilities, to the higher life, to right decision-making and action, and to doing things that bring harmony with others and life gets easier.
One can reach that stage by quieting the mind, continuously opening to the Spiritual Force of the Mother, not reacting to others’ tantrums, considering others’ point of view, etc. That acts as a bridge from ‘within’ to the highest consciousness and harmonious relationship with Life.
Q. How has the study of different dimensions of Life helped you in evolving your own consciousness?
Every day, I practise several methods of Karmayogi that I just mentioned. Whenever I look within and change my attitude, immediately, something wonderful happens: a huge sale or a golden opportunity presents itself. The same happens with opening to the Mother and Her Force. As conditions present themselves, I evaluate the situation and try to make choices in the right direction, thereby attracting positive conditions in kind. Moreover, the response may not just be for my own benefit but for the wider groups and collectives of people I interact with. And that fits in with Sri Aurobindo’s notion that we are not just individual beings, but Universal ones as well.
Q. How can we experience that ‘All Life is yoga,’ as proclaimed by Sri Aurobindo?
Immediately start practising consecration. Offer each important activity in your daily life to the Higher Power, to the Mother, to the Supramental Force—they are all the same thing—and watch how magically life unfolds in the minutes, hours, and days thereafter. Also, aspire to live the inner life, that spiritual existence, daily. Go deeper within, away from the surface, to gain inner powers of consciousness. Finally, learn about the subtle patterns of life, how life truly works, which Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, and Karmayogi have revealed to the world. After a while, you will begin to feel a continuous richness within, and a joy in all you come in contact with in your life.
Q. Your message to the readers?
There is a Divine Reality behind this material existence that is filled with powers which we can gain access to and practise in our lives. If we regularly apply them to the activities and challenges we encounter, we will be amazed by the way life quickly responds in our favour. That, in turn, builds greater faith in the Higher Power and increases our aspiration, the flame within to go further on the Path. As a result, Life becomes a never-ending unfolding of light, love, and joy!
Life Positive follows a stringent review publishing mechanism. Every review received undergoes -
Only after we're satisfied about the authenticity of a review is it allowed to go live on our website
Our award winning customer care team is available from 9 a.m to 9 p.m everyday
All our healers and therapists undergo training and/or certification from authorized bodies before becoming professionals. They have a minimum professional experience of one year
All our healers and therapists are genuinely passionate about doing service. They do their very best to help seekers (patients) live better lives.
All payments made to our healers are secure up to the point wherein if any session is paid for, it will be honoured dutifully and delivered promptly
Every seekers (patients) details will always remain 100% confidential and will never be disclosed