It is possible to demonstrate graphically the effect of the lost wisdom on the civilisation of the subcontinent, as I have done in Parts I and II. Graphics often speak louder than words; this presentation may well prove the point.

Cosmic harmonies are largely grounded in geometry. This is because one starts computations and analyses with a whole in which parts are set in place and joined together creating a web, a system formed of interrelated lines. The process is an ancient one, inherited from the Vedic and Sangam periods. It forms the basis for a key feature of that wisdom to function as an applicable formula. This is referred to as a system of correspondences. Unlike other ancient schools, the Indian premise has always been one of Equivalencies. This stands for that because in their essential being they are equal. Therefore the Sage uses that essence which may be equated with a seed, and the compact or minute therein reveals the larger of which it is connected as a web to its centre that holds it in place.

However, this ancient method can function only within the overall framework of the Circle. If that does not exist (in consciousness or perception), we have linear forms that cannot provide the wisdom of Correspondences. The degeneration witnessed in caste is a case in point and can reveal, geometrically, how what once was an enlightened structure lost its superior cosmic qualities when the vision of spherical perceptive capacity of the Ancients was lost. Linearity replaced the circular. Then the Cosmic Man does not fit into the circle as the zodiac laid out in the diagram in Part II reveals; the image is restricted to the upright progression, always valid indeed, but an incomplete perception subject therefore to unavoidable decay. The pyramidal diagram below describes caste as we know it today given our lost spherical perceptive capacity which has been replaced by the linear.

Caste remains in spite of the lost spherical capacity, for indeed its cosmic roots make it indestructible, but the circle has vanished. The four segments are perceived as stacked one upon the other as in a pyramid. The base is of course the largest, the first caste, Shudra: the entire pyramid rests on this first foundation/mass. Therefore, rumblings, agitations, disturbances (Maoists?) cannot be allowed at that level of the structure or else the entire edifice would be threatened. Thus are born machinations to exploit or else to keep the lower in check, come what may – often by unholy means. It is simply a question of self-protection, given the loss of spherical perception. In a true cosmic-based society, what we may call planetary, these problems do not arise.

The next segment is Vaishya followed by Kshatriya, and finally the Brahmin. If we assume that the apex of the triangle is the position that connects the sections to the heavenly, or to the Supreme, then the position of the Brahmin is secure in a linear society because all approach to the highest must be done through that loftiest segment. The individual in such a society is stationed somewhere in one of the lower portions and cannot connect to the Supreme Reality directly; he or she is obliged to approach the Highest through representatives – in this case the Brahmin, or the priest as in orthodox religions of the West, all of which took shape during the very period when the Vedic vision began to decline. The Brahmin or priest is therefore rendered indispensible and he too must put in place certain protective devices, one of which is to establish ownership over rituals and scriptures, thereby eliminating the threat of intruders from other segments of the pyramid. This becomes the sole preserve of the Brahmin or the officiating priest by which the populace can be led to the portals of the Highest.

But there have been rumblings in the lower ranks, and the security once enjoyed has been disrupted, sometimes ruthlessly. This is the fate of linear perception. It must implode when top-heaviness occurs by the weight of its contradictions; or else when the base becomes unable to continue lending support to a system that has exceeded its utility.

The real cosmic foundation is not pyramidal but spherical, as indicated in the image below. This is appreciated when we turn to the One Circle where these contradictions are resolved. Above all, as noted in this graphic, it offers equal access to the Centre, to God, or the highest ideal of the civilisation, requiring no intermediaries. This is truly equality and respect for all segments of society. There is an upper hemisphere and a lower – but this does not refer to superior or inferior, lesser or more privileged. This distinction, which is one of the foundations of astrological principles, applies to function, above all. It is similar to the seasons: each one compliments the other. There is neither good nor bad, best nor worse. In the true cosmic harmony, caste is not the prerogative or the bane of birth. The horoscope, in the hands of a true astrologer, provides the means to discover one’s caste. Or the part one plays in society as part of the system.

There are two keywords to describe the new cosmic-based order: Unity and Integrality. The former is of the nature of the circle; the latter is the linear that extends from the centre or the connecting lines to the central Point. Without integrality there is no web to position the lines drawn by Time. We may have circles within circles, but lacking the definition that lines within the circle describe, half the equation is missing. This is again a demonstration of each thing in its place.

We can visually appreciate the condition if we imagine a spider’s web without its linear components that extend from the circle’s centre to provide the solidity a web requires for it to serve as the spider’s habitat. The spider and web is a wonderful metaphor for the creative act of the Divine Maya to give form to the Transcendent Absolute. The Absolute BECOMES the universe (the web) through the medium of the Divine Mother (the spider), she who is one with the Transcendent and gives shape to all created things. He becomes the universe because of her power, without which the Transcendent cannot manifest.

This analysis and its visual images reveal that the two, circle and line, must join in a harmonious design to provide the cosmic plan for evolution to inhabit and within which it may evolve by the aid of Time to a higher status on the ladder. Unity cannot be the lived experience of a creation in matter without the Integral. Both have their origin in the centre, the Point, and must inevitably find their just and harmonious place within a contained cosmic manifestation such as our universal system. The two together describe the complete nature of the reality of our material world. Up there, in some heavenly extra-cosmic dimension, if it exists and can be reached, circles may suffice. Here below, in matter, the Line is required to create a vehicle on which evolution may travel to fulfil its purpose.

The current pyramidal structure of caste is all lines, no circle. Therefore it cannot survive in a world that has overcome the obstacles encountered during the evolution of human consciousness to become equipped with a consciousness of a higher level that alone is able to integrate the final fourth quarter.

Here we have the four planes of consciousness placed within the circle, and their Vedic designations on the outside. The fourth section is the issue because this plane – Swar – is the void as far as material creation on this Earth is concerned. All spirituality, eastern and western, considers this fourth to be extra-cosmic. Heaven, it is called, and in our minds this evokes a static, unchanging, indeed eternal world or plane or dimension, beyond Time, beyond Space.

However, the geometry of the circle, as also the zodiac it contains, does not imply otherworldliness at all. In fact, the fourth quarter is the most materially earthly of all the quadrants. The lived experience of the fourth segment – that is, when it becomes an integrated part of the evolving consciousness – is when the true role of the Earth in the cosmic harmony is revealed. Until now glimpses of that integrality and Earth-centredness have been perceived. The travails of society today are precisely efforts to move deeper into the Point, the centre of the centre itself, as in the centre of the spider’s web out of which creation emerges, the Centre where all created things are held together and from where lines extend to draw the whole into the experience of Oneness. Indeed, the innermost central point is the One, the Divine Child of almost all traditions, the anticipated saviour – not for the few elect souls who have followed the dogmas faithfully, but for the Earth herself.

At our current level, with the weapons of mass destruction that exist, with the desecration of the physical Earth, with the decimation of her living creatures, it is clear that an integral all-encompassing Power has to be unveiled that can save our planet from the devastation brought to her by the present limited human species which to all appearances possesses the ability to destroy in toto the web of its own habitat. That habitat, the metaphorical spider’s web, is constructed by Time, by the lines Time draws in the evolutionary matrix. Just as disorder is brought into the cosmic order by using the circle and its properties against itself, so too can we experience Time as destroyer of its own creation; or time as the motor of evolution to bring humanity on this third planet to a new order of which Time itself holds the key.

This is the sense implied in the Maya ‘end time’ predictions for 21 December 2012. True or false, a correct reading of the Maya calendar and its pictographs or not, we have reached the ‘end of Time’. But a qualification is required. It is the old time that is dissolved, and all the forms it has given rise to, those crumbling structures of the old world that are imploding. It was a world created by a severely hampered human consciousness. Its incompleteness is the signal that it must, as time moves on, evolve into the wholeness contained in the innermost Point itself, it must shed the old forms similar to a serpent that sloughs off its lifeless and purposeless old skin.

We are living the collapse of the old – but we are also part of the new that is concurrently arising to replace the old. Cosmos, caste and calendar play fundamental roles in this transition to wholeness, particularly in India, the nation that has never severed those connections. The cosmic harmonies formed the foundation in ancient times for the subcontinental civilisation to carry the burden of the evolution through darkness into an age when the Vishnu Avatar re-appears to lay the guidelines of a new creation of Light. The limitations of the physical, mental, and emotional structure of the human being are being exceeded, the boundaries of the old structure are being dissolved, leaving before the human species an entirely new world to discover along with the processes that will transform the Earth into the paradise we have been led to believe can only exist beyond time and cosmos; when it is actually Time itself that brings the new things divine onto our planetary home.

This new Light can hardly be called ‘spiritual’ any longer because the old world appropriated the term and it is therefore no longer adequate to describe the nature of that Light. The fourth (Swar) is the home of that superior experience of Reality and the secret of our new age is that the time for the unveiling of its Earth-centredness has come.

To conclude, the very first step to bring Hinduism back to wholeness so that the things promised can be fulfilled is to rid itself of the Ayanamsha Chaos. If that simple first step is not taken, caste and all that was once real and true cannot re-make itself and India cannot guide the world to the new Order. For how long are we to continue denying the self-evident fact that the Vedic Calendar, with all that finds a legitimate place in its four-fold eternal structure, must be restored. We lament the degeneration of caste, but we need to realise that the whole of Indian society and not just caste is in a state of decay because 80% of the population’s energies stand hopelessly divided. This is due not to caste but to the lack of the unifying element the subcontinent had always known and for which reason it was able to survive the ravages of time and circumstance. Continuing to accede to the pressure of vested interests that impede this transformation, which would re-make society by releasing and unifying energies that are now being wasted in futile attempts to reform the periphery, while the centre of the circle itself stands veiled and, for all practical purposes, ineffective and inoperable, is not the way to make ‘all things new’. Nothing is in its place, indeed. But foremost is the centre-point itself.

Like Guha, Shiva’s mighty warrior Son, the need of the hour is to unveil the Centre that holds. And indeed this requires the courage of the Warrior.

The fourfold One Circle is the Chaturvarna of caste. Its roots lie in the cosmic harmony like everything else the civilisation of the subcontinent has to offer of eternal value. But when that One Circle is dismissed in favour of the subjective relativism of science, and the Ayanamsha Chaos becomes the determining factor of our expression of the Sanatana Dharma, then of course caste must also degenerate since it too owes its being to that same geometric form.

Here is the very same diagram presented in Part I, page 5, but with each of the four castes entered in the positions they occupy in the Circle divided in four. In so doing we learn how indeed all can be one – but one within the correct perception of the cosmic harmony which the calendar regulates for collective purposes. Caste is one such means to regulate society.
This formulation can be found not only in India as inherited from ancient times but throughout the world, when we consider that globally the very same four-fold division exists. Here are the broad categories; they can be embellished further to include the full gamut of each quadrant: 1) labour, service, crafts; 2) finances/banks, industries, commodities; 3) government, military, judiciary. And finally the fourth and highest – equivalent to Uttarayana in the Hindu Calendar – which in contemporary society including the Indian has been usurped by elements that bear no credentials for the fourth position – in ancient times occupied by Rishis and Seers. Today intellectuals, philosophers, scientists are likely to occupy this important position; their writs often stand uncontested and any consideration of higher principles goes ignored or even ridiculed. The wiseman’s voice is lost in the din of political and social activism and the intellectualisms of think-tanks, bearing little or no relation to the duties of the fourth quadrant. This is the most interesting aspect of our transitional phase on the road to a new world order: the necessary call of the hour is the integration of the fourth quarter and to identify its role in the new global society. This integration of the fourth is essentially the all-encompassing subject of my treatment.
The point to bear in mind is that the Chaturvarna is a cosmic fact which has structured civilisations across the globe throughout history, disregarding cultural and ethnic differences. Indeed, this is the value of a cosmic-based vision: it influences the entire human species irrespective of caste or creed or political ideology. How much more valuable and effective is such a structure in a civilisation like the Vedic which, from its inception, followed superior cosmic laws?
When the Vedic prescription of One Circle is understood, we realise that this single geometric form can knit together all the diverse elements it contains in an experience of oneness which might otherwise appear disconnected when taken singly or linearly. The value of Oneness is irrefutable, but because it is a delicate balance when attained, if that One Circle is disturbed or erased from the collective consciousness, the element that unifies and integrates society is turned against itself. It is then that lesser formulations come to usurp the place of higher principles that might otherwise impact society. (In minor ways we see this happening when aspects of the democratic system such as freedom of speech, human rights, and so forth, are used against itself to bring down the system.) .
Consider the role of nationalism. It can be an energising sentiment in the population, with the ability to focus the collective consciousness on a single noble goal; but it can also degenerate into its shadow – Nazism, for example. As well, there are certain political ideologies that tend to disturb the fourfold balance by emphasis on one quadrant of the wheel. Communism is one example. There we find an overpowering of just one quarter, the first (Shudra, labour). While the ideal underlying such ideologies may be noble, due to a congenital imbalance the unregenerate human condition can carry the emphasis beyond tolerable limits. In so doing, this may lead to totalitarian means to reach a desired end, thereby extinguishing the very foundational premise of the new universalism: freedom.
Today, after the demise of Communism as a potential for global unification which its international ideology proposes, another section of the Circle has taken over the attempt to unify humanity by seeking to replace the Communist failed effort by imposing its values on the whole. The factors constituting the second quadrant (Vaishya – economics, financial powers, banks, industries, etc.) have come into prominence of late. The entire globe is sought to be brought under the umbrella of an economic system the opposite of Communism, but also holding as it does an international agenda. In both cases the universal character of the cosmic influence is sought to be given expression in one form or another because we cannot escape the pressure to cast aside dividing barriers, given that the Cosmic Dial has moved into the Age of Aquarius, the zodiacal sign bearing the most affinity with the cosmic harmony.
Thus, globalisation, liberalisation of economies, free market, and so forth, pretend to encourage in humanity the experience of oneness based on a projected economic well being. The inescapable result of this overpowering of one quadrant over the others is ultimately collapse under the weight of its own incompleteness and resultant contradictions, just as Communism collapsed for a similar reason. Witness the travails of the European Union, founded solely on elements of the second quarter which, standing alone, lacks true binding power.
The lack of freedom Communism demands brought about its downfall, insofar as freedom is one of the pillars of the new Aquarian ideal. In the Communist model the vital breath that a society requires to course through free and open spaces as a necessary ingredient for growth is suffocated. On the other hand, in open societies and their model of economy, freedom proves to be excessive, often degenerating into abuses such as greed and debauched excesses of various types, often aided by the trade of illegal substances that plagues societies across the globe; again, the openness of the society is used against itself. Clearly the two stand in apparent opposition to each other; but in fact they are simply sides of a single coin. The rise of one forces the emergence of the other. This has been the story of our entire 20th-century world affairs
We are still in the throes of an unprecedented economic upheaval, without really understanding the reasons why; whereas, the truth be told, it was brought about by the overpowering rise of the second quadrant as a reaction to the imbalance involving the first. This is the destiny of incomplete systems: they constantly seek to balance themselves out, but not being aware of the complete and integral ‘circle’, these attempts are never successful. Certainly through this latest collapse we have learned one lesson: the universalism of Aquarius has also been felt in the current crisis which has indeed affected economies across the globe. Interestingly, the least affected have been the Asian economies – perhaps indicating a sign of things to come.
The electronic media, which plays such a prominent role in our entire 21st-century civilisation, in politics, economics and culture, is another sign of the Aquarian times, perhaps more so than anything else. This is an especially interesting topic which may be left for another time, since space does not permit me to do it justice.

The fourth quarter of the circle is the great void. The origins of this vacuum lie in the innards of the quarter itself. That is where we must locate the root of the problem and study dispassionately all its ramifications. In the course of this treatment those roots will be uncovered, along with the means to heal the ills caused by the existent void. In a sense the fourth quarter is the cause of incompleteness and an inadequate expression of the other three quarters. Thus the blame for the failure to resolve societal issues harmoniously can be laid at the feet of the spirituality of escapism that had monopolised the higher reaches of human consciousness over the past two thousand years, leaving the lower regions to their own resources to seek some means to fill the resultant void.
We note that displacement is another key word. Regarding the final quarter, for example, the wisemen of old have in large measure been replaced by the judiciary. While the role of law and the courts plays an admirable role in contemporary democracies, it too has been displaced from its true position in the third quadrant of the Cosmic Order. The result is usurpation of powers, with the judiciary having to play the role the executive may often fail to do. As a consequence we see the new phenomenon of judicial activism on the rise, particularly in countries such as India. It not only sets a dangerous precedent but also overburdens the courts. This usurpation may not be desired by judges; rather, it can often be an instinctive reaction so as to fill a void for the good of society that had been left by the executive branch.
In all these cases we learn that the Cosmic Order has suffered because of a common factor: nothing is in its place. When that occurs naturally certain segments overstep, usurp and finally become overpowering by having taken on a burden which is legitimately another’s to carry. The same assessment can be carried out regarding all four quadrants of caste. But the fundamental issue remains: emphasis on any one over the others creates imbalance that finally leads to collapse.

The question may be asked, What is it that actually experiences collapse? In this treatment the nature of the elements in a state of collapse will be analysed. At this point we must focus on the subcontinent and its struggles to remake itself in a modern image, without entirely desiring or being able to discard the forms of old. One such is caste.
The first mention of the Chaturvarna is found in the world’s oldest scripture, the Rig Veda. In X, 90, 11-12, known as the Purush Shukta, it is stated,

11. When they divided up the Man
into how many parts did they divide him?
What did his mouth become? What his arms?
What are his legs called? What his feet?

12. His mouth became the brahmin; his arms
Became the warrior-prince [Kshatriya], his legs
The common man who plies his trade [Vaishya].
The lowly serf was born from his feet [Shudra].
(Translation, Raimundo Panikkar)

This imaginative description of the origin of caste could be dismissed as the mystical fantasies of a Rishi in ancient times, bearing little or no connection to our contemporary society. However, it is the calendar that once again makes caste eternal and for which reason it just refuses to die. Again, as long as the cosmos exists, which provides the structure for the real Vedic calendar, and insofar as caste arises from within that same structure, it will live on in spite of concerted efforts to extirpate it from society. Certainly attempts to eliminate caste have been relentless in independent India. But what if we approach the matter differently? What if we embrace caste as it is in its original highest cosmic sense and in the process try to discover just why and when that noble Order began to degenerate to what we now have in its place?
It may not be immediately apparent how the above Rig Veda verses can be equated with the calendar. To clarify the issue, another element of the ancient lore has to be added if that connection is to be understood. This is the zodiac.
The Vedic praises sing of caste as emerging from different portions of the body of the Cosmic Purush. All astrologers, east and west, know that the human body is ruled by different signs of the zodiac. In the Medieval design presented here, the animal and human figures connected to the signs have been placed on the body over the portions that they are said to rule and also in the circumscribing oval with its further details. This composition provides the first step to understand the correlation by the placement of the signs on the body and also in the surrounding oval; it helps to visualise the cosmic harmony as internal as well as external – or the oneness of inner and outer.

The Cosmic Person and the Zodiac

Next would be to visualise the same Man in a circular position, with his head located at the position of Aries (Mahavishuva – March Equinox, the beginning of the zodiacal year) on the wheel, his neck at Taurus, arms at Gemini, and so on through the circle until we reach Pisces and the feet. The knees, ankles and feet, upholding the upright human body, its distinguishing feature, are located in the final quadrant of the circle, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces respectively.
The Cosmic Purush in a circle would be similar to the ancient Ouroboros, the serpent biting its tail, representing precisely the ceaselessness of cyclic time. Its head and tail join at the location in the zodiac of the Zero Point or ayanamsha where the first sign Aries meets the last, Pisces. In this figure, as in the variations on the same circle presented in this treatment, the outstanding characteristic is that these months/signs ‘effortlessly move one into the another’, as the Rig Veda pointedly states to drive home the fact of a unified progression, a perception that is lost on most contemporary astrologers, especially in India. We are dealing with a continuous uninterrupted flow (of time) which Ouroboros depicts so clearly. As demonstrated in the course of this treatment, there are many symbols that have been handed down to us from ancient times, each one presenting the same vision of unity in one form or another.

I must stress once again that if hostile powers seek to disrupt Hindu society, the simplest strategy is to disturb the calendrical connection to the cosmos, which has also been the binding power of a unified diversity in the societal order, i.e., caste. This is effectively done first and foremost by losing the correct ayanamsha or point of entry into the wheel – the Serpent’s head and tail juncture. In that wheel the zodiac provides the sense and purpose of evolution; it is our inheritance from the Ancients as a gnostic guide for our individual and collective journey through the months/signs of the year. This has been the secret doctrine of all Mystery Schools across the globe and across the ages.
Without that enlightened script there is no ‘soul of knowledge’ involved, let this be clear. We may even be in possession of the correct Zero Point as in the calendar employed in the West, but lacking the eternal wisdom the zodiac contains of the 12-month journey across the ecliptic plane, it is a lifeless and meaningless science, not dissimilar to our contemporary science which offers neither purpose nor goal but simply the mechanical and vacant directionless churning of a machine. With the addition of the zodiacal script, the ‘soul of knowledge’ finds a means of expression in society, a structure by which that cosmic essence can materialise on Earth through the human instrument. Failing which, a slow and steady disintegration sets in which caste and all things cosmic are experiencing on the subcontinent. But having an eternal foundation (the zodiac/cosmos), things once true and real just do not collapse and disappear: they degenerate and linger on as bodies in a state of decomposition. They persist as part of the culture, but in name only.
This has been a most ingenious strategy to set into disarray the only enduring civilisation with cosmic roots and an unbroken link to the Vedic and Sangam eras: structures are not sought to be eliminated; they are just distorted. Thus, though calling it Vedic, there is actually nothing left of that original oneness and authentic sense of unity of old.
However, and this is most important to note, if the things valid and true are to be restored, all we need to do is to retrace our steps and correct the ayanamsha that can in itself connect us to that cosmic harmony again.

I have just read an Internet posting regarding a report in circulation on Caste put out by the Hindu American Foundation. I have not yet read the report itself but I feel I must comment on a statement by N. S. Rajaram to the Foundation, carried in this posting. He used a disparaging word to describe one of the contributors to the discussion, Ramesh Rao. Since this is the same word he used to describe me in a scathing attack which was published by the Organiser in its October 23, 2002 issue, under the title, Indology: Skeletons in the Closet, I could not refrain from offering my point of view. One may disagree with my views, but to use such language damages the cause Rajaram wishes to further. This appears to be a chronic malady because though many years have passed he continues to cast the same aspersion on anyone who may disagree with his viewpoint. My impression at the time was that Rajaram had not studied my work at all.
This is not the place to contest Rajaram’s diatribes word for word, and I must repeat that I have not read the report in question, nor am I familiar with Ramesh Rao’s work. It is the disparaging attitude that must be addressed since it is does not reflect true scholarship and academic training.

In the Internet report reference was made to Swami Dayananda Saraswati regarding the same issue of caste. I was recently invited to speak at the First National Panchanga Ganitam Conference held at Tirumala, 24-26 December 2010, under the auspices of the organisation Swami Dayananda Saraswati heads.
What transpired then made me realise that the Sanatana Dharma is being held hostage to certain elements that seek to gain a monopoly over a belief system and way of life which had not succumbed to any such imposition. In fact, this is what distinguishes it from all other organised bodies, particularly those that gained ground over the past two thousand years. Any such monopoly or exclusivist leaning is anathema to the Vedic Way, the lack of which is the very factor that makes the Sanatana Dharma superior to other belief systems and more appropriate for the twenty-first century. The freedom we espouse for humanity as a whole is the very same that must prevail in our approach to a higher reality. Only Hinduism offers the freedom to know and experience God in whatever manner suited to each individual seeker, and even to deny the premise entirely.
However, this freedom is also a bane. The desired grouping of the Hindu Samaj under one umbrella, in this case the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha that claims to represent the majority, is an impossible task; yet there remains the problem of the confusion this maddening diversity creates among followers of the Dharma. The well-meaning Acharyas would like to resolve the problem since it causes difficulty of management in a world that is uncomfortable with the eclecticism of Hinduism. Be this as it may, there has always been a precise method to bring this diversity into a unique experience of unity. It is the existence of this method – an enlightened process of time reckoning – and its persistence over the millennia that renders the Dharma eternal. Lamentably, this characteristic has been disturbed over the past few centuries; the calendar has not been allowed to serve the Samaj as it had always done since time immemorial.
Interestingly, this is the same method or structure which illumines the true nature of caste, revealing it to be a superior classification entirely drawn from the harmony of our solar system. Even more interesting, when that cosmic harmony lost its grounding in veda, then both calendar and caste were precipitated into the severe decline we live with today. The key to the desired unity was lost; we are left with only a riot of diversity afflicting both caste and calendar. On the surface the connection between the two may not be readily appreciated but in the course of this treatment their interconnection will be made clear.
In view of the decline and the inability to present a single voice to counter the inroads of organised exclusivist religions during this same period – the past Age of Pisces, 234 BCE to 1926 CE – well meaning souls such as the Swami-ji have sought to create a single voice for the majority through consensus. But this has not been the Vedic Way – nor will it ever be. The calendar has always been the method to unify the grand diversity that is the Sanatana Dharma. This is not a contrived system but is taken from the actual harmony of our solar system. The Vedic legacy in Hinduism demands that the same ancient method be re-instated if unity is to be the factual and not imagined experience of the Samaj, without the imposition of any fabricated uniformity.
It was just such an attempted fabrication that I experienced at the Conference in Tirumala under the auspices of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha. The call of the organisers was for uniformity. Of interest to note is that this was the word used to describe the goal of the Conference: to bring about uniformity from among the many calendars, each with their respective ayanamshas, for the timings of temple observances and horoscopy. We are all aware of the fact that each panchanga publication puts forth a different timing for festivals and rituals. Over the years this has resulted in total confusion because the success of such publications depends precisely on the different calculations they offer the public. There are at least twenty almanacs in use, each with different timings based on their exclusive calculations. These include the calculations of Lahiri, Sri Yuktiswar, BV Raman, Fagan, Mercier, Sassanian, Hyber, and many more. If uniformity is imposed by selecting one of these as the resolutions adopted at the Conference suggested, those vested interests stand to suffer losses which cannot be regained once the true Vedic system is re-adopted. There could then no longer be space for any confusion nor the need for any arbitrary selection or imposition.
I came away from the Conference with the sad realisation that, as Sri Aurobindo stated in the beginning of the last century regarding the condition of the Veda, ‘The soul of knowledge had fled from its coverings’ (The Secret of the Veda). There was not a single participant whose speech offered the true basis for deliberations on matters of higher knowledge. There were scientists present in large numbers, astronomers and astrologers, as well as religious heads; indeed, the meetings were presided over by the Sankaracharyas. But none among these illustrious participants presented the true Vedic Way. Hence unity would never be achieved under the circumstances – or even uniformity – in this vital matter affecting the entire Samaj. Rather, when the basis is higher knowledge, it is self-evident and requires no authority for its imposition, except the authority that emanates from the realisation of that Truth.
Lamentably the yogic approach has been lacking all along, and since it does not form the basis of time-reckoning for the Hindu Samaj, calendar and caste suffer from the same cloak of ignorance because both owe their essential being and purpose to the harmony of the cosmic surround. If the right understanding of the cosmos regarding caste as also the calendar are not perceived, can there be any breakthrough given the fact that the Sanatana Dharma has its grounding in that Harmony which is the very basis of its eternal character? As long as the cosmos exists and our planetary base remains what it is, so long will the Dharma live on.
However, the cosmic surround speaks in the voice of Knowledge. Its harmonies express the most elegant and exquisite melodies to which the human consciousness can be attuned. The Rishis have bequeathed their sublime cosmic Seeings to us in the Rig Veda. It is lamentable that we find ourselves so thoroughly distanced from them that we have lost the key they left to preserve the Dharma in the face of any future adversity. When I brought this out in my speech at the Conference, the scientist who followed began his own with this statement: This is science not Veda. That he could make such a comment when attending a gathering purportedly dealing with matters of higher knowledge in itself reveals the true condition. There can be no other basis for any discussion on calendar matters but veda. And since the same cosmic harmony describes caste, I must state that scholarship and science, though admirable in their own spheres, can never reveal the Cosmic Truth that the Rishis knew. What we have today is Cosmic Ignorance – and ironically science is largely to blame for the decline though it believes otherwise, by having corrupted the means for a civilisation rooted in veda to realise a unification of its collective energies without the need for uniformity and its attending dogmas. Hence, disunity and confusion pose serious threats to the Dharma because of the condition which can be described in one phrase: the Ayanamsha Chaos.

We must start with the basics since there are no shortcuts in matters Vedic and cosmic. The basis is the cosmos as perceived from Earth. Unfortunately, this Earth-centeredness has been lost in India because science labelled astrology a pseudo-science precisely because of its Earth-centeredness. For centuries we have been fed this false notion, and one of the most sacred Arts, mother of all sciences, has been wickedly maligned. That no astrologer arose to accept the challenge and set matters right is the real surprise, for it is science that demonstrates its ignorance by condemning the Art in this manner. Astrological calculations indeed are Earth-centred because that is our position in the solar system. When the astrologer draws up a horoscope or engages in time-reckoning for temple purposes, naturally the Earth is his or her point of observation. This does not imply, as science would like us to believe, that the Ancients were ignorant of the true structure of our system, but simply that the Earth becomes the point of convergence for matters cosmic applicable to our location – i.e., the centre of the converging universe. We are not elsewhere, we are not in a distant galaxy, nor are we concerned with discovering the centre of the universe as a whole. Philosophy thrives on such speculations, as does theoretical physics; but the practitioner of the sacred arts is practical in his or her approach. Calculations are Earth-centred because it is here, on this blessed third planet that the human instrument has evolved so that we can consciously live the Harmony. We can develop our consciousness to become knowing and pure instruments through which that superior harmony is applied on Earth.
Ignorance prevails, as presently the case, when the key that unlocks the door to that heavenly vault is lost. When physical science proclaims itself the keeper of that key, then we know that the Dharma stands on the brink of what I call the Abyss of Time. Indeed, we do stand on the brink in India due to the slippage of time caused by the Ayanamsha Chaos: the Dharma either takes up the challenge to emerge restored and stronger, or it perishes forever. Since it is the channel of the Earth’s own soul-expression, when the Sanatana Dharma perishes the Earth cannot bear the loss.
The Earth’s position in the solar system is blessed indeed; the phenomenon of eclipses is enough to prove the point. But as there exists a detailed perfection for eclipses to occur, demonstrating the perfect harmony between Earth, Moon and Sun, so too does the entire system reveal an eloquent harmony in every detail when viewed from Earth. Indeed, this is the reason why consciousness has evolved instruments with an increasing ability to perceive, to see. Therefore, if we wish to honour the Earth’s role in the harmony, we must always place our planet at the centre of observation and refuse to be lured into a search for distant heavens and the static peace of a Beyond.
Our planet is circular just like all the other heavenly bodies. Therefore, this is the very first lesson of the new updated cosmology: to acquire the capacity to perceive in circles, spherically – not linearly. The difference is essential to establish and plays a prominent role in questions of caste and calendar. The failure to perceive spherically lies at the root of the problem uniformity poses vis-à-vis unity.

The first basic element of the Earth’s harmony is her balance on four pillars which we experience as the Equinoxes and Solstices. The circular graphic above illustrates the role of the Cardinal Poles as well as the necessity for perceiving spherically, just as the diagram indicates. It is divided into four quarters, each of which is marked off by an Equinox or a Solstice and consists of 90 degrees of the circle’s 360. However, most important of all to consider, particularly with regard to caste and calendar, is the circle’s zero point, or ayanamsha. But the issue is how is this point to be determined, on which hinges the entire exercise of calculating right timings? After all, a circle is a closed form which can imply that we are free to establish entry at any one of its 360 degrees. In the world of scientific relativism this freedom to choose is legitimate, but in the Vedic world that relativism is the Mother of Ignorance – Diti in the Rig Veda, the Mother of Division.
In the Earth-centred Vedic perception the Zero Point is an absolute and is never relative or subjective. The Equinoxes and Solstices dispel all ignorance in these matters and provide the indisputable ayanamsha which should be the basis for all calculations to conclusively remove the vested interests of relativism which have created the harmful confusion that the Ayanamsha Chaos has inflicted on the Hindu Samaj.
Equinoxes and Solstices constitute the supporting pillars of the Sanatana Dharma, reflected in the fact that every Hindu temple is oriented to those Cardinal points. They are astronomically verifiable, stable and constant, requiring no yearly or daily correction to render them ‘accurate’ as the current Nirayana System is believed to do, based on its subjective relativism.

The culture of the subcontinent in so many aspects reflects the incorporation of the four Cardinal Poles and their Equinoxes and Solstices. We may examine one of its expressions, which plays such a prominent role in Indian society, cutting across caste and creed. This is the classical music of Bharat, particularly of the South.
We all agree that Indian classical music is cosmic-based. We agree because we are repeatedly told this is so by the savants. Of relevance for our discussion is the prominence of the Equinoxes and Solstices in the composition and execution of the ragas: they were composed to be played only during certain seasons and even during specific times of the day. The latter involves the Earth’s daily rotation around her axis in the 24 hours of our day; the former is, of course, the result of the Earth’s balance on the four Cardinal Poles which she reaches in the course of our 365-day year for the experience of the four seasons established by the Equinoxes and Solstices. Thus, when a raga is executed, the musician brings to the audience a cosmic experience.
Though less ostentatious there is a deeper cosmic connection in Indian classical music to discover. This is provided by the drone, the very first sound by the instrumentalist, after which the others join in on this backdrop of the never-ending shruti. Similar to the four pillars of our System, the drone offers the same support to the musical composition that planet Earth enjoys through the Equinoxes and Solstices. Probing even deeper into the nature of the Shruti reveals that it establishes musically the very same portrait of Reality as the Veda. This is, in a word, fullness, the Veda’s quintessential characteristic. All else may disintegrate and fade away across the ages, but if the perception of Fullness remains, so too will the Veda because this is the true nature of a material creation. Indeed, if there is a single word that can express the ancient way it is this one; and it is responsible for the immense diversity we find in the subcontinental culture. The paths that gained ground during the last millennium have gradually distanced themselves from this concept/perception, paths such as Mayavada. They are, in fact, partly responsible for the Ayanamsha Chaos, and are certainly attuned to the relativism that plagues our society. While these paths extol the Self above all else, they have done so at the cost of the Universal Mother. It would appear to be an improvement in the apparently chaotic spirituality India offers the world, but in truth wisemen in the subcontinent simply succumbed to the wave that swept across the entire globe in the last Age of Pisces. That wave brought an end to the venerable place the Goddess held from time immemorial. Stark monotheism alone was thought to be real. All else was the beguiling work of the temptress Eve, or her eastern sister Maya, illusion. This left matters Earthly and Cosmic victims of the imposition of relativism just such a dismissal provoked.
In music the traditional position, the experience of Fullness, remains – at least structural if not in execution: ragas are seasonal and temporal in concept regardless of the fact that today their execution is not bound strictly to the seasons; for the most part they are heard at any time of the day and year. Nonetheless, the drone continues to remind listeners of the Vedic Fullness as the Womb out of which a voluptuous diversity arises. The Shruti is the true sound of silence. Silence abides ceaselessly and is not interrupted by Sound which is rather a wave, a vibration that lifts up from that essential Fullness. The two, Silence and Sound, are simultaneous, contiguous. The cosmos is not born of nothingness and the Void, but of this most sacred Fullness.
Indian classical music expresses this superlative experience of Reality. And it is a tribute to the Ancients who first ‘heard’ the Shruti that they could so exquisitely give a musical form to so elusive an essence, thereby consolidating the Vedic experience of Reality each time the Shruti is sounded – the Fullness of Silence.
But all this is lost when that Cosmic Order is disturbed by the wrong time reckoning which exists today. The Veda honour Time in verse after verse; and this connection has been carried across the ages in temple sacred architecture, while in the Puranas Time is considered to be above all the Gods. And interestingly, this is the form that the 9th/10th Avatar of Vishnu takes in this Aquarian Age of his coming. Equally interesting is the fact that time reckoning has been so disarranged that the cosmic credentials of the Avatar can no longer be read in the heavenly harmonies because the sacred keys have been forfeited, giving science a free hand in matters beyond its competence, in a field where it must follow and not pretend to lead.
We are justified in suspecting a method to this madness. The Vishnu Line of Ten Avatars is the backbone of subcontinental civilisation. Once the cosmic connection is lost imposters, interlopers, usurpers can claim the title, while the time-tested Vedic method to distinguish the real from the false is smothered in a process that can never provide the accuracy demanded of a sanatana Dharma. The conspiracy, if it may be so called, has been well planned: to use the key to unity against itself through a distortion that is the outcome of the Ayanamsha Chaos.
The Epics of the 7th and 8th Avatars are further proof and both clearly provide the proper cosmic credentials as long as the correct system is used for their deciphering. This is simply the solar system exactly as it is experienced by inhabitants of Earth as she journeys around the Sun on the ecliptic plane. She is supported by the Equinoxes and Solstices just as the drone of classical music supports the raga – another demonstration of their common cosmic source.
In the current contrived Nirayana system used throughout India there is no such ‘support’. There are no Equinoxes or Solstices in the constellations, therefore there is no absolute method to determine the correct and changeless Zero Point for the wheel of Time to begin turning and to open before us the twelve months of the year, as the Rig Veda describes,

Certain eternal worlds are these which have come into being,
Their doors are shut to you (or opened) by the months and the years;
Without effort one (world) moves into the other
And it is these that Brahmanaspati,
Has made manifest to knowledge.
(RV. II.24-5)

Time and again in the Veda the Rishis speak of one circle. Indeed, this is the simplest and most important key of all, and somehow it is the most difficult to grasp: One Circle. This means that all calculations, all divisions, solar, lunar, and so forth, have to be contained and executed within one circle. As indicated:

Twelve spokes, one wheel, navels three.
Who can comprehend this?
On it are placed together
Three hundred and sixty like pegs.
They shake not in the least.
(Rig Veda 1.154.48)

That one circle is the eternal foundation of the Dharma. For that to be applicable in a universe in constant motion, we must have a method to locate the ‘Immobile amidst the Mobile’. Our planet’s journey within the ecliptic plane that extends out from the Sun and wherein the journey of all the planets takes place, provides stability upholding change. The Earth measure is our constant – in the Veda it is the Divine Maya. She tilts with respect to that plane because of her axis and revolution around the Sun, south and north, and thus the Equinoxes and Solstices come into being. This absolute and not relative astronomical phenomenon is unchanging within the change that the entire universe experiences – without which there would be no universe. Therefore, to be appreciated is that the journey, as the Rishis called the Earth’s monthly progression through the circle of 12, cannot be experienced in the fanciful and amorphous grouping known as the constellations which lacks an equatorial plane and is therefore entirely lacking in the accuracy of a single, incorruptible ayanamsha. This stability in change, this rest in motion is a property only of our solar system as perceived and lived on Earth. The constellations of the Nirayana system are devoid of these configurations that make the Earth’s journey unique.

Following its evolution from ancient times, in search of of keys for renewal and application today

‘… [F]or some two thousand years at least no Indian has really understood the Vedas…’

Sri Aurobindo

The Great Divide

– Its purpose and implications for survival of the Veda

India is a good model to use if we want to follow a civilisational development from the beginning of at least recorded history to the present. For this purpose there is the abiding discipline of cosmology. The earliest recorded example of that discipline, or rather its product – a certain widespread level of awareness along the particular lines the record indicates – would be the Rig Veda. Few would be willing to accept that this early record of cosmic praises can be considered cosmology. But if we follow the unbroken line from that period to the present we easily note the relevance. And we are also able to understand the fundamental difference with our world as it moves in toto to its ‘brave new’ complexity.

 The important element that distinguishes the cosmology of the Vedic Age and our present scientific brand is the focus on the human element and the development of a superior consciousness central to the collection. The difference can also be evaluated by the simple fact that to the modern Indologist and historian the hymns are simply the emotional outpourings of primitive nature worshippers – pagans, as they are labelled in the religiously-influenced mind of monotheistic academicians and theologians. Only very few have detected anything deeper in the Veda. And yet the text, to one initiated into the same system it propagates, is our best example of what contemporary cosmology lacks. Scientific cosmology makes no mention of the element so central to that of the Vedic Age – the evolution of human consciousness in harmony with the cosmos and able to use its harmonies for self-perfection and the perfection of the entire civilisation it spawned – a society in which the ills of the modern world would appear to have been absent. As an example, the approach to Nature in those former times reveals a very different connection. The world was alive, a living being; the same awareness was extended to the entire solar system with each planet given an identity and imbibed with a consciousness. Indeed, the significant difference between then and now is that there was clearly in evidence a spirit of oneness, making the Earth and the surrounding cosmos a single being.

In our times this understanding has only come through certain mystical experiences to select individuals. It is an awareness that has been aggressively eliminated from our sciences, with the exception of certain trends somewhat outside of the mainstream such as the Gaia Hypothesis of James Lovelock in the 1960s. Given the thirst abroad upon the planet to find connectedness and purpose, it became a beacon for New Age and ecology groups throughout the world. But even the Gaia Paradigm, now considered a theory and no longer an hypothesis, does not incorporate a precise method to evolve a higher consciousness and a spirit of oneness which we find elaborated in the Veda, for indeed there are the guidelines of such a system in the ancient text.

The Rig Veda has preserved its yogic method of the evolution of consciousness for all times. But evolution cannot be fooled. The very fact that the verses are in the main incomprehensible, or have been poorly interpreted to support a largely fossilised ritualism rather than the deeper aim of self-perfection, confirms that the old cosmology had lost its bearings. Somewhere along the line the human component was eliminated, which had previously been the central objective of the process. Having deliberately secured that elimination the resultant scientific cosmology has brought the world to a critical crossroads. Science and technology have run amok with their successes. Almost every branch of learning and technology has carried us collectively to a dangerous crossroads without being able to ensure us that these remarkable discoveries will not carry us to a partial or complete annihilation of the human species.

This impasse would have been unthinkable in the Vedic Age precisely for the reason stated: the focus was on the human element and the development of all parts of consciousness-being in harmony with the cosmos. Perception of the binding integrality and oneness of creation is lacking today, though with every breakthrough science makes we are faced again with the disastrous effects such ignorance can cause to humanity. We could argue that being so ‘primitive’ and ‘technologically under-developed’ the inhabitants of the subcontinent had little choice but to concentrate on the only available laboratory for experimentation: the human component.

While that focus bore the desired results in producing a society in harmony with the cosmic surround, this was only part of Nature’s plan. As it turned out, this one-sided development of sorts while essential would not have served the evolutionary purpose as mapped out in cosmology itself. Our good fortune is to be living in the age of synthesis. To play out the cosmic Purpose there had to be a separation, a determining divide precisely in what has come to be known as the concerns of the spirit in contrast to those of material existence. Both had to go their separate ways and be left to their own resources for the destined synthesis to evolve. The question now is to examine those developments on either side of the divide. In the process we will uncover the way to that Synthesis.

The unravelling begins

Early in the Age of Pisces (234 BCE to 1926 CE), the definitive split between the way of the Spirit and that of Science became consolidated. It was also then that the Vedic Way began to suffer a decline. The effects of the parting of ways was harshly felt in the subcontinent in that gradually a corrosion set in with the loss of an emphasis on a cosmological system geared toward establishing a society of a higher model by first consolidating that superior level in the individual and collective consciousness. On the other hand, science on its own, bereft of  the control a higher consciousness can provide, veered off and gradually produced a global society demonstrating this failure in that its proclivities have carried us to the brink of annihilation. If we do not bring about our downfall through global warming and its consequences, we may well do so by the unstoppable stockpiling of lethal weapons of mass destruction. Regarding the latter, it is now generally accepted that it is just a question of time before something of that stockpile falls into the hands of extremists who are playing out their religious or ideological beliefs on the world stage. For instance, the arrival of religions offering salvation in an afterlife made it possible, when carried to an extreme, to convince vulnerable youth that martyrdom is the way to that salvation, the quickest and surest way. Thus armies are gathering, weapons are amassed to play out a final Judgement Day, but one that may be quite different from what is prophesied in our holy books.

Scholars often become victims of the parameters set around their respective disciplines; they tend to miss the forest for the trees. The true purpose of cosmology is to transcend those limitations. As a discipline it alone among all others is capable of revealing a consciousness of unity and oneness such as the ancient sages enjoyed and which will be the solution to our problems today. In this essay I will introduce a cosmology that calls up that ancient way but now brought fully into the context of our contemporary civilisation. This exercise will prove that in understanding the ‘logic’ of the cosmos the culprit at whose feet the divisive consciousness of our times can be laid is, in a word, otherworldliness, with its focus on an afterlife. But it is not only exclusivist Piscean-Age religions of the Middle East that have inculcated this belief in a redeeming Beyond; the subcontinent has been its victim as well. After the great divide all spirituality, with perhaps only few exceptions, took the same route away from an Earth-based realisation such as the Vedic Age had produced.  The only difference between this development and the occidental model based on that Piscean exclusivism is the continuity we find in India, extending to a former Age prior to the Piscean. Though the Veda is a closed book for thinkers today, it remains the bedrock of the evolution of consciousness and the many spiritual disciplines that have evolved over this period. Fortunately we can make use of this continuity to discuss the problem the great divide has caused in order to pinpoint that culpability and thereby to learn the manner in which it can be overcome.

To this end the cosmology bequeathed to us from the Vedic Age has to be updated. In so doing when we seek to apply the system today, not only will its inadequacies be revealed but also that the need for updating is upon us. None of the postulations of the Age of Pisces will adequately serve us in this process, precisely because of the otherworldly emphasis they all harbour. But in maintaining the thread of development intact, even if distorted, we find ourselves in a position to discover exactly how and when the degeneration set in and, above all, what its purpose has been. In the realm of spirituality just as in science it had become imperative to lose the original poise in order to encompass a wider base, global in fact; this would be provided by science set upon its own discoveries, thereby creating a new field where cosmology of the Vedic type could flourish in an unprecedented manner because science had paved the way.

The key lay in integrality. This was present in the Vedic Age as we will discover, but the scope or reach of the realisation was perforce limited to the subcontinent. Today cosmology must be integral and all-encompassing: it must cover the entire globe.

Universalism and wholeness

It would be unfair to lay the blame entirely on spirituality for our woes; the materialist consciousness out of which science arose plays its role in the conundrum as well. If this material life is all that matters and there is neither an afterlife nor future births to consider, then the control religions could hold over human beings is eliminated by dissolving the notion of sin, punishment and recompense. With that elimination, however, went a certain respect for our planetary base: science of the staunchly materialistic kind repeatedly demonstrates this disrespect, to the point that in an uncontrolled frenzy it has collaborated with the spiritual camp to bring us to the brink of extinction.

Based on a study of the development of cosmology from the Vedic Age to the present, we are able to note the limitations that brought about the need for the great divide; and also how processes are constantly evolving to prepare avenues of expression for the new dispensation so that the whole Earth can benefit and not just the subcontinent. This analysis will provide evidence to suggest that the cosmology of the Veda continues to be not only the bedrock of Indian spirituality but how the survival of the thread connecting today’s expressions to that bedrock in itself indicates the necessity for the planet to preserve and protect that continuity for the survival of not only the Veda but the species itself. In this exercise it will be interesting to note how these discoveries can be made simply by observing the degeneration that set in after the Vedic Age had passed, and the inadequacies of the old cosmology when analysed with a contemporary eye. These made it imperative for science to lend a helping hand by providing an Earth whose body itself had become whole in the last half of the second millennium; this perception of wholeness has been further consolidated by space travel and the image of an undivided borderless planet irrespective of the ills a divisive consciousness continues to generate, depriving human beings of that binding sense of Oneness which is our natural birthright.

We will attempt to follow the thread connecting us to those former times via one precise area: cosmology. Ervin Laszlo, whose thoughtful book, The Creative Cosmos,[1] makes the case for cosmology as the one discipline capable of expressing and answering the concerns of our contemporary world, writes on page 26,

‘…The next great paradigm shift in science will be by nature transdisciplinary – it will be a cosmological revolution in the classical sense in which cosmology has always been the science of the whole of reality (kosmos, after all, means ‘ordered whole’ in classical Greek).’

II

In this essay I intend to present just a few examples of the way a cosmology or a philosophy can escape fossilisation. In point of fact, it will become clear that only a culture, a civilisation rooted in the cosmic harmony can indeed escape the dogmatism that must perforce accompany a system without such an in-built mechanism. There are two aspects to note. One is that a certain stable constant exists which when discovered serves as an axis similar to those proper to every planetary and stellar object; indeed, proper to the centre of our galaxy and universes beyond. We could almost state that the Axis is the basic premise and truth of existence in a material creation. Without this ‘centre that holds’, there can be no formation of a cosmos; at least as we are able to discern from observation of our particular dimension.

An axis is the pole whereby that which is static becomes dynamic. It does so by involving certain cosmic ‘directions’. There are two such directions in our manifest universe, contraction and expansion. When we speak of ‘the other side’, we actually mean the intensified compaction of its essence, beyond the reach of our present mathematical aids, in an ever increasing drive as if in a descending movement. The borderline or threshold is the barrier beyond which that ‘drive’ cannot pass without, it would appear, disappearing into nothingness. But since our world is born of fullness, this never occurs. Fullness is thus the unalterable upholding quality or principle of our universe.

When this compacted essence meets or crosses that threshold, it turns back upon itself. The result is the emergence of a pulsating point born of this intense contraction in its self-generated drive. That threshold is the direction of expansion. Contraction and expansion wrap around each other, in a sense, and an axis is born. These conjoined directions stabilise each other everlastingly – a steady state as it were. Thus there is no material aspect involved, measureable with our current tools. Nor is it exactly an energy. The ‘substance’ of an axis is simply the marriage of two directions which can be described as contraction and expansion. The ancients did not rely on measuring devices to plumb the depths of Reality and its true nature, as we understand the term; they experienced the creative process in their innermost beings. The result is the record they left of those experiences, the Rig Veda. Naturally its hymns are incomprehensible today; they belong to another world, another time, another poise of consciousness.

The lived experience in the human consciousness of the conjoined directions is a new balance; that is, when the proper balance or harmonisation occurs an axis can emerge, be this macro- or micro-cosmic, the result of a cross-sectioning of these basic cosmic directions. The Rig Veda hymn, Nāsadīya Sūkta (RV X, 129), translated by Raimundo Panikkar as the Hymn of Origins, states in verse 5:

A crosswise line cut Being from Nonbeing.

What was described above it, what below?

Bearers of seed there were and mighty forces,

thrust from below and forward move above…

Who really knows? Who can presume to tell it?

Whence was it born? Whence issued this creation?

Even the Gods came after its emergence.

Then who can tell from whence it came to be?

And the Rishi concludes with these inimitable, profound words,

That out of which creation has arisen,

whether it held firm or it did not,

He who surveys it in the highest heaven,

He surely knows – or maybe He does not!

The origins of material existence in this view would not be a ‘big bang’ but rather the combined directions similar to the breathing mechanism with its own contraction and expansion, born of a primordial Pulsation (tapas) which lies at the root of all motion. However, we experience breath as a contiguous rise and fall. In the creation of a cosmos they are simultaneous. In the Rig Veda the axis that is formed of these intertwined ‘directions’ is known as Skambha, the cosmic Pillar, support of the worlds and the fulcrum of creation. Panikkar defines it in the Glossary to his book, The Vedic Experience, as ‘The cosmic pillar, understood to be the stable center of the universe (axis mundi) and its hidden support.’ (All India Books, 1977.)

Being creation’s ‘centre’ this axis or skambha supports movement, essential to all consolidated bodies in this universe whose essence is perforce movement. In point of fact, it would be the first stirrings within that original ‘something’ that ultimately creates an axis which in turn becomes the binding energy of that particular body. The ancients on the subcontinent called that first stirring OM – the primordial sound at the Origin and which reverberates endlessly in the great diversity that is the universal manifestation. Science calls it, or seeks to discover this secret ‘something’, by other names – the Big Bang for one. The two are hardly comparable, we must admit; OM creates or reproduces that stirring vibration every time it is sounded with the correct intonation and within the correct context. We can hardly expect ‘big bang’ to do the same!

Again we must not miss the forest for the trees. Whatever the origin the result is a constant unfolding or ‘becoming’ of that original Being of a compressed pulsation. Thus, Becoming is truly the grace we are granted to escape fossilisation, once we realise that we are only more and more complex displays of that original creative Sound.

Universal harmonies

It is possible to state that each consolidated body in our universe strikes a particular note in this immensity, and its axis obliges that body to mark out a certain tempo as in a musical composition. But all have their origin in OM – however we wish to call it. In other words, using the Becoming of that ‘sound’ we can not only find our way to Being but we can discover just what our ‘note’ might be in the grand scheme of things.

Encouraging the observing Eye to seek and dwell on the ‘first moment’, as science does, is to move farther and farther away from the means not only to discover that ‘note’ but to take our place in the cosmic design, fully conscious of what we are meant to contribute. Therefore the ancients in the subcontinent focussed on the method to bring the human being to the point where he or she could join the cosmic symphony in full awareness of its overall Harmony embracing both the vast and the small in a sublime experience of Oneness. They provided a background for the process which reproduced both Being and Becoming close at hand. They did not extend the eye of perception beyond their recognised ‘field’ so that a certain intense concentration (tapas) would come about that could provide each individual with the energy demanded to undertake the sacred ‘journey’, as it was known in the Vedic Age. The parameter for the process was our solar system. It was viewed as a single ‘family’, and as we are creatures born of the Sun’s third ‘offspring’ our experience of life in all its aspects must be coloured by our position within this family unit, as it were.

There is a certain temporal aspect to the issue: contemporary science uses evermore complex instruments to peer through the folds of space in the effort to reach that First Moment, that Big Bang and the beginning of Time. In other words, it is a penetration into the past. There is no other way for science to proceed because of the POISE it has adopted, – almost an obsession with the known, with what has been and will never more return. This is a positioning external to the fact. It might be argued that quantum physics proceeds in the opposite direction and hence into the minute present; but experience records that the phenomenon observed cannot be separated from the action of observation. While this indicates a certain desirable unity, it more likely indicates that this method of discovery is also inadequate; and though the timeframe is shortened to the extremes our observational techniques permit, simultaneous identification is withheld, the keystone of the Vedic experience.

Extension beyond is simply another manifestation of the belief in an Afterlife that religious adherents cling to in the expectation of salvation. The scientist of course does not dwell on the future, heavenly or otherwise, which to him and his kind cannot be known or proven. On the other hand, religions put all their cards only in the basket of that future condition, whose reality, if any at all, can only be speculated on and never proven as science demands. It must be believed. There is no factual proof of the existence of ‘heaven’ of whatever sort. It is a condition which can be known only by crossing the threshold of Death. And as we experience Death today, we cannot then consciously re-enter life to factually prove what that heaven might be and if it truly exists.  At the time of death the human being experiences the same contraction to a ‘point’ as described in the passage across the border of our material dimension. But our transitional stage of evolution makes the passage an experience of nothingness not Fullness, ergo …‘dust unto dust’.

Thus the unknown future blocks the aspirant’s path with only faith to sustain him through life’s tumultuous avenues of pain and suffering. The scientific method, on the other hand, would appear to be far more concrete and believable, because one is constantly dealing with the known, the accumulation of past experience, be this for the individual as in psychoanalysis, or for the theoretical physicist and scientific cosmologist who peers into space, carrying his perception deeper and deeper into the past and to that First ‘Bang’.

The Vedic practitioner, in contrast, does neither. Its initiate does not extend his perceiving eye into the past or into the beyond and the future. Moreover, and this is important to note, the only ‘telescope’ used for the purpose of discovery rather than an extension outward carries the aspirant deep within to that inner most point of the Soul. This reveals the different poise adopted – neither into the known past, nor beyond and into the unknowable future. The inner point is the temporal Present; it is attained through centering of the consciousness on the axis of being that comes through a perfect balance in time and space. In that innermost dimension the truths of the cosmos are unveiled through the lived experience, as the Rig Vedic Hymn of Origins reveals.

III

The stabilising Axis of Being

Being and Becoming are offered to us eternally, for as long as the solar system exists. The quality of Being is cosmically conveyed by the Stable Constant. It is the ecliptic upon which, within which the entire Family travels; and through the respective tilts and rotations of axes, our System creates its very own music of the spheres.

In our solar system the ecliptic ‘densifies’ the cosmic directions of contraction and expansion via the Solstices and Equinoxes. Within the 365 days of the year, at four points in our annual circumambulation of the Sun, this same function is carried out to become ingrained in the constitution of all things born on planet Earth.

As creatures of planet Earth, it appears that we alone in the Family are provided with a special device whereby we can not only ‘hear’ that music but we can become conscious of our role and contribution to the Harmony. If we observe our solar system within the parameters laid out above, the Axis stands out among all other aspects of the System as a determining factor; yet so little is known of its own origin and the cause for its emergence at a given time and place. The purpose of this essay is not so much to uncover the origins of an axis but how a deeper understanding of the special assembly of axes in our solar system can help us fulfil the destiny of the Earth.

In the Vedic Age the axial function was understood in depth. The hymns of the Rig Veda are testimony to the fact that the solar system with its rhythms and harmonies was a living being and all its planets and living creatures were expressions of that particular ‘note’ the System contributes to the total Reality. While the ecliptic stable constant exists for the entire universe, it is the abiding truth of all its individual components. In our solar system the ecliptic stable constant is the eternal pathway of the planets around the solar Paterfamilias, whose own axis is truly the pole of our existence, the ultimate ‘centre that holds’ the Family together. For the ancient Rishis fulfilment was clearly connected to understanding the cosmic harmony and discovering a method whereby not only would that understanding come but the aspirant undertaking that special journey would discover the internal axis and thereby his or her place within the whole, commonly known as one’s inner truth (swadharma) and destiny. It was never a question of disengaging from the Harmony but rather to become evermore conscious of its ‘sounds’; and in the process the individual note each soul contributes to the symphony in praise of the Sun.

Regarding the Axis, macro- or micro-cosmic, we must take note of the fact that its origin is largely unknown because the axis is our link to the beyond – that is, beyond science’s singularity. When in the new cosmology we refer to compaction of the trinity in the Zero, expressed in Number as 9, 6, 3, and from that Zero the first point of space emerges, or in the number 1, we are actually describing the origin of the axis. It would be a further densification of OM. There are the three dimensions of Time whose fourth dimension is the first point of Space. It could also be said that Time’s fourth dimension is precisely the point of the origin of the Axis. These three dimensions of Time are properties of the side beyond the singularity of material science. Naturally they cannot be examined because, as we know, the laws of scientific cosmology break down at that threshold. The cosmologist stands before a closed door. Thus, however much he pushes his probing into the depths of the past, he will always crash up against this tightly-sealed door. Access is barred because his poise of consciousness is not a harmonious balance of time and space, or contraction and expansion. It is that balance produced by alignment born of centering which offers the possibility of access to that dimension on the other side of the Zero. Out of that Zero comes the Point; its pulsations (tapas) ultimately create an axis: Skambha of the Veda which in turn is personified as Agni, navel of the world, the Son of Force, and the primordial Fire.

The Contingency Plan

I have laid emphasis on the disease of Otherworldliness, which we have inherited from the Age of Pisces with its clear evidence of the Great Divide, because it demonstrates what the result must be when we reject our place in this material universe in favour of an unprovable Beyond disconnected from our solar system and its harmonies. The critical crossroad we have reached is only because we stand on the edge of the Divide and we must make a choice. That choice is not of one side or the other of the divide, i.e., spirit or matter. It is the greater harmony of Synthesis that must be the choice if we are to continue on this journey as a global society. To reach that synthesis we have to accept our destiny and place in the cosmic manifestation and cease fleeing from the ‘land of our birth’.

That land is our solar system. The ancients understood this by universalising their consciousness to the point where they experienced the whole world as their abode, kutumbhakam vasu….  Naturally today’s Indologists, historians and pundits cannot understand the records they have left of that vastness and wideness of consciousness because their approach is one of an a priori rejection, even in the best of cases. The key to unlock the door to the worldview they enjoyed is to retrace our steps and seek to recapture their acceptance of the cosmos as the only path to integral self-perfection, and thereby to the establishment of a society, now global, that can express the harmonies of the System and so to eliminate the cacophony we now know and attempt to prolong, though we all realise its death is near at hand.

Indeed, as I have written, evolution is not to be fooled. Therefore, the decline in consciousness and the poise of rejection had to have been a carefully crafted part of the universal Becoming of Being like everything else. The experience of Oneness makes this obvious. The Divide would necessarily bring quake-like disturbances: cacophony would be the result. But to help the evolving species survive the tumultuous breakdown, an escape route was devised. This was the focus of all religions and yogic systems of the Age of Pisces when the global disruption was destined to begin. It is often stated that religions are the major cause of discord in the world, incongruous as this would seem. But if we understand that they were part of a merciful ‘contingency plan’, we understand how this incongruence can be true. Buddhism is an example. It had to be a mahatma of the Buddha’s calibre, with his immeasurable depth of compassion, to introduce the reversed direction away from life and not flowing with it. Proponents of Buddhism may argue that it seeks to do just the contrary, to join the flow, as Zen Buddhism in particular encourages. The truth be told, there is only one vehicle available to the human being to ‘join the flow’. That vehicle is the Soul, and Buddhism disregards its place and purpose in the scheme of things.

This was a deliberate act because the Buddha’s only concern was to free human beings from suffering, from entrapment on the wheel of endlessly generated samskaras. Given the unavoidable breakdown after the Vedic Age, the method or contingency plan, which would carry evolution through the most dangerous period of its trajectory somewhat in tact until the arrival of better times, would be to preach the illusion of that suffering itself. It was unreal, or only as real as the subject’s poise of consciousness would allow. With the loss of the true and full Harmony and given the breakdown with its attending diminished awareness, those seeds of undermining were easily planted. They have been flourishing ever since.

The soul is precisely the element that can harmonise Being and Becoming in the individual. It is the compact essence of the Transcendent and Cosmic powers/principles as they become embedded in our universe and in particular in the consciousness of the highest species on planet Earth. The compacted Transcendent is born as the Immanent in each individual consciousness. But it stands that a world where Death is lord and master with the consequent suffering this lordship entails, the soul, the Earth’s very own contribution to the universal harmony of an integral truth, had to be rejected. This rejection continues into the present and can be identified as the root of the destruction of our habitat itself. Rather than free ourselves of suffering by this denial, we have become more solidly entrapped in this diminished state where Death is the sole master.

We must realise that the breakdown the Divide caused is not external to the whole; therefore, it too must ‘make sense’, as indeed it does. But the contingency plan is also part of the whole and its very existence points to the ultimate solution.

When the ecliptic is the foundation, the stable constant of our existence, the ups and downs of the evolution of consciousness can be understood as the increase and ebb tides of destiny. One follows the other, even as the Earth dips and rises below and above the plane of the ecliptic, similar to ocean tides. But plateaus are reached from time to time in the ascent of consciousness. The ‘downs’ are experienced from ever higher levels as we scale the evolutionary mountain. At this stage in our journey we are almost at the summit, the mountain’s apex from where a steady state can be attained: from truth to greater truth.

Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet

Director, Aeon Centre of Cosmology

17 November 2009

© Patrizia Norelli-Bachelet 2009

The Origins and Nature of Hindu Decline – 1

28 November 2006

The successful re-timing of the Jupiter transit rituals in the temples in Tamil Nadu where they have been traditionally held caused me to marvel, once again, at the wealth of Knowledge each temple contains and how they have been used in times of great turbulence to preserve the Vedic origins of the civilisation. But I wondered, as I have many times over these past 30 years, how it is possible that such a total loss of the connecting links could come about. At this stage what is required more than anything else if some sort of RESTORATION is to come about is the ability to RE-CONNECT. At this stage this will surely be the most important contribution The Movement can make to Hindu culture.

In light of the breakthrough, I took up Varahamihira’s Brihat Samhita once more and leafed through it. I had gone through this text in M. Ramakrishna Bhat’s translation into English a number of years ago (1981); it was copiously underlined and commented by me in the margins. I also looked through Gheverghese Joseph’s more recent The Crest of the Peacock (1991) where he explores the ‘non-European Roots of Mathematics’; and several other volumes in my library. My interest was to look through these works again in the light of this breakthrough, and also the discoveries that have been made in the interim regarding the Saraswati Civilisation and the now-defunct Aryan Invasion Theory.

I have a book on my shelf, The Hindu Temple by George Mitchell, an ‘introduction to its meaning and forms’ with a wonderful series of photos and floor plans. Mitchell writes, ‘Only if the temple is constructed correctly according to a mathematical system can it be expected to function in harmony with the mathematical basis of the universe. The inverse of this belief is also held: an architectural text, the Mayamata, adds that “if the measurement of the temple is in very way perfect, there will be perfection in the universe as well.”’

But the limitations of Mitchell’s 1977 text is that he relies totally on the ‘word’ of Indologists that Hindu civilisation was a import from the West brought by Aryan nomads. He simply repeats the now discredited theories that sought to impress upon scholars, and Hindus above all, that the subcontinent was ‘empty’; it was only a vast receptive womb of nothingness that cultures from abroad could fill at their pleasure. How consciously was this idea disseminated with a specific purpose in mind, (to justify invasions and colonial rule) remains to be seen. The restoration we aim for will not be fully accomplished unless we deal with the root cause of this inculcation – and particularly WHEN it was set in place. Afterwards the decline of the civilisation was as predictable as the rise of tomorrow’s Sun.

The Hindu temple, it is held, needs this perfection the Mayamata refers to in order for the community to benefit from the wisdom the sages have handed down through various means, one of which is architecture. But these are lifeless structures if other aspects of the Knowledge do not form a part of the transmission. Therefore Myth comes to our aid, together with astrological tradition. When temple culture took over from the vedi [geometric altars] of the Vedic Age, in a remarkable manner the essence of these myths was transposed to the temple structure. But this could not be done without the astrological background as part of the process. And thus was born the epoch that gave us so much wonderful evidence of the quality of the true Vedic Roots; but unfortunately, the very need to preserve the Knowledge in stone indicated that a serious decline had begun: the Knowledge would go underground if it was to be saved.

The texts I have cited above provide the information we need to support this assessment based on the yogic experience. To a person of Knowledge it is evident that the consciousness of the Vedic Rishi was very far removed from the later propounders of the ‘knowledge’ such as Varahamihira. I enclose the word in quotation marks because from my standpoint what we find in the Brihat Samhita is not Knowledge as I use the term. The decline that had set in is made fully evident in this text which deals almost exclusively with astrology as a predictive art and makes no attempt to explore its deeper roots, those we do find throughout the Rig Veda, for example.

The Origins and Nature of Hindu Decline – 29 December 2006

In Part 1 of this analysis, I presented an example of the evolution of Hindu Society across the centuries based on the few texts available to contemporary researchers. I have focussed on jyotish, astrology, because in so doing we may follow the investigation into contemporary India and learn much about the nature of the decline, what caused it, and where it has led Hindu Society as a collective body. We acknowledge that Hinduism is a vast umbrella covering an almost infinite number of sects, and yogic and philosophical systems. But though these systems are like individual stars in this umbrella-firmament, there is one underlying and pervasive ‘ocean’ within which all these systems navigate. This Cosmic Ocean binds them within a common time-wheel, enhancing the eclectic and catholic quality of Hinduism. Rituals to the numerous Vedic Godheads or to the innumerable personal deities may vary; but the timing of the collective celebration of those rituals is what knits them together to maintain, across the ages, the continuity we experience as Hinduism. One example is the Kumbha Mela which, on a particular date and time established by the Pundits, draws millions of yogis, sants and devotees to the banks of the sacred rivers in a common worship that cuts across sectarian and denominational divides. For this reason a study of the calendar, by which the timing of these festivals is determined, can be shown to be a valuable device for locating when and perhaps why the decline set it.

Gheverghese Joseph, in Chapter 9 of his ‘The Crest of the Peacock’, substantiates the core of my analysis by noting that the development of mathematics and astronomy between approximately 500 BCE and 500 CE was limited. He writes, ‘Yet this hiatus in our knowledge [is] particularly puzzling given the wealth of evidence we have for the same period in other fields, notably medicine and chemistry, and in philosophy where outstanding work was produced… Various explanations have been offered for this apparent discontinuity [emphasis mine]. The virtual disappearance of Vedic sacrifices removed, as it were, the raison d’être for continued interest in geometry…’

We can fully agree that the disappearance of the geometrical vedi which required very great precision if the Sacrifice was to bear the desired results, impacted the development of mathematics, – and also astrology, as we shall see. It is to be noted that the ‘hiatus’ was spread over almost a thousand years, but within this period Temple Culture arose and remains with us to this day. Notwithstanding the gap the absence of texts covering these areas of knowledge attests to, one important factor to underscore became consolidated during this period: the split between astrology and astronomy. The Brihat Samhita is an astrological text from the period after the split; it provides some substantial evidence of the lack of a direct continuity with the Vedic Age.

We can approach the topic and reach the same conclusion as above simply by studying the extant scriptures of the periods under scrutiny. Readily we do note that there is a discernible chasm between the Rig Veda, for example, and the contents of the Brihat Samhita. The former was composed by Initiates whose language was of a quality that is lacking in the later text, or even in the later Upanishads. As the mathematical historian records, there was a time vacuum and during this ‘void’ the decline of Hinduism began which left the earlier hymns and prescriptions incomprehensible to later generations. However, it was precisely during this ‘blank space’ that the Puranas arose to become the secret repository of everything that was most sacred to Vedic culture; the Myths were in turn preserved in the Hindu Temples, as if each one was a treasure-book in stone.

Can we expect a mathematician or an historian to interpret this time-chasm correctly? In the early part of the last century, Sri Aurobindo wrote an insightful essay on this very theme entitled, On the Importance of Original Thinking. It was published in its complete form in the April 1981 edition of the Sri Aurobindo Archives:

   ‘We have had recently in India a great abundance of speculations on the real causes of that gradual decline and final arrest which Indian civilisation no less than European suffered during the Middle Ages. The arrest was neither so sudden as in Europe nor so complete; but its effect on our nation, like the undermining activity of a slow poison, was all the more profoundly destructive, pervasive, hard to remedy, difficult to expel. At a certain period we entered into a decline, splendid at first like a long and gorgeous sunset, afterwards more and more sombre, till darkness closed in, and if our sky was strewn with stars of a great number and brilliance, it was only a vast decay, confusion and inertia that they lighted and emphasised with their rays.We have, most of us, our chosen explanation of this dolorous phenomenon…Such explanations, like most human thoughts, have their bright side of truth as well as their obscure side of error; but they are not, in any case, the result of impartial thinking…’ (Volume 5, p. 27 – Emphasis mine).

When we discover a particular substratum that can act as an impartial graph which embraces the entire period Sri Aurobindo mentions above, onto which we can draw a line of development, errors are more likely to be eliminated. But to do so we have to extend our framework to cover an arc from the Vedic Age to the present. All researchers may agree that there was a pause in the development of mathematics and astronomy; but none will relate the decline to a loss of the ancient knowledge of astrology which we uncover by a scrutiny of the Vedic Hymns, where this lore exists as an initiatic language accepted by the entire community. It was so pervasive that no explanation of its symbolism was required. However, it took approximately an entire millennium for the link with the civilisation that composed those hymns to vanish; or at least to go securely underground.

The astrology we find in a text such as the Brihat Samhita bears no resemblance to the astrology/cosmology of the ancient Veda. Its value, however, lies in one area and one alone, albeit of immense importance: the preservation of the symbols of the zodiac for each of the 12 months of the year, a knowledge that was taken for granted in the Vedic Age; and the beginning of that year on the Equinox of March when days and nights are of equal measure. Ten months later the most important of all astrological prescriptions for the Hindu Samaj follows: the celebration of the Makar Sankranti on the December Solstice, or the shortest day of the year. There was, even into Varahamihira’s epoch, no separation between the two – shortest day and gateway to the zodiacal Makar/Capricorn were one and the same. So special was this passage that in the Rig Veda it was hailed as the month of the Warrior’s conclusive victory; indeed the culmination of the entire Vedic Journey.

When the Brihat Samhita was composed the months/signs were known as they are today, beginning with the zodiacal Aries the Ram, followed by Taurus the Bull, and so on through the twelve month/signs. But some ‘nationalist’ post-Vedic astrologers/historians have now decided that this was an import from Mesopotamia and Greece and should no longer serve us as backdrop to the Vedic Journey through the months of the year, Varahamihira notwithstanding. In so doing, they are undermining the entire cultural fabric of the civilisation which is solidly grounded in the eternal Myth these symbols contain, and which has been masterfully carried over into Hindu temple architecture.

Given the historic split between science and the sacred, this type of transmission of Knowledge can be grasped now only through the practice of a special Yoga. Therefore, in Sri Aurobindo’s The Secret of the Veda, the very same deeper psycho-spiritual sense of the hymns has been conveyed without reference having been made to astrology at all; yet through his translations the knowledgeable and competent astrologer recognises instantly the same ancient body of knowledge. This is not evidenced in the Brihat Samhita and texts of that period, when astrology and astronomy were in the process of being separated for good. Still, the time factor based on the true Vedic calendar prevailed: the Solstices and Equinoxes were the indisputable crosswise demarcations of the Sacrificial Year. But ‘forces’ were about to intervene to introduce the ‘undermining activity of a slow poison’ that was to result in the loss of even that binding tool of the Hindu Samaj, to carry it into a ‘more and more sombre’ darkness until ‘only a vast decay, confusion and inertia’ had finally overtaken even the area of knowledge that had managed to survive into Varahamihira’s time.

We proceed forward through our graph and having noted that the system of Vedic computation for the calendar was still preserved even a thousand years after the chasm between the Vedic Age and medieval India arose, M. Ramakrishna Bhat offers us one precise date as a clue to when the ‘slow poison’ hit its target in the organism. Though the objective in conveying his conclusions in the Introduction to his translation of the Brihat Samhita was meant to sustain – as I too sustain – that the zodiac in use during Varahamihira’s time and into the present was of Indian origin and went westward rather than being an import, unwittingly he provides us with the exact means to locate not only when the ‘poison’ set in but what its very precise target was. Thus, on page xiii, he introduces Al-Biruni (born in 973 CE), the astrologer-traveller who came to India ‘with the object of studying Hindu astrology and culture’. Al-Biruni translated some major works such as the Brihat Samhita into Arabic. He came with the wave of invasions from the West and his objective was indeed to study Hindu astrology, the knowledge of which he brought back to Arabia. A number of its concepts have since come down in history as his inventions, such as what is known in western astrology even today as Al-Biruni’s Lunar Stations or Mansions. These are simply the Nakshatras of the Indian system, a division of the 360-degree wheel into 27 parts based on the mean motion of the Moon, i.e., 13.20 degrees per day. Though the Nakshatras as such are not used in the western system, this division, applied differently, certainly holds a prominent place.

Bhat misses the point that should have captured his attention, but nonetheless he serves our purpose when he cites a portion from Al-Biruni’s famed travelogue, India, which fully supports my argument. Bhat’s reason for quoting Al-Biruni’s statement was only because he considers it to be a misrepresentation of Varahamihira’s astrological knowledge: ‘The Arab scholar takes our author [Varahamihira] to task for his statement on the solstices and remarks: “The solstice has kept its place, but the constellations have migrated, just the very opposite of what Varaha has fancied”. (India, II, p.7)

The above is an example of the manner in which a ‘slow poison’ was injected into the innermost organism of Hinduism so that the ‘scientific’ intrusion into the domain of the sacred would gradually undermine the confidence of the Pundits in their own sacred science by causing them to believe that what Al-Biruni injected was more ‘scientifically correct’. Rather than a poison, the effect of this type of suggestion was akin to a deadening intoxicant that caused a blanket of inertia to descend on the subcontinent. There was no need at all to demolish temples when this substance had been successfully administered, as we shall see. Al-Biruni came to India 500 years after Varahamihira’s time, whose Brihat Samhita proves that the Constellations were not to be confused with the Tropical Zodiac which never varies in time and whose 12-month segments of the year are inseparable from the solstices and equinoxes.

This is the true VEDIC astrology. It was still in force when Al-Biruni came to India in the 11^th century. The ‘gorgeous sunset’ Sri Aurobindo mentions in his essay quoted earlier, pertains to this period when the true Vedic astrology/cosmology still prevailed via respect for the correct Vedic time-frame in temple worship. However, though the Divine Measure was respected, the knowledge validating its use was, like a setting sun, falling into oblivion. By the 11^th century all that was needed were a few well pointed ‘poison arrows’ to bring about a ‘vast decay, confusion and inertia’, the inevitable result when Knowledge by initiatic Realisation, the very method minutely detailed in the ancient Veda, no longer exists. It would await the next Age of Vishnu, or the passage of another millennium, to be resuscitated. This Age is now upon us.

To sum up succinctly, suggestions like Al-Biruni’s that the ‘constellations have migrated’ and should no longer be synchronised with the Solstice have been so successful an underminer that all Hindu temple practices are tied to these pronouncements through the prescriptions of its Pundits who, notwithstanding the fact that they can be proven to be un-Vedic (and even unscientific), follow them unquestioningly. We even have courses in this brand of Astrology included in university curricula under the title ‘Vedic Astrology’. It is well to remember that for the ‘undermining activity of a slow poison’ of this nature to take effect, all that is required is to bring about a disconnection between Solstice and Zodiac, just as Al-Biruni suggested; for then it is Time itself that draws the inseparable apart with each passing day THROUGH THE TIMING OF TEMPLE WORSHIP, until the distance between the two bears a discrepancy of almost one full month/sign of the zodiac. Presently the mis-measure is 23 days, or a shift from the Solstice on 21-22 December to the current arbitrary 15 January. But with each passing day and month and year the distance goes on increasing through these wandering phantom ayanamshas. Finally the ‘…only a vast decay, confusion and inertia…’ remain(Sri Aurobindo, Ibid).

Hinduism is still paying for this calculated undermining. It lies at the very heart of its decline. Therefore this is the area we must focus on if we wish to bring back the soul of Vedic Wisdom to the culture, particularly through its vast network of illustrious Temples.

The Origins and Nature of Hindu Decline – 3
12 December 2006

‘…But our Hinduism, our old culture are precisely the possessions we have cherished with the least intelligence; throughout the whole range of our life we do things without knowing why we do them, we believe things without knowing why we believe them, we assert things without knowing what right we have to assert them, – or, at most, it is because some book or some Brahmin enjoins it, because Shankara thinks it, or because someone has so interpreted something that he asserts to be a fundamental Scripture of our religion. Nothing is our own, nothing is native to our intelligence, all is derived…’

Sri Aurobindo, On the Importance of Original Thinking,
Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research, Volume 5, No 1, April 1981 

Of the paragraph from Sri Aurobindo’s essay quoted in Part 2 of this analysis, three lines were withheld which we may take up now as his examples of ‘part truth/part error’ judgements. They refer to two predominant ideas in circulation during his time as to the causes of the decline of Hinduism. The first he describes as the patriot attributing the decline ‘to the ravages of foreign invasion and the benumbing influence of foreign rule…’ (Ibid). While these have played a significant role in the loss of national self-esteem, particularly regarding Hinduism, it is one of those part-truth/part-error hypotheses I set aside in Part 2 by establishing a root-cause at a much earlier date than the beginning of invasions and the foreign rule of the Moguls and the British Raj.

Sri Aurobindo then turns to the second hypothesis, by far the most widespread to this day, and the most damaging to Hindu Culture. Like the first, it too is both truth and error. Sri Aurobindo writes ‘…The disciple of European materialism finds out the enemy [of the civilisational decline], the evil, the fount and origin of all our ills in our religion and its time-honoured social self-expression…’.

Students of Sri Aurobindo’s thought will verify that he did not consider Hinduism’s ‘time-honoured social self-expression’, the caste system, as evil. In fact, throughout his writings on this subject he is more often than not found to uphold the structure, though acknowledging that a serious degeneration had set in. More recently scholars and original thinkers have reached the same conclusion, and I have certainly contributed to this shift through my own revelations regarding the cosmic backdrop of Caste citing the Rig Veda, and therefore how inextricably it is linked to the cosmic foundations of Hinduism. In pulling down caste by a wholesale demolition, we do risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In a recent interview appearing in TheNew Indian Express, the noted writer and Nobel Laureate, V.S. Naipaul, on whom we may certainly confer the title ‘original thinker’, has expressed his views on caste and reached the same conclusion.

Like the Aryan Invasion Theory which continues to be taught in schools throughout the world not as theory but as fact, so too the reason for Hinduism’s decline is laid at the doors of the caste system without further ado. And if Hinduism, accounting for approximately 80% of the population, suffers from the stranglehold of Caste, we may hypothesise that the same ‘evil’ can be extended from the predominate majority to the development of the innumerable socio-economic groups that make up the societal structure of independent India. This has indeed been the case since caste-based divisions have been largely driving the social agenda, spilling over to the minorities from religions that are supposedly unsullied by the caste ‘devil’.

It is necessary to clarify this issue because otherwise we will remain blocked at this iron-clad door, barring any further penetration deeper into the past as I have done in Part 1 and 2, in order to locate the real root-cause of the decline. When we discover that root the true nature of the caste system degeneration, along with all the rest, is made apparent. For it must be borne in mind that the ‘evil of caste’ is not at all the root-cause of Hinduism’s decline, though this has been the doctrine ‘European materialism’, to quote Sri Aurobindo, has succeeded in promulgating in scholastic circles throughout the world for the past two centuries.  Rather, the root-cause which we are sleuthing out through these pages brought an eventual degeneration in the Chaturvarna just as it affected simultaneously all other aspects of Hindu Culture.

However, laying the blame on Caste has become rewarding for ‘European materialism’. Serving a largely political agenda, it has fuelled class wars which have not subsided till today, as well as the agendas of various proselytising religions which offer salvation without caste. Meanwhile the real root-cause passes by undetected and continues to contaminate the entire organism. It uses the channel of calendar observances because that is, as pointed out in Part 2, the umbrella covering the entire Hindu Samaj regardless of caste or sect or denominational/devotional preferences. But – take note – the delinking of Solstice from Zodiac, as imposed by astronomers like Al-Biruni, was also not the root-cause we seek, but simply its ‘engine’ to carry those seeds of undermining across the centuries so that the contamination would continue ad infinitum.

We have not yet laid bare the true origin of the undermining in this discussion, though I have indicated the channel of its perpetration affecting the entire culture. As in all things Vedic, we must turn to the prescriptions of the Veda themselves if we wish to understand what went amiss in that very distant past to cause the decay we see all around us, not just in caste. The clue to discover this root-cause is indicated clearly in the botched up calendar reckoning because all is ONE.  If we penetrate deeply enough we will observe that the nature of the shift Al-Biruni and his fellow astronomers encouraged tells us all we need to know about the distant root-cause of the malaise. It was actually initiated over two millennia ago, and is still with us today. In addition, this discovery uncovers the way to rectification; precisely because, as stated, all is ONE. However, if we stop halfway at the much later effect (the degeneration of caste) rather than to continue probing until our ‘original thinking’ carries us to the cause, our purpose in reinstating the soul of Vedic Wisdom will not be served.

It is also essential to bear in mind that the origins of the Chaturvarna can be traced through the Veda directly to the Cosmic Harmony, – that very same Harmony as it was observed by the Vedic Rishi, and as it continues to exist today without any shifts and mutations, Al-Biruni notwithstanding. Disrupting that Harmony by insisting on separating Solstice and Zodiac, which affects all Hindu Society, is the method to continue stoking the engine of divisiveness that this separation fosters; unless rectified the juggernaut of division continues to gain momentum with each passing day.

The ‘oneness’ I describe can be illustrated very easily by the use of a simple diagram – the circle divided into four parts:. Each of these crosswise sections is one of the four castes, the earliest description of which is found in the Rig Veda, X 90, 12:

…When they divided up the Purush,
Into how many parts did they divide him?
What did his mouth become? What his arms?
What are his legs called? What his feet?

His mouth became the Brahmin; his arms
Became the Kshatriya, his legs
The Vaishya who plies his trade,
The Shudra was born from his feet.

How this Vedic Purush can be equated with the above diagram is learned through the ancient wisdom which reveals that the one circle reflects both time and space. Thus, that same circularyearly ecliptic orbit of the Earth around the Sun, also divided into four quarters as per the Equinoxes and the Solstices, is the very same Cosmic Purush out of whom the castes are born; simply because the signs of the zodiac in that ecliptic do indeed refer to a ‘body’, as all astrologers know.  But in the case of the Vedic Purush it is of cosmic proportions, while in the human being the proportions are microcosmic. The zodiac pertains to both, the ancient tradition informs us, and it covers the Body from head to toe, just as the Rishi has enumerated in these verses via the time-tested Vedic formulas of Correspondence and Equivalence. And via that same Cosmic Harmony this fourfold division could be extended in this embrace of Unity to the entire civilisation via the celebrations of rituals and festivals the timings of which arise from the very same ‘circle’.

While these ‘original thoughts’ may appear too complex for the average devotee to digest, it is the duty of Pundits officiating over these rituals and bearing a responsibility for their timings to be aware of these equivalences and to never lose sight of this Oneness which is the foundation of all that is truly Vedic. It is the duty of Pundits to reinstate that Vedic Soul once again into the organism that is Hinduism. In so doing the pristine truth of Caste will automatically find its place again and all the ugliness that has accumulated over the centuries to hide its universal sense and beauty and purpose will fall into the cosmic wastebin, along with all the other debris the wrong time factor has perpetrated.

The Origins and Nature of Hindu Decline – 4
13 December 2006

A Seer of the calibre of the Vedic Rishi perceives and extracts from ‘the seat of our self-accomplishing…where the many-horned herds of Light go travelling’ the fruit of his or her yogic attainments. The ecliptic is that River of Light where the Earth travels through time and space and, together with the other planets, creates the heavenly Harmony which the Seer not only SEES but can also HEAR. It is the visionary quality conveyed in the word Sruti, a ‘heard seeing’, if it may so be called. We encounter this faculty only in the four Vedas precisely because the Rishis honoured that ‘seat of our self-accomplishing’. They did not extend their goal to a locality beyond this River of Light even while using a star in the distant heavenly sphere as a marker-axis to keep them on course while they navigated through the yearly Sacrifice. In so doing, they replicated the movements of their planetary abode within their own consciousness-being. They became THAT. The Harmony came to them SEEN and HEARD because of this exalted experience of Oneness very few have achieved since the age came to an end in which the Rishis lived.

The point to be highlighted, for it helps us understand why the sublime verses of the Rig Veda are largely incomprehensible today, is that the Ancients never allowed themselves to drift hither and thither in the encompassing vastnesses. They were as if anchored to the ecliptic through a realisation that was the fulcrum of the Vedic Way in that very distant past: the Rishis could navigate the River of Light without drifting off course to beyond the dharma-parameters birth on Earth prescribes because of Skambha, the cosmic Pillar described as the ‘support of the worlds’ – this world and not a beyond.These reflections carry us to the heart of the decline of Hinduism, beyond the more superficial layers scholarship has cast on the subject, thus keeping its root-cause hidden for several millennia. Like Guha, Siva’s divine Son, one by one each such veil is lifted until the full form of this mighty War God is disclosed. Indeed, to carry out this penetration the courage of the Hero is demanded, such as this particular Godhead embodies. We then discover that Hinduism began its slow and steady decline not when Solstice and Zodiac were separated but when the Vedic experience that revealed their inseparability had faded into oblivion. 

The cleavage became more and more consolidated when that Unity was superseded by other considerations, other priorities. Of course the Harmony remained because it is eternal; but the axial alignment of the Yogi’s consciousness-being lost its ‘skambha’, its cosmic pillar of support. Then, like a vessel adrift in an infinite vastness, the practitioner’s Seeing Eye became dissolved in this Beyond, having lost his footing (Skambha) on Earth.

From that point onward his formulation of that Cosmic Harmony conveyed the same rootlessness. No longer was the ecliptic in his experience balanced on the four pillars of Equinoxes and Solstices as the foundational base of his Seeing. The new Seers allowed their consciousness to seek the Beyond as the goal of their journey, in contrast to the Ancient Ones so often extolled in the Rig Veda, whose Swar was an experience of this very Earth dimension.

In practical terms this meant that the zodiac projected onto the backdrop of the perpetually mutating constellations became the only map to follow, no longer the zodiac of the tropical ecliptic where the solar system travels and which remains faithful in time to its never changing four pillars, the Equinoxes and the Solstices. This projection, which eventually became frozen in the Hindu calendar, arose out of a void left by the displacement of the Vedic Earth-oriented Swar in favour of trends that were set in motion because of the demands of the Time-Spirit. Realisers could only experience what was made permissible by Mahakala. The time of renewal had arrived. This was signalled by the cosmic harmonies themselves which can be read as one reads a book; and therein we learn that from approximately 500 BCE, Skambha was lost and the realiser’s ‘lighthouse’ was projected into the constellations and no longer rooted in the Earth’s own planetary system based on her own divine Measure. The slow poison of ‘migrating constellations’ had won the day.

In his essay, Sri Aurobindo does reflect on the dangers attending ‘original thinking’ when by hastily demolishing existent structures such voids are created ‘…I must have no wish to destroy it, senseless and evil though it may be, until our new system is ready. For it fills a place the vacancy of which the Spirit that uplifts and supports our human effort would greatly abhor…’ Indeed, if Nature abhors a void, the Spirit does to an even greater degree. Thus into the void of the Spirit the new seers plunged; it became filled thereafter with seekers after the Beyond who increasingly abandoned the Mother Base, forgetting her sacred Measure and Sequences. That Beyond then became projected into the devices that convert the Seer’s vision into the measurable quantities which grant the population at large the means to live and extend the Seer’s realisation across the breath of the land. Thus, the alterations in the spiritual domain laid the ground for the mutation in the calendar of observances. If yogic realisers became obsessed with the Beyond as the goal of their quests, however camouflaged initially, the calendar had to reflect the very same obsession since the projection starts from the consciousness of the Seer. The way was then paved for the shift from the tropical zodiac to the sidereal. The latter was formalised centuries after the Vedic Way had faded into oblivion; then indeed drifting and shifting became the bywords, with an ever-increasing distance between Solstice and Zodiac now amounting to a Makar Sankranti 23 days off from its true timing.

This confusion reflecting a rudderless ship was displayed in Tamil Nadu where the recent transit of Jupiter was celebrated with the appropriate rituals on three different days and as moving into two different signs. The reason for this confusion lay in the fact that there were three different days to choose from three different almanacs. Just in case, and possibly to accommodate each faction, all three dates were celebrated!

Let us be clear: Guru has moved into Scorpio or into Sagittarius, to the 210th degree of the 360-degree circle of the year, or to its 240th. One or the other, it cannot possibly be both. The rational mind and pure heart must rebel at such aimlessness and incompetence that affects millions.

When the Vedic Skambha realisation exists and can then serve as the ‘anchor’ for the civilisation, a confusion of this nature simply cannot arise. The calendar of observances must be an expression of the cosmic Order as perceived by the highest Vedic Authority. That is, the one who has realised that Order within, through processes of Yoga given in great detail in the Rig Veda itself. In these matters there is no pretence. If no one can authoritatively say when Guru changed zodiacal signs, then we know the darkness has reached its deepest pitch. But with the inseparable Solstice/Zodiac on the shortest day of the yearas one’s Anchor, such confusion can never take place. The passage occurs on one day only, not two or three or ten. And certainly we are given cause to wonder how a restoration will ever take place if the movements of perhaps the most important planet of all, the one whose transits determine the day and time of the nothing less than the 12-yearly Kumbha Mela, are treated so shabbily.

It was indeed a gradual process of decline because increasingly birth on Earth was considered a scourge. Finally, the entire cosmos itself became contaminated with the poison, through and through, when it was experienced as an illusion which demanded to be dissolved. Liberation, salvation came to be equated with freedom from Earth birth, thereby chaining the Hindu Samaj to the sidereal sphere of fixed stars millions of light years away from our planetary home in our solar system. It was a pure and simple expression of the void foisted on Hindus by seekers after Nothingness in contrast to the Vedic Fullness. Given the radical shift to a Beyond, everything Vedic, or the old order, necessarily began to break down. Yet if Hinduism remains eternally true to its cosmic roots, then that very cosmos speaks to its heart of its sunsets as well as its dawns. And though it was a ‘gorgeous sunset’, in Sri Aurobindo’s apt description, the Sun was indeed setting, – but certainly to await a new and brighter Dawn.